no destination

there is no destination
just infinite encasements
nested obscurations
there is no refutation

we have no proof of being
can't see for the seeing
are slow to know solutions
or see through the corruption

attempt your confiscation
lift the haze invading
choose your side cascading
out of definition

we're playing with a time bomb
pulling at its wires
call me out as terrorist
or slave to my ambition

I'll tell you one more thing
you do not want to hear
the man that stands before you
is not the one you fear

and you yourself aren't solid
an apparition vanished
in and out of being
where all the money goes

lines so sure

floating landscapes
mud-orange, radish-red
a hint of a splash of yellow hovering above
hills falling at each other’s feet
like swallows, flying in clusters
losing themselves in one another

lines so sure, so true
there is trust involved here
the artist may have been close to her mother,
a locus of self-assuredness

the jumble at the foreground
is a blood-purple march of spears – battle foliage and the sky, the ceiling – misty
regretful, like the heart of a girl on her way
to her first day at pre-school

Happy Dog

it's the throw-away
it's the sink-hole
it's the first night out
in a while,
the soul of the moon presiding

it's melancholy
how it feels and sounds
against my ear

lips of velour sadness
kiss and whisper
terrible things
that flatter me

"Peaceful Easy Feeling"
the lady sings,
sitting in with the band

and this tasty Gennessee Cream Ale,
crisp and conniving against my throat
so honorable for its cheapness

and tonight
I can be
gone for awhile here
wondering how
I've survived so long
being so fucking
correct

kin ECT Id

Badass Id and I
went to see a film
while in college
about a young man
who kept killing himself
in order to get a rise
out of his mother

soon after
(our first and last trip together)
I got religion and
severed my connection
to my family

so that I could get high
on God
without psychedelics

so that I could dig a grave for myself
and, discarding my body
be free

but what actually happened was
I hit gold

for much like the boy in the movie
who, in the end, renounced death
for banjo-picking in a white suit
with suspenders

I joined the Lithium club
and came to give up my aversion
to happiness

my horizon
now 360 degrees
one step at a time

paranoia in a cafe

I am made of plastic
I disgorge
a pear
a crater
a mouth
an ignoble emptiness
that I cannot find a drawer for

flies circle her head
but ignore mine

my nose cannot find its way back
out of the classifieds

this is my 11th plague
and me
not even Egyptian
but a Jew

serves me right
for my past lives
.as a womanizer.
.in the mob.
.in the Third Reich.

emergent church cafe yin yang

one for the Phoenix Project -- an "emergent church" whence I have received social and spiritual sustenance



I have been shanghaied
into a hurricane whose eye is Jesus' swarthy baby-face
temple terrorist
water-whisperer
can't make up his mind whether he's dead or alive
drops plumb-line heart-cord straight down
to core of fiery planet
pulling up Earth energy to ground my feet
to glue my ass to Terra Firma, aquaderma
perma frost, Pentecost
found and lost, dead sea-tossed
toss your cross and “why” your “I”s
tolerate, equivokize, love has sprung, hate’s demise
trembling trickster, Mistress Mister
rocket-launch, mighty paunch
politician’s selfless lies, campaign speech anesthetize
“We gave them food stamps, now they’re pissed –
Fascist Muslim Socialists”
civil union, pork communion, pulpits, gulp it, sure as shit
rich man, poor man, bastard, priest

and this is how it was preached in Jesus’ time, in every
Bhagavad Gita sonnet rhyme, Buddhist Sutra, Taoist mountain
Jewish volume, atheist commune –

settle with your brother, give of yourself to your neighbor
if she is in need, indeed, undoubtedly
she is your savior

Moon's -- coffeeshop therapy

One summer evening, shortly after we graduated high school, I found myself in my friend Moon’s bathroom, on my knees in front of the toilet, doing what teenagers with low tolerances to alcohol and marijuana do best.
I had found my late-teen nirvana, had indeed begun to hang out with the guys getting intoxicated and high. This was the first in a long string of nights that we would spend at Moon’s house when his Mom was away, smoking, drinking, listening to music.
As the nausea retreated, something overtook me gently, unnoticeably at first. Then I was suddenly aware of it, filling every corner of my consciousness. "It" was a joyful, highly intelligent Presence – It was a unity of my thoughts, feelings and other sensations, and everything within reach of my perception. But it was something deeper than thta. This was a conscious energy that ran from the core of my being. It was the thing that gave me awareness, intelligence, life.
Laughingly, It emanated from and flowed into everything in and around me – my breath, the music blaring from my Moon’s room (Pink Floyd’s Welcome to the Machine), the walls, the fixtures in the bathroom.
And this Flow, as I came to call it, was laughing, because its very nature was comical, intelligent and light-hearted. It was delighted with its own Self.
I reasoned the next day that, either I had had a schizophrenic experience – or that I had experienced something spiritual, akin to what Buddhists find in meditation, welcoming me to the Universe.