Monday, June 29, 2009

The Book Of Humans

Seven shelves of lies bound in leather and skin
Billions of lives all recorded within
So many hearts, they're all fostering sin
And who is the judge when we are all kin ?

Dreamcatcher

I don't need a dreamcatcher
I put a notebook in my pillow,
and in the morning the pages
are filled with the poetry of sleep
scrawled in a strangers hand;

The Book Of Humans
Padme Khan

2000 Faces of Love and Hate
Duality & Choice
"If I asked you which you believed in the most, Love or Hate, what expression would I capture within this portrait?"

Tea for Dinner, Blood for Breakfast
Two Suns at Noon
Pearl Spektor Pays Respects

This is the poetry of sleep

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Kill Me I Love You

She said,

"Come and join us please
on the corner selling pamphlets for fifty cents apiece
and please and thank you's,
and smile like you know the human heart like a book that's been read a thousand times"

I thought,

Kill me I love you
Kill me I love you
That's the mantra of the human heart
That's the language of my unconscious

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Fuck You Modern Days

We've been hanging in the poets room
that languid place with the stale air
and the stuffy atmosphere of trying-too-hard

Our plaid has grown threadbare, our calluses boring
the coffee is old, the generally accepted confusion
isn't confusing anymore,
because we've all figured out the pattern
where there wasn't supposed to be one

And we're trying hard not to see it,
but our anti-uniforms aren't so anti
and the young ones look just like us
and we seem to be mocking ourselves in them more and more

What's old is new is old before it's new again
Maybe we should go naked

It seems time for a shift but to those who know,
the change in scenery is just an illusion
because the patterns repeat, ad naseum
ad nauseum
ad nauseum
ad nauseum
ad nauseum

We need the atom bomb.

I said that before.

Two

So that when my creativity passes the bottleneck of laziness,
it spurts in such a chaotic mess that
I become paralyzed and dumb

With this frustration comes that sure understanding
that we all need the atom bomb,
we all need to die now.

We all need a purge.

One

There's too much to say all at once,
even if I'm bound to this typewriter
or this pen, even if I'm chained to this desk,
there's too much to say all at once
and I no longer function
productively.
So I pour another drink and consume
the world through my eyes and ears,
immobilized.


I Never Finish

In between the lines you read to me
I hear the beating of your heart say
"Take me to the forest, take me to the forest"
As you read I fall asleep, my eyelids heavy,
my fingers warm and numb

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Today - ∞

Today I found a dead snake under the porch. It was so dry and for a while I wondered if thirst could transcend that unfathomable barrier of mortality. So I buried it and poured a bucket of water over the fresh soil. I felt merciful or compassionate in some poetic sense, but later I decided that all I'd really left behind was a wet dead animal, buried in the ground.

*

Today I sent a letter to my grandmother. I'm twenty-one years old, she's eighty-something; I'd never done this before. The letter simply said, "Grandma, please don't die too soon. I have too many questions."

She died that afternoon.

A week later, I received a letter saying, "Sorry to disappoint you, but that's life."

*

Today I read a book I thought I'd never read before. I was wrong though. I've been reading that Bible for years.

*

Today I saw the sun and the moon share the sky, and then I saw the Big Bomb fall from it.
A wall of black one hundred feet high and dark as a mouth raced outwards from the centre.
That black mouth ate everything on its way to me. I smiled.

*

Wholesale

Human hearts, wholesale
Hollywood cleared the shelf
And now they'll sell them back to us
Eight dollar tickets at a time
But when you get yours
you'll notice that things aren't the same
The thing they called Romance
just makes you a creep


Monday, June 22, 2009

My Consuming Question

Where are the brilliant women?

Ilustrator

Illustrator,
lying on your bed, it's probably damp and stale down there,
and you're scratching away at something,
and I'm thinking to myself,
What's your story?
Who are you?
And in your head, one thousand feet above the city
scratching away at something still,
my pencil's snapped but yours remain unbroken
so I'll live a little longer
in your eyes as you lie calmly in your bed.

That Room

The room with the wing chair and the skin lamp,
the velvet curtain covering an obscene canvas
that room with the smell of embalming and stale forgiveness,
that room, your hideaway

You're in that room,
with a pearl handled letter opener in your hand,
and no letters
You're in the room with a sound like subterranean clockwork
Your room, your haven

The room with the whispering library, beautiful souls trapped in pages
Your room with the rose carpet stain, the perfect likeness
Your room with the raven, the cat
You need sunlight and the wind that will forget your past
And I need you with me at last

You've been in that room with
your third eye closed, and
I've been waiting too long

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Delirious

Purple heart, virgin hands
Machine oil celebration
Chakra of Choice
Base of Honesty
Temple
Pillar
Slaughter lamb
Delight in walls, in paper
and safety too
but Home, with mother's cancer
and her knowing eyes

We don't need trains for tracks
we've got many feet
and strong young backs


Nostra Algia

When we were children
we had names for the summer, like
swimming, watermelon, running

O.I.S.S

Look, when they said
Overboard is sinking ship
We prayed for the dead
Overboard is sinking ship
Fight the angel tooth and claw
Overboard is sinking ship
Must obey the mortal law
Overboard is sinking ship

*Some of these words are [somewhat] borrowed from Amanda Higgins

Sad Flicker

She sat on the bus, all in blue,
something second hand with
worn platform sandals on her feet,
headphones in tangled hair,
talking to the window, and
Laughing occasionally in timid Mandarin,
twitching from time to time,
like the sad flicker
of an ancient lightbulb refusing to die

On the subway I sat where I could watch,
but I only got the back of her as if
she had no face to show
She sat, chin glued to the window's edge,
eyes wide, dreaming the waking life,
that of long time drug use
Then she left, that station
seeming as good as any other
But with the fraying of that woman,
you could hear the weird tweaker requiem



Saturday, June 20, 2009

Love/Hate, Binary Like Your Painting

It's a hard hard thing for me to hate
harder than carrying water in my hands
It's a hard thing for me
to let myself tumble with that voice that says
"Hate her, hate her"
But I listen to my stomach's weight
I know that heavy hate

But at times I am an empty room
where curses fly off walls
Echoes in the hollow of my chest

And my mouth is a cave
I am lost in it

I hate you/I love you

Thursday, June 18, 2009

I Think I Exist To Be Heard

I miss you telling me I'm good
I need that validation

Wash

As loud as a whisper
our hands tell the stories of our hearts
Stories of silicon disillusion
and two dimensional days
Fly away while you can
escaping this century
Hide, hide, hide away
from the heavy gut
Hide away from lazy
Hide from time
Hide from consequence
Hide from thine

As loud as a whisper
our tongues spell the song of extinction
As loud as a whisper
As sharp as a knife

Silent Heart

My heart is a sound
and it goes

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Disclaimer

There are three things you should know about my story:

1. I can't ever decide where to begin. If I could, I would write an entire book of disclaimers, endless forwards, an interminable stream of author's notes, each more sudden, more urgent than the last. The only reader who finds this more aggravating than you, is me.

2. My book is about that one, singular purpose of my thinking existence - that which consumes me. Women; a memoir of gratification, and spiraling, frantic introspection. These stories of addiction and weakness, and moral instability are often pathetic upon examination - I feel pathetic writing it too. Which leads me to my 3rd point:

3. I often find myself suddenly realizing that, while everything matters, nothing matters. I find it quite difficult to complain about anything at great length, or explore the pathology of my lifestyle with any serious effort, when that which was before considered to be pathological, is suddenly regarded as harmless, unimportant, or benign.

Is this book simply an ill constructed sob story, designed to validate my neurotic exploration of self pity to be passed off as epic tragedy worthy of reading?

Monday, June 15, 2009

One Hundred

We're having visions you know,
something of the future, a taste of the present
Black holes shout from our arms,
the lips of modern disappointment begin to pout
We've forgotten how to cope, we were promised the Sun
The roses in my eyes have bloomed madly 
and seen love mingled with hate
Last night I dreamed I was swimming in a sea of 
cellular phones and God was made of plastic
I dreamed that a pair of hands would crush
the last white bird
A mob would come
One hundred years from now, we will say
Oil came, oil went
One hundred years from now we'll sleep under
new stars, new skin
Things will be very different,
One hundred years from now.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Trois

I fell in love with those triangle eyes,
those light triangles underneath,
that three sided heart,
the three lines in your palm.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Summer

Tell me to tell the trees,
to tell the secrets of the bees,
the honey waits for air and kisses,
wings and promises,
the grass it listens
to the sky and to the sun,
I've found my love, 
I've found my love.