Poetry

highlighter

my books are my mind

spilled out in pages
scattered across shelves

i am sifting through my ancestors
the sacred and profane
remembering and forgetting

i am becoming

my path is a line of green
highlit fire

I am a thousand flames
words
called forth
from the black ink

to think
is to divide:
each letter
infinitesimally smaller:
the beating of a heart

Waking Up in Washington, D.C.

it is 9 o'clock in the morning

and my brain is full of tongues

i woke
to a president's plan
for an ailing economy
pressed through
a recalcitrant congress
ground finer still
by the pecking fingers of reporters
stuffed into the airwaves
like a sausage.

my dreams were cobweb
clinging in my mouth

I prayed
in the light
as I waited for the snooze
my dream persisted
like hope but soured

a sharp toothbrush punctures
my reverie
not unpleasant

i elect Ira Glass
soft king of my ear
for breakfast
a small truth
etched deep
into five acts

there is coffee
moving quickly
and I go
full
before the dawning fluorescence
i was predestined to arrive
a little late

i know how to empty myself
but where does it go?

time swept me
like the metro

Firefly in a Jar

The echoes

of a night
drift
through my screen mesh.

A man explains
fervent
against a Crown Vic's
acceleration.

Crickets pulse
aloof
as tree branches
rustling above.

And why
does a horn slice
insistent
across the rustling
of dry leaves?

Anonymized
by distance,
a dog yelps
in pain
incomprehensible.

Our city
vast as starscapes
whose lights
yet travel
to our eyes.

i am a distant hope
i make no sound
my ballpoint
is a ninja.

How much less am i
than a single cricket:
whose sound brings sex
the thousand-throated drums
of pheromones in ecstasy?

While yet
my pregnant wife sleeps
through her symphony
of ninjas.

One evening soon
the rain will fall.
I will watch
the smallest inifinty
of sound
blanket her all.

Hope begins

i am (i am) among the 9 thousand

the day barks:

a hound set to guard
by inner clockworks
officious, vigilant

exhaustion
nine thousand anonymous
lapping at the will
an attriting ocean

once again it bays
thirsting for work
and feed

"i am (i am)"

yes, and i am
i say
but less
in the dawn

oh the ceaseless dawn!
calling me to life
from wordless desire

ah how it tracks me
9 thousand distinctions
shattered from a single pane
and the wind carries a howl
through the broken glass

"i am (i am)"

i see that you are!
and i am less!
who am i this morning?
who was i last night?
who shall i be today?
why do you track me
you bloodhound
where do you come from
on the coattails of my grief
to the citadel of my self
where i had thought to rest

"i am (that i am)"

again you are?

the leafcutter ants

I remember the hammocks
staring up
into the meshed leaf canopy

a midwesterner in paradise
still working

i remember the hammocks
of paradise

high in the leaf canopy
i strove against the leafcutter ants
against the green-hued sun
to build a haven
where all things stay
where put

i remember the hammocks
where i strove in my mind
as my body rested.

Letter from Prison | November 15, 2003 | Hell in Christianity, Samarai Culture, Buddhism, Daoism, and Prison

For the Buddhist, hell is very tangible. The unenlightened life is hell. Souls continually recirculate through hellish life after life until enlightenment, upon which they escape to a state of oneness, infinite compassion, etc. This infinitely repeated cycle of life, death, and birth is called samsara: the Wheel of Suffering.

bicycle-gholem

the fire in my flesh

a bicycle-gholem
from the amputated and discarded

the bionics of a thousand worlds
all impossible, forgotten
a lace of time
resolving to now
discarded limbs, all
remembered
touching and flexing the lost
moments of departure
dead flesh kindled
in the fire of what was not
the haunting
of a limb that never was

i feel the jar of steel
through my hands and feet
as i ride her
the memories and frustrations
carry me

oars in the water

i am myself
lived through me
another's hand
upon me

i am in love
with her
she is a prescient guide
past my doubts
and troubled questions

I must persevere
as I have done
for less
towards less.

There is no returning
only the dip of oars
soft in the night
lapping at the stillness
in my soul
as i move towards the moon
on the water

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