prospective portfolio poetry (edit two)

greatest day that i have known:
how do you look in the morning?

mouth dry
yellow tongued
crusty eyed . . .

you are beautiful


still

even after insomnia
even after looped replays

you are ponce's love
you are my dear, dear friend


_____________________________

shaving my permanently adolescent beard
smiling an infants smile

putting on my big boy jammies
smiling an infants smile

i curl up in my still cold bed
twenty-five years old and
sleeping so tomorrow is here

______________________________

your back hurts

once a weight's been lifted

it aches out of habit

as it's last wisps leave

it's fingers outstretched

and then

you're able to realize the tremendous pain you'd gotten used to

the overwhelming sorrow

so ingrained

we didn't even know there were walls

___________________________________

reasons n reasons
pile up round the frame,
like,
kids on stairs on christmas morning

but we're mom and dad, too:

scurryin round in dead dark night

to keep the secrets safe

to keep god's will pure

when we should really merge lanes

_______________________________________________

pedal to the me d/t al

there isnt a moment to lose

i can't stop thinking about

what has to be done
what has to be done
what has to be done
what has to be done

i know and
then i don't
i won't and
then i will
i will and
i don't wait
for the kids to go to bed

rough amalgams
of Christmas' Past
line my longjohns
i'll never escape them
don't want to escape them

constricting . . .

. . . invigorating

like,
some psychic primae noctis,
i can't help but bow to my Lord.

_____________________________

i haven't sat in the dark

if we write about ourselves,

let's not lie please
let's not dress it up
shred it
make it carouse with others

i haven't sat in the dark in months

since ive moved to the city
not one night in complete darkness

or at least not many
none memorable

what in darkness(')ence
brings me closer to myself

unifies, silences:

is it the illusion of anonymity,
the basking in self-obscurity,


like lovers that think
it's always best when the lights are off


like the stuttering beauty
discovering her brain


like an elderly leper finding jesus
or happening upon sorok island

likelikelikelikelikelike
like

something else at all times
and never pavement
only a breeze, a whisper
an abstract's abstract

mounts me
and carries me through the day
desperately seeking a night
in which no one can see me
in which my own dissident, diurnal critics
can't intrude on the small

fractious yet fracturing

dense morsel of beauty
living somewhere off the grid

yet there, too,

among the fears,

the scientific studies

left unpeerreviewed

(dubbed peerless)

prior to canonization.

___________________________________________

writing, please meet the drug I-can’t-seem-to-quit-long-enough-to-determine-the-effects-or-intensity-of-usage-but-suspect-that-I’m- addicted-to-in-a-maybe-innocuous-but-certainly-more so-than-most drugs-sort of way.

cannabis sativa, please meet the drug that I can’t become addicted to. No matter the syringes, hands, and opiate flushed pockets.

-I was completely naked and alone
sitting in my deskamong many desks
at work today.
External impassivity; internally, raptly, watching my own personal horror flick: I spoke with estimators and secretaries while my mind hemorrhaged from this unique, rarely reported, domestic abuse. Domestic abuse
of the most possible proximate cause. Domestic abuse,
the resolution of which is a(n ethically ambiguous) kind of career for the modern alchemist,
the psychologist.

for, like the alchemist, what strong foundational knowledge does the

psychologist stand on besides a more contingent, individual pragmatism:
where is psychology’s attainable
(ok; kind of, maybe attainable)
theory of everything?
(the origin of origin . . .
who is
this
. . .
speaking
. . .
now
. . .
now
. . . now)

I was completely naked and alone
sitting in my desk among many desks
at work today.

The crime is typically rife with battered wife syndrome:

"No, no. You don’t understand: I deserved it
I-
I-
I-
I was weak.

He has a point.
The horizon is here
The sun has set.

No, he doesn’t mean to hurt me.
Really.
He doesn’t.
He really just loves me
Too much."

--I sat at my computer today and whipped myself
like the Jesus I would all too certainly love to become
messianicnflagellated
[why

we know not
best guess is fertile offspring

borne of passion,

some(

archaic god complex
modern, conditioned, rat-in-cage, karm police begging, pop culture metaphor regurgitating
victim)]

- The boy stands at the chalkboard, his legs and his back hunched. His words ring out as his hand scrawls.

I will remember my dreams at all times.
I will remember my dreams at all times.
I will remember my dreams at all times.
I will remember my dreams at all times.
I will remember my dreams at all times.
I will remember my dreams at all times.

I will remember my dreams at all times.

(ad infinitum – or relative infinitum:
a life reduced to second and minute watching)

The young man looked at us all with his mouth sewn shut and his eyes pleading:


“Throw me on the fire. Please, let me thaw out. Don’t make me go back there. I promise, I won’t forget my dreams anymore. I won’t. Never. Never again. Please. No. No.No.NO . . . NO!!

I will remember my dreams at all times.
I will remember my dreams at all times.

I will remember."

"forever." *

*This poem w/could not have been written without radiohead's 'melatonin', an ok computer era b-side, lyrics by thom yorke.

don't forget that you are our son
now go back to bed

we just know that you'll do well
you won't come to harm

death to all who stand in your way
wake my dear

________________________________

i want to end the inner monologue.

i want to end the inner monologue that kills.

i want to end the inner monologue that kills with a ruler.

i want to end the inner monologue that kills with calibrating second thoughts.

i want to kill this judas, this calibrating inner monologue before it kills me.

IWANTTOENDTHISMIRROREDMENTALTREADMILL
IWANTTOWANTTOENDTHISMIRROREDTREADMILL
IWANTCONTROLOFCONTROL
IWANTAPIECEOFMIND
NOTEVERYTHING
GRASPABLE

the gun slung over his shoulder, his
body perpendicular with the ground
neither his loose shoelaces
nor his fraying cuffs - no,

NOTTHE MOON SLIVER-

can rouse facticity's flatlining stoicism

_____________________________________________

"when i think
that i can't blink
without writing:
nothing happens.

the meaning-stuffed-mind
sits satiated
upon its toilet-throne -
erm, chair
- in consternation
linguistically, neurally, constipated:
where's the _________ fiber?
so that my feelings may pass
so that i may feel the cleanliness and solitude
of an enematic colon.

alas -
more marination needed
more time for the parts of my whole
to write their reports,
talk to witnesses -
or: more time.
just: more time."

"what is the sheer passage of time
but the heroic villain,
the will to ignorance?"

"NO!

we must choose -
whether sedentary, on a paved road or
with a machete in the brush.

And so it is with my salty blue pen and blood-lined paper:

I can't control that
I can't write when
I think I should.
But I can accept it,
Waiting for release,
Enjoying the suffering,
That only precedes meaning."

"... "

"No,
We can."

____________________________________________

i'm not a man for all seasons:
springs and summers are bottoms up
even falls mostly enthrall;
but winters have long, spitefully introspective youths
producing terribly meaningful
brief bursts of awareness,
acceptance,
immediately preceding paradigmatic shifts;
but this:

winter-but-not-winter,
spring-but-not-spring,
fall-but-not-fall,
this clipped wing, peg-legged sprinter,
modernity,
where our mental bris stays for dessert
until we look down and see sags

where:

instinct's under quarantine and observation
outta fear
their superiority is originarily arbitrary,
their morphogenesis obsequious,
their self materially, annoyingly, inchoate

it strangles everything natural
in favor of artificial nothingness

relativity frightens,
absolutes somnambulate

_____________________________________

you cant fall in love with every pretty girl you meet:

a voice that runs marathons through tires
and a microwave smile;

Or, induces insanity-infused storytelling at the
FIRST IMPRESSION,
nuking our lamb shank-hearts;

Whilst holding
the heavily foot trafficked
street corner's
street bum's sign:
Will Be Honest/Weird For (soul) Food
like a Doubting Thomas begging,

begging

that:
you might string a supple sentence:

inside my mind as your word play spins normatively
eye up their incorporeality
just past your nose
- in between us.
spit those language loogies sincerely
and:
i may forget beauty ends me
so i may remember.
so i may remember
i ripple the water
so that i may forget not remembering.

must find actualizing, not paralyzing:


my dreams, my ideals
leave me a motherless white elephant,
contextless
without hands that live in iceboxes

__________________________________

theres a space in the light of hindsight
that winds and acquiesces
with the shuffling feet and
darting, pensive eyes
in a man struggling for perspective:

understanding beyond words,
across mountain ranges,
from peak to trough
he lives as a man, finally

or, rather,
will finally live when the god within
accepts his fate as creator and destroyer:
a paradox only afforded the partially divine.