echoes of elsewhere

In suppression their voices ring out

Delicate violence

In vocalizations tinged with the interpretation

Graciousness fills our time

Where I am at my edge

The beginnings, silent as the falling snow

peeling away the feathers of my soul

I am not breaking. Just becoming more 

relentless frosted rocks

tearing into the sky.

gnashing away the memories of origin

the cunning of my species

is not rewarded here

somehow coercively hurtful

and somewhere in myself

there is a shadow in the moon

fearing neither exhaustion nor hunger

nothing is sacred

not anymore.

their signature in the tempo

shaping some sort of unknown

in a lingering sensitivity

of collapsing futures

trampled,

like villagers beneath a charging draught horse

a contemplative carnage

takes hold

echoing through my landscape

the eye of shedding power

to unforeseen æffect

Different voices.

 

Had I never met you:

I might be holding a degree right now

I might have ran when the detectives approached

I might have proliferated and proliferated until even my borders sought allegiance.

Had I never met you:

I wouldn’t have memorized the date to the worst day of my life

I wouldn’t have the memories of venom, as thinner and thinner became written on your cheekbones.

I wouldn’t believe in atonement.

Had I never met you:

There would be a fiery love that would have lain dormant.

There would be an anger that never subsides

There would be an addiction that consumes on some surreal shore, unraveling us both.

If you ever:

returned my phonecalls,

Took me seriously

Believed in the unforeseen. I would make you happy.

If you ever:

Were on my side

Had my back in such a way that it didn’t desecrate what I am.

Fearlessly held me in some kind of esteem. You’d have me now

If you ever:

Feel empty, alone.

Lost in the world where it all seems so convoluted

It is the objectives that are absurd. 

Remember we are complete, just as we are.

There is also:

The awakening to the chaos of the world

the rancor of retaliation

the extent of the disgrace, that cannot be undone.

There is also:

the experience to be lain bare

humility in the yoke

to the karma that is wrought, to the nature of nature

there is also:

space and time

in the corners of thought

where trivial things gain purchase, staying with us for a lifetime.

And I lament:

The people I trusted that didn’t deserve it

The wreckage I’ve caused to the lives of others

The hatred that consumed me in the past

I lament:

The dreams I have abandoned

and the art I haven’t yet created

hope I haven’t yet had

and still more than anything I lament:

Nothing. 

as the unforeseen tomorrows are cultivated

in the idle moments of today 

within our flaws we are made strong

Quicken

Lensing and lensing

Am I adrift

In memory

In the corners

Of next-level intelligence

The wreckage

Between the pages

speaks of otherness

in the fabric of agency

we are the lies of man.

Just words

There once was tradition

That seemed all the same

In places and dreams

That I could once name

There once was a truth

Bathed in while light

Where cries of valor

Cut out  through the night

There once was legend

of fortune and gold

in the streets of the city  

as it was foretold

so they rode upon horses

and ran their machines

their lives consumed

in metropolitan scenes

beneath them It slumbered

lying in wait

the soul of the river

on the reaches of fate

in the cold rain

see the dragon awaken

to feast on the city

and all it’s forsaken

roads flooded with water

all concrete in their claims

in soft, subtle whispers  

it calls out their names

as their vehicles wreck

in pylons and ire

extinguishing fears

their hopes, and desire

and the rain still falls

in passionate sheets

from the wreckage of man

where it kills and it eats  

the dragon roars out

as the vehicles roll

in bolts of blue lightning

as it tears at their soul

it soars through the clouds

emergent like mutiny

reigning and feeding

calculating with scrutiny 

in a city of angels

the rain falls as tears

upon the weight of the masses

in forgettable years

its all a distraction

that will come to pass

in a world where so little

was meant to ever last

the battles will be many

against foes yet unseen

in the paths of our lives

neither carnal nor clean

and hope shall remain

reforged anew

in the shadows of purpose

that live within you.

Within all the structures

There is only man

Who poisons the earth

And corrupts with his hand

His brilliance a madness

His technologies vast

Upon unforeseen futures

Their lots to be cast

sands blow in the desert

waves crash on the sea

snow falls in the mountains

On what will yet be

The river lies dormant

Where the sun dies

the tides of humanity

washing out in their lies

in the caverns of self

I find this to be true:

Right and wrong are just words

What matters, is what you do.

Mindprision

There is something to it

As the smoke coils out the window

 in strange little structures

pouring into this ostentatious city

mixed into the haze

of helicopters outside

the ashes rain down

a storm of mourning

pouring sorrow upon the city

in papery gray droplets

from the trenches of traffic

the misinterpretation of words

In the unexpected crack

There is profit to be lost

Shed in carelessness

Question,

being mind and being words

relative,

power that cannot be retained

evaporates deliberately

Beyond these lies

Beyond the machinations of this fragility

thinness whispering in the fog

lillying about social tension

reeking as overbearing perfume

the smog asphyxiates

the gross invades involuntarily

what even is freedom

from this and other cells

these and other realms

fragments of faction

reigning in disgrace  

marring,

those once beautiful things

now utterly absolved

in the flames of self

remnants I held close   

reconfigured in oxidizing ephemera

the torment remains ,

scorched into the soil

black marks administered to others

from some fleeting moment of opportunity.

landscapes engulfed in flames

Obliterating the ramparts

In Fear-induced savagery

The exile breeds observation

In unyielding tension

Revenant to the last.   

Without Dedicaton

she speaks of winter but the words never come

in long-sleeves holding coffee

in the whispers of what a new day will bring

there is a moment between red and green lights

between the bar

and the gallery

on a street so covered with graffiti

it feels like a coral reef

in the city

in all of the spaces where I fail

greatest among them is where I fail to see that I have succeeded

as I cross the street alone

in the hope that they are somewhere better than here

Dragonsoul

As memories that I don’t feel anymore

As fleeting as trash blowing in the wind through Van Nuys hell

Her mascara runs violently

“You’ve said all the words.”

Like the nostalgia of evaporating power

It seems real but it comes from some unknowable place

As silent preparations of power consume my every thought

As spreading feathers, as anvil clouds gather

within some deafening moment

reigning a kind of squalor

in some space beyond then and now

shedding influence on interpretive expressions 



As if careful in carelessness 

And still these are the grey skies

The static whispers of bitter telepathy

Before the storm touches down

And the wreckage of their machines leaves then bleeding out in the downpour

As if the shrieking of the trains

Makes you good at fighting tweakers

And this is the reality of which I am forged

As weeds growing in the cracks of the freeway

Within these stone pillars, these graffitied overpasses

There is a lingering sense of upheaval

In the foundations of precedence

The seeds of now were planted so long ago

soaking up polluted water

flowering into the contaminated reality

where we insulate ourselves

in bubbles of metal and glass

only to watch them pop against one another

as a ravenous god consuming sacrifices

a tinge of nature waits  

to the roar of thunder within ourselves 

in the lightning behind our eyes

inherently our own

flitter

In the dialectic purr of our language

Obsessive in a detached way

As a permissive control

the intersections of conflicted energy-

break them, in the steel of our steps

let them hear the ruthlessness of our language

taste the sand

feel the suffering

endure the hatred

as it is a privileged hell

for which we are borne

petals of discontent

desiccating under pressure

peeling from us like celebrations past

hearing in some harsh bassline

the end of our civilization

Broken to incompetence

a natural order emerges

in the shadows of the titans

that once seemed so real

I sense the shadows within

have rendered this moment

as marrow from the freshly slain

this reigning catharsis

As the moon rises between rocks

Turning us to perfected forms

Casting a welcomed silhouette

Upon the hazy mirage of unspoken futures

cielos violetas

estamos la tormenta 

es que es como

la tierra levantando en el viento

y ellos gritan

inexplicativo

en este momento

porqure se siento como

la tierra sabía æones pasando

que llorar sin lagrimas

chillido en la vos de un caballero

sutil, elegante

como el pico  de una vespa

que paralizando

despues comiendo la victimas del interno afuera

en los conneciones neblados

como el espejismo en la distancia

estoy empasando mirar el futuro

como la secuencia del infinativo momentos ahorita

en furiosidad escondondito en pétalos de fabrico

en una choro de huellas silencias

nos cantamos por una mayora madre

en voses susurros en miel

estamos el yermo

hecho de corasones enternos

adonde mi amor sofocarse

en un ahogando suave abrasa

sienta como bebiendo profundamente

despues de sed familial

torrencial en las grietas

curativo abajo un cielo violeta

y sientas como la verdad,

es obvio

no hay perfección de alguen interpretación

en tiempo hay solamente las momentas completa

en una pureza más lejos del velo

Hessian

In my mind there are the hooves of horses

Thundering against the ground

The flinch of predatory eyes

Criticizing some familiar landscape

As a hailstorm

On some freezing night

pelting down against the earth

in hateful ribbons

I fell them in our ancient ways

warhammer in hand, claymore coming down  

we drive them to the slaughter

patiently

in a conquest where the blade of my mind

is filed against the stone of my soul

there is something magnificent yet empty

in the inertia of our agency

in the wood-grain texture

as hard ripples of development through time

Why are we like this?

Why are we such hungry birds?

juxtaposibly Insatiable

As chicks in a nest, as raptors on the horizon.

ravens to the aftermath

of that which we were born to create

44/100

I’m trying to catch it

In words.

Like some buzzing prey item

Wafting through my doorway

Its little turret of eyes averting  

repelling down the frame once it realized I was on to it

I thought of catching it on my hand and putting it in the living room

Then, I thought, how the doorway is probably already a decent spot

There’s probably a reason it’s here

This little jumping hunter

Equipped with all the repelling cable it could ever need

Chose to guard my doorway

And I felt so humbled as I looked to the dog on my bed and the cat in the reflection behind me.

This is a pretty good crew.

Gigantic jumping spider and all.

As I throw myself around my place

Grateful to have a place at all.

But I mean that—

Somewhere in all of this there is a place that is mine.

Unique.

As I float backwards in the hot springs of the desert

Looking up at a star crested sky

whipped to sharp peaks

somewhere, my shemagh sits at the bottom of that oasis

returned to the flow of the underground river

that somehow connects the desert in fractures.

Spellbreaker

Shaken from a torpor

I awaken upon touchdown

From some other landscape

Where a moment of passion

Like a spell being undone.

a curse broken upon impact.

Connecting by tearing away

The little tokens that have haunted me

And wish to be done with them

In thought and practice,

psychological and physical

visceral and ethereal

in a hunger for the coming hours

excitement trickling through the dam

constructed

from so many inexperienced mishandlings

as if putting a depth-charge

the wreckage of the past

as an unnatural tsunami

rising up from the cenotes of self.   

Agency

Like a dynamo

It charges and charges

Forward

Faster

Everything, all at once

Build, create, make,

Sit, write

,

(comma)

Like a kiln

Hardening objects of utility

In a hellish flame

That takes weeks to subside.

As if plotting for the future is a kind of internally contained firestorm

Forged in utility

I am beginning to feel its drawbacks acutely

As the machinery seems to wear out

From the brattle of repetition

Gears slip in fatigue

Muscles fail from exhaustion

Time grinds in slow and measured pieces

As if evaporating

To the forest

Lost in the steel and machines

Windborne hallucinations

And it subsides as suddenly as it happens

Though those around me can see I have lensed

Elsewhere.

Elsewhere.

It comes like sizzling static

The whisper of writhing chains

scraping leaves in the wind

elsewhere.

I hear them

 Purring of a friends voice.

Clear,

with a certain rawness I appreciate

in a wholeness that seems familiar

I look to the stars in yearning

I am bigger than my body

Familiar to more than myself

With an agency over this and other realms

As if being all and nothing

Whole and fractured

the nuances of restlessness grow like weeds

blocking out paths

That used to lead me

home.

She.

 

There is a gravity to the negativity

As she is caught in the pull

A victim to the energy of others

That I know like the bitter taste of manipulation.

There is a relentlessness to it

As she tears them apart in the gravity of herself

And they fall like trees before a pyroclastic flow

She is caught in her own dimension

A victim to herself that preys upon others.

There is a quaintness to it,

He listens to misogynistic music on repeat

Where other young men spit their limited understanding like gospel

And without having seen the beast unleashed

He cannot fathom a life beyond the moment-to-moment

There is an idleness to it

As if waiting for a train on some distant platform

And I know this train, as I see its lights down the tunnel

It will take me to some kind of home

But it doesn’t ever seem to arrive.

And somehow I know that it can.   

There is a hatefulness to it

As pound after pound of flesh surrenders under my knife

My fingers coated in hot grease

As the sinews peel and snap

In the furnace of central market downtown

There is a soul in it—

Somewhere, in all the metal and glass

She breathes in

life and death, debauchery and order

in a persistence beyond the veil.

divergence

No longer meaning what it once meant

There is a restless emptiness

Where divergence consumes every moment

We are the great trees of this forest

I am but the fabric of this system

A mere extension of the network

A kind of delusion takes hold

A kind of delusion relinquishes

Like the various tides of thought

That come to mind

As the present slips into memory  

As reality unfolds in a way beyond language

A familiar solitude grows

Like so many weeds on the side of the highway

Flying past in forgettable succession

On a road divided by so many forks

stretching on into some unforeseen horizon.

43/100

Of cactus and orchids and everything in between

In a rawness I can never seem to place in the moment

Where I persist in a way beyond commiseration

There lives so much blasé hatred

As they sit potted in quart containers

That I stole from work.

Meanwhile at Pershing square

The Datura pulls over agave in aligned rows

Behind fencing

On a walkway where everything always smells like piss.

Like a crowdsurfer through thorns

Throwing up white flags

unstoppably insurgent

with a smell that has the power to recall memories
of distant places, vastly unlike here.   

They sit in square boxes

Atop a Beverly Hills apartment

Awaiting my return

The one; never stops flowering.

The other; never gives up.

The rest, a hodgepodge

Emaciated when I found them

Entrenched in their fallen

Persistent to the last

and on this seething day

when the soft and distracted cannot muster the strength

my bag with quart containers of avocado stones

my skin soaks up all the water of my peeling tattoos

in a feeling not so unlike shedding weakness

with a cold rush to the head,

not so unlike awakening

to the reality that we seem to have no control over.  

with a kind of connection that seems to have no bearing.

delicately caught in the distant closeness of the green 

Black Flag

 

 

It is time.

raise the colors

hoist the sheet

undulating in the balmy heat

some black reticulating nightmare

flickering in moonlight —

the night watch at the helm

in darkness, a caricature

as a kind of truth made up of lies

a fabrication of this and other realities.

Where fantasy is all I know

As a vortex that closes around some unspecified point

Where fractions of the whole still won’t add up

as if shaping memory into an ideal

becoming a beautiful lie.

In a Profiteering off of experience

No. I don’t care—

I’m done talking with their Capitan

Mate.

Blow that ship apart.

Burn that bridge.

Kill all but their carpenters.

We are the maelstrom

Of petrels at sea

Harping down on one tender note

ribshots until they can’t stand.

take their face.

Their water
their wealth.
their blood.
& their shame.  

it's ours.

My days have devolved into rendering flesh

Where steel against bone,

and steel against steel

coin against counter

plastic against magnet

I sail.

Harder.

Harder than before.

With the brutality of impatience

A grinding millstone

To all of the human forms

That I leave behind

Sheathing my piece

To a wake of chaos.

Familiar, like a voyage I have made before.

Where I wish to abstract myself

From memories past

By relegating them to some kind of dream.

a delusion that has become plunder

opportunistic to the last  

Like a rising sun over and endless ocean

wind to the sails

move us forward through time.

Beyond the carnage

of success and failure

we sail.