Let the Words

Things Left Behind

2010-12-07T08:50:00.001-08:00

before i left

i'd said

i'd return

for sure

never did

never will

closed my accounts

threw the keys

stopped paying bills

couldn't pay them

anyway

my old number is still

linked up with my

google voice account

it gives me half-hearted

transcripts of voice messages

"This is an important message from AT&T to discuss your wireless

Please return our call

you may also access your account online AT

www, dot AT T dot com slash my wife.

Thank you for using AT&T."

"Hello This is an important call from Wells Fargo card services

Com you press one. Yeah, if not 5

sorry I did not detect a response.

We will try back later. Thank you."

some don't ask

for money

"If you could, Texas,

a rare a call back

Give it to me,

that'd be awesome,

thank you bye."

my mother calls regularly

"this is mommy, just calling to see how you're doing alright.

Hope you're doing. Haven't Found, alright. Love you bye."

a woman that

carries parts of me

with her

still calls

"I just want to know why.

I want to know why you change

the dates without telling me

i wanna know why you did that

even though you knew i was gonna be thereand i

was gonna wait for you."

and calls

"Please don't do this Yang,

hey call me on to say something saying anything.

Let me talk, and I let you talk to you.

Hello problems that we're having

it okay becauseif you are so freaked out about leaving

and just thank god, and.

I was thinking talked about the way things are gonna be.

I'm happy to ringing.

Well. Thanks, wonderful thing todo for each other.

I think you want that instead of all the doesn't have anything so I think that's it okay.

Thank you. Hey, hey babe. If you It's nothing else.

I wanna talk to you.Hey wanted to end like this isn't can give me a quick fix

honey this is not yet hello..."

reading the transcripts of my

voice mail makes me feel like

I am reading about someone else

the syntax makes it less real

"10th. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the ring this invoice.

Haven't calling so many times to know if I can little crazy,

I seem so incredibly creepy for calling so much.

Just don't.

I don't know what else to say call me back."

I refuse to listen

to her voice

to hear it clearly

"I camehome to and set and that was the first time I was in downtown DC.

A N and it brought back a lot of my mind

and I was little time and I missed you and.

I thought that maybe Iwas being attacked.

And And if you want to maybe we should keep in touch.

Because, again, this is a little bit and not just from them.

Now, you're a good person and I shouldn't be doing the feel of our flight.

I don't know,

happy birthday to me.

I hope you having a good time. Bye.

Love you. Bye bye."

there is one left unread or heard

it is 1:05 mins long

google must be onto me

where the transcript should be

it reads:

"Unable to transcribe this message."

perhaps she spoke softly

before i left

i'd said

i'd return

for sure

i'd said

A Modern Day Parable (Offensive)

2010-09-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

I watched
Cap with his constant hard on
and triple folded neck, jam the
face of Vict, the toothpick
deep into the anus of Dave
the camel

"Drink the shit," Cap screams.
"Drink the shit" Cap ranted.
"Love the shit" Cap vomited.
"Suck that shit" Cap raged.

Cap's a man with greens
he rubs them on his cock
every night dreaming of GDP,
skyscrapers, and silicon tits.

Victs a man born of dirt
subsisting on scum collecting
in the cracks of his mother's
kitchen

after I watched Cap
fuck Vict to death for
power, status, and fame

Vict's limbs were hacked off
along with his eyeballs and dick
shoved into a meat grinder,
diluted and blended with piss
and sold at the mall for $30
a bottle

"Profi Komandir,"
eau de toilette.

A billion tears of irony
will drown all those that
choose to see.

Acrylic Dream

2010-07-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

I lay in the rain with a purple sky, twelve suns swirl slowly without ever setting. My breath is heavy and the air is thick. The droplets of rain are like acrylic paint, forming little dotted mountains of color across my bare chest and legs. There is a kind of silence that feels like heavy stones piled a top my head. I cannot move.

The rain increases. Putting the world around me into a slick of fantastic colors of red and green, purple and blue, and gold and silver silver streaks. I am becoming part of a painting, not of my own making. I try to stand but my limbs feel like tree roots being forcibly torn from the ground. I am starting to feel the sensation of drowning. Drowning in a pool of paint.

I slough off paint from my face, my chest, my arms, my legs. As I slip the paint from my body I notice my skin has become translucent. I can see the fat tissue and beneath that, the sinew of muscle. Alarmed, I finally force myself to sit up.

I gaze at my navel. I can see my innards and pushing into my skin, my hand breaks through the surface. The blood is wet and warm, organs like plush pillows. I pull out tubes of my intestine, unraveling ribbons of it upon the painted ground and grass. My blood becomes paint and my organs simply sopping sponges that cascade out of my body.

I can see my bones, my forearms, my femur, knee cap, the lower part of my ribs, and soon they too become like paint, mushy liquid that collapses on itself. I can no longer hold myself up and so fall sideways upon the ground.

I feel the need to panic. To scream, but something prevents me. Knowing that I am simply becoming part of a canvas of color is comforting for some reason. I let it take me. Soon, nothing of my body is left and I become disentangle with the mound of warm acrylic paint that was my body.

And still my thoughts remain.

Inside

2010-07-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

"There's a chaos inside that 'll
not die down."

Unsteady gale wind whips at hair
rips souls from their bones
leaving corpses of naked bodies
curled and crying, wet and muddy

Blackness, sound of breathing
a scream that wallows, tares
from the intestines spewing
brown bile, lead heavy
words

"You'll not drown in a wake
of your own making."

Shoving gravel through eye
sockets, dreading tomorrow
caught in a web of mucus,
rotting tobacco leaves, dust
of glass sprinkled on tongues

Empty bottles of fire sing
heavy somber tunes, tumbling
off the end of the earth,
cutting the heads of goddesses
bathing in the stars

"Turmoil inside suffocates
tomorrow and the next."

"I know."

A Day in the Life of Nothing

2010-07-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Impatient mother scowls sourly at her children
and scolds her husband, silent and seemingly dull,
with wide soft eyes, for being a lazy ass.

Their youngest daughter of four, bobbing
her giant head with an amber green stare,
smiles shyly at me in a shopping cart full
of children, doughnuts, and diet Pepsi.

It's 8:49 AM.

Sleeping in a parking lot after another
pulsating never ending night of nodding
off for fifteen-dollars an hour, a woman
clearly Tlingit, clearly drunk, and clearly
lonely, asks over and over again "Aren't you
coming with me?" There's no response.

It's 1:37 PM.

Steady clicking, pecking irregular bird,
chattering confounding words, for future
comas to come, eyes dry, brain heavy sack
of fluid and distress, "documentation's
for the birds," I say.

It's 4:49 PM

A day has passed and I am ready for a beer.

It's 5:54 PM

Cheers.

Dream Snippets

2010-06-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

A man on a busy street corner full of voices and rumbling machines, sits at an eloquent bandsaw with a long line of women, children, and sad little men with humorless gazes. Each person in line digs in their pockets upon reaching the man and hands him a series of cards - credit cards, debit cards, member ship cards, plastic business cards.

The man at the bandsaw flips a switch and carefully cuts each card in the shape of birds, flowers, butterflies, and intricate lacing patterns. He hands them back to the owner and they smile, amused. They walk to a young boy who's furiously chewing gum standing next to a sky scraper riddled with scaffolding. Each person with their artful little cards gives the boy their card. He then leaps quickly up the scaffolding, removes the gum in his mouth and sticks the card to the glass/stainless steel building.

Climbing down and reaching the ground, the young boy puts another stick of gum in his mouth and waits for the next person.

* * *

A woman with hair that flows from her head like water kneels on top of a glassy summer lake, scrubbing wildly with a stiff plastic brush. The sun is blazing a reflection off the water.

I ask the woman what she's doing from the safety of a dock, she shouts back that nature's pristine and she's buffing the lake for that afterglow shine in preparation for the sunset.

* * *

A man sits in a gloomy room, intently writing on sheets of huge paper with little tiny script. He appears not to notice me. I look over his shoulder to see what his writing: "Strawberries, chocolate, coconuts, Ice cream, meatloaf, cheese, eggs..." The list gets longer and longer until he's filled up the entire page with a massive assortment of food.

He tares the giant piece of paper from the notebook and starts shoveling it into in mouth from the left corner closest to him. Sounds of crumpling paper and moaning sounds like thunder. After the entire sheet has been shoved, chewed, and swallowed he picks up his pen and starts writing all over again.

* * *

I feel the off white smooth ground, it feels of plastic. I am on a plateau of some sort with a wide blue line. The structure I am on seems to be perfectly square. I've no idea how I got on top of the structure. I jump as high as I can while looking in the distance. When I land the entire structure shifts rapidly downward and makes a clicking noise.

I realize I am on the number 3 button of my calculator that sits in my office.

* * *

A naked man lies lifeless on a long assembly line with rollers. A woman dressed all in white holds a black permanent marker and is writing something on the dead man with a nervous smile. After she's covered one side of his body, she flips him over and covers the other side. Having written something of some length on the man, she caps her marker and reaches into a coffee can on a table next to her. She pulls out an old Swingline brown stapler, climbs on top of the assembly line, straddles the man, and starts stapling the dead man's lips together.

"Now you just be quite," she says after putting eight to twelve staples through the man's lips. "You're an extrovert now."

Immortality

2010-06-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Waiting in the rain
until bones gone soggy
blood like slush aching
clenched fists

The bar rumbles with waves
of laughter, old rock songs
tinkering of beer bottles
ice in clear glasses

saw her once, all flesh
heavy breathing, in rhythm
with a man, the rain slid
down her cheeks and collar
bones like olive oil, white
teeth glowing in the twilight
wide smile thanking god

standing under an eave across
the street, eating blueberries
I witnessed the pleasures
of immortality

Swaying like a falling alder
leaf, her eyes wander lazily
trying to remember the ground
a smooth wild pendulum

"You know how this is young
man, without a crystal moon"

"I want you in the rain
always singing of immortality"

Metal buttons, cold wall,
starchy stiff jeans pulled
past soft milky thighs,
rain water warmed by skin

twisting, jittery excitement
folding, consuming, gripping
shallow drowning breaths
until life is knotted
loosened again, drained
already forgotten

Leaning now, buttocks in hands
smells of mud and night, liquor
and cigarettes

"It only takes a moment
to journey beyond the stars
and crystal moon behind darkening
clouds," she's whispering, tasting
blueberries

Immortality slowly saunters away
to the rhythm of the rain

Another Dream

2010-06-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Sleep's an insomniac lover
reading ancient odes, fiery
dirge and death, voice laden
with violence, sex and honey

Dreams are a repetitious chaos
chanting that pulsates somberly
like electricity

This is a rock
This is a rock in a park
This is a park with a rock
where green grass grows.
There is a tree with a shadow
near the rock in the park where
the green grass grows

Again. Over and over,
silent images of a screaming
rock. Again. Over and over.
I cannot stop.

Frantic replay.

This is a rock that bends
time and space in a park
that exists only in my mind
where the green grass grows
and a tree casts a sad shadow
to remind the light that there
is always darkness, that speed
is relative to its existence, that
one with out the other means
nothing

I want to beg the rock to speak,
cut the tree down, and turn green
green grass that grows into ashes

"I am not Moab! My father is
simply my brother and my sister's
only my mother when all else is
dead."

There is this rock in a park
where the green grass grows
and a tree stands silently
casting darkness over the land.
There is bench near the rock
under the tree atop the green
green grass where a scarlet
bible sits

"This is not Eden and I am
not Moab. This beginning
is one of many."

Head is heavy, light
sears through darkness
cast by dirty curtains

I am a rock in a bed
bending time and space...

Trojan Horse

2010-05-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

step-father's marrow is a white
man's, that's steadily killing
him

Cassandra (Mother) says graft
versus host disease is a war
he'll certainly lose

Snakes have licked the ears
of hers and mine, the fall
of Troy is charted by doctors
with monotone voices and weary
stares

Body stripped bare, he's already
burned upon the pyre, Chemotherapy
Ultraviolet scorching, patches of
crusty flesh

In dreams he plays a giant mystical
organ with me, keys made of book
bindings and slabs of gold, that slid
beneath my fingers to a melody not my
own

He smiles, sways to the chaotic notes
and when all's gone silent and still
he stares at me;

"The battles we lose inside ourselves
will always kill us in the end."

I beg Apollo to blindfold us until
the fall.

2010-04-07T17:00:00.001-07:00

i've plugged in the television
turned it to channel snow
with its steady raspy whisper

snow is cold
it comes during winter
like wet salt or cotton balls

its getting to be spring now
birds are starting to scream
and the air is damp and warm

channel snow will keep the smell
down, cover these bodies in my kitchen
with dusts of ice

you can get an orange extension cord
120 feet long for thirteen dollars
at home depot, a small pulley and two
bolts for eleven eighty five

every wednesday they'd stop by

the light, the word, some salvation
i'd asked them politely four weeks
in a row. four weeks. not to come

given the weight of the television
and the force it takes to separate
the metal prongs from the plug-in
i had to buy three zip ties

thought of it late so i stopped
at the drug store

mellisa has almond eyes and large breasts
a gold crucifix precariously tittering
on the verge of suicide canyon

since she turned nineteen i've joked about
her cross to bear and every friday night
around seven I buy a box of ribbed condoms
slid them across the counter and look deeply
into her, smiling

my hallway closet is full of unopened boxes
of unused condoms

my mother willed this house to me after
she died in her lazy boy, staring out
at the cracked parking lot on thomas
jefferson's birthday

we'd play chess together with the star
wars set she'd bought me when I was nine
before she died on thomas jefferson's
birthday

checkmate. she'd say. idiot.
she'd say. let's play again. i'd say.

built in the fifties the ceiling and walls
are flimsy and fake. its hard to find solid
studs for the pulley and bolts

and their arms and legs and heads are
in the way of my aluminum step latter

when their skin is chalky and faces sunken
its like moving giant frozen water balloons
that those clowns make for kids on weekends
just down the street

what was i supposed to do? these guys
nice suits nice faces nice words and always
the light, the word, some salvation
can't turn away the men of god that were
there at you're own mother's death chair
helping you change the green oxygen tank
before she sucked and wheezed and gurgled
and died on thomas jefferson's birthday

they'd brought their big black book
read it out loud next to her lazy boy
staring out the window at the cracked
parking lot and until the end she never
made a sound but towards the choking and
gurgling and suffocation she moaned and
nodded her head and rubbed her heart and
cried holding the nice man in his nice suit
with his nice voice and face and on thomas
jefferson's birthday

she leaned over to me and asked me to kneel
and pray next to her lazy boy and green tank
there wasn't any way to do it. i'd said. don't
know god or the right words or why i would. i'd said
that it wouldn't matter at any rate. you're going
to burn in hell just like your father. she'd said
i didn't see how that was pertinent. i'd said.
and on thomas jefferson's birthday

she died

i read on wikipedia that cyanide wasn't too bloody
or gruesome and made Rasputin's death rather colorful
in the accounts that followed. i barrow wireless internet
from my neighbors across the street using a series of large
squares of aluminum foil to reflect the signal into my bedroom
window, that always smells like old pumpkin pie

by all accounts, they'd said, the blood of christ
the eucharist they'd called it, would save my soul
and i wouldn't be going to hell after all, i'd agreed
i'll buy the blood. i'd said. we'll bring the body. they'd said.
communion they'd called it

four weeks I politely asked them not come. four weeks.
warned them even. my cousin works in a gold mine. i'd say
that's nice. they'd say. no, my cousin's a chemist for a gold
mine. I'd say. great. they'd say. we're coming over next sunday
they'd said.

i marked april 13th on the calender in the kitchen
with the pictures of the bunnies and colorful eggs
in 10 point gold courier font it read thomas jefferson's
birthday

you can buy a bottle of red wine in a curvy glass
for fourteen dollars and forty eight cents including
tax at the liquor store down on main and fourth on
the bottom row next to the plastic bottles of vodka
i read the cask of amontillado by poe sixteen years ago
and i always feel claustrophobic every time i go into a
liquor store

my cousin mike is gaunt and always chews on his tongue when
he's not talking. likes free basing. he says. thought he
was going to ask questions about the cyanide, i'd prepared
responses about a rock i found in the garden underneath my
window that i was sure had gold. go fuck yourself. he'd said
handing me the opaque pint bottle.

mother didn't drink and i'd forgotten about the cork
so i stopped at the drug store on the way home

mellisa's taken to deep scarlet lipstick that makes
you want to lick yourself to taste cherries
it wasn't friday but i bought a box of condoms
changing tact, i'd gone with the ones marked extra large
for four dollars and fifty three cents, i couldn't tell
if it was the makeup but her face was flushed as she
enunciated four. dollars. fifty. eight. cents. the cork
screw too. I said. six dollars and 83 cents. she said.

you just have to pour out about a quarter of the bottle
of blood into the sink, unscrew the opaque bottle you got
from your free basing cousin and use a funnel to mix the
two. I'd posted as my facebook status. lol sounds like a killer
drink. mellisa commented. it is. i'd commented back.

four weeks. four weeks i politely asked them not to come
even tried to warn them. my cousin's a free basing chemist
who works for a mine. I'd say. that's unfortunate. they'd say.

the body of christ tastes like bread. i'd said on thomas
jefferson's birthday. it is bread. they'd said. and this
blood will wash you of your sins, usually baptism comes
first. they'd said. they'd poured big glasses to celebrate
my salvation.

their blood pressures began to drop as wikipedia said
it would and they stood up swaying like the grasses of
isaiah 40:7 that they'd had me read and finally withered
to the linoleum floor. their nice suits nice faces nice
words all still and silent on my kitchen floor.

at first i just opened the freezer door to keep it
cool in there but spring time just keeps springing
as they say. so i bought an old television with
fake wood panels for the snow at a garage sale for
twenty dollars

after the pulley was put in place, i ran the orange
electrical cord through the metal grooves and zipped
tied the male and female ends together. when a light
breeze comes through the window above the sink the
television sways slowly as its raspy voice pours
over their bodies

as of yet not a speck of snow has fallen out.

snow is cold
it comes during winter
like wet salt or cotton balls

The Thunder of David #68: In the Fifth Tone

2010-04-02T18:00:00.001-07:00

No longer let our voices fall to a whispering
march of death. Jam your baritones and
inflections through songs for a god gone
dead

Make the earth shudder under your footsteps
as you let the wind take the pages like
a flickering flame

Make your presence known through the howling
sleet and rain - scream in the faces of distorted
kings, spit on their robes and shit in their eyes

Cast your fury like the waves and witness the smoke
of god vanish in the shadow of a cat, feast upon the
words that wither like the grass

Smear the self indulgent prophets in sweat and mud,
drown the child of the Euphrates and piss on his
holy stone

Go horse in your burning wrath, sodomize wretched
Isaiah, suffocate him in the wallowing tears of Job,
let the blood of your hatred flow like wine

Drink of your consummate supplication steeped
in rage and disgust.

Let it sustain you to shake the pillars
and columns of his temple to the ground

Dictate your commands and bask in the boundless
power your existence brings to bear upon the weak
and know you and the fake god you hate

are one.

Bleed Deep

2010-02-09T15:23:00.001-08:00

old translucent green pop bottles litter everywhere
filled with flesh and tears and hate and love and
guilt and joy and rage and pity and remorse

hurling black rusted tire irons and crow bars
green bottles scream and weep and laugh and
vomit and defecate shattered shit frantically

shards of green in the lawn on rainy days
a naked body haphazardly lays

bomb it all, break it all
a frenzy of life lived
is a garden of glass
that cuts you deep

it is never greener
so lay and roll and
bleed

bleed deep

Rusty Muffler

2010-02-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

My roommate was nearly killed
by a rusty muffler. My rusty muffler.
It tumbled, and ricocheted off wet
pavement right at her

She laughed. Brought the broken
pieces by hand, said I'd fix it someday

Radio's never worked, orange lights
illuminate buttons that have no use,
they're pretty in the night reflections

Broken knobs flick them on and off
on and off on and off on and off

Before my muffler's attempted murder
a chorus of tired pistons, rubber belts,
fluid cylinders, mechanical leavers and stuttering
window wipers occupied the cabin hall

Now there's only a rumbling to be heard
beneath my feet, loudest in every gear
rattling organs under thin layers of fat

It chokes the need for talk

We are taken by the roar from place
to place, I flick the orange button lights
on and off on and off on and off

there's need to yell at times
"stop it..."

I follow the white lines with my
eyes until home, the howling dies,
our voices are left to fill the void

We listen to each others' footsteps
through the rain and gravel, a ruffle
of nylon jackets, groaning door hinges

Dislodged shoes with a soft thump,
light switches, incandescent hum,
toilet flush, electric tooth brush

Rustle of blankets and a fumbling
with chapter books

At least with the roar
there is an excuse

Living

2010-01-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

heavy legs, empty mind
an incandescent bulb burns quietly
three books open at random
hundreds of pages unread
already written

rain, ice slush, days
overlapping, gray sheets
wrapping every awakening

a life that's been emulsified
thick and bland

let the routine of breath
begin again

Decisions

2010-01-03T04:30:00.000-08:00

turn them over again
in the abrasive light
remember what you are
squalor and stupidity
hobbling round for one
last smoke

a slow burn will
only kill you later

Ondaatje: The Piano Player

2009-12-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

all these notes and keys
hit them right and hard
notes and keys that sing
music that's unending

milks poured on brown skin
and I love him for it
that image, that sense
of completeness and injustice

radiator won't turn off
miles and miles of highway,
yellow and white lines run
though visions like hazy streamers

sweating, no money, must sleep
skin's sticky and flaccid, bed's dented
others have lied here, hitting keys
hard and right to make them sing

there's that field that's like cold
milk poured over my skin
gray rocks of Canada meeting rolling
acres of the world's daisies and tufts
of dandelion heads, her curves cool
and a smirk that rolls and rolls
horizons licked by rich creamy evening skies
motions and notes that will never die

here's the heat, droplets that parade
through hairy legs and you've fallen
asleep and the heat and this hate
this distant loneliness and this ridiculous
field and your body, all these keys and notes
and not a song to sing and a drop of milk to curdle
and rot

Naked by the Lake

2009-12-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

Watchful eye of a whale
'Yes, very much like a whale'

distorted reflections, the foolishness
of appearance. My body is a wave
becoming the sky

18 feet tall, giant narrow head
genitalia indistinguishable

"This is our church," she said, "without
the alter or the people and their prayers"

Something seen is consumed. It observes until
its dried up and dead

Walking in the eye of the earth
mud is stirred, slimy stones, a stie

Water's judgment will only kill you if you
breath its mercy, a stupid sin

a babies baptism is for the urine and shit
not her soul

Blessed be this hot water tank, may it sprinkle
the healing grace of Christ our savior while masturbating
in the shower

"Seminary's not for you perhaps"

Sitka Spruce eyelashes only sway, no blinking
Early morning swim through vitreous humor
high in beta-carotene

A vision that's 40 feet deep and a mile wide
no prescription necessary

Living life, constantly scrutinized by a judgment
that's clear and drinkable

Source of all
we worship in confused rapture

21st Century Beatitudes

2009-12-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

Blessed are the rich in pocket
for theirs is the kingdom of wealth

Blessed are the scornful
for they shall be rewarded

Blessed are the war mongers,
for they shall plunder and inherit the earth

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for resources
for they shall be satisfied politicians

Blessed are the wrathful
for they shall obtain the goods of others

Blessed are the weak of heart and mind
for they shall walk the corridors of power

Blessed are the unmanned drones
for they shall kill the Children of Pakistan

Blessed are they who persecute others
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Mourning for Dylan

2009-09-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

"After the first death, there is no other."
Least not for the daughters and sons wrapped
gently by earth's cool cocoon

Those left near the mounds, gaunt and quiet,
return time again, sinful and sorry, angry
at the fury of life, the rate at which it burns.

Theirs are guilty deaths of continuation, a chalice
of blood and fire, sustenance for fornication,
vigor and nightly schemes. Yet, here, among grassy

Fields and weeping angels, a silent empty penance
must be paid. While corpses rot below, they murmur
supple hopes and fumble with shadows, knowing deaths

To come, least not their own. No, Dylan, your first
death was far before the grave. Mourning is a pause
and timid acceptance of the many deaths yet to come

Least not your own.

Langston's Dreams - An Addendum

2009-09-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow

Rise and wake with the
morning frost. Stumble round
the money tree.

Stare and groan, sigh a fog
of breath into the empty air
grovel for riches

Hobble 'til streams of ice
rub your bones. Embrace
hypothermic dreams

Life is a barren field
frozen with snow

Where we wander and die,
crippled by blind cold pride
and fear of mediocrity

2009-07-21T17:45:00.000-07:00

Amber lights intoned and churning
batteries are charging, flowing
electricity on the dreary docks

A man talks to his wife in the rain
clutching his cell with pasty hands

He'd asked me about the boat earlier
how much, does it run well

Penta, expensive parts,
not mine, never taken her out, no not once

Pointless dribble like oily rainbows

This man talks to his wife in the rain
he rocks with the wakes of the passing
boats, churning in a hurt and desolation
that is sure to come

Night grows thin, blankets of mist
and fog roll like warm dough over aluminum,
fiberglass, and old wooden boats sinking
steadily to curious alien shrimp

The Madra Delarosa takes him back after
begging and pleading have become empty
whispers to an ear that's become all
hate and malice

Deloarosa's red and green running lights
are flicked off. She sways and moans quietly
accepting the indifference of the coming
morning

Ancient Avarice

2009-06-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

Trees sway in my mind
while I hack and eat
away her skin
needles litter the floor,

green green
ferns speckle
white light wildly

"I am the end," breath
pouring over warm peach skin
cradled within the nape of her
neck

Sappho screams into darkness
flesh aflame, "A refining fire
has made me blind." The Rose of
Sharon, a pile of ashes

"A kind of beginning," grasp
the running river with its weeping
willows, "roll with the body taken
by the current."

Yokes of hunger and need
plow spring time fields plump
with sin

Lilly of the Valley, we kiss
and pray upon your luscious
leaves.

Sappho was a prophet of this
avarice.

Once Again

2009-05-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

we'll break the red wagons we
rode, screaming down grassy hills,
cheap plastic wheels rolling across
urban streets

Again

We'll take spruce boughs and moss,
hide in the woods, watching droplets
of rain trickle down each others faces

Again

We'll race breakwater boulders, climb
into holes and etch silly odes of love
and hate that no one will read

Again

I'll regret ever wanting to grow older
again and again

A Random Rambling Note on the Death Penalty

2009-04-30T13:02:00.001-07:00

In determining the evolving application of the 8th Amendment and the constitutionality of the death penalty there seems to be two blatant obvious facts before us. First, there are no mitigating factors of death - there is no reversal, when you are dead you're dead. This is a form of absolutism. The due process of law ends at death. Second, and this seems to be a theme the last two weeks, we all recognize the imperfect Judicial system - there appears to be a wide consensus on this fact. What do you get when you put together an imperfect judicial system with an absolute punishment? Injustice, weather purposeful or not, someone is going to get screwed.

Since the re-installment of the death penalty in 1976 over 1,100 individuals have been executed throughout the United States (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/number-executions-state-and-region-1976). Can we, as a rational and democratic society, honesty say that we trust that all of these executions were just? Can we overlook the racial prejudices that arises throughout our popular culture and politics, and say that they don't influence our judicial system? Recall that President Obama had to conduct a nationally televised speech during the primaries about race due to the United State's obsession with the issue. Recall that our national history is riddled with events and circumstances that point towards a citizenry often times filled with malice and distrust simply based on the color of one's skin. Recall the implicit value judgments and assumptions we make about a white male from the south, a black man from the inner city, a poor immigrant Latino, and Native American from a reservation - knowing nothing else about these individuals, what are the images and thoughts about these people? Perhaps you hold no preconceived notions, and for this you should be commended, but I imagine for a great deal of people often times implicit and subtle judgments (malicious or not) are rendered with just these labels.

With this in mind let us marvel at the paradoxical conclusion that the Supreme Court came to in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987). In concluding that Georgia's state death penalty laws were constitutional, one of the arguments of the Court was to remark that "Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system." How very, very true. And yet, given these disparities, some of which can be clearly related to race, did the Court rule that an absolute punishment like the death penalty was unconstitutional? No. No. Instead the Court holds it is rational and within the bounds of the Constitution to apply the most grave of punishments through a clearly disparate judicial system.

Should people who commit homicide be punished? Of course they should, but the death penalty, in an imperfect society as ours, cannot be an option. Society and individuals collectively enter into a social contract which implicitly grants the right to punish crimes, but also carries with it a responsibility to recognize the limitations of its powers to do so. If a person's life is so valuable to us, why do we condone state sponsored murder? Is it because due to the act that person becomes something less than human? Less then a living creature? How do we ethically and philosophically rectify our pursuit to protect life by condoning execution? I don't think we can.

Perhaps we, or individuals suffering from murderous acts, feel morally up right and that justice has been served if a rapist murderer is executed. An eye for an eye, a death for a death. Maybe the death penalty does serve to deter people from committing egregious acts. But how many? Is it worth the unjust execution of someone innocent? Can we come to the conclusion that our penitentiaries are too full and cost too much money, and so conclude that executing people is going to help solve this problem? We don't want to waste our tax money on murderers. But than what do we say of the outrageous amount of money that is spent on litigation and penitentiaries for those inmates on death row?

In a perfect society the death penalty would be constitutional. But than again, maybe people wouldn't be killing each other either.

Nostalgia

2009-04-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

Eight, maybe nine, young
anyway. dirt and finger nails
twilight morning, furnace dying
late summer, long days, skin
smells of peanut butter and alder
leaves

Metallic penny tastes, toy
airplane, flying silently in
hand, pilot child, soaring over
silence, breath sleep steady

Chipped linoleum, caked mud
darting sparrows, grumbling
four-wheelers, wispy circles
of wind

Barefoot grass with dew

Let children play in their
waking dreams

Cover My Wounds With Cash

2009-04-02T18:11:00.000-07:00

I made a salad with Washington
greens today. Deep pocketed businessmen
and pock faced politicians assure me
of their healing powers

Those who've suffered the yoke of power
who've swallowed first world trash
who've kissed the marbled asses of corruption
aaaa to compete, to survive
Who've sucked the sour nectar of poverty
Fear not! Dip yourselves in vats of cash
aaaa to heal your wounded land and mind

Those who've proffered from smiling deception
Who've banged the proverbial capital whore
aaaa just one more time
Who've wielded wealth like a sword, beheading
aaaa anyone in your way
Who've danced to greed while golden towers
aaaa tumbled down
Fear not! Dip yourselves in vats of cash
aaaa to heal your bleeding pride and pockets

A little dressing on these greens gives
quite the zing. Swallow down our shallow
penance, and pray to god that a trillion
or more will save our souls

Ode to Old Dead White Renaissance Men

2009-04-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

Having strayed far from art
Oh, Marvell. Oh, Donne. Oh,
Jonson and Sometime Wyatt,
forgive our modern blunt
Orgies of words

Pastoral shepherds are dead,
so much for their snatch of
sweetness to dampen their want

Pining poets deflowering tulips
have been shot for their vague
caresses, loitering near the iron
gates of life

Mowers grip their flaccid scythes
in death, forgotten and rotten are
their hot July desires

No. No need to complain in
metered rhyme just to be
denied. Give it to us straight
and hard

We'll take it all the same

No Way To Say

2009-03-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ocean winter water sloshes
around my gut. Words feel as
slime does just before vomit

These markers. Those crayons.
I've lost somewhere somehow

Cold dew drops on beer cans
cursed morning pangs
Donne dammed the sun but
let it all be over and done

These markers. Those crayons.
I've lost somewhere somehow

Distractions smell of erections
tastes of strawberry nipples,
dance like colliding flesh
and sound of prayer and damnation

These markers. Those crayons.
I've lost somewhere somehow

Days pile upon hours suffocating
minuets devouring each second
fucking every moment of breath

These markers. Those crayons.
I've lost somewhere somehow

Stalk naked through houses
tracing invisible faces upon
empty halls, licking their silance

These markers. Those crayons.
dried up and nowhere to
be found

Waking up, Post-Inauguration

2009-01-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

Boarder Collie whimpers
Wanting sunshine lapping
With winter waves on
January shores.

Acidic Liquid billows mildly
Coffee pot grumbles and trickles
Its morning chore.

Patriots the world round carry
Heavy metal duties that burst
Into flame.

One kills a Muslim, another a Christian
Palestinians scream, Jews roar, Americans Rant
All cry for their troubles.

Early light silhouettes ancient alder trees
Eagles and seagulls flaunt themselves
Paper kites swirling over ocean mirrors

Barrow’s Goldeneye bobbles, flecking
Water from its angular tux, watching
Honey illuminate the Chilkat range

A flock of green headed Mallards dips
Deftly beneath – sounds of rain drops
They call each other nasally quacks

A million or more gathered, heaping
Their hopes on the shoulders of a
Slender well spoken man whose words
Billowed through the throngs like a giant
“America’s ready once more.”

White caps are kicked up from a northerly
Wind. Bulbous and fluffy cumulus clouds
Lumber lazily, while thin icy sheets of
Sierra surly bear snow

Tan dead beach grass promises something
New in the months to come

My morning’s nearly over, wrist watch
Beeps on the hour, movement never ending
Change always eminent

I wonder if anyone’s been truly ready
With humanity tethered to its place
Like the white mooring buoy,

Indifferent to the wordless turmoil
And hope threatening to tare loose our
Early morning understanding of the world

Revision - Distant Disaster

2008-12-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

The days have streamed by now as in a haze.

Time has made it so. Shadows were the way once.

By their height and their wanderings, people knew,

They felt, the passing of days. It was not time once.

Time never was but always is. Escape. Uproot.

Words spoken long forgotten.

How you wish you were there. The chime of the clock

The stabbing of the spear. The flow of water from all

We hold dear. Blasphemy. Death. Resurrection. Death again.

Constantly consuming without regard.

We wonder upon the wasteless earth, the supple fruit of its beauty,

All trodden under our own ambition. Thought. Idea. They make it so.

We wonder without recognition of things holy.

Cocks and tits.

There's the rub. The wishes and the wells of humanity.

Caught between the sweat and the moans of all glories and deceit.

Wanting pleasure, a fleeting thing. One that slips between

Fingers like memories.

Chainsaw. Sawdust.

A cross cut down, falls in the city, no one hears it.

A man sits in his bathtub, half full of milky water

Rubbing himself with dollar bills fallen from the sky.

He trails off and drowns in his own want.

Erection long lasting death.

Flipping through dictionaries. Words have died.

They pass away, dead in dead sentences.

Letters once proud now die with our utterance.

All color disappears.

The river of weeping drown child of corruption.

Long desks. Black and glass. Hard. Strait.

A knocking on the glass. The buildings fall.

We forget, the tit of liberty, its solidifying mead,

For the cock of tyranny. The sun does not rise with its calling.

Night. Children laugh. Old men die. Woman want. Men conceive.

All-father bring death quickly. Godless gods roaming fiery streets

At dawn looking for a happy fix.

A million reflecting droplets

Pools on the doorstep to our minds. Malice like oil drips and spreads

Violent masturbation with black oily slick

Milky water, not the mead.

The dead man stares. He's brought this here.

Death All-father save those who do not believe.

Forgotten landscapes have we wondered from.

The passing. The reaping. The conception.

Life is born out of man's cycle, not his own,

A manifestation of something solid. Or perceived.

Calling books on library tables.

Mouths of white and teeth of black.

Whisper the worlds dead without eyes or mind or both.

Can you grasp.

Take ticking dashes of our past

Where the hand of our worship

Tells us when to die.

Allegory of the Dandelion

2008-11-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

I wonder if, when Freud was doing lines of cocaine, he'd taken the time to look in the mirror at himself. There must have been one nearby, though I can't be sure. I wonder if Freud would have been struck by the odd visual projection of reality he was witnessing – one in which reality was reversed, the other in which reality took on different textualities and meanings. Mirrors and cocaine, working together to distort reality. Of course, Freud had other obsessions. Maybe he just kept running lines until he tripped on his naked subconscious.

* * *

There was a time when people believed in my golden radiance. When my sunshine locks, gave a sense of home to those that have traveled so far. Still, today, for as long as I can remember, children of all persuasions greedily smile at me. Rub their snotty hot noses in the cluster of my gold dust pollen, like flightless huge lumbering bumblebees. As usual, they will pluck me from the earth to wear as crowns. I anoint immature queens. Give them the glow of mature beauty and regal riches. Soon I will become the baby though, in a morbid sort of game.

"Mama had a baby and its head popped off!"

Zing. There goes my head. Before I've had a chance to sprout my own babies and cast them to the wind. I'm sure their parents have put them up to it. Ruthless bastards.

* * *

Trying to understand mirrors is like walking backwards, it isn't hard – it's just awkward. When I first started shaving the strange stubble unevenly peppering my face, I found left, wasn't left, and right, definitely wasn't right. I've got razor scars to prove it. I had put blind trust in the mirrors depiction of reality and was betrayed. Bamboozled. Mirrors give us images that must be consciously manipulated in our mind to fit our own understanding of the kinetic space around us. Everything is an act of reading and interpreting.

I can't afford cocaine. Both in the monetary sense and also in the attempting-to-avoid-drug abuse sense. So I turn my addictive personality towards dandelions. Seems like rather an odd choice – dandelions. Nothing special. A common yellow flower that frantically blooms earlier than most. Always in the act of doing something. Opening in the morning to the light and closing with the coming of darkness. Dandelions open their yellow eyes to greet the day and lazily shut them as twilight sets in – perhaps we are just following the dandelions lead.

Throughout this waking and sleeping, its yellow flower head is in the process of converting and storing energy – constantly and incessantly. The servitude of all plants and animals are at the whims of morphing energy from one state to the next. Dandelions' are all about expediency though, they do their biological dance of energy and reproduction in bursts of ecstatic quickies, and more often then not, only with themselves.

Each of the dandelions florets or petals that form the flower head, are coupled with feathery whiskers surrounding the base called pappus, as well as a teardrop shaped ovary – the fruit of the flower carrying the children that will eventually take flight with the pappus as a wind catcher and parachute. Every petal is eventually accompanied by a slender duck tongue looking growth called an anther tube. This phallic protrusion will erect an extension called a style, which is doused heavily in pollen. Bees and butterflies, lured by the dandelions' bitter sweet juices, will be rubbed gently by these anther tubes, facilitating the fertilization of nearby dandelions that these bees and butterflies lovingly fumbled upon.

Often, this process of fertilization doesn't work out for dandelions. So. They have sex with themselves. If this is the case, the anther tube splits at the top forming the universal symbol of fertility and curls upon itself. Slowly and delicately, the curling of the anther tube gently rubs its own pollen on the inside of its tubes – it looks like the undressing of a unnaturally long and invisible banana. A striptease and complicated love-making process, whose only pleasure seems to be in creating curvy succulent shapes, much like the artsy shapes of bodies tumbling over each other in cool smooth sheets.

Following these rituals of fertilization the dandelion tightly closes upon itself. A tired and defeated sleep. The feathery pappus goes through a growth spurt and forces the petals out of the womb of its paint brush shaped head. The petals dry up and wilt to a brown, eventually falling to the ground in little clumps. Once petite, giddy, and yellow, these petals resemble little of its short life of charmed youthful beauty. In short order, the leathery spear-shaped leaves that enclose the pappus and ovary fruit arch back, almost painfully. When all of these enclosing leaves spread open, a spherical blow ball of fluffy pappus with the nut-looking ovary connected to them, is revealed. It's like a fluffy parachute factory. The prickly ovary fruits protrude precariously out of the dandelion's clock – the bald honeycomb looking surface that used to be its flower base, but is now a young paratrooper launching pad meant to spur them on to fight the cyclical war of survival and continuation.

Like the rich and powerful, the dandelions let others fight their evolutionary survival war. The wind carries the brunt of the burden. Luckily the dandelion fruits are tiny and light, of little consequence for even the lightest of breezes. Dogs, hares, and other mid-sized animals undoubtedly bump and trample over these blow balls knocking them into flight and scattering them wide. After landing in a suitable spot – ranging from an open lawn to a crack in some cement – the ovary breaks from its fluffy pappus parachute and begins the process over again.

Late October. All the dandelions are dead. More precisely, the flowers and leaves of dandelions are all but gone, while their long tap roots await next summer's warmth and sunshine. Angry quick-footed winds pretend to violently ripe off my cabin roof. Rain drops the size of small grapes are beating the aluminum drum of war. I smile. What would Freud say about a field of dandelions shamelessly masturbating and fighting such a cyclical war of survival? Perhaps he would have had more to say about me than about dandelions – his obsession was with people. Just once, I wish he would have sucked down his cocaine and riffed on dandelions.

Plants have so much to say. So much to teach us. If we would only take the time to reflect upon them. Surround them with our mirrors.

* * *

Still, there is a bit of love and fascination in this twisted theater. If I've managed to weather the mower and countless decapitations, I'll prepare my seedlings for flight, and those meddling primates, will make wishes with my children.

Oh. The secrets I could tell you! The whimsical fantasies that my own seed borne upon the wind and sprouted from. There are the girl's wishes for kisses and a princess castle. The little boy's simple wish for kisses. Not much more it seems. He'll forget soon enough. There is the woman who always talks to herself. Her hot breath casts hopes towards escaping and flying into the sky, to be planted anew, fresh and cheery.

* * *

"Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces." - Sigmund Freud

I can't sleep. Juneau rain relentlessly scatters itself against the cabin roof in rhythm with the wind. Restless drowsy tossing and turning. Wanting sleep. Bleeding for it. It escapes me. So. I think of dandelions and mirrors. Somehow I've wedded them in my mind. Seems to me, that dandelions and mirrors share something of the sense of familiarity or commonality. We don't often question a mirror's ability to reflect reality and we rarely scrutinize the common weed that dandelions have become. Each reflects and projects an ended discussion of sorts – mirrors do this and dandelions are that. Next topic.

Back home, there used to be a long skinny mirror on the living room wall. In my drowsy state of consciousness, listening to the wind and rain, I imagined breaking that mirror in two by kicking it near the center. The flimsy wall buckles a bit and the mirror breaks, not cleanly, but nevertheless into two separate pieces. If this wasn't pretend, my mother would have certainly killed me.

I take the two pieces of mirror outside to our shabby lawn, where a multitude of dandelion congregationalists are singing praises to the midnight sun. Hopefully people are not watching me in this half conscious dream. By placing the mirror pieces in a tepee arrangement with the dandelion center stage, an interesting manipulation of its own portrait is created. In each side of the mirror tepee walls is a seemingly infinite layered image of the dandelion and the surrounding grass. Over and over again. This is a manifestation of the metaphor I've been seeking.

Each succeeding image of the dandelion is a representation for its various states of existence. One is the dandelion that medieval scholars ascribed the Greek name Taraxacum to, deriving from the words meaning disorder and remedy. Another image, perhaps several of them, are those dandelions that the puritans brought over from the old world to the new as a healing agent. Still another image of this dandelion speaks to its various cross-cultural name which refers to the dandelion's diretic powers. Thus, the Italians, Spanish and contemporary French speakers draw on the dandelion's propensity in facilitating urinating in bed or the yellowness of its flower in resembling piss (perhaps this is why so few bouquets of dandelion flowers are exchanged between lovers). There is the portrait of one dandelion which was commanded by God to the Israelites to eat as a bitter herb when coming out of Egypt during the passover. Some of the dandelion's images represent its use as a mosquito repellent or the Russians' use of it in creating a natural rubber substance from its bitter creamy substance inside its stem. Finally, there is my pretty, masturbating, gossiping, angry dandelion and a host of other's I've yet to discover.

I lay down on my back with my head next to the dandelion, looking into the mirrors. I now exist in the infinite illusions and representations along with the dandelion. We exist together in layers of history, of artful prose and poetry, of countless summer afternoons of play and fancy. Freud would likely comment on my pleasurable illusions, perhaps my fixation on the dandelion's sexual whims – maybe I suffer from some sort of sexually repressed past where my family abused me with dandelions? I chuckle at this thought - it brings me back to my autumn cabin with the rain still making its lonely music.

It occurs to me that my illusions will never collide with reality, since every infinite layer of reality is an illusion I command with my perceptions. I am the agent of my own understandings, the images that surround me, the voices of dandelions I imagine whispering in springtime fields.

I hear Freud at the table doing another line of cocaine. A groggy and low voice asks, “How does this power make you feel?”

I look down from my small loft at the table below. No one is there.

“Illusions are all I have. The possibilities are exhilarating. Like a drug.”

* * *

There is the lazy man, fancying himself a poet, or a writer, they are all the same. He'll blow slow, heart wrenchingly plucking each seed to be picked up by the breeze. He is lost in his own dream and creation, trying to paint a picture to write crappy lines of poetry or shallow prose with. He loves the sound of his own voice and words - not mine. Narcissism is his game. There is a certain beauty in it.

* * *

During the early stages of spring, young leafy shoots curiously sprout from the ground. They look little like the plants they will become. They more resemble green alien-looking spatulas. In time, these spatulas will grow into the toothy leaves that form a circular pattern called a rosette. It is thought that the toothyness of these leaves have lent itself to the common name that the dandelion has been given. The original French name dent de lion refers to the teeth of a lion – an imposing analogy and quite contrary to the dandelions association with urine.

My mother tried making sweet dandelion honey out of its early luscious spring blossoms once. She'd gotten the idea from some new-aged-quasi-hippie natural cooking show. She must've missed a step. When I took a lick of the stuff, it was very much reminiscent in texture and flavor of a medical balm that one would put on shallow lacerations or pained cracked lips. The jar of bitter honey went untouched, meanwhile, dandelion flowers happily, perhaps mischievously, soaked up the summer sun.

Somewhere someone enjoyed sweet dandelion honey.

* * *

But, really, I've never been loved for my looks. I've always been a means to an end. A tool of sorts. I don't complain much, it's made me a world-wide traveler. You'll find me everywhere, smiling at you. History has had a fairly wicked way with me though. All at once, I am a healer, a delectable food, a poor substitute for the high strung coffee bean. Still further, a weed! Me! A god forsaken weed. And they wonder why their wishes never come true. Confounding. Ungrateful. Paradoxical, species they are.

Today, children still playfully abuse me and the ignorant banish me, while those that think of me at all kindly, eventually fry me up, bake me, or toss me in a salad to nibble on young luscious bodies of my leafs.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short.

* * *

Artificial Addictions

2008-10-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

There is hope swirling round neon

Lights. Open says the window of

Our desires

ATM whispers sultry sticky sex

Man stares. Unblinking. A need.

A want that melts plastic. He won't

Be Refused

Spits twenties on his cock

Come again soon, its beeping

Laughter says. He smiles.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Neon screams with excitement

Flamboyant colors cast into

Rainy nights. Pavement moans

Eating this color

Red sign. Sways on spider

Monofilament line. Dances

Gayly. A familiar friend

Coke

Brown is purity it says

Waltzing all the while.

Bubbly tricks and treats

Beneath cold hard skin

Black Bar-B-Que, smoldering

Baby. A whimper echoes through

Fluorescent aisles. Marked down

From thirty it shouts

Food for the family in Summer

Time sun. Tears on charcoal

Evaporate fast

Mommy begs the child, shitting

Their pants, licking wrappers

With pretty colors

I am it. It is me.

Plastic wrap around children's

Faces. Candy for the masses

This is where sweetness lives

Mother whispers.

All abstraction. Gifts from

Gods unseen. Wet hot liquid

Drips down her mini skirt

Thighs

Faces reflect off polished

Linoleum floors. Where are

Our reflections going, ask our

Feet. Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

Godly merchants with ruthless

Enchanting smiles. Caress words

This will make you well. Shelves

Offer up their alms

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

Round and Round, in the hazy

glow of neon lights

Nothing

2008-10-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

There is nothing in this flowing

Feather pillows ripped open

Beaten against concrete walls

They flutter and twitter, giddy

In blankness

It is not gray nor black

I Dunk my head in buckets of

crude oil. Take thick hopeful

breaths

Why won't it take me?

Where is suffocation

Amidst this emptiness?

"Arise, son of destruction!

Be not at rest in this hour

Of End."

It is hollowness in a void

Standing, I let Black

Trails slowly cascade

Down my naked body

Over concaved collar

Bone. Across dark hard

Nipples

It is time.

Strike goes the match.

Crackle goes the phosphorus.

Humm goes the flame.

Nothingness burns.

Silent Plea

2008-10-14T20:17:00.000-07:00

Honey are these words

They drip and slid slowly

At the corners of her mouth.

Sometimes

It Seems

Powder sugar sprinkles

Light snow in a flurry

Blown by Amaunet's fluttering

Eyelashes

Sometimes

It Seems

I lick my hands, trying

To Remember sweetness,

Osiris and Re smile under

Willow trees

Sometimes

It Seems

Pansy petals dizzy themselves,

whirling in cold clear streams

Sekhmet sweats, fury and guilt

Deflowering dreams

Sometimes

It Seems

Rye stalks bow before harvest

Purified into drinks of diamonds

Bastet prances and whispers, moans

Kissing me

Sometimes

It Seems

Allusions are all

I have.

Joint Effort #2

2008-10-14T17:05:00.000-07:00

Attempt 1:

Punished. Purified. Panther. Haunting. Re-embrace. Forgotten. Daffodils. Drinking. Terra cotta. Soaked. Tapioca.

Attempt 2:

Where are colorful sappy words…in a river of rotting flesh? Who is praying, lost, and uncertain – with circling greedy flies? Are sinful saints singing? We drop in the eve, on our knees, shoving fist full’s of moist earth into our ocular cavities. Such music, truth. Spoon fed scornful fantasies. Precious jewels, like rain drops, pure, collected in a lead can.

Attempt 3:

Amorous bodies dance with naked nymphs. Sultry kittens masked under moonlight beg for candy. Dish. Dish. Dish. Empty silver bowls, lonely under orange street lights. Masked little boys have frightened them away. I wash memories of their haunts. Drink some bleach to wash filthy innards. Follow darkness, until I don’t feel like it anymore. Blanket. Sleep.

By Panganga and Forest

The Voice of the Other - Subjective Personification

2008-10-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Fuck that god damn Tulip. Flamboyant colorful whore that it is. So fragile, curvy, and petite. Screw Tulips and their many faces of beauty. I'll trust in my heartiness. Bitter as it is.

"Mama had a baby and its head popped off!"

Zing. There goes my head. Before I've had a chance to sprout my own babies and cast them to the wind. I'm sure their parents have put them up to it. Ruthless bastards. Still, there is a bit of love and fascination in this twisted theater. If I've managed to weather the mower and countless decapitations, I'll prepare my seedlings for flight, and those meddling primates, will make wishes with my children.

Silly woman doesn't know the first thing about being a dandelion. To be simple, happy, and austerely pretty, while all the while being torn between love and hate is a cruel punishment. She'll put my yellow petals in her hair, jealous as all hell, forgetting herself. Ignorance is bliss I suppose. There is the lazy man, fancying himself a poet, or a writer, they are all the same. He'll blow slow, heart wrenchingly plucking each seed to be picked up by the breeze. He is lost in his own dream and creation, trying to paint a picture to write crappy lines of poetry or shallow prose with. He loves the sound of his own voice and words - not mine. Narcissism is his game. Their is a certain beauty in it.

But, really, I've never been loved for my looks. I've always been a means to an end. A tool of sorts. I don't complain much, it's made me a world wide traveler. You'll find me everywhere, smiling at you. History has had a fairly wicked way with me though. All at once, I am a healer. Another, a delectable food. Yet another, a poor substitute for the high strung coffee bean. Still further, a weed! Me! A god forsaken weed. And they wonder why their wishes never come true. Confounding. Ungrateful. Paradoxical, species they are.

It was those Puritans (people so up tight the English kicked them out - that's a Robin Williams quote) that brought me here – to America.

[To be continued – I think]

A Sad Joint Effort

2008-10-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Attempt 1:

Uncle Sam rapes small children
Stricken with obesity
He's got a nefarious plan
Wrote it down on a 10 Dollar Bill
Buying Senators on Capitol Hill
Who dance before the parents
In flaccid pools of blood. Reflecting smiles

Attempt 2:

Inverted
Convoluted.

Hanky Danky child of Abraham
Humorous pranks from God. Asking sacrifices
Writes a thick cooking book with fancy spices

½ Cup of salt and a dash of sin
(some lust, a lie, or a vain virgin)
2 Sticks of Absolution
And television (mind pollution)
A teaspoon of donkey dick piss
Spit out from that prostitute's lips
6 pounds of meat! (cries dear Ruth)

Attempt 3:

Rotting apple cores left in the Garden
Used, corrupted self-fertilized seeds
Plant disfigured kings, lusting for sisters
Who in turn lust for each other

A twisted cycle of hateful love
No Oedipus, no Freud
These aren’t objective subjects

Seed-core-sin, say it ten times fast
And let your tongue drown in
Forbidden fruit

By Panganga and Forest

Unspoken

2008-10-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

crimes. a rustling hustle. torn clothing and sweat. slickness like wine. a pounding. consumption. There the crowns of trees are aflame. Teeth catch, prod at supple flesh. disciples of tart fruit. crucified, martyred, juices. forgotten promises. dizzy dazzling waves. hushing heaves whispered into hurried ears. obsession that runs like water over rounded rocks. a suction of moment. pennies that are tossed to forgotten hopes.

moss covered playgrounds for thrashings. nails driven deep into moist earth. cool rounded berries rubbing puffy lips. silky bones tumbling in muslin drapes. pools of acrylic paint spilling on perky breasts. drinking color. thick and warm. watermelons left in summer sun. blindness. imaginary fire flies. spinning. bodies thrown off steep cliffs. falling. gripping. flailing. fists of hair, burning hands. groans that wallow like steady rain. heat. unbearable. droplets of blood in the kitchen sink. pancake batter. flaccid rolling. muffled voices. cry on me.

silence are these hallowed images.

Graves - Revision 4

2008-10-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

Memory is water in a stainless steel bowl, we cannot carry it long without spilling. We slosh along, from place to place, from face to face, clumsily trying to refill it with fresh epiphanies and clear-cold declinations for our lives. We'll always find places to quench our thirst. We will wildly drink and spill until our deaths. We only hope our memory will trickle into another's bowl, mixing memories for some sort of advice on the things to come.

* * *

In Seldovia, mostly during the summer months, I developed a habit of frequenting the graveyard. The walk to the graveyard from my house, atop the hill with the Orthodox Church, is about a mile. The highly compact dirt and gravel road arches past Susan B. English School with its shabby baseball field. At the far end, a craggy rock face abruptly juts-out, ceasing the grassy field. Years ago someone climbed up its crumbling face and spray-painted a white bullseye. I've never seen anyone hit it yet, though plenty have claimed they have. No witnesses, of course, can attest to these assertions.

After passing the school, a gentle hill eases down towards Seldovia's slough. During the late summer months this constantly whirling, rising and falling salt water river teems with Sockeye, Chum, and Humpies. Each of them look for their birth places so they can spawn, die and rot in the fading autumn light.

I used to wade barefoot in one of the fresh water creeks that feeds the slough. The salmon runs were so thick I could literally bend over and toss them onto the nearby embankment. Pick and choose. Most of their bodies, by that time, were soft and darkly watermarked from their fresh water exposer. After a lifetime spent swimming Alaska's gyre, it's back home, where they waver weakly, letting their flesh rot slowly, until they simply succumb to the currents they fought so fiercely. Most become food for the greedy seagulls, capitalizing crows, and curious ravens. Each are usually an arm's length away, cackling all the while. I wonder what manner of curses their cacophony of squawks and screeches contained for my invasion of their kitchen table. I'll never know, but I am positive they were not pleasant.

The rushing slough continually cuts away at the road's sloping pile of dirt and gravel. Water is unceasingly at the work of sculpting. We model our societies on its work ethic. Gnarled little alders and luscious clumps of wild Indian celery cling to the slumping embankment. They live on the brink of being cast into salty water - a certain death.

I fancy that the wild celery is pretty pissed about this arrangement. In stories passed down among Native cultures, not my own, wild celery could actually run and walk until it insulted the creator Raven, who banished it to immobility. Now herbivores and omnivores of every persuasion break and nibble at its juicy shoots. All the while, wild celery curses itself for the idiocy of insulting the creator.

Just past the snaking slough slithering by Seldovia's little gravel landing strip, a rounded ridge, crowded with mountain ash, salmon berry thickets, thriving alders, and sharp pinnacles of Sitka spruce and western hemlock, takes shape. Modernity has cursed it with a menial namesake - TV Tower hill. I imagine that this series of rolling hills that forms the bridge to summit Graduation peak in the far off distance, once boasted a more worthy name. The lively ridge line probably scoffs at being named after the device that imprisons so many. Few are left to traipse through its wooded playground.

It was on one of this ridge's psychotically steep hills (or what I thought was steep), dubbed suicide hill, that a friend of mine broke his leg in a high-speed rubber-inner-tube accident. On his birthday no less. His name is Chance. Fate dealt him a crappy card that day. We laugh at the irony.

I went back to the site of the fateful crash recently, to relish in nostalgic childhood memories. But the magic just wasn't there. For some reason suicide hill, once so imposing, had grown incredibly small and almost demure in its gentleness. I wished for a youthful imagination again, when the world was wild and infinite. When places were more than passive matter, but living breathing webs of possibilities.

Near Seldovia's cemetery, with its chicken wire fence, squats what used to be a home. Today, most would consider it a one room dilapidated shack. Our oversized prefabricated homes teach us this. I once conceived of this dwelling as a place where souls, waiting to go to heaven, would slumber. They ensured that the nearby plot of graves was a place of mourning and prayer. Twice I had worked up the courage to mount its rotting steps and place my hand on its rusty iron door handle. The creaking of my shifting weight always put my heart into a madding beat, ricocheting off my chest cavity.

Only once did I force open the rotting door. Little piles of dead grass and unknown fuzz balls littered the floor – nomadic heaps built by shrews. The small dirty window casted an eerie gray on rusting coffee cans and metal implements. Its musty overtones and crumbling walls were foreboding. By entering, I knew I would either be killed instantly or violate the most holy of holies. I never wanted to find out which. Closing the door slowly and shutting it firmly, I leapt back onto the roadside, my body full of electricity, hoping I didn't wake anyone.

I imagine now that this simple home housed a character much like Shakespeare's gravedigger. Always smirking at peoples' aversion to death and poking fun at the shallowness in which we live. Sadly he's left. He recognized the futility in trying to reveal our blindness, to uncover the petty affair we are all caught up in. I wonder, who was his Hamlet? And, where can I find this man for a talk? I fear his silence.

* * *

It wasn't until recently that I found the wisdom of Epicurus's philosophy, and I wish I would have known about it much earlier to save me the confusion. While the crux of Epicurinism focuses on distinguishing good and bad by looking towards pleasure and pain as the ultimate judge (which in latter years would be used by pleasure junkies to justify sexcapades and mass orgies - Epicurus would not likely have approved), his most famous of quotes passes on a kagger of wisdom.

"Thus, that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist death does not, and when there is death, we do not exist."

All we come to know is through our life and the memory of the lives that came before. There is no wisdom in death. Anyone dead that has managed to record the experience, hasn't figured out how to mail the manuscript to Scribners. Perhaps they will. I won't hold my breath. I didn't understand this during my visits to the graveyard those years ago, but on reflection, I had an inkling.

* * *

This fascination with death and Seldovia's graveyard was forged at a young age from the stones of dogma and the waters of spiritual beliefs. In the 4th century AD, a group of Christian Bishops gathered to write the Nicene Creed. It was a statement of faith written in hopes of unifying an already fractioning and growing Christian sect.

Passed down from those dead spiritual leaders whose names are lost to me, I grew up repeating and singing their convictions, which eventually became my own. Towards the end of the Nicene Creed, those forgotten Bishops ask us to recite: "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." Growing up, I envisioned this resurrection as something physical and inevitable. My dreams saw it and my waking thoughts were consumed and obsessed with its implications. Where is this line between life and death? Who has made it? What does each side have to teach us? Who's winning?

Raised in Seldovia and other rural Alaskan villages, elders and others ingrained the idea of a special and unbreakable spiritual connection between us and our dead ancestors. Their way of life and the land they occupied has somehow transcended time and invested something in us. In me. Their memories in today's modern society are fading shadows. Growing up, I physically forced this connection. I sought after it. I wanted to understand. To feel the ebb and flow of all the tides that catch us.

I would take the little black book of the liturgy, with all of its prayers and songs, and read aloud for the dead. I was awaiting the resurrection - waiting for these overgrown graves to break open and whisper the wisdom captured in death. Sitting below the largest Orthodox cross, I would mumble prayers, talk randomly of life's confusing bits - what it all means, where we are all supposed to be going, why I had to stand so long in church.

If the day was warm enough, I'd lay back. And dream.

These were fanciful dreams. Giant red salmon swam through the spruce trees on the edge of the cemetery. I dog paddled into the sky looking for a golden chain-link fence. St. Peter stood and the entrance to the heavenly garden with a checklist. I want to ask him something. Why blind skepticism? Where is the cocks crow and the complicated route from here to there?

On waking, taking in the blue hazy light of drowsiness, here in a place regulated for the dead, was a mess of life. Wild flowers of every kind - poppies, columbines, lupine, forget-me-nots - ferociously casting their colors to the sky, desperately trying to strangle out the beauty of the next. Bumbling bees, eagerly greeting the nectar of its sweetness. The green hopeful arrow heads of grass, poking through last year's long dead stems splayed in every direction from the winter's heavy snow. Resourceful salmon berry bushes sprout their early sticky leaves, cuddling up to the loose soil Christ's wooden cross has made in the ground.

Birds of every pecking; the sorrowful golden crowned sparrow whistling its tune of blues "Oh. Poor. Me." Cocky mag pies demanding treats, swooping from crucifix to head stone, gargling unfathomable demands. Worrisome dancing Dippers pause nearby, looking for water and food.

And there, surrounding the plot, wise and stately, Hemlock and Sitka spruce trees, steady in their evergreen growth, let their beards grow, tiresomely wavering in the breeze, avoiding this spring time chaos. They acknowledge the coming sunny days with short stubs of soft rich green needles. A gesture of piousness , as they slip on another yearly ring.

* * *

Where are the dead in this necropolis? Where are the solemn, respectable spirits, who ramble on about the wickedness of life and sweet, sweet death? The red tailed squirrel has nothing to say in this regard. He's busy darting around, hiding food and forgetting where he's put it. Green minuscule aphids and fattening caterpillars take no mind either. They mosey to their own tune, happy for a morsel. A delicate flower spider, stumbling around like a crab in nature's floral chalices, pays no mind to the epitaphs about dead mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Their's is the curiosity and impulses of life. I could more easily learn about the animal kingdom's culinary arts, here at the graveyard, than the first thing about death.

It's dawned on me since that the nooks and crannies of the world always have a thing or two to say about history and life. The dead remain silent. It's the chaotic places, full of life and flight, that carry the memories of the dead. Our memories and metaphors are bound to the earth of which we will ultimately return.

Tarrying and dreaming with the dead is an act of life - not of death. The burial sites of the dead are living places. An anecdote for the cycle in which we all are encompassed - life, hunger, and song, from the rich fertilizer of rot for new spring flowers. To forge new life, ever evolving, out of the tatters of remembering. All is a tangle of frenzied growth and a constant march of dying, putting birds to flight and beetles scurrying for their lives. Of hunger and searching.

Someday I'll get back to Seldovia and ask the city council and village tribe if I can scrawl a message over the entrance to its graveyard – in much the same way that a sign hung welcoming guests to Epicurus's garden. I would only change one word. It would read:

“Stranger, you would do well to tarry here, for our greatest good is life.”

Satire

2008-10-04T15:31:00.000-07:00

Sitting, Sat Sartre.

Something Saturated

Sartre's Senses.

“Somebody's Shaking

Steps, Show Serrated Slopes!”

Stupidity Surrounds

Somber Squalls Squawking

Sin.

Stabbing Sharp Swords

Seeking Sinking Souls

Smash Single Siblings

“Surprise Snakes Suck

Sizzling Sockets!”

Sour Sacks Steeped

Shallowly, Sell Stubborn

Sisters

“Sappy Shiny Stars

Stifle Surrendering Salvation!”

Sojourners Serve Supper's

Supplication. Swerve Sultry

Sobriety, Steal Silly Syringes!

“Satan's Splendor Sands

Spiteful Scythes!”

Smothering Said Something.

Sartre Squandered Seeing

So Simplicity Scored.

So Sad.

Lessons

2008-10-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Amadeus's tears tremble down his cheeks. He is going to die. Only on the verge of death do we realize the riches of experience. The trite treasure of knowledge. No one wins. Everyone suffers.
* * *
He'd come for a score. Looking for pussy. Tall and beautiful, with his tight white skin and dark eyes. I'd watched him come in, confident, witty, and crass. The only awkward note was his Austrian accent. Amadeus was a friend of a friend. An exchange student, bleeding for excitement.

Joseph sat across from me. Steady cracks of beer and the tinkering of ice, heated up conversation about home and politics. He was short and brown. Sturdy from his years of stacking seines and hauling salmon. The past few years of swimming through law text books gave Joseph glasses and deep sophist understanding of hypocrisy.

"It's time we moved on. This gets us nowhere." Joseph tips his 7-up and vodka to his lips. I drown some more beer. Hazy convictions. Complicated thought patterns. Layers of leaves under the solitary willow tree. Years upon years pile onto of each other. All rot and fading colors.

"Isn't that what all Natives do?" Amadeus grins, glancing at the woman sitting on each side of Joseph. "Drink and despair. Worthless wallowing."

Splash. Vodka swirls with clear bubbling soda. Joseph drinks. Sighs. "True. Most of us do. It's hard to forget history."

"So its remembering that makes you useless? Always thought it was your drunkenness." Amadeus wears a big 'fuck you,' on his face. Joseph winks back.

"We're all drunks trying forget. Some their suffering," Joseph catches Amadeus's eyes, "Others. Their sins."

"I don't repent. Let sins die with the dead and do something with your fuckin self."

"Not asking you to repent."

"What? To remember? So I can care real hard. Boo fucking hoo. It’s still useless. Why didn't your people do something while your sisters were being raped and your buffalo being killed?"

Joseph smiles slightly, standing up. "I don't give a shit about buffaloes. I'm from Alaska. Dickhead." Amadeus takes Joseph's place on the couch, while he leaves to the kitchen.

"What's your name? Where you from?" Amadeus turns toward Joseph's sister. He's got no idea.

"Doesn’t matter," she says, snuffing out a cigarette.

"What makes you thi-" Joseph is back. His got a knife. Using the dull side of a serrated knife, he holds it up against Amadeus's Adams apple, standing behind the couch. There is a terror in his eyes like scattering birds. His white skin is turning red. A web of veins grows up Amadeus's neck.

Joseph is calm as a dove. Silence buzzes, only broken by Amadeus's hot heavy panting. A little nervous, I pull out a paper and roll some tobacco.

"I was thinking...maybe a metaphor will do?" Joseph whispers in Amadeus's ear, "you just don't seem to understand."

Amadeus is silent and stiff. His eyes are watering, desperately trying to look at his captor. They jitter wildly back and forth. Looking at his own brain. Joseph's sister is pacing around the couch. She's taken my cigarette.

"Look in front of you," Joseph's sister stops in front of Amadeus. She stares, letting a stream of smoke flow along the curve of her face. "This is your sister. She's being raped. What are you going to do about it?" Joseph forces the dull side of the blade harder against Amadeus's throat.

"What are you going to do about it Amadeus," Joseph screams, shaking him. "Tell me, what you are going to do?" Joseph's sister spits on Amadeus's face. "There's a sign on the door Amadeus, it says, you’re not wanted here. What are you going to do about it?" Amadeus is weeping now, meekly trying to shake his head. Joseph's sister taps some ash onto Amadeus's lap.

"There are politicians and others around you Amadeus. They call you a worthless drunk. They pass laws for you, mocking your abilities. You can't do anything without help Amadeus. You can't win. One side pities your follies, the other shits on your accomplishments. You can't be equal and you won't be. What are you going to do about it Amadeus? Tell me."

All that remains are choking muffled cries. Joseph's sister continues pacing round the couch.

"Now. You go be a drunk and hate someone." Joseph releases his prisoner and tosses the knife onto the coffee table. It knocks over and breaks his drinking glass.

"My name's Hope, by the way. I come from my people.," say's Joseph's sister.

* * *

A few hours after Amadeus left, police showed up at Joseph’s apartment and arrested him on assault charges. He must have knew. Before they came he'd put on his nicest clothes. While officers were putting his cuffs on, he winked at me:

"Everyone should be arrested for their crimes," he said.

Rejection

2008-09-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

"I’m the yellow duckling."
Cruel beauty. Jealous at heart.
Snow that smothers young saplings
Its tragedy that makes great art.

Cruel beauty. Jealous at heart.
She grins, breathing gray ghosts
Its tragedy that makes great art.
Boundaries broken, become her host!

She grins, breathing gray ghosts
Words babble and trickle by the brook
Boundaries broken, become her host!
Tumbling nights, empty morning looks

Words babble and trickle by the brook
Father’s Fury. Mother’s mercy. Broken.
Tumbling nights, empty morning looks
Time here is gray and unspoken

Father’s Fury. Mother’s mercy. Broken.
Snow that smothers young saplings
Time here is gray and unspoken
"I’m the yellow duckling."

A Recent Development

2008-09-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

If you were a dandelion flower

how would you wilt?

like all the rest? Fragile

and weak, lost in these words

A confusing prison

mistaken for freedom

Quick sex of spring brings freedom

To these shivering acres of flowers

dribble their seed on concrete prison

floors. Caught in the wind, they'll wilt

And wallow, with hard worthless words

Stuck in a structure so fragile

What feeds this pitiful fragile

Growth? A sad hope towards freedom

Where no one rules but your words?

Has no one told you? You're a flower.

Beautiful but brief. You'll wilt

Like the rest. A cycle, called prison!

We'll live and die in this prison.

Together, inseparable and fragile

Til the end. Here's where souls wilt

Into each other. Passing this freedom

Onto the next bright yellow flower

They'll scoff at the seeds of our words

Begging and searching for the right words,

They'll whore themselves out for a prison

Wet with dew, sprouting a different flower.

The soil's all the same. Give into fragile

illusions, a shallow solace - this freedom.

Accept the clouds for what they bring, and wilt.

Weary petals, only last so long until they wilt

Throw your words

like paint to find freedom

from this prison

But remember. You're fragile

like a flower.

Softcore

2008-09-27T21:05:00.000-07:00

Let me devour your lips
It twill not hurt, they are but
Ripe grapes
Fills my mouth with sour sweet pleasure
That I Hate to love

Soft crimson wine spilt slowly from
Your neck and down
Down
Down
Over your breasts, caresses your
Ribs and drips among your thighs

Please
Stay awhile dear, dear
Hands of Infinite jest, which find no place
Afar off to wonder.

Fingertips etch
Your curves. A south summer wind
Warms the skin, rouses
The harbor of your envy

With bitter lust do I wish to
Wrap the world into a ball of
Complete and enchanting passions

Teeth and tongue
Catches your neck and slips across
Your collarbone, flowing past hills
Of peaches to find the gateway to

Life

Is it so strange?
Do not deny those thoughts of
Moist grass, wet, and glistening by the moon

Unpeeled oranges in the summer sun
Squeeze and the juice, the pulp sweet but
Bitter, rolls in the sheets of your mouth, runs
Like sweat over your skin, stabs crowning thorns of

Lust

That which you hate to love.

Metaphors

2008-09-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

Its the boy holding
An Orange to the sky

Its the girl biting
A green apple, Yellow
Daisies in her hair

That bring bearded
Preachers hot tears

A golden rubied chalice
Overflowing with bloody
Blasphemy

It's the knowing

2008-09-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

Photographs are leaves fallen from
Trees of society

They pile up and we rake them into
albums and books

Perhaps it be better to burn them.
All those smiles into the flame.

Here's one!

Forty four humans compose the scene
Forty three form a half circle
One takes center stage

All are men save two

nineteen are indistinguishable
stitches of woolen coats
top hats and driver caps

Five eagerly glance off, as if there's
another camera

Thirteen look into the lens
Three among this group smile

One man, a gaze unknown
Straightens his tie

Five muse toward center stage
Four of them purse their lips
thinking

One among them, a boy of maybe ten,
raises his hand under his chin
making a curious open mouth smile

The last human, center stage
His Eyes were watching God

He lay pretzeled around two
By fours, with a broken oil
Lantern by his side

After he'd been shot and
Mutilated his corpse was
Set aflame, causing crests
of charred flesh to form crusty
ribbons across his body

Welcome to Omaha, Nebraska 1919

It's the knowing that will
Kill you

I wonder what frames we'll be
Caught in. Damning us to hell

Did I mention. He was
Black?

No need. I'd guess.

Graves

2008-09-17T15:02:00.001-07:00

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.” Mark 13:8

March 27, 1964 - Good Friday - "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake...And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose." Matthew 27:52

When the earth shook on the feast day of Christ's Resurrection, the rocky coast of the Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound were cast into the sea - dropping 3 to 6 feet. In Seldovia, Alaska, towards the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, notorious for its white washed boarded walk along the shore, most was drowned. Resident shops and homes were flooded. In time, people rebuilt, new homes erected, white washed boardwalks reestablished - memories of the rumbling faded into history as a quint suggestion of people's hardiness and the unfathomable courses that nature decides to take. In all, history is a type of forgetting, a death which cannot be resurrected.

My father recalled that he was playing on the beach that day around 5:30 PM. He'd shoved a stick into the beach gravel to erect as part of some child's imaginative theater. Almost directly after planting the monument to imagination, the ground awoke rocking and rolling violently, hitting 9.2 on the Richter scale. He would always remember that day, as the one in which he started the 1964 earthquake. Out of fear and panic, my father removed the stick from the ground and quickly covered up the hole. Still. The earth shook. He ran home screaming and crying, trying to explain to his grandmother that he didn't mean to make the land so mad.

In the mist and aftermath of all that abrupt chaos, I imagine that she just laughed and laughed. The joke was lost on my father.

In my own childhood fancy I would visit Seldovia's graveyard nearly every week during the summer months. Wild flowers of every kind grow ferociously in the unkempt lot. Orthodox Crucifixes are over run with thick grass and sticky prickly balled plants with little yellow flowers - beguiling the annoyance of their damned prickly balls. Animals and plants, it seems, will do anything to procreate.

In the afternoon heat, the air radiated off the ground muggy and moist. It hung placid and lazy with the unmoving dead. The buzzing of bees, bumbling along from forget-me-nots, to poppies, to dandelions, to wild roses was constant those summer days. They drowned out any voices that might be heard. That I was trying to hear.

Chickadees and birds of every persuasion ambled about through the overgrown lively dead plot. A ruby crowned kinglet could always be heard in its self pity, ringing out softly "oh. Poor. Me." A friend of mine, years later, once crassly remarked that; "No. No. You got it all wrong. What they are actually saying is 'Oh. Fuck. Me.'" I would whistle in response, never quite getting the right pitch. Red breasted Robbins, hopping cautiously, peck around for seeds and beetles. A cocky Mag Pie screeches, perched atop a cross, waiting for the mother load of munchies. I read somewhere that Mag Pies on Monday's are the devils signature - I think they are just hungry brats, like any child late for lunch and a nap. They just never grow out of it. Indeed, some kids don't either.

I was waiting for the resurrection of the dead. Growing up, I would repeat that phrase again and again - "I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." Elders and others spoke of the deep connection with our shared ancestry. That their stories, lives, and memories were, are, critical to the continuation of culture and a good life.

In childhood, I envisioned this connection physically. I would take the little black book of the liturgy, with all of its prayers and songs, and read aloud for the dead. Waiting for their overgrown graves to either break open or whisper the wisdom captured in death. Sitting below the largest Orthodox cross, I would mumble prayers, talk randomly of life's confusing bits - what it all means, where we are all supposed to be going, why I had to stand so long in church. If the day was warm enough, I'd slump over and dream.

Fancies of giant red salmon swimming through the spruce trees as I dog paddled into the sky looking for a golden chain link fence and St. Peter with a check list. I want to ask him something. Why blind skepticism? Where is the cocks crow and the complicated route from here to there?

But all is fantastic rhetoric. All is illusion.

Sleeping and dreaming with the dead is an act of life - not of death. Like attempting or succeeding to kill ones self - it is a mode to get from one understanding to another. To get what we need or think we need. The burial sites of the dead is a living place. An anecdote for the cycle in which we all are encompassed - life, hunger, song, and the rich fertilizer of rot, to spring new flowers. To forge new life, an ever evolving one, out of the tatters of remembering. All is a tangle of frenzied growth and a constant march of dying. Their baritone drum beat echoes throughout the winds of life - putting birds to flight and beetles scurrying for their pathetic lives of aimless searching.

The connection is not physical. It is not even really fathomable. I've only come to this realization through morbid and idyllic reflection. When waking from dreams or vacant stares, lost in random contemplation, the world seemed anew. A hazy twilight blue, with the feeling of spinning and weightlessness. I'd stand up, gripping the big white cross, lightheaded - confused of the time and why I was even there, in the field of the dead.

Walking the mile home from the graveyard was an exercise in remembering what might have been said. What might have been communicated. But memory is water in a stainless steel bowl, we cannot carry it for long without spilling. So we fumble along, from place to place, from face to face, clumsily trying to refill it with fresh epiphanies and clear-cold declinations for our lives. We will always find places to quench our thirst, but we will wildly drink and spill until our deaths. We only hope our memory will trickle into another's bowl, mixing memories for some sort of advice on the things to come.

Getting home in the early evening, my mother would ask "how was your day? Where've you been?"

"Good. Just with some friends. Talking."

Place

2008-09-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

I have pictures of this place. Stacks of pictures. All with a story of some sort.

A woman walks down the sandy beach. She wears a long bright red wool jacket with a tan silky scarf. She's caught mid-gentle stride. In front of her lays the yawning blue Mendenhall Glacier. It glorifies itself with its own placid lake, making a mirror image of itself. Still. Somehow, Mendenhall manages to be humble, caught in the reflection of its own awe and breadth. The woman and the glacier. There is a history there. Deep Geological history meets my own shallowness.

Two bicycles lay on either side of a muddied trail. There is a heavy blanket of moss and low lying bushes. In the background Mt. McGinnis and Mt. Bullard tower over and crowd in the candy blue of Mendenhall Glacier. Somewhere outside of the picture two friends speak of an up and coming wedding, the twists and turns of life - how it's always changing. A cool winterly breeze, stuck in summertime June, flaps alder and cotton wood leaves, just now mustering up their green luster.

A two year old child stands bundled up like a marshmallow during a February falling evening. He stands on Mendenhall's frozen lake. Behind him dreams Mendenhall, smiling blue with white icing topping. The child looks happy, but out of place. In the distance, the twin towers stand erect and foreboding with its craggy gray faces. As the child's mother took his picture, people shout rambunctiously, sledding down the steep small hill nearby. Someone sings happy birthday to themselves.

These are just pictures. The place is much more.

Freedom's Free!

2008-09-01T14:16:00.001-07:00

American people
Don't you understand?
Freedom is free!

Stand here and watch
As powerful kings bestowed
by God shake hands and smile
Cameras flash, smiles fade

The buck is passed from
Hand to hand

Ideals of Christ are bought
and sold. Brotherhood comes
at a price

American People
Don't you understand?
Freedom is free!

Israel's screams echo
In the halls history, collective
suffering and a people's guilt
becomes public policy

Money changers sell
humanity at the temples gates

Democratic votes smell of
Silver. A lot of thirty cast upon
a hill of shame.

American people
Don't you understand?
Freedom is free!

Over a Dish of Fruit

2008-08-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

"My father is a shell.
My father is dead."

Droplets fall from her brown
Skies. Eats ripe grapes that
would have been wine.

"Stories are all we have.
Don't you understand?"

"Stop saying that."

Trembling. A lonely winter
Alder, shaken by Northern winds
Here in the land of endless sun
Where heroes go to die for women
And Water; God and glory.

Forks clang against porcelain plates
Cutting wedges of watermelon, its
Black seeds float in pink sweet juices

Nearby desert aches for the sowing
Soon to be suffocated with parched tan
Sand. Voices cry out 'Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap.'

"Now. What do you have to tell me?"

A bastard prophet, wanders, thirsty
For truth. Removes his sandals, weeps
Gnawing the earth, as the desert catches
Ablaze.

"I can't. Not here. Not now."

"I already know."

A Heaving like rock slides. Tumbling.
Rolling. Crashing. Thrashing. Echoes.
Silence.

"I'm leaving you."

"I knew. I knew it."

A city crumbles to skeletons.
Memories now. Ruins that are buried
With time. Only visited, never lived.

Empty grapevine. Strawberry tops sit
like green stars, sopping up juices
Uneaten.

Unknown Person Shot

2008-07-31T06:16:00.000-07:00

“This is the path that a Pennsylvanian man took to shoot and kill Magic. There was no justice. There was no reason.”

All there are are rows and rows of houses. Like the streets of Selcuk. The wind is blowing a slight dust. The light is silvery and grainy. For some reason there is a kind of music in my head.

The beginning lines are being said by a narrator. As if I am part of a movie. Or as if I am the Pennsylvanian man, who's shot Magic.

I get to Magic's families house. I met this family before on a mountain. I was on it with Kent. It was an amusement mountain. Only. There weren't any rides. It was all about people hiking up to the top of the mountain and taking anything they could - bikes, moccasins, unicycles, inter tubes, one girl with a blown up dinosaur sitting on a castle with goggles and a mouth guard - Kent was there with me. At the base of the mountain, was a castle like structure that skirted the base of the mountain. There were showers and places for people to sit and watch others tumble and glide down the mountain.

In one instant, Kent decides to go to the top of the mountain. I go ambling off in random directions waiting for him to come down. I see strange things. There are couples and individuals doing just strange things. Two men riding unicycles totally fucking wipe out trying to get down this insanely steep embankment of dirt and grass. They wipe out badly and hysterically happy get back up on their unicycle and go for another round.

A mother with her children (the one with the girl and the dinosaur inner tube) pass by me. There are two boys. Well. Only one that I can see. They seem to be done with the mountain and are leaving, there is a child screaming and throwing things around in a convenience store or a gift shop that is located at this place. The mother says that she's leaving him. The screaming stops and the mother and her family disappear.

I am constantly asking people about Kent. Where he is. Weather or not they have seen him. There is a husband and wife, Kato and Steph, still dressed in their wedding digs, who come slowly down the steep mountain face on an older Schwinn model bike in front of me. When the reach me I ask them if they have seen Kent. They nod an affirmative and say that by the time they had started going on down he was just summiting.

I sit and I wait.

This is where I met Magic's family. They all seem to be a portly lot. The father and Magic's brother, Alexei, sit across from me. The father looks Turkish and is wearing a black Metallica T-shirt. The son sitting next to him doesn't look anything like a Turk. He looks like a chubby Ukrainian boy.

"Where is he? huh? You telling me that my crazy punk rocking son, just got up and left. Went home to be lazy and do nothing? No. Where is he?"

The father is talking to Alexei. Alexei looks shy and pissed at his father's questions. Alexei has no idea where is brother Magic is.

Eventually, after yelling some more, asking the same questions over and over again, the father turns to me. He smiles broadly and motions to me to come sit next to him. Typical Turkish man.

He looks like he is getting ready to tell me all about his son's exploits. How great he is. But, all he does is ask:

"Do you know where my son is?"

The wife with a tiny baby come up to this father and Alexei. She brings a time to go feeling to the air. She looks so tired holding that smiling baby. She has a middle aged womens beauty. One that you marvel at all the things she's seen and done. When the baby looks at her mother, it smiles and smiles. The baby is so very quiet.

"I don't know where magic is." Says the Father.

They leave. I am left alone. I get tired of waiting for Kent. There is a great uneasiness about everything. I leave the strange mountain amusement park with no rides to be found. Upon getting down into some city blocks I find a park bench and fall asleep.

I am awoken by a ache in my heart. I am crying. I don't really understand why. I begin walking. I hear the narrators voice.

"This is the path that the Pennsylvanian man took to shoot and Kill Magic. There was no justice. There was no reason."

I walk along city block upon city block. I find the family's home. There are fifteen too twenty cars sitting outside the apartment complex. I enter and begin climbing stair case after stair case. I reach an upper terrace and look down into a courtyard. Alexei is talking into a cell phone, on his knees yelling and weeping.

I go up one more flight of narrow winding stairs and there sitting in a tiny room is the mother and tiny baby. She smiles at me and so does the baby. The baby's smile is a bit strange. It seems like an adult smile - one that has too many teeth and is hiding something.

I reach out for the mother face to give my condolences. Tears are quietly running down my face, but she just smiles softly. Looking tired and helpless. I kiss the babies forehead that is in her lap. I cry and she places her hand on my back and brings my head down on her lap next to the baby. I fall asleep.

At 4:52am I woke up from a strange dream...

Grandma's Puzzles

2008-07-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

White boxes, three of them
Now four. Back to three. Up to five and
Down again. Frustration sets in. Face gets hot

“Damn Rubik’s cube,” I say.

The living room is full of family
Full of death

My uncle sits across from grandpa, their both
Stout and have big lips just like mine
Uncle Stan’s eyebrows are ruffled, muttering
Humorously. Wooden puzzle pieces won’t fit
Together for him.

“Where’s my saw at there carpenter?”
He says towards his cowboy boot, feather
Earring wearing, dark skinned, thirty year old
Indian looking son.

We laugh, puzzles unsolved, pieces
Jumbled on top of each other – Pushed aside.

Cowboy Indian, shooting to be a genius plays
Pegs, trying to jump down to one.

“Got down to three – It says that's average.” He reads
Indian lips trying to kiss the ceiling.

We laugh, puzzles unsolved, pieces
Jumbled on top of each other – Pushed aside.

Grandpa’s puzzles not in his hands
Stares off somewhere, wheezes through
The cancer hole in his neck. His face wrinkled
Looks hot, eyes, glossy and old.

He doesn’t speak. He cannot speak and
Wouldn’t speak if he could.
Grandma’s heart stopped last Wednesday.
Grandpa’s heart broke last Wednesday.
We stop.

Rubik’s cube sporadic, wooden puzzle pieces scattered,
And three pegs left on the board

No more laughter, just this blood
Pulsing silence in our ears and Grandpas
Silent weeping fill the living room

Grandmas living room full of death
Unfinished stacks of cross word puzzles
Sit along side Grandmas recliner veiled
With an unfinished quilt for a family member

Nobody knows who.

Grandma left puzzles for us all…

We'll all be forgotten and dead in the end.

2008-07-28T02:29:00.000-07:00

Its morbid. It's true. History books don't remember people – they remember figures and fallacies. The champions story. The champions limited perspective. The losers defeat.

***
Karl carries his bronze metal with him wherever he goes – always in the right hand. To Karl, the medallion on its green and red necklace, is perfect. Is beautiful. Everyday Karl gets on the city bus hoping someone will ask him about it. No one ever does.

Just yesterday, Karl tried to share his story to a dark skinned, sharply dressed man. But when Karl stood in front of him, motioning to his bronze metal, the man mumbled something about 'this being your seat. I'll move.'

Karl sits up front. Alone. He stares out the window watching the blurry figures of Sitka Spruce sprint by. The bus driver is the only one that calls Karl by his name. The only one who actually speaks to him.

“Morning Karl. Where's you're earphones today?”

“Music is dead. Broken.” Karl points to his tape player.

“Too bad.”

No one really cares that the music had died for Karl. Much less care to know his name. The morning bus is always an odd lot. People tired eyed, staring placidly, wishing they were dead. Karl tries to tell a story to himself about the people he sees.

There is the woman who always sits in the back, who always wears flower pattern dresses. She has miles and miles of tulips and daises, wild flowers of every kind, growing in all directions near her home. Yes. She comes into town every morning on the city bus to buy flower seed. During sunny days she runs through her flowers. Rolls in them. Talks to them softly. Millions of flowers she knows by name. Friends. Every single one of them.

Karl tries to decide if this is correct. He can't, so he walks to the back of the bus, where the woman is seated.

“Are they pretty?”

“Sorry?”

“Your flowers. Pretty?”

“No flowers. Sorry.”

The women awkwardly turns her head to look out the window. Smells of diesel.

“You like my metal?”

She nods politely without looking at him. Karl sits in the seat next to her and looks about the bus. Everyone is lost within themselves. No speaking. The bus rocks and sways with the pavement and random stops. It is Karl that has driven them to these distant stares. Trying not to be seen. Trying to be dead, for the sake of comfort.

There shell be no human contact during public transportation.

Karl sees the Chevron gas station that is near where he works, picking up dirty dishes. He pulls on the yellow chord to stop the bus. It rumbles violently into the next stop. The breaks hiss, and the fiery hot engine burns the lungs.

“Have a good day Karl.”

He holds up his bronze metal in the bus drivers rear view mirror and steps out into the world. People are ambling into the front of the bus. As Karl turns to walk up the street, he sees the flower woman looking at him. Her lips are moving. She's trying to say something. The bus is pulling away. She's looking at him. Trying to say something. Why can't he hear her. She wants to tell him about flowers. Karl is running. He is waving his medallion wildly. He can see his reflection and her face.

In a breath, the world instantly becomes blurry and unclear. It came before the screeching and honking that echoes now in Karl's head. The world is fuzzy. Hollow in a way. Karl can't move. He tries to think about his metal and the womans flowers. Can't concentrate. Somethings wrong. Karl feels hot. A warmth that drains him, makes him sleepy. He yawns. Fade to black.

***

She was trying to say goodbye. The flower women. All she wanted was a little repentance for her avoidance.

I watched Karl's blood stream from his head. He'd landed on his back, arms out stretched like an angel, eyes to the sky. In his clenched right hand, he held the green and red ribbon to his bronze medallion. It seemed like the whole world was silent. That no one else was around. I got closer and turned over Karl's metal.

There is a sketch of a man with his hands in the air. Along the edge it reads - You're a Winner.

I read in the newspaper how we'll remember Karl. “Man with Down Syndrome Struck by Car.”

Karl's Metal

2008-07-28T02:28:00.000-07:00

Big lip K boards the bus
Bobbing to a new music player
Smiles big at middle aged driver.
She always happily greets,
"Morning Karl."

Every day. Every ride, Karl bears
A bronze medallion on a green nylon
Necklace, rubbing it with his calloused
Thumb. Over and over. Obsessively.
Every day. Every ride.

Carefully Karl ambles to a seat upfront
He stops. Stares and stares, blankly.
Kindly black man shuffles and coughs
"This your seat?"

Blank, distant stare. Yellow dashed
Lines wiz by. The bus rocks and creaks
The smell of diesel and urine. Awkward
Confrontation tastes of chalk. People
Pretend, staring at the blur of the world

Casting quick peripheral glances to Karl
Now the kindly black man.

Cough.
Black man stands and moves
Silently to the back of the bus
Karl sits. Bobbing. Staring.

People shift, yawn, chew nails
Thinking of what Karl has won to
Get that bronze metal

Letter

2008-07-28T02:27:00.002-07:00

Representative Murkowski,

Greetings from Juneau, Alaska! This is Forest Kvasnikoff. I am a young, lifetime, resident of Alaska, and I am writing you to ask for your continued support and championing of Senate Bill 1756. As you may know, in the month of April the University of Alaska Southeast in conjunction with the Hiroshima Peace Museum, the Marshallese government, The Leighty Foundation, Juneau People For Peace, Juneau World Affairs, Juneau Veterans For Peace, and a Seattle based educational program called Voices in Wartime, all worked together to sponsor and put on a Nuclear Awareness Conference. There were speakers throughout the United States including: Victoria Samson, a ballistic missile specialist; Andrew Himes, Voices in Wartime promoter; and Shegeko Sasamori, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing and currently a California resident.

In addition to these speakers, were guests and powerful speakers on behalf of the Marshallese people: Mayor James Matayoshi, Lijion Eknilang, and Dr. Holly Barker. From their testimonies and detailed accounts of the economic, health and social hurdles that the Marshallese people face in the aftermath of U.S. influence and Nuclear testing, a profound conviction has struck me - humanitarian and economic aid are essential and nearly obligatory for not only the benefit of Marshallese people, but also to work towards healing and rectify the historical injustice that has taken place in the Marshall Island's. You, as an informed and active promoter or Marshallese rights and their plight, are in no need of a history lesson of the Marshall Island's, so let us suffice to say, in a word, that it is tragic.

The obscurity and distance between Alaska (indeed the entire U.S.) and the Marshall Island's places many roadblocks in articulating why the U.S. should continue to act for the benefit of the Marshall Island's. As I've begun to take up the cause to grant support to the Marshallese people, there is one objection that is continually raised to me about appropriating funds for the Marshall Islands. The argument is incremental, in that many claim that if aid is granted with Senate Bill 1756, than another bill and another will arise which calls for more and more funds and resources to be dumped in for the Marshallese cause. This argument is certainly not ungrounded, for there is no way that we can put a price tag on life or suffering or injustice.

However, I would argue that the very tangible nuclear bombings of several of the Marshall Island's and relocation of Marshallese people, as well as the documented health effects that ensued demands that continued support and aid be granted to address the very real issues that followed the U.S. Government's and Military decision to conduct 67 nuclear tests within the Marshall Island's. This is not about blame but responsibility and continued American democratic conviction for individual rights and equality - no matter their location or nationality. Further, in response to those that house fears about a possible spiraling of humanitarian aid appropriations - in light of the current affairs of war and conflict, where literally billions of dollars are spent daily - it seems apparent that war is much more expensive than philanthropic and generous acts of humanity.

In closing, I ask that you recommit yourself to the Marshallese people and U.S. Responsibility to them. I plead with you to reformulate your arguments and solidify your support regarding this quietly forgotten but crucial issue. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully Yours,

Forest Kvasnikoff

My turn: Give help to the Marshall Islands' survivors

2008-07-28T02:27:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, while Juneau residents enjoyed the first rare glimpses of sunshine and warmth, a few speakers from the Marshall Islands and throughout the United States came to share survivor stories of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. They also detailed technical accounts of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands and gave presentations that spoke to the human elements entailed in war and conflict.

Few here in Juneau got to hear the testimonies or take in the highly detailed accounts that transpired. Out of the plethora of information and insights that could be taken from the Nuclear Awareness Conference, there is one that I think all Alaskans, indeed, all Americans, need to take heed - Senate Bill 1756.

The bill is the first step in the reparations that still have not been given to the Marshallese people. More than 60 years passed after the U.S. government's 67 nuclear tests, which obliterated Marshallese home lands and displaced people from them. There have been incalculable health effects, ranging from a wide range of radiation-related cancers to innumerable birth defects - such as the infamous jellyfish babies, children born with transparent skin who lived for as long as a week.

It so happens that both of these aspects were spoken of by Lijon Eknilang.

Eknilang is a survivor of the nuclear testings that took place during the 1950s, and a survivor of the cancers those testings wrought, as well as a woman who had to bear witness to her own miscarriages, totaling seven, brought about by exposure to nuclear fallout and radiation. Throughout Eknilang's presentation here in Juneau, there was one plea that was utterly apparent - do not simply cry for me, become me, step in my shoes, and tell me what you would do for yourself and for your people.

As a young American, stepping into Eknilang's shoes is not easy. Certainly, living and actually experiencing the pain and disappointment that she has, while maintaining a beautiful smile, is something that seems utterly beyond myself. If there is one thing I can do as an American citizen on behalf of Eknilang and the Marshallese people, it is to continually promote support for Senate Bill 1756.

I plead with all of you, write letters, spread the word, talk to your friends and colleagues - do every bit you can - to help support and push through Senate Bill 1756.

To put Senate Bill 1756 (around a $2 billion proposal) into perspective, fiscally speaking, it is important to note a comparison. Take, for instance, the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense program, what some still call the "Star Wars" program, which has been dubiously dubbed as inept and financially bloated.

Over the course of the BMD program, $65 billion has been spent, with about $3 billion having been spent in the Marshall Islands for the BMD testings that to this day continue in and around Kwajalein. Notice that a billion more dollars are being spent on a failing program than for obligatory humanitarian aid for the Marshallese people.

Finally, as I am sure many are aware, take a look at the projected figures for the money spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where some point toward figures upwards of $800 billion, totaling out to about $12 billion a month for 2008 since the war began.
I leave you with this one question - where do our responsibilities lie for the Marshall Islands and its people?

Random Note

2008-07-28T02:26:00.001-07:00

We meddle in all things and seem to be disappointed at every turn. All objects touched with our hands are fleeting and fading. Beach rolled green glass from sorrowful bottles and fisherman buoys are smooth chapters with rough tales of sunny days and crushing blows with cobble stones. Standing on the shore we smell these salty sweet stories playfully swirling in summer winds. But all is memory now. Seasons and sights buried in pages already written. So we continue to write. Trying to forget. Furiously scribbling new images and tastes. Eating pages with tears and blood, consuming our lives. Desperately trying to forget. Move on. Be a better man or woman or what-have-you. Entries of you are obscure encyclopedic passages full of holes and incompletes – novels could have been written – that's what I whispered, skipping gray stones off a milky green glacier ocean. It will dreamily subside, flipping drunkenly to sandy floors, leaving Dungeness crab and white jittery shrimp philosophizing about God's boulders and her scorn for exoskeletons. I asked a bearded Sitka Spruce what he thought of you. He just hummed with the coming sun. I asked a field of Forget-me-nots who you really were – said they couldn't recall. Fireweed blooms giggled at my requests to speak their minds about your soul and bust into a flight of fluffy cotton puffs. All I have are these passages.

Early Morning Bus

2008-07-28T02:25:00.002-07:00

Karl is crazy.
Whatever that means

Every morning - sun or drizzling rain or
Sloppy snow or dazzling fluff and early
Fog in mind and air - Karl rides with me.

He doesn’t know my name. He waves at
Me wildly and absently sometimes. I nod
Awkwardly and afraid – silence and avoidance
Is the culture of public transportation

Where most hide behind their eyes
Living or simply dying beneath
Their muteness and sterile composure
Karl flops his tongue out in contemplation
And frustration

Karl wears earphones. Everyday.
Listening (I suspect) to the same
Beige colored tape. Everyday.
He bobs and rocks, hums and follows
Passing trees and people, while our bus
Clumsily stops and goes. Stops and Goes.

Everyday.

Karl’s tape player died this morning.
Opening the battery enclosure he carefully
Removed and replaced the batteries
Flopping out his tongue and licking his
Lips in quiet, intense, methodology

Click-Click. Wait. Click-Click.
No music. No Nothing. Silence.

Karl examines the tape. Shakes
It by his ear, scrutinizes it with his
Deep seated and dark eyes. Satisfied
He claps the tape back into the player

Click-Click. Wait. Click-Click.
No music. No Nothing. Silence.

A-tap-etty-tap-tap
A-tap-etty-tap-etty
tap-tap

Karl’s tapping his tape player
Desperately with the tips of his
Fingers.

A-tap-etty-tap-tap
A-tap-etty-tap-etty
tap-tap

People are staring. People are
Passing. The bus is stopping
Going. Blurry evergreens pass
By through the window

A-tap-etty-tap-tap
A-tap-etty-tap-etty
tap-tap

Karl makes music
No one says anything
All pretend they can’t hear
Or see. They can’t. We won’t.

A-tap-etty-tap-tap
A-tap-etty-tap-etty
tap-tap

Frustration to exasperation to sadness.
The tapping stops. Silence. Karl dies
Like the rest of us.

We let. I let the music die for
Karl. No one helped. No one sung.
We all died in an empty silent bus

Gone

2008-07-28T02:25:00.001-07:00

This is not for me
It simply won't do
I've got words for you

Ages have past with murders
Slanders and deadbeats raping
Women, now Peasants, now Gypsies,
Now Christians, now Pagans, now Jews,
Now Savages, now Niggers, now Chinks,
Now Japs, now Poles, now Dagos, now Commies
Now Dogans, now Huns, now Flips, now Wetbacks,
Now Crackers, now Fags, now Dikes, now Liberals,
Now Conservatives, now Kaffirs – Who? Dune Coons!

Wogs! Rag Heads! Camel Jockeys! Womanizers!
Muslims, I say! Muslims! Muslims! Muslims!

Terrorists! The whole lot! Everyone of them a
Plague, a disease, a stain, an abomination, an
Extremist, a corruption, a killer, a sinner, a
Sickness, a cancer, a blight, a felon, a con, an
Infection – Marked as the Sons and Daughters of
Cain Himself.

Such is the cycle of hate
A deep seated island of humor
Laugh as I do. Please. Smirk at
The silliness of humanity.

Quite the irony.
Quite the joke.

Within this mist, dwelling on
Stick figure women, their
Breasts and their wallets, bodies
Clad in silk and diamonds, dreaming
Within warm suburban televised living
Rooms, giggle away today and watch
Powerful men tap dance happily, inaugurating
Kings bathing in the passionate blood of Hate.

Gone. It's all gone. If it ever was.

Humanity.

Voices

2008-07-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

The doctor doesn't seem to understand.

Says I'm off. Not quite right.

Thin sheets are always talking to me.

Voices of old French philosophers and
Pompous Englishmen discussing some
Colorless Male Burden.

Killings and Sexings have been whispered
Across candle light by thin wild haired
Depressed Americans who rock menacingly

Staring at the sky. Waiting for black birds
Eyeballs and blood

Baritone Black men tell me about blues
Grassroot hallucinations speaking through
Hazy browns and chaotic melodies

"Jazz," she says, "Strange Fruit,"
She Says.

Women talk of the domestic
This fucking wallpaper
That fucking husband

Doctor just doesn't seem to understand.
I refuse to enter a library until all these
Voices wait their turn

Buried under moss

2008-07-28T02:23:00.002-07:00

Earth moist and sweet
Damp and cool, giving
Way to yearly spring rain

Indecision. Rain, sleet, snow
Rain

Bury me in this moment of
Life and frenzied growth

Wrap me in sopping green
Blankets of Earth

Let me live in dreams
Beneath the Earth
Buried under soft
moss

Home

2008-07-28T02:23:00.001-07:00

Big heavy snow flakes fall so silently and indifferent. Brown and black bears have hidden away, sleeping, dreaming of summer salmon and berries. Dirty mountains, once green, fatten at their apex with snow, beckoning gray dimness for months to come.
Years ago, the Housing Authority built all the heathen savages real homes. Rectangles. Dark, shit brown, fake wood paneling. No Carpet. Cheap Ivory colored linoleum. In one of the long hallways – alright the only hallway – sits a 70s style furnace. It exploded with a warning "tick," and burst into a roaring oil sucking dragon in a matter of moments.
It was an exchange. The American Father and his Son's told the Son's and Daughters of the Raven or the Kwatee or the Wendego to leave. Go. Walk this trail to your new home. Foundations for our homes are no longer simply the earth, but dead wood and rocks from lands not our own. We've traded homes. Welcome to your brand new shit brown rectangle.
The side paneling was redone recently. All the rectangle homes in the late 1980s began to sag on the outside. They looked like decrepit old trees, washed out and crumbly. The new side paneling was plastic and came in bright colors – white, pink, yellow, and blue. The dead and dying houses were covered up with bright plastic. People picked out the colors. They smiled. Look at my bright plastic house. People rotted with the walls of their rectangles.
Walk the dirt roads, they'll tell you. It makes a loop around the village landing strip – the road. The bright plastic houses grow mold on their edges. When Cessna's take off they scream like the wings of bees, throwing dirt and small pebbles behind. In the winter months their echo carries on forever. Filling empty, cold space, for an eternity.
To the Northwest side squats the shit brown school. For the longest time, a disfigured orange falcon, painted on plywood, was hung on it. I'd never seen a falcon. It was our mascot. We didn't have any reason for a mascot. We never left. People never came. Eventually, some friends got together with a latter and a crowbar to see if the orange plywood falcon could fly. Turns out – it couldn't. So they lit it on fire.
It's really just a small place with brightly colored rectangles and a shit brown school.

Walking Home

2008-07-28T02:22:00.001-07:00

Breath escapes like ghosts
Pavement is glittered with
Frozen speckles of moisture

Walking steady. Hours Pass.

Mars flashes silver and crimson
Milky Way sways dreamily
Smiles fantastically

Looks like the frozen speckled
Highway

Walking steady. Hours pass.

Sitka spruce pray silently in
Dark shadows while headlights
Roar and blind by

Walking Steady. Hours pass.

City lights cast hazy oranges
Thunder Mountain sleeps massively
Majestic

Walking Steady. Hours Pass.

Dead and dormant alders and willows
Skeletons of seasons passed, shiver
With winter winds

Walking Steady. Hours Pass.

Welcome Home.

In Honor of Kent’s Fingers

2008-07-28T02:21:00.002-07:00

In the first days of Autumn, before bright leaves began to fall, Daniel purposely severed off his pinky finger.
"Fucking Christ!" he screamed, while trying to hack through the bone with a dull machete.
"Jesus!" Thwack. "FUCKING." Thwack. "Christ!" Thwack. "Sweet." Thwack. "Lord." Thwack. "WHY!" Thwack.
"Ahh. Theeere she is." Daniel brought the finger to his lower lip and gently rubbed. "So soft and smooth." He whispered, "So cool. So wonderful."
A steady stream of blood pitter patted on the grey wet cement. It swirled with the falling fresh rain – a psychedelic flexible dance. He smiled dreamily and held up the pinky like an Olympic torch. Daniel ran.
Hard heated heavy breathing. Splash – Thump, Thump – Splash – Thump, Thump. He needed to get to the post office before it closed, it was nearly six o'clock.
Maple trees danced a crazy dance with the wild whirling wind. Orgasmic colored leaves were ripped from their summer seasonal home and tossed mercilessly about in the thick gray day. They waltzed in the sky. Quick, quick – slow – quick, quick – slow. Orange and red dressed leaves whipping round and gliding slow.
Daniel, holding up his severed pinky, running for an envelope and a 37 cent stamp, smiled stupidly. The wild wind and orgasmic waltzing leaves pricked a wrinkled fold deep within his member. Deep within his mind. Amy, he thought. Amy.

Amy swayed her leathery tanned legs over the railroad bridge arch. They swung like two steady pendulums and sang softly in the bright September light. Her finely stitched orange and red silky dress caressed and sighed, hugging at pendulum leather legs. Gray river cobble stones made a dizzying jig-saw puzzle eighty five feet below and the raspberry sorbet evening horizon hummed rapturous Hymnals. Daniel, shut one eye, squinted at the sky, and smeared his finger across it like a child swiping a taste of their birthday cake frosting. Both eyes closed now, he licked his finger. Tart raspberry sorbet – puckering cheeks and all.
"Ain't for me," Amy sighed.
"Everything's for you love." Danial smacked his lips and tried for another taste.
"Lunatic." She leaned back onto the palms of her hands and cocked her head, letting her brown beer barley hair slip gently to one side.
"I'm the grave digger and you're the beggar. Together we'll outwit life."
"Told you. Fucking lunatic." She smiled, curling back her hair behind an ear.
Daniel wanted to suck on her face, not knowing exactly how. He wanted painfully to grab and wander and prod and jive and melt and bubble like butter left too long in the microwave, not knowing exactly why. Daniel was hallucinating. Again.
A silver band bearing a single sapphire wrapped around Amy's pinky finger. It giggled in the piercing autumn light. It twittered. It winked. It sneezed, ever so cutely. It chirped. It sparkled. It rued, sinfully innocent. It meowed. It daintily tripped on its own dazzling wonder. It skipped. It hopped. It sprang from Amy's pinky like a giddy daisy. It tap-danced. It spun in a disco ball flashing fury. It quivered. It playfully shook its sequin mini skirt. And it finally burst like popcorn confetti, shooting Daniel to his feet hooping and hollering and singing joyfully.
"A-tisket a-tasket. A green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my love. And on the way I dropped it!" He tried to kiss and coddle Amy's pinky finger.
"You are. You are a crazy ass loon." Amy sprung onto the upper rung of the railroad bridge railing. She walked like a tight-rope walker. Daniel followed close behind on the solid bridge, reaching out for Amy's hand, singing.
"I dropped it, I dropped it! And on the way I dropped it! A little girl picked it up And put it in her pocket!"
Laughing girly, Amy tight-roped ran as fast as she could, Daniel playfully trying to get at her pinky. Echoes of their laughter and song rolled along with the steady river below. And then stopped. The ripples of the water held its breath. The raspberry horizon ceased splashing colors. The gray cobble stones bowed silently. Amy's bare foot and leathery leg kissed and slipped goodbye to the cool steel railing. Falling sideways, her head made a hollow pong against the rail. She fell. She fell endlessly.
Daniel peered over the railing. Amy's red and orange silky dress flared and whipped like autumn leaves in a wind storm. Splash. A tangled awkward pile of brightly colored leaves. Daniel ran.
He got to the end of the bridge and clumsily tripped down the steep embankment. Salmon berry bushes slapped him. Spruce roots grabbed at his ankles. Devil club thorns bit him. The clear flowing water froze him as he frantically searched for his autumn leaf. Amy laid among the gray cobble stones brightly silent, cold water hushing by.
"Amy?" Daniel fell on his knees and grabbed her hand, "I won't sing that song no more. Amy?"
"I won't sing that song any more. Amy? I'm sorry. I won't sing that song any more. Amy?" The river made him shiver, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he began rocking, terrified of the silence, "Amy? I'm sorry. I won't sing that song any more. Amy?" Daniel put his face against Amy's hand. Her pinky sapphire did nothing. Said nothing.

The sleepy church bell tower clock told Daniel that it was ten 'till six. Rain in huge heavy droplets saturated him. His teeth chattered as he ran cold and remembering. The beige colored shades were up and the light was still on in the post office. A man with white speckled hair stood behind the desk straightening the pens in his blue shirt breast pocket.
"Jesus! What the hell happened to your hand?"
"Lopped it off with a big dull knife. Can I buy an envelope and a stamp?" He held up his severed pinky up to the post officer.
"Let me. Well. If. I mean. There are…" the post officer held out both of his hands and made a repetitious gesture towards Daniels hand and severed pinky finger.
"Maybe a manila envelope with the bubble wrap inside?" He put the pinky down and pulled out ripped up and washed out pieces of paper from his pockets. A silver ring with a sapphire and 43 cents eventually fell out onto front desk.
"You alright? Should I call – "
"Gotta pen?"
The post officer dumbly groped around for a pen while staring at Daniel, his bleeding hand, and bluish pinky laying between them. Daniel grabbed the pen and scribbled a note onto one of the bigger pieces of ripped up paper.

Thinking of you!

"Manila envelope then?" Daniel gestured toward the stack of them near the post officer, dripping blood onto the counter. Again, the post officer obliged.

Amy Bail
Yellow Brick Road, Cloud 9
Heavenly, Kingdom 9999

Daniel grabbed the pinky and slipped the sapphire ring on it as best he could and dropped it in the envelope. Finger prints of red dappled the envelope. He licked the adhesive, pushed the 43 cents towards the post officer and handed him the package.
"Thank you!" Daniel clapped his hands together and brightly turned around. The post officer gawked silently at him as he strutted out.
The rain still fell and the wind still blew outside. Autumn leaves did their little dance. Quick, quick – slow – quick, quick – slow. And Daniel followed them, looking for his beautiful leaf to fall again.

Short

2008-07-28T02:21:00.001-07:00

I tripped on stupidity yesterday
Its name was Human Greed.

Rousing myself
After the fall
I wept at Greed's
Beautiful feet.

Plated
In gold, engraved with
A note

"Men are cruel, man is kind."

A Silly Thing

2008-07-28T02:20:00.000-07:00

Ryan gazed past the thin snow covered undergrowth of the stunted forest. Through the branches, the ocean teemed and tossed under a peach winter sunset. His face hot, tingly and numb. He breathed, making clouds in the crisp air. The island was silent. Ryan's parents and his sister, Mary, went out to pull crab pots for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner. Wetness and wisps of steam glistened off his burning face.
Out behind his father's fishing and hunting gear shack, Ryan found an old rope. The rope had been coiled up and left to rot under leaves and seasons, too old and brittle to be used as an anchor line anymore. Ryan sawed at the wiry rope with his silver Leatherman, giving himself about ten feet of line. Bits and pieces of frozen seaweed and jellyfish hugged at sections of the rope. Ryan smelled low tide.
Ryan clenched at the salty, stiff, sun-washed rope as he coiled the line around the inside of his palm and outer elbow. He searched for his parent's skiff plowing through the tormented turquoise ocean. No skiff. No stuttering Evinrude outboard, just a steady cold and brisk ocean wind. Having coiled the rope into a neat frozen oblong, Ryan ducked under the wall-less awning of his father's gear shack and stepped onto the boarded walk that led to his family's cabin. His Xtra-tuffs made a thud-thum, thud-thum, thud-thum, on the two by six makeshift boardwalk.
Before opening the cabin door, Ryan turned again toward the ocean. The puffy clouds broke up towards the horizon, letting bands of pink and orange sun dance wildly off the winter water. No skiff. Ryan walked inside.
Before everyone left for the pots, Ryan's father had stoked the ironwood stove chock-full and left the air vent wide open. The stove chuckled and roared, casting dry warmth in every direction. The heat pulsated woozy blood through Ryan's head. He tossed the stiff rope on the varnished kitchen table and walked over to the stove clumsily to close the vent. It shut with a gasp. The quarter cut pine wood sputtered and crackled.
Ryan pulled off his brown Carhart jacket and thoughtfully placed it over one of the matching wooden varnished chairs. He sat at the head of the table and grabbed one end of the frozen rope, still stiff and coarse.
Wrapping his warm hands closely together over one end of the rope, Ryan worked the fibers. He twisted and rubbed, twisted and rubbed. Eventually, enough of the line was pliable on one end to make a bite in the line with a trucker's hitch. One of the few knots he remembered how to tie.

When he was fifteen, his sister Mary thirteen, and his father ran a 32 foot long liner for salmon, they pulled up next to a tender to deliver their catch. His father ordered him to tie up the bow line. The deckhand on the tender shouted out for the rope, Ryan tossed it to him. He was left figuring out how to tie off onto the bow cleat. The boat rocking, he tried to tie off, but it kept slipping.
"Ryan, cinch up that goddamn line! Or we're gonna swing round!" His father stormed up to the bow.
"Here!" he pushed Ryan against the boat cabin, "Come under, then over, around, back, then an over hand and cinch. Got it?"
"Yeah."
"You'll get it." His father sighed, placed his big hand on Ryan's head, "You'll get it." They ambled back to the deck, where Mary was grinning.
"I tied off the stern."
"That's my girl!"

Ryan's hands were rubbing raw from working and twisting the old rope. He dropped it on the table. The knot gave a hollow whack. He brushed his palm against the roughly hewn D-logged pine walls as he entered the living room. The ceiling shot up twenty five feet like a wooden temple. Rafters broke the space above the living room every eight feet. Ryan breathed deeply of the cool pine wood and family dust. The living room glowed with Ryan's childhood.

Their mother often read and practiced arithmetic with them. Countless times Ryan's mother corrected his habits.
"We read left to right, top to bottom, turn your book over."
"Left to right, top to bottom." Ryan repeated quietly.
"That's right." An instructive satisfactory smile grew on his mothers face.

"We don't start counting with five or in the middle of a page. Start at the beginning on the left side."
"Where does it end?" Ryan asked thoughtfully.
"Well. Huh. It never does honey."
"Left to right, top to bottom. It never ends honey." He said with a sigh.
"Ha! That's right honey!" Ryan's mother kissed him on the forehead and walked into the kitchen.

Above the couch hang snap-shots of Ryan and his sister. Most of them showed them playing outside, some were family pictures taken over the years. One shows Mary standing over a brown bear with a 300 mag. She wears the beaming smile of hero. She was seventeen. She'd shot the bear straight through the skull.

Their parents had gone into town to get food, candles and other needed supplies. It was mid-September, the weather reliably unpredictable. Dark cumulus clouds formed in the southeast and kicked up frothy white caps. Ryan and his sister knew their parents weren't coming back until morning.
"Help me carry this wood in, would ya sis?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Need it tonight with this wind."
"Yep. I know."
Ryan began gathering wood in his arms. "You always know. Don't you?" his sister took a quick hushed gasp.
"Jesus. Ryan. Turn. A. Round."
"Wha…oh, fuck."
Rooting around in the plywood compost bin, grumbled a portly brown bear. It sniffed violently at the compost box and began rocking it with its front paws. Dusk was drawing in; the colors of the world fading to a fuzzy black and white. A confused wind picked up and swirled around Ryan. He smelled the thick musky scent of the bear.
The hungry brown ceased its efforts at rocking the bin to pieces and stopped trying to cram its head within the narrow compost slot. The big Brown walked towards Ryan slowly, rocking back and forth with its massive muzzle, snuffing up the ground as it went. What a beautifully silly creature, Ryan thought. He smiled crazily. He could hear the waddling beat of the brown bear's steps.
Doot-ta-Doot-ta-Doot-ta-Doot.
The world erupted in a roar. Warm liquid splashed on Ryan's face. The violent roar steadied to a silent ping.
"You alright Ryan?"
"Yeah," Ryan blinked," Yeah. I'm fine."
"Thought you were dead."
"Yeah. Me too." Ryan rubbed his right arm sleeve across his face. The blood had cooled, became sticky, clung to his face. "Thanks, sis." It was darker now. Nothing left to see but a hazy dark splotched silhouette of a silly dead bear.

That same heroic, smirkish smile found its way into many of the pictures on the living room wall. Mary after she got proposed to, happily showing off her engagement ring. Mary talking passionately into a microphone at her college graduation. Mary, Ryan's arm around her shoulders, holding up her degree. She was a big little sister and Ryan loved her for it – envied, but loved her.
The pictures of himself were mostly of him staring off somewhere, smirking. Ryan with his hands in his blue jeans, shrugging at the camera. Ryan sitting at the kitchen table, reading Vonnegut and chewing his fingernails. Ryan sleeping curled up on the living room couch with his Xxtra-tuffs on. Ryan chuckled to himself at this last one. His father had pointed to it once. "That's my boy," he'd said. "That's my boy!"
Turning from the pictured wall, Ryan's face felt hot; a pain pinched his throat. He eased his hands into his pockets and stared out the large bay view window. Twilight had set in. The vibrant colors of the horizon and the rolling rich turquoise ocean – gone. The ocean sloshed and crashed in a dreamy black and white, silently behind the glass pane.
He sensed warm liquid dripping down the side of his face. Ryan patted at it and looked at his hand. Nothing. He retreated back into the kitchen. The fire still sputtered and spat lovingly. A slow gentle wave washed over his body. Opening up the vent, the fire began to lull like Autumn wind. He picked up the thawed out old rope. The cool dampness felt good in his hands.
Ryan grabbed a chair and sauntered out of the kitchen, dragging the wooden chair behind him with scrape. Standing underneath one of the rafters, he swung one end of the rope over the beam. It coasted over, dropped, and swayed like a pendulum. He slipped the frayed end he had cut with his knife through the bite in the line and cinched it up on the beam. Again, climbing up onto the kitchen chair, Ryan made another loop on the frayed end.
He thought he heard a pinging or a ringing. Ryan stopped. The entire living room was filled with a dying roar, fading to a steady ping.
Ryan jumped off the chair, grabbed the rope near the ceiling rafter, and tested his weight on the line. The rope groaned low around the beam as Ryan swung with the rope. Hand over hand, he lowered himself back onto the chair. He put his hand through the bite in the line he'd just made. Ryan grabbed the standing end of the line and pulled it through the bite to make a cinching loop. He slipped the loop over his head.
The pinging stopped.
Doot-ta-Doot-ta-Doot-ta-Doot.

Uncle Jack

2008-07-28T02:19:00.000-07:00

Standing here at this Goddamn grave I realize you've never even given me a chance, never gave yourself a chance, always drowning yourself in those fucking brown bottles, looking for light, finding nothing but piss warm dark corners, people passing you by, staring at your insanity, and there you are, looming out those beautiful green eyes, dumb and lost, a stray wet dog, begging for a reason, pleading for answers, trying to remember how things got this way, was it the green wool uniform or what it made you do, was it grandpa's belt and his Budweiser or aunties screams after bouts with Jack's bottle or the sons and daughters you never raised, what, what was it, tell me, I want you to tell me that you remember the good times, before I tossed this cold wet dirt over your shiny blue casket, do you remember the puffs of baby powder that were padded over my buck naked body because of that itchy red rash, you called me a sad looking turkey, laughter was your thing, that's what you did, that's what you made other people do, your smiles were pillars of pearly whites, grins so big you could knock over buildings, everyone else just laughed and rolled with you, do you remember the shitty cabin we lived in, you came to visit, pouring yourself a cup of coffee and then the cheap wood paneled ceiling came crashing down, only stopped from hitting you because the cabinets were in the way, do you remember what you said, you said; holy shit, the sky is falling, I gotta get the hell off this planet, you sipped your coffee and grabbed the paper, said you were looking for a space ship in the classifieds, laughter and smiles, that's what I want to remember, but here I am, fucking November wind, fucking frozen ground, a fucking dead uncle, tried to drowned himself and then wandered around on dark winter roads, blacked out, laying there in the Goddamn snow, piss and shit, it's not your fault, remember, remember when we went clam digging, filled up buckets of razor clams, you drove down aunties car to the beach to load up the clams, you accidentally bumped the lock when you got out, the car was running, we were locked out, you had to break open the back hatch, couldn't close the damn thing, it was funny in retrospect, but you, you went and hid away, left the clams on your doorsteps to go and hide, like a child, went to go find yourself in brown bottles, it's not your fault, it wasn't your fault, it's not even that big of a deal, you don't realize, you didn't realize how much we loved you, how much I loved you, always doing stuff for other people, mom loved you for making her smile, always crackin' jokes, always washing the dishes or the house or cleaning up after us kids, mom loved you, your sister loved you, she told me once that you made her laugh when she was crying as a kid, you walked into her room plopped down beside her and asked in your sarcastic voice, whatcha cryin' for sissy, she couldn't help it, started to laugh, said I'd have to be there to really understand, dad loved you, remember that time you walked into a department store with him, looking for a present for mom, and the woman clerk asked if you two were together, dad said, oh no, we're not together, and you wrapped your arm around dad's waist, said, oh yeah, we're together together, dad said the clerk blushed, said I'd have to have been there to really understand, I hate this you know, hate it, wish you were here to tell me to quite my blood clot cryin', like you always used to say, wish I could of dragged you inside that night, lit a fire for your frozen body, wish I could of stopped the hurt that drove you, wish I could have told you that I love ya, to have hugged you one more time, to have seen you smile one more time, to have heard you laugh just another time, to have watched you work for others simply because you loved them and they loved you, but now all I've got is forgiveness.
Forgive me for not being there for you. I'll forgive you for not being here now. Love you. We'll all miss you.

Action - 9/11

2008-07-28T02:18:00.002-07:00

A history has unfolded before our eye's that needs to be told. It is a history that entails a government that has apparently manipulated and twisted peoples fears to conduct a war on premises that later turned out to be an unqualified falsification of the facts – the truth about this war revolves around intensions of political maneuverings, greed, and grotesque perpetuations of an imperialistic "democracy."

The history which has unveiled itself under the current administration has proven itself as one in which corruption, ineptitude, deceit, hate, and freighting displays of political mongering, are common, even accepted, practices and precepts.

The history of our time has shown, over and over again, that our press and media's integrity has quickly eroded at the feet of corporate interests for profit, rife with political slants which contort and strangle any relation to reality. We are left hearing and watching programs which falsify facts (or completely avoid them) and indoctrinate a dogma of malice for everything from immigrants and homosexuals to whole ethnicities of peoples. In certain respects, we've been fed an ideology of genocide pertaining to political affiliations, sexual orientations, and religious beliefs.

Our history suffers from the slaughter of certain inalienable rights. In the violent ecstasy of war, we've witnessed and allowed an invasion of our privacy and what's more, the complete disregard for the due process of law and humanity.

This history breathing upon us now is one that embodies a culmination of environmental degradation which must be addressed by all peoples – the affluent not withstanding. Without taking strides in our private and public lives to wield positive contributions to environmental issues, we face grave consequences indeed.

We face a history to be soon told of a country that forcefully and selfishly imposed the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of how people and governments 'ought' to be conducted. Completely disregarding others rights and disrespecting other cultures and histories on a whim of assumptions, we bare witness to yet another atrocity of policy, costing civilian lives, billions of tax dollars, and untold years of bleak conflict to come.

Let it be known that this September 11th of 2007 will be a day of recognition. It will be a day that we mourn countrymen who died. It will be a day where we recognize the manipulation that our government spun with our countrymen's deaths. It will be a day where I protest against the ills of society – corruption, war, prejudice, and environmental degradation not the least among them. It will be a day that I reject the principals that our government has recently lain before us – opting for a more responsible, transparent, and peaceable governance.

If you even partially agree with some of the narratives I've suggested here – please take action. I don't care what you do – walk the streets with signs, share your thoughts with colleagues, write senators, avoid consumption, pray…show that you will not stand for a society or a government that consistently validates itself as destructive, deceitful, narrow-minded, and hateful.

Regards
Forest Kvasnikoff

Heights

2008-07-28T02:18:00.001-07:00

A struggle ensued, which now has passed.
There is sweat.
Feet and rock and sweat.
Now wind and chill.

A panorama of snow splotched mountains.
Forever peaks. Endless ecstasy blow brisk winds.
There is sweat, once sticky and hot, now slimy cold clams.

This height is thunder.
Electric cliffs of life are
Grandfathers' faces

These rocks are hunger.
Barren black and white rocky ridges
Eat passing feet

Here is art.
Ruffled blankets of earth
After peaceful sex

Boulders

2008-07-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Northern California sunshine, so bubbly brilliant, begins to dive behind a friendly horizon, promising to be back soon. The sky becomes a thick wet blanket. Droplets of water form on rivulets of freshly cut grass spreading its tranquil suburban scent like withering flowers on grandmothers' windowsills. Staring up at the thickness called night, it becomes sticky black licorice. Its sandy bitter sweet flavor rolls in the sheets of my mouth. A treat for some. Tastes of shit to me. I hate it.

We had left the warm sanctuary of pine rafters and stained glass panes into the dew veiled field. Damp, cold and empty, save for the slow shuffling of feet that now wondered around for a place of prayer or silence or both. Kneeling in the grass, a congregation of sad contemplative souls trapped in their own deep wells of sin and guilt, shuffle by as face cards of Hoyle – unremarkable and repeating in different shades of black and red. A dark splotch of water forms on my blue jean knees and spreads through thick weaved cotton, claming my skin, forcing my body to tremble for warmth.

The Church in the distance shouts in silky yellow spotlights that surround its perimeter, its steeples fade into black shadows – towering and foreboding, a glimmering cathedral in a world without candles. A towering silhouette wonders among us. He comes slowly, wafting his spirit like myrrh in the heavy night – richly sweet smoke that thickens the air and burns the eyes. We called him Reverend. Moments ago he burst and tittered while raging and feeding on a screaming sermon casting sin and doubt asunder. Fodder for the flock.

"…beaten and bloodied, strung up on the cross, nails hammered through his flesh and tendons, a crown of thorns casting a waterfall of blood over his face, Christ calls out – Father forgive them, they know not what they do!"

-We called him reverend.

As he passes the scattered flock, some standing, some kneeling, some mumbling prayers aloud, some silently, some weeping transfixed and reaching out for an omni hand, he steadies faith graven eyes not upon us, but within us – souls quaked in fear and love while the distant shadowy steeples caught ablaze in the night. The swishing weighted steps approach through the wet grass beside me. In selfishness and anticipation, I pressed my face against the cool wet grass, mocking a monk in prayer. Unfortunately, God is a space that cannot be filled with form or water. My prayers lack purpose and direction, dying of thirst before being born. A memory passes…

Lips fumble and glide across each other
Cold sheets are slowly pulled over naked
Bodies in moaning repetition
A crucifix slips and chimes gently sliding
Atop milky cream skin, drifting like
Creek leaves caressing down a slender neck
Hurried breathing brings Christ among black
Lace and the valley of her breasts
The night stand's radio say's
"Sunday's the Lords Day"

A fleeting musing smile caresses my face as blood rushes towards erection. My face is wet with dew. Bowing there in twisted prayer, the reverend shuffles in the grass beside me. His presences drops boulders upon my soul.

One. After. The. Next.
Boulder. Exhale. Boulder. Inhale. Boulder. Gasp. Boulder. Smothering. Boulder. Hysteria. Boulder. Blackness.
Boulder. Boulder. Boulder. Boulder.

Gray cold stones erect a monument of guilt in a wet grassy field this heavy night. A soul trembles the stones violently, trying to rip fleshy sins from its self, suffocating under guilty weight, pleading for salvation under oceans of rock and flame.

I Wept.

Not Simply An Unkindness

2008-07-28T02:16:00.002-07:00

Black oil for wings and curiosity for eyes stares furiously at our blindness, unforgiving and benevolent like God's loving wrath at our own destructive ways. Before taking flight, covering the light of the world, he, she, it, sweeps all things within a sleek outstretching of trickery and deceit – all in humor and indifference has the world been founded, explosions and genocide notwithstanding. Born on the flight of dark wings land is torn from water and history begins to end itself. Unlike his murderous cousin, Raven is simply an unkindness.

"Newton, Mr. Gravitation and reason, was a quack alchemist bent on making shitty metals in to gold and convincing himself that God actually gave a shit. You know, order and harmony, something like Adam Smith and capitalism, he'd be a fucking manic depressive, cutting himself up the river if he realized the harmony of that goddamn theory. Marx was a tyrannical economic philosopher who, just like all the other fuckers, slapped around and tossed out socialist and communist alike that didn't conform to his supreme understandings – some fucking conflict theorist. Engel's, that prick, rode on horse back and played croquet, and in his spare time passed out charity to Marx who couldn't manage his own expenses, editing and espousing the plight of the poor due to the wealthy capitalist and property in society and history – he inherited a shit ton of money through inheritance - fuck-HiM. Charles Darwin, Mr. I've Discovered the Origins of MAN SO FUCK YOU, was an unqualified ass-hole with a red bleeding rash of racism and sexism – an A-1 Tabasco boiling pot of cow shit, if you ask me. Ghandi was a pedophile and Mother Teresa lied to herself and others to grasp some notion of God, ending in a weeping grave of faith. Only fucking one left is Jesus…we don't even want to get into that shit."

A friendship is sharing the unkindness of the world to make it more bearable, one that is born in disillusionment and paradoxes that invade the sanctuaries of our minds, ripping down icons and murdering hope while screams for reason and justification are found in every echo. Echoes fade and silence pervades without faith in a future separated from the cold rotting hands of the past. History will be the end of us all. It will record every onerous, supremely confident, piss drunken steps to our deep, deep, holes of progress. It will be an eternal rank cavernous memorial with Black wings circling in an indifferent funeral procession.

Jet black hair silhouettes a pale-ish angular face. Stubble from this mornings rush protrudes off his chin – he hates it I think. The darkly colored square thick glasses intensify a look of insanity and curiosity bound in a hatred for all things that think or contemplate sin. An unmanaged black t-shirt and pants suggests he either worships Johnny Cash or is just pissed that nobody else recognizes how shitty recent developments have become in the pointless destructive evolutionary stages of man – 'course…I could be wrong. I hate strangers. Through the transitive nature of fear, as I understand it, one should scorn all strangers, for they embody an element we all seem to be petrified of – the unknown. That's perhaps why I hold God in such high contempt.

Crossing paths with this particular stranger though, I watch his boney unkempt hand, slip into the folds of his faded black pants, pulling out a succulent pouch. He deftly draws a paper out, sprinkles in dead fields of tobacco, gently works it into a beautiful cylinder, and lights one end in an amber glow of ecstasy, sucking, ever so slowly, in an angel's smoky breath. I love this man. We should die together.
"bum a cigg of ya?"

The pouch is passed and a stranger dies, while a friend is born.

Boxes

2008-07-28T02:16:00.001-07:00

A box sits on freshly mowed grass
Seldom seen faces stand like gray monks
Praying
Ceaselessly glooming at the grounds

The box is a coffin of roughly hewn pine

The faceless, formless, cold figure within
Once flowed like warm creamy sand between
Wandering hands on some sunny days

A loss like pain or fear or both
Flows like flood plains in May
A face becomes a Red canyon
Of roaring sorrow – it bellows and heaves
Tortured contemplation

A whisper – "I'm sorry"
A whisper that becomes a troubled rocking
"I'm Sorry"
A whisper between troubled rocking that
Sears and shakes as wind does within the
Wooden valley – "I'm Sorry" "I'm Sorry"
"I'm Sorry"

Hands grasp and scratch at
The Hollow Pine
Snot like hot corn syrup Smears
Across the bitter sweet smelling pine

Steady heaving
Deep troughs of the ocean
Toss and crash upon lonely shores
Cascading and drowning itself
Over and over
Only broken by a whisper

Hands that grasp and scrape the hollow
Pine suddenly free fall into each other
Breaking a space without
Breaking the Golden bitter pine

Groping blindly, unthinking, unknowingly
A shuffle like kitchen draws being
Violently opened and closed thrashes
Crashes
Thrashing like coins or sheet metal
Fumbling over each other follow the
Hands

Confusion
A wind blown flame
Entangle and strangle any distant
Breath of reality

Revealing within the Hollow
Pine Silver utensils – Spoons,
Forks and knives

Curiosity
Like fury and hope
Empowers the hands which now
Hurriedly rip, tare and smash apart
The Hollow Pine

Bleeding hands drip crimson wine
Upon roughly hewn Golden Pine
No Warm Sand
No Cold Stare
Just Empty Air
All within The Hollow Pine

Rainy Days

2008-07-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

God has come and the rain has fallen…

We pray for sun – forgetting the
Kisses of life giving, comforting rain
Chilling bodies but not souls
Nor the earth beneath our feet
Granting us all these enchantments

A whispering rain off the ocean water tells
Secrets we've long forgotten

The playful gray-black splotched seal
Has not forgotten – their faces popping
Above the churning green surface as a
Toddler that's just begun to walk
Pulling their full soft faces over ledges
Just to high for a giddy blissful gander

The graceful but awkward Cormorant has
Not forgotten, as it glides itself above
The rolling swells – settling in on its
Floating ocean home
Free, Graceful, Home

Gray Cobble stones roll and whisper
With the rain and waves
Unthinking but remembering in a way
A thousand stories could they tell of
Rainy days long forgotten

A bear, invisible to me, saunters
Un and down Pine treed hills
Paws softly, rhythmically, passing
Upon these mossy sweet wet hills
Its not forgotten drops of rain, wetting
Its muzzle – the bushes of salmon berry leaves
Meadow flowers brushing against its thick sleek fur

A tiny droplet of water gently bends
Beach grass, this way and that
As the tears of some omni eye fall
Upon the rivulets of the leaves and glides
Over its luscious rich green body to the
Arrow of its shoot, accumulation, it bursts
Silently falling in a clear free fall of
Glorious pure joy, exploding upon the ground
A short sweet life – leaving the beach grass
Wavering happily, beckoning to the immense
Gray sky for more

As the summer passes, as it will, and the lively
Green grasses fade to an autumn hue
It will not have forgotten these blissful
Rainy days

Of things, of nothing

2008-07-28T02:14:00.000-07:00

I heard the call of distant disaster...

The days have streamed by now as in a haze. Time has made it so. Shadows were the way once. By their height and their wanderings, people knew, they felt, the passing of days. It was not time once. Time never was but always is. Escape. Uproot. Words spoken long forgotten. How you wish you were there. The chime of the clock and the stabbing of the spear. The flow of water from all that we hold dear. Blasphemy. Death. Resurrection. And death again. Constantly consuming without regard. When we wonder upon the wasteless earth, the supple fruit of its beauty, all trodden under our own ambition. Thought. Idea. They make it so. We wonder without recognition of things holy. Cocks and tits. There is the rub. The wishes and the wells of humanity. Caught between the sweat and the moans of all glories and deceit. Wanting pleasure, a fleeting thing. One that slips between our fingers like memories. Sawdust. A cross cut down falls in the city, no one hears it. A man sits in his bathroom. Tub half full of milky water. Rubbing himself with the dollar bills that have fallen from the sky. He trails off and drowns in his own want. Erection long lasting after his death. Flipping through dictionaries. Words have died. They pass away, dead in dead sentences. Letters once proud now die with our utterance. All color disappear The river of the weeping will drown child of corruption. Long desks. Black and glass. Hard. Strait. A knocking on the glass. The buildings fall. We forget, The tit of liberty, its solidifying mead, for the cock of tyranny. The sun does not rise with his calling. Night. Children laugh. Old men die. Woman want. Men conceive. All-father bring death quickly. Godless gods roaming fiery streets at dawn looking for a happy fix. Spring has come. Rains. Rain. Rain. Incessantly remembering. A million droplets of reflection pools on our doorstep and in our minds. Malice like oil drips and spreads. From they sky. The milky water, not the mead. The dead man stares. His brought this here. Death. All-father save those who do not believe. Forgotten landscapes have we wondered from. The passing. The reaping. The conception. Life is born out of man's cycle, not his own, but a manifestation of something solid. Or perceived. Calling books on library tables. Mouths of white and teeth of black. Whisper the worlds dead without eyes or mind or both. Can you grasp. Take the dashes of our past. Where the hand of our worship tells us when to die.

Worldly

2008-07-28T02:13:00.002-07:00

Welcome to my world
This world of people who purposely untie there shoes
To bend over, baring their ass to the world
To get the big commercial fuck just
"one more time"

This is my world
A world of people who cross and bow before Christ
In hopes to ascend to heaven after jacking off to
E! Television and another one of J Lows music videos

This world
Is full of people searching for life riches in Jack's
Bottle, only to find cold porcelain of vomiting death
Shit, and pubic hairs staring them in the face

Yes this is the real world
Real people playing reality roles hoping
For the sweet snatch of fortune to save their
Sorry excuse for their mere shadow of ambition

An adorned world
Rampant with drooling greed for the neighbors
Wife, car, boat, big screen TV, six year old girl
Of whom they don't know the fucking name

Close your doors, lock your windows
The blood of ignorance is coming for you
Let the shadow pass by as in Passover

Then burn your fucking houses to the ground

Anger without censor

2008-07-28T02:13:00.001-07:00

Fuck Dixon and Griffin
Their brotherhood with Wilson

Fuck Their Nation
A
Birth of solemn
Strange Fruit

I wail and weep at their
White deserts of morals
I curse and spit at these
White deserts of morals
I bleed their hatred onto
White deserts of morals

I hate
I hate beyond torment and rage
Hate without screaming rape
Hate that burns without flame
A hate that is silent and unquenchable

Fuck Dixon - his white cloaks
Fuck Griffin - his white Black face
Fuck Wilson - his white Freedom
Fuck Their Hate and their white oaths

I ignite the crosses they bare
Murder their white Christ
Suffocate their Birth
A child without innocence
Smothered with impunity...

I see you in me but
Fuck relativism - I hate

I see you in me so
Fuck you - I forget
This Hatred

I see you in me
This Hatred you bred
With your Birth

you die - it dies
This hatred - gone
Forgotten - not remembered

Thoughtless winds blow your
white deserts or morals
Into the desolate white
Never know - Never uttered

Fall..

2008-07-28T02:05:00.002-07:00

Smoking, I stand on my porch watching the wind thrash at a dying cotton wood. It's noble looking in its annual death, a skeleton of a life that once was – even so short. Endless oranges and reds are torn from it – igniting the gray sky in a flurry of death. No screams, no sorrow – just the emotionless wind that tosses my hair and sets free my dear motionless friend from life. A life revolving around growth and color – nothing more, how I wish a death was so tranquil, perhaps serene, just a common step, and yet in my mind it is not. The color of my life, or the grayness thereof, will fall just as these leaves but will I take it in such an orgasm of color? Will the winds of time and life be violent or calm – colors floating listlessly to the ground or ripped in anger from my dying limbs, to be blown about in chaos, confusion, to be forgotten in the haze of a wintry death? Snubbing the smoke, I climb down to the tree. Putting my face to the cold life-death skin – its rough, smells of bitter pages in a history book, yet sweet like churned up moist earth.

Teach me…I Whisper…teach me…

A Blog for Random Writings of Mine

2008-07-28T02:05:00.001-07:00

Period.