Railing

Posted on June 19, 2017 by

Who is the ghost that walks the train?

The apparition tugs on our shirt sleeves

But all rides are displaced

We are logged into otherness,

Password protected

Our faces dug deep into ourselves

Reflections fed to us

Wires from out our ears

Wi-Fi, stuck in our gut

Download speeds of the central nervous system.

Our spines reverberate myriads of chatter.

A silent rustle, instilling itself

Convincing us without us ever knowing

How important we are compared to

All other representations of knowing

While we are in the midst of knowing.

It’s called automatic updates

 

The train moves automatically

We are in a moving bubble…..and

From the windows see sprawl

Hurling past us………………tame trees

Surly lawns, hybrid bushes

Dotted between office buildings

Who give out loans, advice, and massages,

Fast food made to look like good food

Good food made to look like fast food

We look to make it home, safe

To pass through concrete stops embedded

With glitter and tactile paving

Ghost, ghouls, and the sleepless.

All stops are washed down, nightly

To make sure everything is clean

 

We wait for our stop, or stops

Trapped in by the prerecorded

Professional voicings of destinations

Which are never really stops

Just representations of stops.

Glued to our world, the rails

We read in glorious fonts….about

Long-gone idiots and fools, ghosts.

We are fascinated

about the sky

How its falling

Why its falling

Why it should fall

What we should do when it falls

If it didn’t fall

There wouldn’t reason.

Reasons….

For us to be living it up

 

 

We could ride forever like this

We will ride forever like this

On this train that gets us to work

Takes us back home again

Between murders and wars

Youtube and hookup sites

These things that record us

Splinter meaning into twos

until all movement becomes reaction

To representations (ghosts) of

The electricity that sings about

Who we think we are

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Facts

Posted on April 14, 2017 by

Painting by Gerhard Richter

This is empty.

It is not words.

No.

Don’t let it fool you.

It’s up to its tricks……..

Twisting meanings……..

And it’s ugly…….

Take a look!

Little symbols on a page.

Not artistic at all!

Graffiti is better

Especially when stenciled.

For it is a pattern, only a facsimile.

A silhouette

Upon a surface

 

This is not a room

Where women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

A rose isn’t necessarily a rose isn’t a rose necessarily

There are no eyes on me….and

Still I rise? Nope……I’m sitting down

This poem does not depend

On the red wheelbarrow

This poem is not at a station at the metro

Nor, is it going to be a Cantos

There will be no singing of the body electric!

 

No bee buzzing

And no bird chirping

Is going to happen here

This poem will kick

Out any attempt of alluding to something

Nor will it allude to nothing

That’s even worse

Metaphors are purely accidental

The events of this poem are fictitious

Any similarity to another poem

Living or dead is merely coincidental

 

If you are reading into this poem

Deeply.

Stop!

You are on the wrong path

Go put on lipstick

Or do your nails

Check your internet dating service

You have messages there that are more poetic

Like walks on the beach

A crackling cozy fire,

There are poets on there that say….

“Pearl Jam, you too? I would have never guessed.”

Recite cereal ingredients

To someone you live with

Who’s in some other room, somewhere

In the house you live in.

Maybe there’s a good poem in the garage.

Under an oil can…… or

Next to that box with your 2007 tax returns

That’s time better spent.

 

Scratch your ass for all this poem cares

It’s not looking at you

Not yet, at any rate.

Maybe next time you read it

It will give you a discerning glance.

With its bland expression

With a telltale one eyebrow raised

But,

Don’t think it means anything.

It might be looking at someone else instead

We poems have a way of doing that.

We’re just bitches.

Just thought I tell you the facts.

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Motion Detector

Posted on April 3, 2017 by

Photo by Elan Mudrow

We come with a penumbra

A lighter ring around the internal

Within the greater external

An outer fuzziness of contact

That communicates an abstract

Unstable in its assumptions

Rewarded for its divinations

It detects movement, motion

Perceives, discerns, distinguishes

Identifies, classifies, establishes

Bound with embossed hard cover,

Inside, soft pages to discover

Organic in its innocence.

Mechanical in its wickedness

When solidified, condensed into form

Becomes art we put forth as charm

 

 

(If I listen to your singing, eyes wide open, would I recognize the shape of your voice? And if so, would it be my experience or would your song be watching me?)

 

 

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Scrapes

Posted on March 31, 2017 by

Photo by Angelica Paez

Once the wound is recognized,

Bleeding may be stopped.

Bandages are temporary.

Stiches attempt closure.

Surgery’s outcome could fail.

The magic of the clot

Is never a guarantee

Since cuts, scrapes, and lacerations

Run rampant inside and outside

Body, skin, and heart

 

Wounds aren’t subjective.

This is a misinterpretation of pain.

Wounds are inclusive to all

Bodies, skin, and hearts.

Everyone has had one.

Everyone one will experience one.

Healing cannot begin

Until sutured by compassion

Instead of ruptured

By presumptuous accusations

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Dorothy as Pharmakos

Posted on March 27, 2017 by

by Crafter

You find yourself out of the binaries, out of the black and white, where the plains no longer exist. You find yourself in color. This comes after years of crafting your skill, to escape the gravity of black and white. You find that little people inhabit color. They name themselves like a confectionary, as if easily edible, munched upon, Munchkins. You like them at first, but they’re pushy, stressed out little things. You just got into color and now they want you to leave. No one told you this would happen. How could you know, being from the black and white? The little people are noisy, skipping in circles on a brick road, round and round, in a horde. And they’re obnoxious. They sing songs in a nasal tone and have secret societies like lollipop guilds! You should be scared, but you are just too damned nice, innocent, and gullible. You’re aware of the sacrifices you’ve made for your art, but they know better than you. To get here, you murdered someone! Your house crushed a witch! What do they do? They sing songs! Ugly songs. These songs use lyrics like “ding dong” or “yo ho” and “sing it high” and “sing it low”. This is a sign of dysfunction.

Never mind, you are here, the deed is done. The stockings have been rolled up. You begin to sense something. They’re attempting to use you to get what they want. They want dead witches, sacrifices to heal the post-apocalyptic surrealism. You are the pharmakon, the healer of dystopia and the destroyer of utopia. Color is complicated.

Oh, and they have a mediator, a woman, who just happens to be extra tall and arrives in a bubble. This is a clue. These little people and the woman live in a bubble! They cannot see beyond the bricks that curl up inside their society! Why don’t you ask them how many times they’ve followed the yellow brick road? None, that’s how many. This tall woman’s hair is compressed in waves and she speaks in a condescending way, between a laugh, a wish, and a hex. She sparkles as if she were made of stars, but it’s just rhinestones in studio lights aided by animation. She could send you home with shoes of a color that would mark a permanent schism in black and white, a means to let art exist with meaning, but she obviously wants something from you she cannot attain. Again, you must kill another witch. To do this, she instills a mimetic desire for black and white inside you, a kind of black and white you feel you belong to, you feel is yours, excluding the little people. This black and white doesn’t exist. It’s a trick, a flip of desires.

You could stand up for yourself. You could just stay there with the little people and eat lollipops for the rest of your life, but no, they push you out into the street. You must go and murder. Why don’t they do it themselves? There must be something, a law, or a crooked kind of kindness, which bars them from murdering, wanting only to watch someone else do it.

 It’s fitting you use water to kill the witch, as if you’re washing off a canvas, healing the dystopia, a purification ritual, melting color back into black and white. You find yourself back in the binaries, not even feeling guilty about the murders you’ve committed. You’ve learned. Sacrifices in black and white are self-extracted. Your art comes from the internal, from the red that runs through you, a death and birth of self, constantly in need of sacrifice.

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Decomposed

Posted on March 24, 2017 by

You’re a traveler for the sound of wings.

Its organic, magnetic, comforting flutter

Eases you, resolves you, melts you into consonance

Whose song sings the thing, that lies…. within

The rhetoric of freeways,

That stripe of sound

Dividing you into directions all around

 

Off-ramps, like arms,……reach…..

Fail to catch your ass into neighborhoods.

You’re yelling at deafening speeds

Echoing,……you count mileposts like seeds

Destinations are blurred and blaring

Definitions are judgments on maps……

As if the sound of your voice wraps………..around

Where you’re from.

This must be who you are

That’s why all ask the near and far

Where are you going?

It is….

…”Here”, you always say

To break the silence

 

You ask when you’re going to be done, done, done…?

With the stagnation of quietude…?

That very thing that mirrors you…?

You want yourself to be outside of self

A tune….. someone else can hum

The sum of mangled mum,

To patch the latch

That locks the song,

That finds the flutter,

the ripple of touch

A Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah moment

That merges the lanes…of….

The freeway that guts the city into glitter

With the sharpened knife, full of jitters

You think sound cannot be quelled

It is silence that must be felled.

 

Carpool lanes attempt to sort things out

Engineers search to create

Cars that do not grate

While the engine da doo ron rons.

No one can stop the transmission

Of your travel, the unravel amongst the gravel

You’re too fast to be unheard

Too certain to be burdening the rewording of

The sound you peep… so neat…it squeaks

It’s a power, an achievement

Of gaining that smidgen, that nudge, the fudge of meaning…

Modern meditation, the mediation of the autobahn Om

Rolling grooves into the sound soul syndicate of one, benumbed  

 

Silence waits for no one

Why would it? Why should it?

It’s always there, bare.

When you think you are disabling it….

It, actuality, is disabling you,

Gabba Gabba hey

Your mouth seeks control

Shaking beyond, vibrating soul

You are in the age of yelling

Fuck listening, it’s not selling.

You’re traveling with headphones on

By the time you’re here, you’re gone

You force cracks in the sound continuum

Silence must be held to a minimum.

Then, all perception you can collect

Is understood like the Doppler Effect

Signified by unstable frequency

The flutter who always has to fly 

 

 

 

 

(To the future quiet ones,    

Look back to this poem with silent praise for those who had shut the fuck up before you. May the daily clash of clatter, twisters, tsunamis of the tongue, find composure in your blogosphere. Silence is not understood by the living. The dead understand it well. The universe understands it better. Looks like “we’re” outnumbered.)

Dedicated to the architect. Who, most likely, has no idea who he is, but knows the sound of his own voice.

 

 

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Trump’s Commandments (With personal notes from Donald Trump)

Posted on March 20, 2017 by

Trump Press Conference

  1. I am the Lord, thy God. (Yeah! I didn’t’ have to change that one at all. Easy money)

  2. You shall not deal with any other corporations other than mine. (Or I will force you into bankruptcy)

  3. No graven images or likenesses (Unless, I have full copyrights and ownership of those likenesses. Don’t fool around with me on this one. I’m a jealous guy and if you rip me off, I will not only punish you, but your children’s, children’s, children. That’s how I roll)

  4. Do not take my name in vain. (Or, I will tweet something horrible about you)

  5. Remember bank holidays by keeping them holy. (You will work 60 hours a week and on the pathetic excuses for a holiday, you shall do no work. Instead, you will do all your family shopping on these “holidays” using a credit card. You are to buy so much needless junk, that you, your daughter, your son, your pets, and anyone who just happens to be visiting you, will have to work harder for me!)

  6. Honor thy bank and thy real estate company. (By getting deeper in debt)

  7. Thou shall not kill (Unless, I ask you to. LOL!! It’s sweet being president!)

  8. Thou shall grab thy neighbor’s p…. (Or d…, if that’s what rocks your boat, and if you covet thy neighbor’s house just buy it and kick his ass out on the street)

  9. Thou shall not steal (I can, but you can’t. Unless, the chances are good that you will get away with it and long as it isn’t me your stealing from)

  10. You can give false testimony under oath anytime you think it’s worth it (I’ve done it plenty of times)

Posted in Lists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 30 Comments

Present Day List

Posted on February 20, 2017 by

21dd9302cb04f745c4b654264320aab5

  1. Reality is the root of all problems. Stay away from it at all times.
  2. Dress neatly for virtual interviews and dating sites. Remember, it’s all upper torso! It’s a blouse, blouse, blouse world. Think of the money you’ll save on pants!
  3. Food should be delivered to you. It’s too dangerous to cook. You might burn something, like yourself.
  4. Sex toys now come with USB ports. Eww, flesh. That’s nasty.
  5. Procreation is coordinated by the NSA. Anyone of child bearing years will be asked to donate sperm or eggs through the mail system. Just look for the pink or blue bags in your mailbox! And there are rewards! Every donor will be cordially thanked by a computer-generated yearly birthday card that comes with an assortment of coupons for important items like cat litter, toilet paper, spaghetti sauce, shampoo, and frozen pizza.
  6. Never establish a relationship longer than a tweet. Be careful of verbose internet chatting. Overt, lengthy conversation could lead to meeting in person, which is shunned.
  7. Buy a gun in case you accidentally come in to contact with someone knocking on your door.
  8. Birthday parties, baby showers, bachelor/bachelorette parties must all take place in Google Hangouts or an equivalent. No more cleaning up afterwards. No more embarrassing drunken scenes from that one guest you didn’t want to invite, but felt obligated.
  9. Get your morning coffee mailed to you by Barista.com (A dollar off if you use your credit card! You will be penalized for using debit.)
  10. Never brush your teeth, just have them bleached. Bad breath does not exist.
  11. All your bills must be paid automatically, so you never notice how high they are getting.
  12. Play a game more than twelve times a day. It’s important to stay stupid. Questioning is in bad taste.
  13. Babies will be delivered via UPS. It will arrive in a shipping box full of bubble wrap. If for any reason, you are shipped the wrong child or receive defective merchandise. Simply return it for a full refund.
  14. Send your kids to on-line school, known as distance learning. Its motto “stay as far away from learning as you can.”
  15. Remember, as long as you stay connected, everything you experience is the truth. If it’s not the truth, then remember everything you experience must be true. If it’s a lie, then it’s the truth, especially if the source is questionable. That’s the way it works.
  16. Hey! Get out there, have some fun! Join a Facebook group!
  17. Filter out pimples, freckles, blemishes, and wrinkles. The object of life is to be as mundane as possible, while pretending you are the most exciting mundanity that can possibly exist. Figure that one out and your followers will increase tenfold.
  18. Elections will be settled by virtual voting, so you have more time for more important activities, like making up an I-Tunes playlist of political songs that are mad about the political situation you find yourself in.
  19. The second coming will feature tweets directly from Jesus. Like, “Me and Mary Magdalene getting down at the club”. Plus a “Selfie from Golgatha.” #Secondcoming #Jesus #Savior. #Crucifixion
  20. Cute animal videos have been banned. Find some other way to steal other people’s posts.
  21. Newsreels of other people’s pain and oppression are expressly provided for your entertainment. As a matter of fact, other people’s oppression is your entertainment.
  22. Emojis will soon replace written language. Just think how great it will be when you never have to conjugate a verb ever again!
Posted in Lists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Et Tu

Posted on January 6, 2017 by

 

Photo from Beautifullife.info

Photo from Beautifullife.info

Et Tu has been published.

Posted in Short Sayings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

(Egatuo Rewop A)

Posted on January 2, 2017 by
Image by DarcyRed

Image by DarcyRed

Siri had joined the two in secular matrimony

Webcam to webcam.

That memory of Val’s bride pulling away from his screen kiss

Circulated in his skull…..

Her lips, her mascara  

Her beautiful blur on the screen.

He had made sure to tell her to wipe her lip prints off the screen.

What was she using back then?

An HP or worse? It didn’t matter.

Val was in love ………with

“Winter Witch Rider 2” (Not to be confused with the poser WWR1).

And she was a beauty fit for pixilation

(Even if she needed to update her modem)

Back then, love saw beyond download speeds

And location? Why does that matter?

A ping is a ping and a poke is a poke

Regardless of your IP address

Winter always used a proxy

Winter, his Winter, where was she?

Somewhere in an unknown city

Unknown country, unknown world

(Probably next door, piggybacking on Val’s network)

But, now she was gone, a stranger

Lost in social media.

 

But, she was not a stranger.

No, no, no,—— definitely not

She had 468 friends on Facebook

143 followers on Tumblr

She was a Mage of Instagram

A pixie of Pinterest, plus

Winter was a tap dancer (well, when she was 7)

A writer of moon haiku

A ranting blogger of superb craftsmanship

She walked through wooded parks that didn’t exist

Full of photos of trees and snow

Uploaded with artistic discretion

Fixed with Adobe’s Illustrator

Why, even once, she

Virtually visited the Taj Mahal!

And it got better!

No one had ever seen below her neck

No need!

Why would someone want to?

She was up on all the beauty blogs

And was familiar with the Jedi ways

Of the eyebrow pencil

Ooh, her smile would launch a thousand views!

Who could not fall in love with her?!

 

But, Val had played it cautiously

Even though, he knew he had

The most beautiful girl on the internet

He had been private messaging her

For over two years.

There was no fooling him.

His wedding had not been rushed into.

It took more than one

Cute Youtube video

To crack his network.

He made sure

She wasn’t a sadistic pack of teenage girls wanting a good laugh

Or a lone fat fruitcake from Walla Walla

Or a troll, or malware, or ransomware, or even Tupperware

Attempting to hijack his browser.

She had to be clean of ITDs

Internet Transmitted Diseases

 

Two years. Two years it took!

He finally proposed

In a Google Hangout

(Which sounds a bit seedy if you ask me. But I’m just writing this stuff.)

That’s when they decided together

(If that’s possible)

To hire an online pastor.

It just so happened that Siri

Had the capability via the latest Apple update

And the deal was done

Cleanly, without need to

Meet one another and be disappointed

Or to show up two hours before a flight To Oshkosh

That gets cancelled, or…

God forbid drive, trapped inside

A dusty metal can of unconsciousness

Having to worry about the virus called traffic

Or write a letter and use paper! (yuck!)

Do people still use the stuff?

No! This marriage had been right

With a contract signed with the return key!

 

Their honeymoon had been one dreams were made of

It was full of intimate sexting

Not of the dirty, down low, trashy kind

But, sensitive sexting, between true lovers

Lovers who understood each other.

Ones who knew what an extra o in ooh meant

Or that mmh isn’t a moan, but an acronym

For Meet Me Halfway or Makes Me Horny

No embarrassing grunts or premature ejaculations occurred

Or “I have a headache”. They didn’t exist!

Fuck! The internet is a gift from Pan

Why would anyone want to meet physically?

 

 

Val and Winter had a pact.

They were opposed to the physical

Yes, those disgusting physical relationships

That cave people indulged in.

They had names for those creatures.

They called them Grubbies

To think of their dirty fingernails

Touching one another!

The audacity of physicality

Venturing outside and mingling

In cesspools called shopping malls

Bars, clubs, libraries, 24 hour fitness gyms

Where slobber and sweat

Comingled, not to mention the smells.

Val and Winter swore they

Would never leave their homes.

No telling what could happen outside

There might be, God forbid, wind!

Or a cat could meow for no logical reason.

 

But, that was all in the past

So long ago. Val’s memories weren’t backed up

And if he had been able to visit the cloud

Reliving the life he and Winter had shared

It wouldn’t have been the same.

It just wasn’t real

 

What was real?

2 long, long days of marriage

And one day of doom

First day marriage, second day honeymoon

Third day, divorce!

Three whole days

(What caused the demise you might ask?

 

(Egatuo Rewop A)

 

 

It started with the snow storm

Even though, Val never went outside

He would check weather reports.

They were kind of fun to look at

Weather sites were filled with unnecessary details

(That’s the kind of stuff the internet was made for)

Fudd was arriving

Weather people love to give storms names

Well, Fudd dumped an immeasurable amount white precipitation

On top of Val’s town, Crud

Knocking out power to Val’s internet connection

He had forgotten to charge his phone

(You thought I’d miss that one didn’t you?)

And the world he knew (or really didn’t know)

Became dead

This is when desperation set in

If Winter didn’t get a regular message from him

She would think he deleted her

Or worse, made some of their private posts public

The web was no place for wimps

So, he decided against better judgment to brave the wilds

And walk four blocks to a Starbucks

If he could struggle there with a laptop in hand

He could reconnect

And become the Lazarus of browsing

 

Dressed in three layers of pajamas

That’s all he owned

That’s all he had ever needed

He stepped into the unreal streets.

Snow covered the sidewalks of Crud.

As he looked down the few blocks

He had to traverse

Right away doom awaited him

Just as he thought it would.

He saw a blob moving towards him.

He had read all about such things

On those sites that answer all questions.

He knew about….

Big Foot, Sasquatch, Paul Bunyan,

Babe the Blue Ox. Serial killers, all of them!

And one was heading his way

With a leash in its hand connected

To a familiar, yes those sidekicks called

Idiotic names like Robin, the Boy Wonder

Bert and Ernie, Astro, Kazoo!

Val held his laptop above his head

In an act to strike down his approaching enemy

And at the moment they become close

Sasquatch smiled and Kazoo wagged a tail

Val lowered his weapon.

Shaken, but not fallen, he trudged on

When a branch fell from a tree

And smashed directly in front of him

Was it Treebeard the Ent?

Or a stick Inidan who kidnapped people

And hid them away forever?

He remained stil,l awaiting his death

For one whole minute!

Which is an eternity in internet time

 

The snow, which had taken a short break, returned

Val thought, what are these?

Evil Insects, flies of the devil?

He began swatting at them with his laptop

It was then, he noticed that he was

Swinging his laptop directly in front of the Starbucks

With power still intact, the people inside

warm coffee in their hands, were

Staring at Val with interest

He barged into the shop proclaiming

“Don’t you see them, Grubbies?” He pointed towards the window

Everyone looked towards the direction he was pointing at

Remaining quiet, with that look.

The look you use when you are dealing

With someone who might do something irrational

At any second.

But, Val hadn’t come to receive stares

Or to listen to the music inside Starbucks

Which sounded like Switched-On Kenny G by Wendy Carlos

He needed wi-fi and he needed it now

It was his right as a citizen of the free world

After ordering a Venti Pike from

A cautious barista, he was back online

The Grubbies forgot all about him

 

Quickly he signed back onto Facebook

Where a PM was waiting for him from Winter

Inviting him to play a new First Person Shooter game

Alone

He had been blocked from her page.

 

Posted in Flash Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments