1. |
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number 15
Life is a mega-deal
number 17
I am pausing
I am holding my breath
I am waiting
number 29
forever
the timed out moments break
forever the slip of present
slides past
temptations go on
the hesitations of trips down sidewalks
cut through alleys
peer over
corn-syrup products
waste seconds kicking stones
and rolled up papers
gas prices neon
oil and free air
mud coffee
who is playing the lottery?
eyeing the shelves?
left behind in the lines that stretch around aisles
to the notes of electronic
new customer bells
half-hearted thanks receipts
to the tunes of plunging
and rifling
plastic?
one after another
never looking any other
in the eyes
trying not to touch
hands
trying not to brush boundaries
in the embarrassment of being alive
number 38
one in the afternoon aspirin
number 44
my visions are last night's popcorn's
number 47
sapling paper
bug bite knees
johnny cash
number 53
masochist stairwell heavens
digital tropes of bygone sexist
binary allusions to hero and villain
good and evil fight delight of
symmetrical conflicts
persuading thoughts toward
phallic prick hierarchies
hark the ferrel merry tongues
lash bath of sure language spit
flood suffocating
cultural lungs breathing shit self-made
air
care received and
reiterated and worn on sleeve
internet page hearts
compressed files down payment
reach of electric cash
tools fabulous discrepancy social bugs
lugged like empty suitcase
vocational school friars
blown out tired lessonless
narrative irony flapping rubber
lips prehistoric dead
financed machinery corpses
bleating lukewarm melodies
leftover lasagna earths
atmospheric pull of
lit pixel pupils
on affinity handheld displays
on dirt stained broken
concrete chunk nature
on nurtured stupidity
sold presumptions
touching realities rim
enough to meet
graceful illusion
needs.
Number 59
look at that cotton ball sky
pale blue
your eyes
cool breeze kept out but that sun
through the window warms my thighs
number 76
walking down the street
full of stars
and angels
number 86
how honest the carpet on my feet
soft soled
breathing air between my toes
Number 88
a record is skipping
number 92
midafternoon breakfast
swept under the rug
the sky between
somewhere like rain
and all day sunshine
through blinds a dusty sepia
turning wheel courses
towering in slight conversations
ever-so set on fire by each moment
the stomach twists and turns
breeding inclinations out
of inclinations
pestering everything
is growing old
number 112
bouncing screensaver
burnt in image
number 126
allow me
to suggest
the rain
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2. |
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3. |
Homebody
00:42
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toil is gone sometimes
foil covering pizza in the fridge
tossing the trash
a wait for nothing
beneath the fall of
brick refracted light
on my shoulders outside
it would squeeze me if i let it
i keep it out so nothing can hurt me
but inside, my hot water body
bubbles with excess heat
black
like my teeth
which bleed the very
same tar
that you will find dinosaurs in
locked through time
yes, inside,
the power cords plot against me in their bundle
a corner of the house refuses to get clean
no windex discourse
back and forth with a rag
on this stain will do
and
under the small of my sweaty back
a cool bit of air wipes me too
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4. |
Dishes
01:13
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i do the dishes
some people don’t
some people have probably gone their whole
lives without doing the dishes,
or will go
some people have probably never
even seen a nice & dingy sink
over-flowing with dishes and thought
about doing them,
or how long they could hold off on doing them,
or about what they even made for dinner last night
that created so many dishes in the first place,
or where the sponge is
under all those dishes
i do the dishes one at a time
my sponge is blue and rough on one side
it oozes bubbles under pressure
bubbles are the opposite of grime
bubbles are the opposite of food
i do the dishes listening to the radio
i do the dishes listening to
the running water
and the sound of glass and metal
knocking around
and whatever noise is
outside
traintrack
asphalt
gutter
human
bird
helicopter
i do the dishes because i have made dishes a part of my life
i am thoroughly committed to them,
the cycle of dishes doing and undoing is inevitable for me
i do the dishes and think about
buddhist sand paintings
i do the dishes and think about
the parking lot outside my kitchen
window, and the people who sometimes
live in their car there
i do the dishes and splash water
all over myself, or cut my thumb,
or break a glass
i do the dishes and stack them
clean, beside and upon each other
into a glistening wet precarious dish mound,
after awhile I dry them, put them in the cabinet,
undo a few; go about my day
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5. |
Seen
01:05
|
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when i speak i am a subject
you see me i’m an object
no wonder folks wanna speak
to a god they can’t see see them
existentialism is dope
without you i’m selfless
with you i’m selfish
many theorize that ancient
peoples literally did not possess
a concept of self as we conceive it
some theorize that ancient
peoples literally considered their
internal voice and thoughts as
divinely derived
they stayed up late every night
sharing stories
in turn our people invented movies and tv
did you ever get a thought when
an actor looks
the camera and you right in the eye?
human beings have learned to manipulate matter and energy
human beings have learned to manipulate language
human beings have learned to manipulate images
human beings have learned to manipulate value
human beings have learned to manipulate their eyes
i remember learning to pick the
international space station out of the
night sky with my eyes
and watch it streak into
the shadow of the earth
there are always a few humans
in space fading in and out of darkness
and a few machines we’ve sent
hurdling into its endlessness
i sometimes consider if we will colonize anything or one else?
or be colonized ourselves,
like in battlefield earth.
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6. |
August 23
01:42
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hot out there
amorphous dry
breeze
tugging at the elbows or shirt
hung stomach
pleasantly sweaty
back stuck to seat
car
with the a/c kickin’ in eyes
lacking too much tears
and mouth wavering with the endless
music tunes
passing a couple dozen businesses
pounding rubber on the streets
and shaking with that coming in train
counting dollars
with that
‘some sorta’
mindfulness
which attempts
to consider ongoing loss
and worldy degradation
but falls short of real sympathy
and never amounts to changing the world
and driving by the recycling center downtown
to deposit an arm full
of faith in something
to get back
and plummet into ourselves
beneath a ceiling fan
beside a window
poetry dough
rising
not-so-far-away bodies
trembling
causeless violence unleashed
soft-but-firmly-held rages twinkle
like stars and we see vestiges of time
bent by gravity and space provoked
on over eager streams of liveliness
and fear is crushing strength
violence is crushing love
humanity is crushing itself
as if we’ve forgotten how to speak
it is poetry’s job to teach
what words mean
on their own and to each other
beside or opposed to one another
and how and when they provoke any semblance
of our reality’s order
we must forget what we know
what we’ve known
and learn to talk again
my infant psyche
provocations
the terror in empty heart widening
and split peas leak out of cabinets
at my feet
while i knead at flour
and people murdered in the street
come alive in voiced chorus towers
becoming the street’s wind
and push come to shove endings
flanks of men
and tear gas
squeeze children eyes like grapes
promises add up as specks of dirt
towards unavoidable grime
stuck in the gears
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