Waves and Parades

When I am dead

I hope you

keep your fingers out of my cake

let me rest

I don’t need a parade

worshiping my mistakes with incense

eulogies are boring

and filled with lies

don’t dismiss my dissidence

so that to you, it makes sense

why I lived with contempt

could very well be a secret

I want to keep

no tears please, they aren’t for me anyway,

I only cry at funerals when I realize that I too will decompose

wishing my casket will be empty,

a flaming arrow to my seabed bound Knar

a sliver of sleep eternally beneath crashing waves

newspapers slander life

why must we focus so much on the end of a story

weeping weepers woeing the unfortunate end

blind to the beauty of the beginning

the miracles in the middle

Cancer car wreck tragic outcome

Please refrain from muttering

Oh he lost the battle to such and such

when, years ago, I won the fucking war

the only tragedy left will be a tragic assessment of my not so tragic demise

I will not be the screaming child on glossy linoleum floors

why only temporary sentience?

nonetheless an amazing thing

this consciousness

spawned from energy, chemistry, and biology

an accident under a fingernail

of a planet in a universe

in the fabric of what the fuck!

When I am dead

celebrate the life you have left

and leave me to the bottom of the sea

where my poetry  will become waves

to beat on the shore

  

Field Guide

You are not alone

as I once thought

so so so solid is the solitude

sad when the whole world

sounded stupid

is there no one in my tree?

it must be high or low

but we weren’t listening right

wit is written by scribes

in times of deafness

not squabbled out the backs of necks

in the backs of busses

Life, is a bee itch

with no calamine

tell that to the kids

tossing rocks in Palestine

You are not alone

Rich kid poor kid

suffering finds a way

I asked to be moved

to another seat, another town, any other another,

far from here, move me,

as taught by Rumi

He said there was a field

out past ideas of right and wrong,

that he would meet me there,

and I stood in an empty field,

waiting for the others

with only wind blowing in the reeds,

You are not alone

standing in line at the food stamp office

I pull my number, and fold my number,

a hungry origami

discovered acceptance, a promise land,

Gilgamesh, you fool, I shared your folly

when are we too old to be heroes?

bread and wine,

my fear of my mortality will not lead me to believe in your fear of your mortality

Let not the rescue claim the life guard

I may not be as right as I think I am

acceptance was the name of the bullet

Hitler loaded into his revolver,

a bunker, thinking he was alone,

we never really are

I will be waiting,

where the reeds tell me about God

conflict

I contradict myself, conflicted, spouting words without action,

I lie to me, like I said I wouldn’t,

My credit cards are maxed as I preach about the evils of capitalism

I say, I abhor violence, but I love to make people flinch,

I believe in freedom of speech, yet you better watch what you say to me,

I serve the greater good, some days that means I steal what I eat,

I want to save the world, but when I can’t, I try to destroy it,

I am in conflict, concaved and conditioned to coerce and conceive

I hate hippies, but I loved my hippy mother,

I say things like “it will get better,” but it never does

Try harder, keep up the good work, everyday is a gift,

all bullshit I never believed,

conflicted, I told a man

that I was all about the whales

all about the spotted owl

all about the starving children in places I never been

but I don’t look anymore, I turn away from their suffering

after I sell my first book, buy a house, see a doctor, get my teeth worked on,

I may change my mind about the evils of capitalism

I may forget how to spell oppression

and all the wonderful colors we paint it with

being poor makes you hate money, and crave it desperately

Achtundsechzig

sixty-eight

This is the last moment

before the first moment

of forever

Immer und Immer

Achtundsechzig

technologie

death

of mortals and gods

of porta-potties and ipods

but I am already dead.

when someone reads this—it will be in the future,

no longer able to defend a standpoint

but writing is the only form of time travel that makes any sense

Mit meine Hand, darf ich an dem Wand des Futur kritzeln

scribble a scribe of scrolls and scripts

Pen and Paper, ransom note, grocery list, a love letter to freedom

running out of time and meaning

Ich schiebe als ob ich habe nur sechs Monaten zu lieben.

Six months.

to live a life, write a book, sea to sea

I am living. but for how long.

or keep writing.

I regret the misuse of the other sixty-eight

6-months-to-lives

take the other pill and wake up

Vergangenheit

sleeping away the past

we need you

wach auf! wir brauchen sie!

Schreiben müssen ersten kommen

Nickel

just some funny thoughts,

at bus stops,

in mini malls and cop shops,

Rubbed Buddha Bellies on

82^nd after the world fell apart,

karaoke crank and rain,

bike trail lifestyle, wandered

couch surfing only works when you have friends

in between the dead and the living,

there are the dying,

wasting,

woe begotten tumble weed souls,

Some clung to shopping cart arcs

holding the true covenant

between materialism and death

dumpster diving is more ritual than faith

picking up cans, a nickel for your sin,

a fucking nickel

rarely do I have enough energy

to say that I am tired

tired, flat-tired

I need socks, maybe a girlfriend with socks,

that would be nice,

I better get a shower,

before it rains again

might have rubbed it a little too hard

but cream knows I wouldn’t have no luck at all

Christmas 1984

Christmas, she said, begins in January with clearance sales. Preparations begin in February when all the decorations find their designated boxes. Every June, the Ceramics Emporium threw a summer sale. Mother whistled Silent Night as she picked out her figurines for the up and coming Christmas. I remember her, standing in the dark aisles surrounded by the powdery ceramic dust that looked like snow on the floor. She admired the simplicity of the little ice-skaters, the mitten adorned children frolicking, the clumps of carolers. She held up each one, pondered their joy, and imagined them coming to life, dancing, singing, warding off the chill of snowy death, a hearth holding back the void of winter. She dragged the tiny paint brush across their little eyebrows, careful to not make them look angry, sad was okay, but she wanted them to hold her wonder in their faces. She painted them with the colors of summer, a hopeful brightness. One of the ice skaters got a layer of glitter, she imagined him taking center stage on her mirror meant to be a frozen lake.

When the leaves fell, before the turkey was cooked, she began the set up. The nativity set went on the table by the front window. She used the animals from three or four different sets. It looked more like a scene from Noah and his arc than the birth. On the kitchen table, cotton was stretched to resemble snow. The ceramic post office, church, town hall, and half a dozen frosted homes took their places. Mother arranged the citizens of her Christmas town so that none of them were alone. Even the snowman near the town square had a dog barking at him. This year, a snowball fight broke out between a rosy cheeked postman and three small children hiding behind lamp posts.

The rest of the house became a shrine, bedecked in tinsel, mesmerizing lights, and snowflakes cut from construction paper. The center piece was a beaming, almost magical, six-foot Douglas fir. Each year, every member of the family was responsible for creating a new ornament. Since it was just the two of us, we often made a few dozen. Some were made of felt, velvet, pipe-cleaners; my personal favorite at the time was the glue-gunned walnut shells with the wild googly eyes. All the while the air smelled like cinnamon candles and the little drummer boy a-rumpa-pump-pumped his way to the heart of it all.

We made cookies on Christmas Eve, a sacrifice to the altar of the toy god. With the atmosphere beaming cheer, all she could do was wait, anticipating that cold morning when children with slippery footed pajamas descended stairs like hyperventilating avalanches. I remember her satisfying grin erupt as I tore into a mound of gift-wrapped possibilities. So anti-climactic, she thought. This was the last year it would feel this magical. This was the last year of illusion. The last year where I didn’t know she ate the cookies. I didn’t know that she worked overtime to afford the gifts that never lasted past the New Year. January is the month of broken toys, broken dreams, and broke mothers. That is why she hated Christmas. It took so much, to make it right. There is nothing left for the other 364 days. In her heart, she begged for every day to be Christmas, or none at all.

Cinnamon candles burned.