Dismounting off Mountains

one cant go wrong 

cooking breakfast at dinnertime

Any writer whittling pages to scribbles would tell you —
even those that know how to whistle would tell you—
to put the beginning in the end
—sunrise-sunset bookends—
penning a constellation
of all the little points
your tiny character stressed
along the way
surviving across the sky
a — connection.

My end will crush me into mother's spine
with contractions squeezing at my skull
all of life's contradictions—ricochet so cliché
paralyzing the seventh cranial nerve all over again,
crooked smile just like the first time
but not like the first time, only this time
had all that change in-between
marching along my hero’s journey towards a destiny
one that would bring meaning
to the suffering—the inhumanity
of this human condition
saddened and maddened at all that didn’t happen in the end
Gilgamesh lived like a fool
in accepting the inevitable end
he died like a God
the only one I can relate to

it took me thirty years
to unlearn, to unfeel, to understand
the shame those cruel children
in their hollow schools
slobbered saliva
spewing daggers at my face
your ugliness—was never mine
motherfucker, don’t hand me your trash

humans are such savage monkeys
intuitive knowing and abundant creativity threatening
to unhand their hand on hard-on ways
don’t discomfort them or the shit is flung
I let them smother the other right out of me
mother only showed me how to bend
how to blend
how to survive
those empty hearted hyenas
cannibalizing the perceived weakest
so I peacocked up a bit
and fluffed those feathers
in wooden decoy—
I was just a spotted-fawn
motionless-shaking in the tall grass
remained there until it was safe
waiting for my mother to return
but the poachers got her
in what seems like a lifetime ago

nowadays,
all grown up
I can’t hide in wet wheat fields
scared at the sight of scars
—there’s living to be done
all these micro-moments
so much more than just ticks on the clock
some, brighter than others
glimmering points in the sky
blemished by both beauty and horror—
mileposting your Odyssey
to the end
the one, 
you, I, we, they,
already knew
in the
beginning.
Written in the stars. 

No Favorite Flavors

Far too many flavors to savor

but I’s can’st decides what-I-likes

and beauty comes again, and again

as sure as I prefer air over water

sifting time playing in someone else’s sandcastles

and rubbing raw those could have beens

like a beachcomber nibbling the morning mist at her napeshore

and then the moments that you know are only moments even when they are coming(shivering zeal,) here (framing eternity between blinks,) and gone (looking for lost sunsets) never again,

<O>

Just to make this perfectly clear—I prefer women over girls.

sadly, all these lovely ladies...

will only leave me…

breathless.

shapes and sizes varied,

some single & some married,

like a greedy forty-niner

I treasured my time tugging at her gold-plated braids

like a wild-man inhabiting the woods

got lost deepest in her smoking-forest curls

mmm—they’re made—so marvelously

as if handcrafted, frosted and freckled

like a driftwooder’s impressions—when the tide threatens back

gently blurred under the forgotten feathers of her ginger-waves

caught in the crossfire of two pouting pigtails

 Taking cover, like a bed-wetter’s dreams come true

joylicious

(So I dreamed last night about a horrid bus ride and a drunken Mick Jagger impersonator that looked more like Dee Snyder)

 
Marching ahead of the pinstriped-parade

almost binary enough to be redundant

passengers penguin down the isle

checkerboarding into our spaces at arms-lengths’s

same old silly-squawk—all I ever hear these days

the ramblings of a sunstroke

a bus-stop philosopher

sparking ideas into car-crashes,

baby-on-board,

sputtering his wet gossip of press-on nails,  

clapping at holy-water-father petting pool-boys,

such tepid froth foaming up

do you need a sippy-cup or a syllable-bib?

spewing sour onions and vinegar

without brushing your tongue?

took too many Big-gulps of powdered-cheese, I see,

more gum-smacking emotional ping-pong?

still you monkey-sling this intentional gibberish?

cumdumpstering everyone’s evening like this.

pounding my temples free of incense, of any sense,  

Dr. Drunk-fucker’s scalpel-words jabbing his

dumb-guy-finger-in-my-cake

soon I’ll be begging for the electric chair,

a real “cheer-up, buddy, least ya’ be dead soon”

finger-painting GOODBYE’s

and lustful S.O.S.’s

to the last lifeguards of these sordid trashbins

on the now extinct sidewalks of urbanis domestica

your paltry gotten deeds spilled wearily into my lap

blaming inside-outed-pockets are we?

or is it those swollen lips

whistling slippery with stolen whiskey?

Red-eyes suddened so serious

see? you shouldn’t’ve shouted your shame all over me

M.S. staggering under the weight of all that liquid-courage

Mick Jaggering those hands on hips,

just another leather-livered jerk

my judgments on sharp eyes

keep me at arm’s length, 

instead I knead at the muscles

horseshoeing on the backs of biceps

the ones itching to give hims a hug, 

singing half a note to half a word to half a song

but you staged it all

at the rear exit door

that sloppy, sarcastic, swaggering

romancing vague pity from your captive audience

and signaling your stop between nose wrinkles

when you shook the shuttle

you let us look at you

and all I can remember

is this indescribable

“(                 )-ness”

twisted within each of us

Spinebookpoem #1

(Its just)
how
fiction 
works,

(add) cognitive-behavioral therapy into 
the wild, trailerpark lullaby

the 
things they 
carried on 
the fringe 
the way  
of the scout discovering   the 
universe looking 
for Peoria
painting ships, shores and the sea
(more) symbolic logic,
(again) drawing on the right side of the brain
(again) I heard God laughing
Death;
the poet's companion
(for) the unexpected universe

How Fiction Works         ~James Woods

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy                  ~Tao Lin

Into the Wild          ~Jon Krakauer

Trailerpark          ~Russel Banks

Lullaby    ~Chuck Palahniuk

The Things They Carried            ~Tim O'Brien

On the Fringe-The Dispossessed in America            ~Henry Miller

The Way of the Scout           ~Tom Brown 

Discovering the Universe ~Comins/Kaufmann

Looking For Peoria     ~Dennis McBride

Painting Ships, Shores and the Sea           ~Rachel Wolf

an introduction to Symbolic Logic     ~Susanne Langer

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain        ~Betty Edwards

I Heard God Laughing ~Hafiz, trans. by    ~Daniel Ladinsky

Death The Final Stage of Growth           ~E. Kūbler-Ross

The Poet's Companion     ~Addonizio/Laux

The Unexpected Universe         ~Loren Eiseley

Foot By Foot

My journal tells me secrets.

At the strike of midnight, by a rare kind of cosmic intervention, I surrendered all my complaints and grievances towards this existence.  For the last two days, no, it was these last three weeks; actually the past… four years that I have been dead inside. I have believed in nothing the entire time. Under a banner of rejecting rejection, I swallowed that huge atheism horse-pill without water, and let everything lose its magic. I threw every scrap of faith I had into the fire of dissatisfaction and loneliness; everything from seatbelts to Santa Clause. In dealing only with the known, only with the predictable, the provable, I tail-spin’d into dispair. Funny, how it takes being lost at sea, to understand why we shouldn’t burn down the lighthouses. then my soul became mechanical, my thoughts more concrete, and my hope gathered a blanket of dust. Locked away in an absolutist’s prison; a dire state of utter disbelief. Ovoid thoughts orbiting in a constant, manic pendulum, wobbled me right off the edge.  All that trudging, all that tromping knee-deep in heaps of hopes-crushed, was worth this day.

Yesterday felt bleak. Like kicking heroin in a mildewed basement, as a warped Nirvana cassette slurs in slow motion the depressions of “heart-shaped box,” the day after your high school sweat-heart breaks up with you at a funeral for your only friend.

Today feels surreal. Like backpacking butt-naked on a mountain made out of Easter candy and sex toys, with a marching band in tow, waving my self-acceptance pom-poms in the air; with each smile-driven, proud toddler-step taken, I feel stronger than the strength I have.

Note to self. This time, when you find your center, don’t be so quick to give it away for someone else’s. As a king of your own singledom, you are gifted with finally knowing where the center of the universe. Start by staying loyal to loving yourself. Now that I think about it, when was the last time masturbation came with foreplay? I will seek to expand my definition of self-love. Surely, I will need to crawl, before I can walk. But I know which way I’m going now. Ascend.

I am done acting out this characterization of myself that only exudes a false narrative of a life wasted, failing my way from one rejection to another.

I am more than what I allow myself to be. When I deny my potential, I also deny the call to accepting my own greatness, and the long-standing invitation to inner serenity. Yes, it is true, that some things take time and practice to become enjoyable, like traits and habits. But I am fairly certain that I was born good enough to enjoy this life. I can’t fail, or get rejected, if I worship my existence through performance, observation and writing.   There are no irrelevant details. You are relevant, and it’s you that remembers the abandoned teddy-bear on the airplane to New York. Which arm, specifically, had the tear, matters when you tell the story thirty years later. How sad you thought he must’ve been, lost, alone in the world, without a lighthouse or a friend to believe in. Relevant. I believe in it. And become relevant myself.