I was only ever joking about everything

In an attempt to erase
actions
I reinforce and
inflate them.

Forget any impact my words had
I just took them back.

Just kidding.

The Problem with the Interstate Highway System

I'm sleeping in tents under stars
that I wish would burn with more fury
on windy nights that should be so much colder
to make each breath as dire
as the very act of being alive fails to be.

I've had an address at every
goddamned strip mall and hospital
at one time or another -
Let me claw at the crust of the earth
Since we've tamed the frontier
I'll try to imagine it roaring
while I listen to the crackling static of my clock radio.

Let me jump out of every plane
into every raging sea on this complacent earth
and drown
Empty my lungs and you'll just find bathwater. I guarantee.
But that's the problem.

I might sing you a song again.
You never know.

a poem about my job

the tray becomes lighter each day
sometimes i think i could spin around with it - tada!
the ebb and flow of knowledge
wait and see
when you wait you see
sometimes it becomes too much
but you must stare it in the face
and smile at it
and ask it if it would like more coffee

have you signed up for our monthly flier?
i haven't.

Hi Hi Hi HI HIHIHI

Apparition, I am
Siamese twins
My soul and my skin
In this together
To separate would mean
To no longer breath
So we share a pulse and breath
Only one brain
Vibrations maintain
That two different things
Can share the same name.

Like Birds Bubble Wrap

Birds and bubble wrap are
like
well, you know what they're
like.

I liked, I think, unless, well, that's not the right word
But they use it all the time
to say what
I've been trying
since I was ten
I must have liked to pop
to fly
like
I've been trying.

Someone, always someone, and I
popped it all
and fed them rice
to see if they'd explode
if they'd pop
if they liked each other

In the dark,
I always liked them better
Only hear the sound
of hands squeezing
plastic popping
bird-bellies blowing up
breaking open
the ones I
liked

Is that even the right word?
Were (we're) always remembering
something
like
birds and bubble wrap
No, it's not the right word at all.

Brody









you scare me.

Knowing better
but claiming tethered
to my restlessness
public transportation
makes me disregard distance
Sometimes it’s amazing
how hard it is to be in this
moment.
Sitting alone but
fondling my phone
releasing smoke into the ozone
noticing that the salt files to the right
and the pepper to the left
not focusing on how my body feels
but knowing that I am really
white
just like last night
when everyone did a double take
every time my pale skin caught the light
parked on mother earth’s concrete coat
drinking a beer and sitting alone
a pepper man and woman invited me
into their home
said I could stay ‘til the morning
if I had nowhere to go
and that me sitting on this street corner
was a message of peace
because this salty young lady
ain’t too good for their streets.

Anonymous

If you are mute
blind, deaf, dumb
motionless,
does it mean that you are
any further from bliss?

Though she is a cat of size,
Optimus Prime is considerably smaller than you are,
and, sitting on this bed with her passed out beside me,
I begin to speculate
Is this bed - the one I told you was the first
I've had in years that could fit more than one person while
I was in the middle of telling you five other
trivial stories about my life -
big enough to shelter us through the winter
so that if you decide not to let the philadelphia parking authority
interrupt an entire hour of silence
you might find what you need to be happy is really just another
serving of that terrible cheesy noodle bake that I made
for us before going to yet another
poorly attended art show?

Driving shot gun

Red van
mobile tin can
sailing down a man-made river of pavement
temporary vehicle enslavement
does not defer my curiosity
I would not prefer to be
absent of your company
and despite overwhelming atrocities
passively festering in the arms of distracted pacifiers
life passerby-ers, but who am I to say?
neurosis poke me amid my sermon
and with a gentle side pinch you deter them
reminding me I can say what I think
I trust you, I’m being taught to
start trusting in me, because we are all free
and deserve to love, be loved, C.-all of the above.
you fit my functioning like a constantly adapting glove
and when we’re in the red van,
tin can among mobile tin cans
I feel an awareness of
humanity’s unequal and opposite reaction to natural laws
the bliss of not being a slave to every newly arriving
inevitable “flaw” in human action
the bliss of feeling like falling with no desire to
anxiously grip for unneeded traction.

Look further in and I’ll tell you a story…
Once upon a time there was he and she and we and me and them and all of us.
the FUCKING end.

while watching commercials

Acid reflux
Only the bottom of faces
Shiny ugly lipstick
Then, painfully bland maroon lipstick
Who the fuck wears lipstick
Maybe you should focus more on your acid reflux.

Americas greenest campus-
Get over yourself.

Monica: still standing
Thank fucking god
I wonder if the boy is still hers?
Brandy has kids
her brother has a decaying reality show
I’m amazed anyone ever knew he existed.

Now there’s even a snuggie for your dog!
Enough.

You may be in your pajamas
BUT YOUR REALLY ATTENDING COLLEGE ONLINE?
Tie your shoes
Put on some fucking clothes and go to real school
YA LAZY BITCH!

I’ve never seen so many BET commercials in my life
The guy that wrote boondocks worked for them and has reported ill workings within their business.
For some reason I’m on his side
More than likely cause boondocks is awesome.


other than that, it sounds like people are dragging dead bodies down my hallway.

So this is a really rough really unfinished short story

Two pairs of eyes locked in the full-length mirror, “that’s not me,” floated behind her eyes, and she believed behind the eyes of the strange alien body she knew represented her. Mandora Tinsolvy occupied the 27th floor of the Paleyard building in downtown Svitzelburg. A recluse, Mandora wanted to know nothing of her zip code, state, middle name, or allergies. She wanted no contact with newspapers, tags, social security cards or birth certificates. In fact, she wanted not these things so desirously that Mandora Tinsolvy practically didn’t exist in any tangible way to anyone outside of her apartment; she was not prepared to leave until the reflection left first.
Mandora was not obsessive compulsive because there was no one to diagnose her as obsessive compulsive. Certainly not insane, because there was no one to see the intricately arranged piles of nail clippings, all perfect crescent moons, the photographs with all the faces cut out, all stand ins for stars atop the upside-down puzzles she had completed sometime within the past decade. With the shades drawn the occupants of neighboring buildings were unaware of the constant stream of cigarette smoke, or several streams of cigarette smoke, floating about the interior of her three-bedroom apartment. These potentially peeping toms were also unaware of the taxidermied cats and birds perched on her windowsills (all of her deceased pets were preserved to protect the pieces of Mandora’s soul she believed to be trapped in them).
Tinsolvy, Mandora did not like to cross from one room to another with a lit cigarette, and so each room had an ashtray, and often, each ashtray had a cigarette working to slowly extinguish itself behind a snake of soft ash. Currently Mandora sat anchored to an ashtray in a room she had deemed the “Realm Revealing” room. If anyone had seen the room they might think this title came from the fact that all of her mail from the past ten years lay haphazardly about the beige carpet, most of it bills. Opening bills would reveal too much information, so eventually they stopped coming after Mandora used the Internet to automatically pay for her bills each month. Along with her bills being virtually attended to, groceries also arrived every third Thursday of the month-a neat box wrapped in white paper with no writing containing ten cans of tomato soup, two loaves of bread, three blocks of cheese, milk, and occasionally light bulbs or some personal hygiene products.
The realm room had water stains on the ceiling and trimming the tops of the walls, which Mandora believed to be people from the other side trying to communicate with her. The letters on the floor, she believed, contained the cries of secrets of everyone trying to slide discreetly into her dimension. Within these envelopes was probably the answer to many of her problems, but it could also be a lie that would ruin everything she had worked for. After coming to these conclusions, it became obvious that the Realm Room would ultimately be a place of prayer and worship and pondering, filled with intense energy and vibrations. Mandora would sit there, cigarette dangling between her fingers, an unenthusiastic claw, psychologically dancing with the vibes that tickled the perimeter of every pore on her body.
Lurking in the same location doing the same exact thing was Tinsolvy, Mandora’s exact opposite evil twin… but the twin could only be evil if Mandora, Tinsolvy was entirely good. So, the twin was probably not evil because Mandora felt an obligation to not be absolutely good for fear of releasing an absolute evil upon a world that she had little knowledge of. One might even take pity on Mandora because they might come to the conclusion that she had given up, or hidden away from the world. The opposite was true, for she believed that interacting with the constructions of humanity would muddle her interaction with celestial beings and other worlds. Cultural barriers would prevent the liquid flow of communication between Mandora and her twin, who she knew was undergoing the same strenuous process, for they always seemed to be doing the exact same thing.
It was Mandora’s goal to cross into the world of her identical opposite by means of becoming so connected that they were both seeing simultaneously out of one another’s eyes. However, this could not happen outside of the 27th floor Paleyard apartment, for exiting meant traveling away from the nucleus of the entire operation. Most people wandered around lost, a yin without a yang, searching for meaning in the one sided coins of human invention, all trap doors to the world Mandora was now navigating through. The only way to escape this severed cycle was to rejoin with the other half.
Mirrors filmed over by years of second hand smoke marination practically papered every inch of every wall in Mandora’s apartment so that she could always see her other half. Seventy-five percent of each day was spent toddling to and fro, or resting motionless, or swaying wildly (or only slightly) in front of the mirrors until the face staring back truly felt like a stranger undergoing the same investigation and, just as anyone does with strangers, watched each unfamiliar move so intently that she became unaware of the way her own body was moving, no longer aware of the simultaneous gestures between her and her company.
On a day that was indistinguishable from any other day (for Mandora slept rarely and whether it was day or night did not affect her) Mandora was soaking in her bathtub filled with cold water the color of weak coffee. Some people would think it’s been a long year for that round of bathwater, but Mandora knew very well that the water was slowly evaporating, for she added about a cup of new, hot water whenever she noticed the level falling.

I LOVE HAIKUS

orange and yellow
☆
round sour and full of power
☆
i'm happy with peach rings.

untitled

O, tell me what you mean by hist'ry
Your poor and tired? Nay - duke and dame
O, show me how your best minds' myst'ry
lies in their penchant for quoting the tame

(Ask a question for centuries;
demean its relevancy)

Find meaning in your unique structure-
Cloister your difference from all else
Find delusion, declare it rupture-
Thus hides the beauty of the Self

(Science dilutes potential
and calls it "elemental")

It's Monday today and it will be again in seven days and it was seven days ago

Monday mornings aren’t always unbearable,
sometimes I sleep right through them
falling back to sleep
over and over again
trying to get you to return my call
in my dream.
I don’t feel bad about sleeping until
11:47
because I didn’t go out drinking
last night
and Simone is laying on my stomach.
I don’t want to disturb
my little grey angel.

Sentence

While we rumble into the blackness, staring at street reflectors and suburban living room scenes flying
Away from the windshield --not so lucky as the moths
Under the wiper-blades --

As my father's foot misses beat
After beat of the Lou Reed song mumbling
Through the speakers

When it strikes just
After the bass drum
Upon the floor of his 1991 Chevy Silverado

And its rugs that he vacuumed on Monday, I still feel guilty -- thinking
About my mother's trash that used to litter those floors on days we rode downtown for Newports and Coors Light
Without playing the radio --

When I climb
Over the Pepsi bottles and Frito's bags
Into the driver's seat of the hatchback he bought for me,

Because he couldn't take me
With him, once and for all,
Out of there and

Away from the piles of my mother's trash.

tackle me.
good.
okay, do it again.

Sometimes my brain feels like a basketball court

January 6th, 2009


I am a tense bundle of
celebration, neural stagnation
and cerebral vacation
while the eternal fizzes
like shaken soda
out orifices through our faces.
always in spaces, non places
the relevance of context becomes an is not
short-circuting psychologically becomes
a clue to me
about the apparent faulty wiring
in a creature that is not a machine
and functions better without
unnaturally routed electricity.




Thought I'd get things started by posting an old poem. =)