using your inside voice

This is my voice.

Listen.

Taste it. Please.

Today it is clearer in black,
but in all honesty, I thought this first in blue,

it is true. I lapis up all that literary lazuli

and it changes when I spit it back out.

Stereo-typed, twice in Dolby.
I hear the crackle, taste the salty pixels,
it can be shocking
to play two songs at once.

Tune it. Tune your tune her to tune her in.
Try to simplify, try to translate
in other terms,
on other channels,

I have tried talking in acrylic, the accent is too thick,
I am past brushing up properly.

Some thoughts are shapeless
and cannot be conveyed

with any sociological accuracy
we can shoot in one direction

and get stabbed in the back.
All along I was here
waving words in poetic privacy

that speak aftertaste

too deep to hear
muffled in print.

Now swallow.


Painting by Pierre Carrier-Belleuse (1894) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The top spins on top of the world

It was always about time and place.
One Geologic Positioning Series

Stay still, finding location.

The matter remained
evidently encapsulated
for posterity or hermetically.

You see,
May you live in an interesting time,
is said
in jest.

Though, making it so
makes it so
living our story this way,

nowadays
it is done
this way.

Eventually folding our pages back
into strata and pulp layers
kneading condensation
to make sense in story
smell right.

It was from the East,
the scent carried, the wind
was metallic and heavy with
dry pollen.

We can hope this time
the butterfly will navigate
independently.

It seems lately
the bees hear first
and respond quickly,

making honey with
putrescence
in time for another
Revolution.


Image of  (sketch) The color top, 1877 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Peering inside a black hole

Imagine It,
not wholly unfamiliar.
They call it frequency
because it-
Come again...
∝

The thing to re-membering is

making new ones better by

re-cycling.

∞

Better to be broke and full of spirit
Than holy and empty of edge.
Infinite is always
prettier sounding
than eternity.

≃ 

Rote by re-verb-eration
(un)sounded like (in)sanity
Lately
No body can be quiet
And still, do nothing.
Activism and Philosophy,
Art History.

Duchamps Fountain of youth remixed

and flushed.
∡
Once upon a time,
words were deceiving
tiny dictionaries in sprawling villages
with vacuous vocabularies
that cannot find Meaning
anywhere 

you see syllables slang

instead.
∓
No entry has been admitted-yet
Non-sense pre-veiled, we guessed
inert gasses would decay away.
Nothing was there
ever before-never-mind-
better to (con)serve your energy.
★
Cool your jets,
we are all ways all most done.
♯


Artists rendering of Black Hole By Copyleft (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

The child contemplating comets

What color do you see?
The child asks her mother,
after reflecting-
The blue eyes take care of the oceans,
the green ones tend to grow everything
the brown, found all around,
those brown eyed bodies built the mountains
by blinking.
The child wonders what exactly
the sky sees.
Her mother mentions the birds in a vee,
points to the bees and
Honey-
The child sees no kindred spirit afloat,
she is grounded and feels pressure.
She scours around the ground
in search of relatives, by proximity,
puts them in a pencil box
after making them shiny,
and then she names them.
The child collects her rocks and hounds her mother
about the origins or babies
of granite and geode
and likes the lineage, the idea
of the clouds trapped in crystals
and how close purple seems to black.
How did the rocks, and
the sand the water get born-
She asks with her eyes squinting out at the night sky.
Were all stars once planets?
She asks that moonless night,
and feels sorry about the answer.
It will be back, her mother explains phases
and patience.
The child misses no more
and wonders what container would be good for keeping
stars. Look around, says her mother,
all that you are
is Here, touching her heart,
let the stars fall where they may...
Is that why my eyes are grey?
She remembers
as though it were as close as yesterday.


Painting by Edward Lear, The Marble Rocks (1882) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Quantity Quotient

None of it was good.
Others say it must be good enough
and I wrestled with it, tried to full nelson the
blue bloody life out of it
before I quit the last time.

You would think these simple words
which everyone uses every day in all
derivations of misappropriating ways,
would be something quite simple to me
whose word world
never stops flooding
the floorboards.

And I keep flailing around trying to see what will float
but the best words confound me, sunken.
And I cannot begin
to make them make something
to line up and make something.
There is no reaction.

There is no sense to this cold
natural selection, just rejection.
And it need not be the most profound, I most simply
meant to convey complexity in a novel way, some semblance
of chaos in a nutshell, since what sells is
simplicity as it offers beauty for the masses.
There is no madness in ramblings
when there is no place to get lost, and curiosity is what keeps
the clock ticking and nothing is done with
black and white shapes on white paper,
sitting there and undone
from completion
for good reason.

Twenty-four short little stories
abandoned,
seven attempts at a novel,
three keepers, one in no hurry to make it to the end,
or progress, I digress,
I guess it will all make sense later.

After eight hundred and eighty-eighty lousy poems
one word should be worth keeping
the baby in the bathwater.



By UnknownHerkulaneischer Meister, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Discovered in 1760, is one of the most famous and beloved paintings, commonly called Sappho. Actually portrays a high-society Pompeian girl, richly dressed with gold-threaded hair and large gold earrings, bringing the stylus to the mouth and holding the wax tablets, notoriously accounting documents which therefore have nothing to do with poetry and even less with the famous Greek writer.

What is thine is divine and is feline

How sweet it is!
He chose me, he did.
Lucky to be
There then
when he wanted on his wild whimsy.
A seven-year itch, though it may be.
You see, it is quite easy to
cherish thee more every day
feeling more spiritually on air
by him just being there
by choice. His voice
calls and beckons for little me
whose heart feels about to burst forth
and spill thy weaknesses all over
with emulsified energy,
found the warmth we each seek
From the sun
this is how he follows thy heat
day by day.
That is all we can do, soak it up,
sound would only muffle the space.
So we should hold silence gently
and stay in this moment, you noticed me
waiting to be saved. You made me
meet you more than half way.
And now, this is we,
joined in verse where eternity is
guaranteed and easily granted
permission to feel what is happy.
We should
be happy, now,
with our own two eyes
and keep holding on to each other
for as long as little life will keep
holding us back.

What’s mine is mine, and it is HUGE

The old 
wrinkle their brows,

raise their jiggling arms and shout about

Treason-the youth are corrupt-and abruptly adding accusations

-they all cheated!
Blame like a sneeze

spreads its tiny germ spray every which way-

They, the old, 
say, the way it was in the old days,

I remember walking to school uphill both ways in the snow. 
You don’t know

about hard work.

those blooming golden years, we feared our elders.

The old ones 
tell the youth not to speak until spoken to,

and a hard days work is good for you.

The old tell tales of poverty, the great depression of souls, the cookie cutter worker.

The old warn the youth 
to learn from their calluses.

And not act so callous or abrasive,

and then something about the bees, 
being sweet and golden, sonny or honey and save your money
where your mouth is.

The young are working smarter, these days.

More progress means more pleasure in so many ways.

The youth 
do as they are told,

attend institutions that guarantee debt and teach less interest.

The youth 
learn about the old.

The youth owe the old. 
The youth have it made.

The youth are innovators. 
The young are not industrialists or enslavers, nor fans of manual hard labor.

Because it is better now. 
The old made it so.

How do we know?
They promised

more mines will open, and more minds will close. 
And due our diligence,

they make the youth pay to clear cut seas of trees, 

frack up, suck out, spill in, roll up our fit-bits and toil all over

Again.

The old learn mistakes.
The old American Dream was just a defunct memory 
of manufacturing

*Happiness*
the old way. 

The youth capitalize on these readymades.

                        A.I. doesn’t cost overtime, or demand PTO.

Robots reject bonuses and all bribes or benefits, 

vacations are not upgrades, but memory dumps
feel good at any age. 

The youth all know, 
long florescent office hours, kill creative powers.

The old said, dagnabbit, you youth with your lazy habits

and liberal use of Free Time-You’re Fired!

The youth had already quit

listening.

The old finally retired,

near blind and deaf, nearly senseless,

by thin hair and poking chin, struggled to keep up

and it made them flaming angry

about their own fragile mortality.

The youth became immune and inspired

to change old ways,

retrofit America to Be

Come Great

for the First time 
in the making of History,

truly tiny

by popularity vote.

Painting by Jan Steen (1625/1626–1679) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. "As the old sing, so twitter the young", c. b/w 1663-1665.