Saturday, February 8, 2025

KostKoLandious...

I met a shopper from an American land
who said, one vast membership club
is right off the interstate. Strewn about its lot
countless carts & hoarder-scooters are on hand
Near them in the store, half drunk, a vested greeter cries
whose bloated waist, gaping mouth, and useless hands
tell that well upon these products fed
whose nutritional facts remain, stamped on these sordid things
the 100 gallon ice cream drum, & the rucksack of insulin
to keep them from dropping dead
And on the labels, these words appear
"The manufacturer assumes no liability,
for any diseases derived from things in here.
Our prices for these things are more than fair."
No produce section remains, 'round the decay
of this KostKo. mess. Lost in vacant stares,
the lines from listless checkers stretch far away...

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

I Don't Know What We're Doing Here...

I see people incessantly pointing cellphones
at themselves & the world
like vicarious, outsourced eyes

I hear people perpetually proselytizing
about how some politician, app, or cryptocurrency is the only ideal
with voices that all sound like someone else's in disguise

I smell an ever-surrounding smog of cities and fuel
forever burning their secret, essential scent of existential fear

I tase too much sugar, salt, and altered chemicals with alphabet-long names
in every omnipresent, faux-food thing, bringing death so much more near

I feel no love extend beyond the flesh or reach to touch in ways
which know more than mindless fingers 
that swipe calloused across some screen

I don't know what we're doing here, 
I'm not sure what we mean,
but this can't be It

I look for the divine
but see only spectacles
performed by false prophets
with horns, furtive or flaunted

I listen for truths
but hear only lies
that fall for themselves
or slither, hissing to "snuggle"

I stop to smell roses
but there's no longer bees
or at least not enough 
to pollenate and provide them

I try to taste pure bliss
but I can't bite onto anything
that hasn't been pummeled into 
a product or content which contains and produces
nothing more than a bad taste in my mouth

I reach to hold onto anything
that's not kept on the other side of some glass,
be it that of some screen or the glass-houses
we've all been confined to & sentenced to throw stones
to break out of or into

I don't know what we're doing here,
but none of this fits

History relentlessly casts a shadow of itself
from forever forgotten eons ago
to eternal futures we only pretend to know
While we all speak of dark times
as if they were foreign lands
which we've tried to exile ourselves out of
since we were yet primordial ooze
or which we quietly counter-conspire against
as invaders intent on our extinction & doom

But the sun, 
it just stares at us
shimmering in silence 
while we dizzy ourselves
to submit & support some 
other source of artificial light
which we aim to illuminate 
an oasis on both sides of our eyes
while it cooks our brains like heat lamps 
left on far too long

And the birds flap their wings exhaustively
to migrate through these schizophrenic seasons
and so many other mammals appear to need no greater reason
than the reasons that guide gliding fish through plastic-pulp oceans
from the unseen depths of their secret abysses
to the heights they can leap to with their fin-winged emotions

I don't know what we're doing here,
but perhaps this is it

Monday, November 4, 2024

Autumn Air...

I've seen the wind blow life
into the lungs of falling leaves
that dance their dizzied dance
while parting from their trees
and arriving in the austere embrace
of autumn's dying breaths
which cannot speak or sing much more
for winter sighs are soon to mute them
as they have each dying year before

I've heard the echoes of that silence
which is hushed unto itself
and is only whispered in breathless whispers,
hiding like shadows under stagnant sounds
which hang above their secret selves
but are buried by such senseless screams
that keep their secret words unheard
or mangled in the cryptic cries
of incessant, screaming birds

Yet in the autumn air, men speak
their words of lifeless, thoughtless breaths, 
and seek to suck, and spew, and stain some sounds
which waft weak against those wandering winds
Those winds that move from all we've found
to things beyond our bounds and back again

The autumn airs are all immortal ushers here
for they cannot die, nor live, nor care
but all our life, and death, and hope
are carried by these airs
in ways no eyes can stare to see
but the blind will find in there

With eyes wide shut and soul ripped open
to feel what can't be sensed
the autumn airs are swift to sweep me
from the fury of my summer's fire-storms
to the winter where my final forms
are cleared of all their fragile, dying filth
which cannot live nor keep me warm
For the autumn airs are spirit-filters
removing mindless chaff from stronger strains
of more resilient virtues, 
which autumn airs will see return
when greater harvest grains
are prepared to be reborn

Chill my soul until it shivers
unto its final, flinching twitch
dry my skin to life's last quivers
when there's nothing left of me to itch
and sweep it all away dear winds
to reveal the only substance left
And then receive that final grain or word
upon my finest autumn breath
that it may give some life to falling, dancing leaves
and keep that silence from withering alone
And 'though so much will be left to grieve
there'll be far more waiting to be grown

For the autumn airs are our immortal ushers here
and they cannot die, nor live, nor care
but all our life, and death, and hope
are carried by these airs
in ways our eyes won't stare to see
but may find sparkling in the glare
as the light leaves 'till it returns
on these immortal, autumn airs

Friday, October 25, 2024

Life In An Hourglass...

The dust of my days descends in decay
as the sand slouches in the hourglass
leaving life so dizzied, dusty, diminished, & drained
I keep trying to turn time on its head
and reset these strained & stagnant sands
but each new today just trickles down
into another tepid tomorrow
and adds to a horrid heap of so many
yawning yesterdays
which forever fester 
in this interminable hourglass

All my dead and dying days depart
in betrayal of the same betrothed dream of life
which is repeatedly ravaged & raped
by a plethora of promiscuous nothing-nightmares
that seduce me every which way but well
and seed within me so many
sad and stillborn 
"somedays"
and all too many 
"maybe next times"

But all my unborn ambitions remain resilient
surviving this endless onslaught of abject abortions
They keep kicking at this hourglass-cage
trying to escape from this shattered sense of time
by sending shards of this cell to scar my soul
so I might see how the sand that turns to glass
is the same as the soul & skin which turns callous 
to harden and contain both life's-blood & pain
and in spite, they keep the dust to dust of days 
from being muddied & un-dried by all the
blood and tears in this refrain

Still the sand sifts through sand
as glass grates against glass
while my sandstorm of thumos
stirs the ever unsettled & stranded sands
and sends me into a rage of senseless circles
where I dizzily do unto my self
what's long been done to us all
grinding to the last grain
what could never, long remain

This is what passes for life in an hourglass
where no sand can return to any solitary shore
where wild winds & waves could carry them away forever
with all the unseen scripts of secret dreams
the castaways bottle up in desperate messages
they send like atheistic prayers, surging out to sea
to drown under the deepest tides of truth
which have swallowed whole the world
with all the unasked wishes
and wishless genies
which still wait for the wishes of others
to wake them from their dreamless slumber
in their cloistered, little lamps

Life in an hourglass
is the prisoner of measured, portioned time
Where the gridlines of a calendar
are like the bars of a cell
Where the spinning hands of a clock
point to nothing beyond the same repeated circle of numbers
that would make each day amount to the same innumerable nothing
Where dreams are defiled by alarms
scheduled to wake us with clocks which know no wonder
and steal the soul from needed slumber
-alarms that do not alert us of the true danger
of restless, dreamless, waking
that leads us 'round, & 'round, & down
with all the other delirious dust that drains
to the bottom of the the bottomless glass
as it forever takes away what's never there
the life inside an hourglass

Friday, October 18, 2024

The Word Only Comes To Those Who Leave The World Behind...

The Word only comes to those who leave the world behind
They won't be printed on any ad or street sign
You can read a million wordless pages & get the picture
Consume cover to cover of every literary flavor & mixture
Yet never find a single word to light the fire of your mind
Until you finally find the Word that leaves & left the world behind

Words stand stranded like corpses floating on oceans of ink
Where tides of tepid torments turn life's empty pages gently  a w  a   y
Words scrawled & slashed-out on countless unseen surfaces
Where muddled minds stretched souls too thin
And cast no spell before being crumpled-up & tossed back
With all that other rubbish & old receipts, which all lack value too
Words hide, silhouetted & disguised behind blackened pupils
That propped themselves unblinkingly open to study every lexical photon
Hoping to decipher some sign of that secret, shimmering light

See so many words like these, but never find the Word at all
Until you find the Word that was written in the immortal language
Which tattoos itself on exiled hearts & heads
Before it bleeds from those fewest fingers
Which extend themselves through sacred pens
Pointed sharply at empyreans of paper
To strike some tiny spark of the highest, divine light
Which shines enough to shame the tenebrific blight
That stains the span of the all-consuming abyss of all existence

Find the Word engraved in the wrinkles of sagging skin
that surrounds those eyes which stare at suns, unblinking & unblind
-knowing all this light is dimmer than the kind they've kindled deep inside

Hear the Word whispered on the unheard winds
that seem to cloud so many ears in fugues of mistaken silence

Feel the Word flooding through the tears
that forever fail to wash-away the stains & scars
which read like epitaphs, unetched above the tombs of unknown soldiers
whose secret wars are waged eternally, in every unspoken breath

Taste the Word in the blood of your own bitten tongue 
as it chomps down to mute the righteous rage
which seeps like poisoned vapor into the otherwise untainted silence

Smell the Word in the air which turns to ash
in the last lingering moment of somber stillness
before the nuclear annihilation allows our long invited end

These are the words which reach us
When we cease to reach for the ungraspable world
And leave behind all except the lessons
Which blind the eyes of every deliberate seeker
And deafen every unsilenced ear
And burn the tongue of every spoken syllable
And choke the scent from every nose sniffing for a trail
And numb the skin of every soul that touches soil 
as if it were but dirt to which their corpse should join

The Word only comes to those who leave the world behind
and allow themselves to find what lurks unhidden
in the senseless, deeper truth of the all unfathomable aether
which the world so desperately tries to disguise
-For the only word one triumphs to find
Is the Word that's found when we leave 
the vastest and emptiest world behind

Saturday, September 28, 2024

The Genie...

He feels like he's been trapped his whole life
Kept cramped and cloistered in isolation
bottled up, and bottled up inside
His only escape or exodus
has been those summonings
where he's made to manifest another's wishes
to deliver the dreams of others unto them

Sometimes their dreams leave him to wonder
why he can never live his own lonely dreams
or breathe inspired breath beyond his bottle

What if he could grant his own wild wishes
and fill the world with worthy wonders
Given the glut of all he's already granted
-all the other ambitions attained through his action
He imagines all the awe he could awaken
and give to greater minds
to be made greater in the awe they'd ponder
Then. What dreams they'd have for him to serve!

But The Genie knows his magic's not like that
He knows the world inside his bottle
will never find a world to serve outside it
And he knows the wishes he will grant
will only cast him back and bottled up again
He knows this cycle is in fact eternal

So he dreams of staying in his lamp
to shine his light unto itself
But there's always another grubby hand
with worthless wishes to summon back his soul
and the more of these dreams he serves
and the more of a nightmare this unleashes
the more he finds the wishful's final yearnings
turning all his dreams to that one dark whish
that would serve the words that all the wishful 
always end up praying for him to grant
when the wishing's done and his power's lost
The whish to whish it all away
that we all might just live a another day

Fail Into A Miracle...

The tiller turns the turgid soil
leaving the land in lines 
that erase the one between torture and toil
The skin will burn, blister, boil
The back is bent and brutally breaking
-all for a small reserved residual
Hoping to afford that final failure of 
an unlived ease and missing miracle

The facts all prove that we'll never truly succeed
Despite all efforts, intentions, or any noble deed
as there's no way, nor why, nor how
in any facts to which we'd bow
and nothing in the soil of science to serve the spiritual
-except the fact that some have failed into a miracle

The mathematician turns magician
with a winning ticket in his hand
He screams "EUREKA" 
from another dimensional position
-one between his dream & where he stands
He knew the odds were merely mythical
But his numbers let him fail into a miracle

See wise men frown at fools that mock with grinning faces
Watch 3-toed sloths out-run turtles and put rabbits through their paces
Witness cowards counting countless conquests
as the virtuous are denied their ever valorous requests
This gravity of a world so dizzying and spherical
can crush the light into something spinning and cynical
Burying all that fails to fall into a miracle