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...

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

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

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

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

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