The New Year

There is a boat on the river.
A spaceship, circling a sun.
We know this in the way of miracles,
in feeding ourselves dead diseases,
in believing germs are demons
too small to see. The boat is on the river
(without songs, no one singing
rowing songs anymore, not even
the children: in the end, even
skipping rhymes die, and hope with)
and we are standing on it, not two by two,
but huddled together, billions of us
crowding the boat, though someone says
from the back (there is one, always)
that the boat seems to get bigger,
though the river never does, yet it does
from uncertain angles. A drunken man
christens it Schrödinger's Boat.
And no one laughs.

The spaceship, too, with free journeys
around a star, wheeling through finity
like a children's toy: this is real.
This is true, here, now: but on it,
the people send out cries, radio smoke signals
to the heavens, to other worlds,
hoping someone is out there. Hoping
someone will help them.
Speaking stories about silicon skulls
and pyramids and vanishing people,
hunting down morals and killing the tale.
Hoping for salvation, because it is easy.
Hoping to be saved, not to save themselves.
The spaceship moves, slow, like the boat.

From a distance, it seems a UFO.
And even closer, a thing unidentified,
never given to form, just there.
Quiet. Waiting. Moving. Here.
From a distance, it could be a star sign,
part of a boat, but that is a story,
and too simple and too neat.
There is the world, and distances
growing between that words never bridge
and silence.

Winter

The child flits under eaves
underworld breath jack-frosting
leaves into windows, one pant
and then another, face a pleading
eyes do not utter

It is too cold here
There is frostbite for mittens
A silence devoid of cries, hope
Wasted expense of energy --

It is
too
real here.

Met By Moonlight

The last time we met you were not in a cage,
Each pace of rage like an anchor careless set --
Your mother explains, claiming it's just a faze,
Tied to moon phases, voice filled with shame.
Is love, after all, tied so deeply to form?
I try not to mourn -- you lick your genitals.

That Moment

The dreaming moments
Between traffic light dance
All amber-hue washed, paled
To sickly milk.

Waiting for movement
Your steps from dream to life.
The colours keep on fading;
Your smile withers.

Speaking from silence
I try to hold you here, now,
But tears have no binding power.
The moment fades
And is gone.

Manufacturing Glamour

Paparazzi creations, frozen celebs given meaning, desperation driving
The artist to explain captured images false as the real of oil painting,
The need for publicity or perish pushing from one remove to another:
-- Hop, skip. Jump!
All publicity is good, feeding goals of being seen, being admired;
Remembered in the brief moment stretched, strung out into sightbytes.

Dance By Night

Dreamstruck, dancing through white
Fields flecked with gold,
Artistic sacrifice of frostbitten toes,
Licence dancing clothed, pulling on layers
Before gods hidden in the wood like voyeurs.

Arsonist

Waving through the smoke,
I wonder if you are free, too, if the fire
really purified you, or
if it just lies, like my ex, burning
with you -- I want to say
I love you, but you shamble through smoke
like a horror movie monster
and I laugh and laugh
instead.

Creation

The praise of the reader bright damning,
Writer cringing under love of old words;
Past novels named, hailed as wonders.
But
"I've surely done better since.
I did not bloom but once,"
Lingers, unsaid --
and never quite believed as truth.

The Door

I tell you not to open up the door
The only thing that I'm waiting for
Is a wife I can adore.

I don't care if the food is seared
If you love me, don't mock my beard
Or think me at all weird.

Behind the door are secrets, true,
But it's also true I love you,
True as my beard is blue.

Waiting For Santa Claus

Every year, mom and dad wait for Santa, waking
from slumber at midnight to greet the new day.
Once we were old enough they'd wake us as well,
telling us: this year Santa will come, this year
we might get gifts, and we'd all stare at the empty tree
come the dawn, listening to my father's debates
with himself during the night, if Santa delivered
past midnight or not, and my mother saying no,
wanting to get to bed; we had red eyes, not noses
(unless we caught a cold), but Santa has never come.
I am hoping he comes to my children, because I
intend to be a better parent than my father ever was.
I will sneak gifts to my neighbours, having them write
messages from Santa -- I only hope I won't be shunned
for telling them without words that Santa hates us.

On Santa Claus

On Santa Claus

Nailed to a tree, as "art" only saying
Things we already knew, nothing shocking
To move the mind, uproot the heart or soul.
It is just more commercialized pablum,
Like signing urinals, post modern shocks
That cause no dialogue, only crude laughter.

And yet kids (still thinking art has meaning)
Will want answers to their many questions.
We can tell them Santa is hanging there
On the world tree, seasonal sacrifice
Of consumer kitsch to itself once more.
We can say Santa will eternal lie
Hibernating beneath the arctic ice
Never sleeping, eternally lying
Until the next Christmas season, waking,
Giving gifts to the good, whipping the bad
(having Black Peter whip them in his stead,
for legal reasons -- and he likes to watch).

And if the children, confused, then wonder
About Christian symbolism, we tell
Them Christ was a revolutionary
And not an artist, leaving it at that.

Mountains

In the high peaks there are places
That will ever know the sun,
The last dancing sites of snowmen
Where science hides its face.

In the whistling of the winds
Are fragments of the dances
Heard only by happenstance
Underneath the human din.

Trust

I've shared so many dreams with you
Sometimes I forget not a single one was true:
But I never regret all the things I never say,
Hoping for tomorrow's like today.

Simplicity of Advice

If only we could solve our lives as easily as we another's.
We'd tell them truths, first one thing and then another.
Each problem we'd too clearly see as simple as day
And each solution would b e the perfect one to say.
We'd know X is done because of W, and further back
We'd understand how to keep everything on track.
It's so obvious here from the outside looking in,
So simple that we can tell our answers with a grin
And pretend like shrinks that we know the brain
And how people work though it's all in vain --
Underneath understanding likes the human heart
And accepting that one fact is a damn good start
As we try to act on the advice we give to others
And eat words we from high places preach another.

What We Saw, there.

      10: Fieldtrip

My daughter runs, shod,
Through the reliquary laughing
At giant bones and stories.
My wife tells her about dinosaurs,
Lecture mingled with bloody facts
To captivate and thrall her mind.
I just stare from off, sideways
Glances at skeletons, remembering leathery flesh,
Eyes as pools of drowning water.
I want to ask: "Where did they come from?
Where did they go?" But,
Silent, I watch: seeing among the blind,
Sober at the party, wishing only
For the release of laughter, but
That belongs only to the innocent.

What We Saw, there.

      9: The Burning Night.

Calm before wingbeats, sky
splitting open like judgement day;
screams a failure of imagination
finding only wordless notes to say.

There was awe and terrible wonder
and the gliding of sure wings
but even creatures that seem magic
die as easily as other things.

What We Saw, there.

      8: Lies

Conspiracies make people feel better,
Finding their own place in the world.
I've yet to hear one approaching truth:
All signal and no noises made:

Flagging down keywords in a common tongue
Trying to find meaning outside the sharing
Of experience and foolish dreams of youth.

Sometimes I'm so very tired.

What We Saw, there.

      7: The Place.

Roswell, they call it. A name, a mantra, hot air balloon
lies and stupid hicks unable to believe their own eyes.
Hell is trying to enjoy in evening what we did in the afternoon.

There are always those who will not believe in them:
overhead, air planes, only reminding me of who is dead, and
where we were and how shrill are those who condemn.

We sold our souls to save a world from the thunder
Of wings, from them coming from ground, below to above,
Seeing in their majesty only fear and never wonder.

What We Saw, there.

      6: To catch falling brain matter ....

Photo memories, flashes, pictures taken staining
consciousness, unchanging as mountains -- unless
old age robs even that terrible thing away, a gift from its pain.
Henderson died last week, a form notice in the mail
saying nothing, even between lines; but he used to boast
with highest marks that there was nothing forgot, all attic-
scented in his brain waiting to come out fresh, new,
smelling of lavender.
                  We are great in that we live if we
do not die; to edit the world into us as the hero, fight reality,
but for those without deception-as-weapon, it must be
cold nights, triggered memories that never fade, and
every falling star a wound to a heart thought broken so long ago.

What We Saw, there.

      5: Revelation

Rivers hold deep secrets, truth
tugging us below conspiracies
in towards the darkest currents.

Theories are laughter of many
mocking gods, hunger for truth
turning into desperate answers.

I could say they were no greys,
go from oaths and promises to
the darkness of a word.

Dragons.

What We Saw, there.

      4: Dissolution, the pulling away.

It's the scientists who ask, white
garbed, the dark questions:
did we kill the parents, then, or
some children lost in a storm,
finding our unfriendly world?

We have no answers, just
armaments and fear, building
to crescendos of lost funds
funnelled into secrets that
we can never speak of.

Every night, when I tell her
"Nothing", about my day,
or "Same old, same old",
I can feel my wife pulling
away from me, hearing
the lies underneath.

They made us sign oaths,
I want to say, just once!
Vows about what we'd seen,
more binding than any
marriage contracts, deeper
than love or law: threats
and promises. And I'd say:
I could not bear to see
you hurt, but I never
say a single word.

What We Saw, there.

      3: Drugs as false salvations.

There are things we never forget, escaping from
The life we lived before, but to what do we end?
Saved from ourselves with drugs - the new religion,
Psychiatrists the new pushers - stumbling zombies
Into a newer world.

But they could not give a quiet heard nor freedom
From dreaming and fears, the ground giving way
World veined azure as we fly into the sun, embalmed
And swallowed -- we were not wolves, not hard enough
To swallow it at all.

What We Saw, there.

      2: Debriefing

There were inquests and inquires, judgement by committee,
Psychiatric examinations conducted with terrible patience
Saying until faces were pitched blue that what we saw wasn't true.
We had pictures and the truth but it wasn't seen as proof
There were brain drains and tests and no time for play or rest.
They asked us what we thought we'd done but didn't see
We'd only followed orders to keep aliens from our borders.

What We Saw, there.

      1: Flight.

This was before it was 51, just an area on a map,
desert lands and tumbleweeds and whispers of old dances.
The dry lake was a door, though closed long and before
mankind had risen to walk the world, to make
steps upon the sands. They came out of it that day,
groomed by alien hands and eyes, forged by gods
too inhuman for our minds to comprehend.

This was before they had gps and many other things,
when what we saw wasn't cgi, when eyes
could still believe things seen were real.
They flew south for warmer climes, with planes
following close behind, our thunder in the air.
To this day I don't know how we did the things we did.
But orders were given and we obeyed, to do
what must be done
            (we who are about to die
             inside salute you.)
We banked and flew, not natural, but terrible for all that.
They had only nature, alien though it was,
and we had guns and bombs and fear and hate,
the things that make war grand.

Each one died and fell, and I'd like to say we wept,
but we had no time to spare for such,
and flew and flew and killed. They had fire
and claws and tails but numbers do not fail.
Where a few failed many followed, learning
from the dead: we fired and banked and twisted
turned and one by one they died, to fall
from the sky as meteors.
      (angels falling down,
       embrace unforgiving earth)
They crashed and burned, consumed by selves,
And we circled overhead, prepared for magic
and for wonders but seeing only scale and bones
as lifeblood leaked through shattered wings.

To The New Messiah

I was trying to write a story, about all the things you've done:
The wonders and the miracles, the terrible things you've won,
But the words kept getting shackled and I couldn't find the way
To tell the world a story that's still being played out this day.

I remember all the parables you told, the teachings and sly winks,
How you'd never say a single thing not designed to make us think.
But I wonder if there was anything that prepared you for your fame:
I think you were not able because no one lives who recalls your name.

News

The tyrant comes as a protector first,
Doling out laws to tame unquiet beasts.
Talking TV heads do not desist, worst
Still thinking they number above the least.

A Notice

Due to a trip, I won't have net access for the rest of the month. So I'm posting thre (yes, three!) poems for each other day in compensation. Or as torture: you decide. The rest of the poems written during the year will be posted during the new year, and then I shall unveil the plans for the blog in 2007.

EDITED TO ADD: Well, I didn't have enough poems done to pull that off, so some days got 2 poems, some 3, some just one. The poems written from the 20th and on will be added in the new year.

We

The madness of innocence, innocent
      of madness,
We come together, break apart;
No falling but dancing,
No chasm but within.

I hold tightly onto names whispered
Under bedsheets    in your sleep
Talking about falling out of windows
To drown in puddled water
      like the moon.

"Loving hating, hating loving," soft,
To someone I never see; I dollop salt
And angel's dust just for glue
      enough
To hold our love together.

Rooks

Rock faces bejeweled by moss,
In seeking patterns we make
Meaning.
The stars must feel lost above
Alien skies, not crabs nor fish,
Snakes or dragons
                 (ladders)
Living in the world, clouds
Must always have shapes, the moon
Always a face.
Needing thing to hold onto
(Reaching)
We shy away from mystery, and
Lost language.

Three Poems

     .i

As the rose has thorns
So my smile has a barb,
For you I bloom a new name
And done a newer garb.

     .ii

As the kept flower realizes
       it's fragrance
So too it withers and dies.
The willow bends but does not break,
I close my eyes and sigh.

     .iii

The whisper of your parting
Like an itch upon my skin,
My blush a faintest sigh
Of our sweet, sad sins.

But what if the trees are cut down?

Interpreting extrapolation, collusion collusion of metaphor
Moulded to sight by a wishing never washed away --
The hunger for Real a slippery slope
Of insisting where it must be found
As if forests had only one tree, a terrible simplicity,
Like a world where we see in the same way all others know.

After the end...

I never did do a post-nano post, did I? So....

"New Fires" ended up as 50K and change, and I successfully resisted the urges of people who wanted me to try for a THIRD nanowrimo for the month. I might have been able to, but it wouldn't have been that much fun.

Am getting back into the Trilogy, posting poems on the other blog, and mostly relaxing for the rest of the year. Next year, I plan to finish the trilogy and probably do another modernish novel. Nanowrimo may well be the detective mystery in haiku, but I'm not sure yet.

The poetry blog is going to change to me posting a short story there every couple of weeks rather than being a poem a day. I'll still post some poems there, of course, but for 2007 it's going to be a short story blog. I have no idea what it will be the year after that :)

Haiku

I said your name, once --
Marsh crickets covering I
Never spoke aloud.

Here/Now

The end of days a whisper,
Last note of a song
Trailing into silence
We pretend we belong.

The start of life a sleeping
From waking that we knew:
Love and hope and wishes
And seldom anything true.

The time between a yearning
And pedestrian today's,
Always lost and never
Following pathless ways.

Tides

The king sat on a corral throne
Long time swallowed by the waves,
Fingers clenched bleach-white as bone
For the dream he could not save.

The seas are silent always now,
The ships pass by unharmed,
The salt spray of the ocean crows
For it no more is harmed.

About him ruins of the ages;
Queen and court decomposed
In the rustle of history's pages,
And why he stays no man may know.

Confession After Parole

The days grow long and I remember
Fragments of old songs;
For all that I've done I'm not sorry,
Still say it was kind of fun.
It's hard to remember just why I
Had those bodies dismembered.
You say I should feel sorry and then I
Smile and you worry.
It won't be long now, don't you see?
These fragments of songs
Whispering to me, telling only me
Things still to be done.

[Posted on Sat, retroactive, due to power outage]

Vampire's Night

The lights of cities cushion from
wildreaming, broken wonders clear
under moonlight.

Saving coins for a sunny day
dead currencies rust-red under fingertips,
we are all too hollow here.

Voices we never hear are
Speaking what we can't ignore --
The trees are, soft, dying.

What we hold to slips away:
Ashes on tongue, dust on a hand;
Promises of summer.

Guruophobia

Seeking answers we will
       approve of,
Devouring self help manuals
       like fibre-enriched cereals
We ask the Master
       for street cred,
Reliable references and
       a web site.
The Master asks us
       what we want
We wait, quiet, to be told.

Search

Making allowances for meaning
Rushes whispering in the wind
When the master speaks, words are
Not used     And we are named
Until divested, nameless, seeking
Yearning for the Real.

Hrm

Post nano burnout is
No desire to do a poem,
Thoughts on the novel

Left behind, forging anew,
Wondering what is left
For poetry.

Not Sleepies Much

The world shift slides to
Hallucination blue, verdigris flickers;
Ground rolls underfoot,
Motion sickness an extended blink
as
Time meanders windershins.

Post It Note On The Soul You Don't Believe In

Finding something to believe in.
The dance between being
And belonging you must join.

I wouldn't think less of you
If you avoid making a choice,
Hiding from dreams behind tests
And smiled tinged with our regrets.

Broken Arrows

We, here, following Time's broken arrow
Pointing north-south on the sundial,
Everything new is old again, rising twilights
Outpacing setting suns as we
Hide here beyond death awhile.

Starlight flickers, death dreams of fairies
and the clap of clappers on, and off.
Everything is just as it was last night
Before we took a step too far
And fell, but found it oddly soft.

Eternity is silence stretched like rubber,
Soft sound like nails on chalk scraping
The only noise, never a delight,
And dead we have only this, here,
Mouth's open, lost and full to gaping.

Work

Open every day including Sunday
Until the Rapture,
Until Ragnarok's final days,
End of the fifth sun,
Rebirth of the Rainbow Serpent,
Arrival of the aliens --
Do our saved hours never spent
Count, now, as sick days?

The Days

The days grow longer, ever so,
And age is looking inward to
Golden times, wondrous places
Filled with sad smiling faces.

The days grow short, as ever,
The deep bargain of "forever"
Not long enough it seems;
Getting old's the death of dreams.

The nights are lonely, always this,
Longing for one last final kiss,
Wishing no one had to die
And never say good bye.

The nights remain quiet, and yet
There are things to not forget,
"Children are our souls", and
Only dreams can make us whole.

Serendipity

Toast up, never toasted,
Kettle not plugged in, looking
like a metaphor misplaced.

Milked coffee, untasted,
Flaked with white, souring
At a morning face.

Orgone

A four beat orgasm,
Pauses in consciousness,
the pulse
of
religion experience --
Ohm to ommm
to orgone

Query

Dancing on pinheads
Two million hydrogen atoms
But how many angels?

Quisitioning

Said I could have their bodies but I'd rather have their dreams,
Said I could have their souls but not the sweet delicious screams,
Said I could have their ideals but then they'd turn over new leafs,
You said I could have their words but never their devout beliefs.

Being OK

It'll be all right tomorrow
All the pain that would not end
The wounds that could not heal
And your tears for sorrow.

If not tomorrow, next week
Free from the pain you feel
That's when the worlds ends
We just have to wait for next week

Just a few days past tomorrow
We'll all get the rest we seek.

Silences

Place where we can't
    find them
breaking apart   no leaves
    on the trees
twilight between things,
    neither day
    neither night
suspended; the words we
cannot find choking off
anything true.

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First Friends

We remain, like promises
made never broken,
vows in the silence of children's hearts.

Every time you forget us
Is a lie stained grey from white.
You used to think we
were imaginary, until
there was silence without voices
but -- what isn't?

I was real for you once when
you had nothing else to hold to.
Then you turned to the TV, to your gods,
to other friends not your first, and you
are lost enough in that world to wonder
how I could hate you now
even a little? You broke my heart
before I was aware I had
one to break.

Better, a poem never finished

For better it is to try
than let our dreams
fail softly, die.

S's

Sceptred sickness snakes sunward -
Seeing, singled, starshorn
Singing sweet softly:
Snickering surmounts
Sundreamers slow stop.

Flu

The long march, to
exhaustion, from health,
a battle we can never win.
Each soldier a carrier,
each weapon a blade, loss
in the war against sickness.
Falling into death we
light fires in the caverns
of our souls, but fire
consumes never enough.

Cyborg Porn VR Poems

          .i

Sex with void forms, bodiless movement
Neural nets decoding virii emoticons.
We cannot write code for souls.
Forms without form, mechanic motion
Bits and bytes and ram --
Nothing real:  not me
                          not you.
Data read, written, exchanged; was
                          it good for you too?


          .ii

This is not love, you
Me, all we did was make
A hybrid of ourselves.

Love is learning to let you;
Never holding on
All I can offer.


          .iii

We keep sharing
                   each other
         but
                   remain strangers.
I don't know what this is,
                   there is
         here a
                   wealth of empty promises
.
Hiding behind avatars we are
         gods and sinners
                   beautiful lovers
         made more than
Hacked together codes.

Enough?

That today is enough,
Can be enough ---
If today is enough that
Is miracle enough.
Too, that today
Is not yesterday
And the gift of tomorrow
Is to be different than both.
Surely it's enough?

After Closing Time

Museum become one --
Particle board bones
Dust flakes decorating the air
Cobweb consecration,
and dead water, conservation
of moulded books.

To A Famous Poet

Remembers I, tear-jerked stung
First time I wanted to hurt someyou,
Late to the party bringing with
A Hallmark, too damn lazy
To spare of yourself, and make
Him, dying, even one memory
Of you to call his own. Bastard.

Light

Morning comes, and we wonder who we've been.
Another night of lost memories waking to false dawn.
If we could only know, if we could only see
Look down on you and me, eyes and thunder in the skies:
Another cheap light show they say and we say: "Hey!"
Loud as we can be: "Our gods a pretty swell guy."

Evening comes, brining night and promising sins
Saying it'll be all right, a brothel is an inn.
If we could only try it might be safe to cry
But the god can always see, knowing when we lie
And their cheap delights don't mask an STD or three.
We know it can't be right but we're so very lonely.
Judgement comes tonight and I wonder who we've been
And pray our god's sight won't look too far within.

New Gods

Johnnies come late, domesticated
Offers of forgiveness incense scented
Prayers of forgetfulness uttered, begging
Never quite out-remembering blood and
Sacrifices, the terror of the gods tamed
But never owned, nor castrated.

Fragment

Through bars we've left behind
Of a cage too well designed
Trapped - in silence resigned
To this last, in being kind.

POEM ROUNDUP FOR NOVEMBER

POEM ROUNDUP FOR NOVEMBER

Number of poems written: 44
Average number per day: 1.5
Longest poem: I Tried (18 lines)
Shortest poem: Haiku (3 lines)
Total wordcount: 2,405

November

Cough fit, stagger sneeze,
Working life and student too;
Chil November air --
No smiles anywhere
Sniffing, snuffling, trying to please
- There's so much we have to do! -
Cold-clumped under cloudy skies,
Much to do before we die.

Wind Cutting

Wind breaking our words
Scattered cries over the ocean
Of vehicle noises, I wave
Promising to be faithful
As you leave the shore of my world
And I keep waving, even knowing
From your smile you will never return

Rainwords

Walking through the rain, writing
words bleeding off the pages;
there is nothing missing        slipping away
words we haven't found          are
floating through ruined paper,
falling bluer than the raindrops
        staying longer than the snow.

Love Story

I wrote my love in words you couldn't ignore
Sky writing in the air, soaring on love's dare.
I fell so hard from the sky, hit the cold dry ground
But it didn't seem to hurt when you were around.
Now my love is a cold hard thing, all green
With jealousy and hate; all my love has been
Just another lie, I saw you with her, and then
I became the first zombie to buy himself a gun.

Sky

The sky is dry tonight
bleached bone-pale, opal teeth
glittering in distance, flecking the stars.
We keep seeing strangers
we think we know, greeting breaking
on our lips, gull cries shrieked insults.
I am basked by the wind with new names.

Leavetakings

Our god departed from us
Down roads we'd wandered long ago.
There were foghorn bells whistling in his head
A tune upon his many lips and we ---
We had no word with which to hold,
No magic to bend and bind.
Our god left us; it's funny but
Most of us can't tell the difference
When we pray after all.

Set of Modern Poems

Set of Modern Poems

I

When we touch the falling water
We song with the laughing moon
Soft! a step over bridge stones,
The dirt road after ruins.

II

Open for lunch, hanging sign
desperate for attraction. Each night I
an too solid, the dark
figure beside your bed
waiting to eat your sins.

III

The world     dulled     grey, your
          touch
martian colours
          cold fire trailing.

IV

in times before this
rain soaked and bright-grinned
we could forget our names
open up spectral veins and write
right before the rains came up
from hollows in the earth.

Sleepover

You can all bring blankets
Before the stars are dead
We'll catch them as they're falling
Dancing just ahead.

My Fridge, written when my parents were living here

My fridge is now an alien, a stranger unto me:
Abrim with food and nutrients, no longer clean and free.
Time is lost each morning dispensing gold from dross,
Finding which is mine and which guests and gross --
They've filled a fridge with protein that once was passing clean;
If I am lucky this evening it may be as a dream --
My fridge dull and pedestrian, no stranger unto me.

Days of rain

Umbrella gridlock
On the sidewalk
Dogs yipping, yapping
      people
All we need is
Someone to blame
Tangled dancers, trying
To get past, soaked and
Kicking the dog:
Splatter of red washed
Away.

Haiku

Cold lapsed into silence
Dreaming frozen water
Forgetting secrets.

Bio

Dust-jacketed and past sculpted
By marketing strangers using key words.
("You have a pet, now. We could use a name
for her, if you please. You write; make it
something catchy.")
And immortality is
the author photo
decades old, but
never aging -- not even
when you pass on by.

Fame Walk

You ask how far I'd go
To be famous, walking
Through gala parties laughing.
I say: "The distance", that:
"Fame and infamy are book goods."
That is it better to be a star
Than hope for travel to one --
On borderlands between fear and love
I will go as far as I must
And bit care what prices are paid
By me and the world for this
And all the dreams come true.

Laughtersilent

Tickled to choking
Our eyes too filled with wonder
Reflections echo
In the rain.

Future Tensed

I'll come back to you
You know I will, only
It's not now, not today.
I don't know when, anyway.

But I'll come back, when
I forget just what you did,
The last fight we had
And who was good or was bad.

Finding

I am just trying to find my way.
Wishing for other things to say.
Remembering our first kiss.

Dreaming of a better world than this.
Wishing for more than shades of grey.
That we had tomorrow, not just today.

When / Telling

When I first told you I had
Another name, the sky
Was different, paler, and you
Were more beautiful than
All the things I'd forgotten.

On Crystal Meth

Conversations on the drug,
an evangelist caught with it, thinking
it makes a terrible sense -- heaven on earth,
one pure high. To some people
it would make more than sense.

I don't believe in Heaven.
But some days I really hope there is a Hell.
Learning more about Meth was one,
picturing people who could take
stuff under the kitchen sink, make a drug,
and then cheerfully sell it.
And a strange uplifting relief that there were
depths the human species could sink to
and still surprise me -- I worry that
eventually there won't be, but the call of money
and profit and Safety at any cost driving some
makes me think I'll never see that day.

Home Stretch of Nano....

Well, I haven't posted here in, uhm, over a month and change. Nano ate my life :) Not quite literally, but it felt like that. Still does.

To sum up (so far):

"My Cat Used To Be A Buddhist" finished at a little over 50,000 words in 10 days. I had hoped for seven, but I had Relatives here so it did not happen. After that, I began the novel that had started writing itself in my head 3 days into the FIRST nanowrimo.

As of now, over 40K into it, and hoping for 60-70K at the end, but will be happy with over 55K. "New Fires" is the title and it's a traditional fantasy style novel, more or less. If nothing else, it helps me realize that, much as I used to like reading them, I can't write well in this mode. Ah well.

Live and learn.

I Tried

I tried to tell you about that last time when
It seemed the world was sane and then
It all came tumbling down around me and you.

I tried to tell you that I wasn't sure at all
About where our love ended, the last time you called.
My thoughts are falling down and all I have is you.

I tried to tell you I'm not who I used to be
But I don't know if it's a madness you can see
Can't get up, I've fallen down, but for you

I tried to tell you that you're keeping me whole
But I can feel the collisions vibrating our souls
I've fallen down -- the only thing left that's true

I just can't tell you that I've gone and there's no way back
I can't explain; there's this language that words lack
My thoughts are tumbled down and forgetting you

I used to know you back in that other life I lived
But madness comes and takes and never gives
It all came tumbling down around me and you.

Flu

The long march, to
exhaustion, from health,
a battle we can never win.
Each soldier a carrier,
each weapon a blade, loss
in the war against sickness.
Falling into death we
light fires in the caverns
of our souls, but fire
consumes never enough.

O Muse, My Muse!

O Musette! O muset! our fearful count is done,
The PC has weather'd every block, the prize we sought is gone,
The goal is near, the tap I hear, the characters complaining.
While follow thoughts a slow wheel, the body slowly wearing.
           But O muse! muse! muse!
              O the bleeding count of word
                 Where on the page my wordcount rises
                      Of repetition assured.

           

Fragment

There are days when we fail to understand.
We are stumbling, blinded by
The light of things we never try
told to do or die, but it's just a lie
Never let them see you cry
Can anyone tell me why?

There are days wen we long to comprehend
We're told to seek out powers
No hippie-loving flowers
Watching minutes turn to hours
No singing in the showers
So why do we cower?

My Cat, No Longer A Buddhist

The mouse skitters across the floor,
claws clicking across tiles -- the sound
an echo of older fears. Once, I would
have leapt up at the sound, even swore.
Now I have Cat, who finally kills
them, no longer stuck with some
Garfield complex; not they are undone:
It runs some more, then is still.
Even old, my cat still hunts well,
though he is no longer Buddhist
he is no neutered as well, maybe that is
what changed him, but he'll never tell.

Tree Fort

There's this place I keep forgetting
That I always used to go.
There's this smile I keep remembering
But why that is I cannot say.
When time fails to the end of days
I just want to be able to know.

The place wasn't filled with laughter
But never sprinkled with tears
It wasn't cold come the dull winter
Just a small fort in the forest.
Did that darkness know me best
Preparing me for adult fears?

I huddled under the darkness
In the fort and in the night
My parents never thought me less
When I'd come home early
Sometimes from an angle I can see
The fort and all things seem so right.

But still and all I find I wonder
Just what it is I forget
Sometimes I hear it in the thunder
Sometimes underneath your words.
I think I once grew wings as a bird
But I all I know of are regrets.

7 = 7

7 = 7
The secret alarm clock message,
the sound of telephones shrilling
heir damnation -- three rings
only, and silence into which
shadows flit, whispering names
telling us that A is A, tad etad,
7 = 7.

Kuba

Sky blue, a summer day
When I whispered out names
Lonely trying too hard
Hearing you sigh each time
There was just one reply:
"Don't let our baby die."

A Love Story

When we met last I told you things
Then that I swore were real and true
I told you that I loved you, that I needed you.
Sky so blue and I felt your laugh would give me wings
To fly that day. But I never forgot the other one,
Rued the day I'd said there'd been someone else at all.
If only I'd lied to you then, but I can still fix it in a
Jiff. I just need to make a mind control device for you, a
Way to make you forget and fall in love with me again.
Someday I swear it will happen when we meet again.

Phi Beta Trasher

We are the garbagemen
We empty out your bins.
From night to morn
Even when they're torn
We dirty up our hands,
Save you from your sins and ...

Theophagy

In time before the drowning
We scuttle to wakefulness.
Playing notes on the bones of the earth.

Above us feet move, pause;
Sure, or lost, we do not know.
Only that the gods up there made our home.

Sometimes they come down
Into our darkness, to rest.
They bring light, but it does not avail them.

We eat them, to honour,
Grind bones for bread,
Wonder if the word "Troll" is our name.

Initiation

You wanted magic, the child said, leading
The old man down into the quiet darkness.
Above them, soulscape stars glittered,
Each one a famous face, saying their pat lines.
Who doesn't? the old man asked, wondering
If he'd forgot his pills, if this was only a dream.
Nothing is only a dream, the child chided gently.
And to see dreams is magic, all the magic there was.
To make them real is art, all that magic can be.

They came, old man and young, in the manner
Of dreams, transitioning to another place without pause.
My old high school, the old man said strangely.
What's it doing in here? Why are we here?
For what - the child began, then: You did not mean
In the larger sense? This is your soul; you tell me.
I hated it here. Is this magic, then? Hate? he demanded.
The child smiled. But of course. Hate and fear and love
Are magic, but the kinds that do not that. They don't
Mean enough, to near deep enough as desire and intent.
To see things as they really were is magic, here, in you.
To make the future what is want is all magic should be.

Then who are you? the old man asked, not bitter but more sad.
No one real, the boy said. Just a guide to what waits inside you.
You look like I did, when I was a boy. Or how I wanted to look.
The children grinned, and thanked him, having looked
In other dreams and souls as many things, some of them
Best left unremembered. But this was magic, to walk into dark places
And Hold up a light. And this is all magic, all power, all wisdom:
Not looking away. Not from what you wanted, nor the prices
For getting it. Not looking back is only for those scared of the magic.

Thoughts You

I won't/can't read the papers     Your name
In tabloid type     trumpeting
Strumpets and moral outrage of those
Who hide the perversions in quieter places.
Not the wire pale metallic tattooing
And: "But I thought you were younger. A boy,"
A clock Captain Hook ticking in the background,
You angry and hurt     Me     wanting to say, only:
"Shut up. Don't say more. Don't damn yourself.
You were          Nice enough.
Just digging yourself deeper now."
And your eyes that knew past point of caring.

Hyena journalists, paparazzi capturing soul pains,
"He wasn't a bad person," I said, them stunned
Silent, veering away in search of tamer game.
     Congratulated for confusing them a breath
     and the second advice on shrinks, perhaps
To make my head smaller, or a different shape with
Their psyiogomical ways, trying to understand him.
And through him, me. "I've always looked young."
"Why do you do this?" "Someone has to," I say.
"Why does anyone     do anything.     Looking away
is harder," and they just look away.

And your name is bigger now          almost a war
Older scandals come to light and hard-eyed confessions.
     I wonder if any of them
     Found him kind, or
     gentle.
There is no one to ask Sadness heavy in
the silence. I see you on the TV; I yet wonder still:
How do your eyes still look kind     and forgiving?

Song

We'll meet again in the oceans of our dreaming.
It's all I can do to hold you in a world grown stale and cold.
I lost your love. I saw it die inside your eyes;
Outside them your words were full of words I did not name.

We'll meet again Just one last time I swear
The person I used to be just isn't there anymore you see.
I'm waiting for compassion, for another chance to say
All the words that fall apart exposed to the light of day.

That we'll meet once more I can't help believing
You can't have forgot so quickly the words your heart used to say.
I wrote you a letter. From the context of my dreams.
When I'm with you I need you: nothing ever feels the same.

A Story

Tired of paying prices
For these dreams we never had
Out wandering between the sun setting
and the night.

I'm scared to hear your voice
Calling me like it used to
Everyone else has gone away
Followed you to some place.

People who say they saw
Your blood stain the snow
Well, they just don't know
I tried to explain but it's like the rain
I just keep falling, falling yet again.

I can hear you calling
Through air and silence
I can here your voice
Whispering my name.

I want to tell you
But I just can't find the words
The reason that I killed you
Is who you have become.

I know you wan to blame me
You'll never let yourself see
The curse that only I saw
I wish you could see through your pain
The dreams washed out by your rain

It was out of love I spared you
The ghosts after the dawn
Huddled here alone I
Only wish to be warm.

Hoping for a newer world
I recite the oldest prayers
Hoping for another chance
I rise to meet your stare.

Coda

I can't explain where I've gone
From all these roads I started down
I swear to you that I never knew
And never believed in them anymore

But it's all over now, done and gone:
The UFO came, spoke, and has flown.
I swear to you that I loved you
I always meant to come back to you again.

But someone else answered your door
And I could not bear that pain
So I've gone seeking another kind of dawn
It's a new life I've started down.

Doctrines

Full of instructions,
Warnings most dire.
I read the writing,
Doctrine of Signature,
Wonderingly puzzled.
It gives warnings:
Heat, Time, Ingredients.
Time to rest after cooked.
Hot! In bright red.
But in all the instructions
It never says: Eat me.
This is food. Perhaps
Alice sued, or they are
Merely cautious, but
The directions do not say
When to eat the food,
Perhaps we are to let
It cool for hours, or
Stare at it and starve.
They must have a number
We can call, to ask.

You

You taste just like
fresh sawdust in
the stable, your lips
like hay bales,
and I feel my lips
swelling with my allergies.

Holding On

Of late I have taken to wishing
That love had another name --
On my heart there is a stain
As when my fist impacted the wall.

I am too full of hopes and wishes
But my future seems the same --
Maybe love is not assigning blame
And staying through another's fall.

To see is to see

To see is to paint
Images in our heads
Deeper than knowing.

Nothing destroyed, only
Transformed. Sometimes when
The light strikes your face
It melts to nothing.

The completeness of being
With you, love making
Cannot match -- we only see
What matters to us.

I paint with clumsy words
Comforted only that no one
understands.

I'm Up

Staggering out the door feeling
Like an extra in a zombie movie,
Wondering is the grey world
Might seem a trifle brighter
After more sleep.
But there is only waking
And the worship of caffeine.

[And boy, does this feel prophetic today...]

First Kiss

I smile, tell you you're nice
Shy, not looking up, you
Barely hearing my mumbled words;
I stand, cringing, the butterflies
Like I imagine love to be,
Six years old and waiting
For your lawsuit in fear.

Parable of the Boy on Red Bull

The evening is a pale wash;
bleached seen screen colours
And burning eyes twitching
Under the influence of drink:
Cans and vodka scattered as
Offering to some forgotten god.

He smiles, slack lipped, abusing;
Pushing and making strange noises
That no one is around to hear.
As he croons praises to machines
Twin monitors flickering with colour
Like seizure-inducing eyes, and he
Overclocks, and does it again, the
Grating drone of his computer the
Proof that he is Powerful.

Parable of the Drunken Man

Coming home hither, staggering
Through a door that isn't his
Into another life, left open, seeing
His daughter and the boy next door
Melting like obscene snow men
(One pale white, the other dog-piss yellow,
and himself red, flushed with rage)
Falling apart, no longer an
Unique snowflake in the melding,
Just flesh sundered, the moment
Passed and gone, and the drunk man
Throwing up over them and the bed,
The only statement that night that he
Remains proud of years later.

POEM ROUNDUP FOR OCTOBER

POEM ROUNDUP FOR OCTOBER

Number of poems written: 56
Average number per day:
Longest poem: Quiet Destroyer 52.333 (46 lines)
Shortest poem: The Wait (3 lines)
Total wordcount: 5,509

Quiet Destroyer Vol. 2 3.45

That day I woke up, wakened
By my butler telling me
"They are dead. They are gone."
My parents died; killed by
Some alien power, some 'Flux'
That no one can explain.

In my dreams I was the Quick Defender,
Hero to the people, drunk on glory.
In my dreams, I did no wrong.

I told him it's all right, that
Sometimes heroes make
Mistakes; they're only human.
The voice was quiet, removed.
I loved them enough that I
Could not hate their killer.
He told me: "No, it is an alien.
A monster," and stories
Of the Harf invasion of '62
ground under his words.

I remembered those stories.
I grew up with tales of loss,
With the hate; victim
Of his fear. I am afraid
Of Flux, of the alien, of
Things I do not grok.

A hero conquers fears.
But the wise man destroys them.
In my dreams, now, I am
Quiet, conquering even death.
I Have no tears.

On Dreaming

White crows
gliding under auburn sky;
my grandfather, dressed as Pan
(Peter and the other both) flies
overhead, telling me secrets
between leathery wing beats.

Rainbow birds and foxes glitter
gliding between tree and wood
(not sameness -- in dreams, here,
the tree is building itself from bones
of the dead, and the wood is just)
speaking without wordsmithing.

We float and we burn and we speak
all the great and aweful things
we forget on waking -- words become
animals and animals become real.

And everything makes
a little more sense
than it does on waking.

Silences

Silence speaks a language all its own.
The pull to part, weighted under
The burden of the unsaid, the veil
Others place meaning into, reading
Your wishes from your body,
Saying: "If you aren't angry,
You might want to tell your face that"
Or asking what is wrong when
Nothing is that you know, only
That the silence scares them so.
Even more than the words we
Can fill it with, with also cannot
Be unsaid; at least in silence we
Cannot come undone.

The Bus Stop

Small things out of order,
A failure of certainty:
Waiting among the silent
      Wondering
      -- Did I miss it? --
      Unable
To voice the confusion
If the bus did not come.

Comfortless rain-soaked world
Huddling hunched as delay
Stretching, knowing another comes
      But
      Under it
      -- What if it, too, does not come? --
The wondering: of questions
Without answers remain questions.

Single, not a double. Not normal.
Perhaps the last bus passed that way,
Eyes skipping over; or perhaps late.

No answer is given,
No, but --
No question is asked.

They Say

They say he has a slanty way of looking at things
They say he used to graft rats with moth wings.
They tell many stories, most of which are gories,
About the things he's done and the awards he's won.
Talking abut his Findings, they whisper softly of his sins
Of bodies stacked in basements and people without skin,
Of different combinations of his terrifying equations
Scrawled upon his bed sheets and what happened to her feet
They talk about his wonders: their words are full of awe
But their smiles are the most jealous things that you ever saw
They talk of his gruesome ways and unhygenical displays
What happened to the children, that he used to be a woman
But most of all they talk in wonder they can't disguise
And try to fathom how he won the coveted Nobel Prize.

The Smell

Domesticated water
Chlorine over urine
Chemical blue.

Sometimes angled in mirrors
Under cool light
Eyes remind me --
Leprechaun green forests,
Laughter under trees;
A brace of fairies caught.

Victim

Victim of your suicide
Finding you hanging
Dangling dead from the overpass

Lost wages are musings
On underpasses, underworlds,
And my headlights finding you.

I thought you were an angel
Your body
There
For a sudden moment.

Shaken by the quake, I
Have yet to heal, do not
Know yet who to blame.

Hollow Watching

Meth addicts
speaking, dying
on video -- but
nothing happens
or feels real.

There's a music score
And many people crying
Cameramen are blurring frames
Making it a movie -- but
Nothing false can feel real.

As The Wind

One life, regimented as the wind --
Boring man plodding boring things
Until the moment
of wakening
And then drifting through night
Skies with a mind so soft and sharp.

Gifts

I brought you flowers
Wrapped in cellophane
(really saran wrap,
and the cheap kind)
Ripped screaming from the earth.

Something that dies is better
Than stones that never do,
I explain, and you call be cheap
But - but even so, what dies
Is more beautiful than what
Never does, is immortal;
There is a beauty in mortality,
In the sun burning out in the sky,
That perfection cannot reach.
I am only glad I did not get you
The snake eating its own tail.

Shame

Your hands flicker flash, harsh,
Choppy, the paper between us
Scrawled with arguments.
I fight the urge to look away
And not listen, to ask
And not sign: "Why are you angry?"
At the implant, my new life.
But you are ashamed that
I can hear now; you cannot.
As if I have betrayed you, everyone,
Our "culture", with the cochlear
Grandma bought as a gift.
I am too young to understand
But my sister signs: "Freak"
When you are not looking
And I already say insults to her
When no one is looking at me.
It is my only secret anymore.

Babyhood

The last time I died it was not like this.
I was important, someone somewhere
Loved as in the womb,
Warm and cherished as if by angels.
A whole harem praising me in soft whispers
Saying: what a beautiful baby,
Pretending my mother wasn't crying
Oh! even the pillow pressing down
Was warm with her tears.
Here everyone stares with eyes
Made to judge and not care;
Old ladies drive-by motherings
Screamed out of car windows
Saying: you're too young to look after me.
Insolent men ask you for dates,
Assuming you easy to get into bed.
Your tears are angry, bitter and not warm,
And you wonder why you allowed
Me to be born.
I just want to be loved again.
The next time I live, it will not be like this.

Losses

I wonder if our hopes and dreams
Have knocked and come and gone,
If the perfect people who always seen
To never lose have finally won.

Last night I had a migraine,
There was pounding on the door.
I wonder if opportunity came
Just once and will not anymore.

Karma

We save ourselves in simple ways.
Every time we laugh that's one
disaster, one calamity, one sin
averted by the karmic universe
that balances all accounts --
but, only, like an accountant
would, drunk, siding with
the debtors and the deadbeats
and all others who, needing,
give it names, beg them for aid.
We only pray to our gods
when our accounts come due.

On Your Mother Minding...

A reply to this poem

There was this way, you know,
she had, of staring, ringed in smoke,
stabbing out
her cig on her father's arm, saying to me: "would you do that?"
And I'd say no, and your mother
would just laugh at that; maybe asking
if she'd mind is just a game
I'm playing with you. I find it hard
to think she wouldn't mind
anything at all, your mother,
who would cradle you when you returned
from the battle, dead, with the noisy neighbours -- and
like Grendel's mother, like all mothers who ever deserved the title,
would kill them all.
But not for you.

I do not think she would mind.
I might mind, though, that she'd laugh
especially knowing we were still together.

Called To ...

Called to witness yet we judge
Staring with dead uncaring eyes,
Changing channels with a blink
We look and fail to truly see.

They stand bereft of all disguise:
Under our gaze a wonder dies.
"Odd," we say, garnish with labels,
Condemning with empty hands.

A Defence Of Plagiarism

Everyone telling me
to think is
a fool -- why should I
waste my time doing
only what so many
have done before,
and better? I will only
repeat what I was told;
and was told what
was right -- why
waste my time on this
when there is
a better answer
-- here!

Titled

But what are we with titles gone
But faceless before another dawn?
For all the burdens that we bemoan
There's nothing else that we own.
Silent we make no pleas for justice;
Only this path we choose defines us.

The Sea

To watch the sea come out, fall in,
Dashing itself against the shore
Is to see all wonders, works and wisdom
If we are trapped in metaphor.

The Wait

I am waiting for eunoia
A flash of eureka, euphoria
Or a hint, a hit of ecstasy.

Youth

There is a time when we are young
Before the song of reason's sung
When we can be quite assured
To the meaning of our words.
In that world today follows today,
We always mean the things we say:
To say things we don't believe
Is for wonder to quietly leave.

Ghosts and Gods

The world is filled with ghosts and gods,
Drenched in symbols, shadows of the mind:
We search for Truth but all our myriad signs
Post and posit nothing for us to find.

All we have is trying to be kind
In a world of words as rods and lures
Cruel for the times, none seeming to mind
And Truth is replaced by Sucker.

Systems, so small

The narrowness of our universe is
Linear time, bound space,
Seeing as believing:
Blue skies &
green fields:
What use vision that
Cannot see either extreme?
Infinity is the silent, making holes
in
Our souls.

Space

In the space inside my head
Where all things fit together
We'll learn loss has limits,
Finally love each other.

After An Ending

If it is worth doing, worth doing badly
Is possible too, and as worthy a thing.
There was the way you looked
At me, seeing only me, and
Nothing more.

I looked in vain for proof you'd seen beyond me.
That you'd made up myths and loved me
As I loved you, saying: you are my one, my only,
The last star I see before each day's dawning.

But you, resplendent in gold
And silver, green eyes frosty
Chilled as the champagne glass
Lick ruby lips and tell me,
"It is over."

I wait for a laugh, something to break the ice
In your gaze and the hold in my world.
You just handed me pages, and papers,
And the lilacs were blooming as I wrote.

And I know that everything
Ends, that time takes from us
Even love; but never our memories
If we are careful, and treasure them
Too tight.

We Pray

We pray for blue and empty skies,
Free of clouds and promises of rain.
We pray for skies so empty and pure
Devoid of gods and shadow dreams.
We pray, even if it means a drought,
For empty skies where no one flies.
We pray for an end to occupation
And the terrible ways you aid us.

We pray for the freedom to do and die.
We pray for the return of hurt and pain,
For a reality not to bound and sure,
We pray for things to be what they mean;
for a world where things can be bought
And the sun is not pulled through the sky
And you looking from your high station
Reborn again on Mount Olympus.

Marriage

I understand the vows now. I think.
What holds us together when the love
Is gone, you asked, and I blinked
Trying to find an answer for you.

No answer truly satisfies the question
So I said: "God." And then: "Duty."
Was I joking, you asked, no hesitation,
And I could just whisper: "Yes."

Morning

Every day, paper and coffee, at the table
Sitting as close as lovers, as estranged as strangers.
Our children talk as if our lives were fables,
And I turn to you, and wonder who believes it's true.

Every day, we smile by reflex in mornings.
Every day, we sit in the same places, and repeat
The same phrases, neither of us mourning
Who we used to be before we were you and me.

We gave up love for contentment,
Pedestrian friendship all that is left in the end.
I hid all the Valentines I never sent --
When I see you I don't see how they're true.

Diary Etching

Everyone thought I was terrified,
after the accident, hiding out in
my room, secluding from the world
like a mad monk. They heard tears
in my laughter and saw sorrow in
my smile. But I was mostly relieved
you were gone, because now
I don't have to find the words
to tell you I never loved you.
I didn't even like you much. It was
just biology, and nothing special.
I can always find someone else
and get married again, and have
more kids -- there was nothing unique
between us, not even this relief.

Zombies

The zombies crawl out at noon,
Staggering under weight of sunlight
And exams, slouching to coffee
And libraries; trying to wrestle
Meaning from tuition fees.

"dead programmer's society"

We shall program as the druids did
on stone computers;
Star signs refracted from stones
meaning bled from nature
We shall use knives, and blood, and auguries
before we write with pens.

The Psychology Of Bullies

Standing up to bullies is
reading too many articles
is too many magazines
by grown-ups just trying
to pretend they should've
stood up and bee saved.

But mostly it's hitting
the cement, and blood
coming from the nose
and laughs and words
after that hurt more
than bruises, only where
you can't see them.

Quiet Destroyer 52.333

[A reply to This poem.]

Of late I have been worrying about money.
where it comes from, where it goes --
I could rob a bank (that is where they keep it, after all)
but it would not pay for all the workers, the henchmen, the inventions.
(Even illegal aliens cost money, if only to feed;
especially the Martian sandworms.)

It comes, it goes. Things happen, or they do not.
I do terrible things, but I seldom make the news.
A stock crash is a crime, but white collar, hidden --
the problem with being a shadow player
is finding out the shadows are real.

Sometimes, in the mirror, I see myself in a prison uniform now.
I am not me, do not even look much like me, but it is I.
I am him, he is me. Who was I, before I was born? This stranger,
with my name if not my face, in the prison uniform
never removed, even when he is free.
Do I have a mind to lose? I am losing something.

The problem of brilliance is the fractures,
what happens when you think in ways people never have.
Not before you; polymathic wisdom meets reality
and says: you were you, before you were.
And, thus: you were in a prison, are in one still.

My own mind. The world. My hatred of Flux.
Prisons, all.

I am afraid of a word
I do not know the meaning of,
the taste of, the name of --
the edges, they tease at my mind,
void on either side.

I try to change; absurd, but so --
as if tomorrow I may never be, or be just
a man in grey suits seen in another life's mirrors.
Flux says the word: "Retcon," knowing it because
he is Flux, not because he understands. The universe
is a giving of gifts we never understand.

The word comes to me, as if
It was the Logos, "FIAT LUX"
but a dark counterpoint.
"A different light," I say, "for a newer world."
And, suddenly, nothing matters,
especially the things that do.
I suggest, into the brittleness of the old world,
we go get drunk together. Maybe fuck.

He agrees only to the drink.
I wonder how much he understands
that nothing matters anymore.

Lost words

Lost words are faces without names,
knowledge dissolving like bitter tea on the tip of the tongue,
the silence between the words when
words will not come.

There is a void where there should be
Synapses firing like Russian roulette, a magician conjuring
nothing. The hat, when
the rabbit does not come out, the silence that is not silent,
the soundless enlightenment of broken illusions,
of old dreams lost and nothing, yet, replacing them;
this is where lost words come from.

The inability to correlate our data.
Not getting dates. This is where they go,
what they become, moments between meaning, growing like static
to envelop noise.

Lost faces without proper expressions,
rubber smiles and the pause before we get the joke, to laugh.
This is what lost words leave us with.
Not silence, but the inability to cope with silence.
Not solitude, but having nothing to connect
to other people with, only what fails us.

We use so little of our language that we
are always failing it. There are more words lost
than made, more wonders not worth the name
and too much still to be found.

Shamans

The path of the shaman is a way, not a truth.
There are as many ways to walk it as suns in the sky.
More: as many as all the souls that will ever be.
Everyone makes their own way, walks their own steps.

And this is the magic of the shaman: only, just, to see.
For a name has power, but to be known it must be understood.
Must be seen, and the way is seeing things as they are.
This is the heart of all knowing, of all magic, of all lore:
and it must be forgotten, to be remembered anew.
And every time it is a little different, as the stories we tell
are different, every time: no one tells them quite the same.

This is the price of magic, to see what cannot be unseen,
to look, and bear witness, and not look away. To judge,
because too many are scared to; to dream, and keep
the dreams alive. The heart of all ways is the wisdom
hiding in the heart of every child, sleeping
in the soul of everyone who looks at the world, and sees
what is really there. The trick of magic lies in this:
knowing it is real, and not, and moving between both worlds.

Suffer The Highest, For A Change?

thinking there is more
than survival is a luxury,
like fear, laughter, hopes

stars -- cold and bright
as remote as God
almost as uncaring

under You the children are burning
thrown into pits, shot in schools,
discarded by people wanting sons
-- You only give us silence
watch faith break against stone.

If we can draw tears from stones,
surely blood from God's heart?

Surely give voice to mute rage
lodged inside our chests?

I am so scared of myself,
of love, hate, everyone, of You,
my God, and this world we made.

I now understand a world drowning
in tears, for forty days. I do not
understand why You stopped crying.

If I was cursed to live as long as You,
I would never stop, always reaching,
and if the world fell through
my fingers, it would only be justice
for my silences and my sins.

Genesis of a God

You said you could read my mind
But there's nothing for you to find
Just the remains of aborted dreams
From another life, trying to be kind.

The world would drown in screams
You said, testament to love supreme.
For me you'd make a newer world.
I said I'd rather have some ice cream.

You spoke the words of Power, hurled
Fire from the sky. Made mountains twirl
And fall apart, made Time itself unwind,
But you couldn't make us a better world.

And this....

And this is the heart of all magic,
The turnings of time and space --
A terrible grief to make and shape
The world to a deeper place.

This was a world of loss and pain,
To take away and to sunder;
But to see the world as it is
Is a true way to wonder.

And this is the way of miracles,
The finding of true friends;
Dreaming with another's dream
And knowing nothing ends.

Nanowrimo '06: Plotting, and the title too!

Ah, the infection/excitement begins.... Having done nanowrimo 3 times so far, there isn't that much to do -- except switch genres entirely and see what happens. Three years of nanowrimo has taught me one basic thing: the resulting novels are NOT publishable. I hate editing. Hates it, my precious. It burns! Or, to be accurate, I like doing it if I don't have to tear the novel apart and rebuild it. Which is pretty much the result from nanowrimos.

So, midway though the drek of last years sci fi one that didn't work well, I decided to do something different. (Aside: the story I told was so far from the one in my head it was laughable, but the kitchen sink was cool.) So I decided that, for '06, I would do pure nano. Go for word count and to hell with quality. I doubt I'll be able to, but I'll try anyway -- effectively regurgitate up 50K in a week (or two) about the narrator getting up in the morning after. After what? Well, I'm not telling. Somewhat because I don't know yet, but still.

At least, courtesy of Fennec, I have a title: "My Cat Used to be a Buddhist"

Now to get literary and swamp it in foils and aluminium wrapping and saran wrap and symbolism and allegory and alliteration and aadvarks. (For the alliteration, y' know?)

Little Miracles

The miracle of love
Is that we do at all;
It's so easy to be trapped
In visions of a fall.

When there's so many ways
To hide behind our pain;
When there's so many people
We feel we could blame --

The touch of another's hand
Is proof enough we care
And all we need is laughter
And memories to share.

And when the light is failing
And we feel we cannot cope
There's always love to show us
That faith is more than hope.

La Fin De Siecle

The problem of a hero is that the saving's never done.
No matter all the wars that I have fought and won
Sometimes it seems as if I've only just begun.

Though my heart's as pure as a virgin mirror
The world's full of lies, of deception & disguise,
And I wonder once more: what am I fighting for?

Every gift's another burden only weighting me down,
And everything I could be is a sea in which I drown:
A hero without ideals is like a king without a crown.

Though my heart's as pure as a virgin mirror
The world's full of lies, of deception & disguise,
And I wonder once more: what am I fighting for?

But at every night's ending there's another dawn;
I have to believe there'll be one when I'm gone
For the sky is filled with dead stars that once shone

Though my heart's as pure as a virgin mirror
The world's full of lies, of deception & disguise,
And I wonder once more: what am I fighting for?
But when death is near the real hero need not fear.

Quiet Destroyer 52.302

aka: The Rise and Fall of YOMANK

The villain, calling himself super,
Posted on Flux's message boards.
There were pixelated pictures of me,
Crude jokes and hurtful little words.

He said he was greater than me
(Probably was, some fat greasy man
Barely fitting into a chair, piggy eyed)
And challenged me, man to man.

Me. Quiet Destroyer, the terrible one.
The only villain to defeat Captain Flux
(in battle, if not our war), but this pup
Said: "Your method, lol!, it sucks!"

His goal, so juvenile, so - so plain,
To cause someone to spill a drink,
Owe the other a new keyboard. As if
Anything in that required him to think!

He just posted things from the Simpsons,
Stole gags from Family Guy; and the fool
Flux, he laughed, typed YOMANK!
And was nothing more than a tool.

Afterwards, I found my foe, garroted
Him with an extension chord, but I
Had still lost the battle, Not made
Flux laugh - but I could make him die.

Candy Floss

In all our reaching outwards
In all our searching for,
Trying to find the gods
To mean more than we are.

We die and we are buried
Reclaimed and are dust
Vainly hoping we believe
Something will outlast.

To hope for more to life
Than the living of this one
Is just a wishful dreaming
When all is said and done.

Scientific conclusions

There is uncertain movement
Between dreaming and the now
Unable to find the reasons why
We settle again for the how.

Poem a day update

The poem a day blog goes well, somewhat to my surprise. I had honestly expected to burn out by this time of the year, but haven't yet. Of course, November is nanowrimo, and the end of December is x-mas/going away -- so we'll see. With luck, I'll make good headway on the only novel in October and stop it for Nano without too much difficulty.

POEM ROUNDUP FOR SEPTEMBER

POEM ROUNDUP FOR SEPTEMBER

Number of poems written: 52
Average number per day: 1.7
Longest poem: Canada (39 lines)
Shortest poem: Censorship (0 lines)
Total wordcount: 4,163

Answers

Answers flatter before
Unfathomed depths of question.
A hunger. Reaching. Gnawing:
Seeking, searching causes
For effects. The building of conclusions
Is a house of cards, each one
What we thought it would be,
The final proof what we always
Knew we would find.

Deaths In Lonely Places

The struggle through answers
toward questions --
after the death of hope what is left?
To silence, only tears;
too perfect uniform suits
somehow
free of stains.
Where are the heroes now when
all real men are gone,
dead screaming defiance every one?
We have nothing to expiate,
we say, declaim; but the need
haunts us even so.

Canada

Canada I've given you little got a little in return.
Canada the dollar bill gone 1989.
Sometimes I mind things.
Canada when will we end the u war?
Go drop a language bomb
Je ne me sens pas que bon ne me tracassez pas.
I can write this in a Right-thinking country.
Canada were you ever really good government?
Did you every take off our clothes?
Did you carry frostbite to your graves?
When will you be worthy of your 200 FLQ?
Canada why are your libraries full of books?
Canada will you send your regrets to Rwanda?
I'm burdening your free health care with my sickness.
When can I again buy Mello Yello with my looks?
Canada after all it is you and I who compromise nothing else.
Your smugness is too much for me.
You made me want to be American.
There must be ways to settle this compromise.
Someone famous is somewhere in Canada being famous is sinister.
Are you trying to be famous or is this some type of joke?
I've a finger am trying to point.
I refuse to give up my TV.
Canada stop pushing I know I am staying.
Canada the golden apples are falling.
I haven't read the newspaper for weeks, everyday nothing
happens.
Canada I feel sentimental about toonies.
Canada I used to despise you as a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke to cripple the health system every chance I get.
I sit in my office for days and stare at my screen saver.
There used to be a Chinatown but the racists tore it down.
I think there used to be troubles.
You should see people reading in Little Sister's.
My psychoanalyst thinks we're both completely normal.
I never said the Lord's Prayer in school.
I don't have time for mystic visions or cosmic cookie cutters.
Canada I still haven't told you how you turned away
your crimes.

Shore

At the end of life a door.
Behind it all that we adore.
Behind it everything abhorred.
Context is everything evermore.
Context is our god, furthermore,
At the door we weep and weep sore.

Death Over Phone Lines

One day, way back when
When the world was more blue
And lots less real, mommy had this job.
It was crappy, made her crabby,
And we all hated it. So one day,
I told her to call in dead.
She did, figuring it would be hard
For them to argue. She said there was
This silence, and then they hung up.
But then the social workers came
In their cheap suits and polyester smiles
And lawyers and the executor of the will
And family and friends and flowers
For funeral arrangements.

No matter what mommy told them,
They still thought she was dead.
I laughed, and I laughed: I was a kid,
It's what we do. But I never found out
What became of mommy, where she went,
If she really ever died. Looking back from now,
Though, it was still pretty funny.

Understand

Understand --
If you'd said all you had to say
Your love would have left anyway.

Understand --
If you said you loved her anyway,
It's stopped mattering anyway.

Understand --
If you'd given your heart for her to stay
You'd still be a worthless sod anyway.

Understand --
No matter what you do to delay
She saw you as you really are today.

Understand --
Once the masks all fell away
She had no myth or love to make her stay.

Start of a sample Sonnet About Nature

And the water turned pitch black, pitch as black
Only, now, all living breathing things did it lack
As scum rises to surface in politics, so too
Our impurities made the world of Nature impure.

Local Hero

Have you see the Real Man?
Yes, I have! Yes, I can!
He lives next door to everyone,
A neighbour and a friend.

What's be done that's made the news?
All things you or I could do!
He's the man who lends a hand,
Knows the power of the magic word.

He helps us when times are tough,.
Always willing to lend an ear.
He'd never say he is any hero,
Just a common man -- but Real!

(a reply to this poem

731

People will forgive anything.
God may not, but God
Does not need people.
Needs must, they say, when
The Devil drives, but there is
No Devil, just us, and faces
In the mirror. No monster
Terrifies more. Ends justified
By means are quests for good
That always end as evil.
Some things should not be justified.

The Letter

How I used to dream:
Voices holding me,
Stigma of family
Wounds driving tears
Into palms.

The tree they hung me on
Pine, decorated for the season
In flashing lights and
Multiphonic tears.

You became as them
When, laughing, told me
Dreams good as dust.
But ashes are pure.

&& I found something
Almost real in
Brand New Dreams,
Bravery found outside
Your love.

When I am famous,
Will you write books?
Do talk shows? Tell everyone
You knew?

Say Something About Cheese

Hunkered down in flesh
flash! skin bereft of zipper,
No way wiggle out & free.
Clothing of words a harsh nakedness
Light without shadows emptied
Down through bones.
Clock whir flicker flash
A hum under a single eye;
Magic forcing false smiles.
Soul slivers compressed into
Albums, black white x-rays
Under colour, a flash of magic
Startling faces to life.

No One Believes Me

A work of art, a masterpiece
Telling truths that will not cease.
I shall not be faithful, I say,
And yet you love me anyway.
Why this is I cannot say
But you claim to be at peace.

Waiting For Them To Die First

Old age is buying pets --
(is a series of bowel movements)
Accompanied by a cat chorus
at the door. It becomes a decline
Of health, the loss of friends
And time; giving forgetfulness,
Taking all else -- and finally
Life is waiting for your pets to die,
Knowing you will follow;
Only wishing to not precede them
Into rest and to silence.

Censorship III

They are all like the doctors:
Quiet, but not as removed.
Telling me they are sorry
For my loss, not looking
At the stumps, hoping
They get some money
When I sue the company.

No one knows I saw it
Coming down the tracks,
Or that only by fondling
The stumps can I get it up
Every morning, secret lusts
Become real, just like in
My dreams. If only I
Had been born broken
Outside, as well as in
Some are not meant
For mending, only for this.

My hunger is sated now.
I finally love my body.

Censorship II

Things fell apart;
To pieces; the day
Adverts became art

Dissection will never find a soul.
And gods       Are real
Inside our heads, the only
Place that they are

We continue to confuse
Movement with action

Real?

If only she was real.
Really a woman, I mean.
If only I could be sure.
But I can't, not - anymore.
No one can be sure, about anything.

Least of all the little things.
Her eyes, lashes fluttering
Like dead insect legs, so hungry.
What is she so hungry for?

It could be a joke, just - a video,
For the net, a night of dressing
To get other men cross.
God help me, I don't know.
I don't know if she's real.

So, it's late and dead pigeons led to Iran led to Superman IV ....

"Can you describe the suspect who destroyed Omegapolois, ma'am?"
"He - he wore his underwear."
"Ma'am?"
"HE WORE IT OUTSIDE HIS PANTS!"
"Oh, god, this is live, right? Ma'am, how much did you have to drink?"
"THEY WERE RED! HE HAD RED UNDERWEAR! I will never forget it!"

Censorship

On Silliness

Most people don't believe in common wonders
Forsaking leaves for crystals, pseudo from science
As if the fall of a leaf was not magic in itself --
For the rotting of nature is a true delight, a wonder.

Shuggling

And the Old Ones shuggled
Together under the light
Of the dead cities giggled
Into the desiccated night.

Grandma

Every year a cake, from memory.
The cake rises as memory fails,
Ingredients like collapsing into
Singularity, a white hole of food.
Every year she says it's love.
Every year it's less edible, and her
Smile is that much wider.

                                                  You
Wonder sometimes, through a prism
darkly, if she knows; if this is just
A joke she's playing, knowing no one
Will ever call her on it; her only
Revenge on a world grown too young.

Wonder

Battering down the hatches, the gods
Sneezing from the common cold of prayer.
The old woman standing in line
Knitting warmth from out of the cold.
Every day she hears the gods
Serenade the moon from fences.
There is only mystery when we
Are wise enough to close our eyes
Willing to pretend we do not see.

Ah, the morning....

Bill Clinton warns against wide torture approval (Reuters)

... I read that as "wife torture approval"

Life

At it's best, life is
The pursuit of pleasure;
At it's worst, there is
Insisting where it should be found.
One man's chains are
Another's bondage gear.

Fragment

Every day the world seems to get a little stupider.
I used to blame the TV, and even my family.
Now I can only blame those who made it.
"It is people. It is people. It is people."

Odd Little Thing

They said there was a way to Heaven,
I just had to turn and walk away.
They said there was a way to Hell
I just had to keep on going
Keep on living keep on loving
Pretending this life wasn't just for show

Don't you know that no one can tell you
They can tell you all about Hell
How it isn't swell and full of fire and sin
But when it comes to heaven, they tell you
Nothing at all, not a single thing
Except that you get wings.

I swore to them I was living
For more than wings or a prayer
I said if God loved us heaven was a given
So I kept on going, on dreaming,
On living, on loving, on sinning
And I got in the gates anyway.

Don't you know no one will tell you
They won't tell you about Heaven
Cuz if it's perfect, everything you've been
Wanting, why would you remain down here
In a world of fear and pain, where nothing
Stops you from getting wings
You just clip your life and fly away.

Talk Like A Pirate Poem

[For Talk Like A Pirate Day]

If yer t' be talkin like a pirate, matey
Ye needs ta be salty 'n a tich a cruel
Yer gotta gets em to walk the plank
To hoist the jib, the scallywags,
If ye ain't a landlubber - say it true.

If you yo ho here we'll keel-haul yer
We're real, ye scrubby plounders,
We say arr and avast and ahoy and we
Want our pieces of eight fer sure.

Yer c'n go about with an act 'o grace
But it's a bachelor's wife for me
And if yer bilged by her own anchor
Well, Davy Jones claims ye true.

She's the sea and she's o'r muther
-- to the brig for them's say otherwise
It's a jack o' this and a jack 'o that
And a shoop n' sail and open skies.

Conceptions

Putting gods into boxes is:
"You can only believe as we do",
is:
"You can only see as we do",
is:
"You can only know as we do"
as if they were limited
by our shallow desire.

Magic, Lack of

There is not enough magic
To form bonds that do not break.
That we are connected at all --
A word, a glance, shared jokes;
Our flimsy miracles laughed,
Launched into the silences.
Between woods and deeds we hover,
The cage of our longings a song.
Mourning notes raised
          high
                                      enough
                                                                      become angelic
things

Sting

last cry shrill screaming
dreams devolve to screams
delighting in fear to
thunder pressure
a swift death the
reward for fear final spasms
stinging the green inside
of the garbage can.

Stories

Stories do the telling, fitting us into their tales.
Hero, Legend, Lover: we are become clichés , every one.
Everyone of us moving, suspended between names
And extremes. In the story we play our part --
Within the Story, bit players one and all.
Only the Story, going on, that never stills.
Before the silence in defiance of all ends
We have "Once upon a time ..." and need nothing else.

Quiet Destroyer 34.06

Government grants and forged loans:
These alone do not a villain make.
Captain Flux does not create his foes,
But I believe he funds them, trying to
Justify his existence one panel at a time.

But he is not the reason I fail.
The reason is simpler: I hire people
To do things, the capitalist way,
Following the Dollar, obeying my will.
But they always, ever fail me.

My henchmen are morons.
It is my fault, I know, for hiring
University graduates, but even so:
If they are a cream, of any crop,
Why wonder that I wish to rule this world?

They NEED Captain Flux, need a hero
Of platitudes and saccarine sayings who
Never offends them, never changes them,
Never asks them to be more
Than they are: he is their religion.

So, to fight him, I have only his creations.
The modern man: gormless, unable
To save himself, expecting salvation
From Flux: doorstops of the revolution.
But I will turn them into his destroyer.

Sonnet XVIII

Comparing thee to a summer's day
In boiling heights of temperature.
June third was quite nice I must say,
And of this truth I feel assured.
Spring compasses just falling rain
And insects that steadily whine.
Winter has snow and cold to call:
Nothing that is the least sublime.
Fall is only winter's soft kin --
A dearth of leaves and nothing fine.
It is on summer that I pin
All hopes that you will yet be mine.
        That day in June I give to you
        Hoping summer alone is true.

Untitled

The way of pain is cold & hard & high
And power comes to those who
Wish to do more than to die.
Holding onto memory suspended between earth & sky
We live and wish to make it real
And grant the universe our reply.

Traps

Building a better cat trap:
Food and fame and commercial spots;
The promise of toothless kittens
And human servants
Turned slow with age and fat and rot.

Life

It'll never be the same again
But there's no tomorrow
Nor yesterdays.
Just the same damn day
Over and over again.

Short Poem

Standing between the living and the dead all in all
Tired of alms giving and wishing for an end to all
I wonder about the things that call us home at night:
When the final doorbell rings do we fall or see a light?

On Starting A Novel

The joy of creation is
Cause enough to create,
It is worth all sins,
Mother of promises
And the only road
To the pure redemption of
Once upon a time . . .

Belief

The UFO did not surprise me.
I believed for long, lonely years.
Nor did they, grey and reptiloid,
Wanting our women and flesh:
I can understand all of that.
I will never grok their gift shop.

There Are Gods In The Kleenex

There are gods everywhere,
Filling the air with names:
Dreams, destines, masquerades.

Common as the cold, as changing
As the wind, yet they remain:
Neither living not dead, only virii.

Quiet Destroyer 28.0724

It's been a good day.

There was this hero, all primary
And golden, and I had men shoot her
Until she stopped moving, and after.

She will return. They all do, their Heaven
A revolving door, but no one will know,
No one will mourn her: Hooded,
She has no name, no identity, and dies
As unknown as she lived.
There was no hope for her.

And what else? Else what? - ah!
I helped sow discord among
The League of Galactic Heroes:
Little things -- a word here, one there:
"Perhaps they are pro human, eh?
Perhaps pro-Flux? oxygen breather?
Two-legged?" Little things, but they matter,
Will come back to haunt him during
Elections. I could have told him
That a real leader doesn't use votes.
A real leader does not give power,
A real leader IS power. Some day,
I will explain that to him.

But not today. Today was just a good day.

Tomorrow will be even better.

Profile of a famous artist in old age

There is a longing inside us
The hideous need, the terrible.
The terrible grasp, longing
For what we may never have.
About me fly the whims of
Misspent youth and age,
Follies of life and love and strife
Ah! What of it? Only,
This: there is longing still.
Even death does not remove,
Nor time's harsh embrace decay --
We long for perfect we
May never know, & we
Grasp in vain for things
Smaller men do not see.
One achieves greatness in
The flower of youth, or in
The fullness of life and age.
I have lived this long in vain hope
That my flowering was still to be,
Still to come; would to God that
It could be so, but it was not.
Those first acts, the first bloom
Of creation, raw, will never come,
Never be again; and I stumble over
Them again and again and again
By God! Trying to pick of pieces,
To Create -- But even God flowered
Once, with Creation, and failed
With man. This insight denobles Him,
But makes my own tragedy easier
To Bear in this small room with
A heater and pen and nothing of fame.
I do not die. Nor kill myself. Why,
I wonder, since the fullness of my gift
Is gone, but it is simple: The Devil Fell,
But I wonder, now, if that was not
His gift, only others shouting such things,
In fear, and he wil bloom, eventually,
To outshine the promise of his youth.
I am not devil, and yet I yearn for this
Perfection I may never know, and is not
Mine to have, or hold; but I only wish
To give it away to the world.

Driving

Told him not to speed
Mother in law in front seat
Not worth impacting on the shield
(besides, harder to clean up from
the inside, without a windshield
wiper -- disinfectant never gets
the smell of her breath away.).
There are sirens, a hard on
At the city noisescape, the wails
Like the end of the world,
Just for me and just for you.

There will be people speeding
And no laws or rules or warrants.
You will finally know enough
To be afraid of me. I will maybe
Come to love you, but only if
You never pay the speeding ticket.