Eulogy

He died.

No fanfare, no great revelation
No seeping darkness, no blinding light

He did not see his life
nor did he witness his death

His tombstone reads
"Here lies a man"

But no the epitaph lies
Nothing rots in the earth but

A mannequin doppleganger
stretched skin and white and waxen

There is no beauty
in his death.

There is no lover
tossing herself in the grave

There is no child
asking confused questions

There is no mother
giving confused answers

The weather is mild
no tempest, nor fog, nor blazing sun

There are 4 clouds, perhaps 5
and 7 mourners, perhaps 6

There is no beauty
in his death.

No manuscript was left unwritten
for the world to ponder

No masterpiece found
in his basement, appraised for millions

No genius left scribbled
the last ejaculate of his death throes

There is no beauty
in his death.

No funeral pyre
like a final fist to the sky

No tortured multitude
carrying their great hero

No flower sprung from the
last blood along the ground.

There is no beauty
in his death.

He passed as he lived
quietly without event

We mourn here today
in likewise fashion

The service ends
his brother gives a eulogy

There is a mumble
We all go our separate ways

We will be at work tomorrow
We will keep unscathed

There is no beauty
in his death.

Night fell on the
field of graves
The silence punctuated
only by a lone engine.

I found the stone
once more in the dark.

As the man did not remain
Neither did the A

There is no beauty
in our death.

For Pennies

Let’s make this our night.

Let’s kick our good habits

and grow our bad ones in neat

rows of dandelions

and ponder what marks

weed from flower.

Let's fill a jar with memories

and dash it against the ground

when it's full so we can play

with them once more.

Let’s empty our brains

like a register full of quarters

chase them along the pavement

and roll them into neat piles

to trade for pennies.

Let’s cut holes in our pockets

and fill them with time

until the last echo of

a tick splits our emptied skulls

and drains out the nothing.

Let's rob a jeweler

and give diamonds to the homeless.

Their babbles are endless

and they've earned something for that.

Let's ink our pens with the clouds

and write odes to the sea

where they meet and watch them turn

orange then red then purple then black

then dissipate with wind.

Let's read tea leaves and palms

like books written by wise

old men with wide smiles

and wider minds.

Let's blow out the city lights,

dance with the stars,

and apologize profusely

for stepping on their toes.

Let's wash our hands with acid

and leave empty fingerprints

on likewise glasses

staining breathless lovers'

heaving antipathy

Let's play to lose

and throw the pieces

about the floor when

our plan goes awry, smiling.

Let's slowdance to anachronisms

while the ether whispers

around and between us and through us,

until it settles in us.

Let's watch the clouds

from atop a sinking city

and marvel at how the water's

lovely this time of year.

Let's fall in love

and drown together

in whichever order

the universe decides.

Let's make this our night

It may be our last.

Were

Istumbledonto

amemorytoday

Like a

neatly

folded

do

  ge

    ar

springing

from

a lost

page in

a

fa

vo

ri

te

book.

You hid (you hid playfully)

along its

ruffled

edges

but I caught

you anyway.

(Just to let you go.)

Enlightenment, in Davis California

There are stars here!
There are stars here, my friends!
And as I lie among the streetlight-
-cast penumbras staring at the
Pentahedral crystal hammock jungle gym
I am with them!
I am with them in wonder
In joy in amazement in ecstasy in open-
-eyed revelation of truth
As I realize I was born not
In a city of shadows
But in a city of such blinding brightness
That I could never marvel at the darkness
and the darkness is beautiful here.

Perfect halogen moonbeam outlines of imperfect
Bodies frolicking in selfprescribed madness
Spinning in the chemical centrifuge
Until lights become light and
encircles us
endlessly
Creating its own central outward
Gravity
As I become you become me
And we sail this endless sea of
Blackness
And we fall ever deeper into the great
Singularity
everconsuming everlasting
All Encompassing
Feeling Grasping Gasping
Growing
Seeing
Darkness.

Instruments of depravity
Forged great, twisted
Spinal curvatures held proud
And feared by the mighty
For our words poison their youth
Revealing our shadowy enlightenment
Clarifying with murky water
Promises of intangible tangibilities.
Beautifying chaotic tangled
Masses forming perfection in
nebulous
amorphism.
Downward, Downward
Circling ever downward
Spiraling veraciously downward
Downward the holy!
Downward the giving!
Downward unto Heaven!
Downward unto Hell!
Downward unto Creation!
Down.
Where the soul becomes concrete
And the concrete vague
synesthetic
bliss.
The Darkness is beautiful here.

6 September 20l0

Pacifica

We stood on the shores of forever.
The transient waves
lapping at the Cliffside
Grinding granite
to bare sand and
granting mysticism to
Perception.

Grand piano typebars snicking
to the roar of bonfires
burning the taste buds off our fingers
Our tongues busy in rituals
gifting freedom from base function
to commune with Passion.

Newfound Oldschoolism
stuttering confidence
and alcohol imbibed clarity
screaming Ginsberg at Apathy so that sand might best stone

Spinning dizzily
in Rockland in Moloch in Purgatory
Dying vicariously under the table
while illiterate Jazz read
our right accusatory
for falsifying veracity

Sitting in jail cells in
San Francisco for setting
the sky aflame.
And it is aflame.

Inmates burning with
unspoken tomes spoken
Who in madness spun truth
in whipped tongues, begging
for something worthy of Censure.
Who Rapture took under wing
and proclaimed “Child!”
Who ripped open the sky
to play with father time
while mother earth ran green
in envy.
Who were acquitted on appeal
to dance in the moonlight on the
shore once more together,

Finding lust skipping stones alone
and welcoming her to join us.
Hedonists wearing it like a
badge on bare underbellies
rubbing orgied in reverence
Running fingers through coarse
hair windblown and sparking
with electric sensation.
Exploring, pioneering
quivering legs and chests
beneath and atop us.
Inventing love while sinking
quickly in slow sands
while smooth hands grasped
for the fleeting finite
Whispering sweet everythings
without words or mouths
for they would be wasted here.
Pulling needy lips away
to idealize Communism
as Bourgeois swine wallowing
in prosperity and sweat
of our nightly deeds.
Complaining of lost chances
and brevity of copulation
when we’ve defeated the bedsprings
and Fantasizing of the bed, car,
floor, park, studio, and once
on the hood for good measure
Forsaking sleep to defy
the mandate of the setting moon
Praising the glinting nudity
of Adonis and Aphrodite
in mutual longing
as the sun blinked into
existence through the window
until in merry acquiescence we
dozed, dreaming
we had set San Francisco aflame
and lit our cigarettes on its
embers.
While we slipped little squares
under our tongues and GoldenGatePark
turned alive and welcoming
Gleeful mourning at the loss of self
at the University
Rambling on about enlightenment
full of pretentious humility
Establishing Anarchy in our veins
so we might be closer to god

And god lives right there
in the shack atop that
hill, handing out nature
to the masses
sitting on benches, fried to comprehension.
Proclaiming that the world
was bleeding glory to bewildered
passers-by.
Breathing in fog and smoke
to join oblivion quicker
Bumping Kerouac’s ashes in
the selfsame alley
Piling intoxicants to run sleepless
through the streets
wild-eyed

Dragged out of gutters
covered in nothing
the morning after
finding our clothes
draping streetlamps
and leaving them
in testament.

Yearning for that heavenly connection
and finding it
together.
Scaling the walls of
the mind to
find mountains at
the summit and
climbed those too
and clamored past
the clouds
and the stars until
We found worth at the edge
of the universe.

20 September 2010

Opus

Waiting
Swallowed by ochre sheets
watching you
reveal the stars that
played under your paper skin
Outshining the voyeur streetlights
peering through my
windowpane.
Shedding
your veil turned shroud
turned impure refuse.
Your eyes
Calling
like sirens of melted viridian
from the shores of my doom
Sliding
across the floor
an apparition a wraith a spirit
your halo of fire
splayed along my bed
Illuminated.

Moving
to the tempo
of telltale hearts adrenalized
Conducting
an orchestra of motion
Strings and tendons stretched
Vibrating in harmony
Sighing woodwinds and
brass in frenzied calm.
Two frail bodies
Colliding
in the night, louder than
the most impressive percussion
Holding the last note on
a heavenly fermata
And the conductor never said stop.

Ringing
from the concert hall
bedroom like the sigh
sounded from a thousand
dying symphonic suns.
Fading
in the evanescent eruption.
The tendrils of night
Weaving
dread threads
into our heartstrings and
Plucking
their sour tune
maiming our melody
and
hacking our harmony
til the piano
was but firewood
to an empty flame.

12 October 20l0

Ashpan.

We wore our shoplifted morals
on our very backs.
Shirts stained in lust and
starry-eyed revelation plain.
Lost in odes to obscenity
and vulgar light in boxcars
to Ocean.

Fake wisdom chainsmoked
and chained up pressed
to the radiator, burned.
Seventeen looked twentytwo
and felt about a hundred
But danced like we were
young again in the ethereal
glory of the night.
But the nights turned to
minutia as we packed
Luggage filled with memories
on an outbound train to
Adulthood and Adolescence
was left waiting for you
by the tracks.

Trains trains trains
life and love gone flying
by at a mile a second
and the seconds are precious
and the miles are precious
and all the precious miles
and minutes still fly fly fly
speeding on train tracks
and we wave as friends become
blurred faces waving back
from portholes zipping
in opposite directions
and we becomes I and you
and I don’t quite know you anymore.


And this used to be beautiful:
Writing gibberish on
our arms and legs
when we ran out of paper
sleepless nights pouring
forth beautiful poetry
and utter catastrophe
twinkle-eyed laughing
all the same in acceptance.
Driving streetcars through
Los Angeles to go get high
at the top of the world
and drink coffee that
tastes like Christmas.
Summernight shamblings
and skinny dipping
and kissing caressing
ashamed of nothing in acceptance.
Learning that peace
is only a word
until love breathes
life into its
lungs and that we could
breathe with each other
in acceptance.

But our kindred fire
flickered and roared
only to flicker again.
sunken embers haunting
fingertips reaching,
but too far now to
ever touch again.
Charred and depleted,
flying in the tumult
of cyclone wind,
Memories stripped bare
and standing blasted by
the sands of time until
smooth and unrecognizable
they fade from our minds
Ashen shadows of smoke
from locomotive top-hats
chugging endlessly onward
to opposite stations.

21 October 201o