meritocratic misconception

if to be beautiful

then to be free

if to sing to ears

then to be free

not to discover the freedom of

“being myself,” of singing

meritocratic misconceptions

don’t be ashamed of having bought in

it is just the age

the perverse dream

the wage

the bolts and perfected seams

bad son

“It was nice to be with my family”

bad son

bad daughters sleep around but come home

that’s why I am a bad son

it was nice, it was nice

it was nice, people who

understood

you know, it was nice

not to have to try so much

it was nice to

be taken care of, to be

understood

which is the same as

not being

alone

with spite

these words

that’s why, again, I’m a bad son

for being selfish

a bad son

it was nice, it was nice

it was never nice

There is a soul I've found

There is a soul I’ve found leering in at

through the windows while the TV goes on about

and to speak its name cheapens it, while making it live longer to live more cheaply,

but was I born with a mouth in the middle of

I have protected it by never opening the door

or only opening the door on Christmas

to give it Russian tea cookies

and then making it

spectacle on the outside of the pane

Most of the time I send it on

conquests, which are most of the time errands disguised as conquests,

and although it knows it is satisfied to be away from

Meanwhile it is before 5am and experiences, as though on a mobile,

sort of entrance an nauseate

taking the place of real dreams

Every hand shaken has not touched

and meanwhile the soul I’ve often found

tapping on shaken hands’ windows long after the fact

singing to while shaken hands’ ears are bought off by real dreams

Apology

Been busy being social, and it's killing the parts of me that fix me to a window facing a neighbor's wall so I can keep away from the poetry while it happens, always between dark and dawn. Here's something from tonight.


------


Apology

be satisfied

be satisfied

be satisfied

I will it.

the food on the table

the man in your arms

the rain and the trees, and the trees and the river

and the rain and the trees and the river and everything

be happy today

be happy today

be happy today

I will it.

a day’s work

a dollar earned

a woman with her compliments

a place to go home to

be content

be content

be content

I will it.

snapped twigs

a way to go by

having your forest

and your open field, too,

the food on the table and the man in your arms, a day’s work and a dollar earned,

and the food on the table and the man in your arms and a day’s work and a dollar earned and everything

the will residing, 

residing, 

residing,

residing in the passions’ suburbia

considerations

scholarship

college

independence

mindscape, 3:44 am

It has been a few months since the things belonging to him,

mostly soggy wood beams in rain filtered afternoon bedding,

fell from my dreams and collapsed in a loose pile here when I stepped here.

The details of his face are now obscured,

but I linger on the idea of the comfort of tracing in my mind

the details of his face.

He was a fun house mirror.

They all are-

different, distorting.

I traverse the wreckage which is mostly the aftermath of mist.

I am also hesitant at the river banks anymore.

It is almost like I live east, inland, land-locked.

And then there’s the paper mache landscape half digested by a mouth

that lays like a thick paste across a few lengthy years

so that they are one grey masticated pulp,

and what to do with them,

and who to pitch in there,

and where to run to next.

Hims are heres are new,

until they suffocate you,

and then they suffocate you.

31 October 2010

My work shirt is especially cold on the shoulder of the sleeve where I have wiped the running phlegm from my nose repeatedly. In movies, tears make a woman’s face sort of, shine.

I am surrounded by all of my things in my room. That is, they’ve got me surrounded.

My body appears, to someone, as a collection of bits. He or she waters them from the higher up place where he or she must is be.

When it is I who is crying, I find that I must comfort those who witness me. Just tears, only tears, I’m okay, just tears, only tears, etc.

I can press my naked hand into the back of a naked man and feel nothing. This is the magic trick of isolation.

Many things that I own are sharp. Good.

I am in agony in location A. I think about location B, and how I will remain in agony there. I mill about.

Everybody hangs up the phone. Everybody goes home.

"Severe, Recurrent"

fingers, and toes, cold.

and hands and arms and shins and thighs and shoulders neck head waist and chest.

comforted i guess to find it here still here

since every one is far away.

since every sound is underwater

amplified and distorted.

as the colors run flat,

as the hills leave me breathless but don’t look like anything,

a bird, a bee, disintegrated.

tremendous strain forcing my bones together.

the sounds i make are creakings,

like muted little shriekings.

escape velocity

make it out alive, or with your life, or hanging on to your life.

hope is a right angle.

made it out alive, made it out with my life, made it out because I saw my life remaining.

hope is a right angle.

I am a satellite, oh death, oh god.

oh death, oh god, oh gravity,

breathe in, breathe out, automa

ton, life is, and I am locked inside it.

a Sea-side-satellite, I came here to live

I came here to die, I came here

.

there is nothing I did not come here to do.

here is my life in a knapsack.

here is my, life, in a knapsack.

oh death, oh god, oh gravity,

from the rail tracks I feel that around me everything is in singing, still

no dear buzz would dare knock me off

track. hope is a right angle.

I awoke here.

shock abandoned me,

I felt my spine dislodged here.

I awoke here

in the agony

of dreams dismantled.

friend on the phone

‘Afraid I’m not gonna figure it out,’

I would say to my friend on the phone.

What I would tell him probably would be

something like,

“It’s kind of like a forbidden romance.

I loved it, it loved me back, and our love was perfect;

but it was what everyone else thought we should be that ruined it

that made these impossible demands.

And now it’s too late,

I abandoned it, this is why it no longer touches me,

plays with my hair, holds me at night,

because I left it when I left there.”

And probably, “And now here I am,

here I am

everything around me is different,

and I am different, I know because I barely recognize

that person in those pictures,

except for the one lingering thing, that long string

of hatred strung from my own lungs around my throat.

I’m afraid I’ll never figure this out.

What should I do with my time?

I make enough to eat and enjoy a few things,

but the unhappiness caused by making enough to eat and enjoy a few things

during that time, what I am, all I am is unhappiness.

Follow your love,

do honest work,

miserable, irresponsible lies.

What should I do? What should I do

today while I am?

Because, I mean, I believe

that I am what I do,

that my life is how I feel

now, and every time that is now,

so that if I work hard for some end

but am weeping all through the hard work

what I am, even if I do manage to succeed in the end,

what I am is tears.

What I am is tears-

only that.

If a bus hits me while I’m weeping,

all I was is tears.

Man, I don’t know

except that the people around me

I want to make happy

and the time by myself

is filled with so much color and cold blue steel of feeling

and the pain of that steel piercing my stomach

is the pinpoint of a burning reality

like the focus of a magnifying glass under the sun.

Man, I don’t know

how best to deal with the love I feel for the people around me

or the exuberance of the colors

and especially not the urgency of that cold blue steel I feel,

the urgency of the hard, sharp syringe-like center of being-

what to do with that,

because I guess all in all that’s 

all I care about.”

I’d say to my friend on the phone.