Journal 42 - Footprints of Mojo

The music has stopped or the music's over. The
Lizard King may still live in the deepest parts
of unexplored Africa (whatever that means – apparently
true). Yeah Right. Mr. Mojo (ain't) Rising. He made
sure of that. I'm curious as to how much nonsense
I can excuse from my regurgitated brain. It seems
I write a lot about wine and drunkenness (like now) -
this should probably stop. Aber. In vino veritas. That's
obviously a lie. I hate reading stream of consciousness
bullshit in writers of recused fiction – style changing
fiction – but here I am writing adolescent secondary
words that fall out of the convoluted crevices of my
haphazard brain like gum-balls from the oak tree.
Blown about from the indecisive churnings of the
well-laid wind. I'm no Aeolian Harp though -
Shelley and Wordsworth were full of their own shit -
though their shit was less bull than my own – or
so I would hope. There is a subtle tan beauty with
a pink shirt – brunette with black toe-nails. Amazingly
it works. Beauty and Sex are distracting when they plop
themselves down in living color. I should sometimes
prefer the cold death of the painting or the indirect
abstraction of the poem. Contrary to popular belief,
well – expected belief – I'm not that abstract. It
betrays me and overwhelms me in its career building
opportunities. Sometimes I wish I were an air-
conditioner or a satellite dish – serving a well-
known function that provides some sense of sweet
appeasement. But it seems I (we) want more than
that. Our lives are short and potentially final -
there comes a point when the footprint we will
make rises up out of the shot-down warnings of
our fore fathers. Should we live our lives as though
there is something after or not? If so, it seems we
need encouragement (treasures in heaven); if not, there
is the ambivalence – it matters not or this is our
only shot. Leave something behind. Our children are not
exempt from our own immortality. But immortality is
just as much a drug as cocaine ecstasy and alcohol.

5.2.09

Colorful Words

Surely I have not let go - surely
I have not let slip - surely I would have not
not known that she could replace the
moon, and refrain from blending her red lips’
warm smile in a sad disarmament of sense.

But surely now she’ll never know what
snug music we could have undercovered.
Surely now she will forget what art we
witnessed together. I must surely take
my wine and smile and prattle and whisper
undone, in fragrant discontent.

The wind blows cold through the trees.
A brief winter tease.

Laughter

How many many pasts must we
survive to remember that the dream
has died. I have waddled, crawled,
walked and run only to fall to the
bed and cough with sobs of regret.

Soon my wife will awake. Soon our son
or our daughter will be born. And soon
we will make the mistakes of all our
terrible pasts. And smile at the lacerating
idealism of youth. Laugh at the arrogance
of the passionate youth. The dream that
permeates the ripe mind of the ever-young
has died. And yet we smile and laugh
at those day we lived. We smile at the rain
and the clouds. We smile at the days we have
yet to see – we laugh with the lack of
decision.

Rhapsody

I
‘It is impossible to say just what I mean’ J. Alfred Prufrock


lilacs have withered in the dawn
geraniums lay splayed in St. Benedict's hands;
down the alley, among the shadows, a throng
of black-hooded footsteps echoes off the wall –
while blood-stained thorns penetrate his death coronal

I have kissed the rusty orangutan
and found him not my own;
I have lain with the signing rhesus monkey
and still I am alone

in no dank corner of this dark world
have I followed empirical meaning;
but on a ledge, on a cliff's edge, searching
the nagging depths - my mind begins to groan,
and at least find meaning in the arms of a girl

Philosophy, that comes to men
Men of Age, with unassuming ties
confines me to my heart, and refolds
my crumpled mind with never-unified lies
where Kant and Hume and Descartes’s voices end


II
Song of the X-Generation


we do not care we do not care
we do not care what song you sing
we who wear our colors in our hair
we do not wipe our soiled hands clean
with one more wasted political vote -
do not dare disturb the universe
with one more wasted discourse
on laws to end all pain;
we let our willow souls lapse into a strain
of a songbird's unrelenting note
for a life not so diverse

we do not care we do not care
we have our PlayStations, we have our games
we walk the crowded streets with faceless names
that even you would recognize; -
that's not the sun that burns our eyes

we shall not measure out our days on
frequent flyer miles
and country club dinner-dates
with fine Riedel wine glasses, dancing drunken spirals


we will not walk the streets with our fingers straightening ties


III
‘Hirtengesang : Frohe und dankbare Gefühle nach dem Sturm’


we care for the chimneys, the sparrows and rabbits;
we care for the sheep and care for the fences;
we long for a present with less past-tenses
that batter our days with unbreakable habits

just the winter frost on morning’s window pane;
bald eagles flying high above the grimy rain;
we care for the breathing; we mourn the dead -
we hope for a vision of promises lost, words left unsaid

December Rose

I

nevermind the lofty faces that you meet
the faces that you nod to quickly on the street

recall....the dance of the yellow-jacket’s ritual
around the nipples of the honey-suckle stems;
the nights her pants would lie beside your bed;
songs of birds singing well past breakfast -
her leg around your waist, arm across your chest:
recall the plaintive face staring out your window
and sighing - for another breath to relieve her of
the strain from more uncertainty.


II

below the afternoon bridges, under
a street-lamp flickering and unstable -
I swallow the crisp dusk air and
watch the violet sunset recline
into a cloudy chamber of forgotten repose;
while she returns a letter
written by her abstruse young friend -
         (my irreverent brother)
when the seasons were less cruel:
but forgiving in quiet December evening snows;
when the mornings were less forced:
resolving themselves in capitulated scenarios

Journal 41 - Technological Toenails

Papier-mâché pedicure flip-flops, orange macaroni
cheese vomited sheets draped over the bathtub -
my BlackBerrry silently ding-dongs with its berating
red light – attention starved like a 2 year old.
Except that I want it to flash like a hooker at
me – I'm the sex-crazed starved 2 year old it seems.
I'm not sure iTunes can sync to my soul – I
wonder at the efficacy of downloading the content
of my life from the media store. Now is the time
I recall the outdoorsy tree-breathing lake-fishing
iPod-less cell phone nary having days of my oh-so-
glorious youth – bereft of these concrete jungle
technological trappings of the remnants of the
western Industrial Revolution. Science is king or
haven't you heard? What else would be? There
are contenders. But I digress (No!) I won't decry
the interior life I've nestled down in to. If I'm
this way now, blogging and Facebooking and Googling -
how did my childhood without these things somehow
benefit me or make me 'better?' Nature versus Nurture -
I know, so Yin and Yang, or Chicken and Egg. Nurture
is hard to beat but Nature difficult to overcome.
My jeans at least have self-inflicted holes, like
last year's philosophy class on the virtue of
epistemology. Ethics it seems it the foundation
of life and philosophy and religion and yes, even
science. The ethical is certainly a base layer of
interpretation. Brute facts are like leprechauns or
Santa Claus – such a good story to keep the
masses at bay. Masses exist in the white-walled
world of science. Infected. Like my jack-rabbit
heart – under the radar of awareness. I know,
science turned on the lights and washed our dishes
for us. Indeed, it also decimated Nagasaki and
Hiroshima. I don't think stem cells are all created
evil – nor is their use worse than everyday passing
hypocrisy. I want to start a jar of my fingernail
and toenail clippings as a reminder I am nasty and
dying and filled with deposited excess.


5.1.09

Journal 40 - Blue Nights

She walks in Beauty like the night – Byron was
one crazy son of a bitch. To whom is the night
so beautiful that Heaven denies any gaudy day-
time joys compared with the alleged tenderness
of cloudless skies?¹ So far removed from a quaint
apparition of delight that we must remove ourselves
from the tender innocence that starry skies seem to
bequeath. O the blue of the nighttime sky -
O the night in blue and dark-blue – illuminated
by the light of weak reflection yet faint commensurate
joy – Jesus and Socrates enjoyed that yellow moon
bulging in the nighttime bluish sky, like a big
pale yellow child's balloon floating away into
the starry skies, the chemical explosions in the
sky, the beautiful random unintentional poetic-
infused human-personified starry chemical
imbalances that light the dark Charleston green
of the celebrated night-time sky. Van Gogh
understood the blue of the night. My life is
a cheap forgery like well-copied forged documents
of an unimportant merchant of salt and pepper -
spices dominate war just behind religion -
that is world-views in conflict. I'm a world-view
in conflict. I hang my heave grape-laden head
over the imaginary cliff of the lethean canyon
of behavior. I stare at overgrown toe-nails
listening to the regurgitations of the famous
Pole. B-minor is the key for me. Well, that
and C-minor; I am Pathétique. I would gladly, at
least, tear the wings off the dragonfly or the
ever-grooming fly just to have a taste of
Keats with a Grand Vin from Haut-Médoc. Ah
the Left Bank can be kind indeed. No subtle
binaries though – the Right possesses its own
enormous gems – artists are surprisingly split
across the paths of the brownish green world.
Yes I enjoy blue. Colors like adjectives of any
kind will only do for a time and place not
contracted by me or you – but absorbed into the
blackest blue.²


4.27.09

  ¹ If that doesn't make sense to you, you're not alone.
  ² In fact, if that entire post makes less sense than most of the drivel I post here – you're not alone there either.

Journal 39 - 2nd Round Bye

It’s nice to not have to coordinate my eye-
lids with my belt or shoes. Oversized sun-glasses
are a drain on my better judgment. Purple (or
fuchsia) is the color of royalty – well, those who
pretend to such royal diadems and celebrated
atrocities of social adjustment. Adjustment is the
Epimetheal desire of the ignorant and callow
breeding. The sound of the parties and laughter and
dance music waft over to me in undulant
affirmations of my lost life. Not everything
lost is desired. All of life is a burden not
shared in my bestest dreams. My pen has decided
to be generous with its drawing ink – how nice.
The pressure is over. Especially since Melissa the
waitress is curious if I’m writing stories or
poetry. I say something in between. Since
I’m in between thoughts right now. I want to
be hugged by a beautiful stranger – I suppose of
the opposite sex. Opposites are nice but difficult
and troublesome in their unfamiliar differences.
I haven’t carried my children to the bar yet
but apparently it’s the thing to do. No worries –
entertainment is just around the corner in a
2 year old mixed girl picking the flowers under
the watchful and corrective eye of her experienced
mother. A love for beauty is a wonderful thing –
when does that love turn destructive, the
plucked flower losing its battle for life. I wonder
at times when I lost my battle for life? Before
children and marriage – yes. that’s the point of
those thing right? Resuscitation. I need the
paddles applied. Wait, been there done that –
about 5 times. Nothing’s happening – each day
is like taking steps in the same footprints I
made the days before. Alcohol has me in a
rut listening to music copulated in the 1980s.
Robots have more freedom of choice than I –
stuck relishing in the thought of a 2^nd round bye.

4.25.09

Journal 38 - Rooftop Capacitors

I’m here on The Rooftop drinking reluctantly
Yellow Tail grape juice, a lavender draped event
emerging from the bricks of the rooftop below
me. The harbor is on the other side of the
condos that spontaneously combusted forth last
year directly in line with my view of the
afternoon water/drink. I want to explode the
artificial skyline like a ten-year old on the banks
of the Tallahatchie. Ah, sailboats sail the windy
sea with such comfort and ease. The boat – not
the boaters. Coming about. Life sometimes knocks
me over like an unannounced boom swinging across
my droopy visual field in shiny aluminum shards
of perception. Who’s sailing this keel-less vessel?
The wind from over the tops of foreign roofs turns
the pages of this mathematician’s journal – I wish
the wind would turn the words and images over
in my head, turning new lines like a farmer furrowing
in the alphabet field – combines have their use.
Yes, a mathematical journal – applicable to me if I
were actually plotting out or graphing these words
with care and precision. But alas, it may as
well be the wind over the water flapping the
stalled sails that is blowing up life into these
inky words. Rooftops have a circuitry of their
own. Really. Chimneys and satellites and
bezels unknown to me. Air-conditioners like capacitors
pipes like resistors or flat soldered wire. The taste of
man drops on the big and the small. Drops with
re-used components of our aggrandized mediocrity.
Reusable components are an integral part of the
fight over God and design. If design why so many
different types of wings? Creativity is apparently
not an option. Arguments of a mediocre scientist
raising himself up and lording his self-professed
intellect down upon our infantile minds – receptive
in their mid-afternoon snack of sippy cups and
animal crackers. Biological development is a
fascinating study – of wannabe philosophers drinking
green energy drinks.

4.25.09

Journal 37 - Monkeys and Willows

I think the wind in the willows is the
sound for me; the wind in the willows as it
tolls as it tolls as it tolls with glee in the
sound of the leaves of the back oak tree -
the wind in the willows is the sound
for me. Willows and oak are a down-
laid joke leftover from the birds in the
limbs that broke. The wind in the willows
sounds so close to you, the sound so close
to the dove and the mountain dew. Ahh yes
there it is. The mountain dew – what else
to rhyme with thoughts of you. I touch my
toes and list my woes but never today do
I not blow my nose – how silly and quaintly
degenerate I have become. I need a code
of Harry like the bloodletting Dexter. I can
cough up blood but how did the wind in
the willows, the cool breeze of the wind
in the willows transmogrify into discussions
of you and blood? You? Sure. Blood – No.
Blood is the sign of the grape on the vine.
Excitement, a 2-year old's excitement over
pooping independently on the potty is worth
more than blood on the backplane of my
retina. Feebleness is my only virtue, or gift.
How quickly laughter becomes tears in the
hands of a toddler. Bundles of unbroken
and untempered emotion – purse as the death of a
gazelle. Ewww. Pretty but not fast enough.
Mediocrity flows so easily under the influence
of cheap or expensive wine. Thinking under
the influence. Many a relationship have crumbled
in that mistake. Unfortunately not jail-worthy.
But still fermentation is the Yin and Yang of
our consciousness. Still the weak nuclear force
of our souls. Battered souls are like unbattered
souls – they're fucking souls. Not to be discarded
like feces from a rhesus monkey – cousin in every
way that doesn't matter.


4.24.09

Journal 36 - Hogs and Mysteries

I think I'm past the point of pulling the covers
of Ennui or TV over my misanthropic head to tune
out the squeaky music box of the world's grand
noise – out of tune and painful like a sore throat
in the middle of April. April may be the cruelest
month – but not of geraniums but pollen. The live
Oak lives. My throat constricts like an anal sphincter
about to be probed – in an undesirable way. What
would the desirable way be? I don't know, a gentle
finger exploring dirty erogenous zones. Something like
that perhaps. The undesirable? An exercise for the
reader. It's the constriction not the sphincter. That's
twice. I think my mind (or my soul, whatever)
constricts like that when surrounded by people who
finally started to think when they got a 'real' job
and had kids. Suddenly they pick up one book and
are the next Gautama Muhammad Confucius bar Joseph.
They say things with such matter of factness that in
addition to convincing themselves they're right they
almost convince me. Silence is so misleading.
Nothing nice, nothing said. The noise of the
tuneless world surges up from the bowels of the
magnanimous Earth like a demon or a Balrog breathing
fire and strutting like a rock star. I want to puke
on such nonsense. I think a cracker is a cracker;
bread is bread. Something mysterious could happen
but not to the non-believer throwing the faux
consecrated baker-bread cracker in the unconsecrated
trash can. Mysteries are mysterious, not confusing
until the right theologian runs along and explains
everything in quaint academic terms. I wonder if
floating high above the Earth beyond the ethereal
blueness of the atmosphere, outside the nitrogen and
oxygen (so cold) – if one could hear the multitudes
chattering and gossiping and singing and screaming
in bed – would it sound like a symphony
of amazing human emotional breeding, or would
it sound like hogs snorting in their own
shit and mud? Hogs aren't so bad you know.

4.16.09

To a Spurious Memory

I sit, to pick the memory apart –
it stares at me with a wrinkled heart:
yellow-strawed lofts and green summer scents
attack my withered countenance.
A pair of smiling faces, images of bliss
unfold out of a hike, a ride, a mother’s kiss.
I hear a sound, a river’s gurgling song –
children’s voices laughing pleasantly along.
Like color and taste, I have no firm measure
of comparing this vision of distant pleasure
with reality. I must admit adorned perception
a stage of unacknowledged self-conception,
and store the memory in a mindful place
that only I can touch, and taste.

Journal 35 - Love and Extinction

I'm not sure the dreams in which I'm dying are
the best I've ever had – but it certainly is a
very very mad world. I've been nervous at
more than just the thought of all the eyes and
teeth at school – I see those canines at work
and dinner parties exercising overtime. It's time
to recount the alphabet just to verify my brain
has not degenerated into oatmeal mush. I'm
not sure the ABC's accomplish that but it's close.
That or Twinkle Twinkle. My daughter it seems
re-arranges her pillows while she sleeps -
it's nice to know that someone at some point loved
you enough to sit by you in the middle of the
night and rub your tiny back, or rock you in
the chair while battling pneumonia – or alternating
all night in a sort of medical vigil to save your
tiny soul from pre-mature extinction. I suppose
most of us do become individually extinct after
death. Regardless of what comes next – something
or nothing. (Both are in the 12th round right
now) What is individualism if extinction is just
around the corner? Band-aids and Tylenol don't
work when the death of the soul is at stake.
But maybe it's a very mad material world and
Band-Aids are just as helpful as religion or
psychology. A purple cloud descends upon the
night like a giant down pillow inviting us to
rest our hypotropic souls upon its royal enamored
bands. Seems I've found my way into a dark
sound-proof tunnel in which I can't hear the
right music to provide me with a direction
worth risking. The only sounds permitted are
the cries and moans moans moans of my
small children (and the shrieks of my disgruntled
disappointed wife). Love is a record player
stuck on the same song through an inadvertent
scratch – repeating the same words over and over
and over – and each time you tell yourself the
next verse will come...the next verse will come.

4.15.09