shadow

Those i should have loved, i failed
Those who should have loved me, they failed
I hear a scoff, i hear a tut
but you and i know better

For one sacred second
within the space of a poem
we spy truth's slippery shadow
Excise every iota
of self-serving effluvia
and what
is truly
left?

Most never allow
that lacerating lathe of truth
We don't know how
And if we did, we wouldn't

Blinders in place, we prance or stumble on
Ever patching facades of reliability
Ever weaving webs of mutual self-interest
Sometimes one intersection
will hold up for years
or a lifetime
Don't dare call it humyn decency
The path of least resistance?
Sing a self-leveraging serenade!
Don't dare call it humyn decency

In brackish, blackish backwaters poets know
we abandoned them all

TOO inconvenient unsexy unflattering
Run away, a voice cried!
So we ran, oh we ran
And the unfeeling faces of those who fled
did not fail to flee themselves

Would you like the litany of names?
A voyeuristic vomit of guilt and shame?
Those i crucified, those who let me die
Don't tempt me...

How would you exist in perpetual-retribution exemption?
Our reflexive response is the deceit we repeat
Ego dies when we spy our lies
Radical truth begets
radical forgiveness

black & blonde

Blonde & black in love entwined
Breaking beyond barriers of mind
Black & blonde in beauty entwined
Naked innocence healing humynkind

snapshots and snow globes

I loathe the game "I'm not right for you"
We count on our brains to see us through
Bestowing love only where we find no frictions
with all our requirements, all our restrictions
Are we woven from the same weave?
Do we cleave to what they believe?
Affinities and divinities, references and preferences
Landscapes and escapes, conclusions and delusions
But our brains are dumber than our DNA
Our molecules feel the truths that we hide away
Our bones prime us to love a universe of folk
but obeying those cells becomes a sick, sick joke
This world punishes those who love without measure
We negative reinforce, we poison that pleasure
And even when we do follow our sad little brain
those loving choices lead too often to pain
How else could it be when love is negotiation?
Snapshots and snow globes give no oxygenation
So each life becomes a starless galaxy
Only black holes where love was supposed to be

crimes table

(a love note to jeff bezos)

Raise your hand if you have less than you need!
Come step into truth that makes eyes bleed
Raise your hand if you have just what you need
An enviable state, may we be agreed?
Raise your hand if you have twice your need
Perhaps pragmatism you now exceed?
Raise your hand if you have ten times your need
Ethically embarrassing, can't you concede?
Raise your hand if you have a hundred times your need
Oh how deep are the depths of greed?
Raise your hand if you have a thousand times your need
Humynity's healing you implacably impede
Raise your hand if you have a million times your need
while we cry, die, suffer, and plead
The poor are powerless to proceed
Tain't no god to intercede
Mass murder no minor misdeed
You imperil your imperative to breathe and breed

orbits

Jimi and jaco were jamming with miles and monk
It was jazzed, it was bluesed, it was fused, it was funk!
Jaco and jimi were jamming with monk and miles
Everyone had extra-terrestrial smiles
Miles and monk jamming with jaco and jimi
A flesh quake, sense-shake saturnalian shimmy
Monk and miles jamming with jimi and jaco
Minds melting to orbits mortals never know

shattered

Replace, erase
in excruciating flame
This skin, this sex
This eviscerating shame

sinner frankie

Is it raining hard in frisco?
Only freedom's air can get me right
I'm a post-industrial peon raised on TV
and fast food and intimacy fright
Think i'll hop me a freight train
because i'm feeling so blue
Maybe just maybe somebody left
MY heart in San Francisco too?
Oh somebody tell me, tell me
where can Philmo Street be found?
Is free love truly dead?
Gotta be some around!
Are we all just dreaming androids?
Maude's gone, but harold might be cool
Don't want my body invaded or snatched
I'm adrift in mrs. robinson's pool
Searching for a tribe or flower child
A healer, howler, hugger, a...booker
Isn't this where captain kirk went
before he became t.j. hooker?
Did the Alcatraz birdman tell his friends
to go fuck up tippi hedren?
Look! Above the Golden Gate!
007 dick-swinging with chris walken!
And there! Saget and the olsens
having a menage e trois!
Chekov needs nuclear wessels
(i think they're in Alameda)
Will California girls (i mean wimyn!)
find me a priceless prize?
No maneaters please (though i do like
what's between ms. stone's thighs)
No amy, i don't believe in luck
and this world offers damn few joys
But listen! It's "Eyes of the World"
played by jerry and the boys!
Is that summer of love now
a woeful winter of ill will?
Not if i throw off my clothes
and play ukulele on Hippie Hill