raiments

the future of
great books of
poetry lie in
oriental eyes
straining against
what they might
have to see.

Conservative Dissent

hopeful walks on
quietly dawning days.
Lighting attentive ears
uncertain tongues.
solemn postures
trying to walk as one.
the ritual of insurrection
already begun.

Of cannibals. And the writing man in the lab.

The excessive garnishing
on the surfaces of human
delicacies. Baked into an
intolerant blue colored dish.
Seasoning that will blow
off and scatter into the myths
of food; leaving behind
Levi-Strauss and his delicious
cooked food. The one and the
same, occupying the same
limited time in seclusion.

Landscaping fear

I am reluctant to write.
About what I know. It is
a strange decision guided
by the ambiguity of my
imperfection. So I lean out
my window to rub off stars with
my pencil eraser. And whitewash
the dark blanket of the night.
Sketch cars in the empty streets
below. I hum into the silence;
my hum spluttering into voices
too heavy to float; and so they
descend amongst my cars
and my hastily drawn stick-
figures. My trees are smudged
and the stick-figures start
popping bubble boxes with
symbols. A heart. A broken
heart. Many dollar signs. And
a little pony. There are black
mute alphabets in the white sky.
Just the V but many of them.
Everything spreads out expansively
in front of my leaning body. Half
in the room and half outside. All
finally black and white. I slid
back into my room, sat myself
at my desk and began to write.

painting as (by trying harder) pessimism

"Le Printemps" (Springtime) - Claude Monet

her favorite number three

there can be a surprise
when petty revelations
are made casually.
Surprises of a curious
nature. Like winning
with the feeling of loss.

So when it was revealed
her favorite number was
three; stitched stars in the
skies fell in deep long-winding
falls twinkling towards death.
And he took out his chair on
his empty balcony and sat
down alone rocking in the
darkness. His guess was
a couple of counts less.

The guilt behind unexpected journeys

So my dad was a little
sick, unbeknowest to me.
No big deal. I have been
chasing shadows of stars
on nearby flailing galaxies
for a while now. A bit like
'ignorance is bliss' cliches.
Except my cliches are as
sombre as my quiet bed
night-stand. Like the long
jam of cars frozen in red
cherry brake lights without
reason. We are all floating
around like me anyways.
Specks of dust in streaming
sunshine waiting to be imbued
with purpose. In the meanwhile
I am going to take the next flight.

the great conversationalist's whining in a list of creative titles

1 ) the great conversationalist
2 ) scurrying sentences around aimlessly
3 ) like the ant with the brown bubble bottom
4 ) and two antennas posing as gruffy whiskers;
5 ) he found flesh and fabric and furnished wood
6 ) in the vast ungraspable spaces of the universe.
7 ) but the unsuccessful burrowing creature could
8 ) find no solace in the meaningless touching of
9 ) flesh on mahogany, cloth or skin.
10 ) At least the skin was an opiate;
11 ) a luxury, an item of contentment, a little merriment
12 ) but epidermal swelling is ephemeral
13 ) and a victory of little significance and even more danger.
14 ) What is significant is to find in the infinity
15 ) a mirror self that makes sense.
16 ) The great conversationalist talked
17 ) to the great infinity
18 ) over and over again about the ant
19 ) hoping to have his echoes heard
20 ) by an ear yearning to hear them.

the sleepy foot

the pins and needles
on my right foot are
the culmination of
28 days 8 hours and
35 minutes (at least
in my mind). It finally
took that much time
and a day for blood
to coagulate into dry
streams of veins.
pretty dreams have
a trench on the other
side. the sleepy foot
must be woken up.
And I hit it against the
inner board of my
desk again and again.

About lists and being late

i have begun to write
lists. in the aftermath
of becoming the grass,
earth and the sky, after
my long-beautiful slumber
i have woken up by a need
to jot down whats going
to happen in my life. control.
there is a list about eating,
a list about walking, a list
about what to steal and
what not to. there is a list
about surprises which must
be purloined impolitely.
there is a list about treating
women, being charming
and a list about being a joy
to be around other people.
There is a list about what
not to be and what not to
care about; and amongst
these many pieces of
orange, yellow, green
and white-smudged paper
is my scribble-scratch-
scribble parchment of
what to write about it. Of
all the pieces of paper,
this says the least by
saying the most. Ideas,
plans and world domination.
There is an inherent sadness
in being rip van winkle's
dream. Like glistening fish
on a silver dish. Like poems
recognized in death. Like my
waste-landscaped list.

hedonic adaptation

my tree-swing is set in time,
crystallized in that moment
where everything but the
sounds around me stop. Like
pausing life without muting it.
Set in the stone-skin of their
feathers, they chirp the birds.
Like statues gurgling avian
babble instead of water and
spray. the oscillation of my
tree-swing in their separate
moments is connected by an
absence of myself and that
of something camouflaged in
the frozen silence. Yet every-
time, the vacillation threatens
to break in the ecstasy of my
lightness or the tribulation of
my fall, I find myself in the
middle again. That incipient
second in the aftermath of winter.

the multi-tasking fifteen minutes

how long they seem which
seemed so short. It is the
male hysteria of Hippocrates
searching for those bairns
progressively lost in the
aftergrowth of stagnant
minutes, leaving in their
bushy entrails the confused
sighs of what has already
been done. I was passing
through these fifteen minutes,
floating across blocked
one-halved airy forks;
emerging on the other
side, a little later.

It came arching over

mid-afternoon spring's dream
arranged in the crooked strewn
soda straws I spilt in my hurry;
to rickshaw myself to the midst
of un-understandable rubble
on the debris of which people
orated around to the circle.
The curious circumference
stood and listened while the
debris sat and knew. It was
in the middle of chaos, the
which nobody cares about in
the laziness of a daily existence,
that it came arching over.
With wings, long blotted brushes
of grey growing older as they
lengthened and the small shiny
face of metal hurtling over,
blotting out in its wake, stretches
of the standing circumstance.
In the bleary-eyed delirium
of walking across empty paths
still vibrating from human
contact, I remembered the
strewn soda straws, creased
in places which made them
look like alphabets.

the polity of desire

Weaved into the fabric
of skin is the need to
break out; reach across
spatial boundaries into
want. The unfettered
communion of human
flesh contorted into
fledgling mausoleums
condemned, in their
very inception to be
cob-webbed in memory.
Sewn into the porous
fallacy of intimacy are
false, forgotten bonds;

those that must be
ignored in the moments
of contrived narcissicm.