Hassle

Love it slips away
From your fingers and
Now she's in love with someone else You're
Not sad at all though you think you should be
Still you do feel regret for
All the forgotten memories

She loves another You don't love her
That's all right, see that's not the problem
What the problem is is that the she you loved
Exists no longer but as a memory
The she before you is someone else
Like the flowing river you won't get her back

Where has she gone? The she who kissed you?
The she who made your life like hell?
The she who made you hate yourself?
But the she you loved regardless.
Where has it gone? The love between you?
Did it ever take fruit? Did you cherish it?
No. Plain and simple. You did not mesh.
But still you miss the memories.

You look at the moon and cry sometimes,
Invisible tears, for they don't exist,
You are sad, but what saddens you most,
Is that you're a lot less sadder than you feel you should be.

Does that mean that the love you felt meant nothing?
Does that mean your heart all that affection did waste? 
In the end everything so meaningless
In the end nothing even mattering, no?

No. I demand my grief be fuller.
O Pierrot, like you I wish to be 
Filled with unbridled melancholy.
I have loved, it shattered, let me have my sorrow
O Eros, Aphrodite, let me have my heart
Heavy, crushed beneath the weight
Of yesterday's nostalgia and the fear of tomorrow,
Let me be full of anger and/or hate,
And let my emotions tear me apart,
For I have loved, it's gone, let it go with a blast,
Anything is better than Apathy's emptiness,
Anything is better than ennui's distress,
Let not my woe like Crusoe be cast
To foreign lands, no, my love was real,
Now is no more, but what I feel
Now and what I felt then
Was something beautiful and true.
This not even my own depth less heart can rue.


I have loved and that is all.

Saginaw, MI

Here is the valley under the honey mustard sun,
That stands all alone, unencumbered by the rays
Of the sea and the city. A town and a village.
It stands like the trees on a roadside that sway
Like the many plated cars that rage on its streets
Past the churches, the strip clubs and the shopping malls.
It seems so big to a small town boy,
But really, I know that it's very small.

The horizon stretches on to infinity.
The sun does not fall, it slowly sinks.
And the nighttime produces not many stars,
All the street lamps, they say, have killed the blink.
And no animals roam round except us men,
Of different colors and creeds and we walk the same,
Trapped here with such people that we've never met,
With only our silent sorrows here that remain. 

What do you mean? 

The liquid ecstacy and the hazy lights
That the night does offer is all that helps us,
Helps some of us by offering a small respite,
Helps most of us by being a breeze or a gust
Of cool wind in the hot, sweaty night,
All plutonian darkness that scares me so,
And most of all, it helps all of us,
By taking us where we need to go,

By reminding us that that thing called home
Is one to be missed and cherished much,
That I did not appreciate it when
I was there, and now I suffer such
Loneliness, but that too will pass,
And life will go on like it will,
Not only here in Saginaw 
But the world at large, that never does stay still.

American aquarium drinker

Halfway around the world she, and I
Here under the moon lit, pale, blue stars
Waiting, with a heart full of merry go rounds,
Singing rondeaus that I hope are caught by the wind
That take
take
take them all away,
Like cherry blossoms on anime eyes,
Shower her with my heart's delight.

Pity me I can only write you poetry,
I'd write you a song but someone stole my guitar.
Never-mind that, I didn't know how to play the guitar,
Anyway. That's what they all say-
I'll write you a poem,
I'll write you a song,
And they never do
Their words are mosaic,
So pretty yet cracked
Not solid at all.

You deserve more, my button nosed beauty.
But I can't write a poem.
Not just yet.
So I write for strangers on the internet.

ok computer

It stares at me it does the screen
I mean and messages from people away
Make my day that much harder
And my heart that much weary
It's scary to think that the words on my screen
Are people indeed because it seems
so abstract like rain drops frozen in photographs
so real but real only because of a daft
invention to hold them in stop time like my heart
every time it says that someone has replied
To what though I only send something 
read by the eyes but not real like words
that glide into your ears sounds I'm trying to say
that touch you they do the sound waves
nothing interesting to say when I'm at the screen
nothing interesting nothing at all i mean
and it only gets harder with people around
all with ideas but I shut eye shut at the ground
and they higher and higher while I underground
so I try to get higher higher by another route
but it only shuts me into my own invention
that's stop time too in the velvet underground

Draft 3

In a blink of an eye the world was born

And then came floods and tidal waves

And when the first man saw the sun rise high

He wondered what great meaning his life held

And as he toiled and trod across the land

Tilling the fields to keep his family fed

A flash of light struck the world into oblivion

And one god to another said you've won.

And then they made plans on how to do it all over again

While one hopes to beat another with nothing to gain

Draft 2

They're of no help to me now
These words that shuffle about in my gulliver
I used to pull them out as they would quiver
While I'd shape them to sonatas long and slow
Like a cry in the night by the window
Staring at the moon in a lurid gaze
Soon enough they'd break though worn and torn
And tired and battered I'd start again
Like Sisyphus.

I always wondered what he would think
There at the top when the deed was almost done
Looking down at the drop with his heart almost lifted
A feeling of pride perhaps? Of a job well done?
And was he crushed when the rock rolled down again?
But he knew that would happen so why did he hope?

And even if he succeeded to hold it still
And the visages of victory became vistas
What would be there for him beyond?
He's only done that one thing for so long
That everything else you've already forgotten how
To do and your mind has hardened too
And isn't that exactly when they leave you to be
Free outside of the cage
That you've toiled to build so comfortably
You could live the rest of eternity
And that was what you really wanted, no?

You've ruined yourself thinking and rethinking
You've tied and untied the noose so much so
That when you hung yourself it came loose
So fast so quickly and a sign of God
I took it because I didn't even want to die
But I couldn't take the responsibility of being alive
And miracles, spectacular cheers and wreaths
And laurels I'd garnered just for you
So I could worship you, and then I understood
Why so many believe in you although
There's indications that the only intelligence around
Are us and we've even sent sounds out of bounds
That've allowed no signs of anything at all
And I understood that we're all lost at sea
Against a darkness that pleads to be left alone
But we
Like a child pestering an overworked mother
For a horseback ride though she's had a 12 hour shift
And hasn't had a good fuck in ages
We still gaze stooped and caught up
And

I realized I'd written nothing at all.

Draft

Sweet fruit, just a bite, and you drip down my lips

Softly, smoothly, and it tickles so much,

And the word “suave” which had been stuck on my mind

Now comes forward to the forefront, and I wonder why?

What connection to the fruit, and what made my heart flutter?

When the word and the sensation of sweet and sour

Taste tantalized my temper, and I wish I could remember-

What is this I’m feeling? And why my heart’s so loudly

Beating? Fleeting moments like this

Are what makes life so lively I suppose.

But still I can’t let this inquisition go.

The World Is Yours

How can I put forth the truth when I'm branded
Novice and knave, by plebs who've been stranded
In drought wrought islands, with tigers and spiders,
And all they can do is scream till tonsillitis,
While I have befriended the same beasts they burden-
With the same screams and same dreams with no twists and turns with
Which to excite or edify the mind,
Or take the hapless heart on a roller coaster ride-
And I do accept that I was like that once too,
But I've now found oasis 'mid the cloudless sand strewn
Desert of the new age with new cage , rage, loose pages,
But the hazes have lifted, while I admit I've been loose,
Now I feel like a winner, even though often times I do lose.

Though none among the angelic hierarchies will listen,
Still I sing, still I sing, in the hopes I can christen
My scribbles into verses, and my lines into poems,
So that when they're recited most'll croon "Oh I know 'em!"

And maybe then it'll be though my heart still fidgets,
It'll be for a new line and not for monetary stipends-
And soon maybe I'll climb among the angelic hierarchies,
And beat the shit out of them till in their pants they all pee.
But that's just for hoping, and I'll still be happy,
If in this lifetime I can grind a poem to make the whole world see
Beauty in a moment, and taste of serenity.

What If Mama Knew Now You Were Too Wild

Delightful and drunken disorder we dip in;

Enlightenment in search of else why would we slip in

Sidelines of insanity, in search of some slivers 

Put forth by Pure light that to plebs would give shivers,

And so we anticipate, analyze the astounding

In which all our ill willed ilk might be founded

Right all along to be reveling in riots, when religion's outgrown the pure and the pious