Flourishing In Captivity

tick-tock you don't stop

2011-12-11T08:31:00.000-08:00

"I feel old," she said.
"If you think you feel old now,"
I replied, "just wait."

Passage

2011-04-25T04:58:00.000-07:00

Migratory sequence of user population: Friendster → MySpace → Facebook / Twitter (concurrent) → iMe → DotComMune → Unia → ¤‡¤‡¤‡¤ → biodigital telepathy, a.k.a. "techlep" (endo-networking supplants exo-networking, acquires end-of-history status).

EduLink Bureau. The History of Networked Socialization. 7th ed. NewNet Colony: ThoughtHive, 2096.

same old lang syne

2011-01-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

Midnight's frenzied consensus
gone lethean with first light,
they woke to find their world
fundamentally unchanged, save
for that system contrived to
sequence an abstraction which had,
without need of their pother,
amended itself on schedule.

press

2009-07-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

obituaries strut their two-tone plumage along
the perimeter of even our most promising days

the hands of the clock are curled into fists

degenerus interruptus

2009-05-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

it's over
not thought in language
but felt: a
preternatural emotion
like a systemic
depth charge
detonates: my
trajectory as 180.

this metanoia
derails the whole
shebang: some
timing, abrupt growth-spurt;
you could've at least
let me finish
my cigarette.

fauxku: a real-live japanese death poem

2009-04-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

boot-dented bucket
frostfall: winter connotes lots
soil and shovel, dig?

plastic chairs & paper plates gather whitely here in the backyard blue hour of our late thirties

2008-10-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

Jimmy throws the last of the Labor Day patties on the grill &
rants to me about his waning lotharial sway, as firefly
rump-lights cast dull reflections in the scalp
beneath his ebbing hairline

which makes me think about the lessons
learned through subtraction

like growing up, how the impossibilities in our cinematic daydreams become
ever more apparent, a reductive advance that fosters the tricky negotiation
of high standards & low expectations known as
contemporary adulthood

at some point you get it that it’s a rare employer who
wants to see “Solo, Han” written on the application
for the file clerk position, “space pirate” under
previous work experience

over the years we watched as John Cougar became John
Cougar Mellencamp, then dropped the Cougar;
eventually he’ll just be John

Jimmy waves his spatula around, carving arabesques in the
encroaching darkness as he builds steam; he will
not go gentle, etc.

he stops mid-sentence, shivers visibly &
goes inside to grab a sweatshirt

it’s going to be a bitter winter

Mixology

2008-10-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Blind Alley

2 fingers existential desperation
1 finger defenestrated boyhood ideals
Splash of feces

Whittle down slowly, serve over crushed spirit

Diminishing Doll

1 pony modern beauty ideal
1 jigger fashion magazines
2 dashes bile

Unhinge, top with collagen

Delirium Tremen

1 gallon cheap vodka, neat

Shake

Blowhard Emeritus

3 fingers theory
⅛ finger application
4 snits pedantry

Canonize, strain into windbag

New Age Hand Job

4 parts astrology
3 parts self-help psychobabble

Delude over pastels, garnish with marijuana leaf

Couples-Only Skate

1 jigger ineffable feeling of tenderness
1 shot biological imperative
1 shot unconscious fear of death
Dash of syrupy popular music

Intermingle, serve warm and fuzzy

I Hear He’s Doing Well

2008-10-18T12:16:00.001-07:00

I hear he no longer goes
missing for weeks on end
to return looking like
he just emerged from a
blast furnace,
stinking of $3 fortified wine
and $10 party girls,
that he no longer bellows
at passing dogs and children,
stopped frotteuring on
the subway,
ceased voiding his bowels under the
tree on Christmas morning,
quit trying to bite the deli guy

I hear he has a 9 to 5,
pays the bills on time,
taxes, too,
is early to bed and rise,
flosses daily,
exercises regularly,
follows politics avidly,
goes to church on Sunday,
the infamous purple fury now
placid in his trousers,
lawn edged,
wears only his
own underwear,
has learned to make lemonade

Resumés

2008-10-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

"How are you," I asked

"Oh, I've been so busy with this new project - you'd love it - it's a piece about _______. And I've also been working on a collaboration with _______, which is turning out to be just fantastic. And ____ has secured a slot for me in the upcoming _______ series, so I'm preparing for that. Oh, and god, in my spare time I'm also compiling _______ for the new ______. What about you? Have you been writing?"

"Not recently,"

"What have you been doing for, you know -"

"Creatively?"

"Yeah,"

"Not a damn thing, really,"

"How refreshing!"

things to do before writing that great poem

2008-10-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

buy bread
milk
eggs
coffee
& peanut butter
do laundry
put trash cans to curb
wash dishes
drop out of high school
seduce ex-girlfriend of famous singer while he leaves back-to-back messages on her answering machine, his
pleas for reconciliation just audible as you enter her from behind
feed cat
labor in cipher's capacity for slew of subnormal employers
fall in love 3 times
fall out of love 3 times
swear off romantic love forever
shave head
return movies to rental store
browse Internet for days on end
consider suicide
consider becoming captain of industry
pay gas bill
read volume after volume of poetry
swear off poetry forever
endure results of eons of impacted human folly
clip toenails
join band, tour Europe w/ same
quit band
obtain services of licensed psychologist
come home to burgled apartment
go to college
drop out of college
fall in love again
write countless poems of this caliber

Our Lady of the Boroughs

2008-06-12T04:57:00.000-07:00

the neighborhood girls are

pug of nose,
tight of pant,
and

mean,

mean

such feral-eyed choler: was there ever anything as sexy?

the neighborhood girls are

forces of nature
throwing themselves against the
walls of their provincial dreams in
nympholeptic seizure

violent flowers
full bloom

Harvest

2008-06-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

My fingers pierced
The iced earth
And tore a hole
I buried my wallet inside

I returned in spring
Found a psychopath tree
Sprouting there
And carved my name in its face

gloaming song

2008-06-11T15:37:00.001-07:00

grown faint now, the
tinnitic rending of fiscal
apparatus, drowned here
in the anodyne sonance
of dewslide on evening
grass, this togethering of
cricket chirps & cicada
trills that swells from the
lawns of our infinite
suburbias, whence spirits
dehisce beyond the cul de
sacs, past the last traffic
signals, where pavement
buckles, breaks, & yields to
the primeval melody inviolate

Baygones

2008-06-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

& Sheepshead Bay Road aclamour those sixth day’s nights,

"Jus’ gheddin th’ fuhckin' caur, Gina"

heard from any number of IROC-Zs, hollered at any of the

dozens of

Ginas: crimped, acid washed, bedazzled and bellicose,

down to the Roll-A-Palace, where the lacquered hair of Bay Boys

glistered ‘neath shards of mirror ball light as

regional disco hits mobilized the skates

& libidos of kissing cugines in

a summer decked in Chess King, coke spoon pendants, wispy moustaches &

rattails,

smazed in the Angel Dust & Newport smoke

of a Brooklyn ‘85 widely unsung

save for some scattered sports bar

‘membuh when’s

& here

henku

2008-06-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

buk buk buk b'kaww
buk buk b'kaww buk buk buk
buk b'kaww buk buk

automanna

2008-06-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

on the lam from man’s terrestrial sum, thinker snug in propulsion’s
narcotic caul, I’m swathed in steel, hurtling; radio low & heaven’s
volume knobs at zero (god's auriculars, as always, just out of earshot);
me, conglomeration of hiccup thoughts & diesel fumes: this mobile
dream-state of interstate as inner-state, reflecting on retroreflections,
wheels & wind droning Om through the landscape’s slurred infinitych
of evangelical neon & plastic interurban nowhere, & farther from the
horizon w/ each mile gained