begging for it

expressing it

**riptide**

a golden dress

wading waves in heels

a blind prophet

a boy with a beard, talking

to the ocean at midnight

the lonely mystic

chants to god — hello moon

one-legged prayer

unfillable sinks, faucets without a neck

refusal to shut off

petulant prose, no poetry tonight

a lone soldier — isolate, hungry, angry

menacing landscape

‘specially desolate inside

nowhere left to go

land’s end

bits coexisting, coexisting bits

poetic legs without apology

a floppy fish submerged

life without fins

drowning rescue — bouyed

one muted protest — glass bones crying under flesh

floating black

supine — suspended and isolate

won’t you see me home?

the world’s asleep, cuz slumber is willed (?)

don’t erase yourself

edit the script, cast the lead

look after yourself

become your dogma

play the parts, don the hats — dance little monkey

this time for me

try it on — sylvia’s grief

schopenhauer’s pessimism

buddha’s silence

but keep alive

arrive

once you accept life, it stops

life is movement

learn to make it alone

dream in secret

i am destroyed

the bubble burst

the cord connecting me to all of it — to reality, has been clipped

and i’m left

picking up pieces i don’t know how to fit together

unsure if they do fit together

confusion penetrates waking life

and my dreams

very few moments respite from chaos

and new input won’t quit — new philosophies, ways, ideas, isms

and it’s been several years and i’m more lost now than i ever was

i have nothing to stand on

i have nothing to stand on

unsure what has been obliterated — ego, self, ‘I’, me

conditioning, plans, security, hope, belief

what’s been annihilated and what’s left to live off?

stranger in a strange land

i see you, i just cannot believe you

believe any of it. nothing rings true.

i thought my ego would take more of a break

i thought i’d be less insecure, more sure.

i thought collective consciousness meant we would be collected

i’d feel less alone, more understood

i’d judge less, accept more

but that’s not happening

and i’m mad and sad and confused

and so fucking angry

and i just keep waking up

clocking hours

staying alive

where is my drug of dramatic change?

an inflection point

iceberg and buoy

rosy-eyed crucifixion

hello henry

spiritual insolvency

bankrupt benevolence

confused chaos without role model

zesty thorns chop at the rose

i used to have intuition

full of gorgeous narcissism

perfectionism with a plan

real vision — a belief in something

anything

but i was too eager to deliver

desperate and phony — please like me

tell me i’m good

tell me i’m pretty

no more haunting now

land’s end — without rope

disparate voices

monologues that run

repeatedly hit in the dick, without protection

sitting with all of it, all my vile base animal

desperate to find my way back

i want to be more than i am

jealous of living easy — accepting nature’s assignment

fitting in, fileing in, filling in

security makes me insecure

catching balance puts me off mine

my mind’s trouble. don’t waste your time.

where are the young ones full of life?

Peter Pan

with eyes wide open, i walk the plank

sand dollar dominoes

the weightless gravity of my manic grace — bow n curtsy

dorian caught in the gray rye field — beholden

unthinkable trust in limitless resource

a life of blind belief it all works out — inwardly liberated

prickle dickle bop without worry — the universe provides

whatever is needed is given

just be pippi! ms. longstocking, the thing-searcher

only sometimes i get stuck

stuck in the kick and flail — a want to want — just a little struggle

a little boy’s combat against the universe’s endless provisions

stop looking after me, i’m burned out in your goodness — the treats is junk now

i got bittersweet cavities from all your sugars — my teeth is achin

a pretty girl must really struggle — the world stumbling, falling over itself to make her happy

sometimes i bet she wishes she were real ugly like, but not really, ‘course

but maybe just she wantsta go grocery shoppin with a bag over her head

anonymous girl shopping the cabbages and dairy

i ain’t never so good as when my back’s against the wall

make me beg again

make it hard

ascetic with a backpack

the road beckons her itinerant gypsy home

knowledge chases me

hunts me down, demands her bidding

she yells at me, ‘aesthetic, ascetic, empathetic!”

accrue me, not stuff — no room for both

stuff weighs a man down

voluntary poverty is practical — casual wealth

my mistress, my special lady friend

she is demanding and i like it

‘i occupy your space — all of it’

scour the must — shelves & cobble

subterranean terrain above ground

they just can’t see it — lucky you

so much many lots — miles and cities and a whole world mine, mine

look here! quirky and peculiar — a peculiar with quirk

the patron saint

brilliant minds are dying off, just give them a fucking camera

let them show you

just shut up

keep your job, your house, your american dream

just stop killing genius

give us space to blossom

give us what we need

time and space

cameras and canvas

an empty stage and an open mic

a willing audience with receptive minds

hearts willing to puncture

a hot meal and cold whiskey

we’ll change you

or we’ll entertain you

or we’ll disgust and scare you — which we do already

so what’s there to lose?

we aren’t the ones you want dead

trust me

let our work be our drug, maybe yours too

help us not overdose

i can inject you real good

lemme see those veins

biography

bibliography and bible

constitutional road map

pure, unmitigated.

a forthcoming man

brave enough to risk collapse

emotionally full, with an exacting angle

sometimes i’m sad, sometimes i’m not.

i’m putting down the pen

my barn doors need closing

when is it time to move on?

sex, war, fights, aggression, and blood scare me

my bones are glass

allow myself

to be moved

to be loved

to know love

what is it?

is it really something you feel?

where?

to lose myself in something that is not myself

bound

backed up, hostage picasso

swirling escape — a reroute

evade the genius, torturous revel

turn in on yourself

devour, devoured

banished nightwalker — the dead who breathe

i wanna wake tomorrow an un-self-conscious creature

inwards turn out — truth, dance across the page

human stopwatch

let me be your stop watch

i’ll mark time

sound alarms when to chew your next bite

molasses in winter — i’ll slow your heart

blowing steam at dawn

fire billows from the chance hot air balloon playing

against the sky dali electric — muted pink full of cloud people

garbage men and morning walkers

a shriek, pleading, crying out, softer, softer still

a snapped neck, it falls from the tree fifteen feet ahead

what could be bigger than this in the tree?

i start to cry, riddled, prickled, sad

running out of the park, suddenly overcome by irrational fear

can fear be irrational?

birds bring the morning — cooing for the god that isn’t there

desolate streets of melbourne fitzroy

not one single coffeeshop

i write this on the metal red bench, flies are trouble

a beetle roach crawls past my foot — could they really survive nuclear?

i do not accept you

i cannot accept you

i accept no one

my way, all the way

i understand you and i do not accept what i understand

i accept you from over here, do not impede my wants

at all. at all.

i cannot, will not, shall not stifle myself to make your life easier

if I do, it is resentment. i hate you

exploding on your face

a fucking stop sign

we aren’t suspended reality — self-so without need for backdrop

we see a chair because of the wall behind it, the floor below it, the man sitting in it

the chair is not without the rest

we know sleep because of the time we are awake

we see a child because of the man he will become

we know vegetables because of candy

life exists because of death

relationships

sharing space

stifling souls stretching out

pushing higher orders — beyond base-sired impulse

nonverbally set parameters — chakras below the navel

reach stalemate

conviction in action, conviction in non-action

flittering faeries

falling asleep under twinkly stars

holdin’ hands sprinkling pixie dust in our wake

dancing in the streets — waving at the fellas in my golden shimmer frock

blowing kisses at the girlies & twirling the chick-a-dees

opening my old ears to the melodies

twiddling thumb and the world gives herself up — take me, she says

i’ll letcha make me

travel a little, nest and rest and roost home a little

fill the old gas tank right up — showering kindnesses

gifts & food, shelter — company and love

lollipops from the bank ladies

and the landlord’s with their free rent

antique saxophones and a 1913 victrola

meals and drinks and sundry

trips and cameras and taxi fare

a soul is convicted in spite of herself

no strangers left — we’re all friends ain’t we?

sleeping on his couch, he tells me he was waitin for a special occasion

cracking open forty-year old red wine for little old me

a man on the run sometimes collects stuff

i just post a little advert in the paper,

“6-bedroom house needs emptying her furnishment

come take what you like, what you don’t like’

three days later it’s all gone — beds and sofas and cutlery

an old girl with her four kids and friend’s rusty truck

‘i just got outta jail, the government gave us an apartment

now you givin us all this stuff — beds for my babies, the table

dressers for their drawers. all of it. god bless you.’

she’s cryin and huggin on me

but i just had to go

so i fill up my little sack with some shirts and books

and set off again — meeting characters n kindnesses all over the planet

heroes

dharma bums

a relished ego, aestetic ascetic pleasure