butter rum bean

From the floor up the maple glow of the veneered bar swam and swam.  I took her by the waist and led her to the dance floor.  She stood herself ready before me and the music poured into the maple glow and the smoke grew thick.  Her hand was on my shoulder and our right hands held fast and we made a ship and wandered through the maple music sea.  It was dark and the maroon carpet walls muffled the scrapes of our feet and the music swallowed our dash across the maple sea.  The voice of Blake poured from the jukebox and the smoke rose as the music filled the room.  We wandered and steered our ship through the waves and nothing existed outside us and the maple glow of Blake’s bass voice and the neon firelight and the dancing fingers of the dark.  I felt not her and she felt not me and no longer did we need to breath because the music took us far into the maple sea.  The bartender made the last call from the house of glass and light and mirror behind bar.  We steered our ship from the dance floor to the dark fingers at the shore of the maple sea.  We were heaven’s butter rum bean pebbles anchored for away from the maple glow of the sea that filled that moment.   

the skin on the back of my neck tingled as i stared into the fire.

james sat in a chair snoring with his mouth wide open.

i peeled a banana and opened my book.

the dim light of the evening was all but gone and only the burning fire provided me with light.

i was reading a book by goethe and the sentences seemed to blur together.

"i only wished i had never known her."

"the clock on the mantle said midnight."

an extreme wave of boredom was settling over me so i slapped myself in the face.



i opened my phone and played poker for half an hour.

the wind outside was whipping the tree branches against our loft.

in the room down the hall i could hear my other roommate mark having sex with his girlfriend.

i tried to concentrate on my book, so that it would not seem obvious that their intercourse was audible.

a half-eaten corn cob sat on the table next to me.

i picked it up and examined it.

i stared at it for several minutes.

it showed no sign of life.

Inginio, el chori, llevando totomoxle a los toros de lel carnaval en San Francisco Cajonos, Oaxaca Mexico.

El Torito Encoetado en el primer dia de la fiesta de Xagacia, Oaxaca, Mexico.

sublime form

I would like to dedicate this poem to me

writing only because I want to write beauty

and not because I have beauty to write.

Charlie Bukowski didn’t think of the beauty

that he had in his life. 

He didn’t think he

had any so he wrote because he was good at

writing.  He didn’t fool anyone. He didn’t

have anyone to impress.

He did what he wanted

when he wanted and he was a sexist, alcoholic

bigot and the people worshipped him for it.

I do not worship him but I take a knee in his

presence and read the ink he wrote

over gold letters

like the bible. 

I want to go back and

delete everything in this poem that does not make

it edgy and ugly like Bukowski.  I think I have many

people to impress if I only write for those wanting to

be impressed.  All I would have is sheep when

I am not a Shepard. 

I am North of salvation. Sounds beautiful

but what the fuck does it mean? Nothing,

so I impress the reader by drawing back to the only

line that has worked so far:

I do not worship him but I take a knee in his

Presence and read the ink he wrote

over gold letters

like the bible. 

This poem is growing fatter

though I have fed it nothing. Simile. Metaphor.

I write for that audience I have created that will only

ever be impressed and confused.  I invite that audience

to my greatest reading in a great beautiful hall. I burn

the hall into scorched velvet and crispy grasshoppers.

I no longer have an audience.

I will never again have

an audience I trust.  I cannot trust what I don’t create.

When I trust what I create its not trust.  The mercy of

the real is there to absorb you and critique you until

all but honesty is left of you.  And even then its not

good enough.     

El Saber

Sabiendo que alguna vez
Te pude conquistar
Hoy que nos vemos alejando
Sabrás que no fue sola

Mi culpa

Cuando al verme
Envejecer no podrás
Ni complacer
Mi ultimo deseo

Y dirás

Que algún día
Fuimos el último deseo
Que complacimos
Hasta el último deseo

De aquel distante futuro

Aun que no quieras ser
Mi penúltimo querer
Quisiera que por hoy
Pudieras reconocer

Mi conocimiento

Y que sepa el público!
Que algún día te conquiste
Que algún día fuiste mía
Que algún día te conocí

Y que algún día
Nos encontraremos

Mi Señora

Después de haber
Compadecido con tu querer
Quisiera simplemente pedir
Que por un segundo

Pretendas entender

Haber complacido
Todos tus nacimientos
Todos tus últimos deseos que hoy
Ni tú sabes reconocer

Y menos responder

Quisiera que pudieras
Complacer mí un deseo
Mi último ruego
Que seas primeramente

Una señora

Que por último
Y primero
Pongas por
Delante

de Todos los demás

Una sonrisa

having left the table, reassessing now after the tide has turned, has always been tricky
it is precisely for this reason, and others like it, that i left in the first place
sure i have meant what i have said, occasionally, but how is that any better
so we'll start from block one, hello how are you doing,
yo, me llamo me llamo
tu, te llamas te llamas
i por ti
me ando meando

*the latter is a verso from pinotepa, oax., mexico

existent

For sixteen years I was a tent carny and only the circus knew it.  For those sixteen years I did not know sleep because I snuck away at night to a cubicle in an office in a metal-glass rectangle in the clouds of the night sky.  I worked on the seventy-fifth floor and the street lights below looked like the naked bulbs on the rails of carny rides.  I typed and I typed and I worked fast like Bukowski and made many beautiful reports and graphs and spreadsheets that I collected in a drawer for no one to really read.  I cut my finger one night and typed the reports until the only letters left unprinted were q-z.  I worked alone while a black man cleaned the office floor.  I told him he should work for the circus.  He told me this was his circus.  I asked how that was possible and he said he could not afford the circus.  I told him that when I was a kid I dreamed of sneaking away to work in the office during the hours of the night so I could feel time in my heart like cold plums between my toes and know wine like the poet and women like a titan.  He said his balls hurt because he had 20 year old jizz in there that he could not get out.  He said he did not know the taste of wine but only the feeling.  He said a doctor told him how much time was in his heart. I told him to go to the circus.  He told me that he was at his circus.  How do you explain to a man who thinks the circus is all around him that the circus cannot be sufficed time nor hidden from the eyes?  How do you explain that the circus is the only thing a man should truly appreciate in life?  He told me that if the circus was the only thing a man could appreciate in life then he’d appreciate his life.  I asked if I could try on his spectacles.  He allowed me and I saw some exotic place I had never seen before.  To my left there were lions with teeth and beards and elephants with skirts.  I had never seen this before.  I asked him what it was that I saw.  He said it was the circus.  I looked again.  There were clowns in pastel body paint drinking liquor from bottles and the most beautiful women I have ever seen with six arms and two breasts.  This is what you see? I asked.  This cannot be the circus I said.  I work at the circus in the day and sneak away to the office to write many beautiful reports all night.  He said I was right, I worked for the circus during the day.  He asked for his spectacles back.  There were all my beautiful reports in front of me and my city below me asleep.  I thought how much longer I had until morning and had to return to the circus.  My heart beat and I could not remember what the circus looked like or where to go or how to get there or who I was there and for the first time I considered the oddity of waking to resume my job at the circus that was never there.

dichtomies/mochotomies

extroverted/introverted

shy/asshole

pale/dark

bland/any rand

white/blue

everyday/anyday

beginning/end

arcade fire/pink floyd

mike/micah

noah's ark/flooded deserts

cherries/peanuts

aids/herpes

optional/questionable

rational/imaginative

dreams/nigthtmares

andrew worthington/andrew duncan worthington

narcissicism/indulgence

loco! coco? whatever

laws and laws and claws and clause and time and clocks and cocks and tick and tocks and waits and gates and almost completely make believed you were my mate and fate and not fate and cash and change and splashing water or deranged tame and semi-sane or semi-insane.

i went to the bike store to buy a bike and all i got was a chain that broke and then i woke from my dream and realized it was my dad's car and i was speeding down the interstate from ohio to michigan and the sky was that kind of gray-pink hue that looks how puke would look if it were beautiful. i ate a few clementines and walked around a graveyard which sat across from a high school football stadium and then i yawned and fell asleep by the grave of a guy who served in the spanish-american war.

bill clinton was president when i first realized how babies were made. i shoved my penis against the bed and tried to make an inanimate baby. i wanted to make a friend to cuddle with. my mom took me to church the next morning and i ate doughnuts in sunday school. i prayed to god for guidance with my erections and fantasies. that was around the time that i stopped beliieving in santa claus, or even the spirit of santa claus, although i guess santa claus is okay.

i stared smoking cigartettes because i wanted to look cool and get fucked up in a very minimal way. i stopped smoking cigarettes because some things never end. when my great-grandfather was 29 he rode broncos and when turned 30 he was in africa killing beasts that got in his way as he walked along dirty muddy paths. he smoked dutch tobacco. sometimes he rolled it into cigarettes and sometimes he put it in a pipe.

the second time i awoke from my dream there were loud drums playing futuristic primitive beats in a big grassy field. everyone was taking their science text books and throwing them in a large fire. i watched with great interest and had sporadic spontaneous grins slash across my face. it is a disgrace the apathy and disregard we have for ourselves and all those who attempt to preach to us. as for me, i say "fuck the preacher" and "fuck the teacher", but i am using the word "fuck" in a very ambiguous sense. you must have sexual relations with them in some way even if it is only in your own person. but you also have to kill them, so i leave the big decisions up to you.

one should either learn to lock their door or close their unlocked door or lose their love for the possessions that own their life.

in the middle of the night i dreamt of my best friends from the university all stoned and moaning in a mansion in the french countryside that had been turned into an opium den. sex was veery casual and fun. staring was a good experience too, although that one was still fun after the drugs wore off, i think. everything made sense to me for a little bit, and then i realized i was dreaming awake.

zapruder zeppelin

How the voices of friends change

On the radios.  I am everything not

War so I wish to join the ranks of

Murder. The radiation of death I

Want personally, the gun powder

Burnt nostrils and untethered pulse,

The black eye and purple muscle.

Punched silver and eggplant may

Be my only chance, i.e. parri

Passu for the word lover’s at bat.

Weak from concussive plumes of

Smoke, Ginsberg’s book duc-taped to

my chest, I run ‘til I feel nothing

in my wake and step. All shrapnel,

Every bullet, I call by name, every

Criticism stopped between pages

600 and 9-fifty, one index from any

artery.  When I’m ready, may I grow

not into washable chalk lilacs or such,

but nature  alive for the wind. Like

no one before me, I make my own

in this war and suffering of

depreciated souls, bones, and stripped

locomotives. I don’t want war to be

a thing of the past but an art

that I hate against humanity. I become a

prince of peace, a poet,

my wager as a priest.

poem called "vague/specific populations of various cities"

nyc-8,363,710

mexico city-8,841,916?

tokyo-12,790,000

cuyahoga falls, ohio-50,398

akron, oh-217,074

red hook, ny-10,408

tivoli-ny- 1,163

poughkeepsie, ny-29,871

los angeles-3,833,995

chicago-2,853,114

cleveland-433,748

columbus-754,885

new orleans-336,644

rio de janeiro-6,093,472

washington d.c.-599,657

toronto-2,503,281

montreal-1,620,698

edmonton-730,372

vancouver- 578,041

london-7,556,900

glasgow-580,690

edinburgh-471,650

dublin-505,739

belfast-267,500

manchester-464,200

paris-,203,817amsterdam-762,057

waterloo-29,315

cherbourg-

42,318

berlin-3,431,700

budapest-1,712,210

rome-2,730,125

madrid-3,213,271

barcelona-1,673,075

pamplona-197,275

moscow-10,524,400

warsaw-1,711,466

prague-1,242,002

casablanca-3,672,900

st. petersburg-4,661,219

istanbul-12,697,164

cairo-6,758,581

mecca-1,700,000

baghdad-6,554,126

jerusalem-

763,600

tehran-8,429,807

mumbai-13,922,12

kabul- 3,568,500

shanghai- 18,884,600

beijing- 17,550,000

hong kong- 7,055,071

hanoi-6,500,000

saigon-7,123,340

bangkok-9,100,000

sydney-4,399,722

houston-2,242,193

seattle-602,000

san francisco-808,976

miami-

	362,470

venice-florida-21,015

venice-270,660

orlando-230,519

panama city-813,097

santiago-5,278,044

havanna-2,400,300

san juan-422,665

detroit-912,062

pittsburgh-316,718

philadelphia-1,540,351

boston-

	620,535

baltimore-637,455

charlotte-716,874

lynchburg, virginia-72,596

nashville-

	626,144

atlanta-537,958 (

savannah, georgia-132,410

memphis-132,410

bitch poem

looking at you

is like not

cleaning the dirt

from under my nails.

its something i want

to do

but resist doing

because

lately

on most days

i think dirty is better.

but in the end,

i scrape the dirt.

i scrape it all away

until the half-moons

on my smooth nails

glow like the sweat on

your upper lip

when i caught you

in the dark

like a jackal

teeth bared

in the whitenesss

of a lie you won't escape.

don't

you

worry,

darling...

only

your soul

will

suffer

from

the weight

of your

fading shadow.

Fate

"Hey dude, you want a beer?"

"Sure," I said. I had been walking on my way out the party to go home, but I could not refuse a beer. I took the beer from an Asian guy. He was standing against the refigerator that contained the beer. I opened the beer can and nodded at him and said "Thank you."

Outside on the back porch of the house there were several dozen people smoking cigarettes or talking to people smoking cigarettes or standing awkwardly in a circle of conversation and not saying anything. I saw my friend James talking to a couple of girls. I walked over towards him.

"What up dude?" he said when he saw me.

"Not much," I said, "Just chilling."

He introduced me to each of the girls and I told them my name, but then thirty seconds later I realized I had forgotten their names already. They seemed to be talking about Buddhism or something. I stood there and watched. Nothing ever struck my mind in terms of something that would be worthy for me to say.

I scanned the crowd and saw a dude named Ted from a sociology class I had taken the year before. He was talking with a couple other guys. One of the guys was seated at the table. It looked like he was rolling a joint. I walked over and said hi to Ted and then I went inside.

I saw a girl who was a drug dealer in the living room and I asked her if she had any good pills. She said all she had were shrooms and pot.

I said, "Fuck."

The party had seemed to die down somewhat suddenly in the past fifteen minutes. I began to leave the house and on my through the kitchen I saw the Asian dude again. He was still standing alone by the refigerator. It seemed he had decided that his fate for the night was to be the gatekeeper to the beer. He asked me if I wanted another one. I said no. By fate for the night was to go home and sleep alone.