Dropping The Walls For A Tenuous Linkage Matt Hill
Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA
2|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
Dropping The Walls For A Tenuous Linkage Matt Hill Copyright © 2011 All Rights Reserved. Published by Differentia Press Book Design by Felino A. Soriano Cover Art, Not Far From the Oracle of Water, courtesy of J Karl Bogartte Except for the sole purpose for use in reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, without the written permission from the publisher. Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA 93458
Differentia Press Poetic Collections of the │Experimental Spectrum│ differentiapress.com
3|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
Acknowledgments Again, thanks to the Sanchez family To Scott & Heidi @ Logos Books To Shirley Welch @ Mt. Thrift Inc To Claire & Jamison To Barbara Henning To James Maughn & New Cadence To Adam Cornford To Jake Berry To Joan Stepp Smith To Andrew Joron To Sheila E. Murphy & to J Karl Bogartte, for generous permission To use his artwork as the cover image … Portions of this text previously appeared in the online journals Oarystis, The City of Desires (Rob Chrysler) and 9th Street Laboratories (Jake Berry) … A gesture of appreciation …
4|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
Table of Contents One/The Dysfunction of Moments…………………………………………………………………………………………….9 Two/Finding Center………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….17 Three/The Mayhem of Delirious Glances…………………………………………………………………………………27 Four/Conversations with Gravity……………………………………………………………………………………………..34 Five/Dull Brilliancies………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..52 Six/Daft Raptures…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….69 Seven/Into the Truncated Dust of Icons…………………………………………………………………………………..76
5|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
6|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
Dropping The Walls For A Tenuous Linkage Matt Hill
7|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
8|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
One/The Dysfunction of Moments
9|Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage
Into the breach & blare of juggled lives The salt heroes clutch bouquets of abstracted ignorance As “poetic toil” sanctions the liquid afternoons … Where forests once rose are now only beleaguered Landscapes & the metering of absent residents … The sway of prodigious opacities runs the stumble forward … Hypocrisy always threatens the latent amplitudes W/ a serious noise-stench throwing off the balances … Scattered focus & desperate acts propel the sighs Unpaid debts now dissolve either w/ us or w/o us … UNAVAILABLE is my choice in this wayward time … What a sorry mess of dolts they are These not-so-fearsome hypocrites all of them Undertaking the cartoon mythologies of self-making … The bliss ninnies good and roughed up That reality check returned for NSF… “You’re joking, right? The daily dopes-on-parade Enough to make you fist the inscrutible air … The durations involved in forgiving Longer & harder than carbide sometimes … Even so, the velocity of intent can waver in absentia… Those thundering indignities O yes … With or without which Our richly rimmed ruin becomes vouchsafed …
10 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
No, it’s not that dodging the bullets Has become an acquired skill, But rather that this quagmire of bad ratios Has led to so many nagging regrets …
& there will be no instant replay, No reset of that fat red button … No, the open accounts of deceit & chicanery Will no longer capture the night W/ dawn’s impotent subterfuges … Dysphoric days laid out like so many hard mothers, Even the marginalized ones might now have some advantage … When dislocated from a pathological center, Many of these factoid shams only raise the curtain On the assiduous labors of popularized futility … Lowbrow consumptions zero-out The loss leaders the Klugerati have queued up For the positioning of household gods & The temporal odors of rogue penetrations … Oh man, in this muddle of becoming, On this fractured enterprise called Earth, New management teams futilely attempt To grease the hopelessly squeaky wheels … AND, Existential threats always override any political context … Whether by omission or commission, You best better believe there will be quibbling About frog’s hair or perhaps angels dancing, Especially when it all is looking most grim …
11 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Via the golden microphone and such, The disciples of Machiavelli franchise the rage, The halitosis of dragoneers is seemingly habitual While the radio godlets rack up the truth In order to fulfill the planned bombing agendas …
Blaming becomes the new cancer of discourse As a trajectory of disorder defaults to what? Taking the disagreements outside no longer works either … So many impairments due to driveling pronunciamentos, All forfeiture reigns supreme by falsely appeasing the critics … The flayed minions are in such a hot mess, The Prominati turgid w/ their status inanities, The nympho-vixens graduate into a lucid harlotry, While A LOVE SUPREME does it up in the background … The focus these days has fallen into some major arrearage … These de-trendings slipping into unprosperity Below the faux earthquake weather days, The further falls in the social scale so sadly sanctioned … & doing nothing only gainsays my what …? Times such as these surely pry men’s holes … However, it is best to move off the confrontations In this eccentric wilderness of fiery whelpings … Hell really doesn’t need another ground-zero, Especially as the battlefields remain so full of fear … Also, any fallback to Plan D will only obfuscate further …
12 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Those of us still working w/o that former net, Left now only w/ the dregs AND the dishwater ... The former accounts all in phantom tatters, Reeking with the fine whiffage of circumstance … So my friends, let us now praise the grief of our ancestors, Even as our debt becomes further gratitude and suchforth Even as forbearance from our creditors is not forthcoming & Even as we must now sup upon the marrow of chopbones While the metabolic necessities occur in diminished stride … Needed: A return of unction-to-function Per the suasions of anxiety’s non-employment … Our overlooked hourglass of cobalt crystals Certainly runs down that time-river As Dawn’s blue horizon gets fully loaded w/ tiny footnotes … Even under this fateful last rally-roar among the ruins, An adopted face will not make for a messiah- monster … Songs of distant tribes reach for but do not touch, While the summer things have never been so very far away … W/ the world of known fact presently in tumult, (The saints too struggle w/ the ravages of inflation, Having to pawn nursery rhymes for their frightful future), & Fools still get crucified at the intersection of the suburbs, so Why do we walk through the fire when we should be running …? That ancestral struggle of my forebears so surmised, By their tough ashes left behind from those hard-scrabbled lives The rolling of logs & the movement of cattle Slowly became hoarded, then lost, discs of silver …
13 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Visions of intrepid cosmologists tend the fathoms As they play w/ their displays of vast magic numbers … Very little is of usefulness to the rest of us While the daily primitive economies Must still default to the needs at hand … Altho, there is justice in the firestorms, While all souls remain necessarily naked … The wounding of the fathers continues to play out Wherever & whenever “real life” happens … Under the perverse signal-to-noise ratios Are the numb masses blasted while A lined shot to right center clears the bases … Piling up these tough manufactured runs Continues to spangle the game days … The daily news-feeds anneal more despair, Our minds loading up w/ pirate flags & evil popery … Hopefully all that circumscribes us presently, What with our exposed nipples defying the breezes, Will soon re-factor the us back into trust … The local Fire Boys rally-run the Doppler incidents, Heading off to swimming pools full of vipers … Meanwhile, Detroit’s on life support, The economic kill switch just got flipped, & collateral damage is done w/ heinous disregard … Cussedness percolates through the moronic gauze, An inshrouded day is now replete w/ zany cowards & Dreadful reckonings, followed by a swift kick sideways … So many indicators that all this “irritable protoplasm” Is yet so massively incapable of cerebral activity …
14 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Off-duty polymaths, spruced for the steppin’ out, They who have not acquired the sure & steady way, Wolf down the open pleasures while watching Bare backsides enough to beat the band … & their filling innards keep making those funny noises … With their monsters soft-moaning in deep dark lairs, The Web Titans are still missing the core fundamentals … Is it only these bogus ideologies that foster this root of all evils …? Princess fever be damned, what we need most Are more women of worth, not the mayhems Laid down by the Insensated Barbies … Like Rome, here the world is close to burning, and the best These narcisso-freaks can offer is to plot shopping competitions … So, we must be talkin’ twilight among the bitch theorists Since the attention sluts are now the wind in the drama chimes … Yet the cultural food chain starts only w/ those of us, Runover & left in the roadside culverts w/ our Down-to-broke ways, who remain intrepidly constant … Pharmaceuticals rumble in their unsuspecting veins, As the meglo-punks beat on each other’s bad blood, Charges filed only if there’s more than 50 stitches … The dueling lips are always set & ready, But it’s always best if that starter’s gun never fires … If one leaves upon arrival, then Is one never present in the first place? If the future belongs to the primitive, Will destiny then become like golden foam? Only if the blood of tainted silence(s) never dries …
15 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Stepping aside to let the trainwrecks pass by, I lurk along in the wake of all non-happenings … Anticipating a likely indifferent afternoon, I pursue a Yul Brenner kind of cool … & a traipse in the holy forest does help me, Along with vague & obscure referencing, To find succor within the frequent & maimed downtimes … All such attempts to dial in the afterworlds Are never done w/ a more fleeting ease … One of these hot gusty days, just when I’m just bubbling over w/ stunned inertia, Finding the wear & tear just something awful, It will then be a stern will-to-prevail That just might yet Serve up a fresh trampoline reprieve … Now & in the hour of my hunger, amen, Are these uninhabitable days obscure in the margins, The distances pass because this inexact living Contradicts what I only know to be obligatory … Survival is, and always has been, a consequence Of conscious listening on the journey …
16 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Two/ Finding Center
17 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The known becoming known by means of the still more unknown, the conclusions then become based upon silence … The Deity has always chosen to delight in the uneven & oblique, w/ the Anima Mundi emerging as the universal coordinating power … All the evolving divinations involve many strangers, usually the first to appear, or else are involved in the juxtapose of sacred things … Mystics thus call Light the shadow of God, the Pleroma which extends on infinitely, in saecula saeculorum … On those rare nights When the fullest of moons Follows me through the darkest of forests, A displacement of being Transfigures that where I lack large … “The mirror of the phoenix” Arises through that gateway From whence & wherever we came … Only when the force of the words flag, Will the desire to kiss assume intent … In the Temple of Sky, under a flux of myriad integers, Metaphor shines on as poetry’s tattoo, mostly in cases Where the lines end with the curling of smoke … A potlatch of fingered subtext Furrows & furloughs the raw glances … Twilight needs neither sequel nor antidote … It is only a time to ungather the smatterings, Just as rare thunder yet brings on a gladness & autumn’s blustering air Begins to taste like a requiem for snow …
18 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Grooming protocols can be such a hassle … With a default instead to a choking indifference, & onion flavored tears salting my mouth, I leave a fire trail through the day’s heavy underbrush … My only mission now is to outsource the mind-fucks Throughout this rough & tumble world of longest lefts … Roadkill metaphors, the acme of non-stealth, Only mean more low-impact workouts going rogue … The once-normal proceedings now elongate Into strange sourcings of a journalistic third eye … Deep hours crawl up from the status abyss As an ancient bag of bones now gets laid to rest … Please welcome a BIG summer of monster duplicities! Rebound relationships, currently looking for a handle That won’t snap off … Hey, what we now have is mostly A furious flurry of flirtatious floundering! Pegasus leaps for sure over the mundane hopes & various incarnate deaths in each moment … Under various angles of abandonment This mirrored sky is so very Determined to lay me down hard … The yoga postures of drunks Have recently led to great poems Driven by the pneumatic force of blurry insight … A faith in the word-fire Stacks imagery Like a tower of stones …
19 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Taxonomies of wayward thinking Propagate changes in the unexpected … Poetry seeks the chains of freedom even as She settles in for an unsupervised house arrest … O “douche-logic” of Aristotelian corruptions! Distortion by means of the parts Assures a skewed salvation by way of the whole! The pressure of the inexorable thin red hand indicates: please let the turbulence do its work … Heraclitus still serves us as a daily hair trigger, while the wild doors creak off loose hinges & we insist upon saying the wayward paraphrase … Autumn finally becomes a waiting sonata in the skittering of leaves and in the departure of birds … Via her steadfast denial of summer’s raging, She decided she needed to puke instead … Then, in the muggy heat, her face began to slough off … Absent permissions: Her blouse suddenly became undone because Her outfit options held fewer false euphorias … She, salty & pugnacious, stalks the pop icons; has issues w/ cookies; is completely gadgetchallenged … With many self-taught lessons in falling, her mind is a dark fertile place, an elixir of imposters & sorcerer’s blood … She proselytizes about freshwater actions as the evening dissipates a feral heat ... The lives of the damned, garbed in cynical insight, foster the learned idiots to ply their self-aggrandizing ways …
20 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Butting the mangled headwinds Crystal ships of sodium amalgam Christen the incendiary vehicles Only to remix the diamond lights … Now the nights of Amalgamated Uncertainty cloak me in a chilled sweat … It is I, and I only, who yet petitions for grace & respite by means of the daily dull awakenings that are so palpably felt … The circumference of this laugh Remains too variable For my talons to clutch: Thus, the comforting misfortunes Of a dropped-back-in existence … Picking up the dead & empty tallboys each morning Just shows how threads of pain Can make for some pretty tough fabric … These homeboys get so hot & hurried With their fierce blood that prefers not to cool … A couple of materialists walk into a bar … The whisky begins to flow straight from the bottle … By gaining what they do not understand, they slowly find themselves in the tight underbelly of a metaphysical decompression … Like dropkicked angels licking their bruises, there is a slow insurrection of the sacred objects around them … The graphic validation of molecules disavows the trouser-flogging ratios while philosophy continues to get adroitly accomplished in the back parking lots … In this high heat of dead mid-summer, The fecund stench of this sluggish river Allures the green & rampant youth Towards a thug life full of empty jive …
21 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Note to self: Churlish snarling OK Polite rejoinders not OK Tactile delights on tap from a svelte succubus, Her uterus of light feeds the succor part … This mallet of my imagination surely Keeps whomping on all that is so painfully beautiful … A bold imagination does not forget The lingering longings that come With a smack AND a kiss … After the ass-kicking, more energy work was needed for deletion of all the non-verities … Yet, there was also wondering about the reverse polarity of her “pussycentric” etherics too … Animal recipes were served up as trailing indicators, & the cheap thrills suddenly became the hasty furniture thrown together for an emergency poetry reading …. Digging up these gold doubloons In the back yard Only brings on further misfortune: The flower beds are now in ruins! Her amorous scent drifts upwind, Hidden formulas of paradise work their ends … Above, the sky preambles The longing for a heart’s transformation …
22 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
These heartbeats, a caravan heading for trouble … Just as one must pull back in order to leap better, Smoke insists upon being my metaphoric teacher … Whereas daily do I reinvent this rugged incoherence, Spontaneous imagery remaining the saliva of reverie, The blank page still invites the words to dream … These cullings are mashed and remashed, Leaps & turnings of conventional posing Willfully ignored in deference to Arbitrary death which remains a living fact … He impulsively renounced Pathos, then thought perhaps he better not … Spiral visuals & the philosopher’s stone led to love & its spectacular disappointments … Thereby were many road trips never taken to denial’s estate sale … Riot weather set the feeble skies ablaze, above the very streams from which the poets drank … Irony turned from ironic to iconic as the scimitar of audacity then struck swiftly … Gestures abstract and otherwise poignant in the feminine wind became so many unintended draconian measures … This dude’s staked out at a local washateria, Loitering at poverty central … Better days ahead for sure, even as What was most secure just fell off the cliff … Our wild ancestors, touched by the cold extremes, Their tribal identities bearing the emblematic hand … The Dogstar still rises just so it can preoccupy some of us …
23 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Inexplicably befriending the jet-setters, The delish possibilities only vaguely imagined … Even so, I no longer carry that mortgage around my neck … Insomnia’s mesh, like a drift net, Opens the long purse-seine Of my somber slumbers … Hoping only for a 50-50 on the deal, the weight of wait rends/rents the fabrics of rancor & goodbye … The desolation of murderers then serves up its own parenthesis … Oh how the ludicrous nature of human beings must so amuse the higher orders … Living the life that’s least sticky, even as The rough parsings are not well formed today … More link-baiting triage lies ahead on the Internet… Sexy goddesses, unpierced to the max, Really do have this thing with the wolf-moon going strong … Under which the outline of their breasts grant so fine a whim … By the somber waters of a dark redemption, On a remote beach love was made in the burning fog … Afterward, the tide swept over the waiting willing flesh … Raining on through the Beltane hours, The fire dancers were nowhere near deterred … Within that tribal chorus, strains of gratitude Echoed out against the wet frenzied night …
24 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The flood-plains of fat living Have commenced the periodic dry-up … This will to outlast the crumbling stanchions Of the staid quo & fading crimsons, will yet prevail … & any further largesse certainly looks to get riven By delusion’s dumb dead hand … Obsequious rages mimic the comfort zones, Backhand that fear before it takes you down … The fires of undoing lick out against the flickering nights … The low-level background insect hum Filling the air out here in the deep woods: Great spasms of insight dog this elastic walker … Those gifts to Cortez triggered the bloody native fields … What Moctezuma’s oracles had overlooked Proved to be mighty fatal … On that last day, The precise fire of soothsayers went to cold ash … Well hang it all! Lucifer just flatout fucked up – Period! & what a kiss-my-ass sorry bastard he was too … Now, he’s just a stoved-in control freak licking clipped wings … His romantic regrets of savage self-love Never got redeemed in those imprecations of false light … All this giddy-up from the domestic goddesses, Some making mediocrity look like a suburban virtue … Worse than angels gone rotten, the Virgin’s imprimus Fosters more deadly routines for the newly doomed …
25 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The most loyal friends seem to be the far strangers, Even if their elbows weep with elaborate tattoos … As we shelter up with the artistically inclined, so much Body talk in the air, all the smooth words turn to vapor … Distance can be a relationship extender they say, Even as he quips that he only wants a shot at her love … In the background, the gods still smugly delight In the asymmetric ruins we create … Oceanic horizons keep the good views going, Just because the current one has lost its eyes … The evening air tonight feels iridescent as molten earth … Context is capable of killing too many nights of irony, Especially when the tensions have created a leaping spark … It seems only right that an infinity of sighs Can & will accept the further unfathomable losses …
26 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Three/The Mayhem of Delirious Glances
27 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The smiling heart so hard to find/achieve Envy’s never subtle, nor grossness pleasing A fluency in glossalalia will allow The exhalations of poetry to maintain renewal Masticating the world gets so tiresome The whirling darkness of man against man Monster comebacks set new records of futility Fame’s curtain goes up & then there’s no one there Scripts from the pop cult underbellies Alliterate the taskings, a tsunami of hyped visions Leaves only boatloads of daily fatigue It’s a damn shame snobbery’s so heavy These Mamas walking around w/ their huge rocks While the rest of us make do w/ the lesser steaks Any release from the world of heroes & history Gets done by riding out the fearsome minutes Mindless redundancy does not equal consensus The percussion of fingers denatures all the indifference Allegories of light keep us from drowning Even Venus works by her moonlight while counting swans Carnality’s alternative postscripts hum along opaquely Walking through the intentional void As I navigate the sidewalk shoals With plenty of aplomb and woundedness; The gathering wind notarizes this passing
28 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Far thunder incubates above the croaking ravens I get so proud as I anticipate the hatching of More percussive eggs by this angry sky Unhappiness is the culprit that promotes The damage done … In this sense, we’re all outliers, Even when our hands underwrite each other’s usefulness In the atmosphere of this unfinished life The heart trembles in need of humble occupation; Such a cold anguish saddles this thirsty psyche It’s the solitary tendencies that call the tunes Even with the days wound tighter than snakeskin; A life led on a diet of chop bones & long wishes To be rudely integrated also means being a raw creature & of course society fosters any further encouragement By noxious appeals to the lightly seductive self indulgences In a pursuit of gross careers costing one’s integrity Enduringly valid are factors of non-temporal scope Amid the liens of self-sanctioned destruction The art of determining how to survive in the anarchy Equals how to function while changing course; The damage of sweat rises w/ the greatest of ease This canoodling cadence of gristle & growlers Slips up while sidestepping the scatological ordnance Yes something is gravely wrong in the rhythm zone today
29 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The intrepid weeds flourish in the cracky sidewalks Trees leaf out, birds sing and song Even the blunders of futile comebacks Are not enough to defy the shelving of life & death All things new below the summer skies The circling raptor soars within his eyes The slinged arrows of many former tries In the recreated past lurks a rubber disguise The exploits of daylight leak Through perplexed evenings By logarithms of the opaque Do the wow & flutter remix the whimsical motions What must be spoken of now is no longer forfeited ‌ To anticipate these recipes of resentment ‌ only this Requires a rationing of the animal mentations One may enjoy the membranous labyrinth As the swage thickens out beyond the deep blue sea Only there lies the proper study of significance I listen for a rupture that never occurs An attention transfixed by the furiously moving air Such wrinkled foolishness only belies further confusion Fire rising in the ice, the burning lights Off far Antarctica beckon w/ an antiseptic glow All feels clean but strangely unwashed
30 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The misfortunes of children water our eyes Such is the artillery of these cruel days The sky trembles & roars on here in the Below Perhaps it is the quaffing of morons Which presently obscures my vision The blasting caps of hubris & intrepid folly As real-time proof that certain Non-perfections reside only in the dents Clean head shots never easy, nor certain You might win the round but still lose the fight So, feeling inexplicably malaised, I yearn for A fortuitous association w/ the pagan hordes We undulate through the slothful moments & false sentiments for fallen pop stars Irony’s river moves the adroit ineptness … The need for breathing does not come easily One ends up asking: Why do we wear The garments of stagnation While the further dimensions of Nothing Form such weak threads between Us, each other, and this terribly battered world The terra incognita of this quotidian mess Only empty roads through “reality’s overlay” Contradiction & irony offer the fuels for more creativity
31 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Is not this destiny an endless conduit The demise & exit a next world aperture Breath serving mostly as common denominator? Orpheus prefers not to have any sonnets Being fully capable of wailing out his own lamentations, His blue flames overriding all barbarous behaviors Within the tonalities of ancient fire Formed by a Heraclitean equation of creation Do such glimmers of future dreams dwell Enunciating against the syllables of fools The impoverishments remain strictly a medicine This notoriety of mine now a line of credit Loaned out against the formerly good days The eyes of the world are tired Tired because of the hypocrisy & deceit; The heinous omission of key details Has surely vouchsafed the mega-frauds All authority eventually becomes a caricature of itself Pocketed influence fuels the hypocrite’s game Their sleep spilling over with prime fugitive activity “We who dwell in these alienated lands” Power must be stripped from the impersonators; Ortherwise, the kickbacks will still switch & twitch
32 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Adding noise for safety purposes Canceling noise for sanity purposes Yelping about the obvious ‌ All this hides the true costs of further realignment Repressed desire represents hidden culture traits Eating and copulating designated by their usefulness As in private devotions & the motions of preying
33 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Four/Conversations with Gravity
34 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
A Plethora of Growlers A nurturing meal of ugly surface things In the making of half-baked social muffins … Bloody but stylish are the damaging incivilities … Elegies not written, but rather offered To the Orphic imperatives & the fourfold gods … Jamming content into form by the literary burglers, Old fly-blown catechisms get Washed down the sewer of yesteryear … A java-fueled frenzy of online postings await, As nocturnal statistics fail the login process … Even if who you are is still who you are … This fresh lightning symbolizes purified medicine While the brilliance dispels, perhaps compels … The murkiness of anxious summer nights Gallops into the void of wounded paradox Where even Lack has a underlying structure … How does one squander what has not been possessed …? With the default-to-blur ratio always the category killer, Social turbidities are now our meat & potatoes where Flurries of belligerence cream the anatomies …
35 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The milk of language supplies the audience’s trauma, More ludicrous than old farts driving flashy muscle cars Through unknown temperature differentials Amidst the shadowed bastardizations of tall buildings … Dropping the Walls precludes any return of the damned, As further hermetic language then becomes necessary … Encoding the silences, darkness yet provides brief succor In that there will be no hard-scrabble poetics w/o tears; Memories of the race are viewed in the evening’s burl-fire … The archetypal synthesis of our earthly zones Is a luminous intuition which bespeaks a future life … One glance at the water & you’ll have your trusty amulet By which the wind will renew the fresh hypnotic sky … As hungry reading of the “poeticsphere” beckons, The demands of this world bolster intrepid resolve, Through which the rectilinear world yelps for A badly needed curvature makeover … The mashable cynicisms act like a blow-dryer on foggy reality, While her kisses take flight from the world’s dark nether side … Yielding an orbit of shadows upon muddy water, A slow psychosis surfaces after decades of shameful hide & seek … The big birds return as the guns go silent, Compressions of light fall into the colors of evening, Slow piano notes create synaesthetic imagery, & the tonalities of silence now offer up calm surrender …
36 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The first birds of dawn indicate yet another day of struggle, Even as walking in desultory fashion never disappoints this guy; The local cougars now make house calls for fresh dog meat, & in this local universe of obsidian, whiskey, & lightning strikes, An accomplished lethargy depletes the looming midday hours … There will be no obsessing on the losses, no sir, Only because it’s all just a walk-away shrug now … Any possible wealth is only linked with the ephemeral, Truly indicated by the trees which turn green each April … The hermetic dictums shine on through dubious times, The illusions keep burgling the palaces of deceit, & Fear will suffocate the wise makings only if so permitted … The wreckage of decades rolls on through the stanchions, Our faith in Half-Off days will be sorely tested for sure … Driftingly sober am I in this blind asylum of fool’s errands … The gangsta showboaters w/ their “Can’t Touch This” swagger, Insisting on taking their clichéd shots like snipers in towers; & we still wonder why we anoint this veil of invalid insanities … Nothingness still tricks us with these little hidden alcoves Where we store up the unhelpful nuggets of infinity, Our minds being so full of the inconsequentials these days … The rules really don’t apply when everything keeps shifting … The necessary work gets done by dodging the futile motions, & these trendy gadgets are still a must-have For these techno-orphans who yearn To experience a nostalgia for the never-experienced …
37 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Healthy snacks for dirt cheap; or else the lowest bidder gets it for free … And then we get left w/ an economic slag-heap courtesy of the traders … GETTING THROUGH IT seems to be high on everyone’s wish list As this collective crown of thorns only goads the needed survivals … The pester agents saturation-bomb our irritated days, While the generic flaws of consumer goods havoc our wreckage … “Where’s the love?” you ask, never expecting even half-an-answer … These dead roses hang upside down, only to indicate a former life … If the means forsake the ends, then why ransack the becoming …? “THAT DIRTY LITTLE TRAMP!” also goes w/ a passion for ignorance, Like the premiering of wild horses on celebrity patios & The visual feeds upheld by angles of logarithmic signal flux … If only the non-linear ultimately prevailed, benevolent mutations Might then live on as the evolutionary remnants we have now become … The calibrated nostrums belie our bedeviled tracks As the blatant snickering spares not the unfolding deceptions … Dodging & ducking through the malodorous winds he yells Achtung! Line up for inspection you bodacious slackers! Tattoos and yoga are now listed as line item addictions In the ridiculous drifts of the neoplastic status arenas … The fundamental problem turns out that literal language Keeps clogging up the syntax flow in the metaphoric plumbing … Stand back & stay vigilant for any impending image gusher … I hold such a subtle edge to the vital stuff & hopeful dross, This language bitch of mine is a true word salvation … Like a vomitorium disgorging just so many satiated spectators, It is truly the infraspecific passions which disturb the stasis, Such as running naked along the freeway at midnight …
38 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
This fusion of absurdities betokens only imagined offenses While the morbid angles of dark matter tragically turn Against a sun now burning weakly through the marine layer … Various knots of eternity still lampoon my intrepid step, These verses equipped & provisioned for metaphor-like effect … The thematic fugue juice just keeps on rolling somehow … Grammar sometimes pyrotechnically emanates In the subvocal suasions throughout the mind of words … A reading of the idioms becomes closely bound & echoic By an eclectic emphasis in a diffuse psychic effluvium & also by the annexing of natural process vectors … The lemmas get stressed in order to alleviate The pathologies & goal-directed behaviors Of the many sounds so suggestive of jabber transmission … Thereby flows the tears & rage into a spontaneous rapture … The alloyage of cynical pain & primitive savagery Persists in everyday talk About kissing the hinder parts … By the vehicle of mutagenic attractions do we Observe the mating of extreme alien bodies … Directions of love include amplexus & anagogic acts All the while any staring at bare walls Results in clean & tight viewings … These hybrid scribblings end in a difficult translation, While pressing PLAY remains a source of hesitation … In Carnal Apocalypse do the rank hearsays of fleshly treason reside As Demeter initiates cloud gazing upon her flash-horizon point; Gossamer atmospherics scribe verse across this azure evening sky …
39 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The appearance of strangers invoke the first omens, The world feels & compels the sum total of incompletion As dark luminosities & the riptide of the opaque Ring up what may be unmerciful … Social thrill levels insist on the narcissistic quicksands of misfortune, The Totalizers w/ their hard-ons blur the parting shot factors, &, strangely enough, cider vinegar currently Has a higher use-value than old pieces of minted silver … This spawn of ages does me proud tho, The gritty moments drip away Into the unnecessary aftermaths Of a shattered heart broken with results … In that weary smile of hers were all the traumatic jolts Still fully loaded, an opaque wind passing over Her phantom geography, & nocturnal petitions Were issued & sent forth With a deep residual hope never fulfilled … In the heat of argument, interminable secrets leapt thru the air, Acts of love were no longer referenced to anything related to love, Sonnets of resolve went astray as needs were all contraindicated, Way too many terms & conditions linked to those couplings, Even as she had mercy-fucked her way through those long nights; A finely-calibrated darkness had loomed large & wide-eyed then … Experience includes the shock waves of projected events, Such as form arising only as a vague extension of content; Or questions about the ratio of a leg opposite & a leg adjacent; Or the sound of hands predicating all the noises of creaturehood … Any talk of stimulus packages becomes more whim than wham, & Oral defenses are strictly for personalities marked by the heat of fools …
40 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The structures of the oblique calm as well as confound, The shiny measures of the bathetic bewitch the small minds With a petulant noise-stench that throws off the tenuous balance; The shadows of God index all existence fallen or otherwise ‌ The ancient seed of days resides within the eternal paradox As the ontological anchor of our daily routines, Vouchsafed by the comprising of non-sequiturs, Which truly remains our inalienable right to write ‌
41 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Poem for a Future Love No, surely it’s not the cool generic love I desire … That love that skates upon the surface Of our hellos & goodbyes … No, but rather has that requisition been filed For the hot specific love so craved … The one that makes the head spin & Makes me know the word vulnerable … I wish to reach for that which is felt, The target far more than Desire’s reenactments … I wish for you to wash over me, With the overflow from your tidal heart … & yes, I will wait for the pull of night To flood the shore of this raw emptiness … Perhaps w/ a factor of delimiting blindness, I am not staring at my future love … Perhaps it is only as imaginary beings That we might walk through this fire together … That love might be stirring restlessly next door, And yet remain light-years away … If desire is to get any further traction, It will depend on how much crazy fire Moltenly flows out of these veins …
42 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Oh yes, this Love … What would I know about this Love? This Love that airbrush-edits the days, Wanting the meaning but afraid of the content … If there is to be any kindled spark-by-kiss, Our association will then be in the direction That our footsteps decide to travel …
43 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Litany of Lament I lament the hushed clarion of your long delayed leaving … & yes, I do lament the intractable dumbness That has extinguished all the better chances … I lament that it’s not the same, never will be the same, & yet it’s the same as it’s always been … Likewise I lament you not having leapt into my waiting arms When you had that chance … A fine invitation such as it was … So now I lament the closed, the unclosed, and the should-be-closed Storefronts of your insufferable indifference … I lament this tidal fatigue as it washes over and over me … I lament the forlorn sax notes as they haunt The vacantly hot afternoons filled w/ my crippled future … Even as I yet lament the orgasm of queens, their royal Masturbations twined in sedative delight & the shine of shame … I truly lament that so much fermenting pain Is the necessary ingredient for a soul’s recipes … Lamentably do I lament the contradictions of hypocrites, even as They become consumed by the flames of their self-sermonizing … & thereby do I lament all future apologies that have no fragrance In the undone work that might still be gestating … I lament that our gestures have become dulled By the clichéd frequencies of our troubled natures … Palpably do I lament the hands of pretentious practitioneers … & intrepidly do I lament my colorblind dreams, even if they Do not prepare me for the cruel absorption of life’s hot mash …
44 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
I lament the pursuit of absent benefits devoid of new resource … I justifiable lament the mindless drones who feel that they must pester others in order to justify their living … I lament my incomprehension of the notion “blind justice” … & I also lament the agenda-mongers who insist that their actions Are in no way an example of a pimple on a donkey’s ass … I lament the silly notion that there are “edged” galaxies … I lament that many dubious facts also make for mostly deluded issues … & then I wonderingly lament insouciant homeboys who cruise by on hot afternoons, giving & getting what they insist they have coming … I also lament the gravid fakeries & ambiguous hypocrisy That continuously damns the false lives of the hoodwinked … I lament that the ground zero of our future well being Has not and most probably will not ever be declared … I sadly lament that what was formerly noble is now ragged … & I truly lament that all these testimonies of success Are so tied in w/ having accomplishing so little … I regret the driveling surface encounters that Continue to impact my impaired self-respect … I lament that everyday perceptions of time are accelerating Even as all my blood tests have now come back clean … Even so I lament all those times that my breath was NOT held … I lament the lack of a rebuilt Constitution Replete with the elements & axioms of choice … I lament the deep structures of her former presence Absent now in the neighborhood of supernatural derivatives … Holistically do I lament that what is not derivable from the sum of its parts Must then be equal to or greater than any resulting whole …
45 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Taking full responsibility, I lament an inability to handle Any form or even a manifestation that might still function … Yet, I will never lament my goal to make harmony in and with the text, Irrespective of whatever happens in the interval … & inexplicably do I lament former persons whose remains Are elsewhere, bound for unspecified destinations … So, I do lament the many derogatory implications on the nature of action … I continuously lament the fake promulgations of Ezra Pound etc… I indignantly lament all this fumbling around looking for a center … & boy do I ever lament not having enough artifacts of silence & a firm rapture of the hands … I lament having to step around the large steaming piles Of scuttlebutt that greet me each and every morning … I cluelessly lament wearing squeaky shoes on foggy mornings … & you bet I lament that way too much ambiguity Has been so misused as an inappropriate decoy-device … Righteously do I lament that the failure of the Republic Is mostly about not falling back for the punt … I regrettably lament not letting my dormant strangeness emerge any earlier than it actually has … & finally I lament that we devour Time Even as it devours us … Amen
46 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The Aisles of Paradise Thanks for the grace she said (Extracts of kindness confirm Evidence of barefoot healing & The forward memory of rainbows) Thanks for waiting in the heat she said (Where positioning implies ability, Where turbulence & ire Burn off the acquired imperfections) Thanks for the signature kiss she said (The taint of zealots in the time-lapse Of dark sarcasms Flash-forward the pinwheels of romance) Thanks for watching my backside she said (The despair of hobos conceals the hidden Expense of buying time As shame gets put out into the sun to bleach)
47 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Thanks for coming round to rouse my fire she said (Band-aids for the sublime, like the Peeling wallpaper of martyrdom, end up As the calipers of asymmetric reckonings) Thanks for maintaining my illusions she said (A true friend remains true under the Badlands crossfire of indigenous smudging & the bloated bounty of desolate lovers) Thanks for dropping your privacy she said (Kissing hello is pretty weak compared With kissing goodbye ‌ For it is then that The designs of mutual entrapment disappear) Thanks for the ongoing wonder she said
48 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The Ascension of Rocks Mr. Heckle & Dr. Hide Stand by in stand-by Lucidly observing The problematics Of developed chests & vanity plates; Of cultural sin & in ovo nuances; Of the majesty of vertiginous life; Of digital misanthropy & pan surrealisms; Of bodacious flarfings & factoid sojourns; Of the sleep of ravines under marzipan clouds; Of vulva fondue & silly mantrums; Of yummy carbs & sugar comas; Of time triage & demonized deities; Of tough escrows & eyeball witnesses; Of staring goats & perishable rockasms; Of strange Warhol moments & affluenzic infants; Of theological isotopes & tweaker roundups; Of shuddering URL transfers & the mysticisms of potassium rush; Of the quiddity of rust & the moaning of shadows; Of status: hiatus & hiatus: status; Of free nibbles & layered awakenings;
49 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Of the typography of silence & irksome collateral acts; Of the muck of the people & the Vox Populi behind it; Of delicious head-slappers & totally sudden smackdowns; Of hypothetical shit & the just plain flabulous; Of generational myopias & janitorial duplicities; Of chainsaw hallucinations & the Velcro of supernovas; Of gropable sextortions & the ratings bump of pimped whack jobs; Of aging syncophants & the opening of suicide doors; Of the triage of moments & the hot soup of hands; Of metaphysical pugilists & the spasms of Masters; Of the demolitions of pumpkins & the Big Kudos of pychos; Of the sorrow of tents & the biotrance of famous refugees; Of squabbling space truckers & the treaties of fiat money; Of the Future of Eden & the exotic mulch of feral eyes; Of reblogs in default salvation & the counterfeiting of light; Of duct tape poetics & the disqualifications of the future; Of state bankruptcies & the final graffiti work of heroes ‌
50 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
A Distant Eckstasis
to the memory of Philip Lamantia
Crippled attainments Bust it out By firebombing The bunko dramas By holding the blind stares Under a conspiracy of dreams A distant eckstasis Works further options By metaphoric vertigo Cloaking the rude semblances With the full machinery of darkness
51 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Five/Dull Brilliancies
52 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
When you’re up to your ass in alligators Holmes, maybe draining the swamp just might save that sorry ass of yours … You know Baldini, I just try to keep moving forward, Even in spite of myself … But wouldn’t you know, today has been A sure-fire tutorial in the way of hard knocks … It’s all about what you see Holmes, not what you seize … OK, now listen, stop w/ the noise putty and tell me: Just where does the gravity of your focus lie? With plucking, not seizing, the day … He had mostly wandered around town this one day, feeling vaguely dirty and loose … Like a refugee in his own town almost … Life had an estranged sense to it today, feeling very much like a “cement trampoline”… This was truly a trespassing through the velocity of shadows and cruel echoes, the hours becoming almost intolerable in stretches … The transcript of his life struck him like a disastrous parsing of errors, like a walk through an archive of attempts at avoiding sudden buttkicks, even as he stutter-stepped over the cracks in the neglected sidewalks, striving to maintain a painful focus …
53 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
He noticed a bumper sticker on an abandoned station wagon: TAILGATING IS STRESS it screamed out at him … Having just rained, there were tons of carbon rainbows in the puddles … Those fractal emulsions of crankcase oil and skywater that were amazing to behold …
Living on, and through, the daily discards, it was pretty damn obvious that wealth was all about using well what you now had in front of you … Even as dropping the resentments continued to be one of his daily chores … Having been visited by periodic and semi-fatal traumas, it took him awhile to get the balance going again …
Sometimes you just have to be your own angel Holmes… No, I really don’t think so my man … I think the kindness of strangers has always been my angel … What I mean is that when it comes to marshalling the odds, You just gotta dial it in … Am I right? OK, sure … Kind of like self-kindling the fires of your own making … Is that what you’re talking about?
It did appear like he was just trying to know the road better, Even as it wound through the loose effluviums & vague terrains of so many questionable hours … Hey man, your saving grace just might start Screwing it up for the rest of us … Think about it … Well, dammit, it’s hard to keep this Eastwood demeanor going When the flesh is so trembling & weak these days …
54 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Hey, how come Carl’s limping like that Holmes? Oh, that moron … He shot himself in the knee cleaning his gun … Mmmm … Well, he does seem to have this penchant for getting Hit by lightning every seven years … Yep … And he’s always seemed pretty vocal About his tortured silences too … Well, speaking of that, then there’s Eddie, Who smokes his butts down to the filter… Sure, but he’s an acid casualty, right …? He’s been standing by the side of the road W/ his thumb out for over 40 years now … Man, is that SAD or what …? Isn’t it just another symptom on how California has lost its dreamed lucidity …? Yeah, well, it seems to me like it’s all been Pretty murky now for a very long time … OK Baldini, here’s a poem I wrote last night: Living on false starts & scattered parts A life of gristle sandwiches & deoptimized ratios A versed sluttage formed in the daily meatgrinder Leads me to a thought: I could have been a lonesome wrangler And been buried with All my empty whisky bottles …
55 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Whaddya think? Well, Holmes, that just sounds like a real Headache-in-a-Can … But, I guess it works … I can’t keep this shit inside of me, ya know …? Well sure … & it also comes down to what you’re looking for, right? Sure enough my man … In my case that would be A good woman who’s logged some tough miles And isn’t all smug and snotty about it …
*******************
His survival methods had been composed In the shored ruins, Kept alive by stubborn grief & a demolished constitution … Ya know Holmes, if it was raining milk right now, We’d all be soggy cereal … Oh boy, that sounds like an ugly but true metaphor … But in the bigger picture, it also seems like We’re all just watching paint dry too …
56 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Rolling along through Down Time, The perseverance factor needed most, Acts of dark matter continue to Adhere to his opening heart … He had never made any claim to experiencing such things as microbursts of inner light … Obeying the cadence of random notes proved to be a much more challenging thing for him … & when any zest for living was palpably missing, he swore & gnashed at the daily mess of it all … If you play around too much w/ serious convictions Baldini, You can bet your bottom dollar you’ll be misinterpreted … Yeah, whatever Holmes … All I know is that there’s Nothing better than a good BBQ on a rainy day … Sure does seem like your man-nature is coming very close To being a clinical syndrome there Mister … Listen Holmes, this is more than just an ego-litany … The only enemies you have are the ones you create … Am I right? … So, take care of your friends … Otherwise, they will evaporate on you …
Can’t wait for this economic shakedown to end (he thought) … Maybe it will end w/ a KO in the eighth round … God, what a boneless world this is, littered as it is with unraveling chew toys & these fake celebs that get SO frustrated with their aging process!
57 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
From afar, the creditors stalked, Expecting him to bail them out … Goddamn that’s too ironically ironic he mused … His daily accounts careening towards zero, His epitaph still remained uncomposed … & yet, the Fates still gauged him favorably …
No question Baldini, you are definitely a caricature of yourself … All about lookin’ good don’t apply to me Holmes… you know that… For sure, the maintenance of appearance is a tiring thing … A day late and a dollar short is what I’m all about my man … The necessary measures, coming in dribs & drabs … He jettisoned the baby’s bathwater of commonplace effluvia With plenty of backspin still left for his fecund imagination … Under the sky camo weathers, He adroitly dodged the pigeon guano & the valueless bearings of men … Caving is not an option for me right now Holmes … So, when it’s triple digits, Who gives a crap what the thermometer says?
58 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
His future “on lease”: Head down, he charges on into the Wayward days, bulling a way forward … I said to him, Yes your Honor, I declined to pick up the tab … & He goes, And what brought you Into the bar in the first place Mr. Holmes? &I said, Because I consider strangers To be some of my best friends …
Word’s out this morning Holmes … Watch out for Hammered Jack … He’s been lurking around at the midnite buffett … You & I both know what kind of mayhem follows from that … He’s a Peter Pan w/ a beer can … Doesn’t want to grow up & “get it”… Dumb as a box of rocks ain’t the half of it Baldini … All it takes is just one good belt, & sure-as-shit you’re off On non-stop sleighride through blue hell … Partying like a rock star no longer works for this dude… What, you can’t hack it anymore? Naw, just no longer see the point of it Holmes … You know what I’m sayin’, right …?
59 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Spark the amends, let the guilt dissolve … With trial & mostly error on his side, An accomplished strangeness began to find its discharge … Yo bodacious brother … Make my dull day shine brightly … OK, back to you on that one Holmes … Plus, you can take that as an order! Knees and prayers were mutually exclusive for him … There were no wings involved with this cliffhanger life, Even as mystery’s flag kept dropping its furl … Christ, Holmes, what are you trying to do … Write your way through your suffering or what …? Of course I am … Sometimes the festering particulars Need to work up to the surface for removal … So … Straight up my man, that would be it … With greatly reduced baggage he was now able to glide Through the pensive fields of those still encumbered by theirs … He began to get good at working w/o a net, Even as the daily abyss yawned wider … Paradox & ambiguity had become his Eucharist … I look in the mirror every morning & ask “Who will be the next YOU?” & … Strong coffee has always been My future text of morning …
60 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
You know, I really like running a weed-wacker … I submit to the grass stains on my pants willingly As the high foliage inexorably falls before me … Well, it’s in the thin times like this Holmes That we all end up slogging through the Fat Mud … We’re all just a half-step ahead of the Big Rumble … Hanging curves & life gone viral wove anxious thickets As he came close to drowning in the monolithic sorceries … The daily exits remained a vexing veil of shadows … OK Holmes, try this one on: Not much to say in an upbeat way Longed-for-Love in the ashes As the junkies hoard their stashes No need now for the flash and bling Only love of truth still wears the ring Tap the tills and fold the bills That’s why we hide out here in the hills Yeah, that’s nice Baldini … But what’s known for sure Is that jazz ain’t dead, and never will be … Sure Holmes … But when you figure out how to feel the joy, Let me know … Meanwhile, you need to know That emotive punctuations just don’t work for me …
61 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Sweat and sin always imply existence, Even as his revenue-stream slid into ruin; Yet, eating smoke had taught him how to breathe life … Money in the bank had always been a stranger, As the afflicted confusions kept bankrupting the “recovery” … The quotidian mess kept torquing down into the yawning of days … He recalled joyriding around in a ’65 Mustang during his teenage years … Pedal to the metal, hurtling down that canyon road … One wrong pull on That steering wheel, and it all would have been curtains for sure … A gregarious loner, clearly obscure in intent, Impractical w/ the manly pragmatics, The delaminations of body & soul really not an option, With so many attempts to re-create that guy in the mirror … Slimed by the fame-lusters, His gentile features in solemn display, He persisted by reason of the benevolent clouds … Well, how does one bottom out when there’s no bottom? How can I say anything when I’m at a loss for words? Like I said Holmes … The glory cornucopia is over … It’s done. Period … So, what, we’re just supposed to wing it without a damage plan? Yep … Bootstrapping an outside chance at resurrection, Starving pennies desperate to hitch a ride, Any wanting today will yet generate more desire later …
62 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
You know Baldini, it’s like that sinking feeling That accompanies an unintended step Into a mound of fresh dog shit … Mmm … OK, tell me again, how did she die? OK, I’ll say it once more … She died from bad luck … If the barefoot Socrates was around now, They’d kill him off by a denial of food stamps (he thought) … & by what heinous imperatives do these vile ones keep advancing? The chattels of his former life somehow kept reapperaring, while The spaces he walked through remained under construction … So it’s 9:27 p.m., and I’m having one of those What the goddamn hell am I doing in the world moments … You know, where you just want to Hit the DELETE BUTTON on the whole shebang …? Wish I could be as tenacious as you Baldini … Tired & weary ain’t the half of it Holmes … Even as the undone work whines away in the background … Sounds like you need a little skylarkin’ time there Bud …
In the hot fog yes he felt his lower aches … I will outlast the crumbling stanchions he vowed …
63 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The sore evidences summed up his needs, As the trajectories of an empty heart Somehow just kept flaming-out … Cursing through yet another fire-suppressed season, A season of grand slams & vaulted sun, he deemed it Best to carry one’s own shovel in times such as these … Even when in dry-dock, although still lost at sea, He stalked his missing pieces through parts unknown … Under the swift moving cirrus, his skin darkly ripened …
****************
He told me it’s best not to have an ending … He also said he was no longer In a relationship w/ Nothing … Only a month previously, his relation had looked at him with semi-fixed eyes, mumbling the words “I’m dying” … Sitting next to him, the rushing sound of eternity could be heard, closing in fast … He had left for just a moment to get a glass of water for the man’s parched throat … When he returned, his relation had slipped away, just like that …. He held the hand going cold for a few moments, then picked up the phone … Later, he recalled one Christmas as a child, looking up at his grandfather’s old Winchester .30.30 w/ the octagonal barrel mounted over the fireplace mantle … God, he had wanted that gun so bad … Never had the balls to ask for it though …
Another memory from his childhood home & days: Piles of walnut leaves, fragrantly burning, The autumn air seizing him in transitory wonder …
64 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
His way feeling blocked w/ rule-ravaged life, Dropping it into reverse might still be an option In a world that insisted on damning the metaphor … If I still owned a house Baldini, could it ever be a home? Or would I still just be another wage-slave for survival’s sake? Habitually with a paucity of funds, the vexing configured ownership Of gee-gaws no longer encrypted his sights (or desires) … Even a morbid dread of benign involvements was past his current event horizon … “Barefaced poverty drove me to write verse” said Horace … Dude, his wretched wheel needed some grease! Hey, a big BBQ over at Kenny’s tomorrow Holmes … Lots of eats … Well alright … AND, I do like my meat SLICED … You know, when it comes to eating, you’re no slouch yourself … Oh yes … & just tell Kenny to have those coals nice & hot …
You got all these fat people in fat cars … Is this what This doomed republic has now come down to? Yes it has … & if those fatties think they can still come at me With two pistols blazin’, they better think twice on that … Sure, but sometimes it’s best To fortify yourself with some silence … What …?
65 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Holmes & Baldini gaze down along the empty highway ahead … Just then, a coyote crosses the road in front of them, A black cat dangling from her jaws: Mmmmm … Coyote chow … Do they prefer the black ones? Naw … They just prefer the roadkilled ones … That way they don’t get all scratched up … He thought it only right to think That if there is life here below, Then somehow there must be life above … So many stunning misfires in opportunity’s window, The days were truly the lack without the luster … His instincts for daydreaming had been limited only by The heat-opiate of this past summer’s lassitude …
Listen Holmes, don’t waste your time On spit-in-your-face notions …
Right … Hey, you know the first Law of Holes, right Bandini? Nope … If you find yourself in one, then quit digging … Well sure, but first I have to figure out How to put down the shovel …
66 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Poverty had more than a rancid tang to it … It was now feeling like a really ludicrous Juxtaposition of Flaming Assholes out there …
Goddamn Martha Stewart & her fuckin’ cupcakes …! I mean, the world is ready to burn, And all she wants to do is debate about frostings … He had stopped at the yard sale, looking for old cutlery … Instead, the old lady brought out a box for him to look at … Inside was a pair of pearl-handled derringers … He looked over at her quizzically … Was that a mercenary look he saw in those eyes …? He shook his head No and left feeling silently bewildered … Another of my nieces just arrived yesterday Holmes … Bloody and naked she came into this world … Well sure Baldini, don’t we all?
What’s she doin’ over there Holmes, Making love to that wall or what? Hey now, that’s what’s-her-name’s daughter over there … The one wearing the leather spandex …. Yeah, she’s the one that told me “Being a slut is OK”… That’s what she told you? Yeah, then she said all the douchebaggery Of this world was really getting her down …
67 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
You know Bud … I woke up at her place the other morning … Yeah …? Well, we got up & dressed, & then she fried up some mountain oysters To go along w/ the scrambled eggs … OK …Now that’s interesting … & we washed it down With some stale kegger beer From the night before … During which she Starts in on How We Need to Make Some Changes …
Um, OK … Then what …? Well, I looked at her & said “Goddamn you’re beautiful when you’re cranky”… Oh boy … So then she throws the frying pan at me …
68 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Six/ Daft Raptures
69 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Under first light we broke for cover, Leaving behind the meager vatic rations … The gourd resonators powered us on, As the totemic winds, the sinew power Of the ancients, straightened our course … No mouthpiece needed as the unconscious speaks … The moon tonight is a crescent bone, The metaphorics lurk & loom but do not evade … We map the wind w/ the flights of solitary feathers, The whole point being, amazingly, that there is none … She insists upon blank-gazing the far western horizon, In & at the throes of dawn & the guts of a new day, Her diaphanous bounce still inexplicably Exciting the winged meteorites of August … Yet, lapis & gold were never ours anyway … Those faraway places still remain far away, An exile among familiar strangers that we now call home … The faith undistilled dares to be naïve … That is, Until evil days test the providential stance … Evolution then becomes embedded & replete With the liens of infant deities … Fervor, that rich salt of the Nuevo gods, Might be enough to assure a gustatory salvation … But it will never be the heavy wampum That casts harsh echoes across our trembling hands …
70 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Deferring to the wayward non-happenings By the anticipation of contentious afternoons, We follow disturbance like pursuing wolfhounds … In the imparting of shadows, our dialogue becomes The dog of poetry that actually finds us … As she yearned for a reciprocal release function Amid the stark rarities of a dark blue night, Projecting a displaced climax took place in a huge way … Familiarity became larger than any image of the future, The purposes of deception still lingering yet served up well … Happiness went unmoved By a hypotenuse of salty fire, The splendor of this recondite wasteland Burns off the flaring of unauthorized symbols … Cold lagers formerly mitigated the triple digit days … But, That was back when your eyes were the blast furnaces That incinerated whatever we had between us too … Then as now, I remained sincere in spite of the madness … Why did our blood of lovers Dissolve Into An oozing serum of aloofness …? An overriding duty to preserve what hope remained I suppose … From afar, love hesitated, then the glow was on, Shining like steel implements recumbent in kitchen sinks …
71 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
She was the muse who never bothered putting in an appearance, That mad glint of the commonplace in those eyes of blue stone … Even a theft by fire might have been too late to renew the cycles … Poetic irony … man, what a subtle drug that is … Only the dark metaphors will remain luminous As we mutely crawl through The sodium light of venomous night … Co-factors in the aesthetic distance: Wind harmonics induced by the blended clouds … Metaphoric amplitudes try but fail these bold images … Duration gets abandoned here at the western extremity … Perched here atop a range of mantic strangeness, Oneiric mojo gets written up in a future book of days … Filtrate the unattractive in order To augment further sheared augury… Yes we bless these girasols on the flash-point horizon … Omit the words w/o a syllabic recurrence Sacrifice the chaos of the old & frightfully new Being does not yet exist w/o the accidentals … Mingling chance, the determiner of happenings: The ignition lag of original vernacular Weights the text in order to conceal the meanings … Ellipsis becomes by the usage of omission … By rhetorical self-denials & brooding ephemera By word ratios formed as vectors of trance elements …
72 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
A jargon impetus fires the spasm arrangements, Even if it has to be plastered down by plenty of saliva … When the words fail, then the breath is allowed to increase … The grammar of future days is not possible Without the clashing of forces & ideas, that is, Without some rough texture of turmoil … If a huntress holds a sacred vessel on the left & a blue stone of the ancients on the right, What form should our proper homage take …? If romance is obtained by dividing The assumed by the observed, then a Projected climacteric is all about overcharging the clock …? The exquisite tonic of exacting a kiss Perhaps some luminous plasm at the sublime gate … Yet another act borne by instances of involuntary sighing … Love is down the street, yet so far away … Under the menace of kisses, our associations are The calligraphy by which the distance has yet to close … Your transmigrating eyes are the only homeland security I need … At times, they are the black holes That generate this new universe between us … Then again, you were the storm that never arrived, The abundance that went unleashed, Under such an infinite fragrance of impossible stars …
73 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
If gravity is the glue, then love must be the mortar … Mind too, a fulcrum that moves the days forward … Change also, the only elixir that gets taken as needed … All that passes for so much of our inept bungling Deserves to be deeply buried anyway … Darker than oxblood was the morning sky, Days of acedia accelerated to weeks then As our puny understandings defaulted to further muddle … The gods delight in the asymmetric spectacles, Only through which they are sought and found … This new growth on the trees duly factors my belief … Once did I hold the tympanic bullae of a sea creature … Dense as gold was that wow sensation … That day, the sky was loaded w/ the impending season, The desires we felt became analogues to rare jade, While the nearby ancient cannons oxidized to rust … Stoic is a choice: Horace ate his poverty, then mused upon it … And Issa: well, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore … And Ezra’s litany of Greek & Roman personaii: Well, sorry, but there are no resonations there for this vato … Perhaps the belching of parasites might be far more meaningful … The blistering ninnies still acknowledge me With a smiley hello & an invite to the annual meat event: And just what is in that suitcase of suds ya’ll got there, mister …? Oh yes, the further wonders of Imbecile Science With way too much shuck & jive behind the occluded intents …
74 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
A dialing-in of the chops & licks, a firing off Of the blown bliss in a conspiracy of lusts … These infected souls still itch the romp in all of us, The psyche groping its way through the collective murk … She wants him, but oh the baggage factor: It certainly would never clear Love Customs … The wow & flutter would never hold, Even w/ the full by-products of libido Assigned to their proper firing order … The raging of embers not if but of when … The dancing of maidens precedes noisy couplings, The colored wind anoints their ecstatic faces … In the last lashing hours loaded w/ vivid sighs, Love gets launched like a sheath of golden arrows … In the depth-eating light, Lucid insight splashes me With her cold furious ways … Disappointment has been my career, Not once yet having let me down … Laying it all on the table Has assured no exaggeration … Your diamond river continues To keep that mighty shine going …
75 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Seven/Into the Truncated Dust of Icons
76 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Only want to catch a glimpse of your glimmer as your high frequency smile, such as it is, attempts further purity in this homeland of Irreality … There might be nothing finer than that moment when a woman catches fire … The love spectrum of double fire, in the service of instincts and significance, crystallizes the best, and flushes out the worst … This cul-de-sac of insomnia has become my permanent address … Dreaming while awake has become the grubstake while walking through the daily grind core continues … Translations of motion become the text sandwiches for striving and need; meanwhile, the rainbow bodies continue to defy the experts … Broke in the mundane sense, yet far from broken in the otherworldly sense … Throughout the surrounding horizons are heard the swan songs of the destitute bankers … As a literary barbarian, I yet scale the walls of the philistine complacencies … Having been thrown to the lions several times and yet having walked away mostly unscathed, I’m thinking I can handle further indignities … The non-featured hyphenates of this delaminating world … Rags and rust devoid of acumen betray themselves in all this dung hearsay … Suffering is so fleshily inherent for those who hunt or forage for wounds … So little gets sustained by the raw afflictions while the stifling cretins macerate increased profit functions …
77 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Heroically joined w/ a nymph while bathing, the heroic man observed that Kalypso’s shapely buttocks needed no convincing interpretation … The mythic bodies submit to the default of fate, especially when sexual mosaics are involved … Gilded youth bound before Zeus, devotions to the female principle assuage the flux … The fires of popular undoing paralyze the virtuous while the moronic blazes rage on … Lucifer gambled on the overseership of the world, and thus lost his arrogant ass … His broken wings didn’t have a prayer as his fall cascaded earthward … Autumn is the window that underwrites the harvest of downtimes … The wafting smoke of afternoon fires restlessly weave the patterns of further endurance … Death is such a surly pawnbroker, loaning out against an increasingly feeble existence … The reeking pawnables then become valued at something far-less-than-nothing … Hidden hints of the afterworld determine the metaphoric bandwidth … The sliding shadows seem to be ephemeral bubbles that somehow rebuild these metaphors … Faith dares to be so naïve until a string of iniquitous events further test the intrepid stance … The liens of deity fill evolution with the various de-realizations of quotidian life …
78 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Survival is one tough mother, yessir … I mean, talk about a full frontal uncertainty … The blogs clash, diplomats scurry, the dead varmints get fisted … All attempts at busting through the daily crisis of impending ruin … If desire was a tin whistle, then exact placement of fingers should signal the placed note … If clearing the throat at midnight occurs before a blank screen, is this how one accomplishes the unraveled life …? The truth that comes to destroy incarnate error and such forth, only to dwell in an analog mist & final image … Whipped by the contents of a breath, exalted minds defy the philistine gods … With a readiness to compose gradually, a motion of readouts under the shadow of auguries, language tends to converge to its limits … Ludicrous distortions might even sometimes prevail … Diminutive stature often belies a combative disposition, even as short-statured people also enjoy the amenities of hot smoke … Grades of being often are the result of straining and displacement … When it comes to matters of burning sulfur, the learned idiots are all of the same religion … While the crime is still blazing, the symptoms manifest the neglected things … The night full of eyes called out my name … Consequently, since there was no one home, the night went on without me …… Why so much exhaustion involving the problems of modern being?
79 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
As darkness surged in, I ate my food by the smoky fires, a feeble light flickering through the black quartzed night … Whereby an ode to solitary restlessness emerged, slowly & with many pauses … We took our late breakfast twice weekly at the Grand Totem Café, where, outside of our ken, the noonday river far off invited something between fact & fiction … In the distance, birdsongs summoned the windows of renewal … By the unraveling gestures does the ponderous meringue of useless abstraction occur … Unknown events galvanize all the new directions … Is the wind really a spiritual force? Or is the sun just a fugitive without reproach? Will there be anyone left to ask how to determine the square root of the moment? The important thing to remember is about what is subtracted from reality … Even as the Other can no longer respond, I keep up the correspondence of decades, still awaiting that last & final call … Faux-monastics pray on for those of us who have strayed … A brown-nosing of the lesser deities for sure … While upon their altars are the still beating hearts of sacrificed pagans … The terrible curses involving the body, questions of perversities and such forth … We betray ourselves, thinking there are such things as comforting answers …
80 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Nietzsche’s disdain for women was only a mask for his own feminine side & his other bewilderments … & yet, was it not his own crown of thorns which furthered his desperate desire for survival …? The low irony of getting to have what you want, but then being able to refuse that having, only because by the having of it will there be a boatload of regrets later on … She is the muse who is ever present by her absence … Even a theft of fire might be too late to renew more of the creature cycles … That strange glint of the uncanny in those torched eyes of hers … Sidestepping the cesspool of academic pontifications persuaded me to show my scars elsewhere … It was the intestinal exhaust from the podiums that adversely affected me … Secret proportions of love flex their muscles, strokes of mercy conjugate in ultimate union … The ferric smell of her blood became the flashing anger which readily devoured its objects of attention … The blasting-caps of morons obscure the daily visions … More quaffing of hubris & intrepid folly surely proof that the non-perfections all reside in the dings & dents … Wind images grace the calamity of moments, silence breeds its own discourse, water persists in its own annihilations … &, your love continues to be a distant stranger …
81 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
The acquiring of employments now sits idling, w/ only marginal hope for re-engaging the gears … Capital’s morbidity has now drowned in its own bathtub of over-extended shell games … The poetic fire is pursued in spite of our ludicrous motions, while the afternoon zephyrs extend a generous hand … We thereby become enclosed with the wealth of staggering views from remote locations … The breathing of the dead Gnostics shatters their former Abode of Light … That is, until the Water Ambassador gives the hand signal to lift high all the pleated skirts … Dancing and head-butting with the reborn pagans occurs around a circle of burnt offerings, while the bitterness of gestures no longer seeps through the uncanny nights … To aim the kiss unequivocably is the imperative thing … Otherwise, in the incarnate death of every moment, the burning hopes that sketch out love just might keep howling for attention … These old things glow, even through the rust … I surround myself w/ ivory, rare wood, and highcarbon steel … The dream of days still envelopes me in salt & leather … Slices of Heraclitean Logos form the layers of this transmundane reverie … The ancient afterthoughts form into gestures oblique as ironic surprise waters the future …
82 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
Appealing to futile self indulgence tends toward outcomes of indented immaturity … As in, if DNA ever came in the form of an affidavit, one would be required to sign for its veracity … By not hewing the timber of the gods, subordinate deities remain a source of demonized distress & ruin … Perhaps only a return from death would stoke the primal ghost fires … Written upon the spur of happening, this slow combustion of deliberately smoky & obscure language further deforms the incoherent images that struggle to emerge … Disjunctive synthesis always serves as a means when either attached, or not, to the reader … In situ do so many of these vatic articulations dwell … The antiquated professions are still struggling to explain the retardulated affairs of the lower body, & other insolvable questions, such as: When does elation become a pathological euphoria …? Vulgar oxidations balk all new endeavors while popular sentiments remain enamored with the blood and bone of stumbling beauty queens … Forecasted plagues of banality come to pass when the ancestors have become the enemy … Insipidly do we choke down the dross as corrective social norms continue on an extended hiatus …
83 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
By a looming deflation of their fatuous deceptions, the Glutterati are pre-doomed by their high inertias … Their resumption of the Fall is a progressive disease wounded only by a quickly vanishing light … Far from lovely, a piled on reality-fatigue now creates a more makeshift life … Any which way you add it up, it still comes out to less than zero … This world is only synchro-meshed when the global tranny ends up fully engaged … Otherwise, these fictions we live by are just another veritable fool’s paradise … Even if lightning stands in for the muses, paradox is never just a walk in the park … Oblique metaphorics weep on through the myriad-eyed nights … Pathos rides in hard through the temples of dissonance: inane word safaris, first logics embedded in semantic mess, and worst, the dogmas of nocturnal teeth grinding … Through the mythos, dreams retell the interior cartographies; yet, do we really have any right to breakdown the core of ancient memories …? A turbulent autumn sky, iridescent with molten lava … Triangular fires under the crystallized equinox adjust to the rising winds … Theory’s shadow seeking balance is the true bird that feeds the light … A translating of the ineffable through the tough little daily miracles … Reporting in from the quotidian edges, the days are handing out some rough justice now … Moving the parameters of shit around only feeds the happiness of zombies …
84 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
What is paradoxically well said by the magic hands of ongoing slangism is this poetic blowtorch that further creates the audacities of Whoa … Art has its moments, mostly when it ends up in a strange predicament … An example: when Picasso became incarcerated behind that plate glass window … Tis the season for thunderbird fireballs and the instincts for love … Perhaps ominous foreshadowings of what happens between the inglorious bastings of feeling superfluous & a newly arrived case of restless legs … Femme fatales enter & exit their lives, lived out in unfinished rooms while the storm chasers ride out another failed balloon hoax … Big kudos not needed whenever it’s time to burn the phones by those who thunk & and those who drunk … Somehow it is all still a perfect day in an imperfect world … Under dawn’s melancholy, a choking on Life and emailed non-redemptions … She said No, and the heart was handcuffed and led away … Doing a smoky eye on the hotspur of a gloomy day, the smash & grab of vexed feelings still blurs many of the intents … Skirmishing with the geeked academics, I now see why the Wild West was likely a symptom of something far larger than exorcism and/or salvation … Today, this mirror of sky lays me down mighty hard … &, until my mandrake hour arrives, unannounced, problematic Life will continue to feel like an unnecessary spinal tap …
85 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e
86 | D r o p p i n g t h e W a l l s f o r a T e n u o u s L i n k a g e