THINGS ONLY LIVE ON THE BASIS OF THEIR DISAPPEARANCE

welcome to the psychedelic wonderland
to the celebration of heathen holidays
in overzealous times
and the impermanence of living a clandestine poetry
as we circle around the fire
sending delayed feedback loops to the stars
alongside mermaids and werewolves
with whiskey-glazed lips and wild grins
stars and swords in snails are invoked
to aid in rituals of lo-fi black magic
for the bittersweet promise of a new year
filled with nights passing like dreams

ODE TO A SNAIL

subtle whispers of movement:
eyes atop their stalks
sway with the heavy breath
of exhaust
and moonlight

seductively spiraled and
striped with imprints
of earth
and sky
and the leaden burden
of self sufficient
survival

surreptitious surges
through filth and
up stairs
stretching
sallow skin
and the stain
of passage

the soft scent
of spring
signals
the end
of sleep

BAKHTIN TELLS THE HOUR OF THE STAR

For one has a right to shout, and if we detach ourselves
completely from this impulse all we have left
is the naked corpse of the word,
because what is fully mature is very close to rotting
and every word is directed towards an answer.
So I am shouting, for surely words are actions?
besides, I know about certain things simply by living:
all objects are from one side highlighted while
from the other side dimmed,
and their rhythm is frequently discordant.
This is opaque material and by its nature it is despised by everyone.
The word is born in dialogue as a living rejoinder within it,
exclusively in the present because forever and eternally
it is the day of today.

COLONY COLLAPSE

We woke up today to an environment
in past tense
bees falling from the sky with
pictures of what things were like then
before plastic palms hiding metal skeletons disrupted communication
or maybe it was something in the food?
When we are constantly producing and re-presenting
with voices tinted red and violent
screaming past each other
without a glance backwards
we will never forget our selves.

Under the blanket of night
we stole secrets, glances, feelings of
how your eyes settled so sweetly in mine
followed by lips and whispers of
hatred for lies and other untold dreams.
But like those who came before us
we found that the weight of regret only hangs
heavily on necks overprotected
and passionless, that occupying hearts
if only for a short time
liberates our desires from the stranglehold of time.

HOLES IN HEAVEN

The Earth wobbles more than it used to
and magnetic north is drifting through the
membrane that separates sky and space,
the atmosphere Tesla wanted to make glow
and shield from missiles or radiation but caused
ionospheric disturbances breaking up satellite communication:
radio frequencies arousing the spinning, speeding molecules
until they sweat and glisten
reflecting the mountains, caverns, subterranean
oil wells uncovered through thirty feet of rock,
shaking the earth.
From Athabaskan land in Alaska
haarp songs paint the sky, squeezing
megawatts into gigawatts in defiance of chaos;
indifferent to butterfly wings or lightning
bolts striking the soil.

The satellites are creating holes in heaven
and we don't even know the peak power of an antenna's
pulse as it sends electromagnetic data
coursing through clouds and mingling
with currents of the Auroral ElectroJet,
stimulating filaments and penetrating underground
in rivers of electricity, x-rays, and ELF waves.

But we only think at fourteen cycles per second
and these frequencies can be generated!
which fuck with our emotions and even children
know that minds can be controlled;
after all we are mostly energy, or at least water and waste
equally bioregulated by the earth and
mimicking signals of passivity and anxiety
like needing to piss so bad your teeth are floating.

OAKLAND WILL BREAK YOUR TEETH

The city is calm and sleepy at 3am behind steel shuttered blinds
     quiet and unassuming
The streets are strewn with leaves like forgotten children of the night before everything worth living
     was on the run and those at home were tidily aware of place and reason
     not downtown with the rest of the bums
The walk is long and smooth until roadblocks of carts and speeding ambulances melted daydreams
     of climbing trees or skipping down corners free of street cleaners and crowds of voyeurs
     or skies filled with concrete and flags
Tonight is harsh and barren and the gulls cry for shores unstained and sirens drift on the wind
     as reminders that everything is still fucked

AS SUMMER BECOMES WINTER

Remember when we thought

time was so vast

and attainable, we would hold it

in our cupped hands and

let it gradually slip out

to follow the traces leading

from today to

tomorrow when the clear yellow-white June sun

would reflect off the ocean

in thousands of breathless crystal shards

and we would turn our heads, squinting

and laughing as shallow streams

sprung from our eyes

cutting through dirt caked on our cheeks

churning down the swift rapids of your lips

to fall

so gracefully

down your neck and chest

and whorl and collect between your breasts

in deep pools of merlot?

I made that well the center of my home

and remained by it even after you were gone,

but the city outside expanded

and the space each had

diminished

and small steel houses blanketed the horizon

in various shades of rust

haphazardly built from one another

like an endless row of dominoes

circling my old handmade shelter,

gradually suffocated by ash

and forgotten.