I grew up terrified by life, carrying
the dim blue ghosts
from the violent rooms of my childhood
into every careful motion
as I walked and tripped
through the overwhelming storms
of my species.
I felt hunted
even back at home in the swelling evenings
where my mother whipped the monkey of peace
attempting to create a lower-middle class
American paradise
with yellow paint.

when I turned fifteen
I finally went nuts.

somehow
as the world began to insist upon definition
and the great books that destiny delivered
through my will
only made the big question grow larger
with the sweet help of decadence's
shattered dam
I made it through high school.

college did not work.

since then I have been bouncing between
stupid jobs
stupefied all the while
that not only had society sold these beasts of boss
what might be my only
time
but sacrificing myself
(the only real thing I have/
and not even real)
for causes of idiot capitalism
that said nothing to me
about the truth of existence,
this was somehow supposed
to make me proud?
how did it not occur to these rodents
that there might be better forces or angels or
gods or spirits
watching from a lightning bolt of sexual laughter
measuring our style
and creativity
against the stinking odds of our
weakly guided lives?
I couldn't understand it.

and then to sit here
down to these white pages
that want so much saving,
to take the words in my head
that want so much to dance
and just wrap them in gift paper
so you can feel safer
in your cunning and secret crimes,
goddamnit!
I will not have it!

I was sitting at a table one night in a bar
with a homeless man
on my left
and a young man in a sportscoat
on my right.
the young man wanted to discuss poetry, art,
because afterall
we the artists are the highest of sorts
of course,
the rest of the world should kneel to our careless
creeds and colors,
right?
the bum mumbled something that made
no sense, drunken babble, he laughed and
coughed.
the aristocrat to my right told him to
shut it; we were artists discussing
art,
right?
I convinced the young man to go away
and I stayed with the bum
and we talked about pissing into people's mouths,
drunken babble, we laughed and coughed.

I believe in beauty, I believe the sun
is trying to say something,
but whatever image or deity that you
use
to picture the soul
it moves with the madness of possibility
through both night and day,
it humps both sides of the moon,
it wipes its hairy ass and conducts the choir
of personal revelation
the intense privateness of truth.

I drink
I smoke
I smoke something else
I pop pills
I get horny,
I also live in words
am ignited by the right music
feel a tenderness towards life
and have gorgeous moments under tents of sunset
that leave me dumbfounded by love
and must have inspired the concept of heaven
(like trying to hold sand in a net).

I believe in now over everything.

so you want poems of pliant pretty celebration
as the anger of mankind festers its power
and tries to extinguish oxygen,
but that's like trying to plant flowers
in concrete.

I'm standing here in the hot sun
in a dirty t-shirt
and pants covered in sawdust
in torn shoes and fierce eyes
while the classes the races the sexes the species
practice their fine contempt for one another
while corporations the size of death squash
small businesses like roaches in their kitchen
while dimwitted robots run to run the country
while success is measured in money
rather than joy,
and as I scream
like a caged lion thrashing against the bars
with a devil glimmer in my deep eyes
I raise high my pick-axe
to tear through this concrete that suffocates
our garden,
and I will get my flower
in.

this life is not for sale.

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