to do



breach connections:

-from mind to mouth

-from heart to mouth

-from blood to mouth



cultivate mild deportment & bearing



observe connections:

-from heart to mind

-from blood to mind

-from mind to matter

wait oh wait wait a minute mr. postman



a vial arrived this morning via UPS



sitting just outside my door

a huge cardboard box filled with styrofoam peanuts

contained a much smaller cardboard box

which contained a cheap jewelry box



which held a green glass vial the size of an index finger

filled with some indeterminate liquid

and corked

with a black rubber stopper



I uncorked it right away and held it under my nose



took a deep whiff



minute, white-cold, razor quick hands

raced like liquid ice

up

my sinus



to churn and clasp,

grasping



at the buried nerve stalks,

the backs of my

eyes



Christ, I thought,

tossing the contents of the vial

down my throat

like the shot

it was



now, hours later,

sitting on my roof

under magenta sky,

my skin's

gone dark and spiny

as the stem

of a rose bush



reptilian dusk bloom



emanation



blood-rose ring

around my gold,



slitted pupils,



oh, I am chill.



Baal's lost vodka,

de-routed,

found,



trumps the blood



I am bittersweet

blood god blossom



in the age of rage, death and fire

5 leaves, like a hand



leverage



sky blue as the ocean



leverage



dense humidity in the green white air



leverage



sharp tang of ancestral smoke



put your all into waiting



for the phone call



waiting for your four wheels



to take you up the road,



to your



leverage

A drunken phone call has occured.



Let Foolishness Ring

he sat,

stinking of beer,

his broken fingers arranged

on the table before him

like dessert



he'd pissed himself



the other Dunkin' denizens

wheezed and cackled into their

small coffees

and called him on it



finally the Assistant Manager

called the cops



2 cops came

and forcibly deposited him

on the sidewalk

next to the USA Today box,

threatening to take him

back



to the green cinderblock

room

and hose him down

and let him dry out

in the tank

behind bars



for 72 hours



if he didn't get lost

fast



pronto



one of the cops actually asked him

what the fuck was up

with his hands

but he said nothing

and was not

asked again



(he'd busted them all to shit

falling from a jagged rock face

way out in the Connecticut woods

yesterday afternoon)



5 years later he'd die

among his milk crates

on his portion

of riverbank

or else he wouldn't



like most people on the planet

his life was all

blown to hell

and he couldn't figure

why



he thought it must be his fault



really it wasn't

But from the side of definitely Not Bullshit, I'm just finishing up with Anthony Swofford's memoir of Gulf War I: Jarhead.



Timely reading. To me, this uncommonly powerful piece of work rivals O'Brien's The Things They Carried. I haven't been able to put it down.

And how exactly would you like your bullshit cooked this morning, sir?



Medium-well. And garnisheed like a wage

there are hypocrites and there are idiots

there are SUVs and luxury sedans occupied by them, one per airbag

66% of inhabitants of the traffic jam might be either/or



they are being filmed before as a live studio audience

and they are skivvie stuck on their $899 couches



they are quietly fuming beneath the Fox News ticker

and their neck muscles are spasmodically jerking



they are running off to smoke 15986 butts a year

and they are running their asses off on the treadmill

behind broken plate grins



they are ogling your ass

hating your ass

scheming on your ass

and breaking your ass

in two



they are running your fucking country

running your row in the cube galleys

running your debt

running their mouths behind your back and beneath your nose

wittingly half-ashing in your runny Super Slam breakfast as it lukewarms in the window

cutting you off in traffic

coming unwound in the left lane



or else she is trying to get you off into her mouth

but you can't get there



or her roomate is standing in the kitchen eyeing you

with that particular quality of contempt

that lets you know that she's been fucking

someone else



the litmus test is a categorical absence of shame



now look, over there:



Bingo

quickly beast down into crap abode

melon head fuckwipe

at least

it's Friday

relearn kindness

make love



be the last to dissolve,

then



terribly vivid all night dreaming

dreams of the fall

of subsisting in the shade

away from His wrath



awake

then walk with dog



white gray mist in the trees

flesh-colored early sunlight

woven through



wet anthills scattered curbside



smell of earth



more high clouds



more rain



I will be drunk tonight

ary disgust



Yet pregnant with regret,

my over-arching decision

surfaces, comes through.



Mouth the words

fuck shit, piss-eater,

feign ambivalence,

withdraw.



Their intellectual leprosy:

a slow pantomime

of auto-fellatio,



a giggling

in the death sheds.

Human kennels.



Corrugated tin roofs.

Hell in the sun,

par usual,



most demonic mediocracy,



hydrochloric acid

in your lemonade.

I'd say all the old forms don't seem to hold anymore

if indeed the old forms had ever really held in the first place



I'd say I'm taking it all for granted if indeed

I were really taking it and if indeed it had ever been granted



I'd say I'd make it up to you if only

I weren't so down

31

is a fun

stun gun.



Still feel young,

yet still drift along,



in arrest juvenalia,



yet a son

of intemperate ambitions



matched with lax

discipline

A waiting sense palpably grasps my hands and wrists;

obligation perches over me like an immense indigo bird.

If you value your constitutional rights, check out Take Back The Media and this call for vigilance.

I can't think exactly what else I'd rather be doing right now besides sitting here in this bland corporate environment but it would certainly involve being outdoors feeling cool and skin languid in the salutary effects of sweet cool June morning temperate interplay of sunlight opening like the palm of God in among towering dark green oaks and crimson maples and silver ripple of lakewater nearby extending unto towering inscrutable countenance of pines

one of the nice things about quitting smoking is you can still write about smoking but with deeper perspective



He woke up, showered, shaved,

applied gel to his hair, and concluded

that his emotions were beyond

his control.



He was found

by a 46-year old Mexican

man of the maintenance staff,



pink nucleus adrift

in billowing

maroon blister caul,



floating cerulean

in the eye

of the the condominium

association's



pool for residents,



his femoral arteries

sheared,



the backs

of his thighs

laid open,

split



like bread.



The maintenance man

fished a smoke from the

breast pocket of his

green work shirt.



The sun felt warm

working into his scalp

through the thick

burr of his

dark hair.



It was a fine June day,

and he was thankful

for this job,

in spite of the

minor tragedy

which was the vanity

of this death,



one of the several hundred

presently occuring

on the planet.

I've always loved the myth

of the guy who lurks

away from the smoking

battlefield



and up into high,

rocky hills

where he settles,

a hermit,



eventually losing

his sorcerer's arts.

Or at least

forgetting them.



Then one day he spies

a brown hawk.



In his next moment

he is that hawk



rising high

and away

from his scant hovel

in the boulders



tasting at

his last earthly

second



the bare wisped

aroma



of his last

smoldering

campfire



before cresting

the blue slope

of highland

air



and falling,

then rushing



toward

the green distant

lowland

mists

of his

homeland



for one last fight

there is a mole in the office

and I am he



posted too distant from my core

agency,



now eyeing



the paper chopper

or whatever you call it



the directive today

says



grab the first Money Man

you see

and give it his hand



according to the cube farm's

economy

the drones will simply

pass,

oblivious to the looping blood ribbons

and strangled cries



or, if you are taken,

you become more powerful

the moment their alleged

authorities

bind you



in the moment

of your questioning

may



your eyes fill

with black blood



may your palm lines skein up



glowing

blue and rose



bloodshot

with electricity



yeah yeah yeah



but, oh well,

fuck all that



i wish all that grass out there was the smokable

this morning; i would be



blasted

out there



in the rain

residual anger like scum

in a basin and the basin

is me, my skin, my blood,

my skull



thoughts of leaving

thoughts of going away

empty thoughts



I got a cousin lives alone less than 10 miles away

but we ain't really friends, only friendly acquantainces



too bad

if only my life were like a book

that I'd want to read



nearby 2 people are talking quietly

and the phrase "Septemeber 11th"

has entered their discussion



I'm tired of all these disasters

one of those posts



The creative embers for me are indeed blazing rather low these days.



In my head it's like there's an inertia, a turning. A lull.



Whatever. It happens.



It might be development.

series of responses

subject to update



A brain dead species, horticulturally adept.



Dwindling output.



Not scatterbrained, only dull.



If I could just implement a 2-hour a day plan.



The uncomfortable truth of the lazy.



Far too little sunlight on the Internet. Somehow more in books.



Slap yourself around a little.



8-hour per day ethic.



It's amazing. Ignoring the lies makes them no less real, but seriously less agonizing.



You can see and hear the evil everywhere. Steeped in hypocrisy, it mainly comes from T.V.



I wonder how long before this new breed of hypocritical evil masquerading as piety becomes old. Because it seems very new indeed. So new, it's practically invisible. But maybe that's just an effect of the public's mass blindness.



I'm speaking of my country.