I Think I Exist (Out of Time)

When it was time to
sign up for kindergarten,
they decided I wasn't ready
and so I waited a year.
I only remember cats,
nothing about what
that year was like,
and the cats were
there, in their test,
one year later.

At some point,
they decided I needed
glasses, and I only
remember bad vision
the first time those
glasses were broken.
They also decided
I needed speech
therapy. I got stickers.
But none of that is
important.

Or maybe it is. I
would recite every
memory I have of
how I've arrived here today,
but that's not the whole
point.

When I was young, before
I had reached third grade,
a girl kissed me on the back
of the neck. They used
to chase me. By fifth grade,
they made fun of my lips.
I had somehow gotten
stuck in my own time.
In middle school,
they told me to dress better.

When I moved to Burlington,
I ended up working at a movie theater,
where nearly everyone was
younger than me, including
the managers, most of them,
and the youngest and my favorite
was the last girl I wanted
to chase me. I'm told
she's not interested
right now,
and so I can only wait.

Waiting's the real thing.
The first girlfriend I had
pursued me, and I hadn't
really seen her coming,
and that's how it ended.
I will be moving,
and if I'm to be found,
she will need to pursue.
That's my whole life,
the chase.

I cannot be caught.

I'm out of step,
a tick of a tock out of time,
a tock of a tick,
I meet people I want as friends,
who have the same interests,
the same passions, but in the end,
I'm always alone. This poetry?
Tomorrow, I will write more,
tomorrow a thought fusion,
but today? Today is not
yesterday, and yesterday
is not today, but, as I began
then, I continue,
and alone.

The love that you make is
equal to the love that you take?
Why don't you make more
why don't you take more
why don't you make more love?

People are gravitated to me,
I'm common ground,
but the ground?
It is cursed. I cannot
share in what I give.
I make but cannot take.
Do you think you have heard
all this before?
Well, please, direct me to that
person down the hole to the other
side, because I need to meet them,
I need to see and know and feel
and know that they understand.
I write a blog? That's in the
public, but isolated?
That blog is me.

That blog is me.

Tick tock tick tock, that's a progression
that doesn't repeat, but inverts itself,
tick
tock/
tick

(tick tock/tock tick)

as I've already written. I notice
the squirrels, I told my brother,
not as something cute and novel,
in this world we only see humans,
but as another mind, minding
itself. It does not need me,
does it watch me?
I don't watch nature,
I don't watch through
goggles, to know,
but to see.

I see.

I try and see.

That's a curse out of time,
the knowledge of existence
because I have seen it,
not because I believe or
I want to believe,
but because it is there
and I have bothered to see it,
the magician's slight of hand,
his trick,
his prestige,
the moment you make
the ordinary
the extraordinary.


Did you see it?

Romance

It's not knowing that
two more girls
think,
despite what I'd thought,
they don't want boyfriends right now,

it's that,
as much as I've wanted it otherwise,
it's almost a relief.
They're not tugging.


It puts some relief
on other concerns.

Y'know, I think.

Call It Ishmael Today

After Agha Shahid Ali, and his contents

I have loved
Arabic,
for you,
by exiles
of it all
in real time;
of fire
things;
shines
my word
from the start;
angels
of water
as ever
land;
not all, only a few return,
even the rain,
water
of snow,
air,
about me
in marble
bones;
in,
beyond English
of light
stars,
for time
God;
forever;
after you,
in Arabic,
tonight
existed.

What A Future Is

what a future is
may be found out
easily enough

but if you're looking
for a definition,
look elsewhere

Metaphysics of Zen

after "Zen" by Kenlee from Urbis.com

Zen is a wonderful thing.
Zen is the thing you achieve
through that philosophy
some mistake as a religion.
You can understand, because
they're identified as a group,
those who follow it,
like a religion.
They even have monks.
Zen is not about
religion, or belief,
or practice. I think
even they get it wrong.
They're caught up in its
Hindu origins.
Zen is a way of life,
not a way out of life,
Zen is a Value,
and a Quality,
because it's so
hard to define,
easy to mistake
for the butcher boy
lying in wait.
Zen is,
it just is.
Zen is,
because
Zen is
Zen is
Zen is.

Z-en is
like the blue oose,
like the students
who think it's
okay to ignore
someone else's
tragedy,
oh can't you see?
Zen is.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics are details
that are hard to define.
You don't actually have to be
or have been crazy
to see them, but
it probably helps.
Crazy is a subjective
term, which the
originator of the
phrase I've been using
explains better
than I could,
because I suffer
from a lack of
diagnosis above
all else. I think
that's the best way
to go. I alone
am telling myself
that there's got to
be something wrong,
and that's probably a
good thing.
It's funny, because
when I hear people
chatter about things
being wrong, I figure
they're usually wrong,
because they aren't
seeing things clearly.
I have bad vision,
but I see just fine.
I chafe when
people around me
call themselves
acknowledged geniuses,
based on IQ tests,
and feel a compulsive
need to batter them
to prove otherwise,
even though my tests
have more to do with
personality. The
Metaphysics of Personality
describe how one's
intelligence can be
determined by how
they react to others,
whether they understand.
If you understand,
that's the key.
If you understand.
Most people couldn't
care less to. Most people
couldn't care less about it.
I understand, and I'm
hobbled by a periodic
black cloud around me,
so that I cannot always
show it. But I think
the eyes have it. The eyes,
the Metaphysics of Eyes,
that may be the most pure
of them all.
You either get it
or you don't.

Metaphysics of Value

If the Metaphysics of Quality
are jacked up,
then the Metaphysics of Value
are even moreso.
They simply cannot
be shared, and it's
that very Quality
that leads them
to become universal.
Quality is elusive,
Value is everywhere,
Value in the things
we place it, Value, as
a result, in our very hands,
the mutual hands of Value.
It's hard to talk about it
and not get caught up in it.
Value is the thing we don't
see, and the thing we
see everywhere. Quality
is intangible, Value tangible.
It's the thing we hate to
have, the thing that traps us,
and the thing we can't live
without. You can define
Value, but not Quality.
But it's still a Metaphysical
study. Because people
refuse to believe.

Metaphysics of Quality

There is just one problem
with the Metaphysics of Quality,
and that they are a little bit
insubstantial. It's not that
they're subjective, only that,
if you don't see it, they
can't be understood.
The Metaphysics of Quality
are like a mental illness.
They're jacked up.

Bushwah

Tell me the old curse.
Tell me what it means,
but use it, use it
like they used to use it,
not as we use it now.
Tell me the old curse,
and pretend I haven't
heard it before.
Tell me the old curse
and pretend that
the world is not
used to it by now,
that it hasn't become
an unfortunate joke,
one with no basis
in reality.
Tell me the old curse.
Tell me it like a lover.
Tell me the old curse
as if no one's heard it
before.

The Days Are Just Packed...

I have a lot of
things I really
need to do,
but when it
comes to
doing them,
I think I
get maybe 15%
of them done.
Is that the
average?
Probably.
Mostly,
I think I'm
just riding
that sled
off the cliff,
bringing down
the whole world
around my
frozen ears,
and grinning
most of the way,
to myself
and to the
oblivious world...

The Terror of Knowing

I think I understand
the Terror of Knowing,
not as it had been
understood,
but as it hadn't.

We live in terror
of knowing
each other.

It sounds ridiculous
until you think about it.

I Write the Words That You Sing

I write the words that you sing,
I write the sins you're cashing,
I write the thoughts that rattle the cage,
I write the things that fill you with rage.

What Today Is?

I spent the day
angry about a
number of routine
things. I fretted, too,
over issues
concerning the
fact that I'll be
moving soon, and
still don't know where,
exactly, except
that it is with
a great amount of
trepidation. These
are trying times.
For the most part,
I wasn't even aware of
what today really was.
At 9, once again, I was
counting down the
minutes until
my lunch hour,
one hour away,
and when I came back,
all the things I wanted
to accomplish while
contending with a few
necessary obstacles,
such as two out of
my remaining four
being taken
for someone else.
In all these thoughts,
none of anyone else's
concerns, their
problems.
Everyone is someone
else's problem. In
every tiny world,
there is another
tiny world next door,
sometimes peering in,
sometimes knocking,
and if you're really
lucky, making a grand
intrusion. Did I say
lucky? I meant
something else, I'm
sure. One can't
be too sure of
what they mean
when they say
something, think
something, do
something. It's
the somethings that
get us through the day,
when we don't know
what else will,
and can't imagine
what, or have
forgotten important things.
That's what, I think,
we're thinking more
of, or maybe should.

Tomorrow

Do you know what tomorrow is?
I don't think we really know
what it is.

Dead Letter

I think a dead letter
is a dream someone had
that went unfulfilled,
not because of the obvious,
that it never ended up
arriving, never ended
up read, but because
behind it was an
intention that, in the
dead letter, will never be
read.

This guy I know,
this guy named Bill Shakespeare,
everyone seems to doubt
he could have come up
with those plays
inside his own head.
They imagine romantic
creators, dignified and
knowledge-filled,
but a man who
worked his way up?
Who left his own
story untold? It would
be the greatest
tragic comedy of them all,
of its time too far ahead.

Dead letter,
dead letter,
I see nothing but
dead letters.
Outrageous attempts
to be known,
to be heard.
But since when
did we listen to any other voice
but our own? I myself
am horrified every time
someone tries to
convince me what
my own sounds like.

I protest! I speak
truths anyone could know,
everyone has said,
and for that, I am
called, inside those private voices,
a terror. I am one who
they will not listen to,
oh, yes, when I can hear them,
but never when I can't.
They will say it happens,
but more and more,
I find it difficult to believe.
These are the times
I struggle in,

in the land of the dead.

(What Are You Gonna Do With the) Country

Hopped into my pickup truck,
spun the radio to the talky talk show,
and the man on the air was saying,
in his soft and spooky voice,
what are you gonna do with the country?

Another man said, another woman said,
well all the things that can be done
have already been imagined for the country,
the borders drawn the laws put on,
and every state ratified to make their own hell.

Now we're gonna haggle over what
we're gonna screw up in the next four,
because that's what they're playing in the bingo halls,
the game of what can they do
that, for better or worse, can be done in this country.

They're all lining up,
and it's still a year away,
and they've been doing it
for longer than the last president
took the seat of the country.

Newtopia

All you need is
give peace a chance

All you need is
give peace a chance

All you need is
give peace a chance

How can I go forward
you can drive my car!

Green Pollo!

Are you hep to the jive, yo?
Do you strum the cat,
wik the ninjas?
We're not yellow pollo,
or white or black,
but green pollo.
Wederby this or that.

I refuse to believe that
pandas will die because
they're lazy.
If someone eventually
buys this poem,
it will not be worth
anymore than
it does right now,
which is whatever
it ends up meaning.
The Metaphysics of Value,
as they've been understood,
are misunderstood.
People are not
inherently lazy.
Yet there are people
who don't work because
they can't find work.
They can't find work because
our understanding of Value
is that nothing, not a single person
or thing,
is worth anything until
someone says it does. Everyone
wants to do something,
but they have to be told they can,
a thing bought if it can be afforded,
and not always because it's unwanted.
So many things go to waste.
That's not Value. That's Waste.
Green Pollo is all about Value,
about allowing ourselves to
see it, to understand it,
not as a static thing, a good or bad,
but as what it is, a Quality.
Green Pollo is the revolution,
is the fight, is the war they're fighting
against. Green Pollo is the
realization of Value
and the value of it.

Jive, yo, jive.

Radical Fanatical

I've frequently
a mind to restart
the business of revolution
all on my own. There're a
million things that need
changing, that could be
improved, and a great many
people who could stand
the same treatment, and
probably get that ball
rolling all by itself. I could
devote myself to a classroom,
and get everyone to
understand words again,
but I don't abide the presumption.
Good things happen because they're
meant to, not because someone
wishes they would. I think that's
been made clear enough, especially
since too many people have no
idea what good things are.

They fight for the right,
and end up left.