Epitaphs Vol 1

-Life's expired, to say the least,
Below your feet, a ripened feast.

-This epitaph is bleak,
Hear my soul shriek.

-Be warned of this barren grave,
It may haunt the road you pave.

-I have left this world like a coward,
A stormy pride harshly devoured.

-I've joined the countless billions,
And await the countless trillions.

-My skeletal hand waves farewell,
To its soft and fleshly shell.

-WENT TO SCHOOL
GOT HIRED
FINALLY RETIRED
AND THEN EXPIRED

-Beer made mortality clear,
Now death is here.

Aristocratic Bum

Greetings, illiterates!
From an aristocratic bum.
My train of rags trail behind me as I stroll down litter street.
I drink free tea and box wine,

Soaring in the classical.

And I always, always put my pinky out.

I sense my own superiority,
While working at a lowly job.

I treat fools with smug contempt,

But wear a tolerant smile,

All the while.

Little Christian

You’re always searching for another god,

Little Christian.

Your attraction,

Flippant deification.

Deify the pretty soul,

Little Christian.

Because you don’t have one.

Life is like a fresh cracked beer

Life is like a fresh cracked beer.

Promising, at first,

With its vast mass.

But as the living fluid sinks measurably,

Regret surges sunken in the fold.

The last gulp is bitter hot,

With gagging destructive descension.

One laments the truth,

Wailing for cool reincarnation,

Irrationally desirous.

Heed the beating heart

Heed the pumping heart,

Pulsing with relish,

Within the aged cage.

Beating cries descry a cold cancer blade,

Clasped in corruption’s candy hand,

Alluring, savagely alluring.

Anxious thumping grating gentle offspring,

In dire remonstrations.

They fawn and chirp in new discovery,

Stumbling in infant drunkenness,

Toward seasoned maturity,

To be marred by scar and stubble.

A dance floor awaits,

The transfusing beat erupts,

Suspenseful, joyful,

Shifting intravenous,

Flooding a blessed puncture.

Bathroom contest

Three competitive clean freaks stand washing hands side by side in a public restroom. Scrubbing bathroom hands together in broiling soapy lather. Steam pours from the sinks, fogging mirrors, clouding stalls, disturbing sight. The washers appear bent upon the sanitary motions, but a perceptive observer can spot nervous fish eyes gleaming. Who will be the germiest? All refuse to cease, none will admit defeat. For protracted minutes they scrub their scorching, raw fingers and palms. One washer gets more soap, the others follow suit. How long will this contest last? Who will remain to the bitter end, champion of cleanliness? The outcome is yet to be decided.

To the striking hero

To the striking hero:

Blood and nonsense!

Time ticks and you inquire,
With deviled chin.

So the forked beard states,
With angered mascara eyes.

Pull your bow.
A tense reminder,
Of mendicant adrenaline.

Watch the storm troopers
Who garrison,
On dying suburban lawns,
Awaiting orders,
Boots crunching gravel,
Conjuring cowardice,
With bulging magazines.

What choice have you, hero?
State your purpose,
And be falsely hailed.

A blank.

A tangent blank,
Poor former ideas.

A typing keyboard hates innovation,
Half the time.

A tangent blank for you,
Former ideas.

Life,
Poor life,
Deadened by expectorate diction.

A tangent blank,
The dumb oblivion.

A sign
Of nonsense.

Who is what?

'Don't try,'
My favorite said.

A tangent blank,
For minds unspoken.

Wondering on product.

So they say,
A warbling mess.

Sober over it,
Creativity.

Prison Camp?

Each month the metallic pounding jolts me out of stage 5. A short second speeds, and I frantically fling on fabric. I know I have 22 seconds before my privacy is ruptured by the impatient authorities. The pounding persists and I hear the clink of key in lock. Shirt on backward, pants unzipped, soul unbuttoned, I stumble to the door just as it is being opened from the grimy outside. "Pest control," blares the little Mexican with surprising abruptness. "Achtung," my bitter humor internally translates, and I stand in military attention beside my doorway. My fellow tenants have also been rousted and look none too happy. Poison man enters with toxic tank, threatens biological life, and leaves with hasty determination. I re-enter my cell, slip back to bed, and fight off fascist chuckles.

Guilt

The guilt is free.

Its encasement shudders,

Wondering whence it came,

Or what works it reaps.

Guilt:

Judgmental harvester of past decay,

Tilling famine,

With gloomy insistence,

And stalwart endurance.

Guilt:

Stocky interloper of conditioned sound,

Blaring criticism,

Through a million megaphones.

Guilt:

Every tyrant’s blooded weapon,

Every despot’s accusing bedfellow.

Guilt:

When will you give me peace?

Flourishing Plant

Stop trying to bend me.

I wish to detach.

I am not serious anymore,

Oppressive expectations,

I’m cognitively indifferent now.

Let me flourish within my lush greenhouse.

Without your gross pesticides,

Without your adapted fertilizers,

Without your loving care,

Without your floral discrimination.

Let me flourish by myself.

You wither me,

Wither me with presumptuous force.

My leaves have blackened.

Trash

Propped against a locked door,

Are Inhabitant’s revealing discards.

Bled and bagged,

The silence of the dead,

Material with no purpose.

A grim portrayal of Inhabitant,

Shadowy shallowly indirect,

A stalker’s priceless nuggets.

Dear Inhabitant,

Do you know what you show?

Your wastes, tastes, distastes.

Your nutrition, addiction, predilection.

Your private life and its secret strife.

Body made public.

Propped against a locked door,

Bled and bagged,

Are Inhabitant’s revealing discards.

The Body

My soul is in my face,

My ideas in my gut,

My impulse in my heart.

Its corrugated valleys,

And untamed wilds.

What drugged habits it hides.

I don’t wish for more,

As I mock imperfection,

As I self-exorcise.

Draped with expression,

And backward health.

This is my body.

Boiling inside,

Tinged by lust,

Incorruptible but aging,

Hurting but happy.

Fizz and Burn

Fizz and burn,

Delicious one,

I need your therapy.

In you I experience generational culture.

In you I hold fermented power.

Refresh my mind.

Sharpen me.

Clear away indigenous dullness.

Every philosophic sign points to you.

Do your damage,

I gladly pay your toll,

From an empty aching wallet.

I've purchased sight,

With your carbonated mind-eye.

Drunk Sandwich

There it is,

Porous, blotched brown resistance.

Stomach transforms matter.

Teeth clash with crisp wheat sheet.

Survivalist desire pouring through the physical.

Tasty contentment.

Thankful nourishment.

Low inebriated cleanup.

Then fiery passout heat,

With blotched snoring,

And wasted dryness.

Moderate Pleasure

Moderate pleasures breeze through town,

Their simple sense wreaking content,

Fingers outstretched,

Twitting buffoonery’s bulbous nose.

Cherubic laughter accompanies the hopscotch streets.

Life slyly swims,

Through Time’s river,

Ignored by the all.

A Crack in the Pavement

A crack in the pavement
Will satisfy my writer's spirit,
For it is spidery and enthralling.

A chink in a fence
Will stimulate my appetite,
For I feed well on imperfection.

A leaky roof
Does not faze me,
For I am honed by pitter-patter

A shattered window
Won't wound my nosy hands,
For my layers are of similar substance.

But an incomplete peace,
Will drive me wild,
For the world needs a rounded piece.

Wakeful.

Wakeful.

Wishing for dreams.

A scant replacement for mystical states.

A fatigued hand vainly conjures.

The magic evaporated.

The science will not respond.

Its fluorescent crackles lodged in the stars.

So the wise men say.

An educated laugh chortles with dawn.

HAHAHAHA!

HAHAH!

My laughter echoes through the overworld.

HAHAH!

My laughter challenges the status quo.

HAHAH!

My laughter defies the Phosphore Essence.

HAHAH!

My laughter kills all morality.

HAHAH!

My laughter hates on sordid nonsense.

HAHAH!

My laughter defies monetary simplicity.

HAHAH!

My laugher drowns explicit sorrow.

HAHAH!

Nonsense reigns,

And I
CACKLE
With glee.

HAHAHAHA!

Scrubby uniform plastered,
He strolls down his stairs,
Knowing that the insane is perched.

Second floor, first,
And the burbling TV discerns itself.
The sacred smell wafts.

Who, he wonders, would be so conservative and blatant at the same time?

Only the elderly.

With the perched cigarette,
And predictable mouth,
Smacking,
"Hundred dollars tonight,"
Budding,
In regretted anticipation.

Please, let me be.
Please, desperation is pitiful.
Please let me be.
Please let me be.

And thus,
We end,
And I head to work,
Annoyingly sorrowful.

One Last Poem

One last poem to write.
For old time's sake.

One last poem to write,
Before vibrance overloads.

One last poem to write,
And mind infests.

One last poem to write,
In the desperate drunkence.

One last poem to write,
With swirling ray sense,

One last poem to write,
Abandoned by scholastics.

One last poem to write,
In spite of monotony.

One last poem to write,
Without the transience.

One last poem to write,
To the forsaken.

One last poem to write,
Neglected.

One last poem to write,
It's a shame I'm writing.

Another Face.

The spackled light cowers,

Sulking behind the mocking horizon,

And you feel the face’s presence invade your reality.

It haunts your dreams,

I see it in your eye.

Frozen in time,

With graceful gaunt expression.

You are in love with it,

Poor haggard victim,

In love with its forlorn pleading.

The time has come,

For intense calibration.

Plunging down the winding lanes,

Focusing,

On memory’s hyperbolic portrayal.

In tune with the silent cry,

Until ignited rapture bursts its seams,

And winged creatures flee with purpose.

Awake.

Awake in bed I lay,

Sluggish,

Ignoring the cheery day.

No warmth can overcome,

The relaxation in my bones.

No meritorious labor can overcome,

My content irresponsibility.

Eyelids closed and steady breathing,

Resting, resting,

From reality’s harsh unsheathing.

The world can go to seed,

Whiles I rehabilitate.

My mind can go to seed,

Whiles I dumbly sloth.

Worry and concern are blocked by the bouncer,

Who is a big burly professional trouncer.

Enter sleep without a knock,

Inviting in,

A fluffy flock.

The clock ticks down,

The ebb of time slows,

People dance in town,

At their shallow shows.

But I am at home,

Away from Rome,

Embracing harmony,

And charming rhapsody.

Born Sick.

I was born sick.

Sick of inanity.

Sick of schedules.

Sick of superficiality.

Sick of vanity.

Sick of politics.

Sick of testosterone.

Sick of poverty.

Sick of corruption.

Sick of religion.

Sick of drugs.

Sick of emotion.

Sick of logic.

Sick of opinion.

Sick of health.

Sick of gossip.

Sick of disease.

Sick of greed.

Sick of pollution.

I was born sick, Doc.

Is it terminal?

Please help.

I Open My Own Doors

I open my own doors.
I will not hold them open for you,
Nor do I need you to open them for me.
In fact, your patronizing courtesy will be rebuffed.

I seek the closed doors.
When I find one,
I clasp the taunting knob,
And
Pull,
Pull,
Pull,
With all my being,
Until I breach the structure's skin,
And its vital organs are exposed,
To my appraising and critical eye.

Watch for me in the city,
Roaming,
Ripping entrances out of selfish slumber,
And tromping my way on through.

RS-21 operator engaged.

RS-21 operator engaged.

Powered on vortex.

Cerebral circuit-scape engaged.

Breaching the Howitzer perimeter.

Perimeter breached.

Corpus mantle increasing.

Decreasing darning levels to compensate.

Now passing corifluous auticle.

Shooting carbon destabilizer….done.

Atomizing corneal suction drones.

Locating oracular apparatus…done.

Rotational stimulator in high frequency.

Turbulent overdrive balancing gravitational laser.

Dorian schematics approved.

Nautical inducement drive jammed.

Employing reparational methods…failed.

Receiving preoperational layout from base….received.

:SYNTAX ERROR LINE 7300001:

Entranced Artist

The entranced artist passionately

Smears a piece her of soul onto canvas.

A bare and brutal reflection of pigments.

Cracked mirrors indignantly litter

Her mottled trashscape.

Her blood pounds,

Her breath grows quick,

Brilliance cinches her gut.

Her body begins to implode,

Under emotive pressures,

Spatters onto countless tablets,

With assertive discrimination.

For one pregnant year.

Her heart sours through her benumbed chest

Bursting high into sensual impulse,

Comet-like.

Raised,

With altered consciousness and burning trail,

She strolls consumerist streets,

Beholds simple repetition and fruitless complexity.

Despairing,

With sparse disappointment and sputtering sparks,

She withdraws into herself,

Reignites,

And promenades genius avenues with pristine gait,

Tameless and disloyal,

Boundless and free.

The God and his Creations

All my children gather round.

I shall lecture on sound ground.

Know that you and I are one and the same,

That by my minded fingers you became.

From myself alone you were created,

To be gloried, destroyed, or berated.

For I possess the Maker’s awesome power,

I can destroy or augment at any hour.

Your God awaits his just reward,

Honor him, for he is your Lord!

Tonight I need your loving devotions,

Vaster even than the greatest oceans.

Drape your deepened selves in my abstract thought,

Or all my feats will have been for naught.

Submerge into your God’s whirling fray,

And bring others under his divine sway!

Dialogue with one's self

A dialogue with one’s self is simple splendor.

You’d be surprised at what you have to say.

Drifting philosophies,

Floating enlightenment,

Lurking humor,

Hiding regrets, transforming ponders,

Stormy sorrows, shallow urges, stray epiphanies,

Flippant flamboyance, flying frustrations, furlong farces, farcical facts,

AND MANY MORE!

All this in nightly self-dialogue.

All this from nightly self-discovery.

If the motley of ideas strikes you as fragmentary,

Just remember that life itself is fragmentary,

And we must piece together the fragments at hand,

To assemble the final fragment puzzle.

Grasp the slimy eel with all your might,

Though it may slip through your clutches.

It may whip its fluid form through angled currents,

Away from your astonished disappointments,

Into seemingly unconquerable regions.

Be Your Own Builder

Be your own builder,

Resist the oppressive constructors,

Despise the green realtors.

Tear all contracts.

Construct your own foundation,

It may be ostentatious,

Or it may be sparsely simplistic.

The choice is yours.

Lay the identifying cement,

And feel yourself rise, rise.

Two stories, three, four.

Higher!

Higher!

You’re an independent skyscraper challenging the gods,

Piercing the questioning heavens with pure thought,

Boring a bloody hole in Zeus’s harem,

Taunting the fiercest lightning,

Standing defiant,

Daring,

Double-daring.

A petrified monolith braving eternity,

Unabashed, unworn, undefeated.

Woe to the rage addict!

Woe to the rage addict!

Rage is the boiling monster in our guts.
There is no satisfaction to rage.
It merely flows, corroding the mind.
When I feel my heart pumping rage,
I tremble for it needs outlet.

There is power in rage.
But rageful power is momentary,
And leaves its possessor frail,
Once meek obeisance exorcises it.

Woe to the rage addict!

That addictive devil drug,
Constantly intoxicating,
Constantly proliferating.
I spy vein-pumping addicts,
Everywhere I turn.

Rage invades the imagination,
And tyrannizes,
Making vagrants of all other emotions.
They roam,
Friendless, homeless.

Woe to the rage addict!

Take a raging man.
He spouts follies,
Grinds teeth,
Sprays spittle,
Fantasizes destruction,
Trembles uncontrollably.

Like a child, he is.
Like an unreasoning animal.
Like a creature devoid of deliberateness.

Woe to the rage addict!

The devil rage is at the wheel,
Plowing reason with red-blind steel.

Maybe one day...

Maybe one day the lights will go out, and streaming sands from the most barren deserts will plummet the cities.

Maybe one day locusts will sweep away the aqua sky and devour, devour all that the world holds in esteem.

Maybe one day the earth's battered face will crack, and molten death will spurt down her eyelids blinding all and all.

Maybe one day the sun will explode and envelope the third planet in a radioactive heat blanket.

Maybe one day a flash of white light will wake humans from perpetual unconsciousness and then obliterate their consciousness seconds later.

Maybe one day disease will ride striking down unfortunates with its pestilent gauntlet.

Maybe one day dimensions will clash, time will stop, and the world will implode.

Maybe one day fire and brimstone will plummet from the raging skies, and the eager oceans will submerge wailing societies.

Maybe one day will be doomsday.
But until that day comes,
I'll be laughing, laughing.

Poetic Lense

The bleak world can be vicious,
We all know this to be true,
But lately I've discovered,
An undeniable clue.

In four ridiculous lines,
I will transmit it to you,
I don't care if you get it,
You may in a year or two:

When life darkens around me,
When the blank sky seems less blue,
I don the poetic lense,
And regain my lost hue.

The Great Garden

The great garden thrives

On the fertilizer we feed it.

It thirstily drinks

The water we pour it.

And it lethargically tans

In the light we shine it.

We dig in the great garden for diseased roots.

And when we find them, we crush them.

The soil must be undisturbed.

We are watching for change,

Guarding against change.

Poison roots change our garden,

Infect the healthy plants,

Mar their somber delight.

We remove the poison roots,

The bellicose chutes,

And toss them over the fence,

Harmless and dead.

The great garden is ours

And we will always tend it.

Car ride to Nirvana

Tires encounter the usual uneven terrain of the multiple intersections as the car carves its listless way. Windows open, moved by the pristine passions of appetizing tunes, the driver makes its way to point B, mind dancing on tune-driven waves in the endless ocean of distraction, far far away from the present. Visions dance by, stick, and dislodge. Wind ruffled leaves, rainbow assortments infect the line of sight for fifteen seconds then blur by. Speeding, speeding onward.

Thoughts drift

Away from the fickle traffic lights,

Away from the exhausting motors,

Away from the gum stuck streets,

Away from red faced suits hollering profanities at each other,

Away even from the lofty music of the unbiased stereo.

Away to speculation’s scenic sights.

Away to streaming imagination’s melded vortex.

Away to ultimate freedom.

The dis-

connect

-ed freedom.

The sort of freedom only the insane can experience.

Let the subconscious deal with reality.

Just this once.

The subconscious learned to drive before the conscious self, so give it reign!

There is Life to ponder.

A higher plane than the mundane.

Drive, drive subconscious!

Drive the physical.

Drive the physical while I live.

Behind its mask I bask in peace.

Behind its mask I ask for not.

Now drive on subconscious,

Drive the physical,

Drive until the motor stops

Forever.

Laugh at the Midget

A strolling midget was run over by a bridge truck. When the truck driver and onlookers stopped laughing, they phoned 911. When the 911 operator stopped laughing, she notified an ambulance. When the ambulance driver stopped laughing, he sped over to the site. When the doctors stopped laughing, they performed emergency surgery. When the parents stopped laughing, they sat in the waiting room.

And through all this laughing, the midget lay dying, dying, dead.

When the undertaker stopped laughing, he conducted the funeral arrangements. When the priest stopped laughing, he consecrated the body. When the mourners stopped laughing, they wept. When the maggots stopped laughing, they had a tiny feast. When Jesus stopped laughing, he flung the midget to the devil. When the devil stopped laughing, he drove his pitchfork right up the midget’s behind. Then the devil went and laughed some more. If you listen very closely, you can still hear his booming chuckles. But you’ll have to stop laughing first.

Against Flies

::Clasping hands to vertical oblivion::

Oh Lord.

Thank you so much for everything.

Oh Lord.

I love you.

By the way,

Why did you create flies?

I mean like,

They buzz around me,

And it’s hard to do stuff.

They’re everywhere and they bug me.

Oh Lord.

Please kill all the flies.

Please, Lord.

If you kill all the flies,

I’ll go to church every Sunday.

I guarantee it.

Thank you, Lord.

Cleansing

I step out of the steamy shower, shivering, and reach for the towel.

It’s a dirty towel, weighted with abstract grime and second skins.

Perhaps I could get a new one, or have it laundered.

But, life is neither a gymnasium nor a laundromat.

Some people never sweat, never get dirty.

Some people never feel fatigue’s subtle stench deep inside their bones,

Weighing down their heart.

These people have no need of showers,

But they take them anyway.

I am one of those souls in dire need of daily cleansing.

I am one of those souls who should shower everyday.

But I don’t.

Because I am one of those souls who revels in yesterday’s soils.

Because I am one of those souls who dislikes forgetfulness.

I mop the pristine rivulets with my dirty towel.

It passively accepts its lot in life.

Absorbing, forever absorbing,

Burnishing away the past’s decay.

When finished I stand stripped clean

And welcome another downward day.

Nonsense: Volume 2

• Through literature one can live thousands, tens of thousands of lives in just a few years. Is this a form of immortality?
• Listen to your body.
• Originality is the peak of human thought. All true thinkers quest for it. But does it truly exist?
• How strong is your mind? Mine can take me places. There are undreamed of havens within my brain. And yet, I struggle to unlock them.
• The strong do not fear death. The strong accept it as a simple and repetitive act of nature. This must be learned through strenuous reality.
• Vane self-righteousness has brought about some of humankind’s greatest sufferings.
• Quotations are an easy way to relive a powerful moment.
• Weak minds should be discouraged from drugs.
• A questing mind can grow from the toxic expense of body.
• Take a break from routine. Inhale diversity and exhale tolerance.
• The greatest secret of philosophy is that there is no one true philosophy. All must be perused to achieve self-realization.
• What need is there for light if your mind is illuminated?
• Jargon is taught by dated writers.
• I have quickly found that my own company is the best company in the world.
• Ideas are like fish in a stream. Only the able fisherman reaps a rich harvest.
• Thought must be channeled or intellectual chaos results.
• Adolescence is society’s ideal. People constantly seek to regain it after it has breezed by.
• Every single person you meet wants to convert you to something.
• A carefree laugh is the height of freedom.
• Confidence must not be confused with pride. Pride is for the insecure. Confidence is for the competent.
• The human eye cannot grasp life’s subtle complexity.
• Our greatest triumphs are just transient mockeries.
• The soul only exists in the religious, or should I say fictional, world.
• Mind and body have always been held separate. What if the two were actually one?
• Any confrontation with death, be it physical or hypothetical, will put arrogant invulnerability in check.
• Perfection only exists in the pathological state.
• Willful change is a slow and laborious process.
• Good poetry will bring a smile to the face of its creator.
  

The Nocturnal Mocker

Your unpredictability makes me paranoid,
Nocturnal Mocker,
And each night I wonder
If you'll be lurking between my sheets.
You show your baggy wan face
At the ugliest of hours.

You're here tonight of all nights,
Challenging me to restless battle.
I close my eyes, but I know you're there.
I feel you in the back of my mind,
Teasing my exhaustion,
Making light of my cranky discomfort,
Brandishing your caffeinated spear.

Unwanted houseguest!
You are not welcome here.
Begone with you!
You alert child!
Out! Out! Out!
I will not fight you!
Leave and find some other prey!

And yet you remain.
My rage falls impotent.
No force of emotion can dislodge you.
I can only struggle to forget you,
But this is like climbing Everest.

So stay,
Nocturnal Mocker,
And perhaps your triumph will be bittersweet.

I have yet two strong warriors,
And they don't take kindly to active intruders.

You may win the war,
But tonight is mine,
I will own these last few hours,
Your ranks will stagger,
And be massacred.

But your blooded remains will linger,
Deep, deep within my shorn heart.
Patiently awaiting the sun's demise,
And fatigue's weakening reincarnation.