and so i won't
be taking anything back
that i have ever said, ever thought
for
or about you.

in ways that bodies
time, or names cannot
explain, you just reached
out through then, silently
into now, took my soul
close to yours, kissed
it with mist and mix
of breath and lips
gently
across the tremble of cheek,
and how fascinating to look at
the twinkling pieces of
this puzzle-story
like a star fallen perfectly
into unexpecting
and open
palms.

and thank you.

and so i won't
ever stop
talking about you, thinking
about you, i won't be taking
any of it back.

you have given all of this to me, this
telegram tapped out
unconsciously through
the alleys inside of hours, and around
the echo inside of the ticking of cities,
you have sent this to me
this strange song without words...
and i had fell to believe
it such a silly thing
to even still listen.

and so i won't
be taking any of this back,
anything that i've ever said
anything that i've ever thought
for or
about
us, or
for the rest of all
of anything too.

and in the great story
of this life, great in terms
of he who must live it, it's
always so much and not at all a surprise
when the world just up and bursts
into gardens of fire
and to always find
a bottle of suicide red
nail polish next
to the matches.

every great time, every great
tearing down and rising up, of
self, of knowledge, of grace, of
pain and want, of joy and giving,
every great life and death
has left this flattened
and gasping from the concussion
man-boy, looking up
at the radiant
blinding silhouette
of the great She, who always
with a new line, a new
design, always appears
in every act in this
great story of this
life.

odd how such power, such magnificent
force
can be so soft, so difficult
to detect.
one more reason why
i understand why adam didn't do anything, didn't
try to stop Her from taking that infamous bite, he
was utterly fucking frozen, watching
her in the awe.

and you asked, " why is it so easy
for certain people to get the best of me
when I can crush others with an
effortless blow?"

and i don't know how to answer that
except
that because the question came
from the lips of a woman, how bout
i close my eyes
hold my breath
and lose everything
to try
and find
the answer.

the sharpest smiles start in the dark
slicing through the wide curtain
cutting into your deep space suddenly
cutting into your deep space greatly
waking you up from the great
weightless womb-float through forever
ripping their way around the quiet
witness of the moments and planets that pass
breaking their first flash of light
around the angle you never thought to see
the three hundred and sixty first degree
and then you're all sorts of fucked up
and spinning in the brilliance.

and you just tore my night open,
(like god
unbuttoning the clouds)
said peek-a-boo, yea
I know me
too,
and
what are we supposed to do
from here? and even though
we know better
we know it never hurts
to ask, and that
we won't ever
stop.

and all i can say is
that the sharpest smiles start in the dark
and perhaps that's why
there are so many stars
to wish from.

Ha
damn,
you did it.

my most dear
and precious Alexandria,
and we're safe to use that name here
as it's been slowly wrapped
into a whisper over many moon
rises and settings
of the sun.

you
just
traced a circle in the wind
around 17 years, tied
the moments of that story
into the most amazing bow
and with a laugh the world will never hear
gave that back
to me.

so here's to you my
hardest and favorite fascination, my angel
in a crowd of thieves, my emerald pennace,
my porn star on a harley, my sweetest
little girl waiting to be loved, my brave mother
with a halo, and how much
you used to hate it when
i'd call you out
on how lovely you truly
are.

and look at how and where
and who we've been, with this
this incredible little life tip-
toeing underneath the blades
of grass, below
each and every of our confused
and clumsy
footsteps from then
to now, but with
and, don't forget
the swagger.

and it's been years since I said goodbye,
to the ghost you left
lying next to me, and what a delight
and honor, what a great amen, what a
right on right on, to know
that everything I've truly seen
truly is
everything I've truly seen.

wipe the smear
of the moonsuns brow
exhale the holy
shit laughter
and hell fuck wow.

amazing that
a good pinot still floats
under ten bucks
amazing the bouquets managed
after the ashes
and prior to
the dust.

my cat purrs curling
tornado coil and whispersnore
while alone I giggle
in the brightest light-
how dumb we are to wish for more.

while beneath the velvet gauntlet
my heart is stirred like concrete
generic compounds from moist to solid
and I still don't know what we call it
the image behind the comet
while in one gulped gasp we saw it
this fleeting grace that haunts us.
such fleeting grace it taunts us.

this vast great grace still wants us.

Don't expect to be understood.

who I am right now, burst
violently
out of some strange cocoon when
I was twelve
years old.

I had just lost my virginity, was
madly in love, had my heart
broken almost
immediately and then almost
as immediately found
"letters to a young poet" and thank
you RMR for that candle threaded
sinewed and titanic
hand from beyond.

at times I wonder how
I survived it.
such raw and terrible
beautiful everything erupting
from the inside out and the skin
of that shaking burning boy gasping
to somehow keep it
in.

it almost brings me to tears to
go back
there.
It so decisively informs me
that if any god does truly exist, how immense
the loneliness in such a soul, loneliness
in such a certain way.

I've been trying to make
this understood ever
since, and in
delirious and brilliant
and self-comfortilluminating
amusement, and
there are not millions dead
in my
name.

and I know my friends
know and
love me, and I know
that my friends do not
know (to) and
love
this.

and to be awoken
in the thunder and heartbeat of infinity,
to suddenly come to, in full choking beyond
full conscious in the birth and streaming veins
of eternity, can be
a mighty and fucking
startling experience.
and then, to have that
experience pound and stomp
in the echo and marrow of your molecules in every
limitless moment since, is a quite
and obtuse existence to sufficiently
express or adequately manifest
to the world or external
perception that is purported
or painted to be
life.

but, I would not trade this
for anything, it is my
and it is all
of thing(s).

so fucking strange though,
so fucking strange, if only
I could share the passing rushing
of this and the destination it achieves
which are both subsequently simultaneous, in
when ( the ) I look out out from, and am in
myself, in that quiet of myself, locked
and blazing in the utter-such being of this.

and
if any of this makes sense, you'll surely
notice it when I peel back from the breathing of my
presence in the present, and smolder soft in the
paralysis in the overwhelming
all surging of this, study
me as I meander our here, and
you'll see it, I
hope, but
then again
no shock and nothing lost
if you don't.

J PHX

dude
dont do many
of these, talking
about current
shit current
people, but
what
up joaquin
phoenix...

lets not forget
a bank account - that when checked
says
dont trip - is
a nice place to start.
bukowski never minded
money, be clear
on that.
he did mind
those afraid
of its absence.

so back to joaquin
phoenix
2009 ( in case
anything in the future warrants
research into
what the fuck i am talking about but
my gut thinks
that is highly unlikely )

he grew a funky
grizzly beard, wore the lady
shades laying
off eye witness of any
sort ( my guess would be pedestrian )
decided to rap
and the world
is waiting
for the rest.

i LOVE it.
i
absolutely fucking
dig it.

i get it.
ALL of us get it.
or at least, i think and hope
WE
do.

I
take it as this:
homeboy recognizes that
at best, in anything WE do, one
sentence, one phrase may
HIT
the center of the soul
the heart
the love
the life, and
STAY.
and if WE can achieve just
that stanza
in a poem, or that scene
in a film, or that spit
in a bar, or into
the whisper into
the ear of a moment
than WE can be
done.
and burst
in flames into a smile
goddamned confidence
fucking bliss.

and aw fuck
i gotta be
who again?

the 2012, the 36 inch waist, the 14 to
21 fags a day, the sentences lost
to the air, the tip
toe between paychecks, the 34
years of this life, the how many
bullets in the gun, the how many
drinks have i had tonight, the how many
lovers are left to have, the how many
poems
left to write?

and i go between
*flashing*
*montage*
fetus in an ultrasound
and
Auggie Rodins the
thinker.

guerilla beer poetry vs.
fireplace bong hit civility and
i am king, sunken
into either throne, warm
in the pensive self debate
with myself and myself as
the corporate board at LA-Z-BOY, screaming
in ponder why
has my ass not been offered
a cushion built
for both worlds to rest.

and just so you know, i
started writing again like
a few
weeks ago so
you will and
i am sorry will
have to deal with poems
just like this
until
i remember how to say
what the fuck
i have to say.

I have always been
dead.
I have always been
alive, and hopefully
my placement of the first line(s)
and the one(s) that follow
make no difference to you, because
they make no difference
to me.

but it has been years since,
I tried to explain any of that,
since
I tried to grab any metaphysical collar ( or
broken wing crest for that matter )
and shake out
the agree
the I
recognize
the confirmation,
it has been years since
I've made the kinds of mistakes
that got one jew
crucified, and
lost millions more
( jews and non-jews )
in the after-act.

no no no now
its a much more
quiet and exclusive cult
so much so that
often I disall0w
my own attendance.

but then joy
division erupts and
I'm taken to dark England,
his pain, the noose, and
a comfortable wish
to watch him sleeping.

love will tear us apart again, and
it has surely turned this poem
to shit.

2:16:09

go finding normal and
once I open
my eyes along on the arc
of the ferris wheels spinning
and while I stare
in such windows down and
music up awe
at the clouds on this
day, sliced hours after
the rain has stopped, I
swallow this anti-catastrophe
( el momento precioso )
through my pores.

back and without age again, again
its funny to find my voice
again, making hello, polite conversation and
wow
not much has changed
since.

drinks in the day
with a girl earlier, and
listening to myself, I
find no wonder in why
I am alone, and why
I am thirsty
to not be.

but that is a good one - me
not alone.
so much love for so much
and so many, and so little
to be in.

"thank you"

happy to be alive again
and what
the fuck was i thinking
big man
(little boy)
has a company
(president)
has a girl
(neglected)
has the want
to be the white american
money making
poet who got over on
poets and
what they write against
(self coup)
who the fuck did i think
i was
and fooling, and yes
and oh well,
welcome back
to nothing again
and everything.

" we missed you. "

and as I begin to scratch
peepholes through the bubble
in punctuated diamond breaths,
i am glad
for the want
to write again.
perhaps its because
i have recently began to drink again
apparently certain
friends are best not
forgotten
or else and perhaps
its a combination of this
and many several of other things perhaps
such as the life i just left
silly little poet boy playing
the grown up man, a business,
a she that if had been given some light
and that would have grown from it would
have nurtured us into a we,
and all the while
my moments here were silenced
told to shut up, still still, and wait, but
that life did not quite fit as I had wonderhoped it might,
that uniform and cadence
and all of the great gossamer of ego
has been shed
and perhaps that had just a little to do
with the cosmic F train running my ass over
flat in the path
like a gnat taking a bus
head on.
and yes so now
it is on to the next of any somehow
smiling with many lessons
crushed like bugs
between the spaces of my teeth, and
as i look amusingly from where i
assume to hope to be the middle of my life
i have yet to still become
any form of electric Jesus, or
winner of the global lottery, but
in this little apartment in venice beach, with
a black cat on my lap, and no
woman in my bed, the silhouette
of the dragon has begun to shimmer
in the periphery of my witness.
i wonder, truly
should there ever be more
for which to wish?

and the delight
shimmering like the penumbra
from the grin off of
this jack-o-lantern
with disowned
and noble birthright,
did I enjoy our(my) drinks tonight.

the orbits of our own self navigation and
the subsequent self coups engaged
and displayed to the adoring populace, well well
here we are across 3 glassesof Pinot on my
side, sparklingwater on yours, and
disemboweled edamame
in our contextual Switzerland.

and yes I can admit
to the fact that I am slightly
slighted by the fact that
you have gotten more pretty likeI have,with age.
but you dont have a penis, 1-0 to you.

and in the delicious spin of
moments, life, love, laughter, I raise
this glassto you.

Jim Morrison penned " fearthe lords who are secret among us" and
with this pen I salute the anatomy,
topography,and lineage of such lordly
intimacy my dear
cohort
and friend.

this poem was without question, much
much better in the blueprints and strategy
mapped out ( test & learn ) during
the drive home.

but

timing is everything and

love is tossed in galactic bouquets
across the red carpet of our multi-decade story

and across all of the time we've shared
including and arriving to
tonight.

2:15:09

and I believe its back again
the warm content.

like a great breathing photograph
slowly beginning to develop
out through my senses.

not the cymbals
and trumpets of success
not the confetti of victory
or the spontaneity of innocent
smiling, no
this is much thicker much
more rich than
that.

the welcome carving
out the hollow,
out of out from
the hollow.
cupping the familiar
open of the glow
and pulsing thump
thump of the dragons heart.

and as the lights on Lincoln
begin to sub-flicker
like freckles in my veins
and the strangely OK
settles in below the clouds
between the walls and above
the seeds waiting
to be bathed, I
know this, I
remember this...

...and this
will be again until
I tear it all down again
in some cartoon
of my existence
which will wash away someday
clean.

and I believe then it will be back
again
after that.
the warm content.