Never again will I get upset
when a crazy person offends me
I live in a madhouse —
why would I act outraged,
surprised?
No. I’m an inmate, too
deluded & samsara-screwed
But I’m not all here —
& neither are you
What character am I today?
Oft I strive for studious, disciplined
Yet my ego shakes those keeners off
and lets me where a suit
I’m likely to get in trouble for
In grade school I was sent
to the lost & found to find
myself in another’s clothes
after boldly wearing my own
t-shirt listing the names of the
popular kids in the class
under the stamp
Cool Girls Suck
something ran amuck —
I cannot comprehend
my own ten year old mind
that thought her teachers
were arrested in the head
these past life impressions pressed
back out, creating misery this time ‘round
Attachment to the ego,
character Thomas B.
never did bring happiness
so I won’t be attached to thee —
what kind of actor am I today?
Who will I be as I create
causes for ultimate peace
not just for me —
what purpose for that?
If I truly love others,
I’ll escape and come back
Read time: approx 4 minutes
written in December 2020
I’ve started to root my feet as I walk
so as not to fly away
my head is up inside the clouds
and clouds aren’t here to stay
Appearing normal as ever I was
so it appears I walk on ground
yet inside my mind the streets transformed
a different time, a long lost day, reality unbound
You see, I hesitate to admit
the spontaneous overflow of emotion
that overwhelmed me this past weekend
uninvited tears and two ice cream cakes
Later and I feel better than before
and stronger without falling
feel I’m falling safely to the ground
after being so far away in order to survive
That is the key. Traveling far away
my way costs a little less these days
when travel is forbidden on a political –
I mean for-your-safety and conspiracy theories
Dismissed once more completely unlike
twenty years before when a 9-11 call
came to distress a nation continuously
paying for the evil deeds it continues
To commit. So it seems unfathomable that
I should be able to arrange words
in a way they’ve never been arranged
before since everything is repeating itself
How did they find their way
here now to your hands
to your eyes. How many parts
of your mind are you using
to comprehend this basis
and how many senses are
liberating you or
simultaneously imprisoning
you in samsaric pleasure seeking
yet no endless bliss
I could be anywhere in this
warm hazy gloom I’ve created
in this room
electric guitar riffs and
smoke lifts, incense and candles
burning low, low like my gaze,
low like the spirits of the masses
drawing near the end of what
some may call a “fucked up” year
check it out as a meme somewhere
I want to be held by arms that love me
even though arms cannot love
and to pretend the body and mind
want the same thing is deceit
Smokey blues, and my bare feet
stretched over the back of the
kitchen chair in front of me. Not warm
nor cold and so I can no longer
sense them and my mind in a trance
disconnects from my body and
in the flickering candlelight dance
with the clear, thick sound in my ear
I lose myself, I lose the moment into
a single sensation of the moment
tactile functioning ceases as auditory
rapture plays a different sensation
across the skin. What’s that, pores?
Bring a friend! Goosebumps rise to no end.
If you run your hand against me now
to this solo I may literally die of overstimulation
and it’s not just the copious blooms
of Mary Jane’s bouquets floating through the dark
nor is it the magnificent high
although it helps
it’s this fucking art to heart music in ear
and olfactory tickling dense breath via nostril
and the trance of expression while
simultaneously bearing witness to
manifestation and expressing and perceiving
the metaphysics of this existing in the
future space of your present moment.
This tragically ignored dependency
worse than the drugs used tonight
has mutilated our minds into ignorance
rooted deep.
And so this skin feels music as touch
and yet feels touch not
from within this dream realm which is
impaired life, I feel the strings as fingers
strum on skin and percussion as too much
at times too intense but oh that brass
really gets me from the inside out
really putting the sax in saxual intercourse.
The woodwinds in my hair and as whispers
on my neck – over the top sensations
that would give anthropologists cause
to study: what drug is this?
And gypsy magic would be the reply
because the music is the magic
and the roots run deep
the attachment runs deep
Yet rooting
here I am attempting
to root also
so that I might not fly away
this time, at least not today
I’ve got busy work not time for play
touching my hard nipples
to rock and roll and blues
outside of the dream
the kitchen chair is damn
hard on my ass and I have to
adjust my position and
leave the reverie behind.
written in 2013
Entice me with your words
pierce my walls with meanness
show me you have the power to break another person
yet you refuse.
Show me you have the willpower to stand up
and alone
have the ability to open your door
welcome a stranger
and trust they will not throttle you in your sleep.
Tease me with kisses and polite dialogue,
an intercouse of exchanged language
with kind innuendo but no
biting sting of
regretted words.
Demonstrate your strength
not in feats of power
but in exploits of courage,
the deed which you complete though
you know you’re licked before you start,
see it through.
Toss your speech with abandon
but not your ideas –
your ideals are by your heart
and you live not beside them
but by virtue of them
unto others
though they do not the same.
A vital man with an Achilles heel
I in turn choose not to sever,
a choice my own — as all my acts
are of my own volition.
For I have power too.
As you penetrate, I consume.
As you guffaw, I may also laugh.
As you devastate, I ruin.
As you toy, I play.
As you adore, I love.
I am passionate, above all else.
Prove you have a compulsion for life,
you choose endurance over death,
you have potential to be a
raft for those without
water-wings,
for my exigency for life
is almost extinguished.
Demonstrate a lust for adventure
that is comparable to my own
so we can rid ourselves
of this boredom, tedium,
this dullness, together.
You are a collaborator,
a fellow conspirator and colleague,
a fellow traveller on this quest,
upfront and honest,
sparing only of the sensitivity of others,
unless for a private laugh —
For laughter is god above all —
the ability to laugh at good and bad,
strong and weak,
not others, but ourselves,
in the dark and in the light,
a reason to go forth,
and conquer
not all,
but love.
You can wish and
you can pray
you can hope for
a brighter day
you’ll see the gate to freedom
and you’ll always get halfway
but none of your wishes
will come true
you’ll never be
a real boy
until the strings
they pull are taken ‘way
You may have skin
and you can dance
and once I think
you crapped your pants
yet a puppet you will stay
until your strings
are old and gray
you will remain
their easy prey
you’ll never wander
you’ll never stray
you’ll never wonder
you’ll never play
You’ll never be
a real boy
I’m done with wishy-washy
done with undecided
Finished with fools
I’m ditching unreliables
I’m done with second chances
done with forgiving
Prove yourself now or get
on with your living
I can’t deal with backwash
won’t swallow minced words
I’m tired of dream fluff
save that bullshit for birds
You were spineless and weak
a watered down turd
No more namby-pamby
get gone from my life
I’m holding out for a hero
who’s holding out for me, wife
Your fickle vacillation
nearly drove me insane
And worse, you blame me,
as if I changed my name
I’m done with remembering
I just don’t have the time
You were too wishy-washy
Now thank god you’re not mine
I will never convince you
I have abandoned my madness
As long as you are shrouded in yours
You will not, cannot see
past your veil of ignorance
to what I’ve now become
But every day, with purest love
I wish only everlasting peace
and happiness upon you
Do not feel special because
I felt you so deeply —
I’m an artist
This morning, I wept for
a fallen tree, I had fallen for
over these summer months
Now it lays stretched, dead
over the creek bed, highest branches
brushing forest floor
ground eroded out from underneath
the roots
The artist’s curse is attachment
masked as lust, even love
but the object isn’t special just because
it’s the perception, the artist’s deception
that gives rise to conception
We may have loved this thing before
and here we are losing it, once more
Don’t be fooled
To be felt deeply
is no honour, because
an artist is a slut for feeling
And now you’re just a bore
How can one help but try and remember
Even ask curiously
Who is this and how do I know them from a past life
As I indirectly feed them or compete for
attention or laughter or share an earnest
word on institutional experience
I cannot help but question
How do I know you?
Did we eat at the same table?
Drink from the same cup?
Have I sensually stroked your arm?
Did you birth me from your womb?
Push me on the swing?
So many lives lived unremembered
Remarkable though they seemed
At the time
Gone. Gone from my grasp.
Yet feelings of familiarty arise
At each and every word exchanged
The touches given, stopped
So weird that you could linger
Like an unfounded memory
Yet I know within my heart
That appearance reflects karma
Though unfolded memory remains
Tucked away for enlightened eyes only
A privilege reserved for tenth dimension beings
And here we are struggling in 3D appearance
I don’t hear you in my dreams
No we weren’t that close so recently
But previous lives are infinite
Circular I like to believe
So we’ve had…how many?
Now you stand before me
Like you’ve never known me
But you bear the name I’ve heard before
Under steepled roof, through Christian door
I strive for patience, not to deplore
A despicable name I don’t care for
You aren’t the same though it would appear that way
And de ja vu is pretty peculiar
So the dream I know is a dream getting weirder
As if it’s possible it could be stranger
But that is one thing you’re definitely not
As you avoid my gaze it’s clear
You’ll never shoot your shot and
I think about the shit lot it sometimes
seems I got – gave myself? – a dream with
Suspicious people in my midst
Horrid roommates taking the piss
Out of my very livelihood – what a ride
My karma has given me, so I turn
To the cause, asking
“What has given rise to thee?
What led this John Doe here to me?
What action have a I done or refused
That left this jackoff rather bruised?”
Better perhaps to question
How do I right the wrongs
That led to these damned impressions?
How do I purify the karma in the way
Of the mind that holds steadfastly
Virtuous equanimity, a warm feeling
And friendly attitude to each living being?
That is peace and happiness to me.
The fruit on our vine has withered
I long to cut it down, but something stops me
I feel you lurking, breathing on my neck,
wishing I hated that
now unpleasant sensation
You keep appearing to me as a vision
at my window, at work,
across the road, getting gas or
exploring knee-high weeds,
observing afternoon-hot walls
Summer stinks of memories, snorkeling,
the big bug ID book, hidden peacocked notes
Hot days soothed with cold water and
indulgences rare opportunities afford
Not appreciated and never found again
I couldn’t stand to be with you now,
experiencing anew the arrows of your delusions
So why do I crave you at all? Am I so plagued with
inappropriate attention and my own maras?
Cutting the wizened fruit, so something
new can grow, still seems undoable
With a heart full of love, wishing for non-
attachment, I observe
You’re hard to let go.
The Halfwit Writer