Recent poetry. three.

Boulder.

i.
I’m pushing Boulders
Aside as the pride...
Of getting older
Dissipates.

She yearns one day
To be a bride
But to be bound to her own
Fate.

I am found out and how the World
It acts upon me
Is uncertain.

I have to wait
For my own Self to call me
From behind a curtain.

Pushing boulders like blocks
Navigating from between her
Like a predator that stalks
The deer, dear-hearted believer.

And the next thing that I know I’m on the phone
With an old friend
And fellow under-achiever.
Because having goals is just as much
Of a deceiver.

As being mellow as an idealized
Way just to be yellow.

I’m nearly yelling
On the phone
Telling the receiver:

If you cannot conceive of something
That could be heroic,
Then You have attained nothing
From the act of being Stoic.

At least give mother or father a call
If you’d bother at all
Or if it bothers you at all
When you feel only one foot tall.

One foot short
Of what you were reporting
Your great goal to be.

I’m moving up to Boulder
Growing bolder
By the same degree.

ii.
She lives up in Boulder, Colorado
When I grow bolder, I will call her
As You Know that I do.

She will scold me for the hardness
Of my skull or she will hold
Me in much high regard
Or she will call me
Dull.

No one ever told her
Something that she would believe
Unwitting.

Although men, women, all
Would stone her
She’d be unremitting.

He is quitting everything
Permitting all the germs
To spread.

And she wants to console him.
But she’s in over her head.

iii.
Everything that’s up in Boulder
Seems much colder
When you’re drunk

Maybe she is on the borderline
Between professional and punk

Maybe it is not intentional.
Maybe all convention’s
Just a way for her to tell him
That his ship is sunk.

But I agree that God
Does not make junk
Except for us to find

And turn trash into treasure
Mind over matter is a measure
And a matter of mind.

Dm.A.A.

Obscured in clouds endowed with qualities
of mind one finds
Equality with all the world
but still to one's own word confined.
...
Absurd to think we've not heard sink
or float of frogs in ponds
in years.

We shrink away
from light of day
and think we are sincere.

How queer to find
Between the long and sickly
hairs of mire-weeds.

Not that in itself
but desire
mired in our greed.

But this gray sphere
of mind will pale
to sight and ear
of nightingale.

We need to climb
And rid ourselves of metaphors.
And so I feel that I'm
Ahead, of course.

The river runs like silver nectar
azure intertwined

The broken dirt along its borders
Rough and undefined.

And we forgive ourselves and we
return and we protect
our kind.

Yet kindness pales before the gales
within the wind
within the weeds

Ought we to lead the blind?

dm.A.A.

Upon reading MacBeth.

If you can stand your ground in
Rapture. How astounded you
May be....

By the genius of this man who managed
Just to capture what we see,

And if you can resist the wave
Of patrons flowing from the store
Who’ll tell you ardently how to behave
And who’ll tell you what for.

Who’ll yell at you that you must save
Yourself by prostrating before

This man whose art is of such wealth
That for the greater part we all adore

If you could but open the door
To your own glowing inner Light
You’d see that you are so much more
Than even the most peering sight.

He’s great, but those who do prostrate
Themselves before him do him a disservice.
For you must follow your own Fate
Though it may make you nervous.

Dm.A.A.

Is there a hatred that's endemic
of the town of Hangover
in California
Also known as Rancho
Bernardo?...

I need to know.

I am infected of a strange
and very rare disorder

When others do not meet
my tall, tall order
I don't know.

Please tell me, is there hell
in elementary schools
between their classes

Is there something less than mutual
camaraderie
in boy's flirtatious passes?

Tell me, can you small the
stench
of tyranny amidst the masses??

Or is reality more nearly
As I thought it was
as a cloud passes?

And I look upon the moon
from some hill
amidst the trees?

What strange looming
qualities are these?

Swallowing the mirror of the world
equality
in its degrees?

I can't bring my mind to find
a flea within the hairs
And all my cares are put
at ease.

dm.A.A.

Wierdly beardly
burly early birds
take turns
upon the pyramids
...
of high schools
my rules are

you do not let the stars
fool you.
Thus far.

dm.A.A.

Apparent as it is to see
that parents are acquainted
with being saints
and save the day
...
Why do saints appear
to behave this way?

As though from fear
and from dismay
they keep it near
their own decay

As though for fear
of others they
would make it clear
to Stay away.

Who knows what mothers fathom? They
Perpetually reach their hands
into a bag of marbles and
No body understands.

Fathers with a voice the texture
of a strange machine.
Evade at every point conjecture
As to what they mean.

The perfect picture of the upper
middle class suburban mall.
Where adults bring their children supper
When children are enough to crawl.

It is all bewilderment
in the midst of our suburban sprawl.
Why the children seem less innocent
And the adults small.

Why thrash about between
my needs and bleed my left-side brain
For everything that I could try to do with God's speed
seems, at once, in vain.

I am unconscious and I know that that is sin.
But Yet the hatred comes, quite well aware,
from deep within.

The tattered book of Shakespeare on the floor
In makeshift shelves in sacred stores.
Seems of a lesser order
than the spirit.

And I'm sitting on the border near it.

But matter is the form of spirit
not just meant to flatter Love.
Why, then must the latter
take the former as though latter were above?

And does it matter if, in shutting closet doors
I slap the book about the floor?
Each child's a book and more
than how he or she looks
outside. So I can't hide

the fact
That we do not know how to act.

So tactless with our outer lives
Distracted from inside.

dm.A.A.

Lower order frequencies.

I saw you, black
Eyes behind black
Shades. He tried
To persuade me

To dissuade me
From my black
Crusade.

He always thrives, it
Seems. In the shade.

And all our lives
Subdued in mood,
Were thus made.

But does God, I ask, want us
To venture. Fulfill his sacred
Task. Emancipate our
Selves of fear’s indenture?

God’s told me I’m
Wrong before, God
Was in her eyes.

Those eyes I felt
Entitled to adore.
But without compromise.

But I can dream, can’t I?
Those dreams
I don’t devise.

Unless they are a scheme
Which only from a cunning
Mind arise.

There’s a man who’s drunk
And starving now
And only poetry
Can feed him.

But we shrunk away and How
Our apathy. It would
Defeat him.

What nerve that I should have
To stifle breath
From a screaming liver

Lying, bleeding
Because fear is no
Forgiver.

Does it not claw
At your throat
From your bleeding
Heart?

I need you as you
Need me to fulfill
That part.

But lo and behold
That courage-rope is
Cut.

Falling into crevasses
A heart in storage
Urges in a rutt.

I fall short of glory
But only to be gentle
To those sentimental Humanists
Who say we are not God.

I am tired
Of this story.

Bombs and shrapnel

Your argument is flawed.

Water cuts ravines
Between us. Man’s
Who builds
The bridges.

Is there a way back
For us?
From across these ridges?

I will climb and I’m
Insulted
That you do not have
The nerve,

To turn back those black
Sunglasses
Give me more than I
Deserve.

He tells me
I should wear
The shades
Before we even
Meet.

One word or two
From you.

And I’ll accept
Defeat.

But until then the fears
Are books collected
Over years.

Your eyes were clocks
That stung into
Their faces

As the wind blew
Over
Classroom desks.

And so I hope you’ll
See beyond
Politeness And
Then we can reconnect.

Who scrubs away
The dust

On our classroom
Windows?

Who licks the rust
Away from
The playground
Pipes?

You are still
Peanut butter
Sticking to the
Ceiling.

Don’t hide it
In a
Nuclear Reactor.

I’ll miss these faces
When they’ve been
Effaced.

What human
Right
Can spare you
The challenge to
Invite someone
By miracle you
Know.

Before Death will consume you
In the fading light?
But you don’t think so.

What spider that
she let live long
Inside her

Wove a web in Dana’s
Head? Who are
You if not Dylan?
Of not Nathan and
Everyone ever.

To God, we are all
Naked. Have you
Forgotten?

Are you a carved
-out mask, wine-
besotten?

Or are you starved
Too
For the task? Without
Humility, we cannot
Ask for God’s
Agility.

ii.

Do you deserve
Your insanity? Your
Vanity? Your
Farce?

Can’t we all
Prostrate ourselves
Like wide-eyes
Beggars

And eat our beans?

You own the spaces
Between
The white bars
In the ruler
Lining
The roof.

It wouldn’t hurt if you
Don’t fear it. Too much of
Our lives are spent on
Fear, We have obscured
The sky. And our neighbour’s
Eyes. Becoming

The very God
We had been taught
To fear.

Please. Each plank
Of that roof
Belongs to someone.

When her eyes
Are like clocks
Staring into my
Eyes?
My heart? My
Throat? My
Liver?

I don’t deserve
This. Hide
From the rain

With me.

Dm.A.A.

As they shared
their loneliness
at one table

a jukebox...
untouched

playing silently,

I dreamt
of a dream wife

And a break-up
and putting on

“Hand Me Down” by
Matchbox
20.

And I would dance in my mind
open to them.

And the lights would prompt
our exit

How do I say how
I feel? I was describing
this place

and it gave me pause.

And then I hit your name

And it was all the same
a cause.

I am an infant
thirsting for its mother's
breast.

The Other always
knows me best.

I'm letting go
and giving up
on helping people.

There's a group of jocks right here
laughing about
rape.

My inner mouth's
agape,

The victims will know
the solemnity
of those lamps

in the aisles
of the pizza parlour.

But the drunks
will die
in agony.

It's not worth it.
I miss you.

I would dream
of us swimming across
an ocean
between Hawaiian
islands.

I would celebrate
our honeymoon
here with you
at the foot of the
volcano.

Dana, I know in vain
this will fall on either deaf
ears or open ones.

There is no in between.
It's not worth being isolated
if we all die alone.

My heart is open.
I will not laugh at rape.

Bodies will pile upon me
in descent
only words directly
soft and gentle

will assuage me.

Face the world, World.

Life is not made of recyclable
material. It is not a cup

of coffee

it is death and rape and the courage
to love beyond borders.

And laugh only at one's own
pain.

dm.A.A.

Dear Ms. Imbruglia,

The critics said
That you were bland
They said they'd...
put a price upon your
head
And a stone within
your hand.

Your voice from
five years old still
washes over their
words like a tsunami.

And I remember
What a thrill
You were
to mommy.

One up on my fears
So clear to me
What others are afraid to see

God made us to be...
confused
to lose sight of ourselves

To be a wealth of strange
perceptions vague
contentions
and a plague

of strange pretensions.

I try, I try, I try

but every night the children die

And I die.

Throw me down onto
the jagged stones
that lie cloistered
within jumping distance
of the second story
of the three-stage
Palomar classroom
building.

I want to drink
those stones and sink
my teeth
into my loneliness.
Since she left me alone.

The world is my oister.

Only ecstasy can pardon me
But hardens me to see
The woman next to me
does not agree.

I proclaim to God
how can you tell me
not to hate?

Those whose eyes
are blind
to your great mind?

Whose kindness is confined
to mindless false
associations
Who exalts
his own absurd
frustration?

Forgiveness
Is all that can make me
live this.

But the hatred
is just love within the rough.

And yet to them
that love is not enough.

Tonight I am
a sangria on the rocks
Tonight I am the walks
of life that I could
only sprint tonight
I am the brightness
of impenetrable Rightness.

Tonight I want nothing more
than for her best friends
to sock me in the jaw.

Tonight I am a diamond
in the rough and red meat
in the raw.

Meet me here
bring all your flaws
and every way you have
no flaw.

I can't help
drabness. It will do
us in.

Please tonight Please
let us break the law.

Only love can put us
all at ease.

Only love
Immunity to this disease
Pardon my trespasses
And I'll pardon all the world.

And I'll skip all my classes
as I would have
should have
miles ago

to go dancing with a girl
in the cement amidst
all the trailers.

I love you. Please
We are all just
skurvy sailors.

You deserve me.
Maybe it is mutual, my
baby.

Love where mothers
drop like flies
where they rise
to heights of sanity
onrealised.

I love you.
Pardon me my trespasses and you will
pardon me my ecstasy

And you will sit next to me
in class

free to cut at any time.

But Reason alone cannot commit treason
to the law of being utterly alone?
I need your rhyme.

dm.A.A.

Culture is my Neighbour.

And then I learned about the Active Culture
From a Kurd
Who told me I should try to milk it...
For all that it’s worth.

But I felt like a vulture
About to eat a turd
And I think it’s absurd
To say I had no word
In my own birth.

Culture’s not my friend
It is a neighbour.

It has its own end
That it pursues but I will not
Be so confused

As to abuse it
And allow it to determine my behaviour.

I refuse to let it bruise
Me masquerading as my
Saviour.

What martyrdom could I aspire to
If not to set fire to
My skin on Tianenmen Square?
Peace comes always from within.
So there.

Culture shock, the vulture
Stalks the walks of life
But eats them when they’re dead.

But it won’t put a price upon my head.
I’d offer twice for it instead.

I will not allow
Flirtatious women to prostrate
Themselves before me.

I will not allow
My endowments
To be used
Deploringly.

I will not confuse
The train with the destination.

I will live a life. Not unbruised
But fighting always
(L)imitation.

Some nerve is in every fiber
Of our muscles. We deserve
The blood that we desired
From our mother.

Don’t allow your brother
To smother you.
Stand against yourself
And be a wealth of
Beautiful and True.

And I will not harm you
Nor what I say alarm you
I can keep a steady course
I am divorced from all frivolity today.

Today I take the straight and narrow
Today I give blood from my marrow
Today I walk the razor’s edge
The straight
Edge designated
Driver.

Without license.

Today I don’t deprive her
Of her innocence or join in her
Parade of her depraved predicament.

Today I am without tomorrow
Only timeless sorrow.

Today I don’t ask Father time
(Nor Reason for its rhyme)
for (h!)is consent.

Today I am treason.
I am silence in one’s
Breath.

Today I am unviolent
And unafraid
Of death.

Like the monk
On Tianenman square
I will burn and never waver.

Culture
It is not my friend.

Though it may be my neighbour.

dm.A.A.

I don't trust reporters
Telling me about
disorders
be they in the minds of
individuals...
or in the trends
of masses.

I don't listen
to the casters
or the pastors
or the master
crafters

Throwing fear into the air
as though the flame would
elevate the rafters.

Condemn the soul to death
and venerating God in the same
breath.

I didn't hear
what the caster said
I know it's all
within my head.

I see signs
sticking out like flags
in drugstore aisles
Instead.

Forget them, dear
the words you hear
Are woven all by artless hands
Crafty, drafting us
to take unmerited
and fickle stands.

Light the candle in your backyard.
The wind will blow it out.

Let the house of fear
burn down.

I don't listen
to what the pastor said
It is all within my head.

They can try to fire facts
or so called facts at me much faster
than I can comprehend
the very reason why
they spend a million dollars
to defend, with scholarly precision
Some troubled decision.

Forget them please
Just put yourself at ease
their third-hand
(masquerade of)
Knowledge (???)

Life is disorder
You can't take the Sea
from beneath the vessel
Nor can you wrestle with the wind
And win

And neither can you, dear,
Begin

to steer the tides.

I'm on nobody's side.
No one is on my side.

“Well, there isn't a following moment, is there?”

“What?” her usually flattering bemusement was now overcast with a tenaciously impersonal hostility.

“I mean, that's just the old model of the three-level Universe, isn't it?” he suggested with nonchalant self-consciousness, not devoid of a longing for corroboration and, in fact, an inner terror of rejection. This chance meeting was too precious....

“I'm not following you,” she rejected the moment with a frown in her Semitic eyes of such seering familiarity that he felt that he would simply burn away in the extinguishing flame of this moment.

“I mean,” he lumbered on, “Heaven, hell, and earth. The future is just heaven, the past is hell, and here we are in the present. But there isn't really a 'following' moment. It's all just this moment, and it changes, and we measure that change in increments of seconds or minutes or years. But this is still the same moment that you were in when you were five years old and it's the same one that you and I were both in four increments ago.”

And it was in that moment, when he saw the crippling rejection in her eyes, that he saw God reproaching him quietly for his ignorance.

“I don't know,” she said with certainty.

Four years had been eternity for him, at that moment, that cross-hair of infinite increments. Yet, for her, either by virtue of ignorance or experience, if not both, there had been four years that were at least eight years between this moment, this encounter, and the memory of their last formal, physical leave-taking. She had not held him in her embrace for that entire time.

“Don't follow me please,” she said with anxiety. He knodded numbly. The lights from the gift shop seemed like a stained glass window as she walked briskly into the gaping corridor of the airport.

dm.A.A.

The Ship on Fire.

Why should I remain
Within this social game?
People don’t explain themselves...
And I throw pearls
In the pond
In vain.

Where people don’t respond
And they never explain
Themselves
Why do I impale myself
Upon a stake that pales
In contrast to the kind of gales
Of Life that we could make
As though the Sea’d gone stale?

I set out four years prior
From the shore full of desire
Wanting nothing more than to perspire for
A Cause.

The Effect of it was sitting
Across from a cross, unwitting
Amateur psychiatrist
Who was never given pause.

And seemed to feel I merited
No applause for my endeavours
As though I had inherited
A brain that had been severed.

And I had tried, in vain, to tell them
That I’d never thank them
For keeping me within a tank
And telling me I’m welcome.

I’ll come out to play with you
But don’t you fucking dare
To impose yourself upon me
And be careless of my care.

My trust is not as easily dispensed
As four years prior
I’m not going to live here in suspense
The ship on fire.

Dm.A.A.

When I write,
I write
Just as I breathe.

I do not do it...
Caring
Or despairing
For the disparate
Beliefs
Of those
With whom I’m
Sharing
Air.

I do not care
I cannot hold your breath.

And when I’m breathing,
I can guess at what you’re feeling
Less than I can be the season
Of your death.

I am not obsessing
Stressing anything
Regressing to the many things
That we had shared
Before the evening
Sun had cared.

I am among those there
Who saw the rose
Before it opened to the air

Who woke at dawn and were among
The ones who saw the morning
Light unsung.

And if I should break through to something
Blaring, glaring at me
Staring like God had and daring me
To stare right back beside you.

I assure you: This place is
No haze
We find some solace in each other

Always or we cannot call
Ourselves sister
And brother.

So I breathe out
Devout in my belief
Relieved in what I know.

Either we agree,
And you can tell me.
And we both agree to grow.

Or you say no
And that’s okay
The Sun looks
Unperturbed today.

I am needed
I am loved
I conceded
Unthought of
...
I have bleeded
through my sockets
All my friends are
in my pocket

I would free them
just to see them roll
like marbles
on the pavement

But not without unease
Great to my soul
And still wanting to save them.

War can wait.

War can wait
For us to date

The more I have to wait
The more irate
I’m apt then to become

Trying my best not
To succumb to hate

Accept the fate
That awaits me.

If poetry can stifle pain
Better than apathy
If poetry out in the rain
On clammy mornings

Can fill forlorn hearts
With warmth coursing
Through the veins

Of one that had been forceably
Divorced
From the astral plains,

Then poetry
The weaving of dreams
Is not done in vain.

You know it’s me
Even through my schemes
Again and again.

God need not justify himself
He alone
Has the news

All is Love
Below, above
Know it or don’t
You choose.

If poetry can thus alleviate
The overwhelming pain
Of broken hearts

Than addicts take bars
Of Xanax in vain

Numbing their brains
To stars.

Courage is more than
To see your friend blown up
Before your eyes

It’s to see your friend
Torn up
By his grandmother’s
Demise.

Realise then
We should prize them
Heroes there
And heroes here.

We are all heroes
When we choose
To love and live not in our
Fear.

Or allow fear its due
Tempering our tempers
Some marines just never knew
Or their women were exempt

From that same heroism. It is true
And harrowing to think
We are all
Great men on one side
And the other half
Will always stink.

And sink beneath the threshold
Of the ideal we would like
To imitate

So with every spike
Of pain
Like a landmine
War can wait.

War can wait
For me and you
Every veteran knows
It is true

If he has paid not only country
But his God
True God
His due.

So much news is really oldies
From the moldy minds of people
Find themselves crucified
Upon a steeple by their own device.

Parading vice dissuading nice
Sensible compromises
That, feeble, tries to yell,
Surprise!
Trying to see
Gentle eyes, we

Seldom realize
The kingdom’s always
On the inside.

Where went our religious pride?
Contagious xenocide
Outrageous that we don’t abide
By the laws that artists
Found.

Unastounded
By the heavens
Yet ungrounded
In our sound.

Om. It’s time, kids
To go home
Home
Will always wait.

But it’s up to you to go
Stop roaming.
War can wait.

Let them all come home.
Don’t let them hesitate
Today I’m fighting wars against the government
Today I’m starting barfights with Marines
Today I’m doing jihad.
Today I am obscene.

Jihad: its etymology
Is seldom known but what it means
Is simply to sit alone
And speak with God, unseen.

Today my heart goes out
To Afghanistan devout.
Today the greater part
Of my pity’s with the underdog.

Today I run my mouth
Every immigrant I’d ever met
Said this country’s not what it
Makes itself out to be

And today I do regret
That so few see
With their own eyes

That so few see the world outside
In perpetual surprise.

Today I am a sunrise
Neverending
Yet ephemeral.

Today I am defending
A secret cave
And free trade
On the emeralds.

Today I stand against
The man who criticizes
Other’s lies
But who devises
All his own
And calls it compromise.

Today I’m prone
To stand alone
The sand will run
Out in the sun

But nothing else
When all my inner demons
Have been slain, can
Possibly await.

And For The Love of
(Allah, God, and Buddha
Yahweh, Tao, and Krishna)
War
Can wait.

Don’t care
What people think about
You if they don’t care
About you.
...
If they’re kids, then they
Think they can do
Without you.

Always those fellow children
On the playground
All to eager
Just to say

Meager things like,
Don’t you dare
To go down that way.

Mother says it’s dangerous
And Father says
It’s not okay.

And I won’t bother
To see any other
Way.

Dmitry Andreyev

Whoever said that pain is more
thangirls who don't call back
Has never experienced
Before a love attack.
...
Love attack is static
Breaking through social stigma
Love attack's erratic
Love is an enigma.

Love is Dana
when she was still young
among the few who told you

You should explain a
song to her.
And would never scold you.

Love was when, although she dated
Your very closest friend back then
Still had always demonstrated
All the proper discipline.

Love don't listen to them
When they tell you to keep quiet
Love is very seldom knowing
when you try to deny it.

Showing little care for flimsy
mimsy old pretensions
Love attack is final
Attack without contention.

Love attack is when her knuckle
grazes your spine while you hug goodbye
Love is that belt buckle
She asked if you thought that she should by.

Love attack is gentle
violent
Brilliant and
shy.

Love attack is always giving
Living
Never knowing why.

Love attack is more than just the person
However diverse and versed
Love attack can never worsen
even if totally
unrehearsed.

Love attack just never cares
for strange and jealous stares
from those without it

Showing us through our despairs
we cannot live without it.
But if you've never felt it
Never melted, you
can't no about it.

So without it
Be devout it's
love attack
it's got your back.

Alive one day
The morning she wakes
I promise I’m
Not great shakes
...
But I shake
At the thought
That you forgot

I must have made a mistake.

This is not going
To make sense
It’s too much in
Present tense

And presently I’m tense
Since you have chosen to be
In my past.

I had thought
That you and I
Four years apart
Endured
Would last.

I am not supposed to be
Impressed with miracles
Too easily
Maybe if you could have seen
That fact, you’d see why I
Had chosen thus to act.

But I am just hysterical now
Fanatically dying
My friend’s great-grandmother passed on tonight
Tonight I saw him crying

Tonight I saw the house burn down
And the iceberg crumble

Tonight I’d rather spout the truth
Than fumble for some comfort.

I miss you. Acknowledge me
Please College kept us
Separated
By degrees.

Please tell me that you recall
All the summer days
Or maybe you can see me through
Your youthful and perturbed
By experience
Haze.

Maybe you will see me
Without delirients
And maybe

I can be me.
And maybe something
Will save me.

But I amble. I ramble.
I stumble I fumble

I am drunk. I am drunk. I am drunk.

And I miss you.

Miss your exploding with every moment
In zeal Miss your
Realness the constancy
Of it. Miss
Being your friend
And remember
The knuckle
Grazing my spine.

Miss.

Oklahoma.

Dyonysus through the floorboards
Enamoured like an army hammer
The more I adored you...
The more I’m apt to stammer

Tapped into your emerald green
Aura of compassion
You were always
So surprised
That look within your eyes
Unrationed
And uncompromised.

Tempering my passion,
It takes reason form
Yet I am honest.

All is well if I can tell
Myself that reading you
Is better than bleeding through

My own fabric of pride
But needing you
Is undenied.

My chakras hurt
I’m shocked to find
A fear of love
Within my mind
...
Am I to be regarded
As above those pains that hardened

Many hearts? And does not
That pretension
Render me a great
Pretender.

Failing to accept
The charge of being
Human. Or to
Start?

I’ve started. It
Is true that minds
Defining ourselves
All the time

Would blind us.
I would rather
Be in love
Than be enlightened.

How could I regard myself
So highly
As to feel myself to be above
That weakness. To be right and
Not to have that meekness
Heightened?

The truth is much more subtle
But the trouble is
I know it far too well.

If you could be here
Not to be my double
But to be your own.

Then I would sacrifice for you
Live just to be nice
To you.

I would rather
Be in love
Than to let my ego
Tell me

Love is an illusion
And in its confusion
Lead me straight to hell, we
Need each other
More
It’s definitely
Worth living for.

Be next to me
And we will see
What it means to be.

To let our raft
Sink into the sea.
...
So I decided
Every draft I had
I would exhaust to be
Beside her, if at any cost.

If only to know shy she had
Decided that all hope was lost.

Yet I would never see

The swamp blown over with a frost
That was the cynicism
Of so many people that I trusted
Just to bridge the schism.

I suppose those trees will never
Come to taste the clouds.

Because it take two(s and threes)
For these endeavours.
But they’re washed away
In crowds.

Dm.A.A.

Fine. I will concede
That privacy was just my
Greed.

This place is not...
A narcissistic bog.

But a parade.

Facebook was made as
A crusader’s dream.

A place for scholars
Just returned
From four year tours
Of intellectual war.

It is our Woodstock
And our Houseboat
And our Haight
And Ashebury.

I was blind to have defined it
Differently. But now I
See.

No educated scholar
Would spend hour upon hour
Devoured in pursuit of just a dollar
Or some strange elusive power.

This is a conspiracy
Our generation’s method
To set fire to the heresy
Of feeling disconnected.

Now I see and I refuse
To be pratyeka-Buddha.
Now I’ll use this tool
Unconfused as anybody woulda.

Why could I keep secrets
To myself, and in my greed?
When so many of are full of regret
And my contribution is in need?

The inevitability of innocence.

Since every moment’s
Novel and unprecedented
(Everything is change)...
Then won’t it be best
Just to marvel
As the stars all
Rearrange?

You can classify it
It will pacify your
Mind

But maybe, having tried
To classify it, you
Have been unkind.

I have been too kind to try
To impress upon the world
What Nature holds, presuming them
To have seen what it did unfold.

But as I said, some doors are closed
To many not as far ahead as I.
And so the best composed
Of poems will appear, to dry eyes,
Dry.

But I’ll maintain my stance
If vainly fighting for a chance
Than sanely one day they will see
And fuck them if they don’t agree.

But I will not accept the compromise
The contexts stuffy men devise
Stuffing it like leaves into a pipe
Leaving us to sit and gripe.

The door is unlocked for you, but
It isn’t open yet.
You have an excuse and
You have nothing to regret.

But as for me, having had
The daring, having been prepared
To open it and wet
My tongue
I am among those
Who cannot forget.

Your sad resolve and pity
Cannot touch and I would be
Mad if I should let your witty
Tongues become a crutch
To me.

Since every moment’s novel
And unprecedented
Then to marvel is a better way
Than anyone man has invented
On a prior day.

And so those of us who can do it
And those who cannot
Still remain within the stew, it’s
All in the same pot.

What is innocence? It’s not
Naiivete or childishness
But childlike wonder, that linch
Pin of existence
That few can confess.

For every novel mess
Will not conform to our old
Order.
And so we’re always pushed
Onward to progress
Across our border.

We are thus always innocent
Only a victim in a sense.
Be it with or without consent,
You can’t escape your innocence.

Novelty is what we face
With each passing moment.
Marvel with me in this place
It will get better, won’t it?

A last homage to spirit and Nature.

Something in that
repetition
steady madness...

lends a sense
of constancy
justifying every
(man'made not by God) sadness.

Like a heartbeat
lending resistance
to the wind of ever
novelty
as the drummer, crippled

slips, in defeat
from existence.

It All Adds Up.

People act so strangely
You look around, you
want to say hello....
They don't, and it's Strange, you know.

Stranger than the stranger danger
what persuades the mind to see
Step one, a man
who has a gun within his hand
step two, who knew?
And then me at step three?

Condemn me for wearing
a beard or sitting alone
and being weird or
acting like I'd known
you all your life
As though I were prone
o pull a knife.

I'm spiraling out of control
I am enjoying the fall
You may think you are the captain of your soul
But that's not all
you are

If one plus one is two
And one plus two is three
If one equals one, then you
And I are equal, and you
equal me.

And though two may be greater
than one, that does not dissuade
the disparateness of their properties.

Nor those between
the two and three.

Two, as a dividing agent
Leaves you half a healthy numerator.

Whereas one does not divide
Though the two are greater,

One does not seek to be on
the even side
And though zero is less than

one, still

it's the same, it runs
to show us the same lesson.

For though the one is greater,
that one is still divisive
Wouldn't be nice if
we could all be zero
wouldn't it be nice if

We could all be
that hero
without a cent
to his name. That gent who
says to us, Hey
we are all the same?

You can't divide by zero
Without seeing
infinity.

And so, though zero may be queer, oh
(S)he hath my affinity.

dm.A.A.

Another letter to Jean.

I always wonder what impels
Men and women to suffer
these hells that they themselves imposed...
On a mind that could be better
rehearsed, well-versed and well-composed
And, on the whole, unfettered.

That would be quite better than
The mind being a stopper
for the soul.
I think binding others to one's
destiny
is on the whole

A much more absurd predicament
That is, to want to control
Rather than having the courage
To love, to seek consent
And to console.

And I suppose that to console
has fallen to my charge
If not for all
of humanity
as a whole
than society at large.

Tell me: What impels the mind
that questions its own sanity
to have half a mind to find
some solace in its private vanity.

What, I ask, could be a greater threat
to one's humanity?
Did that mind, in the same breath, forget
the charge it's put upon its sanity?

Craziness arises out of lazy compromises
between methodical illusion
and periodical confusion.

Spiraling out of control
But perfectly calculated
A fibonacci sequence
improvised and orchestrated.

So why do you question me
If you do not trust yourself
Why is it, in my eyes, you see
A threat to your own health?

Do you distrust the world around you
And find solace in your own aggression
Would it just astound you
too much to see your own obsession.

As it is: Your world and his
To see your own transgression clearly
What if sanity had found you
Searching for it so sincerely

in a quarry, knees half-buried
Married to your curse?
When the world is all around you
And above you
When the world wants only
to love you
It is scary
And you make it worse.

dm.A.A.

The More it Changes.

The more it changes, the more it’s

The same day...

I was starting to begin to wonder
If the undertaking that had been Afghanistan
Had changed you
And if something like that ever can
Estrange you
From your common man in your
Attempt to help them God
Knows anybody can
Commit that error
And God help them.

I met Ali, who knew a terror
That even surpasses it
Now he teaches classes
At UCSD.

And yet I meet him on the corner
Of a Starbucks on the plaza
Looking like we share in some disorder
Of the cosmos.

And he tells me, looking at me
Clearly and sincerely,
Don’t forget that Life is not
Beside you

It’s in front of you.

And the recognition
Couldn’t have appeared more dear to me.

And I (had) hope(d) that that same recognition
(had) come to you, too.

But maybe it had been your own rendition
Of your own condition
Left you wishing
To drink more
Of the world
Than you were ready for.

And maybe it was your ambition
To go, like a saint to war.
Knowing, eyes alight
Cheeks creased
Imperishably
Radiantly glowing
That this was what you
Were fighting for.

Erasing the visage
And replacing it with a
Collage of memories.

But the more it changes,
The more it stays the same.
What estranges us
From what we were
Makes what we had been
Plain.

People with high IQs
with more in their garage than cars
Who do not need
a barrage of pyrotechnics
to see the stars...

WHo think technically
And morally
Balancing the odds
Who see GOd
in every face
Please
keep them away from this place.

It was all over the news
Someone with more in his garage
than cars
sent a barrage of bombs
to college
You could see it all from Mars

NOw the girls avoid the gaze
Of every quiet freak
Who wanders into diners all alone
And sometimes dares to speak.

It was all over the news
A quiet boy of kindly nature
Took a gun to someone's head
You can see him in the paper.

BUt how this happened
Is more than the casters will let you deduce
How a good, smart boy had snapped and
Kept the cycle of abuse.

dm.A.A.

The looming threat of
death it threatens
to consume me
in each breath.
...
I want to succumb myself
to ecstasy
but it does not befit
my station

Sanctity will lead me through
A course of imitation.

A tour de force of how to scrape away
the cover that had made
the lover the romantic.

what had hovered in their minds
the disruptor that unloved their
kind

the flesh-eater
who could pick a needle
from the hay.

And the spirit of the
Mountain that would not
obey.

Lighthouse.

Oh, the curse
Of being alone
Upon this lighthouse...

Long forgotten.

As I have to smell
the sea-besotten
weed

What rotten luck
To be alone in musk.

Prone to hearing
Voices from the distance.

Prone to seeing
vessels dotting the line
of the horizon.

I try again
I leave my station
taking some unsteady
vacation.

Visit the village Pillagers
and Forkers and Old New
Yorkers.

And I try to tell them what I've
SEEN. If I'm lucky
I leave within the day.

I am always fucked
If I stay.

ii.

The lock me up in houses
I cannot get out.
They douse my soul in vinegar
Hoping that I'll be devout.

By the time they've scratched
My head apart
And hung the threads
From cracks in floorboards.

They tell me they're bored.
And go upstairs.

And, all this happening,
tired of being so adorned.

Trying hard not to subside to scorn,
I extricate myself
And flee their glares.

I don't want to masturbate
Onto their window sills
While they watch.

But I would kill
for just a blotch
of paint.

But they will wash it off
their quaint windows
and then scoff
at my complaint.

Why should I aspire
to set fire to their homes
of fear and shame?

I know that
if I were there,
I should feel the same,

Exactly the same.

For after all, their world in all
its intricacies and breakdowns'
just a game.

I have to let them play.
Like children
all bewildered
Every day.

It feels so hurt to say.

But what else can I do? The alternative is
blue. What could you know
of eternity?

All the windows point to something more
inane: Modernity. MODErnity. MODERNITY.

Some doors I hope they'll open soon
But until they do, what's the use?
I can't let them know what I had seen.
They could not deduce.

But since I, myself, have seen the light
Behind, I have no excuse.
What would just distract the blind
The seeing would to sanity reduce.

dm.A.A.

Has it been four years?
I can't believe it
Though I'd tried to calculate it

Though it had seemed queer...
To investigate it.

But sure as fact and there it is
It has been four years
And now it seems imperative
To be sincere
Lest my despairs and cares
Leave me in crumbling fear,

Summer of two-thousand nine
The second-to-last time I saw you.
And it may seem asinine
But I never thought we'd fall
through.

I wanted to date a girl
You told me to go for it.
As we waited for the waterwhirl
The autumn would have
something more in store, it

Told me you would disappear
To college
And that Ally would replace you.
But it didn't lend the knowledge
I'd lose face and time erase
you.

Come summer of two-thousand ten
Ally did depart.
If by chance you'd seen me then
You would have (seen) a broken heart.

But really a conniving mind
Striving just to orchestrate,
For that villain – time – to unwind
To blindside unkindest

Fate.

But the summer came and went
As had Ally's once consent
And I found a number heart
The journey down the hill
Did start.

The year of eleven brought
A reverence for scary thought.
You had been very distressed
For me,

But shedding me was best.

Two-thousand twelve had been the
third
Year. How queer and how
absurd.

You had been so dear
to me.
I had fears, but never
could
Guess someone so dear
to me Could leave me
stranded,

empty-handed

I can't stand it.

More than Ally could.

The fourth year was a new
device. I knew
I thought of

You, oh
Once or twice.

I didn't know
How I'd grown
number,

Till I saw
you on that day
After the end
of summer.

And it was upon that first day
of Autumn I remembered.
All the things – you probably forgot
them – that you'd told me last
September.

Not that you'd ever hold me
as you would another man.
But that you wished me to go boldly
Forward

with your luck
Holding my hand.

dm.A.A.

Retarded.

I can just begin to wonder
What if I should undertake
With patience treatment of a patient...
With his sanity at stake.

But if he or she was so
disabled that he or she could not
Or was just unable to
Oh wait I forgot.

What If they were so unstable
Creampuff Lactose intolerant

Or maybe
Baby then would I be able
No I can't. I can only rant.

But What IF I SHOULd get a paranOID SCHIZO
PHRENIC ON THE OPERATING
TABLE CLOTH
WORN BY INDIANS IN
THE MIDDLE AGES.

All of that seems frightening, and I will not bullshit you
That few I've seen have found it enlightening
a job to do.

Lightening the load for others
Who are overboard.
Being a light behind
A locked and airtight door.

But I swear to Bob or whoever
else is listening
I will go about
this endeavour
Shining eyes all
glistening.

And if for just one moment
I can see the light
permeate the glow of some poor soul then
I will know that I've done right.

If I could extend my reach
to breech the old consensus
That divides the sane
from the insane
As one would the vain
from senseless.

Then I'll make it plain, by Jove
That sanity's a subtle thread.
The only constant in this world is Love
and that's beneath the head.

If I have to teach a young boy
How to count from one to five instead
Of sitting in the office of
some headquarters upon
my head,

I would run right in and do it
Not for them, but you, Sir
You who seem so perfectly, pristinely sane
So self-assured.

You who lends authority
to money and of course his voice.
You whose voice is never (or seldom) Sunny
Whose eyes do not rejoice.

You, my friend, you may pretend
That you have all your marbles
But by the end, you'll find, my friend
Your mind's totally startled.

For counting just from one
to five is fine and all
But by the end you've wasted seconds
worrying about something
more small.

And once, my friend, you can begin to Feel
with Others,
Life has started.

You, sir, are the Real
true quandry.

Emotionally
retarded.

dm.A.A.

We could be friends or
we could all be movies
It doesn't matter
If there's a happy ending
...
All of the time we
spent doing our duty
Was all time we
Shouldn't have been spending

When we first met you
Told me I was weird, so
I didn't know that
I could be sincere though

But I regret we
didn't meet for several years since
But that's okay
Despite all of the queerness

When we met again, you
had your first boyfriend
He was a friend and
You were full of joy then

But as the summer
Came and we all parted
It was a bummer.
He left you broken-hearted.

We could be friends or
We could all be movies
It doesn't matter
So long as you're with me

All of that time that
We had all wasted
I think that I'm quite
Ready to replace it.

When we hung out you
Wore yellow shades
As he drove us down
To the suburban palisades and

You said 'Dmitry,
we're hanging out!' And
It has been years. I've
Not forgot about it.

Then we all went and we
three got ice-cream.
I had a friend and
You told me very nicely.

Then he broke up with you and
You were broken-hearted
That was when the trouble
Between you two had started.*

I saw him in Berkeley
I wonder if you thought then
'Did he deserve me?'
You probably forgot, then.

It has been four years and
You've barely spoken
I suppose it's queer but
By the same token,

We could be friends or
We could all be movies
It doesn't matter
So long as you're with me

But there's a chance that
You will reject my
Humble advances
And that would be a pity.

I saw you again, you
were getting some tacos.
There wasn't time then for
You to really talk, though.

You saw an old friend but
I guess I sort of scared you.
But maybe then you
were unprepared to.

Like back in high school
It took some months for
You to be nice so
I won't be bummed nor

Will I succumb to the presumption
That you hate me
Even if it happens
You don't want to date me.

You were abroad
In the Middle East, and
I wouldn't know
About that in the least, friend.

But I suspect the
Experience did show you
How to select the
friends who really know you.

I had been working
At a house of fabrics
Never was a jerk enough
To say that I had it.

But while you were
In the Middle East
My poetic fervor
Had all but deceased, and

Now I suspect that
You're a student teacher
I miss being connected
with such a prudent creature.

It was upon that
Day I got your number
Each day you don't respond I
grow a little number.

We could be friends
Or we could all be athletes
It doesn't matter
We will be dead soon.

I will stop rhyming
Time is of the essence
I want you back, I
Miss you, D.M.Z.

* Author's liberty.

Dana.

Dana Mohammad-Zadeh
Blossoming
Awesome and constantly in...
bloom.

More than any thought
cast back into
the past could ever hope
to presume.

More than Men's forlorn resolve
to doom

The Sun is always
in the room.

Statement.

Loneliness, it comes undone
as simply as
letting go....

Knowing that you
Know.

Opinions are superfluous
Not every piece of furniture
that needs to be assembled
Has an instruction manual.

Evidence unnecessary.
Statistics make the soul sick.

Reality.
Reality.
What you know has nothing to do
with what you think

Even if you prove it
logically,
it makes no difference.

What you know
Comes from somewhere
deep within.

YOU KNOW.
Don't think you don't.
Don;t think.

By virtue of projection, members
of a society find corroboration
for their views.

So that, dismembered...
They can just remember
The ornate sensation
That was childhood
Warthogs in the wild woods.
Having never just
to choose.

And in this very strange endeavour
Everyone that plays will lose

Walking away from the river
Stalking day by day, confused.

A ray of sunshine permeates
the bog but no frog
sees it

Even if it should
warm it over
to insane degrees, it

Sits and thinks upon the water
And its own refection.

Leaving always that great glowing Other
apart from all of selection.

By virtue of projection,
We avoid rejection
and are never flawed

Always perfect children
Our days numbered
by God.

But the members of this world of thought
Grow number every day.
As they grow in numbers, each grows dumber.
All of them having naught to say.

Zombies pace and recognise each other
But the face of God
is not the face of loving mother
And it is quite odd

That in name of heaven we have sacrificed
The only refuge that we have.

And it's strange that change that once had
made us children, full of Good
now makes us mad.

But to be a child was always
Just to grow and to know
What is right.

And so adulthood
Doesn't look to others
for corroboration.

For to ask that of brothers
and sisters is done just in spite

Of seeing them as they see them
Free of imitation.

And so I would say to the frog
Turn away and see the Sun
Sometimes you will be the fog
in the bog, but do not run

Back jumping, hearts just blindly thumping
to the safety of the water.
You are an amphibian.
If this burns down, you're off the charter.

dm.A.A.

That part of your brain that makes
sense of things is also
I think the part
that makes make believe.
...
And so it seems quite clear
to me and many others, also
Why that part
of the psyche
Always seems
to deceive.

It feels overwheling
That the others feel the way you feel
It makes all of this insanity
somehow appear more real

Imagine please a world without
phones, tv's, and cars
Where people were not such devout
believers in statistics

And where you didn't need a lens
by which to see this stars
Remember when the world was more
than either Romantic or realistic.

Remember when you didn't compromise
(was it just childhood) Lies(?)!
Remember when you bled
and were ashamed.

And it was all okay that day
Everyone you knew would play
This game and it was great
It was fated that people would be the same.

ii.
People are the same today
Gathered about a steeple, they
would rather chat the day away
bratting in dismay.

Than converse, they would play
every song that they'd ever rehearsed

Never improvising thinking
childhood lies are worse.

And seldom realising
That the wild wood of that time
was not at all worse.

"The death of one man's a
tragedy, many a statistic," said
the man who wanted everyone
to be realistic.

And wear a hammer and a sickle
or a flag with fifty stars
Who told you fantasy was fickle
Who invented cars

And kept a photo of the Fuhrer
in his office, it's well known
Who had a fervor and a fury
And made sure he was alone.

Only to be judge trial and jury
But you know no soles
Were exempt from his inquiry
The hope is in the proles.

dm.A.A.

Do you find yourself obsessing
Over matters you'd resolved?

Do you find yourself stressing
Where others are involved?...

Are you prone to be possessed
By rapid shifts and rifts in mood?

Intent on being alone, lest
Others change your attitude?

You may suffer from empathy
A most rare disease
Yet one that could bring most of these
well-meaning people to their knees.

The method that you use to solve your problems
Will not work when the fly's outside the glass.
You have to find another way to solve them
Or otherwise allow it all to pass.

Empathy's distinguished
By the following symptoms:
Vile flames that cannot be extinguished
However that you may resist them.

You may suffer from empathy
There is no known cure
But immunity is prevalent
Of that you can be sure.

Obvious Facts.

Poetry's the sister
of insanity but thankfully
they rarely speak...

Until the latter
sneaks downstairs

and pilfers from the former's
platter.

[Everything within my psyche
seems to be inviting me

to substitute for love
a kind of hateful seed.

And to recede
into breeding more
machines.

Blind again to the workings
of my mind and
the Unseen.

Resolved to the unkind
and the obscene.

(But people can smell
revolution in the air

Every institution
has a second pair of laws.

The haunting fear of retribution
in every person's eyes

A paranoia
Avoiding the most heart
breaking of flaws.)]

My heart will not be kept
in a broken grate
resolved to fate.

If I only I knew not
that it slept

like a kitten behind every glass
in every jewelry shop

And behind every counter
At the coffee stop.

The cunning mind discerns
every flaw
in fiber

But the wise one's running
always
with the horses

And so poetry seem to be much
more than a desire

Nor a force by which we cloister
ourselves from other forces.

Voices ring in all men's ears
So wait before you call it madness
Lest I think that you're sincere
In your resolve and in your sadness.

One man's madness is another's
great delight

and since every moment is eternal
who gave you the right?

I went looking for brotherhood
But I found a computer
I always thought the Other would
When I was a commuter
...
I wonder if my progeny
Should feel indebted to their lies.
I keep waiting for somebody
Come up to me and yell, 'Surprise!'

However wooden they may be,
However that they may insist
You compromise,

I hope you'll see
The Good in Life
is seeing with a pair of open eyes.

dm.A.A.

I remember yesterday
I spared the ego yesterday
They see no reason to see it that way
But that's okay,
...
I recall today.
I did not go to the mall
today.

I told them
Scoldingingly
I'm not going to hold you

I remember
today

I killed the ego
today.

I see no reason
I should be upset.
There is more within this, yet.

Yet I still feel like a child
Living in a world that's wild

Seeing it slide by
it fills me with regret.

But I'm not fit
and egoless enough just
yet to cry
yet.

Allergy season.

Writing is like breathing
It goes never out of season
Except sometimes it stays in...
from allergies
Although the smokers
disagree.

Inviting youth to just get wasted
Let the truth remain untasted.

Waste baskets and basket cases
strewn across the place.

Sewn into the heart is suffering
Because it's popular
And it seems the latest thing
To offer up one's life to sin.

I don't know where I should begin
What frightens you more?

Vampires are crafty ones
Whose intellect surpass their hearts

But zombies march in numbers
Through the city
Numb to any kind of pity that
threatens to start.

I am bigger now than I could
ever remember
And the dreams that I could fathom now
are more novel than I could endeavour

Yet my cleverness will bind me
to a fatal error
Trying to find the
bomb to assuage the terror.

All the joy the world could bring
either from Earth or Aether
Couldn't make another sing
Or bring to dancing, either.

The flies now buzz outside the glass.
I need a new approach.
Yet then I see the opportunity has passed
A pumpkin, once a coach.

On his deathbed, U.G.
Krishnamurti said that
enlightenment
was a myth.
...
I remember hoping that
had been the truth
Observing the back of a paperback

novel by Stephen King
wearing baseball attire
in the cover photo.

dm.A.A.

The sky is blue
on Maria's first day
of high school

The birds are...
in the trees
as though to spite the leaves.

Your point
of view will pretty soon
be sharpened
Time to taper
what you may believe.

The Sun is white
on her first day
of high school

As the night breaks
to dawn and I'm
Thinking of when I first went to high school
Seeing it first,
once upon a time.

Absence.

He has
a nostalgia
for...
the absent
Mother's teat.

And he will
clutch that
rope

like a
crutch

Climbing
up an
icy slope.

(Hopeless
defeat
beneath
his feet.)

dm.A.A.

Relativity.

My advice before
I can depart
preserving sanctity...
of heart

No need to thank
me from the start

This tactic was
a frantic Art.

And I will do it
service Even
if you don't
deserve this

What I've observed,
unnervingly
perhaps it is my
purpose

to impart and so i'll
do my part.


Sanity is merely a
religious issue. I wish you
could see it clearly
and sincerely. So
you'd take it with you.

Like God, you find it

for yourself
and no one else can show
you.

However they may
try to preserve
your health and
know you.

All mountains seem
small from a distance.
Children always knew
this since they came
into existence they
named their task, Let's
Do This.

And if you ask me
if there's anything
to help us through
this, it is this:

Though from even the
peak of one mount others
may seem small,
Go down, seek to prove them
meek and you'll find
They are just as tall.

Don't be blind to change of
tone or stripes
from one snake to another

Even if you stand alone,
it is better yet to suffer

For the details of one life
Than the free trails of
another. Better

To find glory for
yourself
Than to blaze the trail
of mother.

Subtleties will always
seem to be
small and annoy you.

But by the end,
when big things
go all up

in flames
They will destroy
you.

And so, to save yourself
from Hell
don't try to avoid it

For no one but the spirit
of the wind can tell
if you have sinned.

And once, faced with the house
of your logic, Fire has
destroyed it,

You have nothing
to desire
But to chase
the wind.

For sanity is vanity
You cannot hold a wave
in place. If you would
be so bold as to smear
the Sun about your face.

Your time is wasted
on the future
It'll be a sorry story, won't it?

Never having tasted
your Heart's sutures
Or the Glory
of the moment. dm.A.A.

Fire.

You know that girl
in the carpet
who hides...

Who beckons you
into the tarpit
where she abides

Reckoning
she can
vandalise
Art.

Wrecking the forest
Divorced from
the start.

And you know that
Goddess who

is on the floor
of the store
And then more

And you come through
boldly carrying gold,
she

will take you by both wrists
torn from

the other
girl's grasp.

Scorn may elapse
But the forlorn old
witch will collapse.

The other will take you
And show you
That you are alone.

The sister would have
you persist
as a prisoner

Resolved to the
comforting
hiding place
She's made her home

But you and the goddess
know
That this place isn't hers.

You can bring
forward gold
boldly

They can't distinguish
between it and pyrite
But you know quite well

that all of their
private Hells
Cannot diminish
you.

Inwardly, always,
you're still in
your shell.

dm.A.A.

One of My Rides, part ii.

I find it odd
They taped off the trees
I want to hug...
I've found God
But unfortunately,
They think I'm on drugs

I found God
Hiding in
a cassette bin
in a thift store

They don't accept my money
here
And i have to ask
What's it for?

One of my rides
Is nowhere around
When I need him most

All of my pride
is burnt to the ground
like bad toast.

Nobody wants
to feel or admit
What their eyes see

One of my rides
is waiting in the tarpit
for me.

In some carpet
at the back of the store
is where I'll find

Something that meant
Nothing more
than the light
to the blind

Yet something that
was worth living
for
for twenty-two years

Tucked in a carpet,
Everything knows
I'm sincere.

And this moment
is the same as when I was
five

And nothing's changed

Even my ride
will look at me
And find it strange

They've rearranged
the carpet of
the streets
a million times.

Yet bow towards defeat
BUt at my feet
I can see
myself smile. dm.A.A.

Life doesn't give us time to test it
By the Scientific Method
Life did not give us rhyme to be arrested
By our reason
...
This world rendered divine
in every form
is not invested
in some future or some norm
And to distrust its truth
is treason.

When the seasons of your mind
Align with maddening proximity
to The fibers of your heart, don't start
to second-guess divinity

Presuming all intelligence
to be confined within your head
Blinded to the kind that rests
outside your mind instead.

Life will not have us sit cloistered
from the world in labs.
Picking apart pieces of truth
Like we pick our scabs.

The Youth that follows us til death
would always have us fly
down the hill discovering the laws
of gravity with every breath
And never knowing how it could have been
or why.

When you are astounded
by how profound the truth is
you will not accept a lie
Or to be ruthless
to try to deduce
or double-check it
with your proofs.

And revelation cannot ever
be recreated
So what can experimentation
leave you but frustrated?

dm.A.A.

There is no alternative to truth.
When you know something,
There is no ignorance.

I had spent all of my youth...
Continually shedding my innocence.

I must have lost my virginity
More than a million times

Which byfar surpasses the mates in my classes
Not that it matters and not that it flatters.

There is no way back from a fact
To retract from it; that is delusion
And those who know not how to act
Will condemn you in their own confusion.

But they cannot see what I’ve seen
They cannot be where I’d been
And it is simply obscene
To conceive of my truth as a sin.

As though all my youth would begin
Upon some authority’s say so
But I know him better than they who do sin
It is he who speaks when I do say no.

If you admit something
embarassing, I'll admit
something embarassing.

My heart has been...
bleeding
since the day it started
beating

If you want to know what
dogs me
it is my own sincerity

Trying to keep an open eye
to the Universe's clarity

If you want to know what
scares me
it's the unbearable burden
wondering, 'Are they aware
of me?'
and never being certain.

And if you want to know the cold
hard truth
I'll parrot your own frankness
I can't bear it should I ever see
the world in your own blankness.

For a mind that's been refined
Like a lens in the galaxy
seems never to mind
when the brain commits a fallacy

If you want to know how callously
I overestimate this Universe
in every human gesture
Everything
as though it's been rehearsed.

If you want me to make clear
The girl that sat down right
beside me
with only you so near
it seemed to coincide so

that I wondered if you had been so
sincere

as to inform her
-- in passing, as she'd come
to me in passing --
I had feelings for her.

But that I would admit
only embarassedly
and in verse
that seems, as people seem
to agree
Much better and not worse

than writing a letter
for a poem even as a lie
is so rehearsed that all the words
together
could make anybody cry.

How many see a child is harmed
but wouldn't think to change it?
Despite being wholly alarmed
And yet I find it strange that

To be immersed in such a fantasy
and of such adolescent zeal
although the very galaxy
seemed to make it appear so real

It is embarassing only
this life that we've selected

Although we sing at night, lonely
we never once respect it.

At least sing for the dying child
it is no more or less a fallacy
Although the sentiment seems wild,
I'm siding with the galaxy.


And also I'll say in post-scriptum
Though I originally thought
that I had fallen victim
to your optimistic plot

Although I'm standing by my theory
I will append that it was flawed
Although you, too were sitting near me
All the credit goes to God.

Peers.

In youth, there were always those peers
Who'd giggle at each novel thought
And there'd be those kids who would sneer...
At every Marvel that you got.

But in truth, you pitied them (and should)
Standing on a wooden stake
Sprouting from the Earth that would
Everyone, regardless, take. dm.A.A.

Every moment spent in freedom
Is a step away from servitude
Who cares for critics? You don't need them
And you know your mood
...
Is like weather, it gets better
If you let it steadily improve
But don't let yourself get fettered
While the clouds are slowly on the move.

You will rarely see the outcome
Until well ahead
But how slowly it may come
Or how readily instead.

Careful not to succumb
To temptation; impatience is
Sometimes the only enemy
And you can wait for this.

Every moment spend in freedom
Is a step away from bondage
Every day you're not a victim
You become a hero.

So don't let the changing battles
Rattle you or take you hostage
Take your stand, until the sand
In the clock returns to zero.

The Temptress.

Eventually you'll meet a woman
With your open arms
Who'll threaten...
To consume you in
Her apathetic charms.

Go Beyond It
Don't accept her offer
Ot her gift
of guilt

Lest you wilt
Like a flower
in her power.

That is Not how Life is built.

She can't admit she's crazy
She needs some sad excuse
And mired in her lazy days
She secretly desires no use.
...
Strangely she attempts to change me
Like a mother goose
I look at her strangely
She tells me, Don't look at me
Like I'm crazy
What's the use

She knows that she's not crazy
Absolutely sure

She welcomes every baby like
she sees it crawling through the door

Over the counter, each encounter
Makes her envy babies more.

"I don't have to do anything" but be lazy

she says

Life is but a chore.

ii.

She knows she isn't crazy
She's taken all the steps
Making it seem perfectly
content to all the outside world

She's God's little girl
In a godless universe
Riding a tilt-a-whirl that has been

has been.

Perfectly rehearsed.

She knows she isn't crazy
And frankly she's insulted
She never even bothered

to thank me

Leaving me unconsulted.

I know I'm not crazy

But what can I do?

If I am sane, it must be plain
That she is quite sane,
too.

Dmitry.

Did mother trip over your eyes
When you saw a button
in the sky? Did you
For lone
For love forlorn...
Were? You Yes. How

For the sake.

Sanity one day
is vanity the next
insanity by night.

Who can claim, this way
to be always in the right?

To Afford a Saviour.

Sometimes I feel
like a healthy fruit
on a sick tree...

Can the fruit heal the tree?
Maybe not
Maybe it can only cast seeds

And trust the wind.

We are all heroes
But we are heroes of our Own lives.

Were it not every individual's responsibility,
Then perhaps everyone
Could
afford a Saviour.

dm.A.A.

Letter to an Old Friend and Shaman.

The burden of humanity
Seems always to transcend
The overbearing vanity...
Of a man without a friend

So stop trying to be a Titan
Carrying the World alone
Find your friends. Invite them
As guests into your home.

They might appear as pests at first
Crowding your clever mind
But give it rest. Become immersed
And pretty soon you’ll find

Even the best of thoughts are worst
When they are misguided
Locked up and overly rehearsed
With no one else invited.

Dm.A.A.

Life is a game
Prepare to be wrong
Because if you don’t play
Then the game can’t go on
...
But that’s not to say
That you shouldn’t try
To win when you can
But rejoice when you die.

A Victory for Empathy.

If all my feelings were my own
Not only would I be terrible
But also I'd be all alone...
And that would be unbearable

But thankfully they don't own
The house in which they're guests
And in those minds that they call home
They are suited best.

dm.A.A.

I (used to) honor these people
Each is endowed and entitled

Now I keep watch
Somehow I miss...
Being a lighthouse beacon

Yelling to proclaim the Soul

[I thought all of them climbed like snails to reach greater heights
They took me and castrated me
On one of those sacred nights]

Now I keep watch
Like a lighthouse keeper
In the winter frost
With the Sea frozen over

We, my friends, had never thought
To spend a winter in this splintered attic
Once our spring had been the thing
Our flings and swings were so sporadic.

And we venerated Mother.
And we venerated Mother.

What are they but bulls with suits?

HOW DARE THEY?

Who are they but trees unrooted?

HOW DARE THE

They are merely poets

HOW DAR

Of bathroom graffiti

HO

They paint the perfect picture in their minds

H

And it’s not even pretty

??!

Can you listen?

Can you hear

The water glisten

When it’s clear?

Can you see beyond the muck? Wood

You ever give a fuck?

How do you live? How dare you?

[Now we watch for villains in our streets
The masses like moss growing
On the city’s feet]

How dare?

Now we must retreat
To hollow towers cold

Waiting, as we had in winters past,
For powers to unfold

How?

They got us out to play
But I will wait inside.

I know what they’ll always say

‘IT IS JUST HIS PRIDE’

HOW DARE THEY!!!???

When so innocent and young
We were among those few
Who could afford to be adored
In knowing not just what to do?

How dare?

But no one even cares
If they shit children from their thighs
No one of them really cares
To raise one like a lion to the sky.

How?

We will raise them in this tower if we have to
Endowed with ever power

And they will find a path, too.

I (used to) think that all these people thought
And sought the depth

Of their own sink
But they were all content to rot
In their own shit.

I should have known but now I don’t.

I should have shown them but I won’t.

We’ll keep our eyes peeled.

We’ll keep watch.

Slova.

All you need is Beauty, truth
And Love
...
And all that I can think of
Is you’ll love our samples
For example
And you know it’s the truth
And Beauty tips
And snooty girls
With crudely pampered
Hips
And it’s the youth
That lets it slip
That Love is cool now
Cool is hot now
Hot is cold now
And the words we had just rot
In our mouths
As the sodas
That we douse them with
Explode and rot our wisdom teeth
And seeth into our brains
All as we speak.

I’ll substitute for Love
That I adore
Although it is a shame
That whenever I have to say
So much more than I explain
I have to resort to naming
Truth a fact
And out of tact
I’ll call beauty pretty
And I think that it’s a pity

That the words that we’d reserved for Great things
Now, unnervingly, are used
For those that don’t deserve our waiting
For them, and thus those words are abused.

And the confusion comes
When we want to express true glory
And always our tongues must succumb
To telling some bad-worded story.

The thing about all monsters is
If they get through, then they get through
And then the proper course
Is to forgive: It's all
that you can do....

BUt should you spart a fort
from the snare
of some hostile creature
Let it not fall
to the foe
As though it were a friend.

dm.A.A.

Humanist poem.

Everything we do is merely human, so don't fret
you do not fall short of some standard that some diety has set
Caprice is what a stuffy man calls his passion when disowned...
And so omnipotence is merely rationality unthroned
and made into a Godlike figure, set against the backdrop of the sky
but we are merely human. Can we think to reach so high?
No, but it is not a height that transcends our minds
God, in this form's, only our inner light when we are blind.
And so, if all potential is available to grasp,
why should we surrender it for the sky to clasp?
For the sky, though knowing, has no eye
for what is human beauty
and Art, I think, is not a chore
What's more, it is no duty.

Art may not be even therapy
for the forlorn, unsatisfied
I could not compel my child to care for me
When I am not here at her side

And if art's not a child
but it is a wild romance
than i would not be mild
when it takes a fighting stance

And though even a lover can
be supportive to a broken heart
Still, she needs the other man
to be also, upon her, impart

his skills, his thrills, his overflowing joys
For that's what life is
Or otherwise, unknowing boys
are often left wifeless.

And a poem rushed, for when the heart reminds the mind too soon
Is a violation of the trust between the parents
And so the son is born, unintended, wounded in the woom
As though the son of alcoholics, its history apparent.

And so, I say, remember yet again
should you find some who'll tell
that your word belongs to Heaven
And to deviate is hell,

Hell is a choice, and heaven is your voice
don't lose it.
Screaming for God to pardon you
Life is not hardened; choose it.

The anger flavours
the beer
An angel savours
rage
A bath sweats out... the alcohol
a fire set
to sage
reason inflames passion
directing its ascent
but only after rash
and unrestricted action
smashes through consent.

if you insist on living
on a world so unforgiving
that trust is not merited
until the veil's unfurled
or unless it's inherited,... If you live on an Earth wherein one's worth is parroted and one's treasure's measured in carats I only wonder how you bear it. You say to me you cannot know someone except behind the mask But I say it seems up for show that knowing one is just the simplest task I do not feel that anyone must become a parrot And so the only one I trust wouldn't ever wear it.

 

 

Dmitry Andreyev

You dreamt the kids of twenty-two
could save the older people
with their eyes in adolescent view
fixed upon the steeple
...
So you spent your life as a crusader
Parading in delusion
With the naive hope you could dissuade their
Pain and their confusion

But the vision of your present's growing
like a rose unhindered
And all the while your friends, uknowing
Focus on the cinders

So grow like the rose, go with the flow
You won't be disappointed
We only ever really kniw
the future we've annointed

But the river has a different plan
though fools, they will despise you
If you don't fight, the river can
and will always surprise you.