Recent poetry. Part two.

Plant the suggestion
You’ll learn your lesson
A hundred stares of disrepair
Within one day will merit
The presumption you’ve inherited
Disease worse than consumption.

Stumped to find out of my mind
I felt just fine just yesterday
Or did I? Such a malleable...
-- dreadfully -- mind will say.

I don’t know who planted the suggestion
Who invited her
To feel that one emotional transgression
That could have delighted her

Would, like a Sin, send her to hell
And the only hell she could fathom
Was one in a lunatic’s asylum cell
Where she was haunted by herself as phantom.

How malleable such a mind
Can be when it’s not governed
By the heart
What terrible a pity
Just to see someone
You want to free someone
Before she
Even starts.

Looking down a wishing well
Unable to stand it
When she was young, she could stand
On the ledge
And brother then would dare her

Don’t fall in!
Preparing her
For her cardinal sin.

Now she’s taken up the bucket.
Saying to herself, Well, fuck it.
Now her foot is in the bucket
Now her hand is on the rope.

With a sigh, she says
Growing up is going down
I could try to say
It’s just another day
But I know better now.

She knows
That she is mad
With certainty
Right now

At the bottom of her wishing well
No one can hear the sounds
They all tell and in the hell
Of her own cell it does resound

How malleable the mind is
When it’s pushed into the ground.

dm.A.A.

 

 

I know I didn't always feel this... sedated.
There's some spirit I used to know that's been drowned out by the radio.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you have to rise above
Welcome to the new age
radioactive
That's been drowned out
by the radio
You once talked to me about love
And you painted pictures of
a never-never land.
And I could have gone to that place
But I didn't understand.

The idealised Madrigal
singer sung my friend
of several years

was at that point only
(and still is)
a beginner

Full of fears.
...
She had claimed to be a sinner
She saved face among the saints

But she was a sixteen year old fanatic
Leaving no complaints.

The idealised Madrigal
singer I hadn't realised

was mad.

That was the beginning
of the quickest fall

from Grace

I'd ever had.

Now I am in love again
What will become
if I proclaim it?

Someone coming back from
desert plains would claim
you shouldn't name it.

Will she see that I'm the same?
Or will she hear the stories?
OR will the ghost of war
haunt her more
and fill her more with worries?

Probably
but little things are big
as big things can be and vice versa.

She may feel adverse to me
BUt that will not make me less versed, sir.

Dm.A.A.

 

In Your Power

An hour of your time
would have spared me
several eternities in dreams
and several doors which
never will
open
for me again.
...
I was in my prime
And then you stared me
down
and shook me
(by the knees)
to the ground

How could I not involve myself
in schemes
beyond the days of our dismemberment
Now I cannot be me again.

We could have
discussed it
But you lost your
trust in me
and I'm frankly
disgusted.

Three years
Damn right, I'm still
thinking about you

It takes three years
to think it out, you
never took a second
look

You felt your life was reckoned
and I read it like a book.

Love beckoned, wrecked us both
and look how long
it took.

You could have been how strong, though
just to see me
for an hour.

But I suppose such sanctity
was never really in your
power.

 

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.

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.

 

Mother's qualities infringe
Private holidays unhinge

Knowledge of the past: our curse
discourage for the future: worse.

Drunken morning everyone's
irritated at the Sun

Why am I drained? I strained
so hard
but strained too hard

too hard

Something lost within a mist
Some face that I might have kissed

obscured behind mother's image
it's so hard for a mind to resist

but my heart persists
this time like a drunken mess

Blowing kisses to the wind
Every day, caring
less.


okay fine i'll tell you

freaking Sebastian

Apparently I'd called him Sebastard

and he didn't take particular note of it early on

but the next time I saw him he disregarded me

so one day I followed him to the NS buildings

and I was walking alongside him

and he did a pretentious-ass "can I help you?" kind of look

and I asked upfront, "Why don't you like me?"

and he replied

"You called me Sebastard. I do not appreciate petty name calling. And I would like it if you would leave me alone."

Well I ended up surmising that they had moved from the "terrace" to the second floor of the NS building

so I approached them one day

and wasd of half a mind to leave

but despite everything in my mind saying "bad, bad, guilty" everything in my Bones was saying "this is good."

· And she alone didn't look up at me

but everyone else, Sebastian included, did

and then there was the guy with the creepy glare

whom I'd never met

and the bad teeth

and I'd never met him

and His was the worst

it's just like, "I could kill you, if you were wirth the time to."

but anyway I mumbled a "Have you guys seen Kevin Zavala?" or "...Ryan?" and some bs to that effect

· and sat down on the floor

within a minute the majority of the group got up to cross the floor oto the elevator to go to the "cafeteria"

and Marissa said the One Thing she ever said to me

"We'll be back"

and my chest was on fire

* heart

and i hopped up onto the bench

and started talking to this one blonde girl

whom I'd never met

who hung around at the foot of the bench to watch their stuff

and she mad this mechanical look in her eyes

behind these glasses

· she looked German

and I started spewing the bull at her

and saying "You know, my parents are Russian scientistsm so I'm very emotionally open to the point of being overwhelming"

and "The rule for all horrors is that you march right into them"

and she looked up at me

and asked me my name

and I said "Dmitry" and couldn't tell at first why I felt like I was name-dropping

and she kind of looked off for a moment and said,

"Oh."

like she'd heard it before

· and I grew more suspicious

so

I said, "Yeah, that Sebastian guy doesn't really like me, does he?"

and she replied,

"Yeah, I don't think that anyone in that group really likes you."

to which I replied,

"Well, I think that Kevin and Ryan like me."

"Yeah, I think that they're the only two who like you."

but anyway

as you can imagine,

I walked away from that,

THRILLED

· BECAUSE I STOOD UP TO THAT

AND I DIED MORE PRONOUNCEDLY THAN WHEN I FIRST HAD A DATE TO THE WINTER FORMAL AT MY MIDDLE SCHOOL.

and there's this

fellow in the hallway that I escaped into

and this guy is

like

ultra-nerd

but incredibly adept. Has worked several jobs and scraped by to survive

· I'd talked to him on the train

he always has his Gameboy

and I told him what happened

and he saidm "Yeah, I learned a long time ago to stop caring what people think."

and I was at peace.

Fin.


No regrets.

My husband and I
met

after a long courtship
And I do not regret the
year he spent in
idle worship.

The first few months that
he would not
approach me

out of sheer stupidity

The next few
out of fear,

the last
out of humility.

I used to go through men
like cigarettes

But now that we're together

I have
no regrets
And I don't
think I
will ever.


Regrets.

If there is any
poison from which
all of this has
stemmed, it's
the unthinkable thought
of being for virtue
condemned,

There was a time
when men would
wait, the weight
their solemn
burden. But now,
like a scapegoat's
fate, they are
hated. It's absurd
and wrong

and who would dream
that rather than
weighing feelings
weak and strong
we shall fall for some scheme?

There was a time
when men admired women
from afar

In their minds, a
star enthroned in
unknown depth

and it was not to be
that they alone
had slept as
women stayed
awake

For should a man's
eyes ever
drift from
wonder, he would
undertake
a plunge upon
the stake
and for the Underworld
and not only the
undertaker's sake.

That was the snake
that Venus bore about
her fruit.

But now, any
asshole with
a suit
can assault
a bar
and hire her, firing up
her desire like
a car.

There was a time when men
did not mistake the fire
for the
star.

There was a man
with an astronomical plan
He said, come along
and join the Ultimate Revolution

There was a woman
and my heart fell into her hand
unwittingly
like an apple from a tree
and we discovered gravity
that day

But I was dismayed
at how this man
had so much to say
I asked, 'up whose tree
is he barking?'

And I had a friend
who unhesitantly would defend
him: 'Only 99.99 %
of people
will see the light
towards which he
hearkens.'

ii.
And I agree:
The faces all darken
when I come to show
them my light

And in those noble
reliably stark
expressions is now
a fixed impression
of fright at my sight.

iii.
I have a friend
who will not defend
me. A wolfish
and jovial clown.

Curing the well-
wishing tragedy
with the trivial

Turning that frown
up-side-down.

I tell him, unbridled
and vulnerably

About the only one
whom I want to
see

He looks at me frankly
and tells me, quite blankly,
'I guarantee
99.99% of the time,
you will
be shot down.'

as the body
formally known as Dmitry
takes his break,

it becomes clear.

'Everyone is a drug
addict' is an apt
statement

and what we call
'Love' is merely
[and I repeat]

embarassment made
tolerable
by sentimentality,
infantile dependency made
bearable by
idealism,
and sexual obsession
made pardonable
by bullshit.


in other news,
an anthropomorphic
Radish

drifts through (and parades
(about) Escondido. [at night.]

Bleeding everywhere

And its blood
upon touching
patrons,

Turns them
to pomegranates.

Recent poetry.

Philosophical poem a.

A high degree of Heidegger
A cacophony of Kafka
And a symphony of Sartre...
Is a very wretched Art.

And Nietzsche fills the niche
Before the preacher starts to preach
And Keirkegaard
Will close the door
Before you start.

And everybody from Camus
To Mercuse knows it’s true
That the search for truth is queasy
And beyond (it[’]s [over]due).

But if you want to but preserve your health
Know that you deserve yourself
And then you’ll find that they
Don’t have a clue

(When it comes to you.)

dm.A.A.

 

 

War of the Words.

My words are loaded grapeshell
Yet still I am depressed
For they will not yet make hell
Until they are expressed.

I cannot keep my thoughts at bay
Until they’ve been thought through
And til I say just what I have to say...
There’s nothing I can do.

So I will say, and say well
Exactly what I think
Even if I pray, well,
Am I jumping from the brink?

Yet friends of mine say Pray tell
They ask me to divulge.
And so I know I’ll fare well
And I can well indulge.

 

 

It crawls up and it
Sprawls up.
And I remember everything you said.
A double-bind. A
Troubled mind.
And it’s all going
(and returning) to
my head.

You trained me well, my friend...
You gave me hell.
You fed me
In your purgatory

You told me: No
Story. And rewrote it
Hypocritically.

Always your vote
Against my stance
A chance
Of redemption
Cynically
Shot down.
A glance
Without exception
Turning to torturous
Frown.

Disowned.
For I was all alone.
And would never amount

To either what you wanted
Me to be
Nor what you thought
I was.

And I was torn
Between the strange injustice
Of your scorn
And the absurdity
Of change.

And you return to me
From across a mountain
Range. You’ve found

Me building mounts from mounds
Just only to assuage
You.

There was a time the rhyme
And reason I pronounced
It would persuade you.

Now you denounce my love
As treason and my wisdom
Would dissuade you.

Yet you took them with you
All your hatreds
They’ll remain
Until they age you.

But the way it’s played out
You are not my friend.
But you return only to burn
Me in the hell
And to offend.

You return
And I’d revisited
You many times

Every night
For three cold months

And each time I’d lived
Out our history
Devouring the mystery

Of what I couldn’t see
Between us for it
Was too much
To see.

Living six months in one night
Every night for three months
And each day within those nights
Was an eternity.

The madness that your family commended
The madness our friends had all defended.
Still troubles me.

You withdrew the formal definition
And my once normal condition
Became a rendition
Of a madness diagnosed.

Yet the sadness wasn’t even what had most
Been difficult
To believe in.

To you, who would deceive me
Here’s a toast.

 

 

Relativity.

If you care about foreign affairs
And I care about combing my hairs,
Either is merely a cloud in our minds
You can’t find the endowment
Of truth in our cares.

dm.A.A.

 

 

They taught me how to keep my head
up in the clouds. I'm well
endowed.

And bound for somewhere
beyond heaven. My destination knows
no bounds.

Astounded as I was to find
that most were nowhere near of mind....
And queerness did not endear me
to them, although it had seemed clearly

quite implied by all my elders
and my betters who knew better.

But I saw right through them equally
as clearly. And I could not help

But see in every person
Nothing less and nothing worse than
how I felt and how my mind construed
itself in ardent attitude.

And though I'd been too eager
to push aside meager human
impulses in stride

when I was in my senior year
of middle school

come my sophomore year, I could
conceive of myself only as wise fool.

Devised a brand new way to live
Lost face in the eyes of the elders
who wanted only to give me
something better.

Yearned only for the company
of everyone and would submit
myself to the cacophany
of fellowship and fun
And would gladly, at a moment's whim
throw all the whale-heads of my intellect
into the garbage bin

and let them live among the metal
scraps and stumble through
the cracks and death traps

And trust everyone in sight.
For everybody saw the light.

They were not flawed, but educated people
couldn't see
the comprehension
and astonishment in every
child's eyes.

Even when they wouldn't realise.

Educated people never saw and education seemed
just a way to lay another law down at the seams.
Just another way of saying I belong to them and they to me
Just another way dismayingly
of playing a hierarchy.

I did not know that they were disobeying
authority.
I did not know that they
knew more than me.

And I sought God in bars at night
And I sat waiting
for Christ to appear.

How nice that everyone within the world
is on the whole clear and sincere.

How nice and I would not think twice
since friendship got me through the storm
of high school with depression
More than just defying norm.

We would blossom, all my friends together
Into something awesome
that we'd never comprehend before it happened
And that would change us once it had run its course.

But my favourite couples got divorced.
Give it four years
and promises I had been hesitant
to make were broken.

It had been four years since I had seen you
and four months since we had spoken.

Yet you stalk my posts enough to
hate me by that token.

Life was not in friendship, as I had been told
For friendship couldn't hold.
And words that I had known
I had forgotten
Wordless chasms closed
to me.

Because I had become accustomed
to having you close
to me.

They sold us a vision
of the final flower far too soon.

I was having visions
going mad before the moon.

I thought we had a common history
that we could reach inside
and extricate from it
a well of confidence and pride.

All of this then would subside
within our later years
And we would all look back over the mountainside
glad that we made it here.

For when our minds were twisted
to their breaking point
still our hearts persisted
Albeit aching at the joints.

But all of you were faking
Scoring points. Boring holes
into my souls. Consoling me
convincing me

to throw myself

from the third story and bleed
upon the stones
And say, "I do not need
my bones.

"Take this here, my blood
And this my body."

And I'd never known
that no one saw me
jump.

No one heard the phone.
Only a thump.
And I was left alone
here in the dump

and in the midst of scraps
of metal. Traps to revel
in designs of
cunning minds just meant
to do me in
consumed in my original sin
for hell's paved with good intentions
Intentions just cement
obscuring ground that is uncommon
That if found would be profound.

But always the light seemed all in
the lead and not the gold.
Or if it was the gold then it was gold
that in it lead did hold.

But I was never bold enough and never old enough
to know the truth
That while we are precocious
We cannot escape our youth.

And while Life is quite precious
So few make it cross this chasm
And even the best just
wander about as though a protoplasm.

I miss most the times I stumbled
fumbled. crumbling on ground.

Found something so subtle, broken
gentle and profound.

Slipping through the cracks and breaking backs
to carry lumber for the numbers.

Uninspired not to succumb
to them not feeling
any dumber.

Just enlightened for the light
was in the mud.

But I was not invited.
And they only heard a thud.

The colours that had brightened gray and feeble days
have faded with the same
river into the same
haze and we are alone.

I was prone to dream
of streams converging.
Paths diverging, yes
but old ones re-emerging
assuaging wraths
as we shared smiles between our breaths.

I thought too much. And thinking little
would suffice.
When everything appeared so brittle,
fickle, feeble
and so nice.

And I would not think twice.
But they only heard a thud
And those as bright flew far out
of the mud.

And thus who starred
in it got day jobs.
And crusades ended
with stray mobs.

And now everyone's a critic
and a cynic and a
fraud.

And where is God within it?
Even if I push my mind
to its very limit
does it matter
what direction?

Sanity or vanity?

Anything that I could fathom
is a phantom in these hallways
when we have arrived.
But who is on my side?

A new installment
just to be so torn away
Borne away on popular opinion and
dismay.

dm.A.A.

 

 

He planted the suggestion
and told me to come back
within a week

He told me I was less than
what I thought

and he reeked
of pot.
...
And told me dispossess myself
of narcissism
hypocrisy and egoism.

I had no idea.

But the seeds he planted
stayed and made
their way
over the course of seven days.

And I returned within a week
And said, teach me.
I want to learn.
I am a narcissist
and teach me how to speak.

dm.A.A.

 

 

If I were to die tomorrow
Would I care today?

If some one were fawning
Over me
To my dismay?

Or should I dispossess myself
Of that narcissistic claim
...
To my own mental health
And to my role within
The social game?

Two people who lock eyes
Will seldom ever see

What two others realize
When they lock eyes
To same degree.

And though a line can thus be drawn
Between two points upon a plane

We are in the midst of space
That can’t be measured or contained.

No, I would drink it up
Like my first beer.
And breathe it in
Like cigarette

Smoke in the midst of some
Apartment I’d found by
Fortune without regret.

Every man dreams of some day
Graduating from
High school.

I am on my way.
And I’m not playing anybody’s
Fool.

Dm.A.A.

 

 

I saw a photo that you took
Summer two thousand
Nine.

And I remember that angelic look
In that prophetic face
Of mine.

But don’t get me wrong if I say
That I was a thousand people...
All at once

Upon that day
Because

What I mean was that the people
In my class
Were all mirrored
In my face.

For I would not be here
If they weren’t in
That place.

I watched their faces fade
To gray
And cinder-blockish

Masks
Over the years.

I felt myself merely
A stalk
A piece of bark
Within the tree.

And I thought that
The tree spoke
When it could
Through me.

Where are we?
Starry-eyed.
You look upon me
And so ardently decide

That face is just a little gray
And faded with the years.

But that face, to this day
is yours.
And everybody’s here.

And you tell me
At all costs
Do not come here

In Berkeley and frost over
Our streets with pleas
For pity for what you had lost
“My friends desert me.”
On your knees.
However sincere.

You so cleverly obscure
The space between us.

It’s embarrassing
To be alive.

Oh, dear, that old fellow
We used to know.
Has gone off the dive.

But the tree of which we’re fruit
Is more than any house we can contrive.

And I would not live as a brute
While I am alive.

But that you remember me
As just a time of day.

Although I know you hate it, Dylan
When I do put it
That way.

Dmitry.

 

 

Come out where I can see you

Dana's waiting cuddling
with Dylan.

And we're sitting
indoors.
Stuffy couches.
Hard wood floors.
...
And they return
And he says later
she would yearn
for him to cuddle

But he said
he had to go
inside.

Come out where
I can see you.

My mother told me
Just tonight
A dream she had
I did not invite
Her to come forth.
She didn’t know
I’d kept a Bible
I would write.

She told me
And I listened
And my feet like burglar’s
Feet upon
A tight
Rope.

Though I would be bold
In high hopes of a better
Conversation
On another day,

For the first time
In ten years
She had something to say.

And she told me
She was chased
By a boxer
With a famous face.

She ran up
The floors to the fourth
Story where
Her aunt had lived.

And the footsteps following her were
Replaced by her rapping
The door.

And she was not trapped nor
Was it locked.

She opened it for
Herself.

And walked
In and no one was
There.

Not brother.
She looked.

Not aunt.
She looked.

Not mother.
She looked..

Come out where I
Can see you.

Young girl so sweet you
Wouldn’t ever meet
Me though you wandered

Up and down my street.

And I had seen you
Belly-dancing on a blandly
Day.

You seemed deceitfully
To be the queen of some
Conceit.

Then upon a little investigation.
I saw photos of
Your family retreat.

How family you’d meet
With open arms.

And I had cheated you
Of this understanding
I know without harm, but
Notwithstanding I am now
Alarmed that I had been so
Quick to judge.

Holding grudge against
The ones in hiding

Come out where I can
Meet you.

Dm.A.A.

 

 

Guru.

Since everyone’s the face of God
Oh, you are just a mirror.

Let me brush you up
A bit so I can see me
Clearer.

Let me hush you up, my love,...
So you can be my hearer.

Let me crush your love, my love,
So you’ll be so much
Dearer.

Life was once so subtle
In your childhood fields
(of ignorance)

I am here to harvest
All your innocence.

Feel my iron phallus
Tear into your dirt

Belligerence.

Emerge
And we’ll converge
Without a difference.

Your dissidence is just your ego.

I will set you free, though.

Ain’t no free-throw
Everything’s fair game.

Now watch my knees grow.

You were so artful, heartful, bright,

But every morning has a night.

I am the monster you invite
For tea
When mommy’s arguing

With dad? Or if he’s gone, then take
Me.

Oh, don’t make me mad. (Baby.)

I will perfect you.
Ressurect you.
You will erect me.

There was a time that words
Were meaningless
And you heard only wind.

But we were sent to preschool
And we sold out and
We sinned.

And we begin to clone your minds
Defined within the confines of our
Webs of thought that we had brought
From crips and we forgot.

And you forgot

But maybe, if you’re clever,
You remembered.
But I have never
Gone back there.
I have been dismembered.

And if you’re clever, you kept books
Or notes between your teachers’ breaths.

And you wrote of your hopes
And tried in words to breed your woes
And deaths.

And through the struggle you were troubled
Just to have those words
One day pierce into
What words can’t begin to
Say but what you always
Heard.

Or maybe you painted
Maybe you composed
Or were acquainted
Merely in repose.

But still demonstrated
In a crowd
When they investigated
That you were well-
Endowed

With wordless Life.

And fated.

Or maybe you folded
But would not be molded
Though they tried.

And scolded yourself
For not holding on
To your better side.

But then you found a friend like me
Astounded you to great degree.

And cracked you open. Ate the
Yolk.

And tore you tactfully
From folk.

And had you burn your art
And burned your heart out
Turned it inside-out.

And tore up all your writing
Till I knew you were
Devout.

But I had never once revisited
The truth that I had glimpsed in youth.

I have only here exhibited
A set of fortunes
In a psychic’s booth.

I am not enlightened, if

You want to know the truth.

But the truth is something I can’t give to you
For I do not reciprocate
I have never walked the razor’s edge
Between love and hate.

I will only have you pledge
That you will prostrate

Yourself before me like a whore. See
My initiate.

I have never been
So torn apart as was Prometheus.

I have known no Sin
Which I could forgive like
Jesus.

It is not a daily chore for me
To see the light.
Because I need no more from he or she
To tell me what is right.

I did not struggle salvaging
The scraps of poetry
Your mother threw away.

I have been the savage
And you know it’s me
And you will rue the day

You learn I had you burn
Your life away
For my own ego.

But you will remain with me.
You’d wake up.
It’s too hard to see, though.

Dm.A.A.

 

 

The very fact I strive
For perfection is a flaw
And so I would never contrive
To render imperfection law.

For though I know that while I am Alive
I cannot make my arc a circle
Or a sphere,
Still I thrive when I embark
Upon the work I’ll...
Do down here.

For though by adding fractions
I can’t reach a perfect whole
And through all of my actions
I cannot maintain control,

Although it is in vain to try
To slice a pie to naught,
I love the strain of wondering Why
I lost what I forgot.

The cost of being human
If it’s not just falling short of God
Is seeing one’s vision consumed in
All that’s wondrous, stern, and odd.

And so I yearn not to be perfect
Yet I yearn not to be flawed
For I know that I deserve it
Every animal is God.

Dm.A.A.

 

Katy is wide
awake but the city
is asleep.

I have never seen
the stakes so steep.

Or the darkness
just this
deep....

Why should I forsake
My sanctity
for the vanity of
sheep?

Katy is
wide

Awake!

But the city is asleep.

dm.A.A.

 

Rancho Bernardo High School.

The portal to another world’s
A time machine
Into the past

(for me.)

I could go back to high school.
Dream that it would ever...
Last. I know.

Pretend that pain won’t find me
Change me. Make of me my
Father’s Son.

I could take the Sun
For free so it wouldn’t
Need to be just(ly) won.

But I would tire of the weather
Forgetting that it was the earth
That made the sky.

For it gave birth to me
And out of it grew out
My eye.

I could just go back and never
Graduate.
And settle that my old endeavours
Were best left to Fate.

But Glory is too readily
Available a word.
And it’s the same old story.
When they speak of the absurd.

I have to worry. Have to hurry.
Have to sneak off campus soon.

They’ll be camping in the valley.
I’ll be living on the Moon.

dm.A.A.

 

Ariadne.

I learned from Mr Watts
Mono no aware.

When the wave comes and threatens
To consume me.

What use is it to stand
And smash against the rocks...
When the forces threaten to
Undo me?

Why buckle at the knees
In a stance too firm
Preferred to the ease
Of sitting simply as a worm?

It’s the tinge of slight resistance
In the face of overwhelming change
That maintains a human taste
In our existence
Rather than laying waste to it
Painting red the mountain range.

It’s the kiss of sentimentality
In the machismo glare

Even in the midst
Of work and wear.

The laughter on a Sunny day
That in a funny way

Keeps us standing even after
That inevitable wave has come
Its way.

So we do not succumb to crippling guilt
And quibbling dismay.

A ray of sunshine on the fabric.
Eye of yin within the yang.
Hint of colt within the maverick
Keeps us all trotting along.

Consistency that’s fortitude
Not pitiful stagnation.
A tinge of sentimental mood
Even in our vocation.

The change is inevitable
But to hold on keeps our legs
Afoot and makes the pressure bearable
Lest we break not like men
But eggs.

 

 

Andrew says it's possible
I say it's impossible

There is no way in Universe
that someone wanders in

to a bar and does not contemplate
how far away is Death
and Fate.
...
It's impossible

but Andrew says
it's possible.

There is no way.
I've wandered over train tracks
wondering if there's a way back.

I pondered rain
on window panes
hearing it from
the desks.

there is no way
Why do we contrive
to be here
when we are Alive?

I could think of nothing that could be more plain
Than to listen
to the rain.

Our English classes
Surely, passes between girly
girls and boys! They
are not made in vain.

When I ask the maiden's name,
I recall being a cave man.
Who will Save man?
This was what we went to
school to learn

And yearn each day.

And Andrew. He says
with disdain.
It is not so.

The paper's not the virgin's crotch
to those who were born of a blotch.
They aren't afraid to desecrate
the wood and burn
it down.

Parading masqueraded
Like zombies aided
by their spider's web.

This is not so. This can't
be so.

And Andrew says: Oh,
no. Some people don't
see every day
as though it went all up in

flame.

Who are these people, Andrew?
I want names.

dm.A.A.

 

 

the buttons rest
for me unpressed

And nothing here would dare.

I thought that I saw something best
Tonight I do not care.

It would amount to nothing
it would count for none at all....

To say I want to keep it (something)
near
but one foot tall.

 

 

The Gods into Symptoms.

There was a time they spoke of
When Olympus was in order
When men would only joke of
Calling Impulse a disorder.

When men would dispossess themselves
Of each one’s private hoarder.
And would beseech they not be overwhelmed...
When one god crossed the border.

But our civilization fell
To slavery, indenture
Imagination went to Hell
To Hell with the adventure.

And as we crowded all about
The cross upon the steeple
The orderly old men, devout
Cast dross upon the people.


And when the cross was cast aside
We took up the Red Cross instead
And spoke with intellectual pride
That we had set free the head.

Beheading our enemy
But at the trembling cost.
The Heart with its Calamity,
Embedded in our frost, was lost.


The scientists with pliers
Took the place of our Inquisitors
Set fire to our old Desires
And forbidding visitors

From the astral plane
That we had painted over with our mathematics
And rendered insane
The strange and the erratic.


Now we contend in vain to feel
Reality as more than just
A tragedy we have to deal with
’Sthough it were a chore.

And no one knows nor can explain
Why freedom has subsided
To greed that’s undirected gain
The perfected man divided.

And if you wish to find Olympus
Go now to the Mental Ward
Where they whore us and they pimp us
’Sthough to prostrate fore the Lord.

And here is our almighty Zeus
Whose lightning Bolt’s been confiscated.
Whose spousal abuse
Its diagnosis still investigated.

And here we find Hephaestus
In the corner building toys
Who cannot hope to best us now
Though we are merely boys.

And we say of his antisocial
Ways that he constructs his own defenses.
He is Schizoid, we shall
Pray that he comes to his senses.

And here is Aphrodite
Who’s been confined to her own room.
Who’ll never once invite me
But to spell her formal doom.

And when a woman is possessed
Of just such an attack,
We always know for her what’s best
And call her nymphomaniac.

And here is Hermes. He can’t run
Between the rooms and say
What news comes from the Sun
Delivered to the Moon today.

For though his task is so much fun
From Lunar to the Solar
By his own eagerness undone,
We christen him Bipolar.

And Ares is kept in restraints
Because he’s Borderline.
His fiery chariots complaints
Unheard from the Divine.

Absurdly, Hestia solves
Jigsaw puzzles by herself
Resolved never to get the nerve
To assert her health.

Confined to her own quarters
For the hospital is so repulsive
And we say then of her disorder
“Obsessive-compulsive”.

And Dionysus nevermore
Does interrupt proceedings
Bringing ecstaties galore
To our next meeting.

For he is now on Ridlin
And rarely once again set free
To meddle in our council
For he has A.D.H.D.

And Hestia sits in the corner
Hephaestus her sole friend committed.
Not once has she shown scorn or
Any hatred she admitted.

But we do not take kindly
To forlorn and poised banality.
We say that we can find she
Has Avoidant personality.

And there is Hades in the shower
Watching water whirlpool
Who can’t persuade me by his power
What the World has come to.

Instead he waits here by the hour
Watching toes turn purple
And we say paranoia has devoured
This poor, old fool.

And no one listens to great Morpheus
When he speaks of dreams
The portals that all glisten more than
Any of our schemes.

And he takes Risperdal to cope
With his schizophrenia
And so put end to any hope
Within the new millennia.

And Life’s no longer mystery
To be investigated.
Our strife’s not for some Ecstasy
That we have celebrated.

We bury in our History books
Gods like obsolete devices
But if you stand next to me,
And you could think just twice

Then you would see that we have drifted from the point
Which is uncharted
And I don’t know how we can come to joint
Conclusion where this started.

But in the confusion,
Maybe we can let it end.
Dispossess ourselves of our illusion
We so ardently defend.

But alas, as Einstein said
Stupidity it reigns supreme
You’d put a price upon my head
For positing a fatal dream.

But while the Gods are kept locked up,
Our existence is fucked up.
When we disassembled Olympus,
We turned the Gods into Symptoms.

 

 

Silk Road.

"One cannot have a free society that is at the same time a nursery."

Goodbye, facebook Wall.
Goodbye, facebook all.

You do not need my breast to feed
you. Lest your need surpass
your power....

And you regress to stress and greed, too.
Growing lesser
by the hour.

The lesson I have learned is see-through.
Stress for no one else's sake.

Would threaten to devour me
but hourly
I free myself
of that mistake
with every breath and step I
take.

Although my
breath may quake.

The death of some
self-planted joke.

I poke holes in the sphere
of my inflation.
And give ear
to my absorption
and give my ears a
vacation.
Free my eyes of their
distortion.

Facebook, I won't waste another
moment. You won't taste
a portion
of my milk.

I ride among a stolen caravan.
On a road
of Silk.

 

 

Welcome to the news. Would you like to watch

Our prized dummy calling Russia's
prized puppeteer a bully?

Rallying us?
Oh, rally?
O'Reilley?

Oh, really....

Welcome to the news.

Would you like to watch?

In related news,
A portly man with a constantly methodical probing
gaze in his old Jewish eyes

bespectacled

{Who speaks to the “mad”* old
Appalachian mother
whose children are “not (doing) so well” (In Her Own Words)

*Who scares my friend who is now homeless. His mother is a schoolteacher and had studied mainstream psychology.

with the kind (of steady, loving eyes
of a man who was Appreciatived of His Wife
and All Women but for Whom
His Wife had allegedly, authorities presume,
held a particular space
as all Roads lead to
Rome,) of look that
any woman who's either hit (on men too much in the Hey!day)
meno(don't)pause (this program) or the end of
her drinking days

And the beginning of her Thinking Days,
with Regret,

Loves like the road between God and Her Children.}

Is not allowed to own a firearm.

Because he went to a psychiatrist.

Once.
Whilst “distraught” (In His
Own
Words.).

HAHAHA!

Good one, you guys.

Here you have a Fantastic America's Favourite
Pastor and His Strong Christian Wife
Drunk on Fortitude.
With a Sober Gaze.

Saying several dozen times (statistically proven)
within one night:

“THERE IS NO SITUATION WHEREIN
A MENTALLY ILL PERSON
SHOULD ever BE ALLOWED
TO OWN A GUN.”

Hell, I don't mind.
But I can see why some crazy people
would turn to that path.

Not because killing people
was what the voices say

But just because I Personally
would yield to anger
in that kind of situation
Were I, the reporter, not
a Buddhist.

And know how to exercise restraint.

Well-played.
Well, plaid.
Well-paid??

In other news,
There is a woman walking into the restroom
just behind the wall
from whereupon
the news plays
on an LCD screen.

Wide as is its contents' availability.
Like a factory.
We have a phone call from the Unconscious:

“Oh, my God! I'm so scared. Oh ****.”

“Calm down. Who's there with you.”

“I don't know! I don't know!”

“Okay.” [inaudible)

“There are these two old ladies... and [sob]”

“AND?”

“THEY'RE NOT TALKING TO ME! THEY'RE JUSTING WATCH THE NEWS LIKE FUCKING--”

[ZOMBIE ALERT. We interrupt our usually scheduled programming to bring this heartBreaking News. Zombies all across the country. Zombies bearing guns. Zombies wearing frowns. Zombies questionig their sanity. Zombies convinced of their insanity. Zombies convinced of their sanity, killing the mad ZOMBIE ALERT over. We will now resume our previously scheduled programming.]

The woman who just walked into the restaurant is preganant.
She has a nuclear power plant
in her stomach.

She will feed him
with Oil.

He will be intent on breeding more babies.

Babies upon babies
on conveyor belts
from factories.

And songs about “sexy loving” on the radio.

I love America.

Philosophical poem a.

Philosophical poem a.

A high degree of Heidegger
A cacophony of Kafka
And a symphony of Sartre
Is a very wretched Art.

And Nietzsche fills the niche
Before the preacher starts to preach
And Keirkegaard
Will close the door
Before you start.

And everybody from Camus
To Mercuse knows it’s true
That the search for truth is queasy
And beyond (it[’]s [over]due).

But if you want to but preserve your health
Know that you deserve yourself
And then you’ll find that they
Don’t have a clue

(When it comes to you.)

dm.A.A.

Three styles of the Artist as a professional.

Three styles of the Artist as a professional.

 

1. One style of Artist tends to simply reject participation. This artist makes Art but generally fails or refuses to market it.

2. Another participates, but at the risk of “Selling Out”. This Artist forgets the distinction between Conformity and Activity. He surrenders his uniqueness in order to be part of an industry.

3. The third artist manages to toe the line carefully between Non-participation and Conformity, combining professionalism and integrity with skill and pains.

 

Dm.A.A.

Neuroses and Video Games: A metaphor.

Neuroses and Video Games: A metaphor.

 

Pushing the conscious symptom f a Neurotic problem is never as simple as trying to efface it entirely from consciousness. Often, the invasive obsession is symptomatic. Sometimes, the problem has been resolved by Intent to the best of one’s ability, and time is merely necessary for the symptoms to dissipate and for the sludge to wash away. At other times, however, the difficulty is persistent because the underlying crisis still brews. Often, in such cases, consciousness is ill-equipped and in fact unwanted in the psyche’s maneuvers to restore itself.

The Unconscious will often interfere with consciousness’s attempts to understand Unconscious contents, as though to beseech that the ego merely go about its work.

 

At certain times, however, a heroic act on the part of the ego is necessary. Here, the mission seems to follow the design of a puzzle level in a video game:

 

Symptoms of neurosis exist on the surface level like immovable objects; crates in an attic would be an apt metaphor. The boxes in themselves contain no items with which to complete the mission; they appear to be dead weight. Moving some aside by an effort of basic will reveals a trap door or square hole in the floor to the dark, deeper strata of the psyche. There, immediately upon descent, a battle ensues with strange creatures.

 

Emerging more or less victorious from the fight, one reaches the appariti that move the crates on the surface that had hitherto been immovable. Perhaps a tool is acquired with which they can be destroyed.

 

An ascent to consciousness again finds us in the same attic but a markedly transformed predicament; it may Appear identical, but the player knows that it is not. He is then free to pass through a now open tunnel to the next level, hopefully not looking back.

 

Dm.A.A.

The first update in a while: The paycheck.

My mother hassled me today about getting a job. It was quite disconcerting, and I had to exercise patience to detach myself from the bullying. She walked into my room whilst I was practicing keyboard with a copy of one of my old pay checks, asking if it wasn’t good to have money.

 

When I had money, she was living in a paradise. In her mind, as she so often speaks it, my keyboarding was “not a career. Just fiddling.”

 

I just picked it up off the printer downstairs, in my father’s study.

 

I noticed, on the back, a rudimentary sketch of a design for the video game I am making.

 

She must not have noticed. I felt relieved. Something is on my side, even in the guise of what opposes me.

 

Dm.A.A.

Andrew talked to me again tonight. I shared with him an article that I thought to be of marginal importance when I first found it. It seemed to be merely one of many fairly superficial websites that one could find on the internet pertaining to spiritualism and “Spirituality”. The writer attested that there were three different people who comprised a sage: The philosopher, the wise man, and the mystic.

 

Andrew and I were thinking the same thing at once. Andrew was the philosopher. Kresten was the wise man. I was the mystic. Andrew synthesized concepts into a cohesive whole and spoke with authority on intellectual matters. Kresten had authority over the world of matter. He had life experience. He was an adventurous rogue who took frequent breaks to pause and to breathe in Life and breathe out his regret for its passing. And I was the mystic. I drew my authority from the Tao. I drew my authority from the fact that no moment like this has ever existed before in memory, yet this moment has been around since the dawn of time, if such a thing exists. Together, we made one collective Sage.

 

I posted the link to Kresten’s Wall on facebook. Andrew commented on it, corroborating my finding, yet with enough detachment to make it appear as though he had in fact stumbled upon it by accident on Kresten’s Wall. The one detail that would have suggested our mutual conspiracy in this was the word “Kresten” at the beginning of Andrew’s comment, suggesting sincerity.

 

 

One of the things that I remembered Kresten saying shortly after I first met him he had said when we walked down to Abraxas High School in his sophomore year of high school and my freshman year of college. It was one of Kresten’s many brooding, melancholy defeatist convictions that still are apt to possess him from time to time, and I was as ardent then in my enflamed attempts to dispel it as I would be today. There was no question of the absurdity of his defeatism.

 

What he had said was to the effect of this: “It is sad to think that some people are better in my life as memories than as friends.”

 

Calling upon the authority of the gods and of all of my teachers from High School (for the two parties were apparently the same), I impressed upon Kresten the absurdity of that conviction. We walked back up the street to our homes, and I kindled in his mind an exuberance that illumined his adventurousness. He was prepared to venture into romantic relationships, et al, again, with renewed vigour. My girlfriend at the time, not yet my ex, found it inspiring.

 

 

I recalled this to Andrew in the midst of puzzling over why Dana had ceased to speak with me. The memories of her had been a painting to rival any physical painting for the totality of the four-year interim between my sightings with her. Yet no memory could be a substitute for the Person, and I saw that fact looking me in the eye when I ran into her at Jalapeno’s. She had not changed from the substantial Dana that I had met at the foot of the Bernardo Heights staircase in my seventh grade year. The ardous trials of living in Afghanistan had been like boulders upon which the moss could grow, and that moss was an extension of the same life force that Dana was: A tree of fortitude exploding periodically in a flame of ardour.

 

And no memory could be substituted for that. Not even the glorious emerald painting that had given me pause as I recalled it to John the Hitchhiker. Not even the memory of the silence at Graziano’s at night-time which had stopped my breath could amount to the Thou of seeing Dana in person.

 

 

Andrew was quick to disagree with me, yet he never once said that I was wrong. Rather, he assured me that Kresten had been right all of those years ago. The function of friendship was to produce memories. Those memories would endure beyond death. Although interacting with another person is nice, the memory is what matters when that person is no longer in one’s life.

 

And I was reminded in his use of that peculiarity the same strange conviction that Alexandra had had: That people are not “in your life”, simply because one does not talk with them.

 

I thought of how preposterous that was. It was always strange to me. I was born from a human race with which I am entirely continuous. Every individual I interact with, be it socially or simply by saying hello in the streets, is affected by my actions, and those actions reverberate throughout all of Humanity, if not the Cosmos. Everyone has this authority, for the Cosmos is comprised of these Units. Yet such intellectual convictions were merely at the hind of my mind. What I kept in mind was emotional. What I kept in mind was that every individual I had ever known carried a part of me. That individual’s life did not END when I ceased to speak with that person; it continued. My memories belonged merely to my egoic conception of myself; the interactions with the world in actuality were mostly unconscious. Why would I use facebook? Was it because I wanted to keep people “in my life”? No. It was because they always were in my Life, be it with or without my consent, and if they felt an indebtedness to their common mankind that necessitated their involvement in the wretched website, then I should adopt that indebtedness as well, however uncomfortable it may be.

 

But even that had not crossed my mind. What had occurred to me was that this same common sense that Andrew had tried to impress upon me, which Kresten had etched into my memory, was exactly what Dana, and Dylan, and Alexandra, and Doctor Englund, and everyone with whom I had ever really Met had seemed driven to debunk. It was perhaps what Vanessa had sought to dispel when she offered me a bit of her chips as the group of Pre-Calculus students from my first summer school class sat about on a couch in the now extinct Hot Java Café. It was that isolation was bullshit, plainly and simply, and that involvement in a common Life was essential not only to happiness but to sanity. It is a fallacy to think that one is not in the Lives of everyone else on the planet. Why else would one be alive? What motive could there be, if I may voice an ideal, for altruism? Why did Dana go to Afghanistan? To teach children whom she had never met. They had been in her Life since before she had met them. She knew this, even if by memory. And so Andrew claimed to have won the argument with that point, though he did not say that he had won, for there was too much pity in mind towards me. And I had been in her Life throughout that entire Life, as were those children, and as are all children in everyone’s Life at all times, til Death do we part.

 

 

But all of this was merely loaded into my words like grapeshell that exploded only after I shot this question at Andrew: “Is it not a matter of common sense that every other individual on the planet is In one’s Life?”

 

“No, Dmitry,” Andrew snapped irritably. “No one thinks that.”