every song is a poem
i write to distract myself:
from my powerful emotions
turning the wheels of
ideas and
pardigmatic machanations
grief and misery
beset me
i write because it's
what i find myself doing
after i get enough high
to be lucid and hopeful
to uncuff my soul
and remember how
good it is to touch
soot and grime
and be running
all the while
smiling and out
and stop whining
whining
settle down
i write to distract myself:
from my critical unpleasant
character
with a heart that rides
out like a weapon
of judgment
and indicision
and fear and predilication
and unfortunate mentions
of religioun
many don't understand
regrettable
i write to distract myself:
from my uncomfortable
position
my socioeconomical demographic
partition of society
where the ragged people been
and are far gone
replaced instead
by ticking bombs of murder
and exploitation
or sometimes
when were unlucky
a running funtioning
engine
of the worst things
like love and shelter
and appreciation
and quotas and schedules
and prescriptions
and hell upon
the earth eating you're
hope of the sidewalk
spun out used up
with you on La Brea
running the edge of a
cliff from me finding out
you took my shit
watch out I say
in the dream of worries
i live in
i do be worrying
my mother told me that
nicest thing she ever said to me
in fact
i have to remember that
i write because my mother wrote
but was deprived of being brilliant
despite it's evidence
she was also
obviously a woman
well, can't have that
i write to distract myself:
from the thoughts
you've made me thinking
i write to,
to do:
everything
i'll write you
a legal pleading
or a letter of
apology
to me
because i'm so
elite in
how i do this
check, check my rhetoric
never could have a favorite
i'm a another zealot with a pen
i hear the inspiration
i write to do everything
fear lives in the streets outside your miniblinds
hazy with cigarette smog and fly wing parts
-- all keeping something truly awful out --
in the sodium street lamps of
you-should-be-home-by-now
deep inside the shade of those
unknown shadows that manifest
all shapes of foe from those
rich headlights that burst
into and tow your pupils
across the wall into
some unoccupyable space
where Escher would sit and draw
were this cafe not closed and dead
and burnt out and a former early model
Cherokee.
a Cherorkee within where people smoked and
seldom but less seldom there laughed
and felt some mercy, hopefully.
a Cherokee like those ravers exploded in
Slabs at precisely the moment we kissed in the boxvan
I hauled here from my last real
home and into this terrible
streetlit unknown
that shown on your lonely corpse
facedown in a field unmysteriously
dead from being yourself.
a Cherokee probably with a blown headgasket
that's nonetheless still running
smelling of sweet antifreeze
and bubbling along about
to dive into whatever
ushers steam clouds up
through those iron lids.
the street is not my life.
the street is the opposite of that.
it's this thing that's pushes and shoves
and never bends to my will.
it's trying to kill
all of us that it can.
but it needs slowmotion.
no street wishes to snap you up like a crocodile.
no neighborhood is your baby's swooping hawk.
when you find the street has taken from you
you've probably, in the streets opinion,
accepted something,
although it didn't make you whole,
from its minions;
or you've survived long enough
to frustrate some powerful
warlord rapist resipiratory
epidemicist because you're
able to read the words of
helpful heartful chemists
that just want people a little better;.
not not higher;
not more better moral ethical;
just able to do what they set out to;
able to bob and weave around another
lifted slab of sidewalk in a dark
corner near some apartment
where one year you had a bestfriend
but who knows who lives __there__ **now**
in the movies it's the state of homelessness
of safetylessness that is sold to you
to most effectively scare you.
she runs through the house eliminating safety
on all levels until she's at the top
and is perfectely set to never have to
give up that white safety she has as
a beautiful martyr to domesticity.
my wife went down with the ship
is where she's going to do
running up the stairs away from
the boogeyman.
for no good woman would ever survive
the boogeyman, defiled, ruined, having
slept outside.
"I'd rather die."
i wouldn't rather die.
i have continued to live although outside.
yes I was raped.
but only one time!
and he tried to kill me which I escaped.
don't i get any extra credit?
will I ever be free and safe from hustlers
and pimps and plots to kill me for
telling with honor what I think?
will I die tonight because I called out
a bully telling me he'd kill me
if I played my guitar at the 7-11
at Western and Sunset Street?
will I die because the victimization
has escalationed to robbery
and rationalization strikes every mind
doing to the kind the unkind?
will I live or will I die tonight?
that is pure fright.
and if my life were important
i'd insist on an answer that's right.
but i know the answers are far away.
the answers lie in the sequels.
and the commentary.
they're not for me to contemplate.
all the street wants is sweat and
fear and uncertainty
here i sit giving just that.
i hope it's considered on my epitaph:
fear called her out and she called back
here i have a techpoem.
for in tech you do test some.
you write "hello world"
like the best of them.
that's the simple tradition.
and would i go against the
masters?
would i churn up admin disasters;
kickbans;
timeouts;
community guidelines;
and so sit on the sidelines?
i would and have and also did
yell at clerks in city hall
knowing fullwell and all
__i am right and they are wrong.__
and, of course, did wait extra long for
that registration.
so here's something i hope you see
as gracious from a poet programmer
homeless heretic using the best tools
to make something of the best of it:
hello world
hello safe spiraling beauties far
away from the humanities.
hello Martin Gardnerees and the linguists;
and gymnists;
and cyclists;
and chess enthusiasts;
hello Joseph-Smith-having-reads.
hello medical-era potheads.
hello beige box sporting unforgettable
because you wont let them
"phone phreaks" that is;
hello Emmanuel Goldstein;
hello comment on his correct spelling;
i welcome all of thee to my stupid obsession of making art
and blurring the lines of what and where art starts
hello world, Internet
hi i am in
hello world is always how these begin
the end
few poems actually get featured at the top