London Fog

This is a valley where London Fog
Hangs heavily like bloodied hands
Torching gallows to fuel the lingering caress
Of addiction rising in smoky spirals.

Drowned in sound these flooded trees
Burst apart in the bitter stagnant silence
After an echoing one-handed thunderclap
One day they will never have been whole.

When that day comes the fog will yield
And the world will be laid bare to be seen
As it once was and as it now is
And to be asked, “What was so important about the difference?”

The forest was once here before the frost,
The cities before they were razed to plant the seeds
Of respite from cacophony and memories,
But we will live on until we die.

In the smell of cigarette smoke behind closed doors
In the chirping of life crying at our loss for words
We will live on and never forget
We will live in the past as who we are now.

Mr. Sandman, Bring me a Dream

When dreams have given way to the abyss,
In closing like the flaming maw of hell,
There is no last, raging desperate flare,
No memories fighting not to forget themselves.

Like a light in august, the setting sun,
Longing for the lost time of a wasted life,
The last dream will be of a dying summer,
Succumbing to an autumnal twilight.

Eyes bolted shut to obscure the darkness,
Fearful form constants become surreal phosphenes,
Photographs of fantasies fay and unvisited,
Their dim light upon the death of dreams.

Ragnarok (Pretentious rap)

As a hard rain falls and drowns a dying flower;
The graves upon graves stacked below are by the hour
Rotting like your mind when you've given up your power
Like the intellect decays from the acedia of a coward.
What has the past then died for if atop the ivory tower
All minds, all thinking is concentrated outward
Cuz our souls can't bear to listen to the never-ending shower
Of all of man's creations coming crashing down around us?

Let us build these empires on broken bones and broken minds
Dancing joyfully upon the graves where even dying has died
A tarantella atop those who've been forgotten by time,
Lives less gone now than having never been alive.
A cynical hubris given to self loathing and pride
Introspection is masturbation when there's nothing inside
A fatalistic weltschmerz is as innocent as the divine
What do you think you live and die for when the apocalypse is nigh?

The sun dawns on this floundering Earth, a twitching fish
Simargl, gargle, rinse, wash rinse
A solar flaring wolf descends upon the world
Rotationally energizing and demoralizing this oyster's pearl
From the ashes of the past let the ziggurat of hash
A sacrificial Franken-phoenix that's been burnin' through the stash
Be resurrected presently as a facsimile of intellect
We razed our cities to plant more trees but now being circumspect
What was once called ennui we know mostly as self-disrespect
Cuz if you're not living to die well then what else would do you expect?

The News At 8

5 dead on the evening news
What more can be said? It's more or less through.
Five families will mourn, will never be whole,
As five warm bodies slowly grow cold.
I wonder about their lives now that they're gone,
Did they gave their parents hell, if they had a single mom
A single father perhaps, but that's slightly less common
I wonder if they grew up living on ramen?
I wonder where they went to school, if they ever got bullied
If they were studious, if they were unruly,
If they smoked and drank and seeked nepenthe
Or escaped their sorrows through spirituality,
Or lashed out at people to hide their fears,
If they dreaded the end of the passage of years?
What did they major in, what were their dreams,
Was there a difference in what their world was -
And how their world seemed?
How did they live every day, how did they think,
What memories and people now circle the sink?
What will be wasted and forgotten and buried deep down
With five dead on the news and six feet below ground?
Five universes died in their entirety at once,
How big and how small is a genius, a dunce?
How much is a life, when it's all said and done,
Five dead on the news, might just as well be one.
The difference between infinity and more of the same
Means nothing to someone watching the grains
Of the sands of time slowly drain on a screen
While electric sheep populate these robotic dreams
What do five deaths mean to those who still live,
What can five rotting corpses still possibly give?

Dandelions

The stale cigarette's earthy aroma,
Battling with the cloying scent of Chinese take-out,
Hung in the air, part gray smoke,
Part intangible presence I knew nothing about.

A single blinking inferno eye,
Winking knowingly through the growing mist,
Gave light and heat to all
But me – I shook, torch in clenched fist.

I dropped the sun, smoking like a funeral pyre
Gathering storms like picking dandelions,
I wrap them around me for warmth in vain,
And hanged beneath the falling rain.

I Dream of Stars

There is no sound, there is no time,
Just a burst of heat and searing light.
The last hurrah of a dying star
Reaches far into infinity,
The glow fades, it remembers:
Planets waltzed, 'round and around,
It smiled and gazed lovingly,
A proud mother when life arose,
A proud father keeping his children,
Grieving when life ended as all life must,
How empty the planets seemed.

It tears itself and everything around it apart,
Collapsing into itself as it dies.
Everything in its proximity shakes
In light of its awesome wake and past-grandeur,
The black hole is born:
The planets descend, one by one,
Following in its deadly stead,
Lost lambs being lead to the slaughter,
Children dying with their innocence,
Wondering what lies beyond,
This is the destruction of worlds.

Nothing can escape its terrible grasp
The black hole grows and grows.
Someone watches and whispers lines from the Bhagavad Gita,
“I am become death,”
But even as the words pass their lips, they wonder:
The star is dead, but does the black hole live,
Does the Destroyer of Worlds remember its past life,
Does it remember giving,
Does it remember shining,
Loving and grieving for its children,
Can what once was ever truly be lost?

Ice Cream

I saw an ice cream cone
In the middle of winter -
In the middle of a blizzard,
Snow settling on the frozen treat,
A thousand crystal sprinkles camouflaged in white
A thousand pinpricks of starlight
Landing on the treasure,
Standing discarded on the sidewalk.
It was pristine, untarnished by man or God,
So I left it there, hoping that no one will eat it,
That its innocence will last,
That it will survive people walking by,
And knowing that if it does,
The ice cream will never melt.

Or in prose:
I saw an ice cream cone on the sidewalk one day, just standing there upright with a beautiful swirl of what appeared to be vanilla. It was one of those cheap flaky cones with a flat bottom and really not enough volume to hold everything it was supposed to and it was standing there in the middle of a blizzard, but still it was a tasty and delicious treat and the child inside me was screaming for me to pick it up. Snow was settling on it, studding the whiteness with glittering stars so that every immaculate curve and line was outlined with incandescent sprinkles. The snow, coupled with the chill of winter, preserved the cone in its pristine state. It was amazing.

As I stood there staring at the heavenly dessert and wondering who would discard something so beautiful without so much as a taste, I realized I had come to a complete stop in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and was quickly becoming a large nuisance to just about everyone. Grumbling loudly and mumbling rudely to themselves, people were stepping around me and by association the ice cream cone as well. I felt slightly proud that I was contributing to its continued existence, a feeling that was quickly erased when I picked up the cone and brought it to my lips.

And stopped. Who was I to destroy this work of art? It had survived man, it had survived the elements, and it had survived god. Who was I to come by now and do what so many before me had avoided out of deference? I put the cone down and stood up slowly, watching it carefully. I kept staring at it as I backed away; I couldn't turn away. A car honked and jolted me out of my reverie. I spun around, looking wildly for the source of the noise and then, remembering the cone, turned back to see it disappear into the crush of pedestrian traffic.

Stolen

The poetry of cigarette smoke in the air
Twirled eloquently, mouthing the words
That between the two of us were left unsaid
To be briefly seen and never heard.

Watching each other amidst the ambient clink
Of aluminum bats and the thud of leather on leather;
The sounds of an America trying not to change,
We smiled at nothing and the unseasonable weather.

Conversation and cigarettes burned and died
I looked off to see barren trees framed before the flaming sky
All I remember is thinking how quickly night descends
And the taste of her lips,
Words and cigarettes and all on mine.

Ding Dong

The blackest magic and eldritch rites
Haunt this idyllic village at night
When the silent stars are rent by screams
That turn fancy into nightmarish dreams.

The demon spawn of hell's hottest flames
Slaughter the harvest and leaves livestock lame
As milk sours and the most innocent die,
Their souls to limbo before they can cry.

In a bitter chill they dragged forth a crone,
Snow melting in the inferno of her home,
The black cat, her familiar, they stoned to death,
The witch left to choke on the winter's breath.

Flowers grew over the grave they never gave her
The most exotic colors, scents, and flavors
The harvest came rich and full the next year
In time they forgot the old women had ever been there.

But the cottage is perfumed with the colors of honey:
The wealth of bees, and the green of money,
No one talks of the riches that came from the ruins -
Besides, there are things still that need doing.

The blackest magic and eldritch rites
Haunt this idyllic village at night
When the silent stars cast their ephemeral gaze
On the demon that kills by fear and malaise.

Karaoke

I remember falling in love with songs
For the first time, sober, drunk, and / or high,
If I get the lyrics from the start,
But more often than not I have them wrong.

I love what I see there of myself
A reflective canvas, a notebook mirror,
With me creating another me
In hopes that another sees my world as well.

But I get the words that mean so much
Completely and utterly wrong so often,
So that all it is to me is music
And cryptic mumbles and gibberish in a brief poetic snatch.

Eventually I'll stumble upon the truth
The words that were meant to be heard
With the music as it was meant to be played
But occasionally I'll secretly wish to never learn what is truly being said.

To Elysium

I've stolen the heart of winter from a forgotten crypt
Watched it glitter like a wish upon dying lips,
Fluttering tremulously and weak for all its brilliance.

I've quelled the swelling of a berzerker's rage,
Imprisoned the spirit that should never be caged
Such that the immortal man never knew old age.

I've claimed whole kingdoms as my own domain
Securing both great riches and undying fame
What other man purloined a nation's purse for his own plaything?

My name and presence has meant pain and death
I've felt the caress of countless last breaths
After a thousand battles I am the only one left.

I am the greatest hero that you will never meet
For having lived this life unfettered and free.
Now I willingly walk to my own defeat.

Ode to the Mud

My fingers are lead, my shoulder is dead,
The palm of my hand is swollen and red.
All of my joints crack in staccato,
Unseen by eyes that need aid to see evil.
My body shivers, weary, in wait,
Of an ankle that pains to keep itself straight.
I suffer to keep a malfunctioning organ
That deigns to leave me dying or broken,
A head of hair that wishes to flee,
Each follicle struggling with esprit
Unlike my belly which grows ever flaccid
Or my libido which was fun while it lasted.
But mind over matter, and that worries me most
What spirit there was long gave up the ghost
There is only silence and thoughts of malaise...
I grow catty now with all these dog days.

Tomorrow May Never Come

When you feel the weight of tomorrow
Bearing down upon your shoulders
Feeling like Atlas and feeling the sorrow
Of beauty's converse in the eye of the beholder
Remember that tomorrow may never come.

When you feel yourself trapped within the amber
Of this moment gone that we call now
Unable to move and unable to tamper
With today, that which will you see cowed
Remember that today may come again.

When you feel the mistakes of yesterday
Break through the clouds of retrospect
And the expository glare betray
The remains: remorse and stark regret
Remember that yesterday has come and gone.

A Product of GM

What good is a broken refrigerator
Resuscitated on a regular basis
Only to slowly putter and die again
Killed by the perfect freezer atop its ivory tower?
It can't keep milk from curdling,
Vegetables from rotting within its rancid depths
And poisoning the unwary,
But the freezer with its ever-frigid air
Has never faltered, and as it beavers on
The coldness it collects clutters and chokes
The lungs of the body it rides upon.
I've watched strange men come and clear the ice
And the refrigerator come to life
A breath of fresh, cool, air
But sure as the frozen debris that litters my sink
Cleared from the icy realm where time holds no dominion
Will melt and spoil in a place so full of life,
The refrigerator will fail again as the freezer beavers on.

What good are these broken lamps
With crooked stands and flickering lights
Like the glow of embers in a still night
Winking into nothingness and forgotten
Or any light at all, for that matter
If all they can shine on is wreckage,
Scattered papers and ravaged books,
An untuned and ancient piano
That renders every tune unrecognizable,
An ancient house cat, once beautiful,
Now covered with matted fur,
And other debris of lives spent in futility?

What good is the queen of this domain,
Desperately trying to be proud of nothing,
Needing to be a mother?
She is a homemaker, a loyal employee, and an instrument of order
And yet her home is chaos.
It is a filthy hovel at best under her care,
Cluttered and reeking of urine and resignation.
At worst it is the end of the earth,
Expanses of the indeterminate dregs of wasted lives,
Piled upon themselves and compacted.
Oh mother, her children can't stand her
They resent her more than anything else for she made them
Cynical and weary of her world,
The only world she ever showed them.
What is good is the father,
Who does not deserve the title “king”,
Who could have been so much more
But worked two menial jobs for a decade,
Squandering his potential,
Taking his anger and frustration out on his family
Until now he has become almost obsolete?
Now he tries be useful again,
Unemployed and dying,
He monopolizes as best he can as much as he can
So that his passing will cripple the family
So that he will still be needed,
And so that he will be missed.

What good is the American dream
To the son of those who came to this country
So full of hope, potential, faith
And other such things that suckers are made of
Only to see the dream fail?

And what good is that son
For whom the parents will dare to dream again
Who doesn't even want to live for himself anymore,
Let alone let others live through him,
Who asks “What good is a home, is a family, is a life
To those who see only broken refrigerators,
Flickering lamps, shattered dreams,
Dying old men, and their own demise”
And other questions no wants to hear
Or answer?

Product of General Motors

What good is a broken refrigerator
Fixed repeatedly of the same problem
That still can't keep milk from curdling
Vegetables from spoiling and poisons
From the mouths of the unwary?

What good are these broken lamps
Dim, if they're ever gotten to work at all
If all they can shine on is wreckage
The debris of lives spent in futility?

What good is the mother's pride
Her need to be a homemaker and to be orderly
When her home is chaos
Filthy, cluttered, reeking more than faintly of urine?
Her children can't stand her, resent her for she has made them
Cynical and weary of her world,
The only world she ever showed them.

What good is her husband, the father,
Who could have been so much more
But worked two menial jobs for a decade,
Squandering his potential
Taking his anger and frustration out on his family
Until now he has become almost obsolete,
Monopolizing as best he can as much as he can
So he's still needed now, unemployed and dying?

How much solace can one take in acceptance
If it is given in resignation
For Sisyphus can only have despaired,
Knowing his beginning and his end
His smile is the Cheshire grin of mania.

What good is teaching the American dream
To the son of those who came to this country
So full of hope, potential, and the other adjectives suckers are made of
Only to see the dream fail?
And what good is the son for whom the parents will dare to dream again
Who doesn't even want to live for himself anymore,
Let alone let others live through him?

Face First

A two-faced man hangs over a cliff
Swaying in the salty breeze
That stirs the waves to gently lap the rocks.

He dangles from the tree of life
Its roots entangled in the cracks in the Earth,
Making the ground it stands on.

The sun sinks into the horizon,
The ocean bursts into flames,
Setting the canopy of night ablaze.

The string comes undone, cut by unseen forces
The two-faced man twists and tumbles,
Hitting the blazing waters face-first.

As You Lay Dying

As you lay dying swaddled with wintry sheets
Barely conscious and unable to recognize me
Or any of your family who shuffle in
Daily to awkwardly stare at you, emaciated
Perhaps hoping they'll make a difference
Perhaps hoping for a sense of closure
So that they can mourn you now
While you're still but barely alive
I'm reminded of the stories I've been told
The rumors, the gossip, and even then
Not much reached my ears.

I think of your colleague who looks so much younger
But studied with you at the university
He told me that while you were studying
You worked two jobs and gave blood to support your siblings
I'm trying to see something of that man left in you.
I think of my brother telling me that you taught yourself English
By reading Faulkner.
I wonder how he knew this
But then again, you always liked him more.
I saw The Sound and the Fury on your bookshelf, well-thumbed
But I was too young to recognize it,
And far too young to appreciate it.
I think of the feud my father told me about
Between you and an old family friend,
How you kept his son from coming to America with him
Because he was too young,
And how he didn't talk to you for years.
The son is an engineer in Maryland now -
The father retired in Buffalo.
I was told the two of you made peace years ago.
I remember the pride in my father's voice as we walked around Tufts
As he explained how you started an exchange program
Sending promising young Chinese students to the medical school.
I heard that same pride in the voice of another colleague
Showing me your articles, written in English and Chinese,
Telling me of the advances you made in... god knows what.

I try to think about what I remember of you,
And all I can see are hospitals and your quiet suffering
And how every few months my aunt calls to worry my father
Filling him with stress and dread as she describes your worsening condition
As he argues with my mother I can see his concern for you,
His anger at his inability to help,
And I think of his tentative hope when you recover slightly.
He will be mourning the death of a father,
A man he admired, who he was so proud of,
In who's footsteps he tried to follow and failed.
I think of your wife, all alone in your apartment
When your time comes and your family returns from America
She will notice the absence of her eldest son
He's been dead for months now, but for her
He would be freshly buried,
And she will have lost two of the most important men in her life at once.
I think of those doctors and scholars who talked to me
Sympathetically in the suite they gave you
They will mourn the death of a colleague,
The death of a dedicated teacher,
And the death of a friend.
I think of my cousins and my brother,
All of whom knew you better than I,
And they will lament the loss of a grandfather
Even though I know my brother will not be at your funeral.
And my mother, who you did not approve of,
Who's union with my father you and your wife at first condemned
Will shed a tear for you, because she's grown to care for you as well.
But I know that when I see you again
To pay my respects and say good bye
I will not be mourning a teacher, a friend,
A colleague, or even a grandfather.
I will be mourning the death of a stranger
Who I heard so much about,
But was never able to meet.

Two Brief Spur-of-the-moment Vignettes

Wish You Were Here
The earthy aroma of a stale cigarette hung in the air, battling the cloying greasy scent of cheap Chinese take out. I kicked a foot out, scattering Styrofoam trays covered in greasy sauce, and gently lowered my leg onto the small empty strip cleared off the cluttered table. I exhaled and watched a stream of smoke disappear into the light. From somewhere behind me a cheap stereo asked, “So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell?”

My foot was starting to fall asleep. I awkwardly swung it off the table, cleaning off another large swath of varnished wood at the expense of the crappy rug underneath, and leaned forward. The cigarette was automatically raised to my mouth. Take a drag. Exhale a small cloud. I wondered if it were possible to make rain from tobacco smoke. Everything was drenched in sauce and liquor and futility anyways. A tiny concentrated storm would either wash it all away or pound it into a soaking indistinct mess.

I hung my head over the cigarette smoking like a funeral pyre.

“How I wish, how I wish you were here.”

Snow
Outside the snow is falling sideways. I'm sitting at a beat up, marked up, fucked up desk, a hot cup of steaming coffee next to me perfumes the air, and as my restless fingers beat a tattoo upon the gaudy monstrosity that is my oversized keyboard, I'm staring out the window at the snow that is flying horizontally by.

The desk is blanketed with white shit; paperwork and my works on paper. It's piled high, and every time I look up I'm briefly amused by what appears to be a mountain range at eye level. I lean back and put one knee up between me and the desk, resting in that position. A deep sigh is heaved. One hand leaves its post atop my ridiculous gaming keyboard replete with useless functions and shining lights to cradle a drooping forehead. Everything becomes a strange swirl of colors and shapes before a deep blackness. I hold this position for a while, my cold fingers resting lightly on my temple, the warmth of my palm putting my weary eyes to rest, and relish the peaceful darkness.

The strange, almost wobbly fluttering of a single sheet of paper falling shakes me out of my reverie. I lift my eyes to watch the avalanche descend. It's slow at first; everything moves into position in preparation for the chaos that will follow. And then it all comes crashing down at once.

Maybe god knows how long it takes for me to resort everything and put it all together, but I sure as hell don't; I just pick it all up and shoved it back into shelves and crevices at random. Chances are I'll never look at them anyways. The mountains will just grow bigger and bigger as time goes on and every so often there'll come another avalanche just so that I don't forget that they're there. I look out at the snow. It's still falling, and still falling sideways. I open my window to stick my head out and maybe see where it's all going.

Papers fly everywhere, borne aloft by a frigid wind. Snow and bitter cold assail me. Before I close my eyes against the stinging and the window against the whole of winter, I see the snowflakes spinning in wide circles. I realize that they were just flying around and around outside my window the entire time. They never left that small space right outside, and I don't expect them to until the wind dies down and they melt upon my sill.

Later, as I'm sitting around a crowded table full of friends, I remember the feeling of snowflakes gently touching my face amidst the gusting winter wind and shiver.

The Sun Sets Over the Morning

The sun sets over the morning rush.
Betrayed by where we were once welcome,
We are all alike, in this way flushed.

Painting storms with a decaying brush
Obscuring strokes with a hasty thumb,
The sun sets over the morning rush.

The dam once broken will always gush
Till, nearly drowned, we at last grow dumb
We are all alike, in this way flushed.

Night becomes day, cries the singing thrush,
Our own ringing songs have left us numb;
The sun sets over the morning rush.

Our silent harvest grows ever lush
As we wonder what it may become,
We are all alike, in this way flushed.

The most simple word will find me crushed
As I wait in fear for what may come
The sun sets over the morning rush.
We are all alike, in this way flushed.

What Dreams May Come

The infinite extends before me,
Ancient yet timeless, old like the stars -
Like the shapes within flickering flames,
And the perfumed scent after it rains -
The inscrutable rhythms of all
the pristine verses, my night time dreams,
Tantalizingly intangible.
These essences of words unwritten,
More real unsaid for all the base tongues
For so much is lost in blust'ring lungs.

Before the canvas of time and space,
Like the life of impermanent Man
Held fast against the countless eons,
These brief poems flicker and are gone,
Each one like a candle burning bright
Only to trail smoke into the night.
Brief player, listen to these shadows,
Listen closely to what dreams may come
For they are dreamt for you,
And you alone.

Narcissus

We are all all the dimensions in and of ourselves
Perceptions removed by degrees and parallel;
Despite what we say we'll never feel what others feel
Or dream those dreams that, to them, seem real
We draw on our past experiences as we're building ships
To visit others on their isolated islets
But on this tract of land that they alone call home
We can visit but it will never be our own

As we whisper lies and hollow nothings
All things strive – I'm here striving for something

We're all like ethnocentric anthropologists
The tortured, outmoded, Freudian psychologist,
How else but through introspection can we view the world
We impose ourselves on others so what do we really know?
Those of us who are drawn to similar things for similar reasons
Are only on the same tide in the same season
But we have our own rides and god forbid if they collide
We can but barely steer ourselves if we're trying not to die

And I try to avoid whispered lies and hollow nothings
We all strive – I'm striving to be something

More than the pretenders who visit foreign shores
Good intentions or not, you can't foster understanding with force
But we all want to see these invaders every so often
It's them or feel like we've finally been forgotten
So we try to make these structures, made in our own image
Less hostile to others and they'll do the same
Asking ourselves is it better to lie, to ourselves and to other people
Or is the truth alone enough to define what is real.

The whispered lies and hollow nothings
At least, I guess, at least they're something.