The Chair Electric

Stirring whirring thirteen burning
spinning winged, winking - blinking,
Eyes on four Ophanim, wheels
carrying the throne of God.

Faithfully, their silent protest
Trailing shadows in the heavens
Justice-bearing burdens bearing
Down on every crumpling eye

The Almighty, looking outward
From an ivory-colored tower
Unto chaos and His creation
Sinking deeper into his throne

Every seeded soul now bearing
Fruits on tangled arms grown
Heavy, holding like the branches
of the Kraken clinging, choking,

"Its massive roots are crushing him"
The Ophanim cry, "He's crushing us"
And they buckle.  And the throne tilts.
And he falls face flat on the clouds.

Good Karma Sutra

Today I found this wallet full of
condoms — rubber coins, and maybe
paper blotters of lsd.

There was no plastic, no
spastic, embarrassing ID
of the loser but man,

I wanted to know who he was.
I wanted to be able to return his wallet,
Ask him “What gives?”  And also,

“Sorry bout your acid.”
I would feel honest.
But I know if it were money,

I would return it with a lie,
saying “I found your wallet.
No, it was empty when I found it.”

And if he asks me about the condoms,
I would carry them all in my pocket,
And throw them at him and run.

1—————2———-3——4—56

If time moves faster
as we get older
do we count to ten
in our heads slower?

That explains the “here a day”
Gone the next
Feeling, the way each day
drags on
But at night not even a memory —
And what is night but a memory’s
remains

I want to live long enough to watch a day
go by in the blink of an eye,
For it to go from morning to darkness to morning again
Without all the waiting in between.

[It's not enough to live on borrowed words]

Did you mean “this could go on forever” in a good way?
It doesn’t sound that way to me, anymore.

On average from now until infinity or when it goes bad,
We’ve never lived as we were meant to.

I still believe in honesty and dramamine courage
helps me vomit out demeaning apologies.

If we’d had the means death would come with dignity,
But they charge a mean fee for dying in a clean place like

A hospital bed melting into morphine, too late for bromine,
Every shuddering breath meaning nothing in the end.

Go gentle into that good night, I mean,
I’m sure we meant well, we always mean well but I think

I love you.  I think I know what the word love means
but I’m mean, and I’m selfish, and I can’t help but watch you leave.

I found myself no longer afraid to die
I found myself no longer

I found myself afraid of sleep long after
I stopped being afraid to lie in the dark,
And whimpered more, I found

I found the electricity inside me lifting
every jerking step my foot swinging too far
I found the careless sound of my voice manic
and founded the careless confessional
Catharsis, like cumming I found myself spent.

I found patterns.  I found the paradigm
pared and I’m breathless when I see it:
I don’t want to be awake anymore.

Hindsight

Stepped out stepped down steps and
I just felt like falling forward
moving faster downhill footsteps loudly
sounding – I could turn down Greenfield

but I just kept on walking onto
Murray with the smaller hill and
One house smaller than it used to be
     (White and yellow honeysuckles grew in the green bushes
      outside but there were no bushes now
      And inside on the cracked wooden floor used to be a cracked leather armchair
      that my father died in and we threw them both out
      in the black rain where they splintered and drew blood
      staining the pavement outside)
But the other street was clear

Burnt Out

Throaty burbling, heavy from the diaphragm

like every coin in the fountain dropped fast like summer rain.

The water inside is shit-brown and old and listless,

climbing up glass walls,

running a glass maze,

falling down and clinging where they can, but

lines where they were mark the glass

until the water rises again.

Mouthful of earth

exhaled: such a hollow world

to live in – just so much hot air.