You spit to me
The gospel of a civil religion
From the warm threads
Of a comfy armchair
Lounging in a postmodern cafeteria 

Peel the plasticized
Digitation from my flesh
But you can never
Replace the electricity
Between my synapse 

Like lightening, you are
No dense positivity
What is truly infinite
But everything that is
Temporarily constant 

He cries at her skin
Forgetting the contemporary movements
Of antique hip-grinding
I do like it
“When do it
Right thurr… right thurr…”
But I sacrifice ideally,
sexy Stoic stuntin’ 

A smokyness
Which binds us
Around a midnight bonfire
A stadium
Of my own creation 

I have psychologism
Sectored out
All of poetry is violently silent
And what a Masters communicates
Pales in comparison

I interpret evolution
As religious virtue
How can you have
A negative conception
Of anything?
How much sooner
Did the Buddha sit
Beneath a tree
Than did Thoreau, Newton,
Jesus, all the
Subsequent Sophists?

Bleached-face, the arbitrary power
One has, such as the Vatican,
A single Papal declaration,
Paleopatronymic,
Paleo- meaning old, patro- meaning
Father; who decided to
Make Jesus Anglo? Who
Decided to give Jesus the
Roman Citizenship? Can we
All be, in some sense, merely colonized?

It’s a false prophecy
Attempting to be prophetic
Attempting to replicate scripture
It takes an
Element of sophistication
To determine the difference
Between the substance of classicism
In the holistic context
Of all-literature

What sort of map
Could be drawn from the sight
At the top of the Tower of Babyl?

A little girl
In a cornfield
Prays aloud for wings
Imagining herself a bird
Like inventing flight
And flying away
From her parents
To experience a variability
Of “home”
A sentimental dwelling of
Meaning and heart
Deposited without any
Semblance of recognition

“‘God. I ha’ seen God with’s hat on, 
a-walken down Henley Street,’
saith Gilbert”

the family idiot
but what’s peculiar
his how familiar
his wisdom be
his ingenuity

(the quote is from Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess)

(after Terrance Hayes)

One word may separate
what I want to say from
what you end up hearing.
I may never know what
I should have said, may
never know I should have said
something different. Or maybe
you should actually listen,
get that dumbass out
your ear.
I’m a mad scientist, a different
and modern Jeckle and Hyde;
I’m two opposites at once.
(The word I’m not saying here
is “schizophrenia”)
I’m into making
solutions, potions, concoctions
and cocktails; and I really like
slapping paint on canvasses of
canvas and other appropriate surfaces.
But I’m a scientist-artist
obsessed with poetry, so naturally
I try to uproot all the barriers
like the broken concrete sidewalk
next to the avocado tree in the Arboretum.
I want all literature
to be artistic, bring people
to the present depths of post-materialism,
a grenade or Bushmaster of enlightenment,
but I am aware that Poe
banished the didactic from poetry,
I know that music makes the song.
How do we get people to be
better readers? In any case,
there are a hundred other words
I could be saying but am not at the moment.
It could be that a couple days from now
I will happen to reminisce on this meeting
in one of my many contemplative moods
and craft some response that will most likely
end up as a flat palm holding water,
what is missing being the key
that turns something beautiful into
the carnage of voodoo.
And other speech you or I forgot.

Little egoist change
happens over the Internet,
like engaging in civil discourse
with a friend
on a Facebook status.

Words themselves are not
conventionally malleable.
Whether it be a fork
or Neo’s spoon
that he doesn’t know is there
and so your word
is the screwy one. 

All affixing the pragmatic relevance
of conversational exchange
and sometimes I feel like
the world would be
a much better place
if I was a bit meaner.

She is to me
like a pristine white napkin
in a sandstorm.
A hazard that’s classical.
I’ve never preferred
conservatism so
earnestly.
She’s a field laden
with a sheet of fresh snow
and at any moment
a disaster could happen.
Like I am a big
brown bear about to
terrorize the meadow.
That area where her sacredness
knows of no barriers,
conjuring images of hips
undulating. I wonder sometimes
what Cupid sees, whether
he wears a blindfold or not.
What attention does he pay?
The trouble is
I have no fear
of getting close to her.

(Please do not try and dissect this piece for metaphoric or symbolic meaning. My intent was to create subjects that don’t agree with their predicates and thus FINALLY create a nonsense poem. I’ve been trying to think of the syntax which would yield a poem about complete nonsense, and I’ve finally got it down in thinking critically of bigger sentence parts than just words. The title comes from a great but unpublished poem written by my friend Jake Smith. The language you find in this piece is like the language of a riddle, hopefully it stands alone as a concise, coherent piece, but hopefully it’s meaningless.)

The odd man out tells
me, “duck and cover.”
His family flattens pita.
A grey station wagon unfolds
itself before a family of four.
The purple sunset over
the cliffs cups
seven nuns singing
hardcore rap instrumentals.
A silvery dog competes
against conical meanings
barking, “words are my bitch.”
Are you a fan of
this incessant drumming?
A baby slaps its sweater
on the lacquered cedar table.
The indignant couple trudging
through the indifferent snows
of remorse picks your head off.
Tap dancing sounds and colors
cover my tastes like earbuds.
Flames become the bed
my wet dreams are made of.
Quick fingers pluck
the heartstring of a precisely
good mistake, featuring a lonely
burnout scorched from birth.
In the meantime dancers fuck.
Poor curmudgeons lament the curse.