Predictive Text Poem #3

Consequently, I have to go
to the store and get some rest
of the day and feel better
soon  and that is why I'm asking
for a friend to talk to you okay
I will be there despite the fact
that I have to go to the store
for you to be okay in the video

Predictive Text Haiku

don't know if you are
interested in the sad
morning. i will be

Predictive Text Poem #2

I will be there in a few minutes and I will be there in a few minutes to talk to you about it when I get home I will send you the link to the video of the guy who was the guy who was the guy who was the guy who was the guy

Grief

We are built for loss, we humans. Memory
is what God gave to people when He was
not in a giving mood. The loss of innocence
was a bite of real fruit. We can't be hungry
without it being a sin. Loss of the womb
is called birth. Loss of imagination is called
grow up, will you? Loss of the ability to fly
at will is called the child accepts what is real;
is called what are you going to do with the rest
of your life, for real? Loss of being a nomad
is called real estate. Loss of people is a fact
of real life, accept it, kid. We get it. Every loss
is real. Every loss is real. Every loss is real.

Teaching Old Men New Kicks

When you are older and disabled
learning martial arts is a delicate
balance
between getting your body
in shape and not destroying it
in the process

the teacher says ideally, this
kick he is showing us should land
upside my opponent's head. I smile
at his optimism. My hips don't.

I try anyways & maybe that
is the whole point. to keep trying,
stay in motion, but don't mistake
the map for the territory (translated:
a picture of something is not
the thing
itself     or; a map is no good if you stare at it
so hard that you walk off a cliff

so, I respect the map of the kick
the instructor asks of me
but do not confuse it with the territory
that is my hips. I try
and keep my balance while
I try
to aim
every punch, every kick
at a map
of my opponent's head
but will settle for the territory
of their kneecap.

Come/Go - a haiku

I always dreamt
"death by orgasm" then thought
"oh... the survivor..."

Mr Half-Measure

I am Half-Enough
I am Rough-Sketched
I am Almost There
I am Think I'll Rest.
I am Never Mind
I am It's Too Much
I am It's Too Hard
I am If and I am And
     and I am Yes, But

I am Once or Twice
I am Three-Quarters There
I am I Tried That Once &
                  It Didn't Work
I am Half-Prepared
I am Stalling Tactic
I am Drag My Feet
I am Piecing Up My Puzzle
I am Missing Piece

I am Undermine
I am Self Sabotage
I am Lack of Clear Memory
        of Just How Bad I Was
I am More Research
       Inevitable Crash
I am Back For More
I am The Aftermath

I am Painful Cry
I am Justify
I am Try This Time, I Swear
I am a Simple Lie
I am the Such Unfortunate
I am the Less Than Average Chance
I am the Exhausted, Beaten Fighter
            Mumbling for One More Dance

I'm the one that never finds or claims a seat.
I am Tomorrow, or the Next Day's Unsurprising Tragedy
I am Mr. Half, because I never measure up.
I am drowning in my cups, but it's never quite enough.

I am Statistically Improbable
I am Wasted Final Chance
I am the Tragic Half-Life
that malediction grants
I am Bitter Gravity
I am Hand That Comes Up Three Times
                                        Before I Drown
I am Numbers counting down.

Predictive Text Poem

(using the initial words, "I died" and then just going with what ever your computer or phone gives you. This one was too good not to make it a poem.)

I died.
I will
be there
a little
late.

Gods Fall by Their Own Devine Plan

The first time I ever felt like God, my child
was looking up at me, eyes wide around
pleading with me "make it different, Dadddy!"
maybe it was a rainy day, or something else,
a toy lost, a fever unbroken. I felt like God
because this is what it feels like to fail

something you created that has faith, believes
you can do anything. I know this isn't true,
even though I created things in my image,
like children. You make mistakes, you try to
unmake the image of Gods that created you,
This is how you know how Gods screw it up

on a regular basis. Parents are not Divine.
We are just another part of a grand design
we had no part of creating- an genetic line
of things angelic, infernal, but too often,
simply mundane. But everything is magic
tricks when your audience is so trusting.

Parenting is smoke-and-mirror special-effect;
a bright face we put on for our kids, that says,
I know what I'm doing and I've got a plan
behind all of this, I hope. We are making it
up as we go along, juggling while we struggle
to read books on perfect juggling, no mistakes;

knowing we are going to drop the ball sometimes,
the way Gods do. We are going to scar our kids,
cause them to reject us & pray, instead to music
of Gods closer to their own age. And if we win,
it is when we get to take off the Godhead, behold
eyes that know us now as human, and love us still.

Letter from The Brain to The Thighs

Remember when we used to walk
six or seven miles, just because
we liked walking? Remember
climbing mountains? You'd shake
from excitement of mounting
and descending mountain after
mountain after mountain range,
and I'd be high from the fresh air.
We lived in a body once, united
in purpose, but something has come
between us, and that was a backbone
gone to ruin. Now we are slow slide
avalanche down, we are collapse,
we are sand castles at high tide,
we are ramshackles, awaiting a match.
I'm saying all this because I believe
you are one of the few body parts
that still work. I don't count myself.
These days we walk, don't run, don't
climb, breathe bad, sweat the terror
of intimacy, call the sun the hideous
daystar it is, swear off hope as cruel
deception, and move slower, every day
almost every part, moving slower.

Pain Scale for Fossils

(after Liv Mammone, after Taylor Carmen Savath)


... and how would you rate your pain today?

1. This is pain where you are in bed. I am
in bed, too. While you call this a "sick day"
I call it Good Morning...

2. Good morning. It is going to rain.

3. Good Morning. It's going to rain fire.

4. Pain is a forecast. Pain births itself
like a mythology. These arms of mine
are Egyptian Wings, legs like Roman
columns. I know my body is a temple;
my doctor speaks only in dead languages.

5. This is an unsure place, the knife's edge
of my body, the tipping point between, "Is this
as bad as the pain will get? Am I going back
to bed, or spend the day, walking in the rain?"

6. It is raining. It is always raining, or going
to rain, or threatening. My plans are rice paper.

7. Fifteen years ago, the pain that kept me in bed
for eighteen hours a day, is what I now call "ow."
Someday I will call "7" a favorite lost world.
The pain settles in layers, like fossils, like epochs.

8. Good morning. It is raining Tyrannosaurs.

9. Rain as soothsayer, rain as oracle, as doom,
as pestilence, and always, and entropy, and cause
of death attributed to... no more words fit here.

10. End game. Extinction event. Rain forever.

Surrender

It was a mundane enough place for a miracle
to occur. Doctor's office maybe, but maybe
it wasn't there at all. It could even have been
talking to my therapist. What I mean to say
is that it was a Wednesday, nothing special

about it, just the end of a long, useless battle
with myself. Addiction was still killing me
awake every morning & I couldn't remember
what consent even was, but it must be a lot
like self-respect:  a mythical, hypothetical

thing I had traded long ago for a few hours
of feeling like someone else. Anyone normal.
My addiction and I were a winning team, if
by winning, you mean, on the couch, unable
to move, or uninterested. "This is a victory,"

it purred, a silken tongue, a certain poison,
as I stuffed my face into a horn, to muffle
the noise of living. But that horn was my life,
trying to wake me up. Addiction convinced
me life was my enemy. Told me to go relax,

have a drink, play Russian Roulette, blinded
to what this war did to everyone & everything
unlucky enough to be around me. Red flags
sprouted like grave markers & I'd be dead now
if I hadn't fucked that up too, more than once.

In 2013 I would go to bed, plain begging God
for death every night. That's why I woke up
so angry every God damned morning. So hard,
at the time, to have seen victory in not dying.
When finally surrendered it was a quiet thing:

"I think I have a problem, and I don't know
what to do about it, but God, I'm ready to try."
I didn't surrender to anyone, I just gave up
trying to die, and asked for help. I was tired
of taking myself hostage & demanding ransom

from the past. I dared to be selfish because
I had to try & do something good for myself.
I took a lot of things freely: suggestions, advice,
faith; things I never had before I let them in.
Now the sun shines, or it rains; things go on

as they had when I wasn't trying to die fast.
I've turned down the noise inside my head,
most days. I was given my life back. I keep it
in one place only" today. I sleep well, or not;
but I no longer pray to die before I wake.

The 13th Amendment Trick

They say the best trick the Devil ever pulled
is convincing people he doesn't exist. But no,
that isn't true. And it wasn't the Devil that did
it. It was Man. A magic man saying, "Now you see
European... and now you see White!" or "This was

something undiscovered, this place, the people.
Now watch as he pulls Christianity out of a hat! And
cheap resources as if from thin air, and not
people's bodies. Please, trust him with your body...
now, watch him red cloth, watch him hard hammer,

look what he has done to you, body and country.
changed you from Human to only three-fifths;
changed you from your home to somewhere
in Hell; changed you from Free to Owned, a thing,
property. And when America said, "Show's over!"

back in 1865, he said, 'Just watch!' and took ahold
of Freedom and abra cadaver... turned it into Prison
Labor!" And the Gods of Industry, black-hearted White
Men said, "This is Good!" and Presto! pennies fell
from Heaven, splashing on a stage already blooded.

April Snow, a haiku

Whenever it snows
in April, I have to smile
a little at life

Anniversary

To miss a thing
that you don't want
back, create a target
then refuse yourself
any means of reaching
it. You stare at it,
target stares back.
A moment hangs
in the still air. Maybe
it's raining, this wet
thing your face becomes.
Nothing happens, nothing
changes; nothing is done
or over. Everything hangs
like a moment in between
non-thought and inaction.
Still- there is you, the target,
the rain, if that's what it is;
a battle that hasn't been
fought again & yet lost again
if that's what it really was.