THE TRUTH HURTS

I.  resurrection with nods and misgivings

the season is here, at last
hurrah, hurrah        and the ipa
that sits on the newly cleaned
desk         glimmers     with hope
and possibility, sublimely
surrendering to the moment
muting the melancholy
that threatens to creep into
our lives     amid doubts         amid paranoid perceptions
as the pervasive     fear of tomorrow
threatens to destroy the
promise of a new day.

cliche-         i hear you lurking
in the corners, i see your
ill-defined forms as you seek
to establish yourself but
i     shout out your punchlines
and i hit on your date, whispering
in her ear the things that i
would like to do to her
and we know that it is
of course, all metaphorical
irony,             illusions and allusion
and you haven’t ever had
a heckler quite like me.

more drinks for me and my friends
and perhaps we will channel the
lizard king tonight.

ah, jim, i know
your kind,     sad and desperate
and on fire, flaming brightly, dying
young, singing to the ladies in
reptilian splendor    orator extraordinaire
the drunken cavorting    the mystic rhythms,
the drums of the whole earth
and the beat of the universe
spurring you on in ecstatic brilliance
like kerouac’s mad ones-
exploding across the sky
ahhh beautiful…

you child in the wind.

we were like you once
and yet we still do not sleep.

i could spend days in bookstores

lost among the    new arrivals     fiction & literature     reader’s recommendations

looking for old friends and trying to discover

something new and fit for this time and place.

smelling the coffee

glancing at the ass of the pretty girl who is excited by hemingway

wondering if i could excite her and

wishing i had more $ to spend.

i open books and begin to read

so that i might know if i want to buy the book

and devour it

and put it on my shelf

another trophy

another life lived

another story told.

the past is a story shared by others
not your own private diary, your
exclusive version of events.

you can change who you are
only around those who do not
know you and really
who doesn’t know everyone these days?

the spaces       we inhabit    are there
when we are not, in hearts and minds and
wires and
01100010 01101001 01110100 01110011 00001101 00001010.

pieces of ourselves
existing on planes of unreality
no longer under our control
becoming stories of their own.

spinning myths, creating legends
writing poems of deeds done
under the guise of biography
under the guise of knowing
under the guise of truth.

a couple of days ago, romare and i were throwing back a couple (ok, maybe 8 or 9) of beers and our meandering conversation meandered its way to politics.  this is not uncommon (the beers and the meandering).  we began to discuss politics and the role of politics and we talked about whether or not we should use this forum (tth) as i platform to talk about our views on the whole state of the world and such.  he thought we should.  i was unsure.  but a couple of days have passed now and i’m beginning to think that maybe it would be ok to every now and again talk about the workings of our government or someone else’s government.  so i’m going to very briefly.

let me start out by saying that i lean to the left generally when it comes to speaking about politics in the good ole’ us of a.  that said, i think it is unfortunate that we tend to categorize one another.  no one i know is always a conservative on every issue.  no liberals are always liberals.  at least people who think.  we all fall in diffferent places based on issues.  i might be fiscally conservative but i might also support public schools.  most people are not always one animal or the other.  we are a mixture of beliefs based on our abilities to reason and to measure what we hear and see with what has been taught to us by family, friends, and other outlets of information.  if you think, you are a conglomeration of thought, and most of us don’t know where all of our beliefs come from because we don’t spend a whole lot of time examining the source of these beliefs.  we just believe them to be ours.

these beliefs then shape our outlook on the world.  but belief is not reality.  let me give you an example.  do you remember a time when you were a kid and you thought that your mom or your dad or your grandpa or grandma or whoever was the best cook you knew?  that was probably based on a small view of the world.  how many people had cooked for you?  they might have been the best cook you had ever tasted.  but then you grew up, moved away, maybe travelled, tasted lots of food in different places.  at some point you realized maybe they weren’t the best cook (even if they cooked it up with love).  maybe they always, always overcooked the green beans.

the point of this is to say that most of our belief systems are established when we are young and it takes a long time and a lot of experience to break out of these small worlds.  we do it through experiences.  we measure this based on that.  we encounter one thing that makes us change our views.  that’s how we grow.  something challenges a strongly held belief and makes us reexamine ourselves.  if we do it enough, examine lots of cooking or whatever, we find that the things that we used to hold sacred begin to erode and we establish new likes and dislikes based on the people that we have become.  not on the people that we were.

politics is hard though.  most of us have only known two parties and one system of government.  how do you change your thought process in this environment.  how do we challenge ourselves to become better?  are the republicans the better cooks or are the democrats?  that’s not much of a choice.  so we steadfastly hold to our belief that one or the other is better, even in the face of evidence maybe to the contrary with regards to singular issues. or maybe because of singular issues.  “i’m a republican because they are for the death penalty,” is an acceptable statement.  can you imagine saying “my grandma is the best cook in the world because she makes really good fried chicken?”  in both cases one issue makes them the best-out of all the others.

the problem is that we have so little experience with alternatives.  how many of us have ever lived in a different governmental system with a variety of parties?  how many of us have lived in a monarchy?  how many of us have lived in a totalitarian state with no choice?  how many of us have lived in a socialist economic system with a plurality of parties?  how about a communist economic system with a king?  we just haven’t seen or delved deeply into all the alternatives so we only know what we know based on what we have.  nothing has challenged our beliefs so we keep going with what we have always believed.  our grandma is the best cook.

i’m certainly not arguing for a rebellion nor am i arguing for a complete overhaul of our political and economic systems.  i’m merely trying to point out something that should be painfully obvious.  unless we really go out and seek information, unless we really go out and learn about other countries and other forms of government and other economies, then our parties will always be the best.  we have nothing else to compare them with.  nothing will ever challenge our beliefs if we don’t actively seek out things that do.  we have to be ready to challenge ourselves if we want to learn and grow.  we have to try some other forms of cooking.

that’s it.

i created this blank space
within which we could fight
turning the night over with our words
and lamenting lessons not learned
more than a decade or so ago
under the cover of emotional detachments
and poems written and then
stuck to refrigerators for all to see
we expose ourselves to scrutiny
in order to learn just how human
we are, judgments reserved until
the day we die, who’s epitaph
will read- “at least now
he will shut the fuck up.”

it rained last night here. not just a few random drops either. a hard rain. a gully washer some might call it. happened about 1:30 am. i know this because i was awakened by it. the rain pulled me from a sweet dream about beautiful beach lasses lounging on the sand with their toes in the ocean.
it was a good thing it was a loud rain. it made me jump out of bed, unlock the door, and run to my jeep. my jeep that i had locked about an hour earlier. my jeep with the window down and the sunroof open. my jeep that i was standing beside when i looked up at the sky and made the conscious decision to leave open. my jeep with a half of an inch of water in the cupholder already.
so this morning i stood in the rain in my driveway in my underwear and rolled up the window and closed the sunroof of my car. it was ok. it was one of those funny moments when you become aware of your own folly and i heard mother nature laughing in the tumultuous downpour. i ran back in and toweled off and changed underwear and went back to bed. the lassies by the beach were gone but i still had a smile on my face.

cue bob dylan or the alarm at this point…

Hope is not wishes beating wishes

breaking on the shore so many

rocks eaten by Kronos

nor is it too practiced prayer

benefiting no one.

 

Can you hear the word

moaned imploring a thousand years ago

somewhere in northern Germany?

“Hoffen… ”

 

Hope is the clash of seasons

warring to stabilize this thrashing

twirling ball where all of life

aims for eternity.

 

Hope is the rain

on bright new leaves

and the girl in the red dress

walking.

.

OK, listen up.

I don’t want to have to write this

Same goddamn poem again and again

There are other things to do

Of much greater

Unimportance.

 

I have pushed and pushed

Like a mother giving birth timelessly

To the same ugly breech born baby

Blue from lack of air

Tearing at my flesh

Over

And over.

 

Crept and cried at the door

Of experience

Rarely realizing that both sides

Were the same.

 

Awakened from fantastical dreams

But failed to harvest the crop

Letting weeds grow instead

Go to seed

Milkweed and mullein

The more beautiful to me

For their striving.

  

    If you want to know

    Man’s future

    Ask the crows.

 

As for me,

Society has no hold

Nor will I bow

To a king.

I reserve my allegiance

For those I have supped with

By the fire.

  

I have been out dancing

With the stars

In the far field.

To come back to the messy world

Of anxious inconsolable humanity

Requires a concentration

That evades me.

  

    I play

    Like a child

    With pretty stones.

 

What do you suggest

My fair friend?

I have helped the stranger

Hurt those I loved

Addressed the room

And hidden my face

While alone.

 

Sat at sumptuous tables,

The next night dined

On beans and bone.

Left lovers in the dark

For the solitude of sky,

Played at dice and darts

Against the grim angels themselves.

 

Listened to fools repeat themselves.

Sat at the feet of purported masters,

Smiled at the joke.

Some of us spoke to small folk

On the mountain.

So what would you have me do?

  

    The leaf will always fall

    Until the tree

    Is gone.

  

Please don’t misunderstand.

I hope to live

Until the spirit can’t be summoned

By a sunset or the moon

Or a woman’s round bottom

Or a whiff of skunk on the breeze at dusk.

These are no suicide notes.

 

Selfishly or not of course

Is all perspective,

Just another word for

Distance from the object

Affectioned or reviled.

No two orbits

The same.

 

The air is cold outside tonight

Only a few more days until spring

Wraps green arms around us all.

My father the sun

Accepts again our offerings,

Our faces raised,

Our throats exposed.

  

    Watching her sleep

    My heart and mind

    Made sad love.

 

But stop a moment and listen.

When I pass,

And I will pass,

I hope to walk away quickly with a wave

Over my shoulder

And no long goodbyes.

 

We had years for this

And for that,

Now we have only

What we have always claimed.

This moment.

  

There is to be no culmination

Of thought no

Do-over-wrought

Manifesto

No word-wracked

Xplanatations.

 

We will either see each other later

Or we won’t.

If you say yes, I will

Go along with you

And not even mention

The evidence.

 

    The fly on my sandwich

    Saw god’s face, multiplied,

    Yet like me, lived.

  

So listen.

Close your eyes,

Hold in breath,

Push your soul

Through the top of your head

And feel the silver pour.

  

Even now tears wet my face

But not for losses incurred

Nor my many failings of both

Flesh and spirit.

I have just wasted too much

Damned life with a pen

Or my dick in my hand.

To finally write a two-word poem.

 

    Ineffable.

    Unutterable.