saturday morning

Today without imagination I will
Go downstairs
And find a rake
And mow the lawn
And feel good about it.
I fell into the past
It was interesting
Instead of moving forward
I always moved backwards
And it felt like progress.
My love slept.
Beautiful as usual.
I hoped so much
To be able to take care of her
Because I was so curious
To see what she could be
With real tending
And not all the hardships
Which she has suffered.
My body was totally
Invisible to me.
Clocks ran backwards and forwards
Much work already lay behind me.
If the hopes of the future are
Bonded to the past
Doesn't that give you incredible strength
To realize dreams?


I understand everything you're saying
But what if while all this
Was happening
I was smoking a cigarette?
Wouldn't that be cool?
I think it would just add
Another layer
Of what the fuck is going on
To the whole proceedings.
Oh, oh, and I could be barefoot!
In cutoffs!
And I could have a fro!
People will be like,
Did I imagine this?
And that will make the things
They do imagine
More real.
It's like we're tricking them
But there's no trick!
It's just how things are!
Maybe someday they'll give me treats!
And I will smile!
What a strange community.
Nothing gets my cousin,
He is above all bullshit.
I admire that
Immensely.


The spoken word
Is so similar to verse
In all its tangents and interruptions.
Who wants to finish a thought?
We want to be open to God right?
And that's how we make the next line
And the next.
We keep mumbling,
And these mothers and fathers from the suburbs
Go see the game with their
Sorority daughters
And I cough
One more time without dying.
What're the odds?
The things I wanted to say
Aren't said and they lie in me like seeds
Ready to sprout at the right opportunity.
I carry holy writs in my pocket which
Makes them profane.
I want to be interrupted by periods
And by the ends of thoughts and by the end of
Lines.
Is that too much to ask as a poet?
Exclamation points and question marks just being
periods with hats.
This is understood, right?
We understand this?


The writer who sells who he is so that
he can survive is a prostitute.
Not a holy maker, not an artist, but
a prostitute.
I don't want to prostitute myself because
I don't feel like I have to.
And in this and that case why would I?
Case being a form of a verb or a
particular situation among many I might
hypothetically or in reality find myself in.
Every sentence is a paragraph.
Every thought doesn't deserve to be treasured,
but it is anyway.
Because I'm not evil and I honor
everything that I can.
(not that those two things have to be
connected)
My needs, for the most part are transitory.
Questions I ask myself and then which
I am drawn like a magnet to answer.
"I need candy" is transformed into
"What if I ate candy?"
And I'm so fucking curious that it's almost
the same thing.
I don't understand how I got here, but
I think pot makes you smarter, like
a whirlwind keeping time.


I don't wish to substitute words for doing.
I want thinking to have its own subjects that
are separate from action.
Call me crazy.
Most people have.
So I write in this space of words and it has
nothing to do with what I need to get done.
Such is life, and I appreciate it.
Because I'm always thinking, even when I'm working.
So if I can identify thinking as a process and
honor it, I become better at something I'm doing
all the time.
I think about typing it all up so that I can share
it with my sweetheart, so that she can know all
the things that it seems pointless to try and share when
we're together.
Because that's a different way of thinking and it's really
important to me too.
How much do I make?
Do I tear at the grass with metal teeth and a
handle until it is green as flowering snow?
The earth's hair and fur laid bare and clean to
us all so that there is no confusion between it
and anything else?
I could.
Is that destructive?
Is it kind?


Walnuts fall like bombs.
Or missed baseballs that you simply pick
up and throw again.
It makes me think of epiphanies, of Newton
sitting under a walnut tree this time.
Is that story about how we know nothing
without the help of trees?
I wrote like man possessed and the simplest
story is that I was possessed.
By everything that chose to speak through me.
I wonder what kind of love that is, if there's
a word for it in some dead but highly
practical language.
Arbosa.
Arbate.
Argary.
Agorali.
Aorti.
Aortus.
Artus.
And things become clearer and less clear.
New questions beg to be answered.
And my artus for them demands that I take
on that burden of time.
Because everything is fed by the time of souls
in one way or another.
Is that clarity?


Can you read this?
"I already have, I already did, I will," my dreams
reply.
I am stung by inequity when I see it.
It makes me slow and it makes me suffer.
Are there three things?
Bees, flowers, and that which intrudes?
Which may be stung?
Do bees sting each other?
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
My gut tells me I'm hungry.
My mind tells me there's food inside.
My fears tell me that nothing important
manages to hold together.
It causes pain, that fear.
Are fears by definition lies, or is the world more
complicated than I would wish it to be?
God knows everything, so God knows.
And yet who am I to believe in God?
Myself especially, who am I?
Can any salve justify the pain I have seen and
been a part of?
Can anything justify pain?
Can anything justify God or one if its creatures
living beyond their means?
I don't know.


God is genderless, God is inhuman.
This terrifies the human soul.
But gender is a fact, a thought and an
invention.
It has not always been.
Before gender we were one.
So am I to say that we will never
Split in such a final way again?
Because how do you destroy a thought once
it has been created?
Once it has been recognized?
Or do you just forget and then forget what
it even means to remember?
Memory is like a cloth that we bury
our faces in.
Memory is like an ark that lifts us up above
the seas of collective fears and doubts and
angers.
Noah was an amateur ship builder, and yet
professionals made the Titanic.
Meaning don't we all have the ability to make
perfect memories if we're led to?
Whose to say we don't?
Whose to say which memories are imperfect?
Because some memories are morally wrong
and if we are to be right they shouldn't
be killed, but can they be forgotten?