I am not a poet of the mind

I am not a poet of the mind

To pulverize and peel away

The masks and classify and calcify

And cry hollow words into the infinite abyss

I prefer to feel and intuit and look closely

Then turn away to understand

To speak

Once the things I've sought

Have gone the way of dust and sand

When I was a young man I sought love and found ecstasy

As I grew older I sought love and found work

Now I run away from love and it finds me

I am not a poet of the mind

Love is war

A war I cannot win

Love will kill me in the end

Please treat my bones kindly when you find them

Step lightly around my grave and pray for me

Whosoever has said this war can be won

Has lied

Sisyphus has rolled the stone upwards

And there is no end in sight for him

His task and mine are the same

The difference is

I have learned to kiss the stone as it rolls over me

A smile of pleasure might cross my face

Before the tears trace lachrymal lines

And I rise to climb the path again

I am not a poet of the mind

I wish to speak of parallax and

Comet tails and solar flares and

Cosmic trails and multiverses and

Birth of stars and system disks congealing into

Planetary spheres and all my fears

Reach a fever pitch and I shake from

Hand and neck and breast

To feel alone is worse than to be alone

We are all alone here

From the start

Don’t imagine it can change

It will not

Life’s condition is to be

Always in a lesser state of being

Wishing for a finer state

To taste, to be lost,

And once again to wake

I rage against the dying of the day

Said the poet of the mind

The day is dead

Her words are empty

My heart devoid of love or care

I am the unmarked obelisk

The smooth stone

My prayer is the cosmos turning

Like the monk’s wheel

Or the pilgrims flag

My Self is a memory

A sadness with no bottom

A mummified happiness

A crucified emptiness

The oceans lap against the shore

Night falls and breathes its first and last

I turn to run away from

This prison that has killed me

It is not love or beauty

But necessity

Necessity is the death

Of what is real

I am not a poet of the mind

I grow in spaces weeds were meant to grow

I need no fertile hand to shape me

I seek no dream to wake from

I sing my words to plain blue skies

And weep while heaven holds back its rain

There is a pungent fragrance to this dry garden

Snails, and caterpillars trace and writhe through me

I dream of sweet cataracts

I dream of crushing volumes of rushing rapids

Thundering towards me

Washing me free of my mind

Purifying my loneliness

Erasing my memory

Be gone ignorance

Be gone intolerance

Be gone injustice

Be gone violence

Be gone

I am not a poet of the mind

Bezelhearts

Hearts shake like hands when they meet
Reaching through to grasp
The river of life that pours through
Remnants of Adam's dreams
Flowing from life's beginning
To its end
Love's tumbling cataracts
A routine expedition
Imam Ghazali is there with Chaka
Playing frisbee with the bezels of wisdom
While Attar's Simurgh
Baked in a pie
Poops on the Greeks
Polishing their amphitheater
I hear them beating him
In the paddy wagon
somewhere in Arizona
Shaykh Abar left his old life that day
Cleaned up MLK
With a fistful of turquoise rings
A hickory staff
And the Pole of our age
Not soon after I'm approached
in a repurposed school building in North Elizabeth
By a man who thinks he knows I'm a Sufi
Now I'm out of shape with a paunch
That feels like memory foam
And a heart that has a cheek you kiss at night
Before you sleep
The du'a of protection
"Audhu bi kalimati..."
I seek refuge in the words...
I didn't know
Driving a Camry station wagon
When we all got arrested
All except me
And Willem did yoga
And head stands in the police station
On our way to Chicago
In the rain
While I spoke incessantly of deli cold cuts
waiting for us back in New Jersey
Nole changed my name
To Mario in his poem
My heart then and now
Knew now back then and
Later on that we would meet,
Would meet across the fold of space and time we know as poems
While the bezels fly across the rooftops of our loneliness
How peaceful it is
To be alone and alive, and loved
At last
In the privacy of my very own
home

Child, upon waking at night

Child, you're what's best from your mother and I
Mind of the Earth and heart of the Sky
Dream of the Dreamer and Song of the Golden
Pale of the snow drift, dance of the cold wind

The rush of the wolf pack
A whispering stream
The silence of pine groves
A tangle of mangroves

Gentle and old as the harvest moon
Cruel as the osprey
Proud as the loon
You are midnight's lagoon
                 dressed in mirroring stars

Yes you are, my sweet child
Yes you are

Fall. Wind blows leaves, leaves minds blown.

10-1-11

I am an old sailor now
unencumbered
by the land or sea
I prefer
to dream
For this poverty
of life
Has filled me with hopes
for death
it seems a much gentler destination
for one such as I
accustomed to nature's rages
followed by emptiness
and waste
fertile abundance and famine
television shows
banner ads
and mailboxes devoid of
handwritten words
landlocked or seaswept
at peace with the heart of dreams
I find what was never lost
and lose myself in what can't be found

7-28-11

Change is the condition that can't be changed.
Sameness, normalcy, routine, habit
are illusions we buy into at the
expense of our lives.
Imagine yourself at the center
of an ever blossoming flower
Imagine this present moment is the
sun towards which you turn.
Now abandon these imaginings
what is left is the self
dark, lonely, afraid
the empty shell of the real life
you carry in your breath.
Now breathe

5-11-11

Prime numbers populate the date
Skeletons file out of the closet
where fleshed out by nostalgia they
fill up my daydreams with sighs
and pungent sweat of yesterday.
I dream, I live, I wish, I weave
in and out through traffic lanes
careening towards my Maker with
uncanny precision.  All roads lead
there and here, right now, my
face is still while my ego
kicks and screams flailing against
Death's cold grasp consuming me
cell by cell.  Incredulous, culpable,
sanctimonious, combustible.  I would
call this feeling "punk rock".   Smash
it all to smithereens, cremate it,
pulverize it.  Rise like bread or
birds and dream again.  Without
nostalgia is better.  Now is preferable
to what once was.

2/8/13

Ticking clocks click at each other

Unfriendly at best

At worst

They want me out of this room

And in bed

With the rest of the team

Tsk tsk

Tik tsk tik

Nag nag nag

So devoid of mechanical beauty

Unlike real time

This sound is like sharpening a pencil

With an dull pair of Singer scissors

I want a blanket made of monarch wings

To be wrapped in autumn

To forget this winter sitting on my face

Like a skull

I want tree sap

And summer grass

Or hot cement

And a wet ass

Straight out of the pool

Death to mismatched clocks!

No pleasure comes from imagining your deaths

With mini cocktail swords made in ancient Japan

Was there truth in the love I felt at 16?

This love is different

That was a love of flowers before they fall

This is a love of trees before they grow

But as long as I linger in their shadows

All I feel is the ache of dying

From never having lived

Where do we go when we forget to be who we are?

When will we get the chance to remember

And feel the pleasure in remembering?

When will the birds and bees leave me alone?

Damn you nostalgia filled clickity clocks!

I hate your stupid futility!

After Yemenese Pumpkin Guts

Hurtling at a breakneck clip

Towards extinction

Mankind’s Goodship

20 petaflop processing

Titan, coolly calculated

Unnamable gluons

This 29^th of October

2012,

Monday the Singularity was born

Then died

Glimmering its final blip

Glup glup glup

Into the great unspoken silence

Drop

ping

Fizz rises to the top of

Stillness

A dark shadow rises over us looming

Like mute juggernaut lumberjacks

Dressed in sirens

Or blue whales or

A moth

That’s lost its way

Somewhere between Iceland

And Antarctica

Not obscurantist

Darker

A burlesque sky

A black limp

A seamless light

A whispering bench makes

Sibilant clicks

No one alive

To hold their breath

(exhale)

Waken

To the knife in your back

)inhale(

Fog on the mirror means

Give thanks