sal paradise pt.1

tin cup flowers
and cars slurring by
a broken man touch the earth,
sad bandana wrapt around his hand,
God gives him road.
he takes the sand.
the dirt believes in what his hand reminds
i feel the moon,
and taste the sky.
you're wind in the washboard,
swallows dipped in silver and rum sweep in and out of-
sparrows sparkling and-
kicking stones to the side.
fingering pockets.
i fell off the whole universe   just for a moment.

no apologies

journey of the rag-yarn socks

the front door open.
the dogs not barking,
slapping some wet skinned faces in front of everyone
talking about someone who has just left. wishing i was a broken bottle
or some sort of watercolor portrait of a man,
face-stern and starkly luminous against the white of the page.
i've whole trees of paper waiting to be planted.
there's want of a forest in my yard- well not my yard, maybe someone else's
-the whole world burning down to
action dust; to the girl that screams:
there's no such thing as sinners, there's no such thing as love, there's just people and what people do,
whole forests of paper feel your words.
           sincerely,
                             we're all just crazy.
sweet dharma dewdrops fell off the tongue of the clean-cut kid.
he had soapy teeth and no shame to speak of
and when he spoke to us, his fingers glowed
because.
did you think that words could do more than arms-
and that anything else alone could do more for you than a full bodied embrace.
and
i looked at the rose you had buttoned on your blouse and i tore it off and dashed it upon the ground
because
many men have died here
but not so many, to be known.
this place forgets me
and it forgets all else as soon as it's gone.
tonight is defined by a low and yellow moon
and the mist of a mild night, three days before new years, wishing open the blue-green-yellow billboard
lit up softly like van gogh's wheatfield with crows
but it was cold that night too, and frost was setting onto the long blades of crisply dying vegetation
and flicking the edges of their yellow to orange and brown.
and there is the matter of those ghosts in the parkinglot
unaware of the cars that skid by full of people, all with capacities to know and be known-
sometimes i wish i could tell them that.
that it's okay to reach out with soft red fingers, wet from running water, warm from hot running water rinsed
over our hands to bleed out the chill that leaches into our too-thin fingers on cold nights such as this.
meanwhile-whole forests of bright white paper burning down all around me,
i think that if i ever found you, it would be walking on a road next to blueberry blossoms-and close, dry
thicket branches that crunch swiftly, sometimes- and slowly, others, behind our heels
and hands shaped like mantras gesturing towards us from trees- telling us to go this way, and that,
welcoming us with their imperfect notions of morality and telling us that everything was going to be
alright.
so light a match on the bathroom window,
take one step closer to breathe in the bad-handwriting of the graceless morning. put one foot forward on the floor-
one hand on your temple.
only time will tell
if this is hell.
or just a special hell for me and you
choke me in the white-noise drone
of the shower.
push against the vitalities of my neck-
offer your hands around my faltering voice.
tell me about the pharaoh.
and the legless learners of passion.
tell me that you need to fall forward onto your face just to remind yourself that you're alive.
drum against my chest imperfectly with your
fingertips.
the unskillfully applied paint on your nails already chipping off- (you do this thing with your thumb and
forefinger as a nervous habit and always ruin them.)
break off into rhythmic beat poetry. in the middle of conversation
(-now that's hot.)
wake me up in the middle of the night just to show me that somebody could actually love me.
break my heart everyday like clockwork to show me that probably no one will.
betray me.
and hurt me.
destroy everything i believed in.
build it all back up in the instants i forget everything about me.


the sun come

i trace over my neck with straight-blade razors
-rip away the stubble like peeling off snakeskin shadows.
and snow falls slowly.
dusting my eyes
with the harpsichord sounds of porcelain.

there is no longer bitterness nor sorrow.

i've whole trees of paper waiting to be planted.

entropy.
  if there was nothing it had to become something, something had to become more and all these things had to become more complex, more chaotic, more realized.

net zero game

nothing is created nor destroyed,  energy to mater, only changed between forms, how many forms are there that are being changed between

 good and bad in the world, net zero game

that is the purpose?. get the most out of a net zero game

something v. nothing

at what point does there become so much something that it becomes the nothing and then the nothing, the something. what is the difference between a blank white and a blank black sheet of paper. at which point do the negative and the positive space switch definition in the eyes of the perceiver. does it need to be perceived to be real? and when there is all of one thing, and none of the other, does the other start to grow and become the new something
entropy
it still follows?
is this the birth and rebirth of the universe.

 the behaviors of subatomic particles and the units which compose what we think of as reality, change when observed, what else changes when observed. electrons become particles, electrons become waves. in one place. now another. both never and always here and there.


 i often wonder if i'm crazy
of if everyone else is crazy and i'm among the sane. few and far between.
of if we are all crazy together,
and the craziest thing of all is that we never let each other know just how crazy we are.

that would truly be the most tragic.

for each and every individually to believe so much. feel so much. break apart so much in every instant as to doubt the sanity of their each and every moment.

and never be able to tell you exactly how it feels, or even to hardly try
while all along, i know. and you know. and they know. exactly what they could mean.
 if only they could ever decide to talk about it.

or if words and impressions were enough to know someone by

i wonder if you've sat in the bath tub as a child- while the water was running out all around you
pensive about the whirlpool twisting everything small and fluid around it down the drain.
i wonder if you've wondered what it would feel like to be really small in the water as it got sucked down- not an object, just a view-point.maybe like a disembodied perceiver that can see and touch and feel. and what would it feel like. and be like to be washed down and plunged into swirling sensory overload.

almost like something that would happen on the magic school bus.

what if at every instant we could be everywhere in a way like that. every possible place the magic school bus could go. or explore. or know. we could be. all at once.

but at the same time we would be big too, so we could put it all into perspective  make sense of all things things and live by them. live in a way where we knew how to be right to each other because that was true.

what is we could magic school but into things that were not physical like feelings and love and comfort and personalities

that would be pretty cool.

what if everyone i meet, knew instantly that i was the first born of the many cousins on my dad's side of the family and that my grandma lived downstairs and  my aunts and uncles were always there and i was babied and all the time i was was young, there were babies and children and people who loved them there. and i was always around that and that i have never left that place and that i am young.
and i am very sweet. and very sincere if i can get the chance but i cant; get the chance anymore because its hard. and i'm sorry. i'm so sorry. for my casual insincerity and defenses because all of my stoicism is me so full of feeling but i'm not supposed to show it anymore.  and all the people i can't run up to and hug anymore would know. and that at any given moment- i'd give anything just to make a blanket fort and fill it with stuffed animals. but i'd look pretty foolish. and everyone would probably say i was mentally handicapped. even the ones who used to baby me. and the babies i built them with.

isn't that something.

i had a sand dune
and i had a sky

i had the dirt below me
and the small stones being filtered through the edges of my fingertips as i sifted thought the ground at my side.

raising my arms up-
letting the dust and pebbles fall through into the sphere

there is passion and there is numbness
and there is something inbetween.
something that's alotabit a both-
that's all mixed up and frantic.
its quiet on the outside but unpredictable

there's the meanness in this world
and there's the not

and there the winter time

and an old LP of houses of the holy jammed up at the cardboard corners and worn down to the white  along the spine