Great strokes of laughter echo and bend.
the head will look at dollars and see bodies.
the head looks at itself and sees no dollars,
and it knows that dollars aren’t it at all.
nothing is worth itself, itself worth nothing.
these heads have seen themselves cut up and used up and scattered in the grass.
they’ve seen themselves grow back tangled and new,
they’ve seen nothing and they’ve seen that.
They know what comes and what will pass.
the broken people in my head have shattered beauty. That
which they starve for doesn’t even know itself. To them,
the beautiful are all born with ease and grace and nothing.
they look at beauty nothing and make of it love. Their ideas
of the tragic broken beautiful are nothing, empty thought.
and light silhouettes beauty against the trees,
and beauty falls down graceless,
its head on the floor.
everything dim and it lays there
all the more beautiful.
but the people in my head recognize non of this.
they implode at suggestions of greatness. Every time
they watch themselves grow back from nothing,
every new self they witness, every birth,
only convinces them further of death.
at every birth
they loose more of themself.
terrified of stable images they recognize nothing,
in awe of horrific love they fail even to cry.
silhouetted against eternal potential and possibility,
the glorified children in my head falter instead,
and walk themselves awake into another end.
they denounce every moment of every past life.
terrified of wasted time, they decide instead to deny all
motion and to sleep inside themselves.
and in the finite escape, the false escape that belongs to no one,
the sleeping waking medication escape, the children in my
head sit down contentedly and speak to themselves.
they whisper, “I am back on the bottom again,
I am back to nothing. I have unbloomed, I have made of myself
the ground and the floor.
I no longer have mercy for beauty,
I am pacified.
I have returned to nowhere. I sit now on falsities,
I feel now a false veneer. Nothing is abrasive.”
and afterwards they fall far down and come to their minds again.
when they drop hard they don’t even know what the real image of anything is,
they look back upon their lives confused.
every single past moment is fractured into states of mind and levels of clarity.
in the past they will find nothing and throw it all against a wall.
to them the only self anymore is the body
and the long-seeming general sense of a person.
a person of which they know little, know nothing.
a great horizon of blending mixed half-remembrances at their back,
faces and partial memories, a childhood that
plays itself out without color.
and in this series of broken mirrors,
I ask myself,
which one is me?
I read from my sense of myself,
and fail to see how
I can point to a thing and believe.
I recognize not the
words and gestures
that are said to be mine.
looking at love I realize I am looking at the sun,
I look at my hands and try to smile and try to weep,
and then I remember slowly in shades of black
that I am not allowed to look at the sun.
that I will go blind.
in my dreams, I sit in rooms
and tell myself to remember my dreams.
I don’t know what the real image of anything is.
I let myself rise again to the bottom of my mind,
I lay down amongst the children in my head,
and I unbloom. I am pacified and motionless.
nothing is abrasive while the children, the children
cover me and assure me that I am in my mind.
the children assure me that all the images are real.
and as the children return me to the untrue I feel myself heavy,
I feel surrounded by air and by a false veneer.
I feel myself sink to heaven, and disassociated I
see mirrors everywhere. Everything projected is fast,
everything projected is weak. The children convince me that I do
not know my face, they make of my hands frail nothing.
they push my head into the air.
and they tell me how to listen to nothing and make of it sound,
they make of my mind and unfixed thing. They shake the windowpanes,
and I seem frail as they twitch.
so, feeling honest and incoherent, I sleep.
I awake and don’t know the real image of anything.
and then, in great strokes of laughter, I see myself.
I see beauty and it makes of itself pieces.
when I see love it is silhouetted against the sun.
and imagining themselves whole, the people in my head
deny great possibility.
the broken pieces in my head have no idea of themselves,
they look at beauty and see it cracked.
when I open my eyes I make of myself nothing.
so I close them and try to make of myself something,
but all I feel are angular hollow peaks and ridges. I feel cavernous immensities.
I feel resonating waves, I feel noise, I feel an overbearing uncertainty.
and when I hold my breath to make of myself something, I falter,
I feel that there is no time, I feel small and unable to stand. And I see what I have always
known, they when I lay my head on the ground and feel nothing under me,I resist myself,
and I stand on myself.
but with blended mixed remembrances, faces and great strokes
of bent words and confused desire.
out without color and our from this series,
the half mind will watch.
itself is me-I read myself and fail to see.
their heads won’t even look at my hands, gestures.
looking at my head it looks at itself and sees
no dollars, and the darkness I’m not
intended to see.
darkness shattered broken pieced to death.
nothing has worth, I sit in rooms and
tell myself to remember.
cut up and used up and spread into skin
and I don’t know a real sun.
the images cut with lines, tangled
and new.
and half of me is all for their grand claims of love.
but they find none of their ideas in my head,
They stop and look with my eyes and try to recognize
a person
but they see many,
they see more than numbers,
here, they see that they are a part,
a momentary part,
so I show them.
here, here are all the less loved, here are the finite.
a greatness all undone, the fault of none.
what are these half memories,
what is a childhood filled with bodies.
I recognize or see that today tells me to point
at a thing and believe.
and, in love, I know I am looking at the sun.
and in the sun I see all of us to come.
11.24.2008
a transparent system of children
Surrounded by light and trampled here under
the children in my head
feel like champions of all gods.
screaming with ease and careless abandon as they conclude.
they know not how to admit the façade baseness
of the thoughts in their minds.
and with their fear of things they can predict a time
of slow death nothing, of slow dead paralysis.
small space confused and surrounded. Surrounded by
likewise thoughts, by statements, proclamations of self.
what they have they will never hear of through the screams of their bodies,
their confused and padded heads.
and those childhood strikes and blows made against the self,
by the end they won’t even know their fathers and mothers or their failures.
keeping corpses around as a reminder of the day,
the day which I cannot stand.
smoke drips out the mouths of the dead
while their parents scream.
they say they have kissed their smoked filled mouths, the taste of yellow dreams,
and all the twisted fingers.
they saw hands growing up towards yellow desires, towards
the faded promises of youth.
they saw children left alone to linger.
children left on the floor, left serious.
and parents have seen the lines, the ground that spreads.
the children, the drugs, the ground.
let them give you their dollars while they kill young heads.
parents are free with no mind
they’re free with all the minds on record.
and they say we must break repeatedly, desperate for sickness.
they say they are here, but they are free and worn thin.
disassociating with arms and legs and hands
now it is closing in.
and the splinters,
what can be embraced of pieces.
a splinter has no body and no place.
and she likes all this, this of a thousand pieces.
it’s a sick as who knows.
and he who makes himself unmb to the complacency that creeps
up the body, he feels like nothing.
he has no body has no place, here he is.
here they are.
by angles their feet grown down into the earth.
they remember what they do own,
what they saw on television.
they carry around their own selves.
and the smoke makes lines in their heads,
thin yellow lines.
and these broken lines, these lines drawn between children,
between the dead, these lines grow to nothing.
and our father will make solid the ground,
as they recite they create.
they say, move the culture against the children, against our terrible pride.
against that childhood state on the verge of god.
provide every youth with footing,
give them years in a field to make in them a thirst for parents.
fathers predict all crowded and pooled and wise,
they foresee a great transparent system of children.
children on the floor, cut up line by line.
they foresee minds that will destroy themselves in
fits of repetition and fits of sickness.
children writing on the floor,
full of their father’s potential and excess.
that from which the children come makes in them a void.
but the children are all swimming in too small space.
I see hands and teeth, ease and careless abandon.
the children all sing,
“to medicate everything, I’m beginning to throw myself
onto walls. The takers gain nothing in the end when we
reach our climax. Our cyclical climax. Relations now
angular and rooted, floating in me. Floating to that from
which I have come. I feel like I am the loss. That which
I remember, I own. This opposition of conflict leaves
me in a state tired & disoriented, with a walking
sleeping stuck on nothing-stuck on the ground sort of
mind. The ground is burning. My childhood is burning.
I feel great proclamations of worth all swept into nothing.
from my own mind, my childhood is burning away.”
I foresee a great transparent system of children
that will make of itself progress.
that will one day see itself
in all its transparency.
they will see, though dimly, their machinations.
they will watch their hands as they tear apart
what they see in themselves, what is seen.
they will run and grasp at their great transparent system.
I foresee a great unraveling, I foresee exposed walls,
I foresee no children.
A childhood burning, all descending into a sudden
screaming and daunting conclusion,
all of use to come with our numbness
surrounded by process.
so we walk pulling behind our past moments.
and the children say, they believe,
“I will grab and kill my own
corpse, and hers and theirs.
and we,
we begin to see-”
the children in my head
feel like champions of all gods.
screaming with ease and careless abandon as they conclude.
they know not how to admit the façade baseness
of the thoughts in their minds.
and with their fear of things they can predict a time
of slow death nothing, of slow dead paralysis.
small space confused and surrounded. Surrounded by
likewise thoughts, by statements, proclamations of self.
what they have they will never hear of through the screams of their bodies,
their confused and padded heads.
and those childhood strikes and blows made against the self,
by the end they won’t even know their fathers and mothers or their failures.
keeping corpses around as a reminder of the day,
the day which I cannot stand.
smoke drips out the mouths of the dead
while their parents scream.
they say they have kissed their smoked filled mouths, the taste of yellow dreams,
and all the twisted fingers.
they saw hands growing up towards yellow desires, towards
the faded promises of youth.
they saw children left alone to linger.
children left on the floor, left serious.
and parents have seen the lines, the ground that spreads.
the children, the drugs, the ground.
let them give you their dollars while they kill young heads.
parents are free with no mind
they’re free with all the minds on record.
and they say we must break repeatedly, desperate for sickness.
they say they are here, but they are free and worn thin.
disassociating with arms and legs and hands
now it is closing in.
and the splinters,
what can be embraced of pieces.
a splinter has no body and no place.
and she likes all this, this of a thousand pieces.
it’s a sick as who knows.
and he who makes himself unmb to the complacency that creeps
up the body, he feels like nothing.
he has no body has no place, here he is.
here they are.
by angles their feet grown down into the earth.
they remember what they do own,
what they saw on television.
they carry around their own selves.
and the smoke makes lines in their heads,
thin yellow lines.
and these broken lines, these lines drawn between children,
between the dead, these lines grow to nothing.
and our father will make solid the ground,
as they recite they create.
they say, move the culture against the children, against our terrible pride.
against that childhood state on the verge of god.
provide every youth with footing,
give them years in a field to make in them a thirst for parents.
fathers predict all crowded and pooled and wise,
they foresee a great transparent system of children.
children on the floor, cut up line by line.
they foresee minds that will destroy themselves in
fits of repetition and fits of sickness.
children writing on the floor,
full of their father’s potential and excess.
that from which the children come makes in them a void.
but the children are all swimming in too small space.
I see hands and teeth, ease and careless abandon.
the children all sing,
“to medicate everything, I’m beginning to throw myself
onto walls. The takers gain nothing in the end when we
reach our climax. Our cyclical climax. Relations now
angular and rooted, floating in me. Floating to that from
which I have come. I feel like I am the loss. That which
I remember, I own. This opposition of conflict leaves
me in a state tired & disoriented, with a walking
sleeping stuck on nothing-stuck on the ground sort of
mind. The ground is burning. My childhood is burning.
I feel great proclamations of worth all swept into nothing.
from my own mind, my childhood is burning away.”
I foresee a great transparent system of children
that will make of itself progress.
that will one day see itself
in all its transparency.
they will see, though dimly, their machinations.
they will watch their hands as they tear apart
what they see in themselves, what is seen.
they will run and grasp at their great transparent system.
I foresee a great unraveling, I foresee exposed walls,
I foresee no children.
A childhood burning, all descending into a sudden
screaming and daunting conclusion,
all of use to come with our numbness
surrounded by process.
so we walk pulling behind our past moments.
and the children say, they believe,
“I will grab and kill my own
corpse, and hers and theirs.
and we,
we begin to see-”
elegy
I will melt on the people, the people people all the people
with holy dripping stillness that slides right
side up
I will melt on the sort that go and see,
I will melt on the wall paper people,
definitions stuffed down throats into hearts
I will live in the folds of horizons, and all things non-
withstanding I shall find ways to move and spill
and form the people
their who’s who formations,
the long dead order
the broken canvas people the dead window people the
news people the no more people
constantly becoming becoming into dust
I will melt on the no more people under suns that grow and
spread
and what are hands up against them,
the sun people, the sun.
sun children watching themselves in shadows on the shore
at dusk
the sun children will melt on me
the sun children will melt on me at dusk beaches of their
own choosing
dusk runs into sand into water into me.
the sun is up.
with holy dripping stillness that slides right
side up
I will melt on the sort that go and see,
I will melt on the wall paper people,
definitions stuffed down throats into hearts
I will live in the folds of horizons, and all things non-
withstanding I shall find ways to move and spill
and form the people
their who’s who formations,
the long dead order
the broken canvas people the dead window people the
news people the no more people
constantly becoming becoming into dust
I will melt on the no more people under suns that grow and
spread
and what are hands up against them,
the sun people, the sun.
sun children watching themselves in shadows on the shore
at dusk
the sun children will melt on me
the sun children will melt on me at dusk beaches of their
own choosing
dusk runs into sand into water into me.
the sun is up.
Maddening kinds of women now,
foreign and decimated, closed-nothing.
and what of me do they allow?
with our medication, nature begins to undo sunlight.
with our medication we can still get paid.
of course my currency isn’t the modern self.
the modern psyche-made.
and what of me is but a building?
original and nothing to sing,
maddening kinds of people now.
nothing to mind or disavow,
“blame,blame, we won’t create again,” the people lean.
liberated with lost minds composed of things to kill,
and what of me do they allow?
daunting even still.
but the whole will remain as structures.
broken to do, to say, to cling.
shook and pushed by the society.
with our medications, the society.
people are structures, the society.
medicated structures.
today will be fine, but how?
maddening kinds of constructions now.
the finality of the unfinished.
bulletholes are really just
and thing in the mind. A thing.
maddening men who sit or stand tall avow,
the structures are nothing, an early spring.
and today is another, but how?
the sunlight assumptions, the society.
the way they say, the society.
so these sunlit finalities,
these sunlit finalities are just
constructions.
and our sunlight medications are just
constructions.
mediocrity now,
and what of me do I allow?
foreign and decimated, closed-nothing.
and what of me do they allow?
with our medication, nature begins to undo sunlight.
with our medication we can still get paid.
of course my currency isn’t the modern self.
the modern psyche-made.
and what of me is but a building?
original and nothing to sing,
maddening kinds of people now.
nothing to mind or disavow,
“blame,blame, we won’t create again,” the people lean.
liberated with lost minds composed of things to kill,
and what of me do they allow?
daunting even still.
but the whole will remain as structures.
broken to do, to say, to cling.
shook and pushed by the society.
with our medications, the society.
people are structures, the society.
medicated structures.
today will be fine, but how?
maddening kinds of constructions now.
the finality of the unfinished.
bulletholes are really just
and thing in the mind. A thing.
maddening men who sit or stand tall avow,
the structures are nothing, an early spring.
and today is another, but how?
the sunlight assumptions, the society.
the way they say, the society.
so these sunlit finalities,
these sunlit finalities are just
constructions.
and our sunlight medications are just
constructions.
mediocrity now,
and what of me do I allow?
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