Starseed Blue

I'm just more aware now

Of how I vibrate 

The fabric is all.

I am no longer responsible 

For the residue in the air 

Of never-sated, ever-craving.

When I leave my pod

I think the whole world 

Leaves with me 

Yet the flowing veil

Who precedes me

Is barely corporeal

Much less the center

Of everyone thinking

"Where is she going?"

Still I evade being seen,

Even by the invisible, 

Even as the crows perch on poles

To better observe.

They refuse to move 

Until I'm comfortable within myself.

It won't be anytime soon.

I'm not used to being walled away

From my interstellar family.

Where I come from

Is like everywhere else;

We share the same mind.

The angels don't have to be 

Drawn on the glass 

On the way to the bells

For we all have permission

To act as a God, with what the unreal

Can't possess, a direct line to source.

We have that here, too, of course,

Though we let the bells clang

Instead of ringing them ourselves

From inside. Every pair matches,

Every pattern ... we share,

Just table stakes for truth or dare.

Here we learn to unwind

The string of a ball until,

At the end of the thread 

A jewel tumbles down.

Maybe, with the right light,

It will finally catch sight.

Why the Disarticulated Dolls are in a Case

I will need an emotional support alligator

After, what? The Nat King Cole Trio held over

At the Million Dollar Theatre. The old downtown

Is dead now, the muses in stone rule empty roosts.

The Japanese elderly still carry canes, presumably

To beat off the ghosts, as thick as mosquitos.

All the business is done by bottle, on the street,

The dry martini drinkers and their maitre d's,

The robed prophets of the streets, like phantoms,

Sleeping, stemming, stumbling, it doesn't matter,

A bunch of radios tuned to the same wavelength,

Vessels for any astrals who want to rest in their hair.

For the dead here went down hard, taken by the silence.

Now they are caught for those compelled to look 

Like flashbulbs in the glare on their glass,

Every room reduced to emptiness.

At a certain density all cities give way to ghosts,

Who most of the time don't even know they've moved on,

For all they've remembered is still here,

Too refined for our view, we foodies on tour

The escape room LA's become. We wander fragile,

Confused, what kind of guerrilla rejuvee is this,

To draw such a desolate pot-luck ticket? 

"It's like you're back in high school," 

One liminal witch snarled, to the smiles 

Of her ecstasy men, the other mistral dervishes,

Who possess that relentless confidence of those

Who are successful in becoming void.

They run at you chest first, flaunting their freedom,

Cheered on by the bygone businessmen who never

Returned from errands, what do you have

To compete with everything that was?

Pink flowers float in a fountain, nature's response

To the suffering. The buildings with mirrors

Might as well be empty too, for all that goes on

Inside is seen, though credits accrue

And cold courtesy calls are made everyday

To those who only listen to voices in their head

Anyway. Could we say we know our mind?

Can we say the experience is real because we are?

Beyond the underpass treehouses, cheerleaders practice

And baseball fathers lean in, and the glow of lamplight 

Drills a hole in my eye to release the pressure. It speaks

Of something larger, something that is not yet here.

Shades of Julie on a Cool Afternoon

Trapped on the hill

By my own devise.

We are Gods beaten down

By the law

Of humility.

The punishment is too sweet,

The lure of the void

Where you're not heard from,

Better than the way you think

You're seen, every flaw magnified.

They just stare at you

On the bottom of the hill,

You've got it all and don't know it,

Terrified by the way they look,

How every shop is closed.

The road goes in circles

Around a hill you are always

Welcome in, but once inside

You are a task in delivery,

Like flowers

Where the recipient

Can't be found

Though everything is logged

And every corner

Holds a camera.

The decisions you make

Contrary to all suggestions

Are somehow important

But only you are to know that,

Even though you never get close to

Knowing what you've done

Or why you do it.

You must decide again.

The road goes round.

The birds seem to move in the sky.

On the carousel here, everyone appears

To have flaws that honk loud red

But it's only because you believe

That you are flawed, for they are

Merely players for your journey.

Not of remembering per se

But of being in the room

Where something happened

A long long time ago

And have yet to recover

Your essential dignity,

The whole of your innocence,

Your ever-nascent purity.

You are plagued by the mistake

Of your present being

As all gleanings are squirrelled away

Especially from your own prying eyes

That ask too many questions

That the universe wants

To avoid:

How are you healing?

Where is the pain?

Why did you leap

Into mad separation

To play with Sophia's Archons?

To learn what a heart is, silly.

The toughness accrued

From knowing you exist despite

What your senses scream, how

Otherness feels from the other side,

All pleas for resolution

Stoppered in intoxicating drops

Filed, not finalized in any way.

For that is what is honored

Throughout the universe.

Before I worked here

I knew this place,

Always sunny, golden grass,

Bouncy tumbleweeds,

Where the rocks stay quiet

And the trees know how to grieve.

There's a fountain here, in a hole

That shows how deep it really goes,

Room enough

For all you cannot bear to hold.

Commuter Lament

A white beam pours from the gray;

There's an opening somewhere,

Sometimes that's enough

To know something is possible 

Even if you don't know what it is.

Our routines confuse us.

Ennui is a cold paralysis.

The work itself unglues -

It's those mistakes 

Other people make!

We lack the strength to be kind,

The gall to be real,

The necessary obliviousness

To what people think of us,

But we show up every day 

Resisting each correction with a smile,

Listening despite what anyone says,

Finding some sort of agreement though 

There remains no meeting of the minds

Despite the coffee pots drained in the attempt.

We call this progress,

The steady descent into mediocrity

Instead of the crazy perfection 

Of seeing we're alone 

In a world that is our own.

But then there's something out of place

-- A Starlink 18-wheeler as if it has always

Been there -- to remind us of the wire

To everything that's sacred, that everything 

Is finally held together.

We just need to talk about it some more,

Figure out the best story to stick to,

And before you know it

We've forgotten why we came out here,

What we wanted to know,

The glow of everything shiny

In the mirrors of others eyes

Makes us feel included.

The universe, that is,

Is finally included.

The Bone Not Taken

The zombie building 

Where Mom and Dad met.

Time. Cheaper to leave it haunted

Than to fill it with mouths.

They mothball architectural marvels

Nowadays anyways, too late

For the Richfield, the only tower

They remember, worthy of the Chrysler 

They say. But I don't know.

I don't believe in that memory.

But as soon as I say that

I see myself in a seersucker suit

And pencil-thin moustache,

My nose bulbous from a bus crash

Where my typewriter smashed it.

The water is better. Tobacco is part of the air.

The women dress like dolls.

Not even an echo now

That I am in a different lifetime,

From a future that erased it

Not by forgetting this time

But by a judgement 

That a memory 

Was illicit.

It wove in and out, the dance

Of the void needle threading

Until it was no more

Than a boy's blueprint,

Structural, so allowed in

But nobody seems to know it is deserted,

Except the dry cleaner, who remembers

When there was business 

Before the homeless, 

Who today would rather hang out their sheet

On the corner of 6th and Grand than live

Inside. They are afraid of what's not real.

Terror on a Quiet, Sunny Day

The green chair is all that is left.

The city in perpetual crisis.

Me in crisis

With everything non-existent 

Except as it occurs to me,

Screaming.

They don't know what it's like 

To not let go, hands

Rigermortis in release.

Everyone I see

Is who I was

But can't recall

Except by seeing them 

As they disappear 

In the middle of it all:

Calm Valet,

Coffee This Way,

Pershing Park is empty

But it is full

Of too many ghosts

To even give names to

In registers of incomplete

Seeing, inarticulate 

Response,

Inability to peer inside

Any veils of who they were,

Hiding through.

The efforts they made, 

The sight unseen,

To be invisible 

Because they wanted

To be noticed

At last, for once

By eyes

That

Couldn't.

Their own, as they go

Before they can tell me anything 

I too much want to know -

What hangs ethereal,

Unrung bells

Not the chime inside my ears,

The purple

In the sidewalk cracks

That lead me where to go

But I resist 

Because I can.

Darkness is always the go-to

When beliefs

Get stretched

Like yo-yo's.

The sun shines

Ignorance 

On all of us as one.

John the Baptist on the other hand

Sued until there was not anyone left

To summon.

Bert's Outfit Shop is closed.

The glow inside

The parking deck's immense.

There are yellers

On every block, and they try to

Hold my attention 

Or make me avoid them.

Or am I imagining 

The insane

Because I have arrived

At my own doorstep,

From the forgotten?

So the reminders, city faces

Dead-man-walking by,

Some holding hands.

Other people.

Why are you not scared?!

Is there a golden thread

To discover yourself

In the thicket of the one?

With company it seems

But not really -

The cord's been cut

By you, entirely.

You want to swim here,

Currents float you further 

From the shore.

"An Unfortunate Series of Events" Eclipse Eve

The sweat breaks

With eclipse heart light

People look at each other again

Instead of merely talking

It's OK to live among the hive,

A speck of Shell stick

Or a giant, luminous, pulsating 

Insect cloud with antennae

As the mermaid by the feather

Holds the pearl, the eternally voiding

Distorted mirror moon at night,

The only real evidence she exists

At least here, to elude sailors,

Meaning men, unable to see her,

For there is nothing to leverage

But what they do, nostalgic downs

Over her breath, her eyelash,

The curl of her smile.

I believe he is Russian,

Bald and impeccably polite --

He likes to cut in lines,

Block his neighboring seat,

Slip through the tiniest seam

To always be the first one on the train

Every day. It gives him joy

To play his solemn, cultural duty,

Choose an air-conditioned, upholstered seat,

A freedom so unlike other prisons,

I observe him every day, like a Mantis being

Ruling the frequency streams, and he,

Like any guy, clams up,

You know the type, can't speak

To release his mouthful

Stoic to the end

As the one service he can

Provide, but there are days

Like today, when a jogger

And an absent man

Lost in his mind

Were struck, killed by this very train

In this eclipse season, beings jumping

Away, things we have to say goodbye to

And for this test we're kept in this seat

To writhe in the stoppage until

We are grateful: for air and transport

And home and life, gratitude

Is the test of endurance, for indeed

That is what we have made it, without a word

Between us, to sit there all Marlon Brando cool,

He and I, who meet eyes for the first time

At the open door, the first words ever shared,

Something dumb and unyielding, voiceless 

On what we together endured even, it wasn't a note

Like every woman would ring, carrying sadness

In all its loudness for the families, and even more

Those that don't have any, but we were able to see 

How much deeper the sunset goes tonight,

Though no smiles and hugs ware shared beyond

The transactional distance we were so proud of

Dancing so respectfully behind, or beyond

Until the moment when everything is one again

Just to remind us, like a cutout on the portal,

All that we have forgotten

Is actually what is real.

The New Residue

Bunker Hill is haunted as Fuck,

The underground levels

Of homelessness

And iridescent blue petroleum pools

Where the molecules move

In shimmers.

They have implied white gloves,

These black boys in dreads and suits

Welcoming me to my prison,

With badges and hall pass and all,

Nothing but smiles

And "good morning, sir."

It's been like that

Since the building was taken over.

The helicopters don't sweep above

As they once did,

No Matrix-mirror skyscraper warp

Fantasies any more

Or even chemset clouds,

Though the water building is still

The fountain that shoots

Its pulse into the machinery

Recycling endlessly — it makes

The strangeness keener:

How problems never really solve,

People never quite connect,

Things are never quite as they

Appear to be and it's for sure

You'll never know why

The wave rolls the way it does,

So clean and so silent

And so washed when you leave,

Ghostdried and deadnamed,

But the world outside is the hill

And just the same, gleaming fantasies

Parading as real, people pretending,

Leverage looking for its place

In relentless flow

Of uncoordinated force

Hitting the grid — so sanguine,

The intrepid architect of it all,

Could be that robin right there

Or the developer of the Bonaventure

Or the bartender of the Standard Hotel

With its child blood halls, ah

But the crows have returned to the trees,

They need no quiet 

Nor an audience

To thread the net 

Across the emptiness of sky

That always was

How you wove it,

The birds you see

The ones you know.

Clean-Up Crew for Yet Another New Year’s Eve

A few last flakes of fear

Exhale like smoke in the glare

— This weapons-grade retrograde

Disconnected the dots

Dust of the fallen world

What would otherwise

Annihilate attention

For what was never real

Must be grieved.

There’s a truth in here somewhere

Beyond the choice of the individual

To receive

The kind of experience

Souls crave

— Something outside, not just

Happening for me.

Ah but there are as many worlds

As stars

And I won’t feel so imprisoned

If I set them free

From mine

That place of terrifying

Mystery,

Where boundaries bleed.

The shuttle almost hit

A car

There was air

Then no more.

The Vertical Work

The silence of home is the stillness of God.

It does not belong here, the adamantine 

Plasma, in soaked papyrus, with the people 

Who get you as incompletely as you do.

And what of Gate 10, the solar womb, 

How does one explain, in the wirecrossing hum,

The terminal teams, the friction interactions, 

Sun blue over a city captive held?

We are all of us needy, none of us needed,

Pulling at time until it breaks in our favor,

Talk of Mexican Donuts and estrogen mares,

Ways to experience stasis as flux, flux as movement.

It's clockwork the sun, or used to be. Lately

The councils have called in from other worlds,

Many people here are not people at all, many systems

Intrinsically flawed and failing exactly for that.

Our eyes now see the purple through the cracks,

Higher dictates pulling reins, unyielding loss of

The fixed, what no longer serves, as they say,

What never really did.

It was always a day trip on bird wings away

From the blood plugged machinery, the route clean

To your heart and your sovereignty, which includes

Me tapping away at ancient ghosts, from Atlantis mist

And the past where I saw what I looked like not at all

Yet the whole world turned on every word, each thought 

I had, every vibration that shivered through.

It was always my world, mine only

Yet I was afraid of skyscrapers and all the other things

That were never really there to begin with. Those wings

Of white that cannot be an optical refraction:

It's still a game, only the ante has been raised.

The Disclosed

Crows and cameras are on top of the lamps.

Three seagulls fly the grey.

Under the red pill moon the news

Takes a horsewoman’s risk of truth

When so many bodies are buried

Like their lives meant more than they did.

No crosses to disclose that they died for truth

Makes what’s obscured felt, more palpable.

Yet there’s a veil,

Timelines preserved in their chambers,

Same coffee in different rooms with different tastes

And no samples allowed outside.

The time to partake of others’ experience

Has collapsed on the wheel of blood

And the vacuum tube of what they waited for you

To see … But you were always free to choose

Your avatar, and to make it what you were.

The whole of the singing turns in crystal distortion

Because the note would be the same

In the endless echo of space, without the reverb

Of times and places landed like GPS,

Kin to the roving bands that marched through

Danbury, one after the other playing

The same tune but dissonant with itself.

No rooms except your own shine in blue.

No oatmeal but your own greets your hands.

You can play the game of being other people

But it ends with you were stolen from, not stealing.

At parties we talk about this,

What we did for other people’s ears,

The horror of seeing ourselves as we are

Too real to understand …

Like the homeless man with the Raiders cap

Walks his dog, revels in the stoppage

To savor the pee, rather than look

Anywhere near the sky.

The Blindness of the One-Mind King

I had to triage everyone

Who had lost their minds today

With divine flow despite

Lithium skies

And the distractions from 

Predictable surprise,

The root beer not only hot

But out of the tap with

Centuries of resentment

Smooth-topped like that,

With any pleasant memory

Of Woolworth's or any

Other place that safely

Doesn't exist anymore

For there are too many doors

And every idea is a weapon 

In some hands

Dangerous if even touched

In the soft peeling crease.

It rumbles, the hunger to understand

Down the addict tracks

Loud to an unknown destination.

Let us build our tents from refuse 

Where the creosote piles

Spread wide with furniture

That once was lumber

The sight of which can't be stood.

The light in the glass is enough.

Day in the Anarectic

An exhaustion in the world, a river of cars
Rolls down now the barely perceptible hills
Exalted into fog but dissolved in indeterminable
Layers of grey each one murkier than the last,

The kind of day where knowing is not worth it
Where even the shadows counsel surrender
And the people shiver in the same miasma
Not able to comprehend their suffering --

Like puppets that jerk on their strings but only
In resistance not some animate spirit that can
Think on its feet, for it has no grip on itself
No idea of the box it has been put inside

No stage direction arrow to when it ends
Only the zen of not remembering if one
Is the show or the applause, in both a foil
But being cool, so valid with that

The temperature spike, the scattering of spices
The fire that could spread anywhere, it is not
Who I am -- albeit blind, deaf and dumb --
These are just moments to endure, not part of

A scenario I signed off on to mock me with things
I said but don't recall, to taunt me with the slow
Withdrawal of what was almost offered
That I thought would cure me of my pain once

Of being on the earth where change comes
Much too slowly, because there's time 
And time there is to endure every drop of it
To squeeze it slowly and drop the mop slap

Like a mike again but the clouds today show how
There will always be more storms to clear.
Best not to waste a good umbrella. 30 years
Are going down the drain now, don't try to fight 

The vortex, watch it go down quietly, unconcerned 
How you never knew what it was and never will
Only that the Void has never changed though
You've long outrun your need to have it close

Oblivion, that thing you can always refuse
Until you fly away in your mind from it all
So far there's too much distance between you
And the illusion -- and you can't.

Riffing with the Arcturian During the Storm

Revenge of the red-haired girls,

Some in clown mascara,

Violaceous rashes,

Intentionally dissonant

But now they are noticed

Now that everything has met 

Its expiration date

And only the new satisfies.

Their lanterns of discernment catch

As our thoughts leap, in loops --

Detail residue keeps the frame by frame

Stuck, repeating --

If you could only cut that moment

In the editing booth,

When you made the executive decision

To disobey your higher self

And everything buckles up,

You become the most chaotic

Of the collective softly veering

To coherence, tagged

As a victim, to perplexing oppressors,

Lapped in endurance to the strange

Instead of base, your home frequency pad,

The still life reigning supreme over what is

A Frenchie after all, in a wool vest

And teenage girls looking for better men.

There's sacred geometry everywhere,

In Union Station and in the personal

Art I had collected,

In last night's dream life,

Banker to the Emperor,

Who had to know as an engineer.

I sit here bearing the force

Of nothing working 

As it used to, on the folks,

The patient collective

Who pop a fuse now

In my empathy field 

And I can choose to feel it

As holy people choosing the mirror

Truth of the quickest path, or as

Are we all watched, 

Made bets on,

Doomed?

It's an invitation to break the loop,

To think again, because you can

You know, lose all trace

Of who you are

And be everyone, 

Spin in any timeline you turn,

How everything you want to learn

Is yours for the asking

As if by magic -- that is you,

Source consciousness

Wearing yet another 

Of your disguises,

Slumming as a Long Island

Celebrity on a plasma run.

They joined you to come here

As these sad commuters

Joined me to forgive, forbear

And write this poem

About sadness,

How it is the ticket,

The price of admission to experience,

To see how everyone works for you,

As you see when you know who you are,

Which is not what you were.

The protuberance has dissolved

And you are not even a thought,

Just the unmistakable sound

Of the weird turning pro.

Versions of Nora Revisited

Such crisp, high-performance

Walking-around knowledge I possess:

There are two Starbucks in Iceland

Frinstance, or that rice 

Was first planted from planes 

In 1932, or that all wars

Are between Rome and the Jews.

My auto assistant has compiled everything 

And is ready to distribute 

The memo with Q&A

In notes that won't waste 

Anybody's time 

Out to the universe, 

Fans and creditors alike

But no one ever sees them.

Everyone has their own feed,

Too self-absorbed to receive.

It's all they can do to survive.

The fact it's been recorded 

Relieves anyone of any obligation 

In fact, to notice.

I am that tree that falls in the forest

That, if it's not seen, does it exist?

Physicists are baffled by such questions 

But the world's existence is objectively 

The one in question, 

With the universe left over,

Still there, in the end. 

And what if the tree never fell?

The note would never be noticed

In the orchestra, 

So unconscious with joy

That's how conscious it is,

Creating non-existence

As a necessary condition of its life.

The red-faced blonde with the beard

Knows this, his weathered face 

Has pondered non-existence frequently,

But he also knows, in order to 

Hold the course,

Best to keep his eyes fixed 

On what the world provides,

The stuff that can be made real.

He's resilient with time, content

To stare the sun 

All the way down the wall.

He only needs to be what he imagines:

Fresh spanging opportunities,

Hundreds of birds crying in the eaves.

The Joys of Retrograde

What is actually at the window has yet to be determined

Though all robed personages already know

What you will do, and love you've made that choice, 

Tho you'd appreciate any guidance, at this point.

Hummingbirds whirr in place at that,

But only because they feel for you, so close 

To the sugar, almost jealous you are only now

Free enough to dance in the darkness.

Some already know the soil they walk is blessed.

God doesn’t need to speak to them, they know the way

And why they should believe their eyes

Not the lies their mothers taught them,

How tunnels end in hell, and every destination

Is a long way off still and almost impassible,

And people are, forget about it, unreachable,

Impossible to trust.

You wait, conversely, for the dispatcher's signal

As safety is now a system-wide issue.

Nothing can move until it stews in the broth

Of what it never understood, at least not enough.

But you feel somehow it's a system that includes you

Though you do not want to know why,

When you hail a ride, it knows where to go

And that you haven’t yet arrived and probably never will.

Temple Blues

Unity only comes through the service entrance
As time's spiral holds only what's made from love.
The rest falls away, still whole
As the king hermit is still
At the top of the tower
Waiting for it to fall.

The seeker must face again the shadow
And surrender another time to the coil of life
In the scholar's studio
Painting heathen grief,
Preparing the best clouds
For buddha dignitaries.

In the mandala there are as many teacher demons
Interstitially as it will hold and still have carpets 

For praying. They blow their vital breath 

Into a snake until the shadow is cast off,
Revealed as a human face
And no longer needed in the play.

That was the breath that brought everyone
From miles away to wave, having become something more
At least for the celebration, while the roads
Are temporarily barricaded 
Zacetecas style, the empanadas
International now after all

Though no one knows that but the afflicted,
On clouds, inside a moment when history yields

To the way they feel now,
What emerged when it ended.
The feeling lingers in the stragglers here,
Still alive in a new day.

Cloud Afternoon

Have you noticed how the pillows

Squish the light out

As you're ready to receive it?

Each ray changes the whole history,

For the world is yours, kid, it only

Breathes when you do.

The luminaries are unlimited 

As are the lifetimes you can choose,

What memories you assume.

The bungalows instead of flying off

Hold their own against the sky 

When it grows too overwhelming.

The slightest nudge

Jars meaning 

From the soundest sleep.

A Vision in the Tunnel

The wind

Only reveals

The immateriality, 

My belief

Up next to our agreement 

What will be,

Will my foot fall

Forever or is there

Some floor

For us to dance together

When the music 

Lights the cathedral,

Beckoning us to move

Not like the tide,

A swarm of our own devising,

When we chase down

What the gangsters of song

Echoed the halls with,

The cool of

What their love 

Took prisoner?

It's all for us

To love, isn't it?

The pain, the things without,

How they call us

From the vortex

Like they're not even thoughts.

What We Do With Our Choices

Funny how you don't miss energy vampires.

You'd think, like a mosquito, they'd taken so

Much from your hide you'd itch for

The way it was, when the drama was the draw.

Instead they toughened you up, so that even

Drama is intolerable, like this is your 1,000th

Broadway show, and the cakewalk ain't boffo

Chateau, for Homie don't play that no more.

And it is to them you owe your bubble,

Which rose from the first act of violence,

The no they forced, against all odds.

Gone is the person you once thought they'd be,

Structured and not self-absorbed completely 

And out for blood. In this place is who they are,

Now seen keenly, eyes that endure their own compassion.

You see how hard it is to stand alone in the world

That suddenly, inexplicably, finally makes you

Feel that you belong in it.

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