There are the eyes of envy, yes
and countless furtive movements
and one can never see what stays their hands,
yet I can see a traffic cop screaming
at the ipod of a standing pedestrian—
a Marine instructor who has lost all his friends in the war
really has nothing on her.
The sun rises to neon signs
and cleaning crews coming off shift.
There isn't a soul here not working a deal,
or serving a meal, or running the streets with a spreadsheet.
It all seems as natural as breathing, the way
the living stay moving. I come back home to
last pitches in bars, past steel and graffiti curtains.
Life is larger than these larger than life people
who fling like grecian gods the puzzle pieces
like dice rolls from their thrones at The Blind Pig
to corners where the homeless with their cardboard signs
almost are not seen. Too large for what is
they must create a what is not.
The normal have contempt for them, but fools like me can only sigh.
You're never a New Yorker
'til you buy that black umbrella
and maneuver those wind tunnels
as the streets all turn to glass.
The whooshing of the taxis
as the night turns on its beauties
and the must comes up from underneath like jazz.
The courts fill with skateboards, scraping the asphalt like flint
as face-painted urchins running for sausage
blur out the sun rays in chalk.
Merengue's compressed in a transistor radio
from a Jacob Riis window behind a sheer.
The shockingly gorgeous have the sharpest of tongues here
while giants wear braids and giggle to no one in particular.
A yellow tugboat swagging, a trawler's rooster tail,
plastic orange coconuts and palms...
the slurry peaks of river move
with the electro-hypnotic industrial groove
grinding out its juice at the "solar-powered" festival,
and one can see on the other side, through the hulks of factory frames
the sky, the dead, somnolent cranes by Huxley Envelope.
How did I end up in the Bellevue Sobriety Garden?
So many movies: mahjong in the park, orange turbans, blue ukulele.
From Westville East past Avenue D it's chased me
one step ahead of the vortex slip.
"My sister's a wreck and I can't help her, you know."
Art, like crime, 'sbeen removed from the streets.
Pieter Stuyvesant gazes at the tulips. They blush.
It's almost as if I'm in China: the tables pulled out to the streets,
the carriages bicycle-driven, the hanzi in neon green,
the sequined scarves and handbags, the human hair and beads,
glass necklaces and fresh water pearls, toys, fragrance, novelties
in shrinkwrap with strange lettering, Qi Gong and chakara cleansing...
Then a bus with a poster of the Dalai Lama smiling.
I guess I'm not in China anymore.
It's Earth Day in Manhattan,
the most man-made place on Earth -
computer hybrid sprouts are on a tray for the occasion,
100 brands of olive oil on sale.
Late at night mysterious heroes come and lift prodigious weights
black sack by black sack into machines.
Whoever controls the trash controls the city.
The street swarms with Yankees caps!
The standard issue dark, dark blue
and red, green, beige, pink, yellow, too,
corduroy and pinstripe, tennis white and tough black leather,
GI or Mao style, the NY white on white, black on black, red on red.
Like birds of spring they carry news of ghosts remembered.
They go with wings to ride the curls of Hermes' head.
An artist with portfolio and beret
lifts up the stroller with her wide-eyed baby
who's new in town and wants something to say.
Dogs leave the elevator in their sweaters.
A man walks by in jacket, tie and boxers.
100 nuns in blue emerge from corners.
The old man's eyes shine: nothing you can say.
There's a practical value
it turns out, in physics, for
instance, that penny we thought
would split our skulls open if it dropped
from the top of the Empire State Building
doesn't weigh enough really.
I can walk without fear of falling money!
Old man Manhattan
slowly rolls his clothes across the street.
You'd never know his dreams are those of young men.
You'd never guess he was the wizard of the whole experiment
where freedom leads inevitably to oneness.
He watches the sluices open from his roost on some steel nest
forever patient, beyond hoping.
No one is cooperating with the nonexistent plans,
they just stagger on an inch above the ground
and slur like sails into the canyons,
where windblown petals laugh with them
below the emerald moon of the Empire State Building.
The illicit voice of Carmen Bradford settles in
as hungry eyes have found their harlequin.
The Church of the Transfiguration
in the center of town is deserted.
On the sign by the Baptist door
Gautama Buddha is quoted.
The Jesuit corporate President
sighs for the young, how they no longer turn
violent to end violence.
America the pamphlet
is posted in the entrance
of diners gone Arabic,
Korean wallet-makers,
Lithuanian bakeries,
taxis of every language
—translation's left to the birds.
Imagine William Sigler
for the first time hit this place:
the mirrors from the windows,
the fragrant model's gaze.
The tour bus like an open tin,
heads peer down on the sidewalk—
Oh no! They have noticed him!
Somewhere along Crosby Street
the Gods kindly turned away
so that demons could devour
the blood of the young - haunt them
with art, its darkness, martyrs.
Elsewhere all things blend and blur;
here, the unwanted resists.
Squirrels come out of the daffodils
to pose like humans for pictures
at a whistle, yet they unlike us leap
to the grass through the slats in the fence.
We can't even cross the dirty side of Fifth
without feeling the terror longing
how the other half lives.
For R.A.
The richest men in the world deserve our compassion
much more than any bum exposing nullity; the only ones
allowed among them love live through the pain with heroin,
the rest proceed with a mission so strange and solitary,
like the proper hobo, black horsehair layers on the hottest days,
a pacifier hung around his neck, a force field all around him,
pushing his cart with a purpose more than human.
Friday night at work with Yolanta, the cleaning lady,
no Thursday at 3:30 jaunts to LA on East Coast time.
She prays every day to return again to Poland.
She had a house, a washing machine, real books to read.
She had a job, what I do here, but I, she said
would never understand that kind of world,
the normal one, where living life mattered.
The sadness, like the smell here, is unique:
major ninths, a bass concerto,
a cry that one can never be invisible.
It's the urge to complete a thought
that has already dissolved, as the lights
across the way reveal their lives
when they go off.
Money changes hands
but the only currency is words
and even then it doesn't matter
whether they're remembered or even heard;
they create what's real all on their own.
We watch them fly like milkweed floss
away to dance in the babble of honks.
I notice a poignancy:
empty hatracks in the power deli,
and, suddenly, the stores are full of hats.
Black men, as we speak, are wearing them,
and those who only wear black soon will join.
The truth resolves from discord into harmony automatically.
In the future, only bankers will not wear hats.
Around Park's darkened temples
a lightbulb shimmers on stainless steel,
fresh kofta cooks in the street meat wagon
where a socialite with purple eyes tells me
she'll soon kneel mystery-school style at Giza's portals;
you must go to Alexandria, I said, not knowing why.
The vendor who, it turns out, is from there, nods between slices.
The Masonic Lodge in neon blue;
cool is the way every move gets included
in this chess scape vision: it is heaven, real
and hidden in plain view, on this centre isle
of the electric universe. I ask a blessing from the chief
of the Mannahatta wigwam, who laughs like sirens' music,
says "we are all one family. That's a secret."
A final installment of found phrases from Arizona's highways
HOPEY
YIPEEE
RLXDUDE
CHEDDAR
CHEEEKS
BAD HBT
INVERT
TONETGR
ARTWERX
LUKNUP
CHIKEET
OVERNOUT
Sting
played in The Police with
Stewart Copeland
son of
Miles Copeland
CIA agent, who hired
"Messiah" Billy Graham
to create the Islamic puppet
Sheik Abdullah Yusuf Azzam
who recruited and trained
Usama bin Laden
Violet exhaust at morning
Ancients of days, valley of the winds
The road is lined with gold behind you, the goal was always useless
The sun, epicurean, casts a wide aperture
I'm just an innertube filled with light
Journalists trade in clichés under orange blossoms
One zippy-jacket away from the room
A kind of respect that chills to the bone
Mr. Church, the atheist, could tame a snake
An unexamined grieving stakes the heart of what is glossed
The querelous float in swimming pools plastic dragons on their arms
The train though ashen ruins, alive with the sound of birds
The mouth-watering phonetics of the Arizona Opry
Rainbow donuts
The clarity of the already broken
The evening sky cracked panes of frosted glass
Fall's black palm berries
North Philadelphia like stars
rows hung in red lights
streets porous with weed
black city
blue razor steel
the solitude of crowds
purple fountains
red boots
the titans of stone and glass
stoic
detached
the corporation is there to serve...
it's only people
who
when you look at them
look at you
there are no islands
on this island
only boats
in shivering seas
The problem
is not technology or war
capitalism or pollution
the problem
is the human sense of separation
from the world
More specifically
girls are born into
knowing this
but they humor
they nurture
man's leprechaun legs
to immortality
because they love us
that much
enough to endure
the pain we cause them
DEMAND
3 picture deal
for title
"The Satan Trap"
Treatment to follow
WHITE
HOT
PROPERTY
It's all going to be just like this from now on,
But there's a cost,
There's a reason people write their names on a piece of paper
And burn it,
There's a reason they take on the energy of new names
—Sonny Liston-Detroit—
But there is no name.
There's only the sound of a quail calling his honey at dusk.
It was I and not the world
Who pulled away.
I thought they had a meaning
The things that stayed,
That everyone had feathers to array
Before the sun's low and dissolving eye.
Oh no, they are for wings
So we can fly.
There is no death, alas,
There's only life
That begs us to forget
Our endless grief.
Still I long for the oblivion of kings,
To have the life I've lived amassed in crystal
Than stand before this moment, my undoing;
How shocking its perfection, still.
It was just when I asked:
"Why is it that the only place on earth
that's not a prison
gives no sign that it exists?"
That you pointed out the sunset
that's been teasing me for years.
"Don't reduce the flowers,"
you said, "to propagation.
"Only a saboteur
knows their purpose,
and their meaning
has no end."
The sajuaros rose
as if listening.
"They accompany you in joy
or misery, that's your choice,
that's their beauty."
"But they are not" I said,
"the things I seek. I become,
before them, something hollow, invisible."
"You believe
you have no value
just perceiving,
you must display,
so says your ego,
who you are.
"But you are the light.
There is no other.
Just look at what you do."
I put down
the driver's seat
visor.
"Oh, my love, how can I
have faith in that,
in what I am, not what I see,
in what I will become,
instead of what becomes around me?"
"There's no separation,
don't you see?
"When you're not worthy,
how can God be?
"Your need for Him
will never
be relieved."
I slowed and grimaced
before a turning car.
"All I see is
loneliness and war,
and connections dangled
from above like magician miracles.
"Where is there room for me that isn't taken?"
You laughed,
"Will you ever
discern the difference
between jack shit and a hole in the ground?
"You're not the first to think you must be better than the rest
'cos you feel less."
The red light
burned the sky.
"The world goes on
just fine
without me,
why should I
stand in between?"
You looked at me
knowing
what my words
protected,
what my wounds
meant,
how important
it was
to the world
that I speak.
"You hide and hide
and then you cry
that no one sees you."
The only thing
moving
was cars.
"The work of light
occurs in darkness"
The lights went on
like they were one.
"To love the light
without loving
darkness equally
is not what love is
really"
It was then
the wheel felt
just like stone.
"My love,"
I paused,
"I know, I just
don't want to go where
I've wasted my life
so far, a common schmuck
who looked to others
to save me if they could
from myself."
I was holding
against a pulling
in the westerly direction.
"I know you're not
alone, my dear,
in that, for I
have screamed
at moving stars
and silent gardens
"Too, because
the love I am
could not stand still
for any portrait."
When you said this
the world of form
revealed
that it was formless--
the gears and motion
were the same.
There was no right-
or wrong-ing,
just a horizon
with some room
for anyone with eyes
to share
the view.
A digression from waxing poetic to nostalgic sealing wax
Ahwatukee (“America's Biggest Cul-de-Sac”)—where I looked, down from South Mountain, for the home of my landlord/mortgage broker/realtor, to see if I could hold him to that trip to the Grand Canyon he promised me
Alvarado—where I discovered the sidewalks were built by the WPA
Anthem—where a fat Chinese bastard named Q Lin asked me why I was hiding my light
Apache Junction—where my spirit guide told me "Apollo needs horses"
Arcadia—where I went ice skating in the middle of summer and "Thai spicy" in the middle of winter
Arizona City—where I carried 50 pounds of rocks through the desert in a bag
Buckeye—where the scarlet and gray sunsets always made me think of my father every time I drove through to LA
Cactus—where in summer the hot breeze through the wide-open car windows inspired poems every day
Camelback—where I realized in an AutoZone exactly what God could do
Carefree—where I found out that peacocks only pretend to play horseshoes, but that donkeys actually like country music
Casa Grande—where I ran at America's Stonehenge into America's leading Ethnogeologist, a binary twin from another life
Cave Creek—where I learned in a biker's diner by a bend in the road the secrets of Mexican folk art
Central—where for two months I walked two poodles twice a day through a Retro-Sixties state of mind
Chaparral—where I would visit periodically a 1953 Bentley on blocks
Coolidge—where I witnessed a parade on Calvin Coolidge's birthday
Coronado—where I went to a GBLT Alcoholics Anonymous meeting
DC Ranch—where in my first week in the valley I saw beautiful women dancing in their underwear on top of a bar
Deer Valley—where an electrician shouted to me at a red light about how the best way to party was with Eckhart Tolle
Downtown—where I saw about a million bats fly out from under a bridge at sunset
El Mirage—where I finally learned that shopping for old furniture in Phoenix was a fool's errand
Encanto—where I discerned, in a therapist's living room, that the universe was my own creation, for better or for worse
Entrada—where I could never, despite my best efforts, get lost
Escalante—where I saw someone offer to get naked at a book signing
Florence—where I discovered that cotton fields and confederate flags really do go together after all
Fountain Hills—where I concluded, while waiting in line in a Circle K behind a bunch of boat people, that the day's news headline, “Violence Shatters Mideast Peace,” could be run on any day.
Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard—where I put my cell phone in the hole of a giant sajuaro so my daughter could talk to it
Gilbert—where I got lost because of the directions of someone who lived there
Glendale—where I learned that drinking insane amounts of red wine was actually good for your health, and as a result did some things that I will have to take to my grave
Gold Canyon—where I noticed that the Renaissance Festival was lonelier than a Christian Science Reading Room
Goodyear—where I observed, in the shadows of an abandoned Greyhound track, my brother and sister-in-law threaten lawyers on each other outside their 15-foot camper home
Happy Valley—where I finally found a Romanian to cut my hair
Hayden Mountain View—where I saw while eating osso bucco a jazz singer from Nashville perform
Indian School—where I watched kids in uniforms play cricket at night long after the last coffee shop closed
Jade Park—where Jeff was studying to be a motorcycle mechanic when I gave him the phone number of Sarah, a virgin hottie who had killed a lot of people in Iraq
Kierland—where I met the nicest emissions inspectors in the world
Laveen—where I escaped to from the rez on my way to the Biodome
Litchfield—where I learned that a sports bar with six NFL games on at the same time is a not a place conducive to helping a couple resolve their marital difficulties
Luke AFB—where I met a lady mechanic who hadn't known what a wrench was six months earlier
Madison—where I was questioned by police about what an architect and I were doing at night in a home he designed but didn't own
Mesa—where I shopped for used books with a guy who gave me a dozen Sun Ra records
Moon Valley—where I discovered a machine that can cure any disease
New River—where I saw a giant owl come out of someone’s fireplace
Norterra—where I saw just how badly homes can be damaged in a foreclosure
Olive—where I ate the best sausage this side of Croatia
Osborn Village—where I wrote the introduction to a doctoral thesis on the use of living plants in home construction
Old Scottsdale—where I spent New Year’s Eve seriously contemplating changing my whole life situation with a London waif, a shaman with dreadlocks, and a psychic emu farmer from Brisbane
Paradise Valley—where at an open house I made a temporary extrajudicial land grab of a mansion and its roof in order to climb right up the mountain in back in 108 degree heat
Peoria—where my papers and books (and fingerprints) are in storage
Queen Creek—where it was always further away (according to everyone) than whatever Buttfuck Egypt place I was contemplating living in at the time
Roosevelt—where I walked 5 city blocks filled with that month's art then drummed in Melrose to belly dancers
Shadow Mountain—where I finally found a Laundromat not shut down by the IRS
Sunnyslope—where I lived for a year between the meth labs and Little Oaxaca
Sun City—where I ascertained that there were actually people living on canals like in Venice, and they drove golf carts instead of cars
Sun City West—where my cat and I watched baby quail grow up under an oleander tree, living on whatever scraps we didn't want to eat
Surprise—where I pet-sat 20 hairless cats in the home of a dead, would-be breeder
Tatum Ranch—where I met someone else who had been to Anguilla (unfortunately, he also thought that Iran was going to nuke us and wanted me to read his poems)
Tempe—where friends took me to watch them in dragon boat races, a dueling pianos bar, a metal sculpture workshop, and a materials sciences library
Thunderbird—where I saw 20 kids get meds from a psychiatrist in the space of a half-hour
Tolleson—where I rooted the Bears to defeat in the Super Bowl with two nurses from Southside Chicago
Troon North—where a corporate executive told me about the time a ski helicopter full of food and apertifs took him to some killer untracked powder in Utah
Union Hills—where I was accosted by the “inventor” of the dot love domain, which he claimed would have led to world peace if not for the Bulgarian mafia who controlled Google
Van Buren—where I discovered that the old hotels are far more beautiful than the young prostitutes
Vistancia—where I really believed the pizza was better than it was in Brooklyn
Wickenburg—where my sister Jane the saddlemaker found others of her kind
X—where I discovered the lost dutchman’s gold, and walked away because of the pain it had caused humanity
Yavapai—where my North Carolina license plate hangs proudly on the wall of the Lone Spur Restaurant
Zizi’s House—where I learned that even the most enlightened and health-conscious of men will buy clove cigarettes if there is a woman involved
Dirt erupts into verdure...
Wrinkled scars fill with water...
Orange rivers
dive off the cliffs
relentless like no tide.
A marriage
of purple
and green, 
The yielding
of caverns
to foam
As salts
merge
in fluids
Of gorges,
dormant,
engorged,
A raging
zygote
swirl
Like javelinas
charging
these hollows
that yesterday
had cliffsides
of sand.
In the drizzle of sacred procreation... 
The desert royalty...
Majestic and solitary...
Welcomes attendants of green.
The water
is their strength,
They hold it
like a promise
In the dance
of sun and dust.
Banks of mist roam the ancient faces...
The mountains are ghosts behind gray...
The crags
thicken,
Rocks lose some
scales
As red mud
like molten
Trails
licks glistening
Hillsides wearing kelly green fur.
Anvils of black
float overhead,
And clearings
of turquoise.
You can
see
The rain
streaming
On rough
hanging
Canyons
from the clouds.
Towering rocks like pipe organs swelling with chords...
Of harmonious rivers seething...
Cactus fountains,
cactus streams
That summers
are silent and dry
Silt trails
defining
The lines
of the fragile
wild.
Now the spikes
Flash
in lightning,
Glow
in rainbows,
Deepen
into burgundy
As sunlight's razor
whitens
Once-liquid
spires
Of vistas
in distant
relief.
Reeds tremble
fiercely
on ledges
of water
free falling.
The darkness of Wisconsin
In a Poynette quonset hut,
Where it passes for downtown
By the Owl's Nest restaurant.
There's no one who's indifferent,
They are cheering on their brooms,
For strategies and skippers
Who can stay one with their stones.
A club member at the bar
Pauses from his PBR,
Reveals the smallest of smiles
For the year that curling broke.
Canticle for Dr. Geoffrey Hill
Whether Christ saves as many as the Christians kill is immaterial now;
Saying it's better one way or the other is a child's play for scholars,
Not worthy of someone who can peer into entrails for Heaven,
Who knows the difference between light and clay.
Who can say how important blood is, as an ingredient, to the soul?
But holy shit, when it comes to myths, we require the stuff in buckets,
For there's no surer proof of our divinity than our capacity for
horror.
But if you really believe that men are monsters, then so they are.
There's only one way into Heaven, through the door that proclaims
“Abandon hope in right and wrong, life and death, sinners and saints.”
God is not the clean in the hairy carcass, but the knowing
That the carcass is clean, despite all effects to the contrary.
We imagine it is labor to pull the sun across the sky,
We pretend our hands are responsible for what comes out of the soil
When it's impossible for me not to love them,
these peppers...
Their lacquered curves and vibrant colors,
Their secret heat that makes life sweeter.
My uncle thinks I'm a fool
For leaving what I don't need on this simple table to share
With people who are too busy to even stop and see what they are.
They rot away slowly, and I return them gently to the dirt,
Grateful that the invisible finds them nourishing.
And just as my love returns in beginning all over again,
Their shapes return, this time richer and more sublime.
I love them so, I sometimes think my love has grown them,
But all I've done is share with them my trowels and my water,
And have listened in their silence for the things they cannot say.
They ask of me so little, that I forget the rest of my life.
"It is not by accident that the colors of the dawn and sunset are pink...The vibratory action of the Sun's first and last blessing to the Earth is that of Love, Peace, Forgiveness, and Happiness to all life...Only when you see within the Temple of the Pink Flame will you know how Beautiful are the Gifts of God." - Beloved Lady Master Nada
And so they lift,
the porcupine clouds
on wet sand, emerald scrub,
a rainbow.
The ground is pink
like the tiles on the neighborhood roofs,
the mountain, too, flares pink,
like the water in which the sajuaros tower.
The rainbow throbs
its fat pink middle
like a belly-dancing genie.
The streetlights kick in,
bathing in pink the wet evening.
Two doves fly as one from our eaves.
Incomparable gift, unfathomable meaning,
that something kneels down in prayer before us!
The expanses from the highways
Seem endless, impenetrable:
Vast fields of roughened flax,
Layered hills in variegated colors,
Cities of cactus, vales of sage,
Dry streambeds clogged with stones,
Sculpted cliffsides made out of sand…
But down the red cloud roads
Inside the chaparral, there are towns
For pioneers, with names like Brenda and Salome,
Where the citizens are free to blacken the sky with a bonfire of tires,
Or to paint their trailers pink, or arch them with trellises of thorn.
On this road there is a place called Hope,
With an airstrip
And a radio tower,
The Victory Mile Café,
The Little Church of Hope,
Then a sign that simply says
“You are now beyond Hope.”
There's another place called Love,
And spots named Gladden, Ambrosia Mill,
None are more than a few stray doublewides
Every half a mile or so, some abandoned,
Some strung with February Christmas lights,
Some companioned by a giant rusted thresher.
In Harcuvar there's a steakhouse out of nowhere,
In Wenden, Kibbee's Shopping Center & “Laundermat.”*
The Ocotillo Lodge and Sajuaro Hotel are both long closed,
But the Cactus Bar with its blinking martini glass in Salome
(“Where she danced” – “Home of the fighting frogs”) is hopping
With snowbirds from the RV Parks, that out here look like ranches,
Their signs in oval iron swaying overhead, tagged with names like
Coyote Flats, Horspitality, Morenga Palace, Dripping Springs.
Their wagon trains need propane, and for that there's Passmore Gas,
Or the last chance Texaco, the Timbuktu Garage.
For the road soon veers to nothingness, and the only friendly face
Is the occasional roadside sign, sponsored by the Desert Zephyrs
Or the Doom Family, marking out the miles to go
Before Lake Alamo or the Vulture Mine Road.
In the rainbow desert sunset,
Distant lights along the brush fields—
What kind of person would look out on all of this as home,
Would swap out what is human for some ironwood and cholla,
For the glaring scratchboard light of the cosmic barrio?
At the Eagle Eye Mart in Aguila,
On the corner of 1st and 492nd,
The desert night is lit up by a swap meet tent
Lined with the pictures of the saints
Arranged like baseball trading cards on the wall.
Migrant cantaloupe farmers crowd around them and stare.
The desolate before God must be hungry for their own kind.
See the palm trees with their tiger stripes
promise a new kind of elegance;
See the divorcees feel a touch more desirable today
and the elders know that what they say is still important;
See the couples one by one turn into valentines
in the sighs of those not quite folded together;
See the poodles in the baby strollers sharing the vacation,
see the surfers lose themselves in the waves;
See the artists hide behind their work in rainbow parasols
quietly valuing other people's eyes;
See the found art of a life inside one shopping cart
and how it makes one almost believe the face beside it
really is the orphan son of Jesus, Mary and Joseph;
See one man's wicked rant at the counter
create a munificent smile in the cashier;
See the antiquated mission bring to life the faith of the flock
(like the birds that come to roost on its algaed fountains);
See the world of guilt and envy, missiles and debt
become the one of pelicans, sails and mist...
Know this transformation
is always seen in you, as well;
Your look of love that lifts up others like the wind
blows you a joyous inch above the ground as well,
Makes you part of the dream-awakening swells
that rise toward Montecito...
The desert in its fuzzy coat of winter green
as fog lifts to round earth rising
a sharp-edged glistening
trees lit up like dendrites sparking
the desert rivers fling
a trigonometry of streams
under and beneath
the vapor sun
Truth will always disappear to its nest,
The heart will be left bereft—
For just as people know not what they do,
They know not what is happening to them, too—
So the wise are fully present with the condemned
While sharpening the blade of the executioner—
There is no contradiction
Save the one called "lack of faith."
Ah Matthew and Greg, so you see you will never be forgotten…
“Last ride with the Marlboro man and look at what we’ve got…”
“They only come out when the grounds are watered and it’s the one day when the sun lets you sweat, so you don’t need to…”
“The one day of the year they can wear their LL Bean prerequisites…”
“And their walking sticks like reused didgeridoos.” 
“Wake up and stop to smell the creosote, people!”
“It’s Greasewood Formula 16…”
“Right out of the bottle…”
“This is what the white man is so good at doing: extracting essences to sell…”
“Like (ta-da) this sign: ‘massacre grounds under restoration.’”
“Knockin’ em down just to set ‘em up. Brilliant!”
“Where are all these people from, anyway?”
“From the sound of their dialects, I’d say either Canada or Eastern Virginia—house pronounced as hoos…”
“They’re too low-falutin’ to be from Canada. I say they’re from Detroit.”
“Hard to say—low-brow is a funny thing—the kind of thinking that gets you booted out of a shot gun shack with your axe and your woman in Rivertucky, Mississippi is the same thing that gets you in the door at the sophisticated Chicago blues clubs.”
“I say just ignore the Reptilians. They can’t really be seen anyway.”
“Yah, but they follow me around like karmic twins, a regular Simon and Karbunckle, I mean, what the funk is that?”
“I dunno. Back in the day, every low-life psychotic tried to sell me on his invention—always showed up with tickets like my ass was a carnival ride—‘til I finally figured out that it was me who had created all these people in the first place
"—all it took was solving the math problem of how they really were a gift—it’s been years—now they’re all vapor.”
“So you now have a vapor barrier with a moisture density above 80 feet?”
“A vapor halo?”
“It was just a realignment on the grid.” 
“Yeah, but you’re always doing your own spot check on your environment. Everyone goes down Route 66 looking for God, but you just know there are some places where the air density changes and there's an evangelical flame up your ass and you need to drive all the way through and not stop at a tire station.”
“I think, my friend, you're really talking about yourself."
"Dude, we're all Mayans now. Have you seen the work they've been doing with 3rd generation longhorn clones? They’re like quantum foam, waves against the shore dissolving into oneness.”
"Are those Mayan prophecies about 2012 for real?"
“They're using the Mayan calendar like a prostitute who wears a honking bling cross closer to her tits than to God, giving new meaning to the term rack of lamb. Don't get me wrong, I like a good apocalypse theory as much as the next guy—don't we all secretly want that 'live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse' car wreck thing for humankind? But the track record of prophecy is not good. I know past performance is no guarantee of future results, but I think the burden of proof should be on them, before the bullshitography hits the fan.”
“ASU is so out of control, all those nano-people out there—nanobots in vaccines, for Christsakes, talk about a coin proximity to the future—you don’t see frogs needing telescopic eyes to snag genetically improved flies, but your typical Olympic athlete? You think that they’ll be dope testing for bionics? No.
“Soon we’ll all be living off our own shit anyway. It’s gonna happen. Bioremediation—filtering through living machines.”
“Like garden toilets?”
“Like a compost heap. You aerate it with these charcoal filters on the side of your house, and bacteria eat everything but the methane, then plants eat the bacteria, and you eat the plants while the methane provides energy for your house—300 square feet of garden can feed a family of four—at 35 to 1 less energy at the gate than a centralized sewage treatment system—never mind the materials costs.”
“So you can 
actually live off your own shit?”
“Why hasn’t it happened yet?”
“Communities are popping up like mushrooms, but in terms of the CNN mass reality, it’s hard to get self-sustaining systems going when people still think they need jobs. And it’s hard to get politics out of it when the average person spends half a million in total for a 300 square foot apartment.”
“Salad waste structures, is what you’re saying?”
“Look at that gouache of lichen on the cliff, it looks like Siberian tundra.”
“And mottled moss…”
“Infragreen.”
“Here's some Arizona lettuce...”
“A cut above Grandma’s musty closet smell.”
“I miss my Grandma.”
“What’s say we go out with a massive steak—none of that synaptic syntax bifurcation parting of the ways—castration by cactus. We inhabit dual biomes—snow in the mountains, steak with mushrooms and baked potatoes with cream cheese in a high desert hot tub with a buzzing neon sign that says ‘we’re open.’ Isn’t that Arizona?”
“A special occasion—water.”
“The juices of the imagination.”
“That’s just the way it is now. Everything connects so much more liquidly—only the flow of chaos makes sense—it’s more organized and meaningful than the most carefully constructed pontiff...”
“It’s an open room where people combine energy…”
“The sounds come in and are collected.”
“I saw this sign the other day: ‘Superstition Plumbing.’ A Dutchman on a horse—saddlewear and a miner’s hat—but Dutch…”
“What made him Dutch? Did he have wooden shoes?”
“Yes, and he was clicking them like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz!”
“Maybe that’s why he buried the gold…”
“Kansas wanted the silver standard.”
“All I know is that dude got back to the mothership.”
“How do you know that?”
“That way of life is gone forever. Look at these people. There's no Arizona music in anybody's accent. They’re like tourists who can’t say what they did on their vacation because they never returned.”
“I’m thinking of living in an internet village in Guatemala.”
“I might just take up surfing and move to Oceanside.”
“I know I'm gonna miss this when I’m gone.”