Maddening Crowds Know Only Mastication (just ask Hardy)

"The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection." (redux)

"How helpless they all looked in the ugliness of sleep. A third of life spent unconscious and corpselike."

"Some, the great majority, stumbled through their waking hours scarcely more awake, helpless in the face of destiny."

"They stumbled down a dark alley toward their deaths."

"They sent exploring feelers into the light and met fire and writhed back again into the darkness of their blind groping."

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

Academic Palaver and The Blind Surrender of Ambivalence

"The founders of religions must have also slept in unheated rooms."

"Good Evening Pyongyang - Are You Ready to ROCK?!?!?!"

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd;

But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts--from far where I abide--
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel (hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.

Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.

"Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain"

"C'mon, Everybody Now- Put Your Muthafuckin Hands Together For the One That Made It Possible For This All To Happen..."

"Keep On Rocking in the Culturally Hermetically Sealed World!!! Thank You and Good Night Commrades; You've Been Great!!!"

"I Like America and America Likes Me"

Schrödinger's Vote
When it is not one nor the other, it could be both concurrently.
Pay close attention, choose wisely:

VS.

Big Sur As 'Misstra Know-It-All'

It’s sad. It’s almost
sad what we shed
in the changing room.

The awe in it almost
with sadness. No more
traveling by night, car, jet
lag, or moonlight.

This ocean did once taste of home
if not temporary then deep, as if

I’d stepped out of the shirts of my family,
who always carry time with them.

I cling to them blindly. Coasts
being only where what’s walkable
stops,

not some ballad of hand
and slate. Beach only dumping
ground for the floatable.

So I don’t float.

So I never loved
my floatable ones. So
what. As if it brings
them back.

Who it's for knows who it's for.

Autobiography of a Totally Harmless Person

Without you, bathysphere, the silent world
will dive even farther and more bravely
from us. Without crew, museability
will take one final blow, sounds will dead-weight
a useless rap against every seafloor.

I did not cherish my way to the end
of the street, sweet tank. Carried no houses,
crossed streets vainly. I was riding a bus
and there was fatigue throughout the city.

And the dog I was dreaming never scared
of dirtytalk. She cowered to muck up
the pride we have at last torn from our selves.

Only steep in these leagues may I pilot
your steel subject. Only now everyone
in the photographs dead. Boy I buried

finally tame. No retractiles, no dark
so long unpatented. But that dog, she
goes so heavy with pause at water’s edge,
quieting her truest locomotive.

Didn’t I invent that? We know to dive,
not for tidal wave, not for subterrain,

but for making echo, knowing nothing
of each other’s loss. We dove. I knew you
and never knew you. Both happened. Both true.

Who it's for knows who it's for.

Buildings Fighting (and How They Learn)

Hello Mrs. Johnson
Hello Mr. Brown

I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.
—Raymond Carver


The Tune and Also the Words
I was in my city but I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.
I was walking through rain to other rain, ajar as any well-winded door.

That was the first word. When we were still getting prehistoric with each other.
Pith with a strand torn from scalp. Folded into your wallet in tiny effort of voodoo.
This is no longer sleeping around a lake-based square.
This is no longer any kind of hustle, so what is this?
The seeds out back may well have escaped.
Pumpkins pouring down the road near the driveway. Nasturtium ricketing all around the fenceline.

Riddle kin, take not your part in this disaster.
I want to smell different and remind people of new things based on smell alone.
I want to smell alone, reminding things of people when they were different.
I want different reminders, basing smells on people being alone.

Is it possible to know the weight of crushed bird hope?
I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe we had a first word.
The morning was swift and bruised, a vivid pillar.

Then I lost it.

"...here, then, is what is considered to be desire; desire known as a mobile void."


Goodbye Mrs. Johnson
Goodbye Mr. Brown

Who it's for knows who it's for.