A poem a night is a tiny goal
Insignificant self-improvement
Maybe even self-destruction
Reducing life to paltry lines

Culture? I will sell you garbanzos nickels for ounces through the feathered shadows cast by phosphorous glares of war. It may be possible that the war is here, lurking between our slender aural bones in sparks and chemical pulses. Never doubt the value of altering reality to suit your giggling whims.

——–
Grading tests

Writing assignments offer snippets
Tiny lines traced in the Sand of Life.
I am 23 years old
I work as a bookkeeper.
I dream of buying a dog
To replace the one that died.
I hope to work in a foreign country
This is why I study English.
Puzzle pieces
Corners, edges impossible to find
Snap them together if they fit
Spread them across the memory
If they do not.
Midnight creeps in
Is soon gone
Outside the rage of traffic
Babble of tongues
Ceases at last.

—–

If it bends, we can break it.

Dreams of running
Joyous and invincible
Heedless of uniforms
Turnstiles, registers, lights.
Upon waking though
I must shuffle
Through dim tunnels
Corridors of stone
Give my papers
(Pictures of myself
Of dead statesmen
Of Important Monoliths)
To pale hands
And flashing machines
My eyes downcast
My spine crooked
My thoughts silent
Again.

——-

Humble Apologies to Ginsberg's Grinning Corpse.

America I want to expend myself upon you
Burn and writhe out my potential across your face
Add infinitesimal pieces of my soul to your fabric
Not for what you are now but for what you have been
And will be.
Because the pendulum swings,
Necessity will come again
And the American will rise again
Out of the mire of obesity,
Relentless squandering,
Precision bombing reconstruction,
And the bizarre great swamp
That is Political Correctness
And Patriotic Politics.
We will rise again
Become the force for good
We so desperately must become.
So, America - for you, this -
Faith, Hope, Sweat and Iconoclasm.
My thoughts and my strange little prayers
Not for what you are now but for what you have been
And will be, again.

Porch in San Fran Sutra

The hum of the refrigerator
The blast of cool 3am air
Through the open staircase
Heavy blankets, soft couch,
A night of musical speech
Metaphysics and gardening
Her eyes were bluish-green
And sank back for eons.

Plug for my buddy Matt - Hair Envelope - Good mad scientist music.

A horn on the forehead, prehensile tail.

Mirages

But on foggy roads with the long walk to anywhere…
It may be wise to offer some silent mind to Papa Asphalt.

Obama campaign quickly responds to Hillary's Ads. I think the way Obama sheds Hillary's attacks by bringing up specific issues is very clever. She's getting the creeping nervesprints now, truly in the animal soup of it.

It's the definition of a criminal that we've gotten confused, I think. Being crazy or weird or irrepressible isn't worthy of prison. Violence or theft, aye, but we live in a country where yelling on a street corner or knocking over a single symbolic shopping display can get you tazed and dragged away. Maybe we need to add the Right to Perform Art into the Bill of Rights.

50 bucks for a street performer's license?

Snake Visions

The stream
Diving in
Getting down
Finding shiny rocks in the silt of grouchy Chronos
Looking up
See the stars
Hug the grass
Walk swift balanced like squirrel along rocky walls
Cliffside calls
Echoed low moan
Darkness swallows
Shadow creep and pry the jaws of Orouboros
Under stair
Whisps of jet hair
Hate on soft lips
Toss the seed into the breeze and watch the fall.

There was an avatar of Kali dancing shoeless

It comes with insistent 4am electronic bleatings
Sidling into the workhaze, the shuddering strange state of semi-existence…

When the cracks get wedged wider with tearing fingers and the heart of tomorrow rises glowing under the scattered cloudthreads.

There was a walk in a highgrass meadow before we split off, a wandering and laughing and burrowing that sang of innocence and a certain joyful realization that all was passing and pleasant and good.

There were a thousand diamond moments sparkling and fading and warm on our throats, and we watched them flow through us and out into the world like a hitchhiker watches a car full of laughing young people as it fades tiny shining on the dusty redbrown horizon.

There was an onyx pool of blood thick and dust-ringed on the pavement as the sound of dust in brush mingled with the shrieks of tiny animals as the desert rolled on unceasing and uncaring.

The smell of burning rubber faded and the radio came on screaming glorious rhythmic salvations as we headed into the uncertain fate of a new fateladen day.

Squid Mantra

Scrawls on the walls of dusty green halls, our echoing calls resounding pounding down, drywall resonance rebounding tunnel sound in the funnel undergroundings….
Signal flares we rise and bust
Rain down in rose and dust
And Tentacles.
Regal blue he waits for you
In sidewalk dust
Tentacles on your shoe
In Ink we trust.

Once before the books of time
we spoke in rhyme
under Mesopotamian moons,
Arminarm stardraped shrouds
we measured the dust clouds
that foretold our booming doom.

Awls and mauls
we sought the call
persistent commitment
shifting salty sediment
Rough thick mudbrick
we dug it with a stick
found ourselves on shelves
Same faces, our ancient shells.

And there's a google trends video that's pretty impressive, even if it is just based off search pings.

While I know Obama has been cautious (with very good reason) about saying what he would do about the drug war, my instinct is that, having grown up as a drug-using black man and seen the damage that the drug war has wrought upon the black community, he would almost certainly attempt to reduce sentencing, promote treatment programs, and quite possibly decriminalize or at least minimize penalties for the possession of certain drugs.

My concern, though, is that Asshole and company will begin hammering away at Obama's drug use and crazy liberal hippie drugfest ideology once the real contest begins. There are many Americans who still staunchly support the drug war, and a smear campaign that paints Obama as a reckless and immoral hedonist might actually resonate quite well across the nation.

So, I suppose this is the bugbear on my mind - How should the Obama campaign approach this issue? Should they focus on healthcare-based solutions like rehab and reduced sentences for successfully completing treatment? How should Obama respond to the inevitable attacks on his credibility for (GASP!) using drugs as a youngster and (DOUBLE GASP!!) admitting it?

But what really got me was the "times you were tested" question, which Obama answered with a short overview of his life, which made a good impression on me. Clinton, on the other hand, used her visit to the veteran's hospital to illustrate that there are others who have had much more difficult lives. Well, no shit, she's a rich white woman who has stalked the corridors of ultimate power for years, of course she haven't had as many challenges in her life as some poor Hispanic kid from the hood who joined the Army and lost his legs in Falluja. But that's not what the question was. The question was about the candidates' personal experiences, and using disabled veterans to answer such a question is disgusting to me.

I'm betting on Obama to take Texas. The question in my mind now is whether Clinton will bow out after Texas and Ohio or stay in it…

Thoughts?

Apparently constant messianic rhetoric is one of President Ahmadinejad's favorite tools (news to me, anyway), as he insists on preparing for the return of the 12th Imam. He must really be crazy about it if an Iranian cleric is criticizing him for it. I think I'll have to reread Dune side-by-side with some Shi'a theology, since I do love me some messianic prophecy.

Medvedev is so assured of his future position as Russian President that he's not even spending money or going on TV. A pity that all that campaign money he collected is going to just have to be scattered among his associates. Man, I wish I was in Russian politics.

On the positive side, seems that Pakistan is doing well after their recent elections. It's going to be interesting to see how Musharraf responds to a united opposition.