posted 01-15-2001 01:36 AM            

History's a fantasy
Forgiving blind

I fall asleep and feel great
Possessing soul

Reality's insanitys'
Regressing role

I wake from my unconscious state
memory's gone

posted 01-15-2001 09:19 PM            

Is it not my time yet to sing the sweet refrain?
If it is all vanity do we play this game in vain...
Laughter fills the innocent child
From going insane
How fun it is to walk in the rain

Be free be wonderfully excitedly wild
Care free days are taken to soon my child
The reality steps in with the dark days of gloom
It starts at the time you pop your first balloon
But I am not sad how can I write like I do?
Did you ever think this poem was not for you
Well, there is a thought quite simple yet grand...
This may be just the way that God touches all man
Through tapping on keys
The spirit sets them free
How very nice when it's is not all about me!

posted 01-15-2001 09:57 PM            

saturated messages
congesting my memories
breaking my will
but i will not let him in
not again

and how are the harder days?
the endless trickling
frugal displays.
don't fight feelings
don't mind deeper meanings.

so silly
you're so silly to supply
some stupid reason for your
treason
fingers flailing
fuck you
go find another freak
to fake.

i'm outside.
i used to be on your side
but now i'm inside
deep down
don't be the detriment to me
don't depress me.

posted 01-16-2001 02:00 AM            

From pigeons:

morning groundscores on
bouncing cement plates &
steel mesh, at dawn's cold
breaking point

Far below,

Endless currents, spreading
outward, flowing back

into me. I saw
my breath, I read
my life. The green river

reading me

so much more complex than mere
swan-dive, saying only

proceed

..in searing wake of barge
& madly veering motorboat

I knelt

for that first fluttering, falling
feather. At my back,a stanchion,
a roadsign: an 800 number
for suicide watch

Spine cracking, trick knee
popping lost wages
of catching too much
air too young, I
stood

and looked out over:

Beyond the matrix and the millrace,
Warrens of waterfront junkies
looking upwards, laughing
with delight. Their totems
taking flight, a marble
blizzard in reverse.

Paddlewheels kicked
Into life, through vast and
endless hoards of dragon
gold, spilled out across
that pea-soup matrix, stirred
into day

standing on the bridge

this could
be mine.

I did it one piece at a time.

From crows:

And wove those Stygian pinions underneath,
from different mornings, greener, blowing
trash in crumbled gutters, faery
grass where violets reared
purpling newborn heads, began
to breathe.

The crows were everywhere that day

to greet us, brought cold spring
from further up than robins
chained to mucky front-lawn
soil. The eldest raven in the
highest branch had more
to teach

my daughter

last time I ever

saw her, looking up
into the spaces twixt
the leaves,

making their sounds back at them.

The crows were everywhere that day.

I did it one piece at a time.

From sparrows:

downtown, who brung me

a watch, bus-tickets,
(twice a folded five-dollar bill!)

A Court Foole who made me
forget, just for a second,
how to hold a grudge,

and in
his laugh,
tiny wingbeats outside, fourteen
stories up, and holding

where I was.

I did it one piece at a time.

magpies dancing on coffeehouse flagstones,

kestrels, herons, far
afield, a lone falcon
on a wire, and one single
eagle my Biology teacher
once stopped class for us
to watch

I did it one piece at a time,

With strapping tape and
Krazy-Glue, played

chicken

with the gods,

and for one
all-fulfilling moment,

posted 01-16-2001 10:35 PM            

It blew in like a summer breeze
and ended cold as ice

I know that I have lied to you
but only once or twice

Just look deeply into your eyes
and whisper something nice

Like a bitter sweet apology
I guess that should suffice

In time you'll learn to live with who I say I really am

When feelings flow free like a river through a broken dam

I'll use my warmth to patch it up
at least the best I can

To melt the ice when summer comes
right back where we began

posted 01-16-2001 10:39 PM            

valium
for the sleepless
methodone
for the hopeless
die me
dead
the darkest shade of red

i am lipstick colors
in assorted flavors
under flourescent lights
they smell so bright.

let me go
nothing like the sudden
stubborn desire
that forces the flow

okay then
goodbye then
just another day then
then what?

i'm the voice
you don't want to hear
i'm the evil whisper
breathing into your ear
listen to my
destruction
take my rebirth
as solid construction

i'm awake
but i don't want to be
i'm a fake
because that is true to
me

posted 01-19-2001 08:16 AM            

I suck I'm great
I can't concentrate

you see I don't
not from your point of view

you will I won't
cause there's nothing to do

try forcing your hand
but the pen doesn't write

try proving you wrong
when I know I'm not right

I saw through your eyes
but I'm losing my sight

posted 01-20-2001 04:19 AM            

you fell in love
then you fell out
and i don't know what
that was all about
you broke me up
it dragged me down
but i'm sure i'll do fine
without you around
you said, "let's just be friends"
but what you really mean is:
"i never want to see you again"
you never want to see me again
but how can you know
that you don't love me
when you don't really know me?

you say you're lookin
for miss perfect
but is she really worth it
when you haven't even met
her yet?
i guess so
go ahead and go

someday you'll look back
look back on what you've done
someday you'll look back
and know that i was the one
i was the one you were lookin for
you didn't even think about it
as you closed the door
on this love

this love
that didn't have a chance
before you let the seed root
you let it begin
to snow
so go ahead and go
just go ahead and go

posted 01-20-2001 12:47 PM            

Dear Mom,

You already know all this but I’m
saying it anyway

Peace has never existed on this planet, but we
drive on with what we’ve got

Not much going on the usual bullshit more later

Please tell them to remove my name from the Book of Life I do not
Wish to be contacted except in writing

the seagulls were singing this morning
over the warehouse blocks at the foot of
Hawthorne, my armies

the uninvolved

i’m down at the street but i
sleep with heat on my game leg
and wake with the city beneath
my sneakers

It’s not that it all goes nowhere, it just
takes a while
to populate the void
can’t look at all but only
jump

i have never been worthy of
you but that never stopped you

it’s those around me who are
responsible for the
unbelievable and when
I laugh the hole
goes away for a
little while. I keep
coming back for
more of that &
waking up thin

heads part like waves at 1 AM
this stubborn chance
to be, and dreams
of which we
forgot we
were capable, and
it feels like my hands won’t
fade through anything I
hit the way they used
to do in dreams

the convalescent screams
in the face of agonizing
necessary
physical therapy to
walk again when he
never even learned
to slither.

Dear Mom,

Little bit ragged right now but we’re
working inside this engine at full
choke, these pages, dead scales
shed, out from under

a torn and twisted cage
of bone but now we’re
just gonna play like
there’s no
tomorrow

sad hurt and angry on the inside wanting
attention without help, but that ain’t
us... Driven insane by free
lunatics, endless
genetic
slavery

the thrill is gone and i don’t
want it back, only what I
let go of at the top of the
spiral. never really
mine, any of it, but it
all takes so
long

waxing lyrical preadolescent fixations
endless permutations of grinding
darkness incalculable, freakout of the
impossible situation, wringing
hands in parlor fear, marry
your death, bury your soul,
but somehow

no matter how hard we try to screw it up, somehow

last deep sigh and peace of the sunset parlor
family puzzle, spilling out through endless
green sunset fields, fallen foundations of
lives, fenceposts, edges rolling
backward, strewn with bone,
going away

take it up with adam and eve
line forms on the left
different graph of untouched forest
peace and water over untapped
spillways, forward into
finality with the dead
asleep and the old
home patch turning
back to soil

in the gas-jet glow of wisdom
redheaded stepchildren of exile

young and dumb and terribly
confused

turn away. turn away. Stop
caring what they
think. We’re all
ridiculous. Come
as you are, and
pray they will
only see the
end and not
what it
took.

I will make the rails sing your name.

posted 01-21-2001 12:16 AM            

I was collating poetry for a few hours and I realized I have seven good-sized books of poems, just about ready for publication, plus a bunch of eulogies I will probably never publish.

Let's see.. "Confessions of a Teenage Heretic", a lot of really spiritual/spooky high school stuff; "Light Fuse and Get Away" which is a bunch of balls-out epics, including one called "Top Ramen" that I just wrote tonight, will post later..; "Wristrocket" a big soup of all sorts of weird forms and odes; "Concertina Wire" really sarcastic love poems from 96 to 98; "Urban Legends", city versefrom Philly to Frisco to Oakland to Portland; "Light As a Feather, Stiff As A Board" ..more spiritualist rants and dream-inspired horror poetry... and this one, the shortest of the epics. I thought was very brave for the circumstances it was written under.. I wrote it at a couch-surf where I lived in Altoona, PA for about three months. The parties there were the stuff of legend, and the renters used to just wind me up and watch me write.... Tell me what y'all think of this. It is a motion glyph, a process, a brief waystation record left behind with sunglasses and bongs in an empty house...

32nd St.

sacred to the work of dave buterbaugh
for wally, scott#2 & 3, and jesse
written winter 1998

1.) MOTOR VEHICLES ONLY

Damp boggy earth,
a moat
of litter
off freeway
berm,

before
fencerow woods, under
a mountain foot,
whose name
I forget

My bike
full of creaks & groans,
my hands
handlebars, my shoes
angry wet vinyl,
burrs & thistles throughout.

I would abandon these
shoes, in favor
of running through
underbrush,winding up
sleeping through late
long mountain hours
until exactly
dawn...

In screaming Mack trucks' babel wake,
my sigh
spooked a doe
grazing well upwind
of that old toxic site
never a mall.

The doe ran like she had wings,
those woods still hers
(for what they're worth)
Beyond roadside garbage,
trucks,
timetables,
hers. I stood, and
wondered why,
lighting
a cigarette, beneath
a bridge much
further than
the fence that
wrecked my
plan.

In a moment's
rest, amid
exit-ramps up and
around a hidden
lie, and rumble-
strips to warn
you when
you get too
close to
Nature. STAY IN
YOUR CAR. LOOK
STRAIGHT AHEAD, &
KEEP ON DRIVING off
the cliff,
impaled on
bones of
mastodons. At least
she had the
sense to turn
and run.

2.) JACK FROST

Frozen mercury falls
just when you thought
I'd never
come
back
before
sunrise
Shut up.
I'll get you there
faster

Fog congeals
fallow fields
icy kiss
upon the
pumpkin crop and cannot
rest 'till dawn,

nipping at your mind
in endless
freezer-burning
jones, shaman
born

of the Fool
in blank-page
snowstorm, painting
panes and gonna
learn you
how to
Art..

3.)EXILE

Let me in,
From frosty
Porch of
fault.

I cannot
walk much
longer, must
sit down
some
-where i won't
get kicked off
by the
cops.

Misguided
crisis, burning
down all
but impatient,
shaking
need to
prove,

no worse than
vacuum I
brought on,
no lightning
left to
call,

a rage
to begin

let me
in

4.) 32nd St.

I dreamt
the kind of
good fall day to
get outside and
skate..

Improbable
rebirth, green
grass under early
snow,

Little kids, walking tall,
flat road & endless
sky,

Golden rivers run
from new-washed
cars, streetside
streambeds, alive
alight
all life

Savage glory
come again, gauging
ancient windage,

in low blue mountain haze, at
this plateau of
graveyard's edge,

looking to the clouds, to name
our gods lost long ago

Where trees & sky collide,
There is my love,
There is my line.

where roads narrow too small to see
where avenues name long-dead bards

where Darwin's finches nest in doortops,
(bless the house, & sing the blues

where your shoes know the way
at the end of your night,

where any dream may come, and
anyone may dream,

I live.

It has not been like this outside
for so long. No rush, but
follow me. Just for
today, we got
some time.

5.) CRUISE CONTROL for john glenn

The old astronaut
rocking on his sunset porch,
flat inscrutable gaze
off beyond
crickets' hymns,
off into
Space

His marrow hungers
for upper
orbit. Once
his raw ungainly hands
sowed all our hearts
with what might be,

once that voice
now dry
as wind in splashdown driftwood
read the stars
back to us all
from that deep
night,

and widened
all our eyes, off into
Space.....

Lo:
Look skyward. Hope
slingshots beyond
Gravity, and Mars
still
waits

Earth
on pause, popping
ears, bending
light, stretching
possibility, jacked
up to windy
stratospheres,

past childhood kites
that dipped & climbed. No better
day to
cruise, through
faded aching clouds,
up where
banality stops,
and Mars still waits,
and far
below,

one child,
with binoculars,
wishing
on your
star

6.) WINDOW ON THE MORNING AFTER

Leaves almost gone--
I want to
make them
green.

Bare white walls
I cannot
change,

static hills
on factory ground. Even
our landlord wants
to chuck it all, & head
for the
woods.

I cannot stop these leaves.
I cannot stop
the sky, only
lay here &
read, too
exhausted to do
anything
else.

7.) BREAKING STRAIN

Scrubbing
toilets
into
gold,

Memory cranked amphetamine
peak so hard to keep within
memory of that
primal sculpture garden
where in former
incarnations, I had learned
what it meant
to fly, and all
the disclaimers
attached

broke me, &
rebuilt just
enough to
start all
cycles
again

forever

EPILOGUE: MOVING DAY

When you first exit onto
Whatever bright street of wakeup,
cherry blossoms falling onto bright
sunlit concrete of mind
hits you, and honey subway steam-
heat cools
the blood-
shot eyes dazzled
to the point
where even bleak
ghetto becomes
unbearable
radiance

There is the line, yr. empty
seat on broken couch
never to be
filled
again. No

time. No Time. Places drained
of purpose, after
with, without-- I don't
be like
it here
no more. We've
pumped it dry
and now

Dawn's fingers
over gas-stations. The bartender
pours your coffee, as you
blink
into Now, too tall
for
Eden.

posted 01-21-2001 12:23 AM            

TOP RAMEN 1/20/01

I would gladly give
both

testicles

for the five-year-old
innocence
necessary to say,

and mean,

“That smells good.”

as that blessed, blessed child
walks by the stove where I
watch the water
boil, counting every
bubble in the
manna

Ingredients:

One block of newsprint, pre-formed, dehydrated

Two parts hosewater.
Salt from eight months’ tears,
shaken out of a pillowcase.

The blood
soaked into my socks. The ink
on all the resumes
that soaked the blood
to spange bus fare for
one more week of

top ramen,

twelve for a
buck at Fred Meyer. The
cashiers look at me, remembering
their own
bottom rung

“We have your application. We
will contact you.”

It tastes

like a San Francisco
streetcorner, cooking
smells that make the
drool run down your
chin (you can’t
get in,

cancelled out by
sweat and piss and
spilt malt liquor,
cordite, CS gas,

infection

Mom used to say: Eat
what we got or
do without. Choke it
down or go
hungry. Wait
for the glorious day
to come, when the
worn-away Goodwill
sneaker is on the
other
foot.

You’ll learn to like it.
It will mutate you, and grow
armor plating to cover
the holes in your
feet, and what
you are not now to
them is cancelled
out by what you
become
to yourself.

And one day,
when you bleed pure
MSG but are no longer
twenty pounds under-
weight, the best
revenge:

to walk into
a restaurant
by yourself, order
everything on
the menu, and
hand out
all but your
dinner

to those who keep the lights
in midnight basement rooms
and boil down the word,
and smile as they grub

posted 01-23-2001 11:01 PM            

she dusts dribbles of
orange from her chin
we know who we are
we know where we're goin
this is the bliss
before reality sets in

i'm little miss
goody two shoes
with two left feet
two regrets
and two hours of sleep
before morning comes

they say i'm uptight
i say the devil can change.
these angel wings
are taped with ribbons
and string

i'm an angel with a
wolfish grin
muttering under my breath
little pig, little pig
let me in

alas i sit
on the straw doorstep
wondering what good my
ruby slippers will do
when i want anything but
to go home to you

who wants to go home?
i've been there before
can't go back again
not the way i did then
with my little
red riding hood

yeah, me and the sheep
we don't mix too well
my fangs dig deep
i say to them,
sorry, babe, i'm just
not into the whole
flocking thing
i like my independence
and macaroni in my hat
or was it feathers?

those damn angels
sheddin like flies
it's gettin in my eyes
just think happy thoughts
and you'll do just fine

guess i better be gettin home
to auntie em and the straw man
but before i go
here's my shoe
so you can find me
come on and find me

some shoes fit tight
others fit just right.
like porridge in a dish
whatever you wish
don't let the magic die.

posted 01-24-2001 02:38 PM            

batgirl-- Poetry will show you the door, to the gallery where love does not hang- bloody- on the wall of lies...trust. If he couldn't get your magic the first time, what are the odds he's had a brain transplant since you kicked him to the curb? (less than zero?)

posted 01-24-2001 07:01 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by khouriana:
dragon- gung hoy fat chong

---

Happy year of the Snake everyone!!!