like this

There was a boy who worked so hard.
He fixed the all doors, cleaned all the floors.
He threw balls while scrubbing walls while racing up and down the street.
—-
And every day his mom would note:
“Son it’s ok, rest for today.”
But shake his head, “Prefer,” he said, “to finish before I sleep.”
—-
And days and weeks and months he moved,
Plaied every game, fixed every food,
Read every book, sung every song and then he found one more.
—-
Until, while trying every chair,
—
He settled on a seat of air
—
Perfectly firm and smooth and their he fell into a snore.
–
So deep, his dream, it started with the blackness of eyes
—
It startled him to be so still, so he saw white in surprise.
—
Then all the colors flashed in kind
until the boy saw dots and lines,
—
two circles eyelike, nose and chin, a voice that sounded just like him
a simple room he stood within and letters that spelled out what he cried,
“It’s me,” he said, “from the outside!”
—-
He shut his eyes and wished for home, opened them scared…and he was there.
—-
That’s when he knew it was a dream that he was trapped within.
—-
“Hey, maybe here,” he thought, “I can dream of all I wish to do.”
—-
So dream he did, up all his friends, he dreamed his street and mom and then
He dreamed of all the things he did and things he didn’t yet.
—
He dreamed of many far off lands, of songs he heard and one’s he planned.
—
Dreamed all the great things he could eat and dreamed that bad things tasted sweet.
—
And dreamed up villians full of fear and with a wish they’re eyes would clear,
they’d turn and smile, remember him and join along to play.
—

New worlds and moons and stars he dreamed while looking at the night.
—
And then he dreamed of sun and saw it rise and there was light.
—
And every person that he saw, he dreamed they knew them, one and all
But try as he might, he couldn’t dream a person just like him.
—
So finally, with so much done, he dreamed that familiar chair,
—
He remembered it so clear, the room around it reappeared.
—
And with his dream mom at his side, he waved his dream friends all goodbye
And remmbered all of his fun and all the things he dreamed he done
—
All the way back to black and white and dreamed the chair from that one night
Let go of sight and sound and touch and color, taste and thought and place
—
‘till slowly out of the dream he finally rose.
—
He moved his feet and felt his face and moved inside his clothes.
—
yawned satified with his long trip and wondered what to do,
—
but couldn’t think of anything, cus everything was through.
—
Mom said, “Finally! You were out deep! Where did you go when while you where sleep?”
—
He look around
and then at her
and tried to say the things he made,
—
But couldn’t get the color right
or anyone he dreamed that night exactly, or the worlds he saw
or shapes he drew or songs he called
—
At best he just could see the end,
when all the dreams came back again
And that his mom and street was there,
And friends were too and things he’d do
—-
So with a smile he breathed a sign
and licked his lips and said,
—
“I dreamed a place
that’s just like this
was all inside my head.”
_______

My first attempt at a children’s story, kind of a matrix lite type thing. It actually came to me on waking from a disturbing dream that I can’t remember anymore.  It had something to do with childhood though and was definitely dense enough to make me question reality for a minute. It made we wonder what it was like for a child to discover and remember the dream for the first time, and further if there is a responsibility for adult help kids make sense of this world (assuming we got a handle on that shit our damn selves of course) I have ideas for illustrations…but this may be a back burner for a little while….that is unless someone out there in the internets got some time for a collaboration

Monday Morning

pace is the thing, I think
to hold tap water in your palm
and lap it up in tender flicks
for fear of future drought.

how love shapes forms that once
needed neither name nor distinction.

a word once made of sound: an object
and truth no longer is enough.

it turns my stomach not to touch her
and yet at last I roll from bed
and take a final sip of coffee
leave her asleep, unkissed, behind.

I’m walking somehow unattached
the blocks away from where I work.

the morning sun within my eye

the weight of clothes I’ve lived
without.
_________

nuf said…

Bag Serials: Adam #5

“So how many we got today.”

“Slim pickens this time, mate. Just the one; and a little bugger at that. But it’s more paws for pickin, I guess.”

“Hmmm…that surprising considering how lush this area is. I will have to make a note of that. He seems pretty quiet back there.”

“Had to tranq ‘em. Three darts. Had the crazy eye, that one; all smeared with berry juice and shit like some kind of flower child. Just stared me down at first, too, up on his hunches, all calm… it was creepy mate. And he just went off after the first dart. Ran head long for me.”

“Wow. Quiet a find.”

“Maybe we can get more then usual for the brains, Eh? Most expensive part, you know. Used in some kind of chang chong healing potion or something.”

“Hey hey, no insulting of our costumers now.”

Clang

“Ah ha, here we go.”

Clang
Clang
“Want me to end it.”

“No, let him enjoy the ride. He’ll get the point soon enough. Hey! How’s junior?”

“Typical two year old. Eyes full of stars. Always exploring. ’slike he just touched down from space.”

Clang

In the Field: In Search of Haiku Hero. Gaming and Poetry.

In second addition of in the field, an article on the clash of gaming, poetry and the future of digital literature.

 A review of a talk at Kelly’s writer’s house by Brian Kim Stefans, a preeminent digital poet.

Brian’s work can be found here.

For more on the history of digital poetry, check out here.

American Skin

in the beginning, there was skin.

permanent tans prescribed to nomads basking after an afternoon hunt and pale cave dwellers hunched in a fire-lit french forest. back when melanin was a raincoat, we regularly saw the slick-red-flesh that boils underneath this shell that we cringe to draw blood through.

in the beginning black was a moonless night, and tribesmen wore skin of walrus while trekking through some 14 shades of white, and race was a contest between barefoot warrior’s once but then there was babel.

and tongue clicks from purple lips sounded like gunpowder mortars.

bright eyed ghost men offered drunk juice and believed the earth could be traded for stones.

in a place where war starts with a dance and meals had half there weight offered to an idea there was first contact with a people of mirrors and coins and serfs.

but once bipeds were a species and aryans were born in iran once.

israelites were arabs long before jesus was a withdrawn rockstar. back when jews praised jah with the blood red corpse of a canaanite, all humanity knew that skin was just the last shield between a sword and intestines and death.

but we don’t see flesh in america.

war is a tv show and blood’s the color of candy apple lollypops and skin is a language. tone is a checkbox. shade ain’t a treelined summertime street in america.

and with that,

our shells have grown thick

our eyes have dulled

and monochromatic american skin has the weight of a middle-aged armor.

much too heavy to dance in. much too ugly to stare at. all looking like mirrors and Fear.

______________

Inspired by a great many thing, both of reality and of meditation. One was a conversation I had in bed with my girlfriend haley. We marveled for a second at the thought of all the organs and flesh just millimeters underneath us and how easy it was to forget that there is anything underneight what we see every day. A day or so afterwords I remember looking my feet in the bathroom on a sleepless night. For some reason my veins were full and fat on my legs and showed green through my skin. It was the first time I notice my shade, that I was not that dark really, not high yellow but certainly on the orangier side of almost brown. It was the first time I can remember identifying my own skin as something other then black.

The Hot Lines: Sermon on the Mount of the Inevitable Progression of Saul to Saul (by Saul Stacey Williams)

Dear Daddy,

Can you see it now?

All the energies swirling from the center, the rings of light, the swarming darkness, the shadows and their sources.

Did you note the seven centers, the transfer of energy, the vibration of sound, your love of the litany.

Did you see how she did that, how I let it seep out, possession.
And jealousy.
And fears.
And doubt.
And fears. Dear Daddy, I do not fear God.

I do not think of him as angry or vindictive or exacting punishment on the prayerful
and prayerless all the same. Do you see now how a mere thought can leave a trail
both light and dark? How awareness must be coupled with action before it overshadows all sentiment and defiles a temple of being?

Do you see now, Daddy, how we are all mystics
(not just Howard Thurman)
working towards the gradual fulfillment of our greatest testament and how many tables and laptops and Cadillacs and pews and pulpits would be overturned in THIS day.

And yet how judgment overshadows the bliss of heightened understanding.

I too see, Daddy, the meaning and need behind the habits you instilled in me.

The prayers before eating and sleeping, the act of giving thanks
and breaking bread ‘n
paying tiads and offering offerings. And through you I’ve learn to think of my profession as professing. God professing through me and I’ve learned to silence the secular so that I to know that I have a calling and Christ Daddy;
it was so important to you that I accepted Christ
as savior and you tried to convert me from the Christ
that you raise me to be.

And you didn’t realized that I never questioned that incarnation of love but questioned
Constantine and King James and the stain glass windows that stained my imagination with images of a God that would not dare live inside of me or Harlem or Brownsville and I questioned where the teachings that the body was a temple were and
that Christ lived within. And that the blood of the lamb was your blood and
mommy’s blood and
my blood and if a doctor told you that your personal diet was tainting the blood the lamb:

would you feed it pig’s feet
and laugh?

I believe in Christ, Daddy.

I read and reread those red letters incased in black binding until I saw it transform
into the red blood incased in your veins and
my veins and
mommy’s. Now there’s a holy trinity.

And the father
is now ghost.

Yes, Daddy. I see you now. Do you see it? Isn’t it beautiful? There is one body. There is one blood and I thank you, Daddy, you taught me that I was a prince and I believed it, ‘for it was you that also taught me to believe.

And I’m going to remember the pride I felt when I stood and walked beside you.
And I’m going to remember your laughter and your fists punching the air to the beat.
And I’m going to remember the one time I saw you cry; it was at your mother’s funeral and how it hurt to sense how alone you felt and how it seemed for a moment that man upstairs became the woman in the coffin.

And I’m going to remember how you lived a daily example of faith and how you never knew were the money would come from, but you how always knew that it would come.

I’m going to remember how you loved to see me imitating you and all the ministers and how that made you laugh and how you,
and they,
inspired me but no church of secular division was big enough to house these dreams,

yes,

dreams Daddy. A subject we never spoke of. Do you see now how they too have there place in reality
and manifestation,
and how water might even help ya remember them. Do you see how it’s all connected?

“Cast your bread,” you would say.

“Cast your bread on the waters and in many days it shall return.” You preached karma, Daddy, and stood dumbfounded at first sight of your Buddhist granddaughter.

I know you see now Daddy, how it’s all connected and heaven is enlightenment and prayer is the constant act of taking action against the mechanical complacency of our nature and sin is not baring witness to the lotus-like unfolding of the highest testament,
love and change.

You died in autumn Daddy

just as the forbidden fruit was falling from the trees. A leaf
that refused to change colors and hold on until winter. I wish you were here.

I wish you had found the will to change your diet and see your every meal as a communion. I wish you had found the will to overcome your grief and allow yourself to be reborn. I wish this were your sermon and not my poem,

and then you would snatch the invisible spirits from the air
and then you would open the doors of the church
and then you would sing in that operatic baritone that made it so easy for everyone to say amen
and I don’t know if I’ll ever listen to Horris Silver again
and I don’t know if I’ll ever stand in this pulpit again
and it may be the last time we all get together
and it may be the last time we all sing together
and it may be the last time. I don’t know
and I know I don’t know
and I may never know, but I would have loved for you to have been here

to teach me.

and I may just call on his name but I would have loved to have call on yours.

which is mine
and ours. There’s power in a name, Daddy.

Saul: a Hebrew name meaning “asked for.”

I never got to tell you how I learned that the apostle Paul never truly changed his name but traveled to far off lands where the letter s did not begin words.

And these words do not begin to express the love I feel and the excitement I feel in knowing you have once again traveled to a land beyond lands
where words themselves do not begin
but rest in the endpoint of their meaning.

Yes you have been struck from a horse once again to be blinded by a light that blinds the sense yet illuminates the path of eternity.
And I know you see it now Daddy.
The distant shapes have become visible.
Hems only hinted at such glory.

And now, my only prayer has been for you to teach me from there what you could not from here. Guide me away from this anger and disappointment into the mirth of your laughter. Show me how love and wisdom are never buried for they rest in the zest of the wind. Guide me to the fireside. Smolder my discomfort with the glowing warmth of the violent flame,

All of these things Daddy,
I ask in your name,

and if it is your will
I ask in the name of the father
which is the name of your son.

_______
I am also the son of a preacher, just as is Saul Stacey Williams, the author of this elergy. And with that, I can attest to the power that comes from a youth constantly preoccupied with questions of faith, sin, humanity and the divine. I can not speak for the life of Saul Williams, but hearing this poem (which you can also hear for yourself at this link) really struck at that clash and rise and peace that comes so often in the lives of those that left the faith of their birth. Like Saul, I believe in Christ now more then ever, though with an imagined, hoped for and seen fulfillment that is beyond the dreams of my youth.

I was also inspired to transcript and post this poem in honor of Martin Luther King, also the son of a man of God, who did so famous believe in the power of dreams. May all of us regain and strength this ability in a world where meaning is said to be useless, love is said to not exist, and God is nothing if not a white man on a cloud staring us down in judgment, jealousy and hate.

Bag Serials: Adam #4

Though the thigh sized branches and wide thick leaves he climbed upward. Hand over hand. When no easy twig was within reach, he clamped to the bark and pulled on whatever finger holds he could find. Sometimes he had to let himself fall backwards while reaching for a mound just beyond his grasp, not knowing if the handhold ahead was simply a clump of dirt or a rotten piece of fruit ready to crumble between his fingers. It never was and even in the equal panic of grabbing slick moss instead of reliable rough dry bark, somehow his fingers always seemed to scramble to just the right places before he fell to the ground. After such a slipup, he would cling stiffly to the face of the tree, every muscle tense, breathing hard and wondering how it was he was spared from falling so often.

It was the largest tree he had ever seen. The trunk was light grey with wide, smooth lightly grooved bark. Its roots rose from the ground in tall thin waves like skin being pinched and pulled upward. Sometimes he would lie inside the small alcoves between them and admired its fruit. It too was like nothing he had seen before. It rose on thin white furry stalls and was capped with a brilliant flash of red and specks of gold. They grew all around it on the ground and ran up the trunk like gazelles scaling a mountain.

He played with them. Rubbed his fingers along the furry undersides and picked at the specks of sunshine along the top. The red rubbed off and he added it to his collection sometimes, smearing it on his chest and face alongside lines deep purple fig skin and thick black earth and green leaf from a particularly beautiful orchard he often visited during the day. At first these colors collected accidentally. But once, knelling above the river covered with all the forest and a fat black hand print across his chest, he was inspired to collect and explore and experiment. The fruit’s color, a red so deep he thought at first blood flowed from the ground, he saved for the forehead, in a round dot, just above the eyes and in-between a slash of limestone and black soil.

But he never ate one. He had a policy of only eating what he saw the other animals eat. Besides, there was an abundance of fruit here. He was never in want. They were tricks, hiding places and nooks everywhere to be found, all filled with food as brilliant in taste as they where in color. But this fruit seemed different. Despite it’s flower-like appearance, never once did a bee flutter above it. It stood like a tree the wind, yet it seemed so soft and tender. Its flesh was the dull white color of fish with gills tipped with dark grey. It was just too strange to be trusted.

And yet the thought of the fruit lingering in his mind as his palette expanded. Feeling the tender morsel of slug flesh slide down his throat effortlessly, he thought of it. He wondered about it while munching on a handful of clay, puffing out his cheeks as the wolves did and feeling it slowly decompose inside his mouth. He saw it clearly, or thought he did, floating in the middle of what turned out to be a deceptively deep pond. He was not sure what he swallowed along with the water that day, but whatever it was it’s taste was ignored as he pulled himself gagging back onto the shore.

The sky was grey above him. He had not reached the top, as intended. Instead, he stopped at a thick branch about half way up and a little above the surrounding trees. All the colors he meticulously applied from head to toe had rubbed off on the long climb up. He was sore.

Catching his breath, he looked at the crumbled fruit in his hand hoping for some comfort. It was mostly intact; the stem laid disconnected and the cap had broken in two but it was still recognizable. Even a golden shard or two remained on top of some of the caps. Good.

It was not the most bitter thing he ever tasted. That was reserved for a thick brown seed he spotted a medium sized rodent nibbling on several days ago. On trying that, it seemed his tongue shriveled inside his mouth and he drunk the river nearly dry. The fruit had none of the visceral kick of that. There was no need to run for water, which was a relief considering that he was so far above ground. There was just a vague discomfort. A disappointment really. Just like this night.

Washing out the remnants of the taste with whatever spit he could produce, he leaned back and tried to sleep. A broken line of indigo lingered on the horizon but above the sky was black. A faint breeze blew. He held up his hand to air as if giving up an offering and let it take the remaining red dust and bit of stem into the wind. He may have fell asleep a bit after. It was a long climb.

And indeterminate amount of time passed before he found himself staring out into the blackness wide-awake. No. It was not black. He focused his eyes and saw the clouds glide in grey translucent bundles; the flat windows of black sky passing by in-between. And even this was not black, no, the casting of brilliant points of light like glints of sun on water spread over the darkness, perhaps in front of the darkness, perhaps along the front of his eye or perhaps simply reflected off the hair flopping over his face. He turned his head and look, the moon, just revealed from behind a cloud the shape of a clinched fist, glowing full and round and white. Not fully white. It was dimpled with grey at times and then raised again brilliant and new like the speckled stones by his river. He held his hand in the ring above him, holding the moon inside it. He stood up on the branch. His bare feet felt each ridges. His toes melted into the smooth bark like water rolling over fish scales. He could nearly taste it. And the air: a slight warmth and wetness that went unnoticed before. Hand again to the sky, this dark night many hued sky, black of every variety, soil and pupil, panther fur and closed eyelid, deep water and blocked sun blackness, all in a rainbow above and below. He stepped forward foot beside foot with hands spread and arms outstretched and head erect and tall. He closed his eyes, opened his chest and roared into the night.

Book Review: Slaughterhouse Five

People have said that this book is funny and that is true. It’s almost slapstick at times. All the little details clowning the main character: him parading down to Hades in a woman’s muff and Cinderella boots and a purple toga. All as bizarrely, self-referentially ha-ha as that apocalypse episode on Family Guy. Already enough to be worth your time.

And you will have heard that this book is breezy to read and you be dead on. Vonnegut’s short, sharp adjectiveless sentences put some of the modern short prose I have been slogging through lately to shame. Including my own. Call him styleless, but at the very least it is clear that Vonnegut has no need to stall for time before moving to the next piece of action.

But beyond it’s humor, readability and sci-fi strangeness, it’s important to remember that behind it all Slaughterhouse Five is plain, horrifying look at modern, American war. Sure, it’s easy to laugh at Billy Pilgrim’s delusions as he slips from a vomit filled prisoner of war bathroom to an alien zoo cage were he fucks a porn star to crowds of cooing Tralfamadorian tourists.

That’s some funny shit.

But for me, the brilliance of Slaughterhouse is the core of truth within these fanciful escapes. The strange places Billy goes before, during and after Dresden echo the stories we continue to here today by those who fight in wars worldwide. And for these millions of individuals, the search for meaning in the face of man’s justified slaughter of man is no less an odd, scary, ironic and painful funny ride. Welcome to the reality of what we so calmly now label, “Post-Traumatic Stress.”

Vonnegut keeps so many balls in the air in this book it is difficult to keep track them all. His writing style reminds me personally of a refined version of Philip K. Dick. It calls no attention to itself, is not concerned with the beauty of language for language sake and throws out any details not absolutely necessary to the story. Its prose exists for one purpose, to communicate ideas clearly. Unlike Dick though, Vonnegut clearly has a deep connection to his characters and, even in his sparseness, manages to flesh out complex emotions behind the even the most unlikable of people. And these characters vary wildly, from a reclusive sci-fi author to Billy’s bitter patriot of a war buddy to Billy himself, blank, sad, deep and yet clueless.

All these characters exist throughout the 50some years of Billy’s life, a life that seems to be constantly shifting between times, delusions, and memories. This mechanic allows Vonnegut to create amazing parallels between the big events of Billy’s life and make it all feel like some larger statement to some big unspoken question. It is a statement, mind you, both tragic and hopeful, of welcome surrender and pain. 3 times Vonnegut returns to the serenity prayer without a firm statement of meaning. Birds sing as corpses burn.

And always lurking in the background, in what I think is one of the book’s most brilliant moves, is Vonnegut himself, acting both as character and narrator. His sudden insertions come out of nowhere, and never to far from the action at Dresden ground zero. These little reminders keep in fresh in our heads that no matter where the story goes, ultimately this tale of mass-slaughter and spaceships is a true one. Dresden happened and its witness describes 135,000 burned alive there in the interest of peace with the same matter-of-fact plainness as fifth-dimension aliens.

All leaving the reader to wondering after finishing Slaughterhouse Five which circumstance is more fantastically inconceivable. And which one should be.

In the Field: Lettuce Bikini

In this, the first, addition of In The field, Ben Franklin, turkey rights and vegetable bikinis!

Check here for more!

Current

Cracked apple skins cast metallic glows
on empty library tables
and somewhere a disk spins for you.

Growth rings of spare thoughts are carefully etched
in square sterile packs
like initials scratched in wet driveway.

Keep your hands in the dirt
feeling for tendrils of 4th degree friends-in-law
paired through shared ska bands and live diatribes

grow friend trees until they’re leafless
leave tags online like hazard signs
bridge the missing links

chance sightings ride in the currents,
lie bloated out on the beach,
waiting to be hauled through the town square.

Milk white sheets sit
inches away from our fingers
as bits flip for new key hits

and instantly seeds of silicon,
digit filled and freshly referenced,
bubble up.
_________

A common subject for me. Something about the potenial of social networks just gets my mojo work, ya feel me? So much potential this sudden ablity humanity has to be linked, beyond language or space or time, all one degree of separation from each other. Exciting time we are living in. Exciting time.