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January 21, 2008
Do others not err?
Do others not err as I do,
Or if they do, do they not feel
The shame of having caused pain, the anger of frustrated ambition,
As acutely as I do?
It must be so, for to me it seems abnormal—
My too-frequent encounter with the experience
Or else its effect on me.
To do bad by seeking good,
Not through carelessness only, which
If it were so would baffle me less.
Do others not know the feeling?
After thoughful consideration, or sometimes with rash enthusiasm,
And with vigorous application of what wisdom and skill twenty-five years have brought me,
Not only to fail, but to succeed at the opposite of my aim,
To harm that which, though needing help,
Would have been less badly off if I had not tried to help it.
What agony! To sin by striving,
To be worse than useless. To endure and submit to
The awful suppression of my own good intention.
August 16, 2008, after reading Leaves of Grass
Architeuthis
Architeuthis dwells
In the pelagic depths
Beneath the archipelago.
April 29, 2009
Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
November 6, 2009
experts
you can't always have your windows installed by experts
every expert is a non-expert at first
it takes some time
installing windows crooked
until you learn
if experts left no room
for non-experts
there would be no experts
but if there are no experts
then there's plenty of room
so I guess it self-regulates
somewhat
April 16, 2010
Sometimes I think about
The days when I really had my shit together
(Modulo a girlfriend)
And I wonder if it was as together
As I thought
Or if I even thought so
At the time
May 7, 2010
Cumulus
Dusk. Hugh (stud), Lulu (slut) drum up fun.
Lulu pulls up duds. Hugh cups Lulu’s bust, Lulu’s rump.
Lulu usurps Hugh, sucks Hugh’s upthrust pup.
Hugs, huh? Nuns must shun lust.
Hugh, nuts unslung, tups dun Lulu. Thumbs rub Lulu’s dugs.
Hugh grunts. Lungs full: Lulu’s musk.
Push, pull, push, pull. Rugburn.
Lulu’s “Unnhhh...!” stuns Hugh—Hugh’s junk, up cunt, bursts.
Smut runs.
Clung, flush, unum. Just.
May 13, 2011
Mystery flimflam of thirty different colors of eventide
in whose utterbearing we went to undergo a kind of melting
evanescenc that within the worries of yesteryear were further
away than any of us had hoped I suppose it could onl have been
this way. But whiteher under the forest of the rytu on tu muster
tither furmer the frathy lions that guard the gates in the absence
of the master. Oh! To be yound again. Si ple glabble of underlying
uinty frones that you must have tried once in your youth. Have we seen
yet a dream? Have we seen yet anything? Refreshing though it may be,
I wish that it had all turned out differently. Powerful entities
ar mo repowerful than use, more poserful even that the stars that reign
inheaven. But who could say in any event? This is what happens to
you when you don't take care of yourself. If under the if under the
forth trees that live upon the deep of underlying forty slithering forther
blastness that in your eyes ites that if iters tuthor fornicating
with each other and within each other in obscene circles.
Well, what's it going to be then? This s what you wanted,
you might as well enjoy it. Thirty times, thirty timesyou had run
away--why did you come back at all. You ought to have killed yourself there.
Further under the further that you there in the different colors
of evening mist that under the forty under the forest that in the
darkness lies certain creatures,unholy creaturs that bloodthirst
after young ones such asyoyou. Sixty! Why thisppreoccupatio with
numbers? To me it seems unhealthy. OFten I had gone to work andnot
hought about it but not it is something that I just can't avoid
because it has become part of me andpart of all the wornderful
undoings that makeme up. That's something best left to chance.
Not die early, she ssaid. Who would w t to die early? Well, it bears
a bit of thought, at least.
I wish oh I wish that I wish that I had I wish that
there had been I wish I wish don't you? But that's nonsense. You
can't have it, you mustn't wish it. But still, to thin of it! Any-
way that is not a productive line of thinking.
I typed some prose that in the night had been somewhat
meaningful to me but later on had become something unthinkable,
something I wanted to diswon, something I had rather have killed
than borne. Mist of the mountains that inthemountains gives rise to
a rising mist that in the mountains and the mounting maoutinsirs if
ly you had seen back then that it was like, you wouldn't be such
a dick about it now. Why must I walsyways be kind? The other are not
always kind to me. I had rather just gibbe to myself under the is nothing
left butunbut--- un-thought and I am the only one left un-thinking.
Sfixifty or more. That's what it would cost and who c n afford it?
That was a cloeone. Well under theotters that with the underotters
had in their hair a certain suneemliness that belied their
exterme you th that in other circumstance s would have been tragic.
I found it tragic all the same If I smahed up his face then it would be
all right. Why can we not use the simple solution?
Sixty nights of prose. That's all we can afford and it
should be neough to last us. If you want more than that I say you are being
greedy. I typed and typed but under the covers no one could see me
and no one could hurt me. I I I but you and we had but you and I
are all that is left and yo me that's enough.
I read this one at the Spoken Word Collective's open mic on March 9, 2012.