If only I could type it in a crisper way than this
to spell out why I try and play
a buffer-role and sit
guessing at the aspirations,
how to curb chance-machinations
of our absurd, undeterred techno-globalization.

This age for cheap is offering
to keep open the gate
the flood of infotainment
acting less like food than bait
only certain spaces in which we can feed and wait.

A storm gathers just off horizon
its soundless thunder rumbles
its dark clouds heavy glint of gold,
but what rocks it holds would care
to serenely come and tumble down
on heads that do not glance around?
From this we will need shelter or at least a wary mind…

So it is that I and accompanying allies strain and scrutinize,
future-wise puzzle-piecing new maps to help us navigate a world
brimming full of bullshit and apparently-free crap.
A legacy we hope to leave
(my part albeit incomplete)
to guide those unborn future flocks of man and
the info-shocked, sadly-vision-blocked souls living
who may yet know to use discretion sometimes
in keeping open for too long their minds for just a dime.

All of us, don’t we need sound notification on the nature of
our own bloating meta-predatorary creation?
It seems something is waiting to snatch up idle ripe minds
to be its bio-platforms, do its ghostly calculations,
become its meme-arrays and unknowing-slaves…
The risk is if we end up biting every byte we see
(we think this data-lunch is free)
effectively lambs feeding from its trap we will be!

Digitally-versed, the buffers’ and shepherds’ work
is to clear a path wide enough for sheep to skirt temptation,
to keep them away from the ever-swelling impulse-inertia,
their desire for satiation
that leads them to trough in underheated isolated chambers
from which all but pre-made thought can escape un-rearranged.

Beware these rains inside will fall
black stones straight through the roof,
and the sheep who do not hear the call,
those too media-jacked-in and enthralled,
will be submerged and drown aloof.

Poems on activist hypocrisy.
From a book called “Burning the Anarchist Bible: Cynical poetry for those fed up with dogma”

RACIST

he was a big guy, chicano, bisexual
nice as folks come
didn’t smoke but bummed for his friends,
kill whitey patch on his knee.

he chuckled at a rape joke once
and has been raped himself
but people don’t disclaim that
when they painfully laugh.

so a white woman turns on him
there is nothing funny about rape.

she calls him a straight white male
who would therefore never have to deal with rape.
the only word she got right was male.
he calls her sexist.

she learns that he is chicano
and her story changes.
she explains that in the same way
that he, chicano, couldn’t be racist
against her, white
she, woman, couldn’t be sexist against him,
male.

“I was raised a racist,” he replies,
“by militant chicano seperatists.”
with her choice anti-racist views
she had denied the struggles he had
against his own internalized racial
bigotry.

but that’s okay, because later he became
too racist against us good white folks
or something
and we had to kick him out.

FEMINIST

she gave three men, crusty punks, a ride
six hundred miles.

of course, she bought all of the gas.
of course, they didn’t know how to drive.

“why do you own a car?” it was their refrain.

she played the radio and drove them
most of the way up the west coast
to their green anarchist gathering.

on the stereo, political rap.
“if a woman ain’t down, she can never
really be your wife.”

“turn that sexist shit off.” it was their chorus.

“look, I am a woman, and it doesn’t offend me.”

sitting shotgun, one took the opportunity of
turning that sexist shit off for her.

“just because I am a man, doesn’t mean
I can’t be a feminist.”

HOMOPHOBE

years ago in high school
I was no anarchist.
I thought laws could solve the problems of oppression
and I thought rules should curtail improper behavior.

we formed the gay-straight alliance
to let everyone know that homophobia was going to stop.

one day a teacher taught us that fanny packs were for fags
and I used to respect that teacher
but I told him I didn’t appreciate gay jokes.
three other memebers of the gay-straight alliance
who were in the class with me
tried to turn invisible.

he told me that it wasn’t serious.

I told him the law against queer discrimination
in the public schools of our county.

his eyebrows dropped in anger
his old broken hands wrung themselves
“if you want someone to understand you
or comply, the worst possible way is
to quote law at them, to tell them
what they can and cannot do.”

I was silent and self-righteous at the time
but he was right about law.

I still don’t appreciate gay jokes.

SPECIESIST

there was a campfire in the woods, of course
and we soberly plotted authority’s demise. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, I know corrosivity is not a word as far as you’ve heard. It is a novel combination of corrosive and acidity to me. Because I didn’t want to write ‘an ocean of acidity’ — it’s not right, not P.C., err, I mean it’s not P.H.! (Gee…) Simply equip and tip in a ton of tums to neutralize the acidic H-2-O blip; not the right video-clip. So, corrosivity it is…

And let’s get it clear: I’m here not to neutralize the seas by puffin’ calcium into the breeze. Creating a ton of anything is hard work for me, being a crab astrologically. So, what to do in a corrosive ocean? What’s the potion?

I see my buddy Pisces afloat and adrift, aloft and aloof in a fantasy of idea thrift. I know not to follow so as not to get lost. And I also can’t abandon my aqueous ship there, boss. The depths being so well-equipped to my elusive style of image-shift.

And a playful warping of the story verbosely is not the essence of this poetic trip. So I digress — unless… No. The real question is not how to rhyme this session, but how to stay solid in a corrosive ocean where you know-not-what-means-stolid.

When you live underwater, the world is heavy. Ideas are tempting but can drag you down fishy rabbit-holes quick. Mystery and deception, image and self-defense protection not a problem for the clawed-crawling-shelled-crusty creatures like me-myself and a few other watery-signed-types on the shelf. But with an ocean of emotive ideas at my finger-claw-tips, and the schools of benign-looking hook-hidden pips, the challenge remains to open-shell with the proper currents and down comrades at my hip.

Open too much and pure-essence is leaked.
Too little and neurotic claws begin to auto-collapse on the allied-peeps.

So, to flow or to swim is the question to let sink in. To roll in the under-tow or no?

And the best way for us, these crustaceans, not-to-crack, is to never let this very question stab us in the back.

I’m totally a slow grey monkey,
clinging onto the highest branch I can,
trying to get into the sunlight…

AVERAGE OUT

raining patterns drop
their meanings lost stopped on the
black umbrella tops

~

OPTION MAZE

where is the exit?
lost in a supermarket
must i buy something?

~

IMPLANT

work implant installed;
in the mall, in the forest,
wireless slavery.

— DANGER. Beyond here be dragons. —
“Shouldn’t we turn back?” begged a little voice.

The courage to continue into the unknown
comes from realizing, from seeing
that moving into the abyss
is more important than remaining in the light,
safely and in fear.

The future contains within it many dragons
so we imagine them to be:
Black-tar-slimy-poison-death,
Red-fire-blood-crimson-pain,
Blue-ghost-lonely-rainy-mist, and
Yellow-sick-fever-rotting-mold.

But it’s the imaginary dragons that are the nastiest…

What we know, all of what we know, we have seen.
And a purposeful life, a life of learning,
requires forward movement
into shadows that strangely gain illumination,
fading as we are almost upon them.
Feet falling swiftly onto ground — solid ground,
brown or grey or green,
and again we are suprised to find it not so full of darkness
as we had imagined it to be.

Beyond here be dragons?
The clearest sign of what we need to do.
Stomp out the unknown darkness.

Herein lie future-wise explanations
for why even though nothing I type here is reflected back into my eyes,
my fingers still move letters on up to the blanketed electrical opulent sky.

And I don’t have a clue why this has to be written
except that it helps me to fill in the space
between me and my greatest most creative pace.

But it will come through the years of hard work I believe in.
Something like this very piece I believe in.
Something like this that others will enjoy as peace within.

Because passion, when true, is a trustworthy guide.
And the passion is true and is turning the tide
And so, it says, to you, alongside,
“Will you please come with and join us my friend?”

And so you wonder if it is
so that together we can be as one in fact.
But no, it’s a bit more recent, with a little bit more tact,
that in the quoted lyrics of the splendid flaming lips
my passion grabs the mic of unison and shouts out just this:

Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize that we’re floating in space?
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
let them know you realize that life goes fast.
It’s hard to make the good things last.
You realize the sun doesn’t go down,
it’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round…

This too comes from the flaming lips. Enjoy the ever prescient glimpse.

I think I just flowd.