Two More From ArtWërks

1.

The streets have been full for centuries.

Even if the buildings were to disappear

tomorrow, these streets would remain

filled end to end and side to side

with memories and with ghosts

and with the specters of memories.

In the dirt between the bricks

there is a memory

locked in stone and pebble

rubble and rabble

memory that filters down

and into the water

and from the water

into the dirt

and from the dirt,

it is rubbed into the soles of our shoes

and we remember again

all the things we didn't know

that we didn't know – comes to us

in dreams and in visions

and in visitations that,

if we're paying attention

will tell us the way

we are to go.

2.

So sit down here

and tell me a story

and make it a good 'un

like the one you told me

yesterday. Tell me

about one of the places

you frequented when you were

young, and fresh the fruit was

and how the women were sweet and ripe 

and how clear and how cool

the water was and what it

felt like to really sleep,

to sleep out in the open

under the stars and what it felt like

to feel safe and to feel free

to feel something different

before all the fences and wires

and wireless was all built up

back before there were gate keepers

and invisible gates

back when you were my age

and the world was something more

beautiful than it seems today.

[Scratch]: Palm Poem #7

Palm Poem #7

I've had my gutful of somber
And my heart can't take it anymore.
My heart beats in common time
And when I close my eyes
I feel the Earth move symmetrical
And when I breathe
It comes out my lungs
Hot like coal fire
Cool like the wind
From a late Spring storm.
All the words are my words;
None of the blessings belong to me.
In the beginning of the words
I found the beginning of me,
Moving symmetrical,
Lumbering over the thin skin of this tired world,
Seeing the new world coming
Popping up through the dead dirt
Plate tectonics, igneous shoulder blades
Born into the Sisyphus stone.

You could drive yourself crazy looking for a reason

The world is wobbling on its axis and ice caps are

melting and we're punching holes in the ozone

so we can have cars that will give us Facebook updates

and satellite radio and heated seats to keep our flabby

asses warm. Once, I heard the atom described as mostly

empty space that holds the power of the universe. We

are made of atoms. I am made of atoms. This desk

is made of atoms. This computer, my coffee mug, the coffee in it,

my scotch glass – all made of atoms vibrating so fast that they,

that we all give off the illusion of being solid. Once

I wrote a poem in ink that disappeared as I wrote it

and it was the best poem I have ever written. That I can

no longer read it, takes none of this away from me –

though I wish I could remember just one line. The lines

were made of ink strokes that were made of atoms,

and I knew the poem was good because it had no choice

but to vibrate differently. The bombs we make are made

of atoms, too, and we think they are destroying things –

houses, families, men, women, children, tanks, guns, soldiers

– when in fact it simply shocks them, makes them vibrate

different –the illusion of death and of destruction. Which

is to say, one could say that the only difference between

an effective bomb and an effective poem is the carnage

left behind – or the illusion of carnage. The world is

wobbling on its axis and the ice caps are melting and we

are punching holes in the ozone so that coal companies

can exploit workers in the mines and be able to breathe

the filtered air found in executive office buildings

and vacation retreats in Dubai. I love Beethoven, I think

because there's something in the vibration of his compositions

that matches the vibrations of my soul. I dislike Handel

for the exact same reason. Earthquakes in New Zealand

and Japan on the news in between updates on coked out

megalomaniacs, political sex scandals, and Reality TV.
The world is wobbling on it's axis and the religiholics

scream that the end of the world is near... not realizing

our end was in the beginning, and that all of this

has happened before. (And it will happen again.)

We lost our sense memory – an altered vibration, nothing

more – in the same way we now lose emails in spam filters.

The only difference is we notice the emails are missing.  

Backtracking

The man wearing the bright green

bib overalls, he told me two lefts

and half a mile past

where the barn burned down

and all those pigs died. Then I’ll see

a sign pointing the way back

to the intersection where

I should’ve stopped and

asked for directions

but was being too stubborn

in my insistence that we follow

the path of the waning sun

to our next destination.