Arboreal

Night arboreal apes.
Limbs. Dead limbs, knowledge - we are apes.
Isn't that obvious. Yes it is.

Play with instinct. Trust yours and see theirs.
They gave it away
A dream
A fantasy built from fragmented information
To see
To hear
To smell
Touch the surface. The skin.
Zero dimension
What does it all add up to?
A pretty little simulation run by
Software. Patched up.
The Tower of Babel
The Apple
It's overkill
A rampant virus
Sucking it dry
For the sake of a stupid make believe game.
Is there any other way?
Not really,
We are just a step.
The next step can be whatever we want it to be.
A string of fuzzy bits collapsing,
Made un-fuzzy

Oxygen

as we grow older
the world becomes stranger
this is where I begin
if I could figure
why I'm big sinner
why I waste my time
in between sentences
that's where I've lost my mind
I can see the cycle
in a half circle coffee stain
there's rust in my brain
that's mostly the oxygen
counting the ways that somehow
don't matter at all
this is where I end
in the middle of nowhere
it's only small comfort
for those in my wake
this is where I end

Fusion

The thoughts of the afternoon were liquid in their beauty
the far way penny popping stranger walks along the roadside
I tell you, the air shifts in hills and valleys and you hear
The colors are a drip drip drip away from being real
But it's all fake, it's all a lie, a big drip drip way
A faint smile way, it's not as dark as you think
it's darker still, it's dark as rain, dark as thermonuclear fusion
offered as a distraction, a way to fight time.

Breathe

Keep your head above the water and breathe, big deep breaths. I feel strange these days. Like any day, any minute, something terrible'll happen. Fatalism is not good for the morale. I want freedom, yet I shackle myself. Go figure, it's the old cliché: I'm my own worst enemy. Life is life is life and there ain't nothing else, so get used to it. That's it. There should be something more, but no. I know. I'm just human, it's normal to want to be God. Almighty. To shit thunder and lightning. But no. I'm small. And yet: I am everything. I feel strange these days. The past is two dimensional. A narrative with blurry pictures and film. The future is black or white, never any shades of grey, it's hope and despair, it's either/or. Just two compartments. Cynicism is the denial of hope, even though it's there. The present, this minute, this second, is a dream. A fancy patchwork of colors and shapes and emotions. Try telling me you had a choice, back then. Making a list of what you've done. I'm not sure anymore. I'm an old lab rat. Conditioned. Bury me in an old shoe box. Flush me down. I feel strange these days.

Blink

This house is full of ghosts, spun webs and wind
Twenty five years ago, as seen on film
It was alive, with sun and light and joy
Tall grass, green eyes (strobe light without a noise)
The walls are stripped bare, the ceiling destroyed
What's left? Just the dream, in a corridor.
Night light, square tiles, all three doors are closed
Down stairs, turn right, on a carpeted floor
His ashes condemned without a fire
Raindrops on broken glass and rusted nails
The sun is bluer these days, it's colder
The smell of wood, smoke, my face has grown pale
Blink once, warm light, bedside, I fall asleep
Blink twice, blue light, nightlife, dead on my feet.

Angstrom Phillip Woodwim

Ben-Fulton in the Mist

Figures in windows with grass coming out of them;
Ben saw the river, water-ful and pulling with the moon
The moon in a coffee spoon, swooning with the lady
The lady counting sugar cubes
Cubes of mathematics
Because she was lonely
Lonely in the mist near the river with the figures
In windows with grass coming out of them.
Petite femme dans le gazon, aime moi,
Comme ces figures dans les fenêtres
Avec du gazon et la lune et le sucre en cube
Dans ma cuillère dans ma tasse le matin;
Tu es mal-odorante. Ma femme mon amour
Dans la brume qui marche.
Wo wohnst du, mein bitte kleine fraulich!

To Woo

Not John Woo. He is my enemy.
I have heard the flight of
Fiery bullets in the night
Through the very essence of my being
I have many masks, and one vision
Of birds boring into my brain
My skull cavity transpersed
Transversed, violated, for I have
In one man, found my nemesis.
He is John Woo.
Every man is so special. But John Woo.
He is evil.

Angstrom Phillip Woodwim (1819-2026) was born in Manchester, Kentucky, in a small baseball park overlooking a town. On a beautiful morning in August 1917, Angstrom found a minute (read: small) time machine on his porch and travelled back to 1775. He never returned. He wrote black poetry on sheets of granulated paper which he had customcrafted by the smith of the Indian village in which he never perished, later to be read by mankind, better than Shakespeare, for whom he had no respect. But he loved Queen Elizabeth. Ben Jonson, once wrote of Woodwim: "He truly is of this age. For many years birds on his balcony crapped on his poems and his neighbors burned his books (several times he was burnt at the stake by angry villagers) and for his blasphemous poetry, women shunned him and gave him smallpox. He is a true luminary, the precursor of the french movement led by Charles Baudelaire. Although his poems were all written in german, and his toes were not unlike Yeats' toes, his poetry was never recognized in Ireland."

Grey Suit

I'm on my way to a place where the sun appears at irregular intervals, a place where no one sleeps. A man in a grey suit knocks at my door, like he's done a thousand times. I wonder if he would come if I asked him not to. I don't sleep, ever; I look at a stream of letters, they're not talking to me. Just one symbol at a time, for ever. And the man at my door (I wish he wouldn't come so often) I wish he never existed. Like a starving animal exhaling for the last time I think: why bother? If I ask him, will he go? Knock. As I'm looking through the peephole I realize he's the only thing I can count on. Not the sun, just a man in a grey suit. Knock.