.

Oh,
There
Must be something more you’re seeing.
.
That’s
Why you stare
An extra three seconds
With moonlight, lampshade eyes,
.
Before we
Go do
What I had suggested anyway,
With shaky hands before the closing of one more terrarium.
.
Oh,
There
Must be something more
.
You’re seeing, which is why
I never see you,
You’re hiding
Behind the
Moon’s new phase
With brandished artillery
Pointed at the insides of my eyeballs
To allot frozen meaning down onto individual astrologies
Standing naked on the dunes.

So much wisdom was balled up in the eye roll of the father as he beheld the day.
“Well,” he said. “I guess we gotta go do laundry today.”
They were in America, the land of “tryin’ to get this day over with.”
The kid hung close to his father, mimicking all of his movements, all of his facial expressions. Intermittently, the dad would twitter at the radio angrily, discontent with all of the fluff, the typical capitalistic fanfare, that was coming out of it.
The kid noticed the big hole in the ground.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I dunno.”
A silence ensued.
“Yeah,” continued the father. “I always wondered about that too. I’ll look it up when we’re at Courtesy.”
Courtesy was the name of the laundromat.
The dad started to get nervous a little bit, and started to get the shakes. Plus, he was thinking of Tracy a little bit, this brunette who worked at courtesy. He was a little low on funds, otherwise he’d go pick up a couple of donuts, and a couple of pint cartons of milk, for him and the kid. Luckily, the kid wasn’t saying anything about being hungry or anything. After laundry, it would be back home, where they’d turn on the TV, probably to the news, and witness all the bombings and drudgery going on all across the world. Then, in three days, the kid went back to school. Thank God for that, thought the dad. I’ll be damned if I know what to do with him.
One thing was for sure: fighting was good. All of the virtue furnished in America at this time was more or less directly derivative of military achievements. The other hemisphere of values involved marijuana, and given the slowness of things, the novelty appeal of the fact that the drug had so recently been illegal had yet to wear off. Caring about stuff, or not caring about stuff, were the essential formats of the human mind. On, or off. And look cool, doing either one, and honey, if you’re on, it’s sure hard to look cool.
The dad could sense Tracy smiling at him, but his hands were fidgety down at the change machine, and he avoided her glance. Plus, Christ, he thought, I’m married. But my hands are still shaking, he thought. God must not care about marriage.
The kid was playing this game where he tried to actually run up the wall, sort of like Spider-Man might do. He’d noticed that his dad’s hands were shaking, but he didn’t want his dad to know that he’d noticed. He was just running up the wall, dragging down the heavens, demanding their attention.
Suddenly they heard some clamor from over in the corner. It was coming from some bald dude, and he was issuing an aggressive directive at some old dude.
“Hey, knock it off, motherfucker!”
Some people around him noticed, and all of a sudden their dispositions were cheery. This was a newsworthy event, they thought to themselves. Perhaps even later, they thought, the incident will end in a murder, and channel 10 will show up with cameras. Then they can tell their grandchildren this story of today, that they witnessed, not just any news, but THE news, firsthand, and they didn’t even have to turn on the television. It just fell into their lap, like— like— something they wouldn’t even know the sight of, if it bit them in the god damned face.
Proceeding, Tracy had to go over to the two men and break them up, threatening to call the cops. Outside, some snow started to fall on the gray day. The kid liked snow, and he started peering out at it, as the dad tried to figure out how to afford some donuts, ‘cause he knew it wasn’t long before the kid got hungry. Christ, he thought, what if things would have turned out differently. Like if maybe they lived out in California, or something, or Arizona. He’d heard there was less unemployment out there. But there was no snow out there, and here he was, sitting by his well-behaved kid who got hypnotized just looking at snow, and looking over, he saw Tracy smiling at him, running a hand through her hair. He gazed brusquely back at her and then looked down. Eggshells over the giant hole at the side of the road.

We are waiting
Now
Waiting for the revolution
Which will be retaliatory and bloody
After so many lain slain
Within garish neon lights and street signs
Inundating our mountain valleys and our
Nervous city streets —
We hate,
Because to
Lower ourselves
To a reality of those streets,
We know,
Is non-literary gristle making.

This is just an observation, for anybody concerned: there is some obvious sexism going on in the United States against women, and the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the presidential election is an indication of this. And I don’t even necessarily mean a sexism on the part of the people who voted against her — it’s also evident at the media level, the insuperable hype machine churning out those “e-mail conspiracy” stories, again and again. That was the result of, what, one death of an ambassador? How hard could that be to set up? Even if the initial cause of this hoax against Hillary wasn’t exactly “sexist” in DNA, but rather exacted against her for her being the primary competitor to conglomerate legions which would have wanted Trump in office, the fact of its being able to materialize with such velocity indicates a lack of societal bulwarks PROTECTING women from such scandals. We had a female cop in Oklahoma slay an African American in a criminal altercation, and instantly get prosecuted, whereas the assailants of Alton Sterling had their case “investigated,” male, and have still not had charges brought. The Hillary Clinton vie for presidency would have been the perfect platform for feminists to step out and support the politician’s efforts; yet, we barely saw any zest or zeal for having a woman leader. The reason? Women already rule, in the United States, within the deep, stirring realms of dating and romance, and this provides them with more than enough satisfaction already.
All the time, we hear about feminism. We hear the diatribes of angry females around the nation, claiming that “It’s a man’s world,” claiming how men make more money, and have all the control. Yet, I do not remember one single feminist organization coming out to support Hillary Clinton in the past few years. Part of this, I believe, is a fear on the part of feminists before the idea of a loss of their own hegemonic victimization. As we know, the goal of any activist is to work his or her way out of a job, and joblessness is obviously a scary thing.
But even amidst the moderately liberal women voters in America, those not necessarily given to mounting sanctions against men, but who do believe in big government and safe, legal abortion as leftists should, there was not an overwhelming quarry of the ENERGY to unite. Could it have been fear of being persecuted for said actions by the male governing machine? Probably. And to an extent that’s understandable, or at very least off limits for me as a man to discuss. There is also just the social chasm encompassed by the very act of being different, of creating a CULTURE of maternalistic rule in a nation (which by the way is already in effect in Ghana) — the tentativeness to step out and say something apart from the crushing norm, whatever it may be. One thing seems clear: women already hold an intrinsic power in realms such as dating, so there’s possibly some MERCY being enacted on their part by their allotting men at least the bulk of the power in politics, not to mention some desire on the part of sexist judges to retaliate against the natural primal advantage mentioned earlier.

The sense of urgency on the part of others to make life seem good, and lively, and to express the self with intricate and morally commendable methods, befell the psyche of a five year old girl, in a modern age, as if she were extending her ankles so as better to feel the summer breeze. It’s always there.

Art
Is the activity
Of wresting back for your own
What the world has said
Isn’t yours.

And then, they will tell you that when you
Grow up,
You will find what you want in life
And find success
Which of course presupposes
Everybody not being full of sh**
With smirking faces and deliberate disrespect
The only seeming special of the day
So isn’t it peculiar that
The death of one hated musician,
One hated celebrity
Can make it all seems so small.
.
I just read in a Rumi edition,
Complete,
That the start of humanity was from something like
A vengeful, uncontrolled spasm of
Overly concentrated matter
(Very complete),
And in between we have our births,
We have maybe a little luck,
And we have language,
Which with to do…
What I’m doing now.
At least, this is what I’ve found to do.

Obviously,
This is the last thing you’d ever want to think about —
Preferring beings which actually have a function,
Beings like animals
Brandishing rapid, forceful slaps and noogies
In kindergarten classrooms,
.
So how the rest of us
Will wash up on the shore when
Our time of this miracle is up
And our blood will decay
On the bold, shining sands to
Decompose into another —
We have all won,
Who harbor this impossible light.

I could tell my mom was uneasy when I told her I was looking at a Shel Silverstein book. We were both living with my grandmother at the time. My music collection included The Field’s album From Here We Go Sublime and Throwing Muses’ album Limbo, and my mom’s boyfriend would describe me as “that Socrates-lookin’ dude.”
And yeah, I wouldn’t say I got too much out of Shel Silverstein, at least compared to like Celine, out of whom I got an invincible eye glint which once almost caused my boss to send me home early from work.
But over and over I see it: up pop pop-up books. Children’s books. They were down in Asheville, North Carolina big time, a community of a high prevalence of moms with those baby-carriers in drug and grocery stores. And I’d even peruse them, trying to kill time before going to ABC for a Jalapeno IPA. And there it was: one of them was by e.e. cummings, a favorite poet of mine. I didn’t notice whether any of the other ones were also by poets, but I’m sure some of them were.
In my hometown I read, one time, in a volunteer opportunity, to a class of kindergarteners, and opening up a lot of those books, I got the overwhelming feeling that as a little tot I’d read, and looked at pictures, a lot more than I thought I had. Some of those images, like the “red light green light,” and “Swimmy,” were irreversibly ingrained in my psyche. And it’s just interesting to think about, because little kids can’t go online by themselves, so their literature will always materialize in book form — it’ll always be big and colorful. So it’s possible that, unlike with basically anything else, from food, to music, to basic looks of their surroundings, when it comes to their illustrated, bound publications, they’re actually getting the same exact experience I did when I was young.
As an adult, I find it depressing that oftentimes I want to research a subject, like maybe a mythological figure like Marathon or something, and all of the books available are in the juvenile section. And then I feel stupid going in there, ducking my head down, talking to the overly nice librarians, and making out with this big ol’ goofy thing. But eh, it can be worth it, I guess. As our race continues to precipitate, and we logically quell our own misgivings with intentional, psychosocial baths of light and color, it seems that we have stumbled upon at least one indefatigable industry whose only purpose is diversion, but whose diversion is a wholesome one. I look at the themes still prevalent in kids’ books — animals, and going to the bathroom. Inescapable things of existence. The objectives are simple, and of course all phases of life involve preparation and strategizing, but I guess I can’t help getting jealous when in looking at this particular phase involving the youngsters around, I see that it never changes.

We are more complex than we know what to do with,
And we are more beautiful than we know what to do with —
The only necessary erring,
As we know,
Being the inevitable failure to process
All this beauty,
All this possibility,
All this urge to kill and all this
Urge to find a reason,
Floored into specks once
Again
By the sea shore floor.
.
Music lies in this impossibility,
And as long as its our song
The dandelions see in the sun
And envy,
Then music will ring throughout the land,
And we will all stand in the light.