Poems

Here are some samples of my poetry.

Pessimism Is The End

To the pessimist pain
is just a part of punishment.
To the pessimist abuse
is just a price to be paid.

The end of history is
only inevitable to those
who leave imagination behind. To turn away from dreams,
to deny the struggle its suspense…

To the pessimist life
is just an unfortunate fact of death.

Poem In Which I Express Myself Honestly And Succinctly

I think definitely it has to do with

Your glasses.

Not just your glasses

But something about them

Told me things that seemed unlikely

But all of the things turned out to be

True.

WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE FOR ENDLESS WAR 

    The war
  is not badly
  executed or
  aimless or
      failed.

That’s a common
misconception.

The war is
a permanent
system of global
management using
violence and conflict
to sculpt world events
in favor of certain
american
interests.

It is a genre of theatre.

It is a play
First directed
By Henry Kissinger,
its last true innovator.

The play is written
everyday by advances
in technology, international
crises, quasi-democratic
elections and, primarily,
by the inexorable
advancement of
unfettered capital
and political expediency.

Millions of innocent lives lost,
uncounted pains inflicted,
every ton of uranium
formed at the start
of the universe
packed into
bullets into
deserts into
            flesh
are open to interpretation.

The play has
no planned ending,
but theoretically, it can’t
keep going on like this.
  Not forever.
      Can it?

There Is No You 

In the park, reading Neruda i realize
There is no you for this poem to be dedicated.
I want you in the park but have no you to want.
There is no you, there is no one.

I’m alone.
I’ve written all the poems I can write this way.
I’m alone now.
Now I am yearning for you, but how can I write it this way?
I am alone and there is no you and I am yearning.

I wonder how long.
How long haven’t I known you?
Where did you go then & what are you now?
Why and how do I go on wanting you?
Wanting no one.

Ode

To me
reading is
less about
reading
than it is
me,
running
down a hall,
tearing open
each door I find
and peering inside,
again and again,
forever,
looking
for someone,
something to fall in love with.

Two Professionals

Sometimes, I scramble
to my phone in the middle of the night
to tell you some crazed scheme.

I’m always panicking
that I’ll forget if I fall asleep.

Last week I texted you:
Let’s be art thieves.

Tonight I texted you:
We need to use a contact mic to record someone’s heartbeat going gradually from panic to calm. Maybe mine.

It’s a good idea, for a project,
for us. Something fun we can do together.
Two professionals.

Sometimes my heart panics at night
when I think I could love you

Deja Vu

I am thinking
of the warm
close silence
before a kiss.

Between us,
I think it won’t happen.
But that silence
feels as if it’s already begun.
I don’t know 

what will happen next
between us.
But now I am living
in that silence.
Waiting.

Yelp Review, Wishbone,
11/18/16

Very good chicken tenders. The sandwich is skippable, though. The sandwich is underwhelming, here. The sandwich is utter trash. I don’t like the roll. I don’t like the tomato marmalade. I don’t like the illusion that eating here does not contribute to a cultural death-spiral that commodifies artistic conceits faster than we can produce them. I open my eyes. I am in a war. I know that the flash of starlight is not a star, is actually the scope, is actually death’s fingernail. I know that tragedy is an endless cycle that perpetuates meaningless violence. I know that this is not a desirable form of freedom. I know that there is no judgment after death. I know that judgment starts and ends here. I know that there will never be another good idea, ever, because humanity has systematically consumed and digested centuries of good will. I don’t like sauerkraut. The cayenne pepper in the limeade was a pleasant surprise.
But it’s not enough.
2 of 5 stars.

Pretend Telegram


TO: MY PRETEND WIFE


FROM: MY PRETEND TURKISH PRISON


(PRETEND AUGUST SEVENTEENTH,


PRETEND NINETEEN FORTY-SEVEN)


——-

PRETEND MUTINY WAS UNSUCCESSFUL

STOP

MAY NOT SEE YOU SOON

STOP

MY PRETEND HEART IS PRETEND KILLING ME
STOP

and so is all this pretending about you..

it isn’t spoken

the candidity
of the secrecy of the
love of our shyness
toward one another was
more than I could take
another year of another
phase of another threat
of breaking. so I stopped. goodbye.