Machiavellian Trash

my treasured inclination to write  is perpetually undermined  by a certain (controllable?)  thirst for alcohol and  a dog- or goat's hunger for smoking.  I most frequently arise in the morning in one of two separate ways:  like a deva content with its record of lives, jellyfish eyes leaning above the horizon of its definite uncertainty, or:  a dumb hungry ghost slowly bracing  through the routine trials of capitalist poverty.  I am a victim supporter child employee or  the human race, currently residing  in the state of New York, in America  where the pale temptation of gossip possesses  far, far too many of the mouths & brains that would benefit and blossom  in that moment when its shadow  peeled away.  I still have a couple swallows on this beer, plenty of cigarettes  till the sun tumbles away.  I need 3 seconds for the giraffe  to remember his purpose, the  wolf snorts at the rattl...

there's this scene in Charlie Wilson's War  where the late, beloved Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character is vociferously undressing the ego of another man with significantly more power.  besides the fact that Hoffman's character is  the erudite son of a hardworking immigrant  and has legitimately achieved what  might be any noble child's dream,  is this hammer.  it's a hammer in the toolbox of a near-by janitor.  it becomes beheld by Hoffman's hand like  a lightening bolt tucked within its sky.  the action of chaos glitters, falls into the temporary horror  of the room.  Michelangelo sculpted David.  da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.  some other people, more recently, made  this.  **** 

a man walks with a woman  talking about something I can't identify  while  I lean between a heavy dufflebag and the wall  of a semi-abandoned building.  I'm trying to look for poems.  it isn't working.  I'm in a shallow grave of resources  waiting for the ripples  to bring me a line.  hip-hop clouds linger at the periphery.  I'm not sure how far my writing should go.  one day the shadows will cover my  last  spoken  moments.  **** 

the gods of mercy have their fingers  in everything of the day as the  recent memory of  sheets of snow  peeling magnificently from  the crowded city rooftops  and their inhabitants  and Mother Gaia whispers  coins of good chance  into the grateful pockets  of bums and poets...  things diminish quietly  in their cost as  one finds more, finds value  in the light trickle & flash  of dopamine  reminding breath of  its purpose.  **** 

I'll infrequently find myself  somewhere especially hospitable--as  though the sky were pealed back further  away from the Earth by visible  miles. like Dr. Gonzo & Raoul Duke  in the godforsaken desert save  you're in the favor   of the gods--not  their disapproval.  there's a deficit, to my clever,  greedy mind, of convenient places to  rest if one is homeless. there are  options, certainly, but they are  sparse and often fouled  with the unwanted presence  of stupid people, homeless and housed  alike.  for now, the tender generous  daring sun has opened  her arms to us all:  your scars and hassles and  tragedies  are inarguably  the watermark of  your efforts and a great creature dwells  in the thoughts of  the one who would  search  for  it.  **** 

all humans have approximately 8 distinct emotions that  cooperate undermine inter- reference one another in either pragmatic  or multitudinous ways.  these would include: anger, contempt  forgiveness...charity...generosity  alertness, pride...the depressed manner  that accompanies lack of education... the unsuppressed joy that accompanies  hope for education...  I don't pretend sovereignty is  a guarantee: innocent children  regularly starve to death  with their fate loud as billboards  even as the water of their lives  is robbed of smart questions for itself. but...for facts dumb as stone & dead leaves and the inescapability of chance  something progresses.  our Brahma Vishnu Shiva-sensibilities  collide and transpire with  the keen luck of their intentions  shape and assemble  the mountain  that directs all feet to a better future:  where the soft, stubborn glow  of enligh...

~ a moment of silence for us all,  especially  what sorrow and grief and  shit are included without  effort or question,  a moment of silence to count  so many spilled drinks, spilled days  spilled days answers hopelessly squandered requests to  so many unwilling ears --  a moment of silence for  so many cars that won't start  in  amazing, agonizing failure,  watch your breath shrink to an  unbelievable fullness,  the dumb paper leaf remembers so much  the shadow is consumed by the darkness.  ****  birds and dogs  chirp bark whisper  crazy promises into  the timid winter afternoon like  easy flannel footsteps  gossiping  into nowhere.  **** 

 glass ~ even the routinely-poor are afforded  some small mercies and graces --  earlier, today, for instance  a discreet 3-panel  animation of a woman  smoking in close-up  of narrowing proximity  rolled into my periphery of  a sudden at the weedstore  and, tonight, outside the church  where my eyes close to some rest:  the fierce stone of the architecture  spraying indismissibly into  the moment...  ...when counselors,  nurses,  clerks, interviewers,  doctors, various staff  ask me why I consume  alcohol to the degree I do,  this is what I can't remember  or manage  to tell them, this  perpetual, permanent  withering, something abundant yet  feeble in its abundance, the glass  before something else  that always  was.  ****  razorblades  ~ stuff this into your brain:  there's this overflowing pile  of billions and more...

none spoke spanish in either  of the houses my parents  Natalie & I shared in youth  nor in the decades after  my Scottish-Spanish Filipino father relented from this finally inhospitable  earth.  nor do we confess, remember stories and opinions  of Grandpa Bob's German ancestry  while pledging support in World War  Two nor Grandma Violet's endurance  of soft Italian racism only  the humble resilience mentioned  in photographs  bare of context & personal signature.  it's why I love, adore, sometimes-worship  American morality: these grades for  honor  pinned upon the uniforms of ordinary people...yet  for the name of any good blood at all  would seek a coherent language  and inquire its neighbors, partners  to speak them.  **** 

if there are any criminal aspects to  be considered in my character or  personality they are few. they aren't  loud or daring, the sorts of things  serious or enthusiastic criminals would  take credit for: no assaults no murders  no stolen cars (although I did once enjoy  a very hyperactive & profitable summer  with my friend Casey in High School  shoplifting this medium-sized plaza  for just about anything a teenager  could stuff into a bookbag ...)  nor does my appearance inspire immediate concern,  sober, outrageously intoxicated or any of  the many, many stages in between: in my  private thoughts I demand a peculiar scrutiny  regardless of success/failure ratios  and likelihoods and reasonability and  so forth, but ... socially I am often docile  and quite willing to betray honor for  practical convenience ...  this to say: some dozen, give or take, open- container tickets ha...

woke up to some relief, some resolution  of social commitments, dressed by the  light of the churchbasement-window: discount italian breakfast before smoking & toothpaste before an early departure to the halls of justice... I don't  think it's all stress and hallucination and  personal dysfunction -- Lord Buddha help me to cooperate help my rotten feeble soul  to repent its unrighteous karma...  later... I let my feet walk around  in the earth of themselves, got  something to drink, unnamed  birds about their business, the activities of the noble and deeply satisfied.  ****  of a calm sudden the words arrive with a seminal, palpable ease --  3/4 thoughts set in unlikely realities  like pothead apophenia pressed into  a firm crust --  despite the endless/choice  between minimalism and maximalism  despite the regular overcrowding of  potato people with- and with- out cellphones despite losing or ...

if there's some habit, vitamin, pharmaceutical that corrects short attention spans I haven't seen it.  all day long my eyes drown in the hapless, abject conformity of turdsuckers overpiling with words and not a flare of meaning or  whit discernible,  their voices trapped in some world before language: immigrants of this unwanted country this timeline all futures would beg to be spared from-- the leaves and the rocks and the wind and what else move in the space of the expanding universe and I try  to meditate on the respiratory habits of fish: those whose ancestors navigated, bred  endured trials century and millennia old, hungry, thinking creatures with a perception older than dinosaurs, citizens of a world no name has been provided.  **** 

the Dharma pivots, arrests what will is offered to and supplicates  its low purpose: the narcistic and  and the gullible alike undermine  themselves long before dawn's fate.  ...and yet authenticity cringes, prays for itself in its uncertain, fragile condition... the thunder of millions of young people -- either genuinely or fashionably professing  for the reparation of humanity's well- recorded flaws, deficits, embarrassments --  the anger, contempt of their hungry, skillful number nearly matches the stupidity  they are following in history.  I'm old as far as the numbers go (42 in Feb. '26) so it's funny to remember, to have been  alive to witness when the tides of reality-t.v. programs and Win-a-Bride/Husband gameshows were gradually re-placed by anyone  with a pen & paper and a room to post a camera in, like some Renaissance  of the worlds before their industry, forking sharply left, forking sharply right.  ...but I hav...