the world

I want to eat the world

I want to close my eyes and

I want tomato rain to fall on me,

the last unconscious being, and then

wake up

I want to sing forever

and then stop suddenly

I want to destroy this desk

and throw pieces at you

people I want to

be invincible but still wonder

what death must feel like

maybe I could kill someone

and then apologize and wake him up

and ask what it was like

maybe I could eat

one piece of the world at a time,

sure, that’s what I’ll do, and eventually

I’ll get to all of it.

I think I’ll start with the edible things.

Maybe I could sit down and talk to someone

on the sidewalk and learn the purpose of

matching color schemes.

My stomach feels like I swallowed a yell

and I want to vomit it out.

but maybe a yell is part of the world,

so I’ll keep it down.

You can learn something, sitting on the

sidewalk talking to strangers about the old wars and

watching them tear up and choke with crazed crazy grief.

I’ll have to swallow this paper eventually too

and then all of this will be gone forever

unless it’s somehow

miraculously

metaphysically preserved,

or the collective unconscious

commits it to memory.

this time

Time is a leaking faucet,

annoying as hell and

persistent as a bitch.

In the same way

blood can be wiped nicely off

a leather seat if you clean it soon enough,

I can clean my mind

of everything, and you’ll never see

what was there.  It’s

clean

and empty

as the back-seat –

the man whose blood’s been cleaned

probably dead by now.

But we still can smell the unseen

blood underneath the seat

that I missed with the once-over,

smell it cook

in the heat of the sun.

Friends get in my car and ask,
what’s that smell?

and I tell them,

I don’t know.

If he’s dead, he’s dead.

Is it true that

the pain of the lost

is God’s smile

and their torment

His grin?

Is it true of the man burning in hell,

oh well,

he deserves that shit and we don’t,

and right is right

and wrong is wrong,

is it true I am right,

you are wrong,

is right true?

is wrong?

I sing my own demise.

Greet me sweetly,

oh demise,

come when I’m not looking

come when I’m down

come like the first time I saw a woman

come like a sunset

if the sun was a mass of burning truth.

Muse, sing in me

if the muse is my demise,

and my demise is love given to me but

withheld from me to others.

Time is a bleeding man

moaning MY FUCKIN ARM when he’s conscious of it

and otherwise dead wait.

WHY

YOU'RE YOUNG AND SO AM I BUT

EVENING IS COMING SOONER THAN WE THINK

AND WE WILL NEVER FIGURE OUT THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION WHICH SITS QUIETLY IN THE BACK OF OUR MINDS - THAT SAD QUESTION - THAT INERTIA - 'WHY?' - WHY, WHO SITS AND WAITS BUT WE'LL TELL HIM,

NEVER MIND

AND ENJOY EVERY DAY OF OUR VAIN LIVES UNDER THE SUN

THE DEVIL IS UNDER MY SOUL
AND THE DEVIL IS COMPLACENCY
AND THE DEVIL IS KIND
AND HE IS LOVELY
AND I LOVE HIM
AND I WILL KILL HIM MYSELF
IF I CAN,
IF I WANT -
I ALWAYS WANT
AND NEVER DO,
NEVER CAN