6 – ian

without hands i should want on knees in front of the sun until the time comes to kill quick under
today’s fluorescent lights, sitting down and eating the bodies
of tomorrow’s predecessors

my mind’s polarization has become too long and untied.
in the interest of human progress
engines kill my nighttime thunderstorm failed meditations

i heard the quiet comments gray
now hot days
inviting back on themselves and me

i saw the grand falsehoods that, grasped by beauty,
hid love in our fingers and
hate in our palms’ perception

i know that it should all please quiet little boys, or anyone’s getdown,
to fulfill all expectations into grass, that is, to make silent

i see all this rather in a field and dirty, not at some time in our modern day
body countable homes, that isn’t what i want-
for girls to recite at eachother with bullets,
devote their hands to absurd children looking at men who
cover their own eyes better than worms or pebbles saying,
“human capacity for love at which most fingers cast the praise
stacked with unnerving precision…”

eyes uneven like bathroom tiles, glances like unsure flashbulbs,
waking with earth stained feet away from me and everyone i meet
i stoop as a child drinking out of cathedral footprints
guttural noises echo out of the human mist

i’m no longer interested in what we call the great curtain

no,
dear aspiring policemen,
children prefer the holy unity of things.

let’s synchronize our eyes,
achieve a perfect pitch in a head of empty streets

stop walking on anymore when your feet are gone-
miles and flights that betray words before i or he get anything
from the wind

for your words i will hand you detached broken ears
ears that float in latent wombs

though surely alone in the cavernous moments of our minds
we can look at our hands like overzealous thoughts
that sought in every facet to escape solitude

and let’s synchronize ourselves
even with this head that looks like it could,
through broken eyes,
see

see the room behind multitudes
see the perfect instrument of what is meant by love

see the approximate glow of light that feels endlessly thick,
the ideal image of design,
a death of lonely definitions,

broken eyes that could see our doctrine republics.

maybe our old minds will scrawl young litanies

but those luminary shadowed figures bend down over my head and whisper
words that run passed ears and into stained gone minds
i lose loose inflections and the sun through a buddha dusk’s smoke
obscures, with indecent regularity, the electricity of unbeknown minds
that i bend through the lens of my eyes

i see the projected image of oneness
inverted and large
covering all i leave

even reversed back through the lens
beauty is a rhythm understood

let’s reverse our eyes and blink into mirrors
let’s look at our souls

realize that these bodies are the image of our capitulated preference
so for your image i will hand you nothing

for your broken ears i will give you mine the same

and we will get nowhere together with lagging vocabularies that sag
under the weight of our words that wither

i see the one time escape of my thoughts
long and free
rewriting all  of me

cut up poetry – ian

(done by writing a dense paragraph that meant nothing and cutting it into four pieces, rearranging the four, and writing down the result, punctuation and line breaks added liberally to attempt to provide some kind of help towards meaning)

1
long days spent in the practice of nothing and everything
my words with no eyes for want
to look is when you don’t feel what you’re wanting

governments all given up and spent on uncounted endless arguments that
end too soon
they don’t feel the mild suggestions, eachother
or anyone in the long dull of grass

moved unchanged over any directionless progressions that cut lovely,
quite lovely, in everything

quit this that feels as if it isn’t,
without hands they should want on knees in front of the sun

on knees in front of the sun until the time comes to kill quick
beautiful as a washing machine alone-wars cast with indoctrinated boys.
hidden backroom visibly:
the words of their parent’s love

for these my only days
to realise or make realisations like:
they relate to what is called the cavernous footprints of history
the youth has given up
in place, god.
then sitting down and eating at the bodies of their predecessors

i’m not interested in what we call the great curtain

2
or the blame
i’m only interested in thoughts and the quickest possible little heads
and maybe in yours

sanity-no hands to want to feel a mind

walking on anymore when your feet are heads that reduce the rest
miles and flights that betray words before i or he get anything from
the wind

or hear the quiet comments grey(now hot days)
of our diagonal kind of ground barren or
inviting back on themselves and me

it should all please quiet little boys, or anyone’s getdown,
to fulfill all expectations into grass. that is, just as to refrain

in a field and dirty not in some time in our modern day
body countable homes, that isn’t what i want,
for girls to recite at eachother with bullets.

devote their hands to absurd children sitting with the men who
cover their eyes better than worms and pebbles, saying
“human capacity for love which most fingers(in the interest of self,
of cold clean detached indifference) cast the praise
stacked with unnerving precision”

3
the ignoble state of the youth
ears that float in latent wombs

decades of hardened stories from eager boys without opportunities
with indecent regularity
inverted and large
covering all i leave

some listening and asking through the lense of my eyes
i see the non youth and the older minded
(perceived separately are only to be firemen)
(to a certain age)
and then to be celebrated and joyous

when reality overcomes aspirations (so often sought and instilled)
to trust the records of time internalised(we all sit alone)
is to sing at the breeze with no one behind you

nonetheless some make records for interest purely in the warmth
of electricity between minds that can never know eachother

4
constant amongst our police minds shot into oblivion by
words over-dropped out of our mouths

the holy representative oneness that though impartial
be seen as all the projected image
hard questions about the youth
or backwords through the lense

dear aspiring policemen,
children prefer the unity of things.

the blackout of uncertainty
a mind whose polarization has grown too long and unstable

in the interest of human progress(folly beyond our hands)
(but in them) there’s no choice
the future that falls upon unborn faces
as perceived by isolate minds

“i like the fine things that wash up in the mind”

5 – ian

voices raised in the end nothing praised
the ground smells of the sun
the grass sits still wet
and i stand thirsty

her latent eyes that i stared past
were just as grass grown over mine
striving for the sun
or the beats and vibrations
that strove to get home
as they flew out and in

feeling rightfully small under the
full tilt stillbare trees of early spring
voices raised and in the end nothing praised

4 – ian

1
here and stand i wonder

i wonder about that dark silhouette
that i spoke to as it cut across
the grass – humbled
by the church a mirage
illuminated white
in the dark damp drizzle
of a spring connecticut night

i wonder still about a night spent there
contemplating indecisiveness in that moist grass
where out of the dark it was said what i had thought
“we walk around eyes on our feet and stub our toes anyway”
then i looked at the steeple there enlightened
and from where my head was nestled
i almost forgot to notice
the spotlights
with visible beams
and pointed directions

and with wonder i remember all the careless saturdays
boarding school nights when
as i walked past
my mind was still hot to change
because of those heads that surrounded me then
filled with thoughts escaping as words
in that heated sincerity of limitless youth

and i wonder almost in disbelief
at the ties and buttons
the books and lessons
these conversations

the way i feel alone in winter
and alive in spring
in the same place

the warm smell of rain
and the metallic taste of snow

and that with these hands i can begin to understand myself
and what that means
and with these eyes i can begin not to see myself
that with this mind-
with this mind i can be nowhere
if anywhere at all

that with these feet i can seem to stand still

that i can stand here with these feet
look past myself with these eyes
find in this mind
the will with these hands
to record a moment

2
the things i have seen with these eyes
and the places my feet have trampled
the foreign conversations through which i’ve stumbled

the strange diagonals and directionless ways
in which i have grown

the sounds people make
the words people use
and the beautiful obscure jumbled minds that
have no limits besides themselves
and the words without pentameters
the sounds that compliment our silence

i wonder at my relatively momentary lapses of wonder

if there is a natural silence
it isn’t a lack of noise

like madness is not a lack of sanity
and hatred isn’t careless

like the raindrops i caught
as i walked through that wet
connecticut spring night
my thoughts fall into my hands
where too often
i drop them

3 – ian

people mistake me for myself
as i float and refuse
why should i seek that kinetic abrasion -
my own realisation?

anyone’s realisation in this long country
anyone’s truth found on these streetcorners of elusive happiness

i’d rather descend instead into the sun and
with melting eyes fail to see
the flames
without ears to hear
and with melted hands i wouldn’t understand

and people mistake you for myself
moving in my head as someone else
can’t you look learned?
point everywhere and lead nowhere

followed giant fingers pointed in the sky
with clenched fists full of crumpled paper
laid down staring after potential airplanes
never to be realised in the rhythmic pursuit of my seconds

and my flutter of concerns before sleep
unsettled minds and poisoned heads
their america found dead
our bloodsport is six o’clock
channel five news

young men left lame
fighting wars left undeclared
old men’s money better off fared

where’s the pill that closes my eyes
to all this blindness i suffer?

how many weeks of two pills a day
before an american can
without seeing hate
look out their window
and find nothing worth buying

and how do i make the safe dollar?

and how many of those will take my eyes off the smoke
on the horizon?

that black bleak column
that means nothing to me nor should it

that from the side of my eye
suggests that maybe old men bought me
and old men sold me

Extended Jazz Poem – Jon

Lock me out for three hours

on the front porch in boxers

and slant eyed, I never knew you could

dance like a fallen saint or skip rocks

across spiritual pools of rainwater and fallen leaves

of tincans and twine.

It might as well have been three days

because

you’d just as soon break down the door

and send splinters and nails flying

so I’ll sit on the front porch and watch the sunset

behind the frozen trees and brown grass

turn to the dark purple glow of small towns at night.

Kicking around cans and paper cups and trashbagscraps

and spent blunt tips of desperate bearded wanderers

you can hear the jazz of midnight.

Serving up “Fuck Bush” tshirts on a street corner

and receding into a toothless dry haired epilepsy of loose change

pilfering and back alley masturbation, of food scrap finding,

you can hear the absent ramblings of DC nothings.

There’s shadows in the metro stations.

The reflecting pool says god isn’t real,

just staring at Abe, he’s bent on the water’s surface

in the biled rheumy electric street light reflection of 2 a.m.

There’s the cinders of burnt bridges in

the cigarette butts

tossed like paper cups or crippled

orangefireflies ,

falling

from the highway overpasses.

And landing, extinguishing with a faint sizzle

in the spilt oil and rainwater of urban downpours.

There’s a plastic sunflower in

the steely green trashcans of rusted

chainfence industry.

Oil like a Technicolor fanfare of pollution

licks the grease off blacktop.

Scaffolding and incense stubs

english streetsigns fade likes stars in an urban

evening

to parks where chinese kids play alone

theres greeks in chinatown too,

I’ve seen them wander through fishmarkets

and gag on unseen smells.

We sat and threw trash out the 23^rd floor, it didn’t hit anyone.

He likes the west and crumbles catholic shrines

film photography and rum

He would like a front porch

and a greenhouse, but is fine with mowing the lawn instead.

He likes abstract art and big cars and walking.

There’s pawn shop heroes of

battered guitars and cloudy diamonds and

eternal 5 o’ clock shadow, of cigar store character and

pool hall small talk.

Someone used to grow sunflowers in this lot,

until they faded like the ink in our church hymnals, and got stuck like gum

underneath pews. Were a desperate cult bent on forever.

What does it matter though, with sunflowers.

2 – ian

so i put on a side as i walked out
towards the city lights
hoping for something to shout

sometimes your silence
and a walk after sleep
are enough to convince me
though my thoughts fade
that we’re all broken
because we were made

when i’m quiet i can hear my fear
like a river that screams as it rushes
a room full of voices raised at once
audible as it crushes
composed of words i can’t understand

and when i’m asleep my human dreams are distraught by nature
my mind reels to find
images and feelings by morning i rarely remember
broken boys dry eyes agape at televisions telling the story of love
and those holy days in mid december

i sat on a hill and watched them
all brought to a cliff and made to jump off
with that drunk old supermarket cough
their deaths they couldn’t embrace
unmedicated fear that i could taste
in their voices as they leapt from their palimpsest lives undone
those dull screams
like bullets shot at the sun

when i talk i feel their weight
words lost as i walk after them
the ugly notion that i’m too late

Tea In India – jon

- ian

splitting – ian

rays of sun splitting empty quiet rooms
blurred memories and images bloom
joined together at the edges like
a jigsaw puzzle and mind alike
a fabrication that becomes reality
in quiet empty room’s finality
images split by thought’s mentality
edges fabricated in the mind
rays of thought revolutionize
a dull sunny day.