Lex Caesarea ( The Emperor's Cut)

the doctors said the cord
was choking him

the harder she pushed
the more he died

she cried
then they cut him

away

he did not want to leave her

she says now he’s a miracle
he shouldn’t even

be a
life

so don’t forget it

the memory cuts a cross
opens her wide

the release meaning

she wanted him out
he wants back in

but not this way

the sign of his exit
etched endless
and timeless

beyond the skin

Machination
(refractions on Baudrillard; Dedicated to Luigi Ballerini)

Everything is operational, or it is nothing.


No more wanting, only getting people to want
No more doing, only getting people to do
No more being worth something, only getting something to be worth Something
No more knowing, only letting know
No more enjoying, only getting to people to enjoy

No more pleasure, only getting people to take pleasure,


We have lost our shadows
Revealed by the stage light from all angles, ex-
Posed and de-fenceless squinting against the glare
Her images and information unrelenting


This is the price we pay for sex
Why speak when its so easy to communicate

Lylic Idyllic Lyrics (circa 2006)
I was an angry youthful poet full of dreams and scemes

Trapped up in this building
you at the street level
writing about facades
and the shadow
and the cross walks
and the cars
and the simple notion of a thing called poetry


Massive amounts of worlds and words read and written
Things change
You’ll soon find out.
Small rooms will need to get bigger
Big groups will need to get smaller
It is a natural progression
for the perverts of language
I will stand here forever if I have to
I will repeat myself until I am blue in the face
I will preach my sermon 
so you know my lines backwards
We can’t keep this up.
The next level of the game is here
These small rooms will need to get bigger
These big groups will need to get smaller
I am not trying to cramp your style
Big words need to get smaller
Long sentences need to get shorter
Attention spans need to span
Words need a screen
Words need a project
or they will die in the next breath
Books will burn bright so we can light our cigarettes
beside the tabloids
It is time to mock the system and get paid
You better check yourself
All this turtle crawling to the finish line needs to cease
What are you doing?
Who do you think you are?
What are you changing, except maybe your mind
Have you found a character in me
I am
You write
So I ask you let’s make characters
I know the streets
the states
the lines of demography
economic stratification
I am here
We need more characters
It is time to make a plan
Whatever
Draw up the blue prints
get to work
I know only a few poets anyway
They all sleep late
with a blanket hung over the northern window

Theory

Theory


Romanticism symbolism
                     paraphysic dadaism
                                       form antiform
                                                    conjunctive disjunctive
           open closed
                      purpose design
                                    play chance
                                               hierarchy anarchy
                         distance participation
      creation decreation
                         synthesis antithesis
                                             presence absence
                          centering dispersal
            genre boundary
                          text intertext
                                        semantics rhetoric
                        paradigm syntagm
     hypotaxis parataxis
                        metonymy metaphor
                                         selection combination
                             root rhizome
    interpretation misreading
                             signified signifier
           lisible scriptible
                             narrative petite histoire
         master code idiolect
                             symptom desire
                                           type mutant
                        phallic androgynous
  paranoia schizophrenic
                        cause trace
                                   metaphysics irony
          determinacy indeterminacy
                                   mastery logos
                 exhaustion silence
       art object
                 finished work process
                                      performance happening
         God the Father the Holy Ghost
                                      transcendence immanence
                                you me

other fragments . . .

other fragments

once upon a time
there was a wooded scene
down by the creek
there you sweat an autumn evening
of hide and go seek
with the older boys


other fragments

you remember cold sun days
first base is a stump
second is a flatten card-board box
Billy’s jacket is third
he doesn’t need to wear one
if you hit the ball over those trees
it’s a homerun
no innings
no score
you play until the street lamp comes on
or your mom comes and gets you

other fragments

it’s not a good bike
but you like to ride it anyway
over to freedom park
there’s a pond there
where an old chinese man
with one leg
hunts for the giant gold fish
he’s saying he’s been searching his whole life
your fingers dig in a small brown bag of cold dirt
for a worm to bait your hook
you whisper to him
today is the day
he nods
and smiles
knowing it’s not

other fragments

you are coming home
and it’s late
you are supposed to be home before dark
but you were fishing
as the old man said
in broken English
by silence and water
you are becoming wise
but you can’t tell her this
so you spend the night
locked out of the house
on the porch you dream of whales
and warriors

other fragments

you only remember her first name
and a mole on the left shoulder
her hands are thin
with strong bone
she plays the vitula
you sneak out back doors
and climb through windows for her
on Sundays you walk across the tracks
to the other side
just to hold those hands behind the church

other fragments

you’re in the backseat
her hair is tousled
still sweating evenings
down by the creek
the woods are gone
cleared away
down to the earth
roots and all

other fragments

a sign posted on the side of a trailer reads
low-income housing project
no trespassing
you notice on the window
it’s beginning to drizzle

other fragmants

note pads half written on
still trying to work out
problems that happened
years ago
where you were
at one time before
this cigarette burns
like so many other things

other fragments

blind arms searching over quilts
childhood mornings
cereals and cartoon songs you never forget
but would like too

other fragments

. . .

TBD

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by the American poet, T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked the beginning of Eliot's career as an influential poet. With its weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing, and awareness of mortality, Prufrock has become one of the most recognized voices in 20th-century literature. This is my take on the same idea with a twist at the end.

TBD

feel, the page
a place to outline
insecurities
cruelties
the subversive elements that
drive the nail
into the hand

into the coffin

see yourself
flying out
side the city limits
while in here
imagine
how the page lays
out in someone else’s book

how it pokes

while
wanting a sip
of what the other person
drinks

things never imagined

a faint sound
false rivers running through it
a place to start
though this seems edgey
its not a good story

wander the streets
of course leads to a contradiction
by the sharp turn to the on ramp

thoughts stay asleep
under the pass,

a California winter approaches
city order
another level of jail

sound is heavy
the weather isn’t yours.

Breathe, its your last,
and you're under

remember

When on the other side,

write it down too

[American Journal]

by Robert Hayden
(edited and rearrangned for the page by jake sanders)

here among them the americans
this baffling
multi people extremes
and variegations their
noise restlessness their almost frightening
energy how best describe these aliens

in my reports to The Counselors

disguise myself in order to study them unobserved adapting their varied pigmentations white black red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering distinctions by which they live by which they
justify their cruelties to one another

charming savages enlightened primitives brash new comers lately sprung up in our galaxy how describe them do they indeed know what or who they are do not seem to yet no other beings

in the universe make more extravagant claims
for their importance and identity

like us they have created a veritable populace
of machines that serve and soothe and pamper
and entertain we have seen their flags and
foot prints on the moon also the intricate
rubbish left behind a wastefully ingenious
people many it appears worship the Unknowable
Essence


the same for them as for us but are
more faithful to their machine made gods
technologists their shamans

oceans deserts mountains grain fields canyons forests variousness of landscapes weathers sun light moon light as at home much here is beautiful dream like vistas reminding me of home item have seen the rock place known as garden of the gods and sacred to the first indigenes red monoliths of home despite the tensions i breath in i am attracted to the vigorous americans disturbing sensuous appeal of so many never to be admitted

something they call the american dream sure
we still believe in it i guess an earth man
in the tavern said irregardless of the some
times night mare facts we always try to double
talk our way around and its okay the dreams
okay and means whats good could be a damn sight
better means every body in the good old u s a
should have the chance to get ahead or at least
should have three squares a day as for myself
i do okay not crying hunger with a loaf of
bread tucked under my arm you understand i
fear one does not clearly follow i replied
notice you got a funny accent pal like where
you from he asked far from here i mumbled
he stared hard i left



must be more careful item learn to use okay
their pass word okay

crowds gathering in the streets today for some
reason obscure to me noise and violent motion
repulsive physical contact sentinels pigs
i heard them called with flailing clubs rage
and bleeding and frenzy and screaming machines
wailing unbearable decibels i fled lest
vibrations of the brutal scene do further harm
to my metabolism already over taxed

 The Counselors would never permit such barbarous confusion they know what is best for our serenity we are an ancient race and have outgrown
illusions cherished here item their vaunted
liberty no body pushes me around i have heard them say land of the free they sing what dothey fear mistrust betray more than the freedom they boast of in their ignorant pride have seen the squalid ghettoes in their violent cities


paradox on paradox how have the americans
managed to survive

parades fireworks displays video spectacles
much grandiloquence much buying and selling
they are celebrating their history earth men
in antique uniforms play at the carnage whereby
the americans achieved identity we too recall
that struggle as enterprise of suffering and
faith uniquely theirs blonde miss teen age
america waving from a red white and blue flower
float as the goddess of liberty a divided


people seeking reassurance from a past few under
stand and many scorn why should we sanction
old hypocrisies thus dissenters
The Counselors would silence them

a decadent people The Counselors believe i
do not find them decadent a refutation not
permitted me but for all their knowledge
power and inventiveness not yet more than raw
crude neophytes like earthlings everywhere

though i have easily passed for an american in
bankers grey afro and dashiki long hair and jeans
hard hat yarmulka mini skirt describe in some
detail for the amusement of The Counselors and
though my skill in mimicry is impeccable as
indeed The Counselors are aware some thing
eludes me some constant amid the variables
defies analysis and imitation will i be judged
incompetent

america as much a problem in metaphysics as it is a nation earthly entity an iota in our
galaxy an organism that changes even as i
examine it fact and fantasy never twice the
same so many variables

exert greater caution twice have aroused
suspicion returned to the ship until rumors
of humanoids from outer space so their scoff
ing media voices termed us had been laughed

away my crew and i laughed too of course

confess i am curiously drawn unmentionable to
the americans doubt i could exist among them for
long however psychic demands far too severe
much violence much that repels i am attracted
none the less their variousness their ingenuity
their elan vital and that some thing essence
quiddity i cannot penetrate or name