And how do foundations work,
when there’s nothing but rocks
and probably dirt, I assume,
but I’m no expert
so let’s not presume what’s exhumed –
excuse me.
I got ahead of myself.
I saw a picture
of a beautiful museum
built on rocks by the sea,
like, RIGHT BY the sea,
and one of the comments said
“It’ll be really sad when it falls in.”
I don’t want that future.
So what kind of sutures
are sewn into cut-open land
to hold that structure there,
as sure
as a closed hand?
My words aren’t technical enough,
and some aren’t technically right,
but, well,
I just
wonder about these things.

I dream of a world
where all the buildings stand forever
and all the bones stay together.

I see smooth columns
lifting a ceiling near the shore
and I think
“What genius is this,
how many hands
came together to build such marvels?”
I forget
the modern marvels
right outside my door.
History
hits different.

The great lightning strike,
but it is Cupid’s arrow;
I am still waiting.

I recall my cultivation.
The gardeners: former lovers,
friends, moving lecturers
for a semester or two.

My soil the life through which I walk,
roots taking and not taking,
light and water passing to me
from books and songs and
and movies sometimes,
poetry stirring petals,
blooming and resting
as seasons require.

The growth is ongoing,
the process on-growing.
Keep it up, seedling.

My god, the lights in the valley
coulda been anything:
a cluster of advanced science centers,
a web of self-sustaining cabin homes,
an invitation to a party
with thousands of entrances,
a peaceful civilization that’s accepted
the encroachment of the dark.

Instead, we have
traps of all sizes, mostly
in square shapes;
the stuck people
are too tired to think,
too busy to clean,
too sad to entertain,
and too mad
to accept the dark.
We shall all
light the night with our
tiny computers
and hope that wi-fi
is the only connection we need.

They stole
all this land
and cut it into
disgusting chunks
that we buy
from a big plate
called “real estate”
but it’s all fake,
these deeds
should be worthless,
and every slice
from this giant
thieves’ pie
draws money from us
while they swarm
like flies
to eat our
putrid offal,
and I’m disgusting
’cause I wait,
and watch the knife
come down,
one more serving
from settler chef
to settler customer;
close the store,
this was never ours.

I imagine sex a lot.

Lot a sex, imagine I.

A lot sex, I imagine.

Imagine: I sex a lot.

Imagine sex, I a lot.

I lot imagine a sex.

Sex lot, I imagine a.

Sex imagine I a lot.

Imagine, imagine,

sex sex sex

sex sex

………………

sex.

Heart of fire,
mind like water,
seeping into everything,
fitting most containers
and remaining itself.

My brain douses my heart.
More often than not,
I overthink
my life into oblivion,
so action becomes tiresome
and I stay inert.

I may need to jump into something –
to leap from a mountaintop
and let inertia carry me.
My thoughts can’t
tarry me,
and it’s time I
let my heart be a lantern.

Is it weird that I’m proud of my wallet?
Not saying I value money above all –
I just really enjoy how streamlined my wallet is.

As an object, but also an extension of myself,
the wallet is pleasing. It holds only what it needs;
would that I could be more like my wallet.
To consciously open myself, and shake out
all the extraneous thoughts and habits, to expel
the effluvia of bygone days.

With more thinking, I suppose I should admit
that my wallet also holds all the hooks
of the corporatist state. My ID, my Barnes & Noble
membership, my voter registration card …
my wallet is actually an arm of the state apparatus.
And I’ve allowed it to dig its hooks into me.

Shit.

I hope that when I drive through the richer neighborhoods,
uppity folks wonder at the state of my car:
the rumbling of the engine, the always-open window, the
loose sun visor hanging in my face (quite a liability, really).
The age of it – almost twenty years old, my word! – is
the most damning truth. How can that man
be driving through this neighborhood?

I have friends in places much higher than my own.
They’re generous enough to welcome me
on their own turf, but it is all turf.
I hate hierarchies, but right now,
I can’t escape them.
So I drive through them, noting their
wending and winding roads,
and enjoying the places
that should be free and open
to everyone.

And no wonder we feel tired;
no wonder we feel gutted;
no wonder we’re lost and unsupported
in this purported fantasia,
beyond the clutches of history.

I laid my head down and said aloud “I’m probably dying,” which is not the truth, for I’m definitely dying, we all are, but I’ll take these lines to explain that when I say “I’m probably dying,” what I mean is that there are factors which affect my overall health either positively or negatively, namely, sleep habits, diet, exercise, mindset, and the like, and for the last two months or so I’ve fallen into a rut that’s expanded into a cave which reaches ever into the abyss, and it gazes back and says “you’re probably dying,” by which it means, the factors that affect my overall health are not great right now, and I believe I’ve hastened my inevitable demise, not to say that I’ll be dying anytime soon, but if I started this life with, say, ninety years, I’m probably down to something like seventy now.

And that’s my bad.
I’ve said for a while
that I need to take care of myself,
but fuck,
it’s hard.
Or maybe,
I’m just a quitter.
Hence, I’m probably dying.