Oh Jeez,
please give me the strength to do what I know I must
trust you to bring me to the place I need
feed me with the breadcrumb trail if necessary
scary, you know, so although I understand the hunger
no longer do I know why it’s so meager
eagerness to have real sustenance and permanence
sense calls for striking out for the territory
for the fresh shave, the blank slate, the sweet horizon
I been there before, though, and I’m sick of reason
seasons without cycle are fine for me
we can just follow the leaves, right?

Aaaahhh!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!
The market is falling! The market is falling!

He’s jittery (of course he: only a he would so kill)
and he can’t quite keep his invisible hand quite still—
does it shake ‘cause he’s a speed pill-poppin’ fiend
or ‘cause, guiltily self-indulgent, his pants he has creamed?
He’s spooked, the kook, by his own reflection,
as he gets depressed by the thought of depression.

So, I’ll make a confession: I never liked him anyways,
what with his materialist craze and greed-glazed gaze,
not to mention his brazen pillage, setting the world ablaze.

So let him shrink, contract, take a downturn, and crash,
and maybe we won’t all die from affluenza,
the curse of too much cash.

In order to sleep soundly, I recommend:
Build a road, then let it fall into a reasonable level of decay, then construct a windowed box on wheels with shocks within which you can sit reclining back on cushioned seats while being rocked back and forth to the sight of landscape passing.

In order to be awed, I recommend:
Get dropped off in the midst of the jungle in the middle of the night, then walk towards the nearest bridge, making sure you time your arrival so that a fine mist is surrounding you that can be illuminated by a truck’s lights approaching from behind, which will cause a rainbow ring 50 meters in diameter to encircle the bridge and you.

In order to be satisfied, I recommend:
Spend hours wandering hungry and lost in an area without sustenance, and make the method of your wandering frustrating and tiring by constantly nearing promisingly bright signs of satisfaction that then dim as soon as you eagerly approach, and then stumble by chance across a dumpster overflowing with perfectly good but irregularly shaped fruit, bread, cheese, and wine.

Cuesta (duras penas, vacilantes emociones, fe) trabajar.
Cuesta (penosas dificultades, vacilaciones emocionales, fe) no trabajar.
Si extiendes la mano para tocar el cielo o no, queda igual de lejos, igual de cerca.

Notes Wishing They Were From the Underground
(Actually Coming From Suburbia)

dejá vu
(eerie, inexplicable, deeply true),
which used to pounce in strange places you’ve never been
– places so different that seem the same –
this feeling is gone
(tamed, explained, now shallowly wrong).

for no, you’ve never been here,
but yes, you know it well, don’t you fear,
because this store is like all the other stores,
– a lot so similar that should be different –
but you know what to expect, nothing’s queer,
and there is nothing new here.

He does chin-ups on the metro… while I simply hold on to the overhead bars to keep from falling and being trampled.

There were once upon a time dragons here, but they are long gone.

When their nests were paved over with strip malls, they circled for hours until their wings ached. Yet they could not find any aeries from which chainstore eyesores were not visible. And they are romantics when it comes to the view.

Enraged, they screamed with foul, belching fire. But only to be sterilized by fire hydrants. The remaining wisps of smoke were quickly protested by furious NIMBYs.

Confused, the beasts were easily manipulated. Their unexpected flight patterns were predicted and rerouted and GPS coordinated. Soon they were captured, emprisoned, tamed, and groomed. Their haphazard, reason-defyingly strong scales were arranged in grocery store aisle uniformity. This last, seemingly superfluous act by the suburbanites in fact allowed for the fatal blow: razor-sharp logic which cut them to pieces. There was to be a great feast, with well-groomed, well-fed families from all the land.

And then the once would-be feasters got distracted, each in their own solitary way, and the meat sat until it rot.

I do not pretend to master my fate

I feel my insides gradually vanish
(leaking slowly into other dimensions)
And my skin become translucent
(as my pores become fully porous)
And my mind become tubular
(a protosensitive, pregnantly empty conduit)
And I am flooded with a rush
that I could never contain
(even if I were still with my formerly solid grasp)
that washes me like my great-great-grandma
washed her daughters’ clothes in the river
(violently, lovingly, deeply)
And I am smoothed and polished like a river stone
(cleansed of consciousness’s claws and burrs)
And I am ready for the world to seize me,
possess me and propel me
(beyond my stagnant state, into a formless shape)

I implored my ancestor for a story.
Okay, okay: I wanted her story.
Okay, okay, okay: she is an unwilling, unwitting ancestor.

But I got it anyways:
although she denies that she ever had a child
or that this supposed child engendered a long line of descendents…
this line ends with me,
and I can gaze back at her
and see the never-cut cord
connecting her with her offspring…
she denies that the bastards even exist,
and so has never cut the ignored connection.

I see some descendents oblivious to their connection,
and yet still an unbroken stream of nutrition reaches me.

There was a time when I was content
To ramble and rhyme at mind’s light whim
Without a thought for what paths life sent
For my slow slip-shod feet to flip-flop in.

Now I grow uneasy with my self-conscious route
As I head from the local towards the global nerve-center
I feel queasy in the night’s shifty streetlight clout
That illuminates only the views that have been sent for

By those with trigger fingers on the power grid.
So now I survey the forgotten, the dark spots
Where the cracks, the joints of the machinery are hid;
I walk with my weight on the dimly shackled lots
of those wed unknowingly to the machine –
which brings me closer to dissolution than I’ve ever willingly been;

my feet are torn by the shifting, caught in the
hinging of mechanical sheen, as I stand
next to those thrown down during society’s surreptitious sifting –
so now my weight falls in the interstices
to be ground like grain (which is dispersed at wind’s blind whim)
into elegant mass, a meal for the marginal.

Music by Bajofondo Tangoclub.
Paintings by artists of Buenos Aires and Cochabamba.
Words by me. Photos by me.
Click on YouTube link inside the frame to see this in a larger version.

You tell me “No hoo ha!”
when you see ballyhooh-la-la
‘cuz you don’t know who (ha!)
who can getchya good hoopla
I ain’t the grand poo-bah
I ain’t got much moolah
but I sure like to fool ya
with verbal cubix zircoonia
cuttin’ them gems like a jewelah!

My soul’s as faded as my shoes as my sighs
slip in fragments,
slivers
down on the ground, among the earth
those that catch them (at times broadside, others like snowflakes)
look up.. think
how lonely! how selfish! how foolish!
what ghoulish heights you pretend to inhabit!
is that might that has set your sights?
wonder why I’m running in circles,
the insubstantial mists
churning
the color out of my habits,
spurning the formulation of any accumulation
of words, ideas, action just
wispful yearning is all
that is apparent.

yesterday I thought I heard
thunder
only to realize
someone was scraping metal
over concrete
last night I awoke to a roar
dreams scattered like butterflies
fluttering into dark woods

I sat halfway up in bed
straining to hear through
the darkness
I thought I heard a machine’s dead moan
only to find

the night had let out
a storm
like a long-held breath
rain
like old, pent-up tears
smiling, sighing
I fell asleep