Oh, yes, other hearts were broken
Yeah, other dreams ran dry
But our golden ones sail on, sail on
To another land beneath another sky

Thanks Mom

Pull your bookends from the sea.

We spend our lives
most of us
setting bits in order.
What other mechanism
could have accomplished
this lengthy series of keystrokes?

And tonight four died of bullets in the town of Jupiter.

"DEDICATED TO:
Change and contentment via together-rising boats;
The reckless encouragement of blue sky research;
A mountain for every little person;
A flood for New York."

You're nothing unless you're moving.
I'm only learning now to keep my head up
and my smile quick
as a flash.

The faster you waste your youth
the better.
Let's just get
on with it
as the shells of the Atlantic rattle.

Dear RadioShack Salesman,

I don't want to buy a cellphone. And if I did it wouldn't be from a shit hole like RadioShack or a pushy moron like you.

You are a scumbag,
Luke

P.S. You have freaky dead eyes and I'm afraid you are going to stalk me and kill me in the forest because I called you "dude."

If you're raking the leaves and it gets all over your driveway, just hose it off dummy.

GOOSE

When the search resumes
Monday
two kinds
of search dogs will be brought in
authorities said
cadaver
dogs and archaeological
dogs.
Cadaver dogs detect decomposing matter
investigators said
and archaeological
dogs search
for older
material.

getcher towels ready
it's about to go
down
hey
new
jersey fuck yer tollbooths
i wish i could stay
awake until i died
eeep-eeep-eeep
eeep-eeep
you
kids
don't know
shit
$$$

press hard
enough
and anything can be
a
blade.

and i know you do too
don't you?
i know you do too

and
the fog was so thick
we couldn't see the curbs
we felt lost
and kept on
stubbing our toes
i'm on
my way
she said
i'm on
your way too i said

Dear drug-selling neighbors with Boston accents,

Thank you for the desk chair. It is better than what I had before. It looks like your baby puked on it.

From,
Luke

WE DO, DON'T WE, WHAT WE CAN

-5-

Tonight you are the antithesis of ductility. All the windows here are made of plastic. The watch on your wrist clicks like beetle wings. The curved plastic stems of your glasses provide a persistent pressure behind your ears. Outside you see red Mars or an Airbus. The aisle creaks under torque. The front wheels perform thankless blind discovery. The back wheels trail behind knowing their fate powerless. The engine sits heaving in the smoky dark pushing ever onward.

WE DO, DON'T WE, WHAT WE CAN

-4-

There are, most people know this, many ways to skin a cat. Of course we are not really skinning cats here. This is merely a turn of phrase. As is this...ah now, see how we enter the infinite looping mechanism. Things are simple here as you can never leave. Should you summon a Pynchonian intellect you may find a graceful exit but this is unlikely. So down we go, the whole rig shaking like a filament.

WE DO, DON'T WE, WHAT WE CAN

-3-

Hold on now as we are diving and deep. We lack the most basic energy. We will watch a building full of pets and babies burn finally to the ground. And down we go. We are backing off the rim now. Windows are golden in the sunset. The freeway is a net cast. We are diving. There is a familiar pressure in your ears. We all look so beautiful in the light of Armageddon. We are diving. We are dancing. We are all fooling ourselves. We are all dancing. This is dancing.

WE DO, DON'T WE, WHAT WE CAN

-2-

Welcome to the hottest place on Earth. It's a small town. Rockets arc overhead. Or they may as well arc overhead. This is suburbia and it is hot outside. Everyone's neighbor has a swimming pool and they're fucking clean and blue as crayons. We all drink gin from beaded glasses. The skies are red all day. Or they may as well be red. All our cars are parked in the sun. The UV rays bake dust to their clearcoats and increase the rate of offgassing.

WE DO, DON'T WE, WHAT WE CAN

-1-

Wear me the fuck out. I mean, if you don't mind that is. This isn't the type of thing you would ask just any old body. I believe that Jesus was a nice guy but that's about it. There is a place for you. And by you I mean all of us. The saints and the streetfighters. You. There is a place where Jesus was just a nice guy and a place where Jesus was Lord, son of GOD and still is. What do you see upon rising each morning? The ceiling or the paint? It doesn't matter.

you are the worst.
so am i.
welcome home.

You know those deodorant commercials where the guy turns into chocolate? That's gross.

I built a little boat
to sail upon the sea

these things
come in the dark
or the light
it doesn't matter
to these things

living
is plying battered seas

lightly
thoughtless
from any height at all

"If for some extraordinary reason you have to jump off a moving train, look ahead and try to pick a spot that looks soft. Throw your pack, and, as you jump, lean way back (this is the hard part) and take huge, leaping steps in the air. If you lean back far enough, and don't trip as you touch the ground, you will experience the rare thrill of running 35 to 40 miles an hour."

dude where's my freaky upside-down ghost boat?

August 21st, 2017. South Carolina. Be there or be square.

"The deepest, and most terrifying, was this: I have said that I heard screams… The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it that it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed – 1,800 miles an hour. It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight – you saw only the edge. It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like a plague behind it… We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit."

"If I stand
alone in the snow
it is clear
that I am a clock."

Above all, beware
of sadness

on earth we can do
- can't we? -

what we want.

"In this country he does not know
the word for 'drowning' and yells:
"I am diving for the last time.""

"Takes his glasses off and lays them on the table like
a shining weapon."

hows about an e-lectric gitar grinding right alongside some out-charged and smokin synthesizors and here you go coming through it all a little bit of that cray-zay harmoniphone?

push up on the sliders always push up my friend that little click between the notches only meens itz workin.

you sit on the beach
waves rise full of maneaters
like deep gloom itself
to catch the light and sink it

and there isn't enough air in the world
to fill a single lung.

Last night I saw red light in the sky over the water. It looked like a ship was burning. I watched it because it was getting brighter and I didn't know what it was. It was the moon rising. Red moonrise out of the sea. Can you even imagine?

good morning ocean
ooh, it's weird to live here

impenetrable / melted

Hi. Would you like to walk in spring verdure with me? Or maybe get a coffee?

"I miss the citrus
smell of spring
on the plaza filled
with young
and long-limbed kite flyers."

he was dead all along.
the bus explodes.
the skull was from space.

There once was a man who lived in the sun by the sea. Everything he needed, short of companionship, he got from the sun and the sea. To fill his need for the companionship that he could not get from the sun or from the sea he had found a beautiful wife and a beautiful dog. He made sure to recycle all of his recyclables every week and never left a light on in an empty room. Sometimes he woke up early and looked at the waves coming in and sometimes he stayed in bed late with his beautiful wife and listened to the tires and the engines of the cars and the boats. 'You know,' he said or thought sometimes, 'this is all very nice.'

last night i had a dream
in which i had a very pretty girlfriend
with extra long bangs
that came down to the tops of her eyebrows.
i love you we said
and i pushed her long bangs
around a little.

I wish I owned a grappling hook. Life is garbage unless you know how to pick a lock and own a grappling hook. Not for robbing. Just for adventures.

World Distribution of Atheists

i went to see the ocean today
it's still there
sparkly

The poor thing. Poor little sea.

The Aral Sea is drying up and soon it will be gone. This is a sea. A giant sea. People are drinking it all up. It's terrible news. It makes for great pictures though. Rusty shipwrecks in the middle of a desert. They're going to have to change all the maps. It's so big that it even shows up on globes. They're going to have to change all the globes.

The Aral Sea?
That's what our kids will say.

I like your birds
and your upstairs neighbors.
I like the cars that pass your house
better than the cars that pass my house.
I like the speaker in your television
better than the speaker in my television.
I like the water that fills the pipes
that fill the walls of your house.

The television tells me about
these people
who buy in bulk.
Groceries.
Laundry detergents.
Hot-sauces.
They think they are saving
money.
2000 dollars or 4000 dollars per year
but the television says they are wrong.
Says they spend more
buy more
than they need.
Says it makes them fat to have
so
much.
For me, I don’t care whose right
because
I don't buy in bulk.
They never have what I need.

I think we should all be more careful with each other.
There is less time
than you think.
Very very
very little
time.
I think we should all mind closely
the last things we say to each other
at night or before going
to work
because you never know.

I think we should all keep lists
of names.
And dates.
And places.
And who said
what.
So that we will always
remember.
I think we should all be so very
careful.

Sometimes I feel I could be
great
if I could be as brave
as astronauts
as brave
as dinosaurs.

Sometimes
I breathe in and in
until I can’t fit anymore air
inside.
And I keep breathing in
until it is
impossible
to fit any more
air
inside.

A man has decided to kill himself
and he has recorded a video
about it.
He is holding a black pistol
and he seems a bit
irrational
and he seems very angry
and very sad.
But very focused.
The video is on the television right now.
Before he kills himself he says
he wants to kill his
mother.
He wants to kill his mother for revenge
and he wants to kill himself for release
and he has made a video to ensure that no one
misinterprets
his actions.
His sister is on the television too.
She is still alive.
She seems very angry and very sad too.
They were in a cult
but they escaped.
The brother has killed himself and his mother
and the sister has run away.
The sister seems awfully sad.
The brother of course is dead.
He had sex with his mother
and his sister had sex with an old man.
They did this together in the same bed.
It is how they were
raised.
A brother and sister
who were raped as children
are on tv.
The sister seems awfully sad
and the brother is dead.
He has killed himself and his mother as well.
Another woman is on tv too.
She says the brother and the sister
were never harmed.
She says they simply grew up surrounded
by love
and liberality.
And they have pictures to prove it.
Someone has replaced the faces
of the people in the pictures with
cartoon faces
for their own good.

This is a place I like to sit though I don't get much done here.
This is a place I like to wait for things to happen.
The world is bigger than us but not by much.

Washington Park 10/15/2008

-A bird flies in a straight line.
-A plane flies in a straight line.
-A squirrel goes up fifty feet.
-Leaves fall. As they should.
-A second plane flies low over the watcher of squirrels and dogs swimming.
-Ducks paddle trailing V's alone or W's in pairs.

The trees are close to bare and a balloon is up above the skyscrapers.

i see a thin grey squirrel
it doesn't know what in the world
is going on here

i see trees on a hill
like explosions
they fly
to me
though they would fly
anyway

You climb up on a roof, you write a song...
You do a lot of things
to feel better.

But we all need some kind of air...
From mountains
From cities
From mouths

There's a lot going on here.
-Is there?
There's a lot to see and do.
-Is there?

they
say
hope
springs

NYC from pickup truck hillbilly seat

there's not enough time for anything
i could use ten lives
i could use ten friends
ten girls
ten bucks
ten
      songs

Intelligent life in an infinite universe is a certainty.
This is how infinity works.
If something is possible, it will happen eventually.

The odds that two instances of intelligent life will find each other
at the same place and time in a universe
of infinite space and infinite time
are pretty much zero.

It would be like two bullets connecting
in midair when neither shooter knew
where to aim or when to fire.

The odds of winning
goddamn Powerball are 1 in 146 million
but somebody wins it every week.

If you shoot infinity bullets..

I used to have a porch.

Some people are saying that when they switch on the large hadron collider the world will end. A black hole will eat the alps and then the rest of the world. Armageddon, you know. Other people, collider people, say that it is all hype and that it is only possible that the activation of the collider could produce particles that may exist for micro-fractions of seconds and pass harmlessly through the earth.. Harmlessly through the earth.

All we really need is a little tiny place to lay down and feel safe at night. With this we could all be fearless explorers of the world. The lack of a place to sleep is all that keeps us from being fearless explorers. This and the abundance of psycho-murderers these days.

what do
     you know?

i know i am alive.
i know i WILL not be alive.
i know the DEAD will ALWAYS outnumber the living.
as we passed that mark
a while back.

what are you
     afraid of?

death
love
honesty
lack of
     honesty.

whatever you do
rain will fall
and stop falling.

at the very edge
we mix
and if two hands
are held together
tight enough
there will be a mixing
of one
into the other.
all edges
are blurred
as
there are no edges.

A heart is more

an animal
than a machine.

I'd like to add
some imagery relating
to swimming
or fish
here.
Something about
maybe swimming
and looking up to see
maybe your brother swimming
up above you.
And with swirling
                          lights.

At some point maybe a stranger
comes into town.
They usually
do that.

"You have been handed a miracle
each time you open your eyes."

...

what's more,
there is
no better
place.