overjoyed by an infinity experienced in three cleansing breaths
*instruct audience to do three cleansing breaths*
for tongo
they asked the dalai lama
what he does when he doesn’t
have enough time in a day
to meditate
he responded
“i meditate twice”
it’s that sorta
give more
get more
logic that
so many overexcited
men want to share
with the rest of us
quoting misremembered
recently read quotes
from the stoics
change your mind
make your bed
usually living lives
that we wouldn’t
want to trade keys for
usually decent signs
gateway premonitions
of nice guy incel men’s rights activists
that a soft open
by way of quick reference
to “this *one* interesting
joe rogan podcast episode”
with some neoliberal hero
like malcolm gladwell
or perhaps a keen attempt
at inducing a secondhand state
of petulant vulnerability
with the inclusion of bill nye
a reminder that everyone
had a science teacher
at some point
with a drinking problem
that would wheel out
the audio video TV cart
TV strapped on so hard
it squeezed itself
onto the lined rubber surface
provoked a sense of
displeasured bondage
proof positive of a school administration
that did not clearly value enough
The Science Guy
or
weeknight binges
by the teachers
most likely
to be aware of the
biphasic effects of
alcohol
i wonder if the dalai lama
were to be reincarnated
as a highland park bro
would he obsess himself
in the for-good-reason
incredibly mediocre
last existing copy of
some “totally fire”
lap steel album
“that still slaps”
or in dead stock denim
back pockets a perfect holster
for an unopened copy
of the catcher in the rye
or in learning about
native plants and flowers
to spring and all
on an unsuspecting
frogtown local woman
[an amateur botanist]
on a hike he mentioned
to her in a copy and paste one liner
on hinge or
maybe tinder
he can’t remember
or
like some belligerent
portlandia character
so lacking in critical self-awareness
he wouldn’t have been able to
gaze into the belly propped
oily smudged laptop mirror
of fred armison playing a character
so spot on in lampooning every
cishet white dude east of the 5
because
he was boycotting IFC
because they charged him for
an annual membership
that he forgot would auto renew
causing an overdraft
or
as a group do we think
he’d be happy to keep it in
his Kindle app
on his foxconn produced iphone
serving as some perfect reminder
the enemy of your enemy is still your friend
and the exploitee of your enemy is friendly fire
and anyways fuck the hands
even of sweat shop hands
who have not even recently
joined palms facing up to the sky
and past the sky like some malibu
stay at home daughter instructing
the 4 people watching her Live
on instagram to do
they can’t meditate
it is hard to take three cleansing breaths
when there is a boot on your throat
the transplant
high maintenance with bad taste
you slink through the room
in some
day time
banded herve leger
your sunday hair fades
in the limelight of
an early friday evening blowout
and the smokey scent
of a sephora you visited
for a friend of a friend’s
product launch on fire
follows you leaving
behind denuded notes of
nightstand aged gardenia
and unreplied unseen ig story @s
and a phone dead having unplugged
the charger to take to the home
of the man that can’t seem
to figure out how to text you
before 11pm
you are the appendix of america
tonsils to the world
purposeless but doing your best
falling out in five parts over five years
i.
we met just before our freshman year
at a mansion in la jolla
at our legacy sweet sixteen friend’s mixer
two fragile thin blooded
san diego idiots moving to new york
every single day came fat with an apple in its mouth
we constructed and assembled the dumbest empire
of 5 minute friends but also some good ones
i constructed my class schedule to allow for
hangovers from my favorite weekly parties
the night before usually at baddies or
butter or desantos
NYU should be illegal
lost and horny
18 year olds being reborn unto
downtown manhattan
$200,000 worth of debt
a solid fake ID network
fern cliff for 40s
cosmic cantina open to 4am
and mental health wellness checks
at every point of entry
for any campus clinic visits
because of all the suicides
he became my brother
we talked everyday and he became
one of the few people i’d want to
and could even spend time with
all the time
i knew his family and the quirks
and the pain and the difficulties
he knew mine
he knew me
maybe best when in 2014
after michelle’s house party
i biked home drunk taking houston
up bedford and then over christopher
and then up hudson to perry st
i picked up a four pack of crispin
i put them one by one into a blender bottle
to shake the bubbles out so i could chug
all four as fast as i could
i put on bojack horseman
reclining in my zero gravity chair
a scene about fathers and abuse
and abandonment and consequent
maternal engulfment passed by
an instinctual thought
of self extinction
total immolation
crossed my mind
i recalled seeing
as i was emptying
the crispin into the cups
and then into me
seeing a knife in the kitchen
i thought about pushing it into my stomach
not stabbing not thrusting
but pushing
i drafted a text
it was sometime after 3am
i told daniel the thought i had had
i told him i was okay and was going
to smoke pot and go to bed
i did
i woke up to several missed calls
not from daniel
but from my mom
his mom is a therapist
and i’m sure she told
him to bypass a call to me
and to tell my mother
i stopped drinking for a bit
but then he and i planned a trip
to basque
in and around bilbao and st jean de luz
and the bullshit somm in me
couldn’t and wouldn’t abstain
the powerlessness
and unmanageability
grew and grew
ii.
michelle’s mom said something
disparaging about middle eastern people
while we ate our cold pizza from star tavern
there was a pause that
so often happens
with white people
after something racist is said
diffusion of responsibility
culminating in a disappointing
reminder that
“mom…. paasha is middle eastern”
like having defended my background
since 9/11
the first time hearing
the N word was being used at me
[of the SAND varietal]
wasn’t enough
i’d met michelle through daniel
her now bf
who i stopped over with in orange nj
to get pizza and hang out
on our way to dana and mike’s wedding
for which neither of us had brought
or bought a gift
i talked to daniel about the incident
we sorta landed on me sending a short
and kind text to michelle
something along the lines of
“hey i might check in with your mom
about what happened the other day”
i sent in monday around noon
when i was back home on state st
she responded faster than i would
have thought it would take to read the message
in the first place
she called it passive aggressive and maybe
even unbecoming
i talked to daniel about it
and he
the infinite avoider of conflict
said he didn’t really want to get involved
i left it alone and felt a space grow
between he and i
iii.
i got a call that my oma
was in the hospital
and the feeling of
this is it
washed over me
i saw her in the hospital
and i adapted in the moment
the only way i knew possible
i took photos of everything
my mom and aunts and uncles
seeming weirdly understanding
of that being my coping mechanism
the doctor looked like an
even more pathetic version
of buster bluth
and he told us
that hospice at home
was usually what most
families decided to do
i never knew really quite what that meant
that you are taken off an IV
that you’d get no food no water
that your organs fail
all in front of your family
in the living room
a hospital bed
replaced the coffee table
that’d been there so long
it had made four permanent
divets in the shag carpet
i never got a call from daniel
i think i got a text
sometimes our friends overthink
things to the point of total inaction
thinking FOR us
to the point of harming us
iv.
after oma passed
and after feeling some coldness on his end
he said he wanted to talk in person
but knew too that i was not going to be
back in new york from awhile
eventually we met
in some random townhouse
in boerum hill he was housesitting for
i asked what was happening
what was going on
he made some half hearted attempts
to be gentle
which i’ve found always
develops the statements to follow
to be unconsciously seething
an entitlement to cruelty
based in a preface of feigned kindness
he arrived at his point after 10 minutes of floundering
“you’ve been… and are…. just…. too much”
v.
i later developed a distrust for people
who are perpetually housesitting for others
what are you running away from?
it’s your home
you picked it out
it’s okay to set boundaries
it’s good to set boundaries
i have a lot to thank you for
learning
the streets of new york on a skateboard
how to make a film
how not to wash dishes
it’s okay to set boundaries
it’s good to set boundaries
i also learned
there is no such thing as
too much
just
too little
no
we have no bodies here
in the heart of a sunken america
no
not the america my
oma and opa my
terrible father
moved to
the america
opa likely would have
been happy to die for
had he been
of conscription age
and not
otherwise unkillable
no
not one of my blood
soaks downwards into the
bankrupt earth
so many others drench
flowering through denuded
broken copyright soil
no
the promises of america
when they all came were,
in 1967, more of a punchline
when free love and jingoism
slowed both to
a pathetic
listless crawl
not for lack of either
but instead such
an overabundance
an embarrassment
of oils on the canvas
mixed to an impossible murk
we are unable to clear
with spirits, and too thick
to dry to gesso again
and start new
no
perhaps america
ought to become
what it has always
been meant for:
sculptures of earth
and blood and bones
and rot so thick with valor
flowers die upon blooming
so many colors and
no family plot
we just kept
giving eachother
little
things
so sure that
if we stopped
we’d blow away from
one another
a reverse inferno
two candles in embrace
my 5 year chip
the bell from snake’s collar
a family teacup with a pear on it
a sock you snuck into my suitcase
i imagine if i were to collect all the things
as i may have to do to be put into a box
they would sit quietly together and hum
what am i to do then
with a box filled with you
that hums away closed in a closet
[june 17 2021]
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
laguardia
laguardia is everywhere i’ve been
a street by my college
and now in front of me
a granite bust
definitely made posthumously
why else would he look so dejected
that sits below a model of i think
a bomber which is a weird sentiment
for an airport
which sits below a skylight
that has 16 lines and 3 concentric circles
forming 64 geometric shapes but only 4 unique ones
fiorello’s statue looks unfinished
which perhaps the sculptor intended
as this city and its returning GIs felt
unfinished after the war
but too often as we artists forget
context is for professors or those living it
the murals around me in this post deco rotunda
satisfy me in a way i’ve not been in awhile
especially not after jalapeño cheddar
pan pizza from dominos i ate last night
and the mausoleum it has created
in my growling stomach
not since nora and i accidentally snuck into
the palacio de las bellas artes in mexico city
to look for the blueprints of juan o gorman’s
1929 house
and reaching a mexican dead end
which is when someone doesn’t really
know what you’re talking about
but gives you a nearly overconfident lead
we then walked down the stairs
to see murals by diego rivera
i had only seen in the margins
of a middle school spanish book
they impressed upon me the memory
and feeling of meaning to see and experience things
but not having the cache sufficient
to store everything there
least of all great works of art by non white artists
i have been brainwashed to undervalue
the flag behind me is hung from
its top two corners
the bottom two not
all the doors being open
there is a breath to the space
and every minute or so the flag gets a gust behind it
and it drags softly on the green marble
to lightly touch the back of my head
to remind me
i am in america
as though the national guardsmen with guns
wasn’t on the nose enough
the breeze smells like indian spices
despite the restaurant beside me
being named YANKEE CLIPPER
which in queens makes it particularly
and happily
american
i take a selfie video for my instagram story
to likely caption something like
“do u ever feel america watching u?”
but that will disappear in 24 hours
and while the poem may last
the context may not
the sculpture begins to feel like a mirror
[may 14 2018]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
poem from a daybed
the only lilt
is in the smirk
just before i make
you smile
high off it
like it’s
running out
that fear as usual
unfounded
in that i am
learning your
weak spots i can
use to have
you make your miracles
your missouri lips
pulling your face
up and tight
while i’ve got a few
inches on you
i look up at you
like the cosmos
or a building long loved
sure that the air
will hold you
all three
up there
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
i cried to dream again
how can a nihilist be so fatalistic
how is it possible that all possible
worlds and timelines that i should
always find myself on the same
chosen wasteland
no
this won’t do anymore
in the way that i have let you become sovereign
to my entire heart in just a couple weeks
too can you also become the pollen
a bee can
with work
turn to honey
it is unknown to me whether or not
there is only one person left
in this world
on this timeline
that i can be both made and
unmade by nearly on the same day
nearly and often in the same moment
but you do seem the richest color of love
occurring naturally
i am moved to tears in my
self indulgent loneliness
and perhaps in the coming weeks
of growth (to sky or to soil)
i may find within me a capsule
filled with youth enough
courage enough
faith enough
to put myself in such a way that
you could turn me
into no thing nothing n o t h i n g n e s s
maybe when that happens
or if
(if you were to be gentle)
i will reach towards both star and flesh
singing your name underbreath
like the wind carries a kite
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
untitled [politically]
america you are the sick kid
who comes to school because
he's worried his best friend
will get the girl he sits behind
america you are uncut
six pack plastic ringlets
made for convenience
trashed for worthlessness
waiting for fish to lynch
or flowers to grow from your face
america you are every
broken door hanging mirror
on the curb reflecting overcast
into a neighbor’s empty
living room
america you are denuded
silos of grain stocked
for the coming unrest
in the naked cities
america you are hungover
thinking thoughts of hate
at roommates making
breakfast too loudly
america you are a goth teen
now praying for his life in a sea
of glimmering safety glass in his
mom’s rolling airborne suv
america you are planned
obsolescence
apoptosis
scab foam
a suicide gif
america my immigrant father is gone
america my immigrant mother is tired
america your name still makes me nervous
america
[january 1 2017]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
double tidal orbit
abandoned by the wind
with little pieces
of paper wife to
the southern side
of my shoes
a fluorescent light
in an office building
is extinguished
in the blueing dusk
seconds after the yellow
street lamps turn on
i wonder if i have
witnessed something
i’ve missed four cross walk signals
and anyways my shoelaces
are tied together by your name
[october 8 2015]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
being the only sober person at new year’s at caroline’s in echo park
we were counting down
leah kept asking for a time check
and i wasn’t sure where the
second hand had gone on my phone
and anyways i was so nervous about not kissing someone
but really i was mostly thinking about where we were re time
and how if i was off people would notice and be mad
but nobody had their phone out i was the keeper of time
i had one job and i let the inexactitude of technology
put me out into silence like a cigarette in an ashtray quietly smoldering
[january 14 2018]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
spoonfeeding casanova
creme brûlée i think
i’m sure he’s overweight
i can’t see because the tables
weren't purchased with the height
of the banquettes in mind
the woman with the spoon
glances over to me every couple bites
like she knows about me
or at least what i used to be like
everyone in the place has a side
of sautéed kale that they won't finish
wilting further in a tiny enamel cast iron pot
ordering dessert with a creamy flirty look
like an aunt visiting from out of town
feigning surprise once fries
that she ordered arrive at the table
the same surprise as when her eye cream
and crystals do not work and in the morning
looking back in the mirror she sees her shadow self
i’m eating some disappointing chicken dish
more bone than anything
focusing on farro and counting
how long its been since
my last gout attack
while wondering if this woman
has looked again at me
she may have
but like the many
notebooks i fill 1/10th and then buy another
the same way my mother chain smokes
half of her salems lighting with the tips
of the old stuffing them into a napkin filled
with her spit to put out the embers
i feel too young still to glance a second time
[september 21 2017]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
citizens of st. louis
your "job creators"
your franchise owners
your city council members
have lowered minimum wage
from $10 to $7.70
which is to say $2.30 per hour
saved up to buy robots that
are still being beta tested
rest assured when they are ready
your pay cut now will pay for your termination then
this is to say your american dream
that you eat daily with breakfast
side of snake oil side of lotto ticket
should wake you hours before
so that you can see the sweat
collected on your brow
in the mirror and see it
is no different or better than
the sweat of a mexican
an african american
a syrian or a filipino
hating a liberal or hating a conservative
is like hating the flock from which
one bullet will pluck a life
maybe choose instead to trace
find the gun and its manufacturer
find the man and his father
see the faint boot heel shaped bruise
on the throat of his and his
remember that agreements last as
long as they are subtext to the liminal
act or the earth will swallow your remains
still digesting in the belly of industry
[july 6 2017]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
blessing for the griffith observatory
you have your name and
hill and park to surround
but i need to tell you something about yourself
you may have forgotten what you were for
as projections of the cosmos
line your cellar walls
but the city beneath you
and the country around
have turned you into a tomb
a tomb for the science that is hoped
to incite the young to hypothesize
to grow older and theorize
a landmark for cinephiles
and those excited to flex
their prowess cultural
but i am afraid you were born
to the wrong people who gasp
at your beauty yet graceless of your purpose
how far can you see on a good night?
how long ago were your optics antiquated
and not anewed unable to see past smog?
when ivy covers you after the warring worlds
my body amongst the mulch
i trust your pendulum still swings
[february 4 2017]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
rose noir
each pulse
distilled
blushing petals
woven oil rising
unanimated
crushed stars
in an hourglass
tipped to its side
you were given
this by me
and somehow
i seem to have
returned it
yours this
whole while
[june 15 2015]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
oil to the surface
i saw the explosion of american flags
on my safe and sound suburban street
after 9/11 and the big crunch
of their disappearance when
greed separated from ideology
the newly adopted
good times spirit
of the post war boomers
went starved and sullen
to fat and happy
now swollen and numb
aerial views of suburbia
like the inner workings
of nature itself
fibonacci and golden
ratios all present
but as a pattern
for human ailment
never observed
forlorn real estate
gladly turned to malls
carrying every single
item needed
when burning
aluminum cans
and cutting eyes
of relatives out
from pictures don’t
provide the chemical
thrills they once did
the sick fermented smell
iron and onions and
30 days sober again
desperate coffee breath
voices cholic from a failed
generational ferberization
experiment benefitting
parents that really did
need a break
or a messiah
or an ICBM
this aggressive disorder
cataracts of modernity
conviction of rightness
in the ever absence of doubt
nothing is right and
nothing is wrong
there only exists
undiagnosed
ancient avarice
present in our
DNA ours to read
without eyes
all this while
[march 22 2015]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
the great mall
i either wanted to buy
and be good at
jacks from the toy store
or a band t-shirt
maybe iron maiden
but that is too early
now that i think about it
it was san jose or
waikiki but
the food court would’ve
been the same anyways
four well known fast food chains
three places with things on
an open grill
and two cafes channeling
someone’s half remembered
trip to europe
while it was sunday afternoon
none of the people i passed by
looked like they were
shopping out of need
want or even entitlement
the shoe dragging shuffle
droves of yawning adults
children on a slack leash
sulking obediently behind
they are here out of habit
and i’m jane goodall
[may 23 2012]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
shadow in the shade
you are an artifact of faith
a crease in my cynicism
iridescence in the depths
in the way
fish do not boast
of holding their breath
your smile does not
renew its vows to you
quietly the orchids grow
saint preceding each
time your name
is whispered
flower to flower
[june 29 2015]
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
the fourth in coronado
these people here don’t want to leave
children in the bay fingers plump
like spring sweet plums
smiles pulled tightly
from a day sunned
their parents
pruning crowsfeet
squashing tales of age
with giddy rum chuckles
on gingham tablecloth
turned blankets
the navy blows up a barge
everyone but the veterans cheer
swigging their pacificos eyes aimed
at the bottoms of the bottles
[june 20 2015]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
like ships in the night
you make me
want to dance slow
cheek-cheek
hand-hand
the corners of our eyes
just missing one another
you might call me honey
or something sweet
but we agree
are past euphemisms
we could be like
dry champagne
with wedding cake
perfect
decadent
but so poorly timed
[april 11 2014]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
who doesn't like dogs
gentlemen
and i use that term loosely
god is giving a picnic
we were invited
but the last one
you guys complained that the grass
was making your jeans wet
and the sun was sort of too hot
but the grass was wetter in the shade
and the food on the trees wasn’t growing
big or fast enough
and the meat wasn’t
juicy or succulent enough
and the water wasn’t sparkling
you couldn’t find the waste baskets
not realizing you could bury everything
to turn to dust to turn to soil to turn to food
he brought everything
but your criteria has made
you blind of wonderment
[march 24 2013]
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
how sweet they were
i like a strange
or strong nose
on a woman
not elephantine
but pronounced
and proud as
though it were her decision
i’m not sure if you
ever looked at me
so all my memories
of you are profiles
[march 6 2014]