We Don’t Know You But If We Did

Why? Why? Because I see all that shit and I just think, no no no, show me you. I want to see you, I want to see your actual life, I want to see how you see the world, I want to hear what’s in your head, I want to know you… I don’t want all this STUFF. Do we think it’s that entertaining? All of you diluted and filtered. All of you through links, images, stories, videos, even memes, even jokes, as if you yourself are a channel of electronic transmissions, a free mass media channel, why? you are dangerous. you are an adventure. you are a problem – is that the problem? is the beauty in you too much trouble, the complexity too distasteful. interiors of each other reduced to a business plan. like as if this messy exhausting disaster is so much more righteous. is that all there is to your perspective, who the fuck are you, i want to know you, i want to feel you, you are in the head, you are lost in the collection of crap, a range of crap so unlimited it will always take precedent, will always be more than you, is this valuable? subtlety and mystery give way to vulgarity. you are a medium for everything that’s a medium, do you exist? what do you exist for? look at us the advertisers. look at us pure entertainment. do you know why the world gets away with everything you don’t want? everything you hate? everything you have an opinion about? we do not see you. we do not know you. we do not feel anything much

the stuff keeps us cold. we do not need you this way. we like you, but we do not need you. we like you, but we do not love you

do something. fucking do something

the garbage is telling you that you don’t matter. that’s how garbage propagates more garbage. that’s how nobody knows you. that’s how to play it, fake. and make it, the rise of the lie so paramount and empty. the world doesn’t need it. the world doesn’t need more fake. the world doesn’t even really need your fucking opinions about everyone else’s opinions. the world doesn’t need you to share what it already has. the shit has already been shared over and over. it’s something else the world needs from you. it’s something else so figure it out. nobody will remember your opinions about opinions. nobody will remember it. what do you think people fucking remember? the world is begging you for the only original thing you have. we want to see you

we want to know you

we do not know ourselves either

show us

we need to see you

we need to see ourselves. find us

or we hate and we cancel

that’s what it says. we are going to die one day. what did we do with ourselves? were we garbage? do you know what the fuck i am talking about? it is not your job. it is not your shows. it is not your porn. it is not your humor. it is not your opinions. it is not your links

who the fuck exists? who is a person today? what exactly did you create? what did you fucking create. what did you fucking create. what did you fucking create?

i am not just talking about art

We don’t really know you but if we did we would love it

i can’t find you

i want to know you

We were uncluttered yet impure,

now we are too pure

or we like to think so

Now we are cluttered

we are clutter

but we don’t think so and we

don’t care

it is okay

this coldness will not last

forever, it is so young

this coldness

Let These Words Be Unimportant

Let me whisper. Let me bring these words to you, let them turn yellow then purple like light diffusing through polluted air. In a sound of voice I long to hear and embrace floats near me. Connect these words in us through this space, not by chains of past offenses identity crises and grievances. Let them feel comforting and welcomed, not as wounds, feel like birds at dawn singing through cold air or a bell tower carillon drop notes over chaotic streets on the way home from work in the evening. Let these words mean nothing, let them be nothing, let them exist for no indisputable purpose or explicit reason, yet not be treated as meaningless. Let them not be crowded out with opinions, nor create such crowds. What makes such opinions more meaningful?

What if I have no history anymore. What if I claim nothing. These words have tongue in them, lips, lungs, I want for them to not be pushed to sting. Let me kiss with them. Let me exist with you as if there were nobody else before us, and nobody to jump down our throats after. I have slept with these words when hungry, when lonely, now let these words take company. Let these words be a place to land, not just a springboard to and from troubles, not as an opiate either but a place to be fearlessly awake together. Let these words be a world that’s not too smart for romance. Enough views crowd us one after another, it’s blinding. If we come from nowhere beyond this moment, if only by sound we could touch these screens delicate as paper, what if.

Your voice alone is wonderful to me. Carillon notes blending and separating over rivers inside send little messages barely heard, grow more resonant. I long to hear beauty instead of these arguments. Then these words will not chase you down, will not hunt you. For truly I long for you and for no opinion. I long to hear words exist less for the purpose of proofs, divisions, violence, information. Thus let their intelligence here stake no claim. Let these words be unimportant yet significant. Be available and abundant. Let them be valuable.

Come With Me

Yes I admit searching for your face in crowds afraid of what I’d see. You came in closed the door leaned your bike against the armoire put your keys and wallet down on the dresser and stay

ed. We listened to the same musical refrain over and over after the film credits stop

ed since you made it last

even long

er than needed that evening, years

your presence melts resentments and smile fades priorities then there’s only innocence in us. I’ve felt long

ing and awe and dread since childhood toward everything in life and everyone I’ve loved. This is why poetry picked me without asking. I’d eventually tell the truth, sometimes incredibly pained and sometimes without flinching in a way that served an art. I was less than eight when I knew I was alone. I see her walking slow

in memory, eyes locked down at the ground watching feet move mechanically, but once she stop

es to stare at a glow. Strange. A mesmerizing purple hue around a shadow, circling the contour of the dark form in the sidewalk – was this some prophecy for today? Six brothers and sisters new lives pop in and out of dreams like a vague connective tissue. Purple orchids sit in the windowsill wait

ing for water don’t need too much attention, bookshelves crammed with ideas and lyrics and pictures don’t make this old, ancient ache better, or easier the exceptional courageousness it takes to care. Beyond the selfish, superficial, convenient or practical no bar, text box, or website brought us together. You said you noticed I always look at the poem during critique instead of up at the group, you stay

ed long enough to get to know me a little but not very deep. My most entitled and arrogant phase featured this loss although I couldn’t explain how much loneliness this arose from and alienation. I still can’t keep up with demands in all directions by myself but who really can or how long

can we pretend. Later on we leave after a short time. Except in rare circumstances when we see differently those places in them that we fear. And those elements in us embracing those who just don’t want to know, and those who do, and we take all of that. All of it. A fantasy is not a knowing. A knowing says, this does not have to be so exciting. A languishing calls in all of us. Saying stop

by, hang out we are just talking. It is not about being so impressed, it is beyond bodies, and we are not rushing out of here either. We are not on our way home because there’s nowhere really to be, nowhere like here at least because why not with you, why not here making something, building something beyond our outfit and our face and our credentials? I am dreaming now. But this is the future of our yearnings. Why not the freedom in doing nothing also, to stretch out in the grass for hours or lounge on the patio quietly, why not cooking and talking late into the night, where are these people?

Those who don’t mind the time?

This does not have to be so exciting it just has to be true. I want to go find them and set down my keys on the table, turn off the internet and TV, to tell me their stories or notice the majestic shape of a tree reach in every direction for the sun to form such pleasing angles, am I crazy? I am angry because there’s no antidote to the recklessness of others. To the tyranny of business, being busy and making things happen. There’s no pathology in craving more significance to our company — is it so dangerous to desire this today, feigning instead to resist real feeling as a means of self-improvement? I have feel

ings. That need not be cute or palatable. Take no hallucination of ideals, that aesthetic is so tired. The end is coming soon, dears. Come by my love because fifty thousand options, fifty million options are not you, because fifty billion other options are still not who you are and because it does not matter about tomorrow, even now doesn’t matter because there’s nothing to do. In truth, there is real

ly nothing.

Drink tea with me, no pool, no bar, no fancy food, no nice clothes, no entertainment. I’m up the mountain pass now sipping the tea, bundled in wool, iron and wood and smoke billowing from fires in the freezing cold, there is no service here, and everything is free. I long for you here but will find somebody to come with me, somebody along the way who wonders what it would be like to set their keys down anywhere, anywhere, and love those you find. I create no words, no art to sell truly, I make piece after piece for those I hold and a place for us to exist in is all the same affair I work for, beyond the obvious yet not beyond those held in the middle of the darkness because the only thing we have that’s free in this world is each other and we know it. This is why poetry is not endangered. Is this not the belief anymore, here – what happened? Nothing is just only ours. Everything is for each other. This is one truth of mine among many. I wish it weren’t so sometimes. I’d like to need no one, but this contemporary promise is a false idol of sorts. I unpeel bananas

in the kitchen for breakfast, oranges

in the afternoon and adore them in solitude. I don’t really adore french fries, though they taste good — a body is treated like this too. It matters how you see

things, when we unpeel and also when we don’t. I’m still being with them, still in love irresponsibly on paper and on screens and whatever and it’s great. For us cyc

ling colors through bay windows, stay

ing up all night. I come here to write for tears of long

ing to watch icy blue rivers in us melt

from ancient glaciers — they need a job. In this moment as with most that matter nobody knows this about me and it’s okay. I am the same as everyone. You who recognize this thing.

You, taking he

art