write a last will:

there are breadcrumbs to be left

under the topaz blue of the oversized sofa,

that passed from one lover to another

a chain of grievances

and fur from new pets

there are old leather volumes in the nook

claimed by siblings

living just above the hole in the floor

caused by a sickly hanging vine

that set the house on fire

when an april storm blew the growlights loose

there are soft pine boards,

oiled down like the deck of a schooner

jib of an attic, covered in soft splinters

and the plastic cleaver

bearing the name 'mona' - her hairbeads, too,

our ghost, we displaced

with the way we talked and were naked in the sun room

write one final song:

there are branches scraping against the spanish tile

the crabapple clawing its way inside memory

the squish of mildewed carpet

in the bathroom

and the overdamped silence, open and waiting,

for a car to come home

the rhythmic turning of a casement window

the sound of paint chipping off beneath a nail

there are clothes slapping against rock

washerwomen on the river bank

soft and carried on warm light

their voices warp and weave around your body

carry you to sleep inside the gatehouse

there are the wheels on the rail

rocking and chugging as you speed to the north

carrying you into the endless day

and out of the distant night

lived this way once

you would live this way twice, again, and better

you would pursue, go in pursuit

of your own desire

make love one final time after a long and permanent goodbye

keep secrets, if only to have inside you

a place where the shadow and light play

It seems to come to me only when I am quite far from it - that is, when the chances of my trying to tame it are next to nothing - so that what I am left with is trails -
just scratches on a surface, jitters of a tight hand, in this dominant tongue - clumsier and busy to know,

it's the sun beating down on the white willow, and the blank zone,
what cannot be read by finger or eye -

misreading of bird-talk - buffalo saddles moving in between the crumbling hills in the badlands, more jewels everywhere in the cracks between streams,
round and soft and glinting and setting,
with snakes in the gullies and snakes in the grasses

You come back to me at the strangest moments - sitting on the overground underground, and browsing telephone poles.

common heart ache - what fills us is still mountainsong - the cry of an independent, indignant, fighting, beauty-making warrior heart. here I am held fast, making the same choices that I seek to condemn.

Only with this racket I can start to hear it all, as we move above the noise floor.

now we run between sweet and salty seas,
a field just long enough to lose sight of the steeples that surround us

we're walking, just us three, and the ghost of every one we've known
the rows are all thistle and dried grass,
cornflower blue twisting out of half-dry ground

and we're counting our steps as thin drops of water fall from a sky that promised no rain

promise me it will never rain,
or at least promise me that the rain won't fall to ground

promise me that the we'll stay dry among the falling waters
or at least that we'll have a fire still to warm us, hold on to our sparks

promise me that even when we're soaked and shaking,
last end of our table burnt for fuel,
that there will still be some song in the air

that we'll return to this place in our minds
a small garden with high walls
a promise between us and earth

I've loved you like a conqueror
now I want to learn to love you like smoke wafting up into a room full of fog

like a log in a fire, surface by slow flaking surface into a new and energetic form

I want to learn to do the work of loving you
and love to do the work of learning to love you
and do learn to love the work of you
and do love you

surface with its mirror coating stripped
tiny voice that screams over the
silence of enlightenment
talking about the science of enlightenment

we're creatures of time
we're creatures of mind
we're great swirling patterns

our souls sometimes rhyme
in our fear of the abyss
clinging to an old story

like an ark in a storm
or a turtles's back

we emerge from the glimmering wet of our own mouths,
these maws, gaping, mothers after the afterbirth,
a tiny churning of sparks in the godhead,
wondering -- what could be more glorious in its irony
than hoping to think a thought that proves its own originality,
in this one-without-a-second world

the stack is in the batter -
go in with broad bread hook
holding on the left, giving on the right

carbon form of flagrant rite -
clamoring, harboring freight
train harmonies - monotone, polychrome - late

clattering of argument
cups, starch, and cloth

go once, come
go back and forget -
calm and collapsing harbinger
of sigil and taste

Of course, if it were really a GIGAfactory, it would be approximately the size of the continental united states. In point of fact, it's just a factory. But then, that is the hilarity and absurdity of an enterprise that has mostly won or lost on marketing.
We took the train to Zossen. With the current nine-euro monthly ticket valid on all regional trains, and the bike supplement (an additional 11 euros), this was as hop-on-hop-off easy as could be. From there, we mounted our cycles, and set off through town, and then into the forest.
I remarked to my friend Jan that even though we call it a forest, it's really more of a farm. Look closely and you can tell that the trees are planted in rows, with space enough for a harvester. At some point, this will all be Kallax shelves.

And then suddenly, we're on a highway overpass. It's the A10 – part of the autobahn ring system surrounding Berlin. We something gray and low slung a few clicks down the highway.

We continue on our path, back into the woods, and we begin to see signs of industry. High-voltage, three-phase power cables, snaking along the ground of the forest, surrounded by chainlink. Every 100 meters or so there is an surveillance tower and signage which implies that we're somehow transgressors, but clearly lacks a legal tooth.
Then we emerge again from the forest, through the mouth of a petrol station. Ironic. Of course, heavy industry still relies on countless petrochemicals, countless trucks burning their diesel.

Finally, we roll into the parking lot. This is an american parking lot, even if it's in germany. It's 31c, but in the endless ocean of concrete, it feels five years in the future – baking, choking on ozone, nowhere to hide from the UV. Such a place can only be described as hostile to human life. The signage agrees: "Danger Zone for Pedestrians!"

Any direction that you look, there is rubble and refuse and waste: old tupperware, underground storage tanks with some defect, the plastic wrap from a palette of pre-poured concrete.

The low-slung grey something is a low-slung gray something, even from up close. The art on the sides is some derivative of a derivative of an ayn rand book cover, but like... piped through pytorch.
We asked if we could have a tour. They told us to leave. So we sat across the road, in the shade of the petrol station. We slathered some SPF50 on our necks, and toasted our off brand soylent to an exceedingly bright future.

i woke up lifetimes ago at dawn to write this
but it took me until now to sit my body down at the clavier
to strike chords and post boards
above the glare of the canal's edge
you were a whisper of grass
you were a hollering wind in a gorge

we gorged ourselves on pumpkin seeds - ripe and fat and blind
each lilting phrase poured out from behind the veil of my youth
and in those days we just stood our cigarettes on their ends,
and let them burn to the ground

I asked you for your autograph, and you wrote, in your distinct hand
'spiritual bypass'
I'm hung over from eating english breakfast, sipping tea with torries, and collecting foxgloves

I wish you well and wish you well and wish you well,
but the crowded platform of this train leaving,
of these words printed,
ink spilling
is noisy

i printed you a pug in our final hours,
as if to say, 'i cannot breathe' --
and printed you a wand,
as if to say 'for better or worse, a witch' --
i printed you a crown, but threw it in the pond,
down the way, in my little corner of purgatory,
where I whiled one thick slice of my lifetime away

i woke up at dawn, many lifetimes ago, to write this
full of gratitude, and quiet surrender to the pale orange light
streaming in over the grey tiles, and the black dog

प्रातः स्मरामि हृदि संस्फुरदात्मतत्त्वं
सच्चित्सुखं परमहंसगतिं तुरीयम् ।
यत्स्वप्नजागरसुषुप्तिमवैति नित्यं
तद्ब्रह्म निष्कलमहं न च भूतसङ्घः ॥१॥

On awakening my heart remembers, that shimmering divinity in me,
Like a swan lapping up milk and leaving water, drinking existence-consciousness-bliss, until the ego dissolves
Beyond waking, beyond dreaming, beyond dreamless sleep - always -
I am that one and only spark, not this corporal form

प्रातर्भजामि मनसा वचसामगम्यं
वाचो विभान्ति निखिला यदनुग्रहेण ।
यन्नेतिनेतिवचनैर्निगमा अवोचं_
स्तं देवदेवमजमच्युतमाहुरग्र्यम् ॥२॥

Early in the morning, I worship the unthinkable, the ineffable,
What gives rise to thought and speech
What the prophet called "not this, not this",
Primordial, eternal, and utmost

प्रातर्नमामि तमसः परमर्कवर्णं
पूर्णं सनातनपदं पुरुषोत्तमाख्यम् ।
यस्मिन्निदं जगदशेषमशेषमूर्तौ
रज्ज्वां भुजङ्गम इव प्रतिभासितं वै ॥३॥

At dawn, I bow to the formless and the luminous,
The fullness that contains everything, that animates everything -
the cosmos without beginning, settled in the endless universe,
like a rope turned into a snake.

श्लोकत्रयमिदं पुण्यं लोकत्रयविभूषणम् ।
प्रातःकाले पठेद्यस्तु स गच्छेत्परमं पदम् ॥४॥

These three sacred verses, these ornaments of earth and air and space -
Whoever says these in the morning, goes home to god

-Adi Shankaracharya

sometimes the spirit moves through you,
and sometimes it don't
sometimes papa is home, and sometimes he's out to lunch.

who will survive? none
who with thrive? this one.

I do apologize for every note of every song that's sung amok atop the the calling pyramid homes. these mushy fingers, which write notes on a treble staff, call the diaphragm on the telephone and tell it nice laugh, tell the druggist pocket laughing stuffing hardware not to laugh.

find a clear and unadulterated path
through the woods that though quiet are not quite wilderness. they don't have that here


which specific feeling comes to mind?

a bird alights atop a tin gutter, the gutter is my heart
the bird is free and universal, comes from the wide white sky, leaves to wide white sky,
but for the solitary sound of clattering feet on the eave, the beak that taps a warning
here we are and here is my flightlessness
I miss you, and call to you. the tin is hot.


dog in the doghouse, forgive me if I have not given you all,
i know it's cold in winter, hot in summer, not quite home.
my house is your house, and the fiberglass igloo in the crook by the back porch, where the leaves would gather and rot, hot, covering the writhing wetness of worms like bandaids, wrapped in little ribbons and divisible.
the porch screens torn

call me colophone
one more memory of me for the hole
one more kiss on the face of the deep
one more telling of our story

A bed of leaves, a peeling bark. The towers where we climb. Climbed and climbing into fragments, solid-souled rampage feet - the hardly there beat. Maybe all goes cartoon, cycles marked-in and apportioned.

Can we connect, us? That's what it really must be.

Patience climbing like a vine, the house where a child studies, the rock beneath the house.                                                                       -                                           Striations - birth. The bath of earth.

Not all things can be washed away. Not all things can be unmade.

Let god direct my path.

I've got to let go and let god, as they say. Let go of the need to control it all, and just let god in. Let god direct my path.

Let god direct my path.
Let god direct my path.
Let god direct my path.

I was lost in the wilderness of your longing, of your fear and lonely hunting. I moved past everything I know, into the clear morass of my meaning. Into the switchbladed horsecorns,
that sit together at the house dawn, make roses and pawns,
sit in silence while the love we left inside blares horns and toots fruit from stem to root.

Come the ragged windy perch that sits inside my sister self, and holds aloft a ragged bird, in wind that washes over.

Bye bird. I'll see you in my dreams. I'll see you at the seams of things. And when we meet again, I'll hold you friend. I'll make amends and sing again. In your fine company I traveled long. In your song.

Though I have no tale to let inside, I pride myself on masticated paws.
Broken jaws.
Give it some time, honey. We'll get back to the way it was, when the rains came, and we spoke of something but no name. Give me all prospect and harmlessness. Give me all righteous-caused chocolate bars, who tell me of the money most.
Of the money most!
Of the righteous host!
I was born out of jesus' ass, and I don't care who knows it.
I don't care which of my toe hairs shows it, and when the book is closed -- the one you already remember but haven't read -- I'll still be born of holiness.

The sudden and thunderous cracking of a split tooth rhyme game, grated into my headpsace by the growling soot of my unwindexed and unwindexable view.

Head on down to the biological market, find you some mushrooms, portabellas and doom. Hop on zoom!

Exsanguinated rat complexion, inner visions that fade to podcast in the june moon. The cherry on sunday, black and white and red. These keep me looping around and trying to find the next measure of angst.

When I foreclose on supplies, close my guy's thighs, walk down to the club and trade fetish for ties, trade powders for lies, at the chemical market. That's me at my finest.

This notion, of you and I and I in repose, laying gaily in the the atrium of our memory, I begrudge it. Cook some soup or don't, sprinkle in whatever -- I have always loved your sense of smell.

I brush my keen father feather against the flesh of the night,

the air inside your vowel sound gives way to the blaying and bleating of this goat beard.

breathless, suddenless, thunderous one-ness of this compositionality, positional martyrdom, sacrificial bartering at the market stalls of our unison.

beautiful brick wall, another chantilly cream and mustard-licking crispbread of a morning.

I hold my meek mother, beak and all, until the light fades.

Just surviving in these times, that's about all one can do.

The day will come again when my free time flows freely toward experimentation and stories and art and love. Right now, to give myself the kindness of just getting through, that's about all I can do.

I've often wanted to write here, lessons learned. For example – I think that to write what I can recollect, of how the Free Network Foundation met its demise, would be a worthwhile thing. How we also become what we fight.

I took out the analytics from this site, so now more so than before, this is just noise into the void. I am okay with that. I do keep a record – have written more this year than any other, but all quietly and to myself.

I've spent so much time this year staring at a screen. I can feel the inflamed tendons in the right hand, from the unstoppable doom scrolling.

It is so tempting to thing that we'll get through this pandemic, and that things will get better. I still think things are going to get better, but not because of any inexorable force. There is no one coming save us. But the power of ingenuity still beats in our broken, sacred hearts. We are still animated by the divine. We can still play, invent, imagine.

We can do so much better than internet. Some day we'll have an organic global brain. Some day we'll figure out how to regenerate the commons. Some day we will ask what lets the flowers of our mind bloom, and then we will do that. Until then, I send this to you, whoever you are – in love and solidarity, and hope.

Berlin - December 31st 2020

Musk of life is a pheremone trail.
You accept your urge.
Until one day you lose the scent.

Everything flowers, everything blooms, and then wilts stamen-first into a droop of metling flesh.
Everything sexes, and everything secretes, especially the thin membranes near our sense, impressed. Crevices of flesh against the open wind.

Mush of life is a compost pile.
You accept that it must sit and gather heat.
Until one day it turns, to stay living.

Everything moulders, everything teems, and then is set again anew in rotting, with the tumbling of refuse.
Everything living once was dead, and everything dead was living - espcially the wet mulch decaying, pressed. Heel of boot against forest floor.

Much of life is a windowsill.
You accept that it is dirty.
Until one day it is too dirty to stand.

Everything gathers, everything accretes, and then is wiped again with the wet cloth of our will.
Everything hushes, everything breaks, especially the silence like a pane glass, pressed. Heel of palm against flat of back.

The turn inward, the turnaround, the turn outward. Seasons turn. I've been journaling these last many months, but that was not for you. That was for me. And now I wonder what happens if I write for you, for me, again.

Greys and blues out to the horizon, and muted lichen green. The ficus blanched in the summer, wilted in the winter, curled in on itself from overwatering. The soiling of all natural wilds, the unwilding of the whole planet, so many microplastic beads streaming through the night sky with their carcinogenic albedos. So many mylar baloons drifting on geoengineered trade winds.

It's hard not to retreat into poetics, when I want to face the world, when I want to write for the world. It's comforting to know that I won't mention this, won't tell a soul. I will just send it on the wind.

This monochrome dawn is breaking.
Will grumbles of her own concerns.
I do not remember my dreams, but I do stride in the direciton of my will.
I am learning to speak again.
I am learning to care about the mundane world again, and I am unafraid anywhere, to ask in certain terms, if you would like to spend some time.

I remember every alley, from Missouri to Mussoorie, and all buzzing lamps we've driven past.
Here on the outskirts, I look and see the lamp of the human heart, undimmed and radiant, one beacon to call a city to attention.

We are fabric, and I am thread, let me not forget.
We are tapestry and I am image, let me not fade.
We are mosaic and I am tile - alone I form nothing.

We are city and I am street, same as you, and only worth knowing if we're all on the level.

We are water, I am water, and this monochrome dawn sends all of us skyward.