The Man Who Lost His

was at first uncertain...
after seemed same, like bright to freshly closed eyelids
then shock bloomed cold
a glacier that crept up and hugged him from behind
he saw absence through the forozen transparent
the feel and the think parts were safely iced
up numb, though
the warm red hurt melted through the center eventually and sparked gently on the backs of his eyes
throbbing, burning, forcing tears out hot to the surface
where they thawed out a path
to a high spot where he could really see the lack of
the greedy echo empty sucked all the scream out
then delightedly spooned out laughter, a tasty hysteric
until it had licked him clean
he could see from where he was
that it was still empty, ravenous
although the bones of multitudes lay piled at its feet
and a line of his fellows stretched behind him
out of sight, but only he was high enough to see the truth
the skeletons told him agitatedly they understood, byut the formulaic cyphers they clicked off
he yelled
you comprehend nothing, I see all
I am the king of the top of the fall
I am distinct, you have forgotten
the queue behind was ignorant
he felt guilt, it was stupid to let anything take his
stupid, stupid, stupid
the moment when his hair caught fire he lost his
too
the flesh ran off
he weakly clacked into the calcium heap
had no sense but phantom pain where his
used to be
he looked all the way up
to the highest depths
saw himself in the person stretched out
being picked clean
chattered a late warning.--

Winter

The heat of the sun makes her
Sweat and wish for winter
The winter, she knows, will
Caress her coolly, without the
Discomfort of warm closeness.
Winter knows its place and
Keeps its distance.

The Siren

{ed. note from author:}
[This is] a "write a sonnet" assignment for 12th Grade English, which suffers from delusions of Shakespeare and has some of the most clicheed and clunky imagery and rhyming that have ever been perpetrated on the reading public. At least the iambic pentameter is correct...

A siren rises from tempestuous waves,
And, sighting storm-tossed ships, begins her dirge
To tempt the sailors to their wat'ry graves
Where coral reefs and shipwrecked boats converge.
Her airy melody floats o'er the sea
A melancholy note of sweet, high pain,
She sings to sailors, "Please, come out to me,
You've much to lose but so much more to gain!"
And they, believing, let her lead them on
To rocky shores or shapeless shifting shoals
Where unsuspecting boats, once cast upon
Th'unforgiving rocks, are pierced with holes.
Then men regret the siren's song of fate;
But oh! alas! For them it is too late!

Untitled poem, August 1981

You think I'm so innocent, pure, and free
Just as happy and careless as I can be
But I've known guilt, and I've known pain
And the bittersweet feeling I can't stop the rain
I know love and I know hate
And power and weakness and chance and fate
I know the truth, but still I lie
Iknow how to laugh but still I cry
You say that you trust me - you seem to believe
That your fade-away angel could never deceive
You extend your heart on a silver tray
And I don't have the power to push it away
I die a thousand times when I look into your eyes
But it's only myself that I despise.

The Doors of Perception

{December 1985}

The doors of perception are stel, with razor-sharp edges. They are at the corners of the deserts of your mind, and the transient winds of your emotions are causing them to swing wildly, erratically, back and forth...

The moments at which we step outside of ourselves and go through these doors are very rare, and very unpredictable. Who knows whether, at the moment you step up to those doors, they will be swung allowing you to see clearly at last, or slamming shut, killing you, and, worse, slashing apart your imagination, killing you, and, worse, slashing apart your imagination, savagely, brutally.

These doors are the keys to all that is real (which is hardly anything in this world). It is only when we go through them that we get a glimpse of the true, horrible, beautiful Self within us all. Only the unlucky make it back through those doors to the hellish world that the rest of us are, for the present, cursed to live in.

MIRRORGLASS

{Journal fiction, December 1988, age 18}

They were the cool young things of the 90's, wearing wraparound, mirrored glasses almost constantly. What they did when they weren't parading through the main streets of the city in all the latest fashions, nobody knew.

REFLECTIONS ON PRESENT, PAST AND FUTURE

{ed.note from author}
The following was written when I was a pompous 16-year-old sci-fi nerd in Miami with New Age tendencies, attending summer school between my 10th and 11th grade years to make up a math course I failed. The first part of this journal entry concerns my tempestous relationship with my best friend, "W.," who I considered to be solely responsible for all of our disagreements. The second part is a rumination on the cosmic significance of my previous summer. Obscure references are explained in brackets.

As I sit here listening to "The Breeze" (95.7), the new jazz/New
Age/classical station, a pleasant mix of thoughts is running through my
mind. I'm thinking of all the things I've been doing or planning: drawing
a design of the Alpha 10 [a spaceship that figured into the private
sci-fi universe concocted by W. and I], tape recording my ideas for my
essay project, the War Against Sleep [some sort of plan I had for a book I
was going to write, sharing with the world my wise insights on psychology,
philosophy, and mysticism], Star Trek IV, Italo Calvino, the name
Hilary, talking to W. and T., the "Harmonic Convergence" worldwide
New Age celebration [which was slated to occur several days
after this entry was written]...This is a cross-section of the stream of
consciousness winding thru my mind now.