We eat ourselves alive
in Brooklyn, there was a house of joy
and the joy the joy the joy became
    a terror to our sanities.

Everyone so happy, (pretending
    freedom so well) that sometimes
forgetfulness would cover over our garbage – how we  ate each other up,
    enduring decay, communally. Covered our inadequate patterns
in the foul breath, the death gasps, of each other’s sweat glands,

ever dripping with big ideas.

—-

In my life, I have known
boys mainly. Some boys so tender
they become my flesh, even as
we traumatize one another
until the numbness let us go.

In the cold buzz of my memories,
    their lips stand out above the
blur, the grave dirt; (the sex that once pop
     made electricity) (but now only work) like all other
        work. Marx and lips,
before the decay of feeling,
     all that caused me excitement
     and sends me off to destroy myself.

—–

I try to pick apart the
      things that drive me; 
         I try to disarm my mind.
              so I will not go mad.

But rare are the hours of
clarity, and foggy I
mostly live.

Cloud by cloud by wish by wish,
planning away the inevitable,

all the time.

Kaufman Illusions @ the Surreal Escape

Alan Kaufman’s poetry
    reveals to me the idols
of this twilight culture, white vultures
    screaming of pain, not theirs, tearing
away at corpses left rotting on a battleground
      they refuse to participate in

Oh, that’s the aesthetic: white dreads
    for Mother Earth, comfort in mushrooms
for discovery of celestial patterns and blown-up brains,
    colors creeping through the cracked walls of the commune
ignore the infestations we live in

He told me,
    as he was tripping:
“We must suck at the great mother’s breast, the great magnet,”
 like leeches, he preaches:
      ”Everyone is confused except for me. I’m
       not confused,” he tells me
that he needs four hours to collect his mind
in the mornings over illegal EBT cigarettes,
     yet in his hippity-hop journey, he tells me:
“I gave a gift to you. Did you get it?” 

I strain to receive,
    lying awake at night,
listening to the throbbing of fifty-three dreams,
    all the molecules pumping through so many veins.
How many veins?

I am a foreigner here.
Alan Kaufman explains white poverty,
    punks and garbage bag ladies
he steals money from,
    calls them racist metaphors, condemns them dead
while they are holding his hand.
How he rages
     against policemen in peaceful towns,
   takes the outcast voice
 (they all do)
       the poverty, the weirdness
    piercings that penetrate the social fabrics
         we were born with, woven into our
skin with our DNA, we dye them away -
     Alan Kaufman knows.

But I am an immigrant, a hipster poser,
     a stranger in a surreal land,
privileged enough to know my Norton verse and
     traveled enough to know what is worse
than America is a lot of other countries,
     governments maybe -
           but is Anarchy safe?

Across the wall, the sleeping man is my subconscious eye,
      all night, I perform for him (he doesn’t know)
how I endow my voice, my moans
      with meaning for him alone.
While “my boyfriend” drools on pillows, three at once – I am incapable of loyalty, 
       he lies there beside me after a day of
          what? nothing. He writes and listens to music
loudly. He is talented. I don’t want to constrain him.

YELLING:
I don’t know! When! I got stuck! In this stupid! Hippie cliche!
Looking around me! Is this a Joke! I don’t recognize! My race.

I am not Kaufman
    I am not angry
    I am not political enough
        except when my mouth is dry and I need
borrowed tears to cry, which
        is rare, because I have my own 

I will not preach you
     my vegan goodness. For
we are all trapped like flies here
     in amber, sweet ego, not
a tool or a lens, not special
     but congealing.
As we believe we are flying, even though
      all the world is already frozen.

I am not one of them. I can not be.
I act damn Capitalist.
I collect books I never finish reading.
I scheme celebrity status, confess
    that even the sale of my body
    can be sold – I have been told, before I
grow old I want to burn through the cold
world with the lamest poetry I can sell

But I am frozen,
    amber never drips
above the horizon of the weavings in ancient patterns,
    Universal deceptions that
sail away into forgotten dreams, Bohemian
    and the dingy basements of abused brains, mine
        sleepless and failed
impatient to make my abstractions real