Friday, January 29, 2010

there is nothing I need less
than another trial by karma

every whit paid has left me broke
and now I feel like I'm getting

a freebie a token for being
such a good customer

in this rag-and-bone convenience store
holding nothing I need...





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Don't fear my gaze

I look at you long and hard

because I love you so

and who knows when the last time

we say good-bye will be?



(for Ali)


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I am no longer the seer I thought I was--

I mistook hallucinations for visions

and visions for dreams

and dreams for living

and living for a death--

now I woke up with nothing to say

and the relief is enormous--

I'm just getting wondering what today's farce'll be




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
life

has

never

been

any

different

than

passing

frenzy

giving

way

to

perpetual

peace

(what

we

call

weariness)

and

calm

(what

it

is)






Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
awakened from the dream of my life

lucid

detached

lolling in the morning bed

looking out on the day

waiting for nothing

wanting nothing

and no desire to go back to sleep



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

the last of this light fades to bluish gray

on this last of all days--

the late afternoon of pitiful victories

and explanations--

and all who do not hoe your line

will denounce you for your rescue--

all who envy your position

will relish your failure and crow--

what shame when another sees them fall

and yet none go back as far as you to vindicate

your promise or their pledge to you--

you did the heavy work

and they hog the light rest--

now on this last of all days

when you give up the goal--the ordeal--the remorse--

and what will happen will happen of course

with or without your sanction--

your part played will be its own event--its own happening--

its own thing in itself manifest in creation--

now as this last light darkens to violet--a scar on the skin

of the horizon--and then to star-flecked black--

and all regret dissolves in the weariness of release--

it is not your trouble any longer--

on this last of all days--it is not your bother

and you will consider the fragrant twilight--

the lone cry on the farthest hill--

that once was you language--your gauge--your belief--

not now--now--last of all--you disappear

into the Absolute and stare back at this life through everything....





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I have ceased to listen to
the groaning of the downtrodden--

it is a white noise like silence
among us down here on earth

a white noise like the music
of the spheres gracing

a dream of freedom that tempts
one into one's denouncement...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I cast about for one thing

that isn't an illusion--

but that too is an illusion

(now try explaining how

illusion is real

because it exists...)



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

whatever I did I did
to vouch for what I will do--
constancy in flexibility
shooting the rapids of the heavenly river--
the Cowboy and the Weaving Girl
parted but for the one night of my deliberation



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
my baucis

I fear I fail you

and your anger at

times says I do

but unless the Source

The One

The All says otherwise

I will be with you

even as we pass

from the world

even as we putter

as shades

in some elsewhere

close at hand

so will we be always

tangled bare stalks

from the single root

rising



(for Ali)


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.


the illuminations of a life

resonate in consciousness

any moment in a long film say would jog

a memory that would ignite the total fire of

sense-memory

and for a moment this body this sense of time this moment

will be gone and all of consciousness

will be always on the grain of the vision the unrevealing shadow

the lurking spot of phantom misting

that will reveal the instant as preserved

the news of a death

the mother not to be seen for the duration of this stint

the wordless realization that all would be different

and all of life would have such moments of alteration

as a simple sound catching unawares my attention

will revive the whole scene (first tears)

on a quiet red winter evening deep in the years--


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I get off the soapbox just as the cops ride passed

I don't know what bug is up their ass

no one listens to me even those who agree with me

Did I choose the wrong vocation?

the wrong life?

the wrong time and the wrong circumstances?

no ones listens to or cares about anarchists

we are no threat to anyone but ourselves

(if we flare with righteous anger a wee bit much)

except when society finally does fall

and then the infrastructures will the gone

the apparati old as junk at a yard sale

and all of us will be on the road including the cops

they won't even have to pocket their badges

because it won't matter the badges will have no meaning

any longer and I will smirk to passing refugees see

I told you so



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
under a moon 3 days short of full

I know it is the end of the chase--

how gleaming we all were when

we started out

only to hunt your trace through world after world

so in the coming lunar fullness I can say

I found you naked in the sky and in my bed

and we hardly gleam through the smudges of our tangles

now we stand facing each other

everything unsaid the content of our moment



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
people are tired of how long it is taking

for me to cease and desist

to lie down and quit

to pack in this shit

and I am waiting too

my how life insists on happening





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
gaining on the light--

the world gone

all memory suddenly present--

the totality of the experience--

the reason the sojourn was over

the actuality opening out of darkness--

yes it is finally happening

bypassing the light to become light




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I give in and up--
if in doing so I give you happiness and peace
then for once thank God
I did it right--


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I have no reason left to try anything but repentance--
I know--none of you believe in God--or you believe some crazy notion
of your own undoing and call it God--

well, good luck--you will some day find yourself here where I am--
under the empty sky--scrambling on rocks barefoot--
cursing yourself in the form of blasphemy-as a light goes on

and you stare at it as if it were a sun or a flesh-destroying face of God--
"no man sees My face and lives--"
well, at least no man can see God's face and die--

the rest is luck chance fate or whatever condition we cannot
understand but use in our pitiful defiance of nothingness--
but happy you know no more than you do--no need to burden

yourself more than you have already--I already repent of my pride--
and wait for the release from my hide--bonjour--eventually--



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I don't know what will happen next--

but it is for those fated to live this moment in eternity on earth--

good luck assholes--you're meeting yourself--yet again--

paying for your own sins--onto the seventh generation--



Content (c) 20008-2010 Philip Milito.
oh what have I done?

I've worked to no purpose and achieved no lasting end--

just because you think you have a mission doesn't mean

you know what it is--

this work I've done lies fallow and ignored--

and oh--oh--that is what I've done--




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I know the age is done for--and so are me and mine--

we laughed and enjoyed the folly--and now we've run out of time--

but only on this earth--and only for this time--

and what next God knows or cares--for me and mine





Content (c) 2008-20010 Philip Milito.
I believe I'll have another dish of ice cream--
a plate of cookies--a bag of pretzels--

fire one up--douse one down--burn in righteousness
and howl as if the sky listened

while my marshmallows incinerate--
food addiction--sex addiction--gambling addiction--

power addiction--nothing to help one feel alive
except being alive--which a sane man would fear

as he'd fear what he thinks is the devil-
i.e. himself...




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
the arrogant do not know--
the arrogant do not care--

they have a will to power
they worship like an anchorite worships

the god he imagines beyond the sky--
and being unable to satisfy their vanity

unable to create--they will destroy
the entire world to make themselves feel alive--




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
sickened by the drawing down of humanity's pretense
to goodness
I await my turn to leave--

there's nothing left to do
to a world so hard done by that my pride no longer
protects me from the realization

that I will also fall with these others--
nothing like disaster to teach humility to those
with no ears to hear no eyes to see no brains to think---

and in the desolate void that is creation--
no hope for any light to shine--so I put in my time and made
my mistakes and life will not let me go until

I've sung the common swan song--then I'll be free to go--
to what and where I wish I could recall...




Content 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Kiss good-bye to the idea of America--

it's gone--has been for decades--centuries even-

the Democratic Idea was foisted by high-minded intellectuals
on a grubby ignorant pack of low-lifes who'd rather

clinging to abuse from their masters than think and act
and reason for themselves--snarly ignorant pig-fucking cracker assholes--

what will they do when the nazis they keep in power abscond with their
livelihoods--nothing!--they'll rage and hate everything that isn't

in their limited understanding--it's alright Gomer--
be displaced by the cataclysm your greed and stupidity caused--

your thoughtless consent to the mendacity of your masters--
but don't show up at my post-apocalyptic outpost--

I'll just look over the fence and watch you starve (sorry Lord
but I've yet to learn to bless and forgive my enemies)

the backs of the working class have always been a platform
for these greedy power-mad masters of the universe to stand on--

now suffer for your stupidity--more--for your evil--you wishing to be
among the rulers and actually thinking you have a ghost of a chance--

as long as people get what they deserve nothing on this earth will matter
to heaven--despite that esoteric thinking that states

what is above is reflected below--if God is truly a nazi too then what hope?
I no longer care--I'll be dead soon enough and done with this shit--

but in the meantime--fuck all of you--let God forgive--you for your evil--
me for my pride--this is the earth--a training ground for dim-witted souls

to enlighten themselves and learn what I and so many others now
are learning the hard way--(God will have it no other way--)

there will be no peace on earth--there is no light in this world (even Jesus
on his cross looked up at the sky and said "Father--why have you

forsaken me?") live as you will--kill if you must--right and wrong
have no meaning here in the world--enjoy the fancy meal--the lapdance--

the overaged bitches tried to be young by fucking some young'uns
(all these poor whores truly understand)--the money money money money money--

I'll see you in Hell and I'll see you in the air--like it matters

when nothing is in our control--and we ignore God to balm what we think--is--

our consciences...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.


Thursday, January 21, 2010

whole orchards sprout up out of shit--

you'll have to get a little dirty
if you want to live--








Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
what raves outside the window?

ordinary madness in the form of some tangle of dogs
and leashes swirling around the walker--

nothing else to report---





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I tried to piece together a history of Savonarola
by projecting myself into his biography--

now I burn at a stake made of this ordinary day
for merely attempting repentance (difficult--

difficult) by being too close a reader--
like finding everything you know to be right

to really be wrong--I'd post a review critiquing
this version of Savonarola if I could walk out

of the flames of this instant--unbound--and know
who it is I'm repenting of--(difficult--difficult)





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

"you gotta walk that lonesome valley
and you gotta walk it by yourself"

indeed! what made you think life was other
than a slim thread of faith holding

together a sense of being in the face of
such worldly desolation--

other than a trudge through our own trash
littering the pilgrim's road--the deep shadow

of the valley as the sun sets
to raise a moon?




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
grief will not stand before the onslaught of
man's pitiful stupidity--

be happy--people kill themselves
for the illusions they've embraced

and you don't have to worry about that--
all you have to do

is not get too full of yourself--even your highmindedness
is an illusion for which you'd kill--


Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

trapped again gnawed my way out again trapped again
gnawed my way out again--on and on until the salvation of freedom
seems the tedious collapse occasionally
of some high-mindedness I didn't believe I was capable of--

but glad to be rid of it
as I dash--breaking the snowcrust on the fields--



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I never thought I'd live to see it--

surrealism rules and the end of our time
justifies it--


a pickpocket's explanation
that he works hard for his money--

(your money ya dope--)
while owls cut the moon
like a can opener cutting a lid

but now that I've lived to see it

I don't have to--




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
Hope has a brief season evidently--

the abiding reality that gave Luther dread
and caused even Christ from his cross to cry--Father--why...
is weather or tilt of earth so long fixed
no imagination can place its origin--

against such what avail a small glimmer

of weak yearning we call aspiration
brief as the acceptance is long to come?





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

the sun plays on the street today

as it played on the streets of Atlantis

or Egypt or Rome or any place or time

in the world--

its mortality measured in numbers so infinite

pi is but a clearing of the numerical throat--

numbers trailing off into the infinity of God

that here is a late afternoon sheen on the building facades

of this mid-winter day--

and all memory is fate recorded

infinite in each head and each head's dream

and in the infinity that holds each dream each fate each memory--

long deep thoughts for a moment in time that will pass

into each other moment--each an illusion of space and motion

in the instant in which we subsist--

long deep thoughts for an afternoon of dread

and of optimism--entwined in one consciousness

and as still and centered as the calm that for a moment

is our being in the cold declining sun...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
I seek nothing...

it's already in me

and all I need do

is adjust my attention





Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito
the world is the natural home of what we call 'the Devil'--

that is...our own selfishness--fear--anger--
and the safety-in-numbers that the gangsters of this world
(ALL of them) manipulate to keep everyone guiltily in line--

each of us--duplicitious for the sake of a survival we will lose
for clinging to it so absolutely--

even assholes like me who sensitively rage at the world's injustice
and at a deity who founded all things and everyone
but takes no responsibility for it--the archetype for

popes kings presidents CEOs little next-door Hitlers
and all other masters of the Disclaimer--then puts it all
into self-important words that enlighten no one

let alone the would-be poet-shaman him(my)self--

such is the world--the greedy and the power-mad will ever rule it
enslaving the ignorant and frightened and hateful
in their own shared greed and power-madness--

but also for each of us--the spirit's mandate--
out of this general chaos of death-in-life
we grow into a...into OUR particular resolution and realization--

at least regaining some of our self-awareness to mend our ways
if not die out in a full transcendence..

'Devil" take it--so to speak...




Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

sitting beside
a snoring little beast--

the world its usual
vertigo-inducing spin

outside the window
I keep shut--

the cat lifts and turns
settles back down

and snores s'more...



Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.
Why are so many people happy
only when they're making
some one else miserable?







Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.