phil milito day blog: May 2011

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

what will come of all this endeavor?

don't bother asking--

no human mind will encompass

consequence in its living skin

you will not believe your own facts

after so long visualizing your outcome

another delusion of spiritual hucksters

to mislead who cannot trust their own experience

who will remember us?

who would give a damn?

we are history to those who know us

and will be forgotten when they too are forgotten

no reason to go soft

no reason to stay hard

no reason to give a cry

no reason to listen for reply

no reason to seek and soar aloft

no reason to be on guard

no reason to to wander or dance or sing

no reason to do anything

you've outlived yourself--

people talk about you past tense

even when you're standing next to them--

you check your pulse your wallet

your breathing

you see empty sockets when you look

in their eyes

and you long for anything else

because you know you're alive--

you look out a window relieved--

sunlight lays a thick shine on the trees and grass

in the hot afternoon--

stay by the window

you've outlived yourself

and are quite ready to go

we are history recorded

in billions of brain cells--

and history lost

when those cells die off--

we leave monuments

that only wear smooth in the wind--

and people will lean against them

in future sun and wind--

enjoying their time as we've enjoyed ours--

with no idea 'who made these?"

Sunday, May 29, 2011

yet an easy morning--

1:03 am DST

this quiet part of the city

where families huddle in their apartments

or some loud group of young clowns

occasionally sully the air

verbally showing their balls--

or the not-so-rare solitary walker

of pavements in any time but this one--

when they pass--it is quiet again--

even silent--the city night not even

a background of white noise--

this quiet neighbor

on an easy morning

1:15 am

DST

another day I could disappear

from the record just like that--

no trace of my experience

of this excellent morning--

no residual echo of its brief existence--

the sun shining over me

while a brighter light rises from the ground--

another day I could just drop into that fissure

just like that

and be something else--

what pulled me along

was the tug of karma through

the tangles of the world--

out of all this I picked the thread

unraveled and followed--

and this is my bureau

and all the junk in it--

and these are the snapshots

that caught some of my view--

the people I love

whether they are here or not--

their knick-knacks

holding the character

and telling the tale of its owner--

and the fading day holding

sense-echoes reverberating under the skin--

the rope pulling me

through wakes of filthy waves--

the polluted sea of clutching waves--

the pull of tides drawing me along

releasing the braided ropes of the ship

out of this I swim with the flow--

the tug of reckoning in each surge

all you had left was an anecdote

to put a brave face on some humiliation--

and now the One has taken that too from you

as it was destined for you--

one job down one coming up--

set 'em up in the next alley boys

that ball'll roll speedily

between the gutters to the pins--

that's what it's like when you are fortunate

in your work--

but oh the shit when you're not--

when no gig's in sight and it feels no one remembers you--

a few down the gutters

and one damn pin standing--extreme left--

you handle it--

I've exhausted all ability

to read your mind--

I have no understanding

of your contentiousness--

do you compete with everyone who tries

to be anything to you?

here--make a pissing contest with yourself

hot but not outrageous

the day is late spring

turned full toward summer's

gathering in the saps and the dews

and bursting under ordinary sun

of release into the environment

a thought well away from the game trail of power--

what if this bloot of brilliance

I call nervous response

tells me some contrary to my tensile apprehension

and begins me to worry--dying snakes of lightning

calling me out--

I tell you I relinquish the over rational mind

and its bogus body to let personal velocity

outside the prohibitive fear of not knowing yourself

move in its channel of surge through the consequence

that ensues--

it will be fast and it will be the full stop period of

your testament--

thought subsumed into the act of its nervous engagement--

pitch a bitch long enough

and someone will indulge you--

if you have any integrity

do not apply--

however--if you have mere pride instead

then demand more than

they think you're worth--

complain complain and the ignorant

will assume you're important

and toady up to you--

just don't be too honest then--

because if you show how serious you are

about your disdain and you sense of entitlement--

they might leave you for someone more welcome

of their fawning--

then pitch a bitch long enough and

you'll be left alone to hock and hector

and generally be dismissed as a crank--

then you'll do your work under cover--

or will do nothing but gripe all day--

pitch a bitch long after anyone will hear or care

Saturday, May 28, 2011

don't love me so fiercely

I am only weak

and tired of my passion

and yearning for a break--

don't love me so fiercely

I'll only disappoint

what you imagine I am--

your own crucial mistake--

don't love me so fiercely

you should not anoint

the image I am of all

who left to make you ache

don't love me quite so fiercely

I'll cool on you quickly

because you could not match

my crooked ideal

don't love me so fiercely

our troubles each to each

will never pardon our egos

or make the pain less real

I am blessed beyond what I can endure--

if God loved me I'd be finished for sure

I can't figure how or when or why--

but by God's Love I'll surely die

Friday, May 27, 2011

small dunes

ripple the sand--

remembering other

holiday weekends

where the heat and haze

were so intense

sea and sky were the

same gray shade

in the rippled air--

hot sand

and friends of various types and ages--

each different year

lost in memory

in the only blaze of sun

at summer's beginning

all collapses after a strenuous week--

no gatekeepers hearing the words one would speak--

an effort to achieve fails where one falls to lie

on a scorching ground where all but the hardiest die--

and even the hardiest have limited time to give chase

to leave a mark winds would be slow to erase--

all collapses on these diminishing days

where no achievement remains--and no one stays...

to see your enemies prevail is hardest of all

for the vain spirit to accept--

as if decades of determination delivered nothing

but toilet paper to wipe the brain's convolutions--

and all dedication to the inborn ideal

was an ultimate joke of self-delusion--

but to know your enemies are no less fractured--

that their only protection has been adherence

to a socially agreed upon lie to sublimate their failures

and mask their resentment at those who dismissed

their glory-hankering assimilation and ache for approval

that locks them in their canons of crap--

is a cold comfort at best--

they were about boasts of empty fame

while your fantasy was some impossible purity of purpose--

and there we leave you and your enemies--

you resemble each other in the way a hot young girl

practices her iphone porno poses-round naked ass

on her mirror--asses facing each other

through the burnished vanity of each of you

Thursday, May 26, 2011

she waits for me--so far ahead

I can barely make out her speck on the horizon--

she didn't have to do this--

I wish I hadn't put her up to it--

but she accepted and I felt a fool--

she showing more fortitude than I did making the choice

in a venture that could only end in qualification--

oh the unrealistic faith we place in ourselves

when we think love will carry us through a move

and a new life as easily as we made our promises to ourselves--

well I'm not in this alone--

and neither is she--

and even a bit of the feeling of adventure has returned--

a feeling of our younger energy is surging

through the aged experience to put a knowing half-smile

on every new manifestation of a common situation

we'd faced before in life--but even more "oh what the hell"

about it than when we were younger--

we always knew the stakes are high--always high--

but where we once saw our lives ahead of us--we now look behind

and know we could be gone at any time--

so now we move forward--not without the occasional lapse

into "shit--why did we do this?"--but on the other hand--

we really--on second thought--had not much choice--

the world we'd known is long passed--and the sociopathic

bipeds who rule this one are easy to fool--but you must be swift

on your feet--they can be vicious when they realize their sense

of entitlement has been mocked--they'll lose their world

in their due time--but I don't care about them--I care about

her and me--and other stumbling old renegades on the--trot--

(damn it) as we head for a brief home we can as yet only imagine--

a way station (maybe even on some metaphysical level--

a "weigh" station--) there to wait out our years

and what will come of them--

her speck grows larger--I'm gaining on her--she waits--

we will be together before nightfall...

regret and relief are contrary manifestations of the same emotion--

its quality of revelation just depends on how fortunate you feel

to have endured your particular testings

and still be standing...

I had only regrets for so

I didn't see the point of praising

and now that regrets has smoothed into acceptance

the praise is in saying nothing

tears

drip

this--

drool

does

too--

can

not

help

but

remiss

should

any

fool

could

do--

but

when

the

ground

hit

andtearsbegintospreadyou'llseeallman'scontrition

asaoppingwoundinsteadthenyouwillbesilentthenyouwillbestill

thenyouwillknowthesadnessofdoingwhatyouwill........... ..... .. .......... ... .. .

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

she walks through walls--

she disappears into the mist of your bewilderment--

the Eternal Lover--

the True Wife--

the other half of your pitiful half--

you see her in the blaze of sunlight

of leaves on summer trees--

you follow her down innumerable avenues

only to catch up to her and see

she isn't the one you were pursuing

but the resemblance was so strong--

you caught a whiff of sisterhood

and went wild with desire

you thought was a higher aspiration--

what's to keep you from retreating

into a delusion of spiritual suffering designed

to bore the hell out of any unfortunate enough

to wind up sitting next to you

at the brisket and beer joints?

you have no out anytime anywhere--

you are squarely in the middle of your hell

and God will let you roast there awhile--

and if deliverance be the death of the carnal shell

of all your heat--well--you asked for it--didn't you?--

unlimited liability on every soul

but worse for you who thought you could slide passed

with a noble intent disguising an emptiness

in the soul--now you know and can do nothing

that will invoke the intercession of Grace--

you cheated and lied before the sunset

thinking night would give you cover--

but nights brighter than any day

have shown you your fatal misjudgment--

you wonder among the throngs

blissfully unaware of the tab they are running

at the Eternal Club of the Limitless Experience--

but they will suffer less than you because they are unaware--

they haven't reached your self-awareness

tainted as it is with ego comforted but not overcome--

they will have their time--they will be where you are--

(their sleepless nights already hint at this)

but what is that to you?

you've already littered your own path--

you will gain nothing of someone else's miseries--

you are out there--forlorn under the violet twilight

ending another dubious day of self-absorption--

you cast your self-hate at them because you think

they are mirrors--

you have no will but to seek

and still she evades you--(maybe even saw you coming and fled--)

you squandered every blessing the angels brought to you

and you haven't even started the penitence

you'll only ruin with your own crazed view

of your place in creation--

but somewhere your completion sits on her dismay--

wondering where you are and why you haven't gotten

even the rudiments of awareness together enough

to find her and release both of you from the squalor

of your ultimate faithlessness--

she cannot name her disappointment--

(she's fled from so many pretenders--and there's a good chance

you were among them)

but you won't know this until it's too late--

you'll continue--oh you'll continue alright--

but what mercy will finally manifest

when you both meet and finally recognize each other?

will she know you for sure?

will you be enough over yourself

to be truly contrite?

you'll wander--stumbling in a haze

of hallucination and evisceration

until some Light awaken you...

to what damnation?

to what salvation?

amid the pale ghosts

angels move

persuading these wandering souls

to follow the corridors of the aether

to divest themselves of their guilt and remorse--

hard to be an angel--

they have their work cut out for them--

but the Boss will have His Way--

regardless of our suffering--

God may be Love--

but God does not play--

yet another "dark night of the soul"--

how many more of these

must be endured

before Light breaks through?

my own echo mocks me--

in the valley of humiliation

the thorns cut my feet

and I cry out

and under the empty sky

my own echo mocks me

"I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet"--

but whatever end is in store for us--

my path lies in doing this--

for whatever purpose--

to whatever end--

the thing done is as nothing--

or has value only for who may receive it--

but for the doer--there is only the doing--

the waters are rushing around us--

cranks smirk in their own justification--

good that some of us are on high ground--

bad that our supply routs are cut off--

oh if I live long enough to endure

this pandemonium

then I'll know what Moses knew...

that "...our proudest success is but toil and pain,

"for it is cut off swiftly, and we fly away."

there is no trust any longer--

not even honor among thieves--

it's back to the Roman handshake

(if it was ever anything else...)

flies on a turd

are livin' larger

than I am--

than most of us are--

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

waste no prayers or tears

or time on memorials for Philip Milito--

he is merely the man they are going to bury

when I die--

and think not of his sorrows or joys--

his karma or his grace--

he will be a fading memory

when I am released--

oh all in the earth will go that way

but do not mourn the carcass--

it will return to dust and dust will stay

when we are gone from here--

a sense of vagueness surrounds the forward thrush--

every fortunate turn

turns not so fortunate--

and I wind up where I started

diminished by just that much effort--

forward thrush--but with no sense of direction--

I may only think it's thus--

so Dylan's made his three-score and ten--

congrats--

how different the climate of the last (I can't believe it

either) half-century would have been without him--

but while I hate to rain on the "Dylanologists" praise parade--

let's remember--

Ramblin' Jack and Leonard Cohen hit that mark years ago

Ringo got there last July--

RIP John and David Blue--who would have followed in order--

and to any I've missed--my apologies and praise--

I'll be lucky to get that far...

Monday, May 23, 2011

so now this cosmic clown Camping is saying

he was off by five months--

the rapture is Oct. 21 this year--

that May 21 was an "invisible judgment day"

in which our earthly structures have maintained--for now--

oh the old bastard is absolutely shameless--

but pity him his reckoning--

God certainly gives all of us enough rope--

the earth shaking all around

every change in weather unleashing

an apocalyptic frenzy--

I'm not unsympathetic--

it's just that all processes are ongoing--

and it is our misfortune to be alive in the earth

at such a time of upheavals--

to those who expect nothing after death

then you won't be disappointed--

and to those who profess such love for the Almighty

then what are you afraid of?

your personal release will come when and as it will--

do you really have to be told to go on doing

what you're doing--and just live?

what's lost is found--somehow--whether or not it's worth the finding--

here are four posts lost in blogger's malfunction of May 12--

for what they're worth:

even if I knew the True Meaning of Life

and spread the word around

I'd still be just another county heard from...

I have no idea what the Afterlife looks like

but there's enough testimony to suggest it looks

just like this life but vivid beyond imagining--

being pure thought form--

and so other worlds also resembling themselves

in their very essence--

I'd have to take these testaments for what they're worth--

I already wear shades shades of some kind because

"the light is too intense"..

hope shines through the day

like rain streaking a muddy windshield

we survive however we can--

God won't help us--

and we won't help us--

but the alert among us are always ready

for that semi-beat--that pause in process--

where anything can happen--

and however we can we grab hold

and survive on the mercy of that instant

of non-being

there--are they worth it? I don't know--writing this blog is as much an artistic

compulsion as any other work I do--and things I think are crap may mean

the world to someone else--you just put it out--for who will receive it

denounce from a mountaintop

exhort the masses

incite them to righteous violence

smash them tablets over the heads of heathens

kill kill kill to purify

announce the coming of the Lord

and look out our savior's gonna kick

your savior's ass to hell

but live (or try to live) a righteous life

of kindness compassion service to the afflicted

mercy and forgiveness?

what're ya

nuts?!?

Sunday, May 22, 2011

my head clears of one type of imagining

and fills with another type--

as I pick through my wreck

searching for what may be preserved--

for what was real amid

the delusions I thought were aspirations--

my head clears and regret softens

the stings of pride that led me to

this fresh fall--this opportunity

to rise yet again

stand absolutely still

watch the days change around you

all the particulars of a life

will never be again

but stand absolutely still

and all that will yet be

will be of the same character

of what is done

stand absolutely still

and you will be left behind

stand absolutely still

and you will be the first to arrive

itchy for the new thing to be under way--

the process continues

and somewhere in those roiling resolutions

the old ends and begins the new

in the same surge--

has it happened--and I'm just waiting

for what has already come?--

itchy for awareness to take me on its way...

I concur with Dylan on "Dylanologists"--

I recommend that instead of shooting (as they deserve)

the likes of idiots and "acknowledged authorities on..."

such as Griel Marcus

Michael Gray

Clinton Heylin

and especially the terminally insufferable

Ron Rosenbaum ("Modern Times is Dylan's worst album

since Self-Portrait, and EVERYBODY'S AFRAID TO SAY SO!" --

How Brave Of You Ron--thanks for straightening the rest of us out...)

someone should tie them to chairs--facing each other--

(and screw them in advance for any of their snotty rebuttals--

the vain imbeciles!)

put Tarantula in front of them

and force them to read the letter

about the butter sculptor--

and see if they still fail to recognize themselves--

even money says they will--

so the world didn't end yesterday--

what was it--a slow news week?

media again pandering to the public

they disdain?

and these pathetic "decent Christian folk"

with their alleged "righteousness"

clutching their Bibles

and donating all they have

into Camping's pockets--

as if they could buy their way into heaven!

their own Bible tells them

no one--not even "the Son"--knows

when the end will come--

and here they are cherry-picking through Scripture

to support their mass psychosis

I'd hate to be Jesus--

I'll never have the patience in this lifetime

to endure this sad waste--

this pitiful human degradation

Saturday, May 21, 2011

tonight's red sky

presses down on my eyelids

the thread is fraying

all thought lost

for all but sleep

a new tack

play possum

the bear will pass you

oh never mind

the hunter won't

losing

losing often

losing often enough

losing often enough to

losing often enough to learn

this ain't makin' it

small mind

big mouth

bluster roar

violent if corrected

shoot him from afar

but don't miss

wounded

the animal would be

twice as dangerous

some posts attempts at the highest illuminations

some other posts just the groveling of a loner

yet other posts either mystic appreciations of

momentary peace or bitter tirades against lovers

imagined false friends the kingdoms of the world

and other abstractions and public self-projections

I never know who I'm going to be

from one post to the next

but I do know I'm most awake

when I'm most tired

the point of which escapes me

now do you believe

there is no 'god' but in your own mind?

now do you understand

your truth is a single one out of myriads?

now do you 'get it'

illusion is as real as any concrete object?

now are you ready

to acknowledge a True Creator

and let yourself be its manifestation?

I've dealt enough with smug egos

impervious to anything

but assaults on their vanity--

let them spin

any excuse they will--

let them believe

in their own power--

since no one can be reasoned with

in any case--just as well avoid

the whole business

and love the solitude

that reminds you of your

true station

anti-political

is not

apolitical--

the spirits

of those who died in resistance

will tell you so

while the ghosts

of those who died in servitude

will remain silent...

Hey! James Panero--thanks for the publicity--

finally saw the twit about the May 11 post

and the (to you) pertinent quote--

a shame you didn't note that I have no love

for the Artistic Dog Murderer--

but at a 140 character limit--

how can the world sustain a thought?

ah, fuck it--cheers anyway

P.M.

there is no shame in charity

except to the maniacs of the Lord

who cherry-pick through Scripture

to support their own madness

and bloodlust--

what charity for these sick dangerous lost ones

but charity beyond human comprehension?

the very charity they deny to all--including themselves?

not to know this for certain--

to just let it be and tend

to the afflicted you happen upon

is itself an act of charity--

charity we deny ourselves--

charity beyond our comprehension--

so little would it take

to vouchsafe a piece of your love

to one who knows not love...

listen hard to your grandparents--

you never know when will be

the last time you see them on earth--

and you want to be sure

the words you'll remember them by

will keep them alive in you

I bless your desperate enterprise

knowing my blessing's as good as a curse--

but you're not the only one whose luck is unfortunate--

the deck of life is stacked beyond belief

and you're stuck with me

as a poker partner

I feel I'm entitled to a 7,358th chance--

but I came late to the line

and I hate waiting--

I see as many heads ahead of me

as behind

and now I'm up to 7,359...

so many are crying for attention--

so many are crying--

so many

if you pander to idiots

don't be enraged if you're

pegged as one yourself

so everything is different but nothing has changed--

the world is still the world and we still share the blame--

and even if a shining forehead could leave reality re-arranged--

that light would show life's essence would ever be the same

so hesitate to speak before you open up your mouth

because even those who love you will think you've gone mad--

all truth is relative so if our only constant is doubt

keep your vision to yourself and let everyone be glad

so this is what it is to be free of your past--

surrounded by the monuments of your own ignorance--

the undoable consequence setting the vectors of

personal movement along channels curling

like a tangle of cord around the penitent feet--

and all resolve to amend useless

amid the intractable wake of progress--

spare the spiritual types your scorn--

they've picked the hardest way to go--

some just sitting in their own corrupt monasteries

peering out a bedroom window at holy hallucinations--

while the ones who actively try to live a life

of illumination ask for more troubles than a mere mortal

can bear--and get it in spades...

moral responsibility--

reflect--ponder--excogitate--evade

Friday, May 20, 2011

"sorry" just doesn't do it--

it's the inexorable "vengeance"

we call "justice"--

the unyielding unmerciful punishment

that counts--

but even "good" will come out of this enlightenment--

once you've disabused yourself of childish notions

of a "Just Loving Creator"--

you'll be free of the guilts and sicknesses

that the mental illness of "religion"

will implant in your psyche--

you'll be spared your self-hatred

projected as blasphemy as some idiotic notion of "God"--

you'll be free to be in tune with

the True Source of Light and Life--

as unknowable in any dimension of conditioned

creation as here in this particular world--

and at long last you'll be granted the opportunity

to find out who you really are--

then your struggle to live an authentic life will be much more

than a crazed wrestling with yourself in your room

on nightmare sheets of a bed like a granite crypt slab--

it won't be a miraculous intervention--

it won't happen instantly and you'll be "changed--changed utterly"--

it will happen little by little--step by step--one free gracious act

at a time--until you no longer are keeping any count of your steps--

you won't care about anything but what happens right in front of you

at the very moment of its happening--you'll no longer try to distinguish

a heaven and an earth--and you'll stop bowing and scraping

before other people's idols--

this is at the bottom of everything I've ever written--despite

the backslides--the advances--the hurt--the humor--my own

petty struggles to let this be--no luck--no chance--

no divine intercessions--just the continual unfolding

of the way forward and the falling away of every misery

we've ever put ourselves--in the name of "vengeance" "atonement"

"penance" "justice"--

if you trust these words--don't ruin their application

with egotism--and if you mock them

may you find this way in your own time--

be glad and

just think of the possibility of of no longer undergoing

the self-punishment of trying to be God...

I am at the mercy of the unmerciful--

there are many like me but we are powerless--

nothing we do can take down

the gangsters who rule the world--

if we were as unfettered by conscience as we wish we were

we'd disaffiliate from the standard lie of accepted social conduct

and sit like Buddha under the bo tree--

but we know we are not enlightened enough to do that--

or hang from a cross like Jesus

but we'd throw that cup away if God didn't let it pass from us--

we are no better than those we oppose

and knowing it hurts us more than anything

the gangsters of the world could do to us--

when I kiss your ear while you sleep

you stir and snuggle closer...

then my heart aches

remembering all the angers that sometimes mar our union

remembering all the joys that build and strengthen that union

and how nothing we can do for each other helps the pain of living

and how nothing saves us from our definitive reckonings

then I ache and hold you tighter

all we have is the moment we are in

and all such moments form the content of our love

these moments may last 'always' somewhere in creation

but here in our precarious lives in the earth

we live them fully as they pass

and that is our 'always'

and that is why I will hold you close

there is no life or love without you

little by little

post by post (by disappearing post...

thank you again blogger)

the word gets out...

though many don't hear or can't read any way...

we're all piping little peeps in a cacophony

of bird song

greeting a dawn or signaling end of day

in a fading olive-tinted twilight--

all of which is beyond words anyhow...

Thursday, May 19, 2011

I should have left well enough alone

but nooo--I had to listen to some cheerleader

for positive thinking and powerful visualization

harangue me into taking action on myself--

as if my natural habits were some aberration of the species-

and I've no one to blame but myself

for letting her in with her sweetness and calmness

as if it were a walking advertisement for transcendence

(a comfortable upscale upbringing and shamelessly well-off parents

can do that for you--)

and now she's floated off to another admirer

while I'm sticking branches under my tires for traction

as an exhaust of sawdust flies up from the mud

of my latest spiritual misadventure--

I'm old enough to know better--but any moment--

any effort could be deliverance--so you undergo the crap once again--

and once again crap is its own reward--

may her wings get mangled in the blades of a ceiling fan

as my muddy boots carry me forward in my trudge--

the proverbial 'sadder but wiser'--

nuts!

faithfulness is to disloyalty

as genius is to intelligence--

as genius and faithfulness require

supernal honesty and courage

so disloyalty manipulates trust

and intelligence justifies the wrong--

life takes all the fun out of living...

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

God toys with us--

that's the new knowledge--

all this bullshit about repentance and atonement

and 'Oh Lord Thou art my shield' is a stony field

for a crooked tree--

we're on our own babies--

put your faith in yourself--

and as far as worship goes--give it up--it's another shuck--

another huckster's pitch--

if the True Ineffable One let's us hang by our own rope--

then dangling gladly--

and if freedom of choice is the issue--then do what you will--

the One has given us free choice--though it's a choice

between equally onerous conditions--

go ahead--you know right from wrong--if it's the worse kind

of spiritual anguish there is to distinguish such from such--

the One has done this by His own design--

no wonder everyone wants to be God--

why settle for a pliant robot toy to play with

when you can have a live rat scurrying in its maze?

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

the future

resembles the past

too much

to encourage hope

but I can't do

anything about it

until I get there

You know, killing Maureen Dowd wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

Value the friend who will not involve you in his penance.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

this is why I do not like the game of life--

it's fixed and the goons always win--

and God seems sometimes like a blind referee

who's on the payroll of the team bosses--

no more stickball on the city streets--(everyone wants

a multi-million dollar contract)--

no batting out fungos--no shooting hoops in some backyard--

no honor among the athletes--

and the lunatic crowds--the fans?--who'd run wild looting

and raping and wrecking everything to celebrate a win?--

who'd run wild looting and raping and wrecking everything

when their team loses? Who help us from the insanity

of ordinary people? the beasts lurking under common skin?

let me leave the stadium before the clock runs out--

get my car out of the parking lot before the hordes pour out--

let me be miles away when the final whistles blows--

zis-BOOM--

bah!

Content 2008-2011 Philip Milito.

I will not come when you call--

I will flee when you try to engage me--

you do not seem to get it--ever--

I will come on my own to any who make no claims on me

you desire nothing more than to oppose me--

go ahead--I make no move

and enjoy watching you do all the work--

especially since this enmity is your own doing...

I no longer recognize this world as my own...

these bipeds--these imitation humans passing me

on the street--some mutation in a cosmic gene pool--

and their world some novelty in random collisions of matter--

and my world some dream that vanished as I woke up--

you're holding dice when you talk to anyone--

and now we can add our social and commercial media

to that long list--

think I'll keep quiet and head for the high ground--

watch from my mountain top

swimmers just twenty feet below--

S.O.S. This Is Planet Earth Sending S.O.S.

someone out there please save our asses

we can't do it ourselves

S.O.S...S.O......................................

(damn blogger)

Saturday, May 14, 2011

I see blogger hasn't restored four posts from may 12 thankyouverymuch--

here's a prime lesson to all of you who put such unbridled faith

in technology--don't wait for some fool to trip over the plug

and send the whole grid down--

learn to live--in actuality--

it won't bite you any more than it has to--

Thursday, May 12, 2011

if my doleful lessons in life were gold

I could buy and sell the whole world

and still realize a profit

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I see from Bill Knott's latest blog posting

that he's (on some level) throwing in the towel--

he proclaims that his poetry 'is and has always been a failure'--

I sympathize/identify completely with his feelings--

Knott has long been one of my determinative influences--

the discovery--so long ago--of The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans

set me on my way--surrealism does no justice to the alternative realities

this man conjures--and to my young overly impressed eyes the blurbs alone

sent my mind into throes of encouragement--

"These poems give asylum to the orphan in each of us"--John Logan--

"The voice, the person...so intense, present...that I'd rather read

"even his weaker poems than many poets' best,

"including 'good' poets" -- W.S. Merwin

"Saint Geraud [ah how I loved that pen name and the inclusive dates 1940-1966]

"is one of the best young poets in America. He's terrific"--Kenneth Rexroth

and now--over a generation later--this master of what? magic realism?

goofy puns? savage clownery? heartbreaking tenderness? (how undefinable

the true originals are--to their detriment--)

can't get shake from anyone--

I can't say anything--I've labored as long and also to as little effect--

the Official Gatekeepers of Our Cultural Institutions

have flushed us down the Memory Hole--

(I have yet to even bother trying to self-publish through Lulu--

I wonder more and more 'why bother?'--who'll hear? who'll care?)

Knott is so unique--so inventive--so utterly sui generis--the academic

mahatmas cannot classify him or conveniently label him--

these lazy stupid vain conservative schoolyard failures

having their petty revenge on the bullies with their

glory-hound posturings and their anointed canons--

(oops--there goes my chance for scholastic immortality--now I've done it!--

and these little daisy-chain fuckers never forget or forgive a slight--

it's No. 2 lead pencils at twenty paces forever now)

I guess I'm sorry to see my last vestige of role model worship go--

to see him bite the dust the same way I'm biting it--the last delusions gone--

but what I try to remember--and what I hope Knott remembers

is that our work may only be 'failures' in our own eyes--

and only because we wanted in--but suffer for not ruining what integrity

we have by playing by their rules--

I hope for Knott what I hope for myself--that all our work--

finished achievements--ancillary projects--archival remains--be somehow

preserved physically--and at some point disseminated by someone

simpactio to our concerns--the work is valid to everyone but us--

it did what it was supposed to do--it was not all in vain--

and I'm sorry I'll never be able to convey this to him--

I'm as marginal as he is--and he doesn't even know

I or my work exist--and who knows if he'd even care for it

if he came across it--Christ--the joke of it!!!

I'm also getting too old for this bullshit--

I'd rather settle my worldly estate--leave it all

to the deftly clumsy hands of contingency--and enjoy

this moment--peaceful--at least for this moment--

I'm tired of breaking my only heart--and I look for the courage to rest--

even if I break down and write something tomorrow--

it will end of its own accord--when and how it will--

I hope I'll be ready for that

and I hope as much for Knott--

this is for Tom Otterness--and for James Panero of The New Criterion--

Otterness who makes cute innoculous little statues littered around New York City

portraying "class struggle" and getting countless grants from

bureaucrats and cultural institutions who seem to have enough money

for this and not enough for teachers city hospitals or just generally the poor--

the same Otterness who in 1977 made a short film called "Shot Dog Film"

in which he took a dog from a shelter tied it up and shot it dead--

the poor trusting animal wagging its tail as Otterness killed for the sake

of his alleged 'high art'--I'll never forget the rage I felt years ago

when I heard about this because the rage never left me--

this sociopath made perfunctory apologies and pleas for forgiveness

and to the debauched cultural elites who empty their pockets

in the name of art and culture that was good enough--

entrenched in the old idiot belief that as an artist

he is held to some superior standard to the rest of humanity--

which brings us to Panero--who denounces these elites

in the name of conservatism--decrying public money going to

this depraved monster--public money he'd like to see taken away

from any department of society living--be it services or

infrastructure upkeep--who is exploiting this long-dead animal

for his own brand of elitism--writes Panero "Otterness' sculptures

"seem sweet, but they are meant to leave you with a bitter aftertaste,

"because Otterness continues to be the angry artist who once executed

"a defenseless creature. His work remains a meanspirited comment on the

" 'evils' of capitalism." what??? how much more 'meanspirited' can

capitalism itself be--with its credo of money and power over every

moral principle we've known as a race of beings?

he cites statues of "fat cats with bags of money [rolling] over smaller

"worker-men" and a "triumphant woman [reading] a book

"over a dead Monopoly Man, with coins spilling out beneath him."

I declare to the Living God--I don't know which one is worse--

and I don't care what said Living God or any of you reading this think--

for Panero--let him and all his conservative cronies hang

from lampposts with their throats cut (some thing's never change)--

and for Otterness--for his all-too-easy pleas for forgiveness--for his fake

contrition (not one penny of his gains going to help shelters--

preferably non-kill shelters--or any other organ of animal welfare)

and for the cultural elites who so easily turn away from his evil--

(their civic duties and tax write-off obligations just common vanity)

may he suffer a slower more painful death than he showed that animal--

let God punish me for my rage--they can all go to hell--

at least--all dogs go to heaven...

[This 'screed'--(I'm sorry that's what it is--but what's sorry anyway?)

was based on a guest editorial by Panero published in the NY Daily News,

May 11, 2011-- p. 26--(uh oh--there goes my credibility--but frankly,

it would never appear in the NY Times--they'd have their own spin on it--

proving culpability all around--but how easy it is for the jaded and the lost

to excuse themselves--]

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

be careful of whom you choose to trust--

trust is dicey and disappoints easily--

and I will make no special claim for myself--

I will simply say that if you need someone at your back

I'll be there--(my own history proves what privations

I've endured doing the 'right thing')

and if I inadvertently egg you into a fight with someone

I will be your second--I will be there

to at least hold your coat...

o.k.--so creation is filled with ridiculous contradiction--

only a fool would think he could outwit it-

and could he outwit it--he would come to be regarded as wise--

so--creation is filled with wondrous paradox--

ridiculous--no?

no hope does not mean hopeless--

it means no false expectations

it means no delusive defaults to bogus belief systems

it means--to join two cliches--"taking it

as it comes and playing it as it lays"

it means you're on your own in the only type

of freedom you're likely to experience as freedom--

and--absurdly-- as hope

in my earthly suffering

is the love--

in my privations

is the love--

in my broken hopes

is the love--

in my last cry

is the love

what I bring you probably don't need--

so why do I bring it?

Because I need to--

San Juan de la Cruz has said it

"Vision is a measure of

the defect of vision"

anything you can imagine

is not the true reality--

look all you want for heaven--

it is all around you

manifest in the structures

of this world--

on earth the sky is the limit--

in heaven there is no limit--

and here--

stomach knotted in living tension

the sky above the earth below--

and here--no discernible connection

though we think we know better

Monday, May 9, 2011

the start had been made--

oh at least 10 years ago--

and ten years along finds us here

the work in disarray from too much double thinking--

the job in a perpetual coming together--

the result as elusive as a promise of fidelity or dependability--

but a result nonetheless forming as the process

resolves itself through whatever wayward actions I bring to bear

on the Eternal Situation--

a start has been made and an end will be had--

but meaningless to me who continuously 'does'--

hard as it may be

you'll have to let go of your delusion--

it got you this far but look where it got you--

further from your finish line than when

you left the starting gate--

in the middle of an anywhere for which you have no map--

come as it may and hard as it will be

you'll have to let go--you'll have to let go

the golden light on the leaves outside my window

distract me from my situation for a moment--

a brief moment--but long and large enough

to feel the consequence of every mistake I've made in life

even as I think on the hopes that tricked me into thinking

I knew what I was doing--oh why the grief now?

let a plan fall apart--in the collapse a new way forward opens--

under the leaves golden-lit outside my window

you think there's something wrong with me?

there is--

I believed in the worth of what I was doing

and now

I know it is worthless--there--what do you know

about that?

you who find it so easy to judge while ignoring your

own sentence?

there was plenty of time to change course

and now there's no time--of course--

why visualize an objective

when all you'll imagine is a pipe dream?

luckily--being in the world--whatever direction

you go in will get you somewhere--

whether it's where you want to be is another matter

the new thing I will be

has not been decided--

the more an idea appeals to me

the more quickly it slides away

I miss so much--

it's like I'm facing west

to see

a sunrise-

Sunday, May 8, 2011

you will have no trouble with me--

I'm ready to go--

but please make it snappy--

I have loved ones waiting beyond--

what kind of Reaper are you anyway?

death is all talk while all I can hear

is singing--

each day a new beast chews on my leg--

and each day I must kick it loose and flee--

and each day a new beast starves

while my calves are superb

I heard him through the apartment wall--

let me die let me die

let me die let me die

let me die let me die let me die let me die

let me die let me die let me die let me die

letmedieletmedieletmedieletmedieletmedieletmedie

and on and on for more than an hour--

I was ready to go help him after a while

until he suddenly stopped--

I heard his door shut and him say

hi baby...home already?

you think I don't know you resent me?

pretty soon you'll be hating me for not having lived

my whole life differently--

as if I knew I'd find you and embrace

your sour judgment of me--

the more fool both of us

listen with your heart

but do not listen to your heart--

how many times has your heart told you one thing

and your head told you another--

and it turned out your head was right?

listen to your head with your heart

especially when your head holds your heart in check--

it is that balance upon which your choices will be based

oh the world rocks and tips on its side--

let us breath while we can--oh world denied...

haunted by demons I cannot name

I retrace old error and wind up the same

as when I started my pitiful penance

what justice satisfies my devil and my Eminence?

Saturday, May 7, 2011

the ghost I will become

tingles under this living skin--

mediums have claimed to see me glow--

Elijah-John-whoever he is

high-fives me passing in the aether--

my metaphysical credentials have been mocked

by every worldly religious figure

so you know I'm genuine--

but this shell is cracking--and weariness sets in

and this ghost I will become is itching to break free--

it has endured enough damage--it wants to be freed--

whatever the One allows--my flesh blends into

the mild spring night until I am eyes looking out of the air--

soon my ghost my soul my higher self

the entity I am through every change of condition--

whoever I am I welcome me into yet another

dispensation of infinity

you will see me dreaming on the other side

of your sky--

a faint trace moving in the back of your vision

beckoning you to join me in slumber...

when others get giddy I get nervous--

they don't know how fortunate they are--

it's easy for them to talk about what others should do--

they think cupcakes and gold pieces rain down on everyone--

but from what I know of those here with me

positive thinking doesn't always yield positive results--

many had faith and leapt--landing on their heads--

they prayed they hoped they turned to their 'holy' shield

and got shot down anyway--teary eyes looking up to the empty sky--

how easy for the fortunate to talk--unless someone

experiences the pain others feel they just don't get it--

and even then some of them may extrapolate and learn--

but the rest may just wander stunned--demanding justice

which is another disguise for vengeance--

we cannot talk to our own loved ones at times--thus the eternal

unanswerable question--We are all One--but which One?

I underestimate the effect that my daily toil

has on my headaches--how it makes my blood boil--

and the recurrent cry of "I've reached my end!"

is silenced when the next job pulls me in--

how can anyone bellyache

when God wouldn't even give Jesus a break?

we give to our work all the strength glory borrows

where Alpha and Omega merge on this planet of sorrows--

Friday, May 6, 2011

destruction and creation are one--

you cannot separate them for one begets the other

one comes out of the other--

destruction and creation in a single act--

you will fall if you give in to the world and bemoan the destruction--

you will fall if you live in some spiritual New Age in your mind--

you are in command of nothing--you are commanded--

live in the morphing instant of transformation--

and do not anticipate what is to come--

and do not mourn for what had past

I'm afraid to think how many times

I got tired of waiting and walked away

and what I waited for passed by

a minute later...

I saw my face on a milk carton this morning--

has anybody seen me?

O blessings of the Unique Only Ineffable One--

you'll flay my skin and leave me the bone

and my contrition will be some version of missionary soup--

enough to feed any wayward traveler or starving wandering group--

will these bones warble like some well-fed pigeon on a stone

who left in droppings my passed sins when I'm done?

O blessings indeed--my stuttering cry will be grace--

and no one like me will again attend the place--

my reality doesn't matter--

you're right I'm wrong

and the therapist sides with you--

and your harm goes unchecked

and my punishment's deserved--I believed in a notion

of togetherness that is off the table

in our Brave New enlightened World--

and brutal Objective reality says

I'm liable--as I've always heard--and now have learned--

strange powers pulse through the night

and yet again the simplest act

destroys all we've spent a lifetime building--

and Love is the strangest power of all--

it does nothing

but weep for this loss--

we've all made mistakes--

the problem is surviving the consequences

long enough to correct them--

I will be a clown in your circus--

I've had years of training--

in fact

anyone who's been in love can do it--

millions of us unemployed in our situations

because the workforce is glutted

and all we have is our one sentence resume--

I will be a clown in your circus

I LOVE PIPPA!!!!

there--I said it--and I'm not ashamed

(haw)

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

one reaches a point of diminishing returns--

and the problem one sometimes has is that one can only

go on doing what one knows how to do--

and cannot see when the vein is tapped

the well is dry--(oh any cliche would say it as well)--

and one doesn't realize one's finished--

oh but pity that one when the realization sets in--

and one finds no mercy or protection from consequence--

pity that one--for you may wind up the same

and not know it until it's too late--

Oh Gross Almighty--you who hears and turns away--

take this day all ruins of our imaginary love for thee

none of it any longer matters to me--

I'm out on my ass looking for where I can stay--

you demand adoration and the totality of our love--

you demand we atone for all wrongs we have done--

you demand payments though we're broke from all we've won--

and yet no amendment for you is ever good enough--

now I'll catch hell for daring to speak true--

you Almighty sadly are no better than the rest of us--

you abandon us when all goings get tough

while you stand tsk-tsk-ing saying all that's owed is due--

well take it--take it--as if we'd power to bargain with you--

blame us all you want--it's your doing that we are through--

Monday, May 2, 2011

the best and the worst

are one in the eyes of death--

and so to live

we must pass through those eyes

and see ourselves alive

beyond such descriptions...

our effort...all of us

our choice...each of us

one day of joy

one month of sorrow to pay for it--

sometimes I think

I'm being gouged

a hell of a weekend--

personal travails of friends--liver disease--cancer--

all the ways we are called 'home as they say--

and Osama finally send to the hell he wasn't expecting--

no 70 virgins--no enemies serving his madness for eternity

in his imaginary heaven--

and yet this weekend also--a reunion with our 4th grade teacher--

93--frail--leaning on a cane--but mind sharp as a tack--

and if she didn't always remember the name she remembered the faces--

good food--good company--and those we remembered from 45 years ago

amazed that we made it this far--

ends and beginnings--ends that are beginnings--

and God alone knows

where we all end up--

Sunday, May 1, 2011

my sweet

my love

my forever girl

I'll see you again

when we look at each other

through the eyes

of our descendants

if I'm certain of anything it's my uncertainty--

don't ask me how the institutions of men work

or how they have such lack of conscience to work them--

don't ask me how DNA entwines the souls through centuries

of generation--evolution--and sheer accident--

don't ask why the power that animates the Universe

choose this clumsy painful method to teach and to punish--

don't ask me why I ask don't ask me--

the more you talk the less I hear--

who told you to persist?

who told you a hammer was harder than a nail?

who told you a fall from a cliff would allow you to move the earth below?

I'd like to chastise him for his presumptuousness--

let us change positions so I can deal with this meddler--

and so the less I say--the more you'll hear--

all I could give doesn't matter to you

you take everything anyway...

so what to covet--to what to aspire--and how to distinguish

are rote civilities--disguised by a smile and felt by a knife..

phil milito day blog

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

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