I let into the house

the demon of the fish pond

it wandered away from the water

and got lost in the garden

when I cracked the door that was it

it sped in and now I can't get

the damn thing out of my chair

sucking down sardines and goldfish

and spitting the bones out on a plate

good thing I already had dinner

it was hot out on the night air

sultry September as I sat in the window...

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

uncontented

as if somehow I lost a hearing aid

and gained blindness instead

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

the safety of ignorance

gives false comfort to one's inner

raving lunatic--

there're bipeds for whom no actual tangible

material fact is to be trusted

or believed--

I've lived long enough to see

the first in a new line of automata

raise their blank faces

with unseeing eyes

to the unrelenting light

mistaken and careless about it--

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

I shoot at clay pigeons

the way my soul shoots at me

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

thick and dry

even I

one day will be

the corpse you see

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

vicious king

crushing righteousness

underfoot

have a care--

for those who believe

in goodness

and are trampled

underfoot

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

letting people figure things out

for themselves is risky--

how wrapped up in the agendas of their thought

to miss or ignore the facts of their acts

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

humanity as a whole has gone mad

the venom of the Snake has finally taken

our convolutions are the death throes

of fear ignorance and pride

yes dear the time has finally come

and when it passes we will be sweating out

the last of the dose amid the pile of carcasses

we once called people

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

how glorious New Year's morning will be in 2013!

strolling down 7th after the Times Square cheese show

(god--how many uncreative people in the creative arts!)

the crowds walking in shirt sleeves and halter tops

and stopping by the Garden to look up

at the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds

glowing in the hot hazy air of a New York night

The first January 1st of the New Age

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

sun leaning down toward autumn

which will be my last?

this one the next one 25 ones from now?

is its die already cast?

sun leaning down toward autumn

the longer shadows

suffused with significance

eye watery in the the afternoon heat

sun leaning down toward autumn

no more to say than that

no more to say to that

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

free to be what I've become--

what I'll be is already imaged forth

and waiting for me

to get here in my time

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

dumb before the morning

eye peering from under the rim

of a slouching hat

at the quiet 'perfection' of the

cross street

the light and shadow

absorbing all attribution

like cloud-reading

rorschach of this momentary actuality

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

...in soft dawn

awaking from a dream

resonating its peace

through the instant forgetfulness

I saw the blaze around each object

and remembered who I am...

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

it occurs to me that (re: previous post) that we do not

pay for sins onto the seventh generation

so much as we met ourselves in future incarnations

and those hardships we'll face at that time

are the karma we must pay for from this (and other) sojourns--

we are our own replacements and sadly

we will be 'duking out' all this in some form yet again--

but then earth was never our final destination

(except for those who have not allowed their spirits to evolve

and so will die away with the passing of

the conditioned reality of the created universe)

just passing through over and over

until we get it and no longer need to pass through--

until then see you somewhere down the line

like the Good Gay Blowhard put it...

(that is old Walt I'm talkin' 'bout...you know...

the only poet with a shopping mall named after him...)

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

here in the former United States of America

politicians businessmen bankers corporate heads media-as-P.R.-reps-

for-the-Machine train each new generation of slack jawed morons

to acquiesce to submit to kill or be killed for the sake of pathological

delusions of God and country and to be controlled like zombies

to do the bidding of the long-foretold and finally arrived Big Brother

welcomed like a lost-lost Uncle Sam

and none of this trite pontificating matters

let society at large go back to hell where it belongs

I too believe 'keep things as they are for the sake of the Lord'

but for me that means honoring the earth and all creatures on it

honoring it preserving it doing right by it

what kind of foolish outcast does that make me?

one that has always gone his own way and passed others

like me few and too far between

we are few and they are too many

but the earth still yields its bounty but more sparingly

as the herds graze and exhaust the land

I've always been out here and so in weary regret

sit this apocalypse out

mourning the sweetness that has passed and

praising the sweetness to come

as each with his load sinks to the earth

and our replacements duke it out in some future dispensation

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

living in reality

totally

beyond what I know

and what I don't know

but focused in the instant

being the process

as it resolves itself

to what result

my limited hand can shape of

that torrent--

this is the life

this is reality

this is the life's record

I have left

for what purpose and to what end

only God and my inaccessible higher self

know--

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

the time is always now

the place is ever then

a sweet memory replaced by

the terror of passing

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

who has pleased himself

pleases no one

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

exhaustion renders me open to vision

diminished by my interpretation

and equally tired

to distinguish them

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

the Thought is never

confined to the mind

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

endless ache will

only lead to

endless ache--

The Law is like begets like--

the salvation is like

blooms into unlike

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

God

allows

no

one

to

escape

cleanly--

He

breaks

your

leg

as

you

turn

to

leave--

He

lets

you

crawl

toward

Him

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

I will not tell you

what you want to hear

as long as I don't know

what I want to say

let someone else mislead you--

I'm here

but I don't know where that is

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

changed my mind

waved goodbye to this life's self-image

waved goodbye to the goodbye

I must surely be closing a circle

I am without identity 1st time since childhood

the whole convoluted huge middle of life

the biography of who'll be the man

they'll bury when I die

I must surely be going out as I came in

anonymous as the vision that absorbs deep orange

light aslant on late afternoon buildings

informing an attitude of melancholy

ego centered in a dispersing entity

what the hell you tawkin' 'bout

sorry I think at times I'm Orson Welles

addressing God with a megaphone

er..

oh yes I can be anyone else I want

even myself all selves any self

and barely remember

I must be approaching the finish

I stand under an arcing of KRAZY KAT moon

eyes peering out of the air before I

changed my mind

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

EVERY DAY OF FOREVER.

I am turning before the eye of another; that is, another I viewing the turning.

*

Not all truths are known, though all are evident.

*

One grows silent in one's ranting when there is certainty there is no chance to prevail against the established order.

*

Where go the herds, go the parasites.

*

Only in this world is the parasite a king.

*

Oppressor and oppressed share a single face.

*

Knowledge is always after the fact.

*

"Envy not the evildoers." Which ones? The players or the played? The whores, the thieves, the downtrodden forced by their circumstances to cheat and lie just to live? Or the pompous hateful righteous ones who tell you to stay in chains, for the sake of the 'Lawd", who themselves create such grief and misery in the name of their tainted agendas?

*

Is there any aspect of earthly life that does not bespeak of the utter deadliness of earthly life?

*

"If I knew then what I know now..."--is that true? Do you really think you'd do otherwise? It's doubtful. Everything we'd know now would just be another dubious choice among variables beyond our comprehension.

*

Every act of life leads us to where we are now--and still, we'd bemoan all we should have done and didn't, or wanted to do but couldn't.

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

gave everything to art

art gave to anyone who'd receive it

for you the value's in the thing done

for me the value's in the doing

and even if no one sees or hears

it still exists in its own actuality

give to art

and it will be there for who can receive it

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

sad

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

here we are--

another day closer

to some just doom--

the slow dying

aching in every reach for life--

I read the news and sicken

each and every day--

maniacs run wild

and bring grief wherever they go--

and frustrated dreamers applaud them--

idolize them--

wish they had the guts to be like them--

while I wander--a ghost--down streets

no longer familiar to me

though my whole life's been spent

walking on them

and wondering what to do next

and not knowing

but knowing I'd better do something

and having no dealings with any but

these maniacs--

God kills us slowly--(it begins with birth)

and builds to a culmination

of sorrow which consumes loves and hopes

like a glutton clears a banquet table--

oh if God were as merciful as God is vengeful

there might be a fighting chance

to endure this world--

but that's not the plan--

you are here to be destroyed

as Leonard once simply put it--

and the only hope left me is that

I will pass from this skin peacefully

(and may have already jinxed that

by wishing for it)

letting the maniacs kill each other

in the name of their twisted egos--

living black holes consuming life

beyond our scale to save it--

and death a heavy release

because I'd be free of this horror

but not free from knowing

what error I've accrued

that will make a horror of my next

earthly sojourn--

unless there's some good of which I'm unaware--

pie-in-the-sky like a sty in the eye--

aching in every blind grab at life

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

An escape is not necessarily a release.

*

Lulls and rushes--

Ebbs turning back to oncoming waves

Racing to break on foamy shores

On the pull of the moon--

*

Why try to bring them together? You're only trying to please yourself. They have no outward desire to re-unite and all you'll earn is wrath for putting them on the spot.

*

Is all good merely ego gratification?

Even if this is so, isn't there some good for the beneficiary ?

*

Ask and you shall receive, and what you'll receive is a fall from grace.

*

Smile falsely. My regret is in not seeing you fall, my consolation is in knowing one day, you must. Let me drain you like pus, so the wound might be cleansed and the ragged cut begin to close. Smile falsely, while my healing removes you from me.

*

The past is all gone now; there is nothing to which to return. The future is an idea still forming

in the crucible of the present. And presently, in this heartless new dispensation, all of us are blank as an empty slate, waiting for or learning to handle the new objects and understandings of this diminishment, with as much humanity as we have left in us. We have all been leveled, grasping for what will keep body and soul together, until body and soul are called asunder.

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

wonder will not wonder long

at the absence of grace as wisdom

*

work hard to find

and assholes are voting back in

the very sociopaths

who nearly wrecked the world's economies

and put these assholes on the bread lines

is there anything stupider than a white

conservative American?

*

in a matter of months

a new style for a new age suddenly sprouts

catching us old-timers

at a loss for livelihood in a world so utterly

different so utterly ruined

that death is preferable to living in constant

conflict with smug rude brats

who endure because it is a felony to kill--

an absolute fiasco in the Retribution

Department so this is how I will end (who help me)

dying in the street because I can't afford the hospital

and wandering my mind like I wander through

the streets pleased as punch to be getting screwed

a ton of reality checks without one fortunate break

*

clowny admitted it

those are his fingerprints on your scrotum

but you can't do anything about because he died

a while back mauled by an angered lion

somewhere among the cages as they hauled up the tent

in the field and

you waiting with the others --watching--

wondering why the bull gangs and the performers

and especially the clowns smelled of whiskey breath

and body odor as if lice in the crotch

of the ringmaster were invited to sing and a damp song

rose out of the--oh yes--bottle they tugged

now tub-thumping circus music ties the cold sweat

to the muffled event

trembling under trapeze and wire-walker

watching this--this--diminished Arlecchino--

heinous harlequin degenerated to common clowny

no one likes because they are so damned creepy

*

don't ask me some foolish question

I have no love for mockery

I have no patience with petulance

I disdain your condescension

and look forward to the affirmation

of justice your fall will demonstrate

I will look behind the shrubs

that camouflage your moat

seeking your gleaming throat

finding only your tracks

divoting in escape

heaped with heavy meetings

and sorely indulged yearnings

so do not judge my refusal

to join you in bad surrealism

I have my own burdens

and you can choke on your resentment--

*

the wise man continues to learn--

the fool knows all

*

I weave in and out

between

what will be accomplished and

what will be abandoned

I stagger in ignorance

because I do not know the worth

or

if it mattered

and

even if it did how would I know

for what purpose and to what end--

as if I were wise enough to rule the stars

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

MAXIMS OF POLYPS 3

(That's all...right?)

Oppressor and oppressed share a single face.

*

One ceases to rant when there is no chance to prevail; as along as there is hope, there is ofttimes disappointment.

*

Only in the earth is a parasite 'king'.

*

Creeping weeds cover weeping creeds.

*

Comedy is another's suffering; tragedy is our own.

*

The more I know the less I want to know.

*

I am not certain I understand how any understanding is certain.

*

You were happy until you became aware of yourself.

*

It is necessary to leave once your work is done; your work was all that afforded you a place to be.

*

The man who hopes never learns.

*

Explain an idiot to a moron and give him incentive.

*

Love will not serve evil, but evil will co-opt love; become what you are--not what you love.

*

Despair is to God as crime is to cops.

*

The last agony of earth? Knowledge of failure.

The last joy of earth? Failure of knowledge.

*

The earthly mind is too limited to know itself; sorrow for the consciousness that holds this awareness.

*

We all come and go...talking of all we don't know.

*

Silence is the deepest voice.

*

Polyps calls it quits--

The preparation gives him shits

The colonoscopy gives him fits

The outcome comes in bits

To terrify his poor wits

Polyps calls it quits

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

MAXIMS OF POLYPS 2

(that's still right!)

Thirst for power will make a desert of aspiration.

*

What you do not want is often what is hardest to lose; it is the part of you God will not forgive if you do not forgive yourself first.

*

If you've come through the fire intact, you may have to undergo the ordeal yet again; as given, he who would save his life must lose it.

*

Big Brother is the Anti-Christ and we are enduring his earthly kingdom now; you do not need to be religious to be made to understand this--being awake and having a conscience will be enough to subjugate you beneath the heel of every lunatic running around the world, destroying it to remake it in his dangerously pitiful image.

*

I sing the body natural--bless it before it diminishes to your soul's release.

*

I am not a priest in the glory of high-minded spirituality; I am a terrified supplicant whose idea of divine mercy and aid is the bitter joke of a deluded mind.

*

Who gives love will get love; who gives conditional love will get deceived.

*

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

a sure thread runs through my thought

keeping consciousness together as if strung on a necklace

an ornament a trifle an extravagance

only the alienated could indulge

while other's strands snap and joyously

they chase all the rolling pieces of sensation

a sure thread runs through my thought

weighted with a tug of gravity sloping over

those other declenations

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

there is only the echo

after we've stopped speaking

it persists in waves of energy

saturating the worlds

with music tactile as muscle

on bone

the sound of our very passing

through this place

and the very end

of our song

still

an echo

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

the opposition as always dissenting with vigor

we will hold back Time like that Greek fella failed to do

that's them bobbing in the waves

reaching to grab the lifeboat and drag it down with them

Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.

MAXIMS OF POLYPS

(that's right)

Systems are for those who don't know what they're doing.

*

Perfection means no elbow room.

*

Animals are better than people; even the Bible says animals are without sin.

*

No mercy means no love; to hell with tough love--it's just another asshole who wants to rule you.

*

As if you were better than me!--As if that were a stretch!

*

A man will trust his own conscience, but never his own heart.

*

Worship is a result of misplaced vanity.

*

6 protons 6 neutrons 6 electrons--the carbon atom--Lord--are our bodies the Anti-Christ?

*

Only in our imaginations can we walk on the air.

*

A man will risk everything for the sake of relief--be it love, work or peace; Man never at peace in the world, because he is so ready to return to his source, even to the point of trying to undo the impossibility of leaping free from his own temporal existence--as if it were different than his permanent milieu.

Content 2008-2010 Philip Milito.