kiss me as much and as often as you will


my kisses are sweet as your kisses receive

the lips that have cried out in pain


but now are calm and precise

with the acceptance of a life of error


redeemed by the awakening

that joins our kisses and embraces


into one great acquiescence of all of life as it is








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

happy is the one

who has learned

to say to hell with

all grief and punishment


if my life

is in my own hands

then damn it I'll make do

despite what God has in mind for me


it will be accommodated and factored into

whatever fate ties me to my identity









Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

suffering is like shooting fish in a barrel


it's soft

it's easy

and it absolves you in your own mind


of any threat or challenge

to try and detach from what holds you back


from reeling in that fish

you are set on frying in butter and herbs









Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

a new path opens

a new time counts some beats


let the others dance

I'm stricken to my feet


and they who have their fun today

will tomorrow count the cost


you with your new Aquarian principles

will soon enough sorrow for what you've lost












Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

are you happy?

I'm certainly not


but then I woke up to reality

and have seen my poor delusions


splayed up on a barn door

like entrails to ward away


the hyenas of hell

if I'm not happy why should I make them so?








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

FAIR WEATHER LOVE

having you beside me is like having

another weight tied to my ankle


it took push coming to shove

to make me realize my delusions


that in good times we are strong and together

but when things go rough it's every asshole for himself


and having a faith that turned bogus

I have myself to blame for sinking deeper into the shit








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

tomorrow ends 62 laps around the pool


it benefits me not


those who claim to love me so well

may construct their own ideas of who I am


those who hate me on sight

or love me but not quite enough


can hide in their own mis-imaginings

but it will do them as ill as their falsity


did to me


I'm not holding a grudge

we all face our reckonings sooner or later


but don't make a fetish of it

you are not favored above all others


and every time you notch your belt

you'll just meeting your own self


learn it now while you can






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

whoever's looking

through my eyes

must be wondering

"what the fuck?


"is he really going

"to go cross-eyed again

"at the folly of his fellows

"while sinking with them


"into the same flaming pit of passion?

"is he really going to go all shiny

"at her or another's full breasts

"nipples winking like cheap come-ons?


"is he yet again going to peek

"behind the veil and go stark raving blind

"yammering some gibberish

"about blindingly white corridors


"and lit entities like conch lights

"along those immaculate halls? or will he finally

"close his eyes and see beyond

"all limits of vision?"


and there's the rub...whoever's looking though

my eyes has seen it all before....






Content (c) Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

you haunt me like tides my love

I feel your pull when the moon is full


with each changing moment enough

to spin the whirlpool that would catch me


I feel your hand could pull me up and out

or drag me down to drown with mine









Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

the stillness

of the misty nightwood


quarter moon smudge

on the red velvet sky


no sound

but the hiss of blood


through the ears


and it is easy to see

how time breaks and fades


on eternity

until we come back to ourselves


then the misty wood

is just chill and moist


and the moon disappears

behind clouds


and a peacock cries out as if in pain

and again each of us is alone....







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

all rebels see themselves

in all they oppose

and make their own downfalls

more painful for the pride


unlike the smugly complacent

who see themselves as blameless

and thus lose their individual natures

in a bland but vicious herding


that denies all ascent...

oh I would take all action

required of active ongoing life

knowing I would damn myself


for all the blessings I'd incur...

all of us bucking at shadows of the stars....







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

getting out at a good time


our freedoms are gone

our lives are controlled

and truth just an inconvenience

and an obstacle to business


those who would hold our souls

to the world are in full command

and they do it by making the unenlightened

think that they entitled to some bogus notion of liberty


but why bother saying anything to anyone

when each's reality is its own thing?

may the few who won't buy into all this find help and mercy

and as for me it's the best time to leave


and you wonder why I've been waiting for the grave to open

like a door leading out of here?








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

just a little while longer

and nothing will matter anymore


I've already begun to detach

from the futile busyness of the world


everyone climbing their vanity

as high as it will hold them


while all will fall in a flash

and deeply go under







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I've broken my own heart

and diminished my own soul

for the sake of one who knows

no mercy or forgiveness


you heave bogus praise

on some force that can't be satisfied

you waste what little life you have left


I'm going to heal in the numbness of my own submission








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I can't be sorry anymore


how many times must I pay for

the sins I've already paid for?







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

whether love thrives or love dies

lovers have their revenge on each other


when one dies and the other must

clean up their earthly mess after them








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

you live in some illusion

but that's all right


you'll meet the same grisly end

even if you lived for real








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

A PROPHET (HEH) PACKS IT IN

don't be a fool like I was

don't wander the desert to face down

the demons of your selves


affirm the herd

sheep are only torn by the wolves

who come from out of the wilderness


to feed on easy prey

stay in your rooms and cubicles

stay in your cold dark cells


better that than to burn unmercifully

in the unendurable blaze of the Light








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

broken bogus beliefs

and shattered false faith


leave you empty and naked

in the eye of a stoic Source


that in its own vanity

cares more for its fulfillment


than for the lives of its creatures


when you wake up to this reality

you'll wish with your whole being


that you were dead


I know I try my best to do

what I imagine is the right thing


but it gains nothing for me or for those

I thought I was helping


when this Source posits its creation


this stumblebum riot of unending loss

you'll know you're at its mercy


and whether you live or die will have nothing to do

with what you thought was a love of god






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

the animal figures on the nursery wall

the bird mobile above the crib


I remember them as if they

were still mounted in the present


what happened to all the time

between then and now?


I lived and I died

and a Source of Life did not forgive








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

deserts as far as the eye can see

and a neon aurora dancing at a slight distance


the first (and so far last) time I saw Las Vegas

it was coming out of the desert


the night sky washing out as my travel companion and I

were rolling in for a $10 motel and a $3 breakfast


(this was a hell of a long time ago

you understand...)


it was like a bad sci-fi movie

some gofer's idea of Heinlein or Asimov


and just seven hours away from Santa Monica

to an early place where my life


would begin to fragment...


now when I think of it

it is more vivid than other memories to which I've clung


and to which I added onto my sad self-biography...

it means nothing now...Las Vegas and Santa Monica


so long ago that they sound like someone else's story...and are....






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

balanced between futile hope

and definitive damage


how could one not go psycho

between aspiration to transcend


and the inevitability of failure

as all one is holds one back from


all one may become?

all one's intent is as nothing


all one's love and compassion

a joke to the indifferent universe


oh let all trying be rested and abandoned

let act in the instant call the shot


let imagination merge with the reality

and let the life stand as it is








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

free to rage

to hate

to despair?


free to explode

in my weakness

because I'm not


strong enough

to endure

my load of consequence?


I messed it all

and all my freedom

will allow is to rage


to hate

to despair







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rightsreserved.

don't wonder why I hate you so much


you're always ready to judge

but never ready to forgive and help


you sickening piece of shit

I know now why life sucks


but I'll be damned if I give you

more than you deserve


I don't care who you are or think you are

I will live free even if it means death to me


and if that's where it's at

then what am I missing? death at the hands of a divine psycho?


I will love as I live...food...drugs...women...women...women...

and death to all cops and priests and generals and presidents and kings...


death to all who espouse death...and life to all who love....





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I'm as free as I can be

in a creation that allows no freedom


where everything in entangled in a stifling net

damnable Source Of Life


that insists we live then kills us for doing so

fuck everything beyond my range


I will live fully in the instant

and gain eternity









Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I'm empty

I'm clean


I don't care about God

I don't care about some asshole plan


that destroys us even when

we are bidden to repent


fuck all the assholes in life

who adhere to their evil righteousness


and think they are blessed above all others

damn you and the God who doesn't wish that you perish


if God is disgusting enough to demand repentance from us

then damn us because it is never good or perfect enough


then fuck the whole damn issue

you do what you know is right


you love and forgive even if God doesn't know how

and if killing us is all He is good for


then what does anything matter?

let God demand obedience (if he were so good


He wouldn't need to put a gun to our heads)

He will deserve to be alone at the culmination of creation


let Him learn His own lesson in humility

we are empty we are clean







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

am I saved?

am I doomed?


fuck it

I do what I know is right


and if that's not enough for this psycho

then fuck Him


we only have each other to soothe and to love

let us be true to each other and fuck everything else






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

fuck God


nothing we do is good enough for him

then the hell with him


and his psychotic power-mad plan

God does NOT forgive


but we do and if that's not good enough

let God be alone at the culmination of creation


maybe then he'll learn his own lesson in forgiveness and humility








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

no matter how old I get


women young and fresh

in their unstoppable beauty


will draw me back into a past

as far gone as Babylon or me at 20


the blessed lust for life goes on

even if one past his prime


feels its pull in the ebb tide of life






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

dead stop

in all activity


a way will open

and it's the only way


left to take


and whether you're strong enough to go

doesn't matter to the need to go


you go alive after the end








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

good-bye to Juan

good-bye to Conchita


I do not know where I'm bound


but if I meet you again on "God's Golden Shore"

it will be by goodness I never suspected


this is the meaning of "love and do


what you will and let God keep the books"

we have no freedom or control except over ourselves








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

there's nothing left to say

when you've run out your string


and the world still embraces its doom


we come into a world of generalities

and die off in our own particulars


and whatever we thought was salvation


is nothing of the kind

we speak our piece and it lingers for so short a while










Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I've found what I was looking for

but lost it anyway

and I've lost the will to seek anything more

to replace what's gone away

what will come will surely go

be you near or far from it

and what you don't know is all you know

and that is all I take away from this

Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

secrets spill out

a little at a time


undo your best attempts

to mend your ways


but your vanity takes

the first hit and finds


the intentions are all wishful

while all consequence stays








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

everyone's ready

to be helpful


everyone has a

hot idea for you


you'd be a fool to listen

but we're all sooooo sociable


hell even I'll contribute

if you want to hear it


(just to show I don't think

I'm better than anyone else)


and can still do as you please

but it will still be a gamble for you


you don't think I've lived as long as I have

following my own advice?








Content (c0 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

love loves power

but power sooner or later

loves rest


and rest will be

blessing or curse

depending upon


what you loved






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

SUCH EMPATHY

hang by a hair

climb up a strand

slide down a rope

fall off an end


land in your shit

hold up a hand

god turns away

so do all else


easy peasy sleazy scum

the best in humanity


gamble

make a risky move

if you succeed you're a hero

if you fail you're a goat







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

don't think of God and despair


think of yourself and succeed


at least as far as God will permit it







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

memory restores the reality

that has been lost in its continuation


the matrix that give the underlying shape

to the deteriorating situation


but it needn't be that way with this reality

it needn't count every cost


for if memory restores the reality

then nothing's really lost








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I lived long enough to see my fall


the mockery of those who put me here


the self-hatred that allowed them to do so

under delusion of a creator's love


mercy and grace and forgiveness

shimmer like delirium dreams


in the sweat-soaked cot of a dying madman


seeing the reality dwarf his illusions








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

FALLEN

and so women are the mystical

allurements of nature

stars of glittering eyes

clouds of inspiration

horizons the curves of their bodies


and so men the misshapen

images of the brute force that brought us forth

tending this reality with arms and legs

like rotten tree trunks and their spitting snakes

their heads and hearts like granite


and so this is the duality

that powers the cosmic swirl

of our fall from greater heights unimaginable


two wrongs making nothing right








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

GODDESS IN DISGUISE

you are a goddess in disguise…and yet you are the ruin of all that men would attain…where are you when in the blank moment after orgasm all the world swirls around the bed to affirm your power…your majesty of sparks in the poor brain of the drone that serves you?






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

OLD GOAT REAFFIRMS

about women there is no doubt…I love their fragrances…their smooth skins bereft of blemish…their lips are like nets dragging the poor fish in…the honeyed skin dragging the tongue down the taut belly to the hot dark swamps of their crotches where life and death merge in one flush moment of eternal flux…

oh even the least of them will tempt man to his doom and away from every imperative to rejoin the stars…but oh the stars with which he must reunite cannot be attained without the hot bed of the female flesh… the field of play where love and death join in one metempiric spasm of ecstasy…

oh the death that brings life…oh the joy that passeth beyond understanding….







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

WHAT A GREAT PLAN...WHAT A WONDERFUL DESIGN

I'd kill you masters of the universe if I could get

enough bullets to do the job


but there's no amount of ammunition

that can take down those who tarnish the ideas


of honor and righteousness

with their unpunished (at least in this life) sins


for those of us who believe in goodness

we continuously find ourselves at the small end of the horn


while the wicked prosper (let's not bring god into this right now...

the gray areas of apprehension do enough damage


at our expense...) but sooner or later

enough people will wake up and realize what a shuck


the whole damn issue is...then watch the fur fly...

then watch the dividing of what's fair and what's foul....





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

maniacs spread terror around the world


and I'm with my fellow workers

trying to figure out how

to get out of my financial mess


engendered by the very assholes

who run the scams of this world

who'll give their agents of destruction immunity


while the rest of us die for their glory





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

once you forgive yourself

for believing all kinds of bullshit

(including God's alleged "love")

you will feel so light and happy


that you'll wonder why

you spent so much years

content in the darkness

doubting your own abilities to mend your own ways


to hell with everything...

as long as you love yourself


you'll have love for everything and everyone else

and if there's a god that isn't about vengeance


and the hypocrisy of demanding what (H)e won't give

then you will be at One with All There Is...may we make it to that....





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

hell doesn't end until we do


don't depend on God

God has done everything but all of it


is our fault...

yes the only expiation of sin and payment of karmic debt is


to endure the vengeance of the One...and I understand why...


any repentances amendments and atonements will never be good enough

because we lack the totally of the One


and if we can imagine what it is...that ain't it...

and since it concerns the selfishness of our egos we know (at least intellectually)


that "he who would save his life must lose it"

so we can do nothing but to endure these hells of ours...


what future hells to atone for the sins of this and previous lives

we might as well not address because we are not there yet


so this is the condition we call "human"

this is the world we've made for ourselves


and this is how we will die out and pass

and what comes next is in the hands of the unforgiving One....






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

one is expected to rebuild one's self

and continue on the thorny path


but what if there is nothing left in one

upon which to build?


no pity no mercy from anyone included the One

on (as we say) high


and they will face their own comeuppances

but the One who doles out the punishments


will not care and one will just have to eat

hard cheese and have the failure added to their tab


some academic asshole decided as he sat at his breakfast

tea and toast that Kafka was not a major writer


because he does not espouse the canon as dictated by

the masters of our cultural vanguard


the jerk the imbecile the smug self-satisifed cog in the machinery

Kafka not a major writer? Kafka is the only "major" writer


who knew and expressed the horrible reality of the One's will

in this horrible world


oh the fools the shits the unmitigated assholes the rest of us

must suffer under because they'll never understand


how much a part of our worldly misery is their doing






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

prepared for everything

ready for nothing









Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

if this generation of idiots wants to overrun my lands let 'em


my lands...as if I truly owned them


(real estate...what a filthy hustle...)


what is of the earth belongs to all


does this still have to be said?


let 'em run roughshod over everything


if they have no sense of propriety and know only


their own overblown sense of entitlement


then let 'em show their lack of quality


I'm almost done and ready to slip the bonds


and it's so hard to muster the negative energy


to build spite fences around my world


while it's so easy to slip away and let 'em


sink down into their own plots of mulch....





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

how this life comes crashing down no longer concerns me

it has already crashed


and I have nothing to do but rise up

and follow my own way out of the remains....






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

death never seems so sweet as when you finally realize

it is not the end of anything...


but the beginning of so much more to come....





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

DYLAN'S SHADOWS

With Shadows In The Night, Bob Dylan is closing yet another circle in his life and career. As with 1993's World Gone Wrong, Dylan has circled back to material that formed him. WGW brought him back to the roots of his art (and in itself, by sequencing and song selection, formed a discrete, distinct Dylan album in its own right.)

With Shadows, he has done this again, but with his own life. We have another distinct Dylan album in it's own right, with Dylan fully inhabiting these songs and making them his own. The themes of loss, regret and mortality have dominated his later periods, but reach a certain fruition here; this is Dylan at the fullness of age.


The quality of the album itself has had a predictable small amount of sniping, but those with ears to hear (a majority this time) acknowledge the the beautifully muted and concise arrangements, with Dylan (how does he do it?) giving his best singing in years...


Dylan's vitality as an artist, even now as he seems to be closing out all old accounts, remains strong and vital, matched by few great artists of age. For the ages, another keeper; for us in this living moment of its making, another gift from perhaps the greatest artist of the last half of the Twentieth century, and of the first half of the Twenty-First.










Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

OH THE HELLS OF THE CONDITIONED

what good is a can opener

with a beer handy?


the existential worry of it...


good god what do I light my cigar with

without matches or a lighter?


heavens what aggravation...


what? a blackout? and my computer dead?

how do I live? what shall I do?


must I think for myself???


oh if only I knew what to do

with moonlight....








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

whatever happens to us is beyond our control


we do our best to be righteous

and get fucked for trying


that the Source of All Life is more evil

than any invented devil could be is only part


of what breaks the soul with responsibilities for atonement

God's own will will deny us and punish us for...


"Love and do what you will and let God keep the books"?

we might as well die and go to perdition right here and now...


who but a devil could tell us to repent and then punish us

because nothing we do will ever be good enough?


yes "anything we can imagine isn't it" and yes

"he who would save his life must lose it"


but what forgiveness when God Himself will not?





Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

eternal twilight of spiritual defeat


the red sky of hell soothes the way

no blazing perpetual day of light


will ever be able to do...

our choice nothing but choosing a safe acquiescence


of a placid tyranny or suffering because we choose

to do right and found that this god has no use for anything


but His own murderous judgment....








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

people become shells of themselves


when they're done living

but God isn't finished with them


and they must live on

souls destroyed a little more each day


until this evil power-mad

psychotic gangster is done with His vengeance


our only freedom of choice between suffering and suffering








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

my ordinary mind explodes

under the weight of its wrong


God may forgive

or God may damn


I've exhausted my care

let it be what it will be


nothing we do matters and

God has the last word anyway








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I'm hard-boiling eggs


they expire tomorrow

so I'm hard-boiling eggs today


so much for pondering destiny

so much for attending to things


beyond any limited human knowledge

life and death always in the balance so


I'm hard-boiling eggs








Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

I feel so ill


I'm almost hovering in a corner

of the ceiling


looking down on me


to think this is how I'm going to go


that all my joyous stumbling life

was going to lead to this weakening


and this capitulation....







Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

listening to the blues

is better than having a doctor

look after you


the blues is tough medicine

you take the prescribed dose

and learn what's afflicting you and maybe heal some


and even if it's fatal it is a more soothing

way to the grave than a priest could show you


in fact doctors and priests give me the blues


that's why I'd rather listen to Roscoe Holcombe's

Graveyard Blues than to some Ava Maria sung by


some overdramatic neurotic


the blues do not give me the blues






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

pulling myself up

from a groggy nap

as if drunken


with a calm acceptance

of doom

hanging like a sweetness above the bed


the gray twilight darkens

and everything about me

seems subsumed back into some void


where random forms find definition

and become what they denote

and all one has to do is float


heedless of trouble and consequence

to become eyes looking out of the air






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.

my head is aching


if it's not the deafness in the cacophony

of mendacity and self-interest


it's the misguided morality

that makes the sayer think he's superior


to the mess he thinks he's above...

bite my ass...no one is wholly guilty


or wholly innocent...but we are all culpable...

you are involved even if you stand aside


paring those famous fingernails...

disinterest does not save you anything...


and I know this beyond my power

to do anything right...it makes my head want to explode...


less than I understand and more than I can handle....






Content (c) 2008-2015 Philip Milito. All rights reserved.