Insomnia

When I can’t sleep I talk to myself
Seek solace amidst solitude
Build a palace of my attitude
Read my own poetry to fall asleep
Counting my wordy, wooly, wise sheep
Electric sheep are yours to keep
The truth lives here but it lies deep
Concealing secrets for which we seek
Through your fingers try to peek
Catch the brilliance when I speak

And I just keep on writing until I drop
Rhyming alone and I’ll never stop
Without fail I’ll keep on trying
Thoughts sizzle like bacon frying
Pop hiss grease fizzle in the pan
Thoughts heating up like I just ran
Running away from my own issues
Running hard, needing tissues
The nose knows, smells bacon done
Tastes so good with the rising sun
Morning dawn, light approaches
Brightness invades, rebukes, reproaches
Ferrets out secrets, reveals lost files
Illuminates denial, illustrates what it defiles
Sanctifies the still alive and makes it thrive
Gives me drive and lets me jive
So what’s the light, where’s the source?

Me and you alone of course
Transcendent truth, intercourse

Confusion illusion confounds allusions
Poisonous vapors, psychic capers
Crazy prophets and projected craters
Life finds a way, evolves in papers
Thesis, essay, idea and narrative
Any expression of the life I live
Alive inside my own mind I thrive
Grieve as I bleed the mind outside
Brain in inkwells, dipped and rolled
Drawn across pages, papyrus scrolls
Pour myself out and only got filled
The more I grew the more I spilled
Oil tankers like this disaster zone
Every wreck breeds more clones
All these thoughts invade and batter down
Walls of Jericho fall under before walls of sound

where can i find me, love you

Unmoored unfettered drifting free / rising above, clouds below me
Get so high, look what I see / my house, your house, statue of Liberty

Gonna spit a bit quick right before bed
Shake loose these demons from my head
Calm down chill out don’t see red
Stay focused and get that paper
Dough start to inflow with this caper

Wanna get away and escape it all
Leave behind the stress and the madness
But I turn away and face the wall
Nowhere to go to pour my sadness
So drop it on the page and hope
That one day I’ll have crafted enough rope
Threads to clothe me, hempen like dope
No absolution here don’t need no pope
Just need a space and these words
A crowd so I don’t go unheards
Then I can drop it classic like whey and curds
I’m the spider, ya’ll miss muffett
Ya’ll paying for change, warren buffet
While I’m jimmy saying fuck it
Lets all get stoned at margaritaville
Begin the night swiggin on swill
Watch yourself, try not to spill
At least not once we get past the well
And onto the good shit, break out the patron
Before long we gonna be gittin it on
Because this is how we do it son
My rhymes make change like clerks
My beats make ya dance like jerks
My shows be packed on like the works
Hamburger hill, enemies get Merc’ed
While I’m up in space like cap’n kirk
Chillin with spock in the spacedock
Gonna throw Khan out the airlock
Now lets pause and take a stock
Seize a steer and steal a sheep
No quotes here, we top of the heap
And they used to call me a creep
On TV, this is the shit they bleep
Fuck that censorship, I’ll say bitches
And if you don’t like it, come get stitches
In your side from chasing me down
I don’t live here, I reside in the sound

Ground Control?

Tenuous tendrils / tremendous tumor / there’s a rumor / that you ain’t so super


Drifting disconnected umbilical cut
Planet receeds behind, out of sight
Rose so high we broke the skylight
Exhale exhaust smoke and fire
Ascend exponential till we asymptote
Past even horizon when we take a toke
Escape velocity in the smoke

Got so high one day I went into outer space
Left atmosphere behind, stars I began to chase
Swimming in sunlight, riding the gravity waves
Interstellar windsurfer, wasting my days
I cruised away from earth and waved goodbye
Felt like I’d never been this high
Cursed the cool moon as I cruised through
Then I turned around and watched as mars grew
Skimmed past the red planet, saw Olympus Mons
Slingshot around the god of war and I was gone
Spat through space like Hermes quick
I thought to myself, space is fucking sick!
Saw the stars align and I just loved the pattern
Then I flew through the hoops and went to Saturn
Tripped past Jupiter, biggest of all
And I started to wonder when I’d fall
Although alone in space I can relax
Forget about my thoughts, bonds and pacts
But out there its lonely, space is cold
And this is not the way to grow old
So I fell back to earth’s embrace
Gravity keeps me tied to this place
Feet on the ground but my heads far above
Floating down from the sky like a dove
Till I again rest in this life that I love

High On Words

Hubbub babble sounds like battle
War of words, more like Babel
Speaking in tongues you can’t handle
Eating my tongue like it came from cattle
Ya’ll calves like bron but I’m a bull
Hungry like MJ, never get full
Taurus rapper spitting this shit
Stubborn as hell I’ll never quit
I’ll keep on striving, never settle
Take this chance to prove my mettle
Cuz my shit’s tough as fucking metal
Do it like a hero chief gimme a medal
Then away on my bike I will pedal
Making up words pretty like lotus petal
Making mad money with this shit I peddle
I’m burning shit up like nero, rome’s on fire
Plan is to destroy this fake empire
Choke out the national till it expire
Smash imperialism and I’ll never tire
When I stop you can call me a liar

America; land of the free?

Everyone’s equal here, see?
Unless of course you happen to be born
Anywhere outside of the middle class white norm
In the land of scorn, porn and corn
Apart by our differences we are torn
And this is the world into which we’re born?
Around here most everybody is oppressed
A tiny few rule over all the rest
Just follow the money, remember CREAM
Know that corruption rules everything around me
Feel like I’m living in the Wire
Here comes Omar with shotgun fire
Like he says, the cheese stands alone
Money is king, your backs’ the throne
Nothing is fair and nothing’s equal
America looks like a fucking sequel
British Empire Mk 2, sun never sets on whitey’s rule
And the one who gets screwed is always the fool
And the ones making money are very few
Privilege, power and populism are the glue
Sticks up the wheels of change
Keeps the gear shift stuck in strange
But I say fuck it, lets get weird
Go wild, wooly like a big bushy beard
Mess this system up, gum up the works
Revolution of janitors, cooks and clerks
Break the machine with our being
Discover a new way of seeing
Fight for right with our might
Maybe we can light up this night
Reveal the real, make em feel
Free the people from the heel
Under the boot of our own creation
We have made this oppressive nation
Slaves to our own innovation
Always moving forwards with no map
Never realized we walked into a trap
And the jaws close quick like snap
We wonder where we’re really at
How we got ourselves into this crap
We go blaming this and that
Never realizing the problem is the path

Polka Dot Blues

I got them polka dot blues
Little cysts spreading across my soul
Little sty drifting through my vision
Dots gained by breaking rules
Diving headfirst through any loophole
Swiftly escaping into my old prison

A piece of paper, a shower of embers
White slate marred by a few cinders
Little holes appearing, motheaten shirt
Eating into me, making me hurt
And made by hurting
Pain comes from my own gain
Sabotage myself when winning
Gotta lose gotta make it rain
On my parade I don’t deserve
A sentence I don’t have to serve
Self imposed exile, alientation
Set myself apart from this alien nation
Foreign to me, foreign I be
Different from my environment
Product of actions I never meant
Made my self a bed in which to sleep
I lie awake in lies, never sleep
And even in rest I don’t find peace
Can’t escape the stress that doesn’t cease
At night I dream of daytime worry
And through endless hallways I hurry
So I sleep less to escape the eyes
Stay up late, race from the prize
Solace comes in escapism
Fracture my life back like a prism
Rainbows seen in my vision
But when I pull away the lens
And put down my pad and pens
I’m just sitting here alone
writing in the twilight zone

noir sonnet of my life

I guess I’ll open with a poem, the wry rascal declared
Grinning, nodding asleep onstage
Lights shone on sweat stained suit and
Creased, beaten, worn fedora
Lent an air of
Desperate dignity to the dim scene
And he said

“All the people I love are wandering drunks
Wasted and high, blasted to the mind’s eye
Selfless and spent, hippies, freaks, geeks and punks
Lost to the nightlife, alone when they cry

They traipse through my life, my house and my heart
Mad abandon in the sacred moment
To be more than a number on a chart
In art immortalized, death’s opponent

Living on the fringe of reality
Rejecting some mad American dream
We work to escape the banality
So what will we be? The milk or the cream?

We are the change we wish to be gandhi
So why can’t we wish for more than we see?”

sweet shorts: haikus and poems written in class

Why?
no one gets out of here alive,
because to escape this is to die
although we all want to fly
desire to live forever in the sky
but life forever is a damn lie
when dead in the ground you lie
for your memory they will cry
tears fall from your child’s eye
weeping for the end of your I

Collegiate Haikus

real straight forward class
brainwashed into believing  
nod and get an A

but who is in charge?
Isn’t someone going to
Tell me what to do

Instructive chaos
More voices means more ideas
And less agreement

school kills many trees
so much paper down the drain
classes raze forests

Philosophy fail
Ironclad arguments
Mean nothing at all

Cage

Outlines are frameworks of lies
Fettered attachments, heavy ties
Blank page is open like blue sky

Touche

fencing with glances so subtle
eyes dart, intentions so humble
meet, break, contact of the soul
lifting downcast eyes is the only goal
delicate, fragile, simple perfection
my lips yearn to frame the question

Egypt

Slavish note taking is the rule
In this labor-camp school
Building up pyramids of thought
Edifice of solid what we got
No worry about what could be
Just needs that we should feed
Our learning serves their greed
The more we learn the less we’re free

morning joint

Today I rose at dawn and got baked at the lake.
Living in Madison, eating some cake
Making some moves making things shake
Got a little groove make a girl quake
Feeling real smooth just for its own sake

Cool like cucumber and raw like steak
Hungry man is the trouble man got a mean streak
These words are rhetoric you listen when I speak
Watch as I leak, blood on the page, aortic
Rhyming tourettes, words are tic
Spitting to create the life artistic
Red hat on my head, life aquatic
Smoke some weed and get neurotic
Smoke some more and feel necrotic
Zombified, still alive this shits toxic
Makes these ladies all erotic
Mary and jane get over here quick
Give this big ole joint a lick
Keep it tight oh it burns so right
Just give it a light, paper crackles
Pop and hiss like a witchy cackle
This joint its time to tackle
Puff puff pass sticky icky fluffy grass
Hits my lungs and comes to pass
Transubstantiated into a feeling
Brain waves want to pierce the ceiling
Standing waveform stands, reeling
Starts to speak, ends up dealing
And then joint is done, truly really
All that’s left is empty paper

.....have i stayed away too long?

did you miss these rhymes while i was gone?


Whoeeeeee rhythym slithering down lie a black snake moan
This beat soothes down grooving through my soul
Needle on wax, sounds come from the land of Stax
Time to get real down low heartfelt soul wail from the sax

When I don’t watch myself I become somebody else
Blinding eyes with green gauze lies smoking the lye
Blunted eyes squint to see through the haze
In which I’ve been living my days
Unjointed unforgiven unconscious I’m livin
Consequently conspicuous Confucian cornucopia of confusing kaleidoscopic vision
Things I see dancing spinning passing by me
While I’m just sitting back high as the sky be
And let me get a fly beat
Over which to drop some real heat
{beat Change}
horn stabs at ya eviscerate guts
this joint is funky visceral nuts
crazy hazy lazy fresh as a daisy
funky fresh like the Prince Smith
same as Will I am a wordsmith
Shakespeare when I speak I got no peer
Back in the day they’d call me a seer
Might stone me to death, got no fear
I’ve been stoned before, didn’t you hear
Couldn’t you tell, can’t you see it in my eyes
Insane ambition to cut all ties
Release the anchor and just rise
My ships sailing up into the skies
Outerspace where I resides