Knowing is free

Knowing things, 

knowing every thing,

is free 

When you have no other capital 

You can at least hold knowledge 

and you don't even have to acquire it 

Just pluck it out of the air

Just know

Shout what you know at the sky,

as you push your shopping cart down the street 

Yell what you know, red-faced, at your TV screen or radio 

Prattle on about what you know to millions of listeners on your immensely popular podcast

Cuz when you have nothing else, you have what you know 

Critical thinking, research, studying, all overrated and wasted efforts 

mostly serving to make you aware of what you don't know 

Why waste your time 

Just know

It's so good to know

Moment; Time Travel

I was ten years old
I was sitting on the toilet
I was thinking about time travel
I thought "If I can will myself to remember this moment in the future, it's time travel. I will have sent this moment to my future self."
It worked
I remember that time
Sitting on the toilet
That's the moment I chose

My wife's dream

I was hoping to write a poem today

My wife tells me about her dreams

She had several last night, as usual

My wife is an epic dreamer

In one she dreams that she is a superhero

one of a group of superheroes who live together in a complex

They share a parking lot with a Catholic church

There are tensions between the neighbors

and the heroes have to go to the church

and apologize

And I can't see me writing a poem that's going to be any better than that

Come and Join Me To Make Love (a found words poem)

Come and join me to make love
see lonely onlyfans girls
want to see my nude photos for free?
Big Boss Porn Sex
Hi, I'm still a virgin, look at my beautiful nipples
My neighbor's breasts are very big 
I can't post my nude videos
I need someone to accompany me
Hi, no idea who you are but...

A love letter

 I love all the various versions I've known of you

Looking at pictures of you before I met you, and I love her too

My best friend, my girlfriend, my fiancee, my wife

My lover, my partner, my life

I'll always be there next to you

I can't wait to meet the next you

And I know I'll love her too

2021

These feel like imaginary years

A weird movie that is too long

I keep waiting to be able to emerge from the theater

To blink in the sunlight as my brain readjusts to the reality that was out here waiting

And not to find out it was only an intermission

My dreams and hopes are paused, on life support

Warped clumsy reflections of our lives unspool across the calendar

And we try to hold out

And to survive

Long enough to not watch the credits

Social Media

There are a couple of people who I've blocked on social media or who have blocked me on social media who I really enjoy seeing in the real world for hugs and coffee.

And there are some of you who I really like engaging with online and we just clam up and are awkward in real life.

And there are some of you I like both places, but in like, totally different ways, like I'm friends with the two different souls that possess your body.

And there are some of you who I can't stand, online or off but I like to keep an eye on you, or I like to have your eyes on me, to see that I'm doing cool shit, when I do cool shit, but then I worry I'm not doing enough cool shit.

I gotta go. 

Got some cool shit to do.

Religious

It's been so long since I had religion

I don't know if I can quite remember what it's like

But I know that if I had religion now

It would have to be a spirituality of my own making

I know chocolate would hold a sacred position in rituals

As would coffee and hot baths

No stale wafers and chilly baptismal pools

The red wine could stay

I have fond memories of passing it 

mouth to mouth 

on the beach

This is how red wine is meant to be served

If I had religion

I would believe that any God

Looking down and seeing you,

Sweet Coal,

would have to smile at the way you lived the life they gave you

You would be immortalized in stained glass in any church of my making

The patron saint of life long adventure

Falafel

 Falafel, more like falawesome

A food good enough to start a fight

as Egyptians, Greeks, Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians, and Lebanese all claim to be

the only ones who make it right

We give Hamburg credit for the hamburger

and we thank the French for fries

But falafel is so good everyone claims credit for it's inventions

and to make it better than those other guys

The world's most contentious food deserves better

This lovely fried and crispy treat

So let's stop all this bickering and fighting

and sit down now together and let's eat

Get yourself some falafel 

Have it made every different delicious kind of way

Unless it's served with yogurt instead of tahini

in which then tell them blasphemous monsters to go away

Haiku

 Homeless

Fight or flight engaged

Always on

Sacramento

I sit at the window

listening to traffic

I can feel the energy of my city

I can feel a million souls

moving

fighting

playing music

making music

dancing

walking

drinking

drowning worries

building and destroying

I can feel all this energy pass through me

like electricity moving through a wire

so many different frequencies

so many different textures, colors, flavors

flowing eventually together

if I can keep it from becoming ticklish

if I can keep it from burning

if I can just hold it, it's building

in me

as it pulses and finds a rhythm

a symphony of human motion

and emotions

it builds

it lifts me from my chair

I float up in my room

I find the center

I am equal distance from each of my walls

from the ceiling and from the floor

I start rotating

slowly at first

then spinning

faster 

and faster

until all is a blur

all vision is blended, streaked, combined, overlapped until it is blackness

a living blackness

all sound combines, at first cacophonous

then droning, buzzing, tighter until it is silence

I explode

the energy of the city returns to the city

it takes me with it

I am part of it as it is a part of me

I wake up cold in bed

I step to my open window and listen to my city

I can hear the far off freeway

someone is singing

a car drives by with loud bass thumping

it grows louder and then fades 

I close the window

shutting out the sounds of my city

in my small room

four white walls

as close as I ever get to silence

and I fall back to sleep

My Type

 You

You're my type

When you were long and lanky and we twisted our limbs like branches growing rapidly together

When you're curvy and round and enough for me to get lost in

When you become old and so comfortably familiar it would be a struggle to recall what it was like not to have you near

My type is you

That Kid

 That kid I used to be

Sometimes he seems like someone else

Someone I can sympathise with

Someone I wish I could help

Poor little shit, he didn't know anything

Today though

On my 52nd birthday

He was there in the mirror

Looking older

But still that same kid

Those same eyes

Starring back at me

I can help him

I can give him love

I do love him

Poor little shit

He knew so much

Valentine's Day

 I saw a Valentine's Day post

"Every second of every minute with you has been wonderful."

A sentiment I find unlikely 

I argue reality is more romantic.

"The good times are so very good, they've made it worth getting through the horrendous times, and that's saying something, because we been through some shit!"

Victory!

 "Come Celebrate, Comrades! We've done it! We have remade America as a Socialist Utopia at last! I've got a peppermint mocha for each of you!"

"Um... like, thanks for the mocha but you know most of us still don't have health insurance, right? And I don't know how I'm paying my already late rent this month. Are you sure we've succeeded in making America a socialist utopia?"

"Hello!? Didn't you hear the barista say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas? Victory is ours! Viva la revolución!!!"

How can I read when there's writing to be done

I sit to read and the first page is brilliant and inspires me so, I hop up to write
I sit to write about life, and love and, reminded that these are happening all about me, I hop up to live

I spin in circles

possibility overwhelms me

I look at my phone

"Reading and writing today" I post as my status update

and just like that, I get several dozen reacts, likes, loves, and hugs

I'll try reading again later

Is It Cake?

Life wasn't hard enough,

now we have to worry that things might be cake?

And I just saw a video of cake that was really a pillow. So anything might be cake and cake might not be cake?

Why are we doing this?

Leave cake be;

It's one of the few things we've gotten right.

It's one of the small spots of joy that almost make life bearable.

Cake.

Limerick

There once was a man from Nantucket
who knew he'd one day kick the bucket
This awareness of his mortal state
a sense of foreboding did create
and also, he had a comically large penis