The Cog

have to drink out of glass.
carry it everywhere and it dangles from their wrists
like a god. a little water sloshing at the bottom,
always there, just that little bit of water, not enough to drink,
but there like it would matter eventually and yet it is lost,
the lost water, the nothing warming water useless
because in too small a container. always more water wanted,
but it must be in glass and therefore never enough water,
but the dangle and the message and the belief
that it is healthier because of it all, but is it? Is it?

the texting hipster who doesn’t know
that the texting device makes him uncool
in the realm of former hipsters, but not caring.
the interview with the rock star: what apps do you use?
the lost generation, the t.v. dazed text starved supra socialized now gents and ladies
of uncoolness. get it now, the moment, catch it.
remember when it was just at parties they would bring out the photo albums?
now it is always. how old we’ve become in our youth.
little old scratching melters into each other
where warmth belongs to digitalized mommies fast screen daddies and you.
waaaa. mama papa we are the now generation, the new generation
where we can watch tv all day, motherfucker!

the guy who made it in academia.
matters while the rest of us flounder and forget
and remember that we don’t matter because we weren’t vetted
and we can’t wear ties and fedora’s and flowers in our lapels
but we can sport the floppy boots and the red nose
and we can cry and eat shit and remember that our past is as gone
as their future is in front of them
because they have a whole lifetime of being known
as the ones who matter in the art that you suffered through,
got caught through, burned through, failed through,
asked for everything through and got nothing through.
daft you. wise they.

america wider knowing it’s got nothing on this,
the land where ideas matter, people are trying,
innocence has been celebrated and innovation praised,
no where out there compares. it is all death delight and long views
fetid streets with locals and no entry no money
and suspicion of strangers.
only in the mountains or the liberal seas can a wanderer find a home.
the rest is for the short view and the flickering light
in somber houses late night.

the smart one who knows 1s and 0s and can code
and can know and is young and is the future
and is living inside of the box and we don’t know him
and he doesn’t know us and he is math and we aren’t
and the way the world is to work he will speak and we will not
and it will not be language that we know, but that they know
and transactions will take place because of it
and our food will become cold because bad and theirs will stay hot
and will go fast and taste great because they knew
and it all had to do with the simple fact that nobody, nobody,
nobody talks or even looks at anybody on the street anymore.
it all comes down to the creation of methods to eliminate you
and everyone you know away from me and vise versa.

the woman with the hitler mustache made of a band aid
walks in the sun with an umbrella and a stern look
while vaping a cigarette, a long black one that looks like a real stick
and when she looks up she sees again the world
and her feet keep her walking and there is no rain
and even the sun is not that burning
it’s just that there is no other way to be.

the past, the very recent survival mode, is in you in a stolid sad way,
making the world of the inner become something slow
when the inner isn’t slow, making the world seem dull
when the world is not dull.
it has no color, unless grey (greenish) is a color
which I guess it is, but it has nothing to it.
it is wasted time in exchange for money. it is like a shit.
it must be released and soon.
They will try to convince you that it matters, but it doesn’t.
it matters only to them and you do not play a part in the equation
except in the basest of ways.
The cog.

Published in: on January 16, 2016 at 4:03 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Poesy

Before the night fell the grasses swayed. All life was somber and still. A cricket bleeted alone as crickets always do, this one, too early to sing, waiting for night as the orange sun disappeared behind the mountain. The water of the lake was smooth, not a ripple, grasses grew out of there too. Tall grasses that sticking up like trees with thick stems and the brown, very brown, dark brown almost browner than the trunks of the trees on the shore stalks, as I said, stood perfectly still. What happens when the stopping begins. Eyes wide open we seek movement. The poets always sing of themselves in the whisps of winds and sways of leaves, but when selves disappear the remaining former proof lives on, soulless, unknowing, lost.
Too much silence can kill a man says huxley. But huxley doesn’t know anything. He cuts corn down when seasons of corn cutting come. He rushes out to strip the land and comes home a richer man for a season, the good season, in between the times of waiting and loneliness. The poets are always looking for friends in nature. Somehow they know how to relate. Sunshine becomes God and moon the almighty mother. Loneliness doesn’t grip them. They don’t need the flesh and blood of their soul sisters or their brothers. We all fall down.
And stories, expanding in underwater silence, our talents bubbles bursting upon the water’s skin. If we could tell our stories, let our stories come up and be as real to each other as they are to all too often unknowing selves, then we could breathe. But breath is but another dream, another wasted thought to the drowning man, his story and his being watching the round orb of the sun blur and decrease. Eyes on deck. Keep watching says you, but the poet knows that even the underworld is there for him to relate to. Even then.

Published in: on June 17, 2014 at 12:16 am  Leave a Comment  
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every time I read bukowski i end up telling someone to go -f- themselves

everytime i read bukowski i end up telling someone to go -f- themselves.

everytime i read bukowski
i end up telling someone to
-f- themselves
of course,
i should never read bukowski
to read bukowski is
to give up all of the pretenses
that you carry with you
every day
bukowski was beaten by his father
all childhood long
he was beaten
if he mowed the grass wrong
because of it
his face broke out
in
boils
women later thought his face
had character
but they were probably just like
me
possessed with a desire
to explore the lower depths
of what’s not allowed to say
to tell it like it is
in a gritty, even dirty way
that you never do.
so when i read bukowski
i end up saying
the f-word to people
and sully my own reputation
doing it
but that’s just the thing
you get tired
of always being mr nice guy
and bukowski never was
never tried to be
except when he realized
that if he didn’t make money
he would be living on the street
an alcoholic bum
well, the same goes for me too
i will be on the street too
if i keep reading bukowski
and when i then speak on the www
those kisses last forever, baby
and people i had criticized
in my mind
in some small way
believe that i hate them
because f is where i go
when i read bukowski
but i don’t hate them
i just want to get their attention

joey c kantor

Published in: on April 28, 2014 at 7:23 am  Leave a Comment  
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to give again

Maybe
you’ve got to
sit down
and take –
now and then –
Maybe if you give and give
and give
and get so little
back
then you are not giving
at all.
You are just taking
from yourself.
What then is left of you?
Do you feel the daze?
The object of your vision
should be left solely
for you,
at times,
sometimes,
not that you needn’t
have to give,
sometimes,
or want to give,
sometimes,
but, sometimes,
your original line
of vision
should go
unbroken
and what is taken
will be for your eyes,
your soul, heart.
then you can give
again,
have the smile
that is required
to give
again.

Published in: on February 3, 2014 at 7:27 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Poem – Albert

Needing to know beyond what knowledge,
needing not me,
lays down like rags before me
I feel again instead of see.

Having always seen, always supposedly known,
knowledge anew tells me I’ve not but been tethered
to a big brown ball lowing groans and smoking,
rounding the linelessness of what-might-be illumination,
sun gowned, maybe, real perhaps, or just mimicking
the word beyond the word where the word supposedly lay

at which destination I cannot see anyway so I don’t
instead deeming it right to feel only
watching not watching while the gazeless codes enrich me,
and feed my blindness something of something
at least to the point of wanting hence feeling.

so I smile at the absurdity of longing
to know the meaning of to know

Published in: on February 2, 2014 at 11:50 pm  Leave a Comment  
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new

hello,
this is the world of the new. there is old and there is new and new is you and you are you and

welcome,
there isn’t much point in being here today,
but you are
and I am
and we
together,
although we don’t see
each other
we do exist you know
do we?
oh yeah
we do.
you?
me?
yes,
we do.
all in all and all in all
the world is alright today
so you say
and we all must learn
to love it.

There was a girl who touched my heart
but lived very far away
it wasn’t that she lived for me
she hardly knew my way
but she lived for something
a little something
something far and wee and her
nothing more than what she was
and that was enough for me

Published in: on January 20, 2014 at 9:42 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Lady on the Floor

It is easier on their end,
making the rules that we must abide by
to pay our obligations.
I am an American. I was born to abide by the rules.
Because the rules worked, in other words,
I’m not telling you what rules or whose rules.
You assume that I mean “America.” I don’t.
I obey the rules of the heart
taught to me by parents who abided by the rules
of America back when it was easier to do that.
We were raised to be honest and to pay our bills.
When the bills became difficult to pay
some of us became stressed
and continued to stay stressed only to develop illness,
nurture hatred in our hearts, coming to fear those rules
by which we were raised to abide by,
and for good reason.
It’s easier on their end, for sure.
We call them Executives, but they are you and me.
They are every person who chooses to believe that they too
can have the American dream and go for it.
We are those people, too. All of us mostly.
But some of us don’t watch. Some of us grab.
There are the takers. The bitter whose victory will kill.
While they don’t watch.
Sometimes I think that it is better not to pay your bills.
Because to not pay your bills means
that you will soon have to end the system,
for yourself anymore, of relying on the system
that would keep you in the same type of home
as those of your neighbors.
You fear losing “home.”
Sometimes I think that it is easier
for that man in that office
to send that letter, not even having to lick a stamp,
to me who must then work 800 hours
to fulfill the obligation.
That’s the only little thing that some of us pained ones are currently griping about.
Physically pained ones because, in their calculations,
we don’t deserve medical/vacation philosophy.
They are thinking of their Chateau Lullabies where the brie is so good and of course, later, gosh, life is hard, helping all those people…
Work work work work work work work work work work
I once picked a beautiful lady up off of a floor. She had worked for eight hours on her feet. She was overweight and in her late fifties. She sat in the middle of the marble hallway of a luxurious hotel/casino and cried.

Published in: on November 8, 2013 at 4:07 pm  Leave a Comment  
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This Fallow Morn

How so much this thing that we do. All. Sort of do, but not do, and all that there is left, after not doing. That which…

What next. When there seems to be nothing there still is is. Can we write of what IS when what is Not is not mentioned? Where is the real when…

Put words to what is, that is the the. No other words need apply. So simple this is. This know, this what is, but what isn’t known.

I praise these its, these knowns, for what they are. No words need more be mentioned, but those words that are, in real, more so than is, in that what is known is not real.

Yon precipice. I fall? Perhaps, all the way down to something. Born of something, this more. This fallow morn.

Published in: on January 18, 2013 at 1:28 am  Leave a Comment  

on joyce and novels over your head

…hiding from a novel here. I’ve got this big novel over my head. It’s not a lot of pages, just one big page that hovers over me like an about to strike extra giant pteredactyl with it’s pointy spine fingers hovering over you. It’s a horrible feeling. Having this large book over your head like this. I guess this is why you cannot be sane to choose to become a writer. After awhile you must either drown your sorrows in either alcohol or drugs or some other vice, I guess.

So. So much for that novel. It really does try to stop over me and pick me up into it’s maws or jaws or leaflets or logic or whatever. I can do very little to stop my fear of it as it is over me. It happens all of the time. Every time, when writing, that I don’t want to use the voice that I feel most comfortable with. I don’t think I have one writers voice per se. I have a lot of voices. As many voices as to aspects of my personality. What is personality anyway but the amalgamation of a thousand voices, aspects of ourselves. We are either going forward or we are floating. If we are floating that is okay. Some of the greatest artists and creatives floated through this world pretty good. Learn to deal with it. It is not as easy as the other thing, the running through things. That’s harder to do than floating. Both are difficult and both deserve equal respect, I guess. Life kind of sucks in the end because of death anyway that we can’t complain too much about it. It’s just another bad idea. A worried thought. Meaningless words, the giant novel, joycean in scope, perhaps as an art form he would have said, polishing his big, fat glasses through which he saw logic and logic and logic and then no more, the logic having gone to his head, he’d understood everything and praise Jesus! Trademark. And he said to his sister, Emily, Lord, the fun involved in learning the amalgamations of personality having to do with aspects and business deals with fat elephants walking to moons yet unexplored, but seen and sometimes eaten as if in blue cheese the elephant world would contain themselves, wondering. Wanderingly, again, joyce, the novel outside of the novel, big fish little fish, ronald laing, whom I do not clearly understand and the hope that someday this exercises will have at least consumed my fingers for a few moments. The exercise of the mind is the precursor to the exercise will power button belonging with the body.
Then the world came back and your fingers, though tiring, continue. Past loves can’t remember why they loved you anymore. You seem so tawdry. So cheap. Parameceum. Love.

Published in: on November 13, 2012 at 11:16 pm  Leave a Comment  
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The Poet

So true. If at all something can be true. (the curve, always the curve, coming up ahead, a down slot fast slot down spot…stop, then go) the curve, outside, inside. All I can record is movement. Actuality is of no moment. Fickle. Downplay the wired. Upplay the actual. Inside the moment. Outside the real. Next…
Its been claimed that the world is a wiggly one. The fact fades and dives and ducks away from the beam and all that is collected is the wind of the movement once again. Not even a New York skyline much less a storyline. Judgments crush down asking for some solidity, but it does not come. Once again it is the history of the invisible.
And style. Style again. Just what does that mean? A curve a jab a wisp a…never is it good enough for style is that which is left after the attempt has been made at stabbing the truth. Stabbing to hold, not to kill. If ships sailed before my eyes then its seas would be calm. This is all you can hope for when it comes to knowing. Calm seas under which the swirls and the whirls hide and propel the universe. But only if everything is symbolic, which it, of course, is. Magic? I guess so. There is no there there. Only a here hidden and fulsome, blowing, growing, in ecstasy. A carving of reality one breath at a time.
And judgments again, the stopping power of the good judgment, yet such things kill everything. This is an intereting plot, the killing of everything. Only this will make everybody stand up and prick their ears. Pour money into the killer’s cup. But such a sight is a fantasy. There will be no killing nor should there ever be. An ending, perhaps, or a beginning after an ending, but a killing. Is something born for the movies where excitement is guaranteed. For life only for the deceased. Thursday’s obituary.
So then you have color because of your particular curve. Black. Oh pound, so much like judgment this thing, this turn toward the ferocity in the emotion of the color black because of a curve that you took and did not take. That took you. Where are you? Here. In dread of the fact that you end because your sight is not great enough to see the beginning after. It is the same for all of us.
Under there are porpoises too. Worlds and grasses drifting in tides, suns high above, minnowed rays blocked in and all pointing upward. We’re fish. How can one so silent as you deny this? Our eyes look in one way and see in another. We are you and you are we. Yet we continue on. We never even meet and this is just as well for how could we hold all of us in our minds forever since forever is the only way that really ever counts. So we see and pass on, our gills sucking in oxygen just like all the rest. We’re fish.
Perhaps our minds really do need the truths of the ayurveda, your air, my earth, our water, the fire of us all. Perhaps in only this way can we know what we are and where our thoughts come from. Otherwise we are drifters like logs in oceans soundlessly going away for years and years and years. We grab hold of our elements to use them, to speak through them, to ground ourselves in something other than the ether of thought. But our lips want to kiss such truths and in our love we smother them and go back to ourselves, children without balloons walking walls alone.
The sleepy eye coming in from the jowls and hardening our eyeballs as though eyeballs could be plucked out for seeing things which lead to thought. Thought is a pillow upon a bed which isn’t there. Bang, bang, that is our head seeking stoppage of thought when thought drips into puddles stagnant. Shoot her up, smoke her out, water her down. Works for me.
What would blank do? That mirror’s image is you. There’s got to be more. It’s only that it’s all so static, so staid, so just there. Where there when no whispers to move your head or raise a smiled lip? Just you and always you there in the silver glass waiting for something to move you beyond. But the steps are limited. There is no one thing that you can do. There is only you and you are what is to do. But the staidness, the bland…
Kick invisible toads upon grasses that taste green. What for? For the heck of it. You’ll never find those toads so what’s the worry? Swim in oceans blue that take you cold downward only a little bit before you buoy back up and see the sun, feel the sun. are those chocolate covered clouds that you see? Breathe the air that trees have made and sing with lungs still good. Enough of you will do this and it will be called life even though you do not know that you are living it. There are plenty who aren’t.
I see now why storylines recede from steps of breath and air. Everything would be too fantastic. Heaven would be painted green and believed in and such things would warrant smiles and you don’t much feel like smiling because of the smokestacks and all. But a world destroyed is lightless without the flicker in the innocents eye despite it all. And the guilt you feel is useless without the flicker, the very same flicker. Crawling must lead to standing and that’s simply the truth. Of course, the callouses on your hands will go away, but you are not a dog, nor am I.
When will the ship come in? this is a very real question, one that keeps me from thinking for long periods of time. It is really just a desire for peace. But people don’t like peace, they do, but they don’t. This is a sad fact. The human being becomes bored and action stirs emotion and because there is judgment, that thing which makes everything so real, peace goes away and we wish for it again until we are bored again and action comes upon us again.
The poets roam, their souls bared like the page under a magnifying glass. Because it seems so huge they expect huge things, huge ships perhaps, but they are not holding the magnifying glass and they are really just very small creatures, just like everybody else. Some push away the magnifying glass. Put away the poetic pen and wish to be the size that they are when they poeticize when they sit and drink a cup of coffee or speak to a friend. This is their lives becoming art and it is a real aspiration even though they cease to be noted and their lights are lost among the stars. If they have an inner strength though their secrets are carried with them and act as fuel so that when they do poeticize again they are purer, their lights are shinier. They are honed. But the getting lost can be painful.
So we end here because our bodies want us to. We will not live forever in this form and the breath out is true, the eyes close and we sleep. A million pictures later we arise and we still walk silently, balloonless, upon the walls of our neighbors.

Published in: on August 9, 2012 at 3:33 pm  Leave a Comment  
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