Cold Nights and Blank Pages

Cold nights and blank pages
I came a long way with strangers
but I guess we're all in it
for the long haul now
together

Loves lost
in listless and uninspired lives
wrapped up in our own beings
are we freeing ourselves?
or fleeing ourselves?
forgive me

this wild dog
with wet paws
and eyes crusted over with
flour and tears
I can't focus
and yeah, I've a few beers
but in my 23 years
I have never been privvy
to a secret like this
but what is it?

what could I be holding
slack-jawed and unknowing
just given one glimpse at old glories
gone wrong
carried out in the streets
and burning like ancient Colours
in the tear-gas afternoon

Cold nights and blank pages
I came a long way with strangers
but I guess we're all in it
for the long haul now
together

Furnace

How fast in this place
our glittering artifacts
are borne out for
all to see
the skins disguise the soul
but for us there will be
no costumes
here we are glorious naked,
in our garb, garbage

this is the time
these are our lives
this is our line
it is drawn in the heart
this is the furnace
and we are all fuel
for it's fires

burnt up and spent
on others aspirations
inspirations only,
fighting for some
recognition
our great cognition
is just the condition
we've suffered through
this is a period
of fools and kings
each is each
and each no more than each
and each know more,
then the other

this is the time
these are our lives
this is our line
it is drawn in the heart
this is the furnace
and we are all fuel
for it's fires

Superfunbooboomwowcowboypoetawesome, part I

Okay

Here it is

poetry that burns me down

exploding from the wounds and cracked skin

smoke and gaseous farts and lights

all howling all around me

as I stumble all-too-sober into the night

looking for what ailing desperation

would cause me fall ass-over-heels

into dead space

floating in the womb

of freezing rain

crying, pummeled

and enshrined

is this our art form

our loves our lives

or fantasies all

locked away in living rooms

concealed

and waiting for what lies to come?

what lives undone

so young, you falling hipsters

failing ghosts of a true spirit

MOLOCH!

oh yes, I can scream it too

and scream I will

over Chapels

atop minarets or synagogues

none of which

where I belong

I've gotten tame

so let's run;

be wild dogs till sunrise do us fall exhausted

at the feet of better men than what we are

break houses in frustration

peel against the angry gods

who scorn us with their

gold and white suburbia paradise

I'll let all my faces hang on a shelf

and gather dust

I'll pack all my reasons in a box

to hurl it in the Fraser River

let them

float to sea

let them

float farther than what they held back

let their rotting eyes and cursed melodies

nourish the fish that feed me

and the other waxing masses

at least then

my reasons

will have

done someone

some good!

I'll stand over the hill

at Golgotha, some hermit's light in my hand

to shine on all the bridges

and pathetic imperfect avenues

of my past

and future lives

oh, Bryan if you could see the shit

you've done to these pathways

you'd hurl yourself in the headlights

of the chevrolet sedan

or ford taurus

or whatever it was that came speeding

down the highway of your fear

oh golden black bird of men, flying

your soul is emptying itself

your laughing green street signs

pluck me from my comatose

meandering free verse

back to stark reality

141A St. and King Rd.

Surrey, British Columbia.

and the damn mechanical stream

forces water up the collective asses

of the pine trees while they twist

and orgasm in the wind

the dead-end

cul-de-sac reflected in the glittering

steel fences and blue-light whatever-o-clock

blog posts

computer screens fickle and unimaginative

filling with nonsensical jive

my coyote sensibilities rebelling

the constraints of reason

and all I do is realize

I'm standing at a street corner

insane and scribbling, scribbling in the orange

and dancing like a child which I used to do

in an old park with cherry trees

not here with the watchful eyes of

of all your granite seraphim

or demons ready to jump out

at you at any moment

screaming sirens on the road to heaven

as it curls up before your feet

you run for light

while shadows protrude from

the corners of your insanities

reaching tendrils into your head

and plucking out the rhymes you

so desperately strung together

into meanings

you realize you're a poet

were you ever one before?

stumble through the mire

and fall back to the familiar

that golden door

the Holy of Holies

dog shit and the ark of the covenant

coffee grinders blaring

sordid animation on the television set

play some chill music to calm you down

then get high on Ginsberg

and do it all again

it's all good

it's five in the morning

fill your little belly with coffee

and the husk of bread that's really all you have to eat

except for raw brown rice

make some brown rice if you have to, just make sure you're full. Make more coffee, you' will need it.

light some incense

wait an hour

meditate

six-o-clock lost thought

in the stream of pseudo hip-hop and Bod Dylan

turn it off and stumble out the door again

shoes sopping, jacket heavy

cold and hungry but burning with the need for more of this

rambling poetic nonsense

so you roll with it

get out and decipher

all the messages

left for you by the

aching shadows after

starlight died away

feel your heart pound as the cars

on King George Boulevard storm by

in perfect contrast to the cherry trees

planted there on 108 Ave

oh, cherry blossoms are beautiful

so we'll force them

down you're throat

and into your brain

to remind you it's

all okay, there's fields

of flowers floating

just above your head

never doubt the power

of the little pink flower

seagulls cackle tempestuously

over smoke-hazy

whirring skytrain

tobacco rush

nicotine fix necessity

fire

power

give me poison

that I may live

plow west

into fields of soft plasticized

shit-coloured domiciles

standing firm and blending in

in protest of the eternally unhomogenized

world for which they were created

Give me back humanity!

give me conscience and soul

give me holy spirit sperm donors

shedding seed in virgin wounds

or uterus

using us for the new christ

we'll go happily

us fanatically stupid believers

in this supreme father unproven bullshit

give us mercy, like catholics to jews

my people to your people

your people to my people

all of us holy

and fucking eachother in

a land where nothing is sacred

but the bentley and microsoft

capitalist whoring of

values to children

and children to the rich

no

not even the act

the fucking

the orgasm, the glorious cum

is sacred in your eyes, kid fuckers

burn in hell!

no

I can't tell where I am anymore

I can't see the difference between

the grass and the concrete

the air or the rain

the good or the bad

the glorious or the merciful

or the legion of business suit

briefcases

trampling the dream

into ashes in the face

of supposedly needed

efficiency and progress

long gone

the innocence of democracy

let Washington and Voltaire

and the men who made us

fathers, grand fathers

other great and majestic

cocks of the democratic country

roll in their graves

bring back slavery

why not

we're slaves to our economy

anyway

there's no room for anything else

let there be no more of the

"freedom"

let there be no desire

reduce me to my parts

let me fall to bits and rust

in the acid dew of

utopian dawn

On progress, science and society

We have given ourselves up to progress. This statement cannot be contested; the proof of it is everywhere. Progress, however, should not be accepted without answering a host of questions, the foremost of which is: where are we going and why? Why do we need to seek technological advancement? Why do we push the borders of the wholly flawed concept of civilization?

How is progress measured? The more we create, the more we design, the more we invent, the more we advance, the more we construct, the further we progress! The faster we go, the more we progress! The better our devices, the more we progress! We have created a society that needs to be on the move. Is progress not possible without this constant movement? Could we not progress something as we remain in one spot? Does social progression have to include expansion?

What factors drive this progression? Is there a human element to progress as a society? Should there be? As a civilization we need resources; this is a simple well known fact. We push our borders to encompass the resources we see available. This is the economic factor: the need to feed, the need to consume. Now, however, with little resources left outside of the grasp of civilization, there are few borders left to push, few things left to bring in. We are driven to find new ways of producing resources, or new resources altogether. Science fights to discover what it can use to advance society. Is this in the name of progress or for the sake of bettering civilization? Is progress aimless? Is bettering civilization the cause of and reason for progress, or is one simply the result of the other?

Either way, science remains a driving factor in the machine of progress. Science has become the new religion; it is the focal point of our society's faith. We believe, as a group, that science will keep us warm, safe, fed, and in contact with each other. Science has done this! Science keeps us always moving forward, but do we know where it is going? How much do we the people know of what modern science is doing, and how much is the common man prepared to understand?

“Reality is what science can measure and explain” has become the manifesto of this Post-Modern society. Does this not place too much emphasis on the sciences? Can science measure humanity? Has science ever been able to measure life? Can science explain existence and tell us how we got here? It has not yet proven that it can; it has not yet measured or explained the most obvious and fundamental question there is and this renders the manifesto void. How could reality not be what we are experiencing? How could reality not be the most simple sensations and processes? Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am”

And if the manifesto is rendered void by a simple fallacy of science, where do we proceed as a civilization. How do we progress? Do we need to measure progress in a scientific manner? In part, yes, but progress can not and must not be measured by scientific and economic gains alone. Progress must also gauge our worth as a society by the levels of joy, knowledge, community and enlightenment the citizens possess. Progress must measure both in the advancement of science and the betterment of our conditions. Progress must realize who it works for and we must realize that science, progress and economy are all tools we made and begin to use them as they were meant for.