FUTURENGLISH

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Can’t sit on my porch and smoke a J
And remember how peaceful life can be
But all night long are a bunch of pushers,
Selling drugs right there on my TV
Drugs that whether or not I’d buy
Are gonna end up in my water supply
Along with who knows what else, who knows when
Just gotta take a deep breath and drink it in

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The Chromatic Typewriter | Colossal

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Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through,—
There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—and the neighbors knock and
borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There’s this little street and this little house.

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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.

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The Little War

I have forgotten what it’s like
Not to be alone.

It is one thing to feel my mind
Rippling away from itself as I nurse a coffee
Too hot to drink —
One thing to sit and watch
Traffic chaos, unfolding metal fractals

Very much another thing
To have only myself to blame, (or to praise)
For my cruel deeds, (or my new leaves, fresh turned)
There is no-one to put the tea on.

And it is one thing, having errands to run,
To do them efficiently and quietly,
Mechanically and soulfully
And only by myself.

Very much another thing to
Lock the door at night,
Behind me as I come back
To my half-full, half-empty home
Saying ‘Goodnight,’
And only to myself.

Each day is a little war
Between solitude
And loneliness

B. Datson
8 January 2012

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I had a dream you came to me, saying’:
You shall not do me harm anymore
and with your knife, you evicted my life
from its little lighthouse on the seashore

And I saw that my blood had no bounds
Spreading in a circle like an atom bomb
Soaking and felling everything in its path
and welling in my heart like a birdbath

It is too short, the day we are born
we commence with our dying
Trying to serve with the heart of a child
Kingfisher lie with the lion

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untitled

(thirty pieces of silver never felt so right
the best liberation that faith can buy
iron gates in the clouds
and the same old lie:
“i’d’ve never done it if i knew he would die”)

B. Datson
26 May 2006

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Yeah, so High School was fun for me, if you couldn’t tell

i’m a cosmic mistake
i’m not a good actor
i lose my voice,
getting trapped in my throat,
words dance on the tip of my tongue
tilting and tumbling and trying to escape
the world is happening around me
and i stare through empty eyes
blinding and dry as dust
bone dust, blowing through my empty spaces
crackling blue-white electricity
misdirected and pooling inside
waiting for release
i am not moving on this planet,
but this planet is moving me
rust upon these ancient joints
clouds are breaking around me
fog is moving in
ego-cracking, spilling thoughts
there are secret blades inside everyone
there are hidden, secret blades
warm and unyeilding
sends me running and screaming
blades that cut words
blades that bleed a broken heart
severing thoughts,
breaking glass
a sound so bitter, it bleeds
i do not feel like collecting myself
i do not want to bleed
suspending itself in my soul
and life lines running parallel to my age
sharp angles cut wildly through my life
and tiny islands upon my hand sink into flesh
white crests upon waves fly towards the sun
the moon throws light over the ocean black
and footprints fade with an angry tide
washed ashore, a torn page
a chapter missing from someone’s life
a sea of pain, separating destiny
a stone, splitting a stream
flash of light —
how cold its grasp!
and then it’s gone
my bones burn inside me
and slowly, shifts the blade
laying down my somber crown
a void to fill with tainted breath,
i’m awake but not alive:

i close my eyes to sleep.

15 April 2004

(2004!!)

—-
ah, teenage angst.

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I have lived the past year so wound-up and uptight…to experience calm is like that initial scary moment of diving into deep water: “Shit, I can’t touch bottom — what do I hold on to? I’m panicking. I’m going to drown.”
So now? Well now I swim the fuck out to sea.

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ombuddha:

Mountain sounds carry a chill wisdom,
an upwelling spring whispers subtle tales,
pine breezes stir the fire beneath my tea,
bamboo shadows soak deep into my robe.

I grind my ink: clouds scraping across the crags
copy out a verse: birds settling on branches
as the world rolls right on by
its every turn tracing out non-action.

Shih-Shu.

Photo by Debra Josephson.