somehow i convince myself this
is the same sun that circles my reality
then
the patterns of fall repeat again
like un-trusty clockwork
like a sex moment with myself
and i return here
at the moment of personal revolution
when the leaves sit loosely on
branches, ... standing by
like me
waiting
reflecting on a change that's yet
to define me ... and ... fuck it
i want to know something
just one thing
i want to prepare
like the almost yellow leaves
aren't i a part of the cycle too?
somehow enslaved to forces that urge me
free?
but the more i think
the less i want to understand
or care about knowing anything
forgive me i am drunk and don't care to write well
i use poetry like wind uses a storm front
and i am unable to understand or
control either ... and i don't fucking care
my mind sinks
like an ignored earthquake
in some foreign place
defeated
and i succumb to the images in my head
replaying like an invisible montage
something like a bad 1980s movie
that celebrates a sudden growth or accomplishment ... fucking lame
one i purposely forget yet it sculpts how i view things
a collage of thoughts and feelings
i thought made me who i used to be
but i realize ... well nothing ... fuck it ... this is the last thing i'll write about
but i remember
and piece together a blurry mess
of images and feeling
adding to the soundscape
of the city's inspiration
a collection of jazz sounds and rock and roll moments
all not happening now
dead moments and a brutal and ceaseless nostalgia
fuck you
no really fuck you
the one-way traffic outside
my apartment window
like a brick wall yet able to allow fragments of the events
outside its contain
in here
the sounds of life
the progression of death
in us all
lies and drug use
pleads for change
in both senses of the word
sense like vision but unlike sound
shoes on concrete
walking
pit pat pit pat pit pat pit pat pit pat pit pat
cris crunch cris crunch cris crunch cris crunch cris crunch cris cruch
greeting concrete like i greet myself at a bathroom mirror
bam
smash
crash
fuck you
again
everyday
attempts to find something
i might recognize
fuck you
in a place where i can misplace the essentials of my face
defining moments happening then and now
in something i create with my borrowed eyes
i know the sun circles and connects us
or at least i've heard rumors and subscribe to the idea
thanks for the insight ... really it fucking helps
god is truely divine and a provider of maps
but i wonder if those around me bother to wonder as i do
bother to masterbate on lonely nights
ummmm
or whether they're similarly alone
with themselves
wonder whether you also become overcome with fragments of something
seriously what the fuck am i writing
saying
you can't possibly understand or
give a shit about ...
amid the life we create and the life we
well ...
divine first words during divine last moments
i wonder if you're as alone as i

:-#

dear you,



will you speak with me?



i speak in emoticons
and was
born in nineteen-eighty

played with decepticons
and reject war rationale
and war songs
war profiteers and war cons

it is now i stand
it is now i speak
because i too am from a broken generation

am i in part to blame?

when bush was elected
my age group
neglected
to stand
to march
to stop complaining to a mouse clicking for a myspace account

brb

i've promised many
including myself
that i'd be an agent
have faith in the working class
the ghetto
the disenfranchised
the figuratively raped
and the spirit of reason who tells me to be patient

"we can't let this go on forever"
"eight years is enough"

though it's forty years too late
and the grip on our throats has
been there before our memories

existed

and
lifted our eyes

know surprise

it's not gonna pass
can distort our best intentions
and it's coming fast

beware and aware

so forgive us!
for it's hard to remember!

change has crossed the lips of great men and women before

only to be silenced at the tear of gun fire
only to watch hope reduced to a glimmer

rather beaten by power
the greedy the seedy and the selfish like a resistant whore

or an image conscious generation told it needs to be thinner

what have we done?
where have we been?
broken generation
what are we fucking doing?

we've never known
a life without hyper consumerism
false needs and corporate control

the hyper real
and the watered down
choices of the every four-year-Super-Election-Bowl

grab your popcorn
strap in and watch them
fool you into participation
with a process that prefers your complete submission
like gang rape in a five dollar porn

mcdonalds seduced us with cartoons
carbon footprints
plastic toys
and colorfully packaged obesity

we've been breast fed by fat cats and the morally dead
who’ve supplied our every need
and valued us as profit margins
only!

and if we're poor we're valued as soldiers
dodging bullets till one strikes our head

and we fight for you?

and i'm a criminal if i smoke weed?
if i run a red light?
if i speed?

i’m a criminal if i protest
a system that
had i any sense
i would passionately detest?

if that's the standard i passionately resist

is this seriously the best we can fucking do?
seriously?

if so i am through
through letting my words
and my art
speak from the margins

i refuse to let you victimize
me
convince me MY values are garbage

because i'm a progressive
a god damn left-leaning revolutionary

so fuck your god
because he's my oppressor

fuck your police sanctioned pepper spray, batons and horse
that breaks up my voice
on the sixteenth street mall
during the dnc
because i say fuck the system
with desire and force

because in a "representative" government
i have NO fucking choice

i’m broken but i can regenerate
and not fear
but survive and use my hate

because it breeds action

i'm post republican
post conservative
and post racial
and while a figure of the system
i support barack obama
because he symbolizes hope even if he can't be it
for a broken generation

he's my lone candidate
because of what he can make me be:
a grassroots voice from the top

and after eight years of this,
an unelected leader who never
won the office let alone had a mandate,
we can be change

so fuck the unpresident
of the divided states of america
and the mindless fear mongering he represents

and fuck his clone jeorge mcsame
and his god damn alaskan slave
-- she actually supported the bridge to nowhere
and is hell bent on leading all of us there!

we're broken
disenfranchised
bloodstained
but without the blood on our hands
from an unjust war executed by a truly evil man

and as for his clone,
it is self-evident that we can't let him be president
and we can't defeat him alone

broken
we are
but
like shattered glass
our lack of unity
makes us a threat
and sharp
to an exposed
naked
and self assured
plump and pompous ass

i'm no democrat
but a bleeding heart liberal
beating the shit
out of our recent and shameful past

and like the cutters of my generation
who killed themselves
as victims of an unprovoked sense of hopelessness
we are the razors to the wrists of injustice
of ignorance

of you fucking assholes

i'm a human first and american
LAST

when something's destroyed people
for political gains
it can go to the hell it fictionalizes
and kiss my "loony" ass

country first?
what about ethics, love and compassion?
those are the values of my generation

broken as we may be
but a reflection
of a yet-to-be moment in
history
when we finally started to resist

closed our hands when told to salute
and instead clenched our fingers
for a FUCK YOU fist

you don't speak for me
you don't represent me
but i resent you

i stand with the silenced and the defiant
the humble
the forgotten
and the community reliant

not communist
but dutifully committed
to the ideals of a proud socialist

i stand against your ideology
against your spiritual and mental monopoly
over the minds of the wise
and broken
kind and never spoken

my regeneration

indeed
my soldiers of the spring
my multicultural
my gay and lesbian friends
and straight aligned
my male and female sisters and brothers
real lovers, fathers and mothers
we have had enough

but those words hold no relevance
when reduced to counter culture blogs
and complaints at poetry slams

god damn i'm through
god damn i'm through
letting my words and art not matter

my precious values floating aimlessly in the margins
like the last few o's
in a cereal bowl

god damn it
i'm a writer and a fighter
detached from the majority
a minority
and a uniter

god damn i'm through
being ignored by the mindless
selfish and the few

i'm an elitist
an intellectual
because being elitely intelligent is what we should all strive for

i'm determined to invade each
red state with reason

with all the love and passion in me
and i pity those who call me their enemy

i’m against the things that make me hate
-- we all have it in us but how we use it determines everyone’s fate.

i’m through being bitter
a hostage of george w bush, the new age hitler
i'm through being a hostile coffee shop liberal
the lightly spoken individual
restrained by the literal to be non committal

to my needs
our needs

as agents of progressive change
our new focus on the internal
external and the communal

i'm through being the broken generation
a degenerate
and product of

a

broken

fucking

nation


will you speak with me?

please!


sincerely, vincent alan adams

written the day after the 7-year anniversary of nine eleven

i lay at night
this night
exhausted from insomnia
craving a sort of chaos in a still
smoke filled room

were we supposed to make love tonight? or fuck?
or were we destined to walk
and embrace the early morning’s slight moisture
while street lights projected our shadows ahead of us

i'm not sure what to do
but i know this journey toward clarity
only makes my thoughts abstract
as though irony wanted to rain
while a newborn sun prepared to cut
through a reluctant blue sky
-- like suicide

what am i to make of all this
these red eyes lonely, tight and tear stained
my swirly reflection pulsing in a mirror
i will soon never see again

i know once i understand this it makes
me know you less
and it makes me question myself
and reshape an identity i've yet to know

you don't have to see this with me
this midnight darkened horizon
but i want you to walk in silence
and hear these muted voices
speak the wind's language
reminding us of memories we've traveled
all this way to forget

i want us to walk this road and let
the cold air move through our dry skin
this way we can rebel against our
need for sight and comfort
and i can remember what inspires
us
and what erases vanity
and what compels men and women to move
toward thunderstorms

at times i forget and trust others
to guide me
and i don't want you to make the same
mistake
because i have and will again
and i need your strength

let me please light this last cigarette and watch the smoke coil
as i lie back and taste traces of jack daniel evenings
recounting events that define the way my eyes recall imagery
my reflection
telling tales that stretch beyond notions of love
that shatter notions of identity
notions of being whole
complete
let me smoke until the drought of eternity
when all liquids refuse to pass through my body
and i’m a shriveled version of what i used to be and want to be
let me stop smoking until i want to smoke again
and forbid you from passing judgment
forbid you from defining the lights i choose to see and lights i can’t see and lights i don’t want to see
let me seek you at my most vulnerable
those nights when i crave the moist scent of your voice
and simultaneously demand you disappear
let me recall dark lit nights and eyes cold with regret
let my arms feel the memory of circling your body like reluctant halos
i want to remember speaking naked in movement
redefining love to accept our need to feel each other
sex
moments static like a wind that changes only to bring familiar clouds
let me recall imagery that defines my past like wax on my finger tips
like your shadow fluttering behind the candle light after our last time together
let me redream that night staring outside the window
watching the moonlight dress the landscape
realizing love exists as common dreams in arms that lust to keep us warm
i can’t regret you and i can’t regret that you once and will always define me
i can only float in a wind like a withered leaf
and let your energy embody and symbolize me
i can only wisp in your form and let you exist in many faces
i can only float like smoke and let new cycles pass through my body
i can only trust the moment and trust that as one song dies another lives and is reborn
through my body
i can only sway in realms of abstraction hoping to see you once in a while
hoping that you’ll see me too

the light pierces
the sun
for the first time—this early spring
when surrounding clouds allow vision
and the trees
with infant budlings
whistle in the wind—naked, eager
without a shred of maturity
without a cause for ego
without the energy to renew distant hopes and dreams
this
man's final call—evaporated
in a distant frosty fog
that…ices everything…that
once-warmed monuments defined—a culture
a small moment with a god—or goddess
who never lived but
pulsed rhythm
in a vast collection of brightly lit chests
bent over
painfully …screaming…reaching out
hoping to one day move clouds—like gods—or goddesses
in ways that encourage the sun
to pulse forgiving light
this time

sometimes i speak
silently through
a candle’s flame
alone
untainted by artificial moonlight .... and
permitted to touch
some scandalous excursion
through the scales of my skin
or a syntax that moves
a pencil to solve a small
personal paradox—in one night

in one night vast energies
play sacred games in my favor
and demand the colors of life
to cooperate with a daft
man's ambition

when i speak
silently
the eyes of man remain
closed in ignorant slumber
and
as distant as a
nonexistent shadow
or a silhouette
in a dark ocean's tide

in one night i can escape
chains that burden brilliance
and pity those who
conquer frivolous
claiming some encounter with freedom .... in one night

suffocating in clean water and fresh air hoping new pollutants clear my mind and convince me of my new personal goal to travel on dark red rectangles new enterprises to undefined locations and creative spaces to transform the shit you leave behind new clay to reform shapeless matter into enlightened figurines of humanity i'm a god like jesus who redeems spirits while bodies willingly waste away and in search of fake shit

on some drunk real like fuck the world kinda shit deconstructing reality with broken drums and distorted guitars assembling something that looks like a reality fitting of the fucking chaos people hide from their fucking skulls finding harmony in black disjointed dissonance and calling it music fuck you

i meet him at the thought of ritual
where i move to
an incomplete melody

i beg him for the moment when sound
strikes the ear
and my thoughts drift as though
they never occurred
like an invisible sun flare piercing its nearest satellite
and whose energy reaches the
outer limits of atmosphere
and influences the way nature
contemplates movement and change

patience, he tells me
awareness breeds sight and
only blindness allows
a space for sensation

i grab the beads he offers
and i rattle them in my hand
and feel command
as though i hold a hundred
small thunderstorms

i know i do not belong here
and i know i haven't realized
the place i imagined
and i know the goal of journey
but somehow i find peace
in silence -- in holding something i can't touch
and fragments of speech
and languages i can't speak

i find peace in broken words
and poems without focus
purpose

i still see miles of
uncharted sound
i suddenly don't want to touch
but i want to dance to its memory
its energy

i want to fly on a sky made of sand
to remind me of my origin
to remind me he doesn't and can't exist
and that god is only a travel companion
and that peace
drifts on its own terms

all too often you return in familiar form casting nets like memories ... luring me back as you did the first and last time we touched ... what gets me now is that your power over me not only remains but has strengthened in your absence ... your fingers reach through a fog of time and dampen my skin like beads of rain and i a listless bystander only able to comprehend the irony that pulses through your finger tips ... 

and on these nights when the moon glazes the skyline a milky blue and the city’s silent in reluctant energy ... i speak to you from a place i hope you’ll never hear because if you knew these thoughts you’d reject me again ... turn your back on me again ... but maybe cry this time ... maybe cry again ... i speak from not far away ... within reach yet distant like touch ... within vision though invisible to your unprovoked eye ... hoping you can see the last of my opaque and transparent figure

i want you to know and love me as a fading whisper ... i want you to know that i am well and know that i forgive you and finally forgive myself and that its taken more than i could’ve known to form those words and mean them ... i want to know how you’re doing ... i want you to know that i still wonder about you but i see the last of you and i want your last trace to fade gracefully away ... i want what’s left of you, what’s left of us to die as a memory

in silence

forever