whatiskant

[whatiskant]

i wrote everything here for my brother Yoni who died two Aprils ago. When he died I posted 2 poems he’d written a long time ago. I am rereading everything I posted now. It could all be better but I am not ashamed. I loved him so much.

[whatiskant]

Don’t be afraid that you might die in some moment of misjudgment, in pursuit of excess, in sickness you would not properly seek our help to deal with (as you would certainly rather die than trouble us even for one evening). Even at that point it will be ok. I will travel backward in time to the moment before your body dies and you will be ok. Although many times in other circumstances I have lain awake and considered how this life could have been lived differently, and come up short, apprehending the difficulty in intervening between cause and effect, paralyzed into this narrow life, when the moment of your death arrives, when electricity leaves your brain and your (perfect, every thought and gesture and invented word holy, every recipe and capacity for kindness and abnegation, every laugh and hug, every joke, every solidity shining) neural architecture is dormant (every thought still physically possible but not animated by electricity, beginning to rot, when that moment arrives I will know instinctively the way between the currents, I will move backwards and prevent such a thing. I will know because there is a hierarchy of impossibilities, because although time must march on I must also intervene. My obligation will outweigh any trivial ineluctability, entropy, linearity.

[whatiskant]

First we kicked our brothers from our (our) land

Now we cant xtend a hand

I mean WE were the People of the sand

Than again, trifling scores achieved by those in need

Do not please me to aggravate my own sin against creed

(Achilles cannot convince me to take heed; not when hes

fell off his steed

and arrow to his heel looks at me

in pleading

hope of revenge enacted through my rash brash decisive acts of leading)

By this point the pope may replace dope

And isis may have fought past plebian proles hope

But proletarian listlessness -abysmal- wrought in habituality based moralities

Have etched blissless abysses indelibly mired; made for formalities not functionalities

Beg my own self my own mind to be incisive grab the reins and rain my reign upon thee (nee of this verse; sorry if I can even call it pretentious , maybe- but not practically)

Everyone has shit , so why it feels like alls shits claiming me? !

I can see, but wy must i only see as the layman sees- not as the black caiman sees- with lies unbelied, untroubled, unharried by unveillancy for it is now clear to me the urgency of surveillancy!911!

Cameras to replace venomous licentious hate for carefully chosen words of distaste and expressions of chaste which indicate a life that u dictate with a manual of etiquette and abstinent tastes. and syrupy smiles that take miles- to reach ur eyes

Drank from the chalice and tried to deny she lied as lions shied from blistering white light I provoke the night to invoke the yoke of my pheromonal charge(d) presence reach the fuckin skies !! fuck the lies and countless alibis- ur as evil and deceitful as our government to its people!-fuck the lies try to mind but find that the mind is lost somewhere between the 3rd and 4rth tries.

Your as evil and deceitful as our government to its people

Grab a cardinal toss him from the highest spire –squire grant church wings of lecherous- temple steeple

[whatiskant]

magnum opus lapis sky but haint it night-time speakeasy is full with the dejected- lodging is no longer needed for those who dont need it most but perhaps they need it more than any. try and find love by a ginsburhgian trail of paid cunt- scream to crowds in the hjope s of someone with like enough mind will hear it , mayhaps write on anothers screen - perhaps it will be read and tooken into consideration. question all- question the search, it may be just about that that time.... quit while im ahead-who am i fooling quit wheneverf goddammit i have no apparent stream to give over . kafka dont wanna chill- and niether do i. im not wont to divulge- is this really y only outlet? im doing it again-.. falling into a spiralng shitstorm of self pity- im doing it again -how will i feel good again... i glimped happiness in small and larger doses but still scarce in its largess.... grammar fuck you. monolithic this unacheived goal seems even unattainable- i am not one to put effort in what i know (i stress know) to be futile. there it is again... i started strong. i cannot seem to hold the stream- im self thinking only for all the brimming-over love i possess. rejects buying love and if they could afford it without monetary compensation they would recompense the cosmos however they saw fit in their disordered minds. they feel somewhat disgusted - with themselves- with the misunderstanding maintream- with the fact they wrote misunderstanding maintsreAM. dont remember the conversastion ... dont remember much of import.... falling in the abyssal hole of self... cant even derive onanistic pleasure anymore... im burning out - but damn it so fuckin slowly. do i hate or do i think? do i believe or do i hope to touch upon theological reasons for belief- do i want -. the rundown motel is full with hopessess (members of the lowest caste- who have placed themselves in it- through the locked and cliched chambers of their own minds) unhappies searching unknowing why they still search .... i am burning out, but damn it to hell - so so slowly.... opaque opaque opaque cant hack through cant hack through - urgent urgent desperate desperate desperate

[whatiskant]

one of us, one of us, we chanted. we circled the lame moose until the sky turned black, baring our incisors and giggling. from far off in the forest came their unreal song, an arooo arooo arooo, and from right on my belly came the small perforation spouting maggots, each with its own terrible speech to give. tear down that wall, ask not, the whole pantheon of fervid mutterings rendered public shame, and the fruits of the hunt lay piled high in our caves like prop gold coins. you dragons, fly away, you wolves of pop up shows. in the face of the object we apologize or turn our faces from the blinding, we pull our pens and draw incision lines around our pupils. wallace stevens wandering through the mountains hums in harvard snatches of something he remembers though he's managed to forget it all. the dragons give him their berth but we do not know if it is love or what

[whatiskant]

Preparing again to denature and release as when I carry too many bottles back into the kitchen and one slides until I am just keeping it in the circle of a distend pinky. Promise me you'll help mop the slivered mess I'm going to be in insubstantial pieces on this soggy bed and the plants I gave names are watching, bored and unwatered, turning yellow like a seasonal shift, a drive through New Englanded trees and to a tour of the Budweiser factory. But that was then when the air still had happy thoughts to whisper, or was that my mother, getting me to sleep against the dark. When she said think happy thoughts I thought happy thoughts but I wasn't in them, it was just puppies and rainbows and sunshine, ideas of happiness, from a book, like driving through an apple picking, like an ad for granola bars.

[whatiskant]

im okay with lying, stealing, but not with confidence. it's a sin, i believe that, i do, as much as i can believe the leader of some shitty bipartisan think tank quoted voltaire re doubt being unpleasant but necessary and of course no one quotes voltaire except after googling "quotes about doubt" but it's so stupid bc why on earth should the unpleasantness be relevant at all im an intellectual ascetic or maybe self destructive i feel so superior to everyone but i have admitted it a thousand times to purge my sins i will admit to things but it reinforces them instead of exorcizing whenever someone says im a contrarian i say, yeah, of course: but i am, i am reactionary and resentful i love the language of religion, its so universal. i don't believe in specificity, although i enjoy and indulge in it i dont believe in jokes but also if you have an ideology you can find consequnces to examine

[whatiskant]

it's all a piece of shit you need to be deliberate

[whatiskant]

no excuses for anything you should be ashamed of everything you should be overcome with racked by shame you should not fill anything with clutter leave your notebook white and brisk and your skin unmarked do not say a word even though you think you must you do not have to and you will regret even if you do have to it is better not

[whatiskant]

Little green man, your ship is ailing, your house fallen it will be a thousand lifetimes before there is one other of your kind

What are you doing with yourself, are you keeping well do you read

When hyperdrive thrusts you into your seat, are you thinking of tomorrow’s moon, or of the one you would like weighted beside you

Have you wanted have you lost would you like to

[whatiskant]

He does not eat he does not sleep moves his limbs at all at the same pace if there can be a mouth on that face, I have not seen it open, if lungs, I have not heard breath. He might stand upwind a greyhound and it would not stir, he has, many times, with his back to a pond of drowning children, and no look on his face

[whatiskant]

Alien, saucermen have come beckoning to your window. Step into the sky. Grab a star like a knob and haul yourself through. Does it burn in your hand? What will you say when your mother calls and you are fraught and tinny, past the Pleiades? What Gods play dice down here. In the far off overcoat of the sky, you will reign like a rock, fixed point, untroubled youth. Cast off your lightless dreams and read the morning.

[whatiskant]

Little Green Man Makes His Landing

The little green man alights on a meadow. He lies back and the sky is blue. Where has he come from? What is his purpose? The little green man falls asleep, and sleeps for weeks. The sky remains blue. The long soft grass flickers slightly. The wind runs its hands over his little green face. He is dreaming of home. He smiles in his sleep. The wind swells, kisses his bald head.

[whatiskant]

Little Green Man

You are the little green man, in a little grey ship, atop the atmosphere. Everybody wants you, but they can’t have you. Too high up. Everybody wants to be you. They look at the sky when they get on the bus. What they’re looking at is you. You like who you are, alone in a race, the only little green man, riding the only little grey ship. You don’t eat or drink. You can reach out and touch the stars. Everybody speaks a different language, you don’t care. You are the little green man, and you don’t need to talk.

[whatiskant]

How long has it been since you wrote anything you liked. That’s just your taste improving; but it is not. When I was a dog, I ran beside the other dogs. That’s

from a poem. I heard it on a New Yorker podcast. Do you read poetry. Is there any poetry that’s not about poetry. Why don’t you use question marks. The moral choice do you bear your part of climate degradation when you drive a Prius or are you credited not driving an SUV. Mayer says the Chinese working poor have it better than American, because their employers provide food and quarters. He says: they work eight hour shifts. In the busy season, twelve. I said, but I would prefer to be an American, although I cannot muster a convincing argument beyond vocalizing, in a direct mumble, “hegemony, equality, agency!”

I suspect his facts are wrong.

What are your facts. Hi, I’m 5’9”, 175 lbs., IQ 125, have read 350 books for grownups.

[whatiskant]

The Roman philosophers taught that people could know; it was their sin, said the stupid people. Sitting in judgement like a bloated lung, the people who didn’t know said: you cannot know, the philosophers were rash and arrogant. Even then I knew you were wrong. From some unknown source, immediately, I was washed with certainty, you were wrong, they were right, I knew so many things. I knew I was inside a head. I knew I was alone in here. By the time I mentioned the philosophers to you, you didn’t remember who I was talking about, and I couldn’t quite remember either. The philosophers are hung in my head over an empty fireplace, a group of four or five, bearded now where they were clean-sharp-faced before, in robes whose washed-out reds and blues I had taken from a book for children, about perhaps the Greeks’ or Egyptians’ persecution of the Jews.

[whatiskant]

I can manage to talk to people but I can never stay for the response. I say, hi! and I dash around the corner, or I hide behind a dumpster a shrub until they pass, shaking their heads like to shake something off, three or four degrees left right left right left right, very rapidly. I have begun taking pictures of everything in case I need proof. Yes, I did eat that raisin on the nineteenth. Yes, I did wait in line in the supermarket that night, and yes I did tell each person waiting behind me to go ahead, sure, until there was no one but security and the cashier in the store, and I said, please, no, go ahead, and then I was alone. I own now ten tshirts, a canister of black tea, two tablespoons of Jif chunky peanut butter. I ate half of the peanut butter; half went to baiting mice into the black plastic rectangular trap; it hums dramatically whenever one of them dies. I have been crating my things, like as though they were a puppy in the habit of pissing on the basement floor. The events of my life have conspired to bring me here, and with such little to my name. It’s okay. Good to see you.