Carpe Noctem

I looked to the sky
From my city locale
And I saw
The complaints
Of the daytime dwelling.
The noisy proprietors of
Thunderous voices had
Shouted "Carpe diem!"
Too long
And I saw that my sky was tainted.
Those voices
That shut out the dark
And propped up their sconces
Felt the day too short
And inflicted their choices
On my midnight.

They feared the challenge
Brought on by dusk's early presence.
And they were quick to shout and condemn the nocturnal actions
As evil and mischievous.
Curious creatures too mysterious and divine
To accept, the bats and owls
Were too ugly and unpleasant to approach.

I wondered if they felt small
In comparison to such vastness –
Rejecting lustrous gifts sent from
Light years away
For fear of incompatibility with an ancient and overbearing
Tao of navigation
They faded the bright lights provided already
For billions of years
And sought a thick cover of neon comforts
Like children plugging in night lights.

This failure,
This blindness,
This "seeking the light"
That rejects
A time of opportunity
And a universe of beauty
Leads to the very action
That leaves those very day dwellers in the dark
And it is what sets them behind the prospering nocturnal.

Harvest

Oh Mr. Scarecrow, just look at you,
Stuck on your stick, with nothing to do
Blessed with only one power which you must yield:
You must protect the harvest, you must keep the field.
Eying the crops within your peripheral view:
Don’t be surprised if sometimes your vision splits into two

Mr. Farmer created you in his visage.
Don’t let him down, you must pay homage.
Mr. Farmer won’t feed wild, no matter what the age;
It costs too much to feed what’s out of his cage.
With your stitched on smile and tattered old clothes,
Do your only job and scare off those vermin, scare off those crows.

The crows, they know better, they know
What you’re for;
So they spend all day destroying you more.
These tar coloured birds, pecking all day,
Piece by piece they’re removing the hay.

Oh Mr. Scarecrow, just look at you,
Stuck on your stick, with nothing to do
And still you hang, way up on your cross
You don’t mind you’re dead now, it’s all for the crops

Today you’ve done well, yes, certainly earned your pay;
So the farmer stuffs your holes with some fresh, farm-grown hay.
Next morning will come with another day:
Another day of torture, another day of decay.

You know Mr. Farmer, he made it this way:
But for every day that you die, there’s another to say,

I’ve stood here, young crops, long day after day,
All as a sacrifice for your simple way.
You can’t possibly fathom what I have to do,
Lose a bet everyday just to look after you
To let you grow tall and sway as the wind has you go,
I’m pinned up here; the burden of pain mine to know.

Then a day comes, with a new story to tell;
You look North, South and East, but every follower’s fell.
That monster, Mr. Farmer, he’s gone off to sell
Your devote little nation to downtown marketing hell.

Without your clone army, you feel empty and poor,
But can’t help notice the sprinkling of the compost floor
Seeds for the next batch, maybe one without a victim
This time you might do right, maybe this time you’ll teach them.

If they know of their demise this might make them feel sad,
But perhaps it will help them enjoy all the dead ever had.

Here’s your new culture to which you can preach,
You are the farmland closer whose only job is to teach.
Yes, every day you will die and Mr. Farmer will win,
But at least you reap the benefits for the time that you’re in.

Oh Mr. Scarecrow, I wish you could know:
The problem with the field is you reap what you sow.

Ivory Tower Disease (White Plague)

Fastened to a plain that limits their perception
They’re the ones that seek to rise up off the ground
Always seeming to find perfection in every cloud
They are building higher just to see what goes on below

Trying to create a cleaner theater
Housing solitary audiences
To unsuspecting actors
Spectators becoming skeptic fools so easily
Persuaded by simplicity: calming space and ‘purity.’
Minimalist divinity is a mystic’s faith in less distraction.

Oh, to be high and ever so hollow.
These are the isolated ones–
Mute and troubled.

A raided room is a segregate tomb–
That is where they feed the wound:
A surrogate womb.

They shut the doors
And raped the locks.
Their blank walls stare.
Their tables talk.

Still up there the pictures
Tend to speak a thousand words
But there they’re always
Monochrome and monotone.

Towers tall escape commotion
Where it’s hard to see
Vicariously.

Warp Speed through the Receding Colour

Riding a wave
Beyond the acetone wasteland
Exploding colours
In the infinite Crayola
I hear birds sing
And reach for my viola
Electric guitars
Flying over my head
The street corner jester
Said something, he said
Beat box the bass jazz
And boogaloo boogy
Jive to the beat
And give a mouse a cookie
Throw me a paint can
’Cause I can’t wait, man
Gonna colour your mind
Like a Yellow Submarineland
Spare me a quarter and
I’ll tell you more
I’ll be here all day
And there ain’t no door



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Now playing: Beck - Nausea

Natural Disaster

The big fish eat the little ones,
Swimming around,
They bathe in the shallow, blood-ruby sun of Los Angeles
A lonely place for the actors and actresses: silicone starlets
Consumed by that sun.
Burning hills, the plastic lava-flow of fiery avalanches
Where unprepared thespians
Are building their homes
Too close to nature, too close to alone,
Too close to perfect,
Always too close
With too much money to burn,
They’re always burning under
That bloody red sun.

With expensive explosions to hide all the lies
The insecure idols burn all their ties

I’d like to direct a new feature film:
One where the actors and actresses learn
That expensive wardrobes and luxury cars,
Dressing room curtains and makeup residue,
Self-indulgence and high-profile lives
Make excellent kindling to burn all their lies.
I’ve found incentive to let it all burn.

A natural disaster in the fake plastic hills:
A pure cinematic and visceral experience
And all of the actors keep popping their pills
We won’t do anything, we’ll just watch it burn
They’ll spark it themselves; they’ll just have to learn –
Maybe they’ll learn but I’m not so sure:
I’m sure their insurance will give bliss through sweet settlement…

Come buy your ticket
And take this ride
Join in this tour bus of voyeur passivity
Watch the sun collide
Watch the hills burn, yeah,
We’ll watch from the side.
I don’t care if the sun burns it all,
I think its time that Hollywood falls
So stoke up an avalanche that slides into the Pacific.

Watch it burn,
Watch it burn.
Let it slide,
Watch it burn.
“Learn to swim.”

I don’t feel guilty,
I just feel prepared. Without a Blackberry,
A Lexus, or Rolex,
Without a Gucci handbag to hold things in tact
Or an agent
To do my job for me
I feel more ready than ever before
So let the rapture begin, leave bright stars
In the dark.



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Now playing: tool - Ænema

Jungles in the Sky

Each plant had
four walls:
no roofs.
The ground under wheels
a recycled plastic, with
paths made of flat carpet.

No more windows
Except on the screens
- just a door-like space
made because a wall
was a bit smaller than the
other three;
and another is barely visible
because of the reincarnated trees:
the ones that grow so high even the
hawks fear to fly to the peaks;
they grow atop the fake wood veneer
of four-drawer chopping blocks.

Jungles in the sky
where each plant is exotic
(or at least in the
eye of the ant):
where the beasts roar
when rubbed the
wrong way
and only the meek
survive.

Capitalist Cow

unholy bovine
digesting bourgeoisie cud:
blood through four stomachs.




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Now playing: The Brat Attack - Mr. Capitalist