BARAKA

dedicated to Allen Ginsberg
& Jonathan Haidt

“To determine the true rulers of any society,
all you must do is ask yourself the question:
Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?”

– Kevin Alfred Strom

Solar Sinai rain, drip drops slash oil-fuel hail
harvest heavenly Star of David,
flames across the horizon,
avalanche vultures,
cyclic pitfalls, murky awareness, aristocratic heights—
who devoured the game of corpses in heaven’s altitude chasms,
who perturbed petty coat consumers,
draped in see-through tapestries of gum-spam fury,
hygiene repositories, dust mite landmines,
amorous spite,
plebian creeds, post-mortem atheists’ flashlight hope…

eternal realists,
changed their names to venerated titles,
because of dreams –
already initiating the art of appropriation –
committed the Kamasutra to memory
recited it at graduation commencement,
half-shirtless, in boxers and panties only,
underneath the regalia,
dragged ethereal bodies across university hallways
into power cathedrals of money,
who shook hands, kissed presidents,
made love to lobbyists! –
and liked it!

argued with congressional scholars, intellectual senators,
emeritus presidents 24/7
their Eastern-Thought Policy Rhetoric PhDs,
politicized salvation, debated silky treason,
wrote extemporaneous tabloids,
the last of the mohawks, suburban outfitters gaffed,
holy holes on jeans, societies’ dodo,
spun political grotesque spit-shine on shoes,
dope-washed waives rights,
the vast tsunami, all the world’s yin-yang-ads
highways, they drove themselves to-and-fro,
inhaled car-ka-roach fumes, gawked molly-jaws,
Osiris eyes tie-dyed,
surrendered daily, worked blackouts,
believed they were signing John Hancock’s Revolution
uninformed patriots of Truth,
projected their analytical limericks
vis-à-vis their ergodic verbalization –
autumns      atomic      auras

newborns without cocks immediately taught
to embody prostration, pink ribbons
in their locks,
pray to shapeshifter jaguar sparklers,
wear gilded rings on fingers, meditate from 9 to 5,
perspire odors, rancid gossip of tradition,
yet never thrust change into this living lantern,
only cast credit cards at others, isolate—
cash registers as barriers

who never listened to their own utterances,
mourned passing clock fingers,
circumcised impure diamonds,
looking for a new oral fixation,
choked out any visible impurities from resounding thorns,

who slut shamed psychologists prescribing hairdo introspection,
who howled self-proclaimed freedom, full of holes,
into insane asylums,
hair bowties bound freethinking
to the bottom of the well,
as they bawled their eyes,
declared their reasoning proper, harmless,
and who while pronouncing themselves the new godhead
unknowingly bowed their brains to inevitable havoc,
who surrendered to flashing lights, epileptic seizures
in slow motion,
who played dead
before autoerotica goddess on television,
sabotaged earth into squandering,
searching for the sour taste of asphyxiation,
god fucking man,
hauling thunder, meander these halls
into the nebulous void—
sea, obscure and indecisive…
who nodded, light switch on-off-on—
vultures blur party lines, coca snort glassy crassness,
BuzzFeed guillotined the paisley shrouded news anchor,
the bobblehead dollar nation’s chairs,
vessels under pretense, free speech
treadmills at the psychedelic gym-nausea,
crammed cock & balls —
who rushed into erosion—
Jungian desperados, spiritual daffodils,
who shouted Sisyphus myths,
bedlam lullabies, loaded golden resin
into gravity bongs, gongs at dawn,
windowpane stares, phosphoric dreams,
inhale Drano, exhale Lysol,
text ‘LOL’ to life—
in an elated state of glee!

who screwed their elevated despair
from quicksand seclusion,
whose pickup-line bread crumbles were tax-paid faux paus,
self-help bookish toe nail clippings, Zen turds
fueled by terrible grammar, illuminative phrases,
‘Real Real’          ‘you know’ and               ‘like literally’
history repeats uncultured bloodstains—

who ejected their coca semen flow into backwards tweets,
sexted across empty vessels,
whose characters rearranged a poor clamor rising,
rising ashes, the vehement desecration
Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking down mythic streets
New York monsoon slumbers, LA Times tome Bera –
King Sodom’s failure upon sure sundry departure,
who breathed quicksand quagmire palm tree idolatry,

a nuclear clarity, sequins around noose necks
shattered oceans, already dried up,
up azure forests’ luxurious sky
swaying lamplights go unnoticed,
consequential to tv poison libertines
taking carcinogenic Ubers into clouds —
whose protest signs read
WARNING: embers of tomorrow
will revise your soul of dramas, dreams, politician crafts —
who depreciated ignorance, levitated justice from this earth,
who floated into the sun where stars go to die

who made their bodies art,
whose skin found forefathers’ shadow, make-up mirage

denigrated young minds into blue bustling brains
eked cosmic collisions out of Greco-Roman cars
entire epochs they submerged in pastures pansexual,
ricocheted against Venmo banks and diagnosed bums
catering tribulations and asking for crack
in return for one look of pity;
one look of calmness in the cackles of tarantulas, ominous
as last breaths that shall perish no matter how witty
their masters’ beaks
flying into nightfall seem —
collective consciousness, digitized by cool fracking
Middle East dance floor dance against
acid trip protest synergy
ingested at Coachella and Marty Graw
4/20 smoked O.G. candid selfies of politicians in drag —
naked before Vanity Fair —
PC resurgence —
listening to dead mountain standards
neonazic with bronchitis
bore lava that tore our Dinosaur eyes
crammed into modern karma —

who ticked time bomb crème brulée martyrdom,
whose saturation tasted dancing wombs
on tangerine tongues
whose booming buds were not only swift but also flawless,
who I know had more story here to be perceived
along history
reading dust aimlessly
in the eyes glistening
kingly and queenly cats,
daemons current and river
flowed with our flowers decrepit as limbs leotarded
and primordial
I dragged my body on the dance floor
with melancholy musical sin
censored congressional addresses
to populace,
caught in the Netflix and YouTube web
blotto-vanity youths,
quantum Mecca polarized photos of lost cadettes,
military men—
and lost cassettes—
dispersed into martini glasses
opening Pandora
were paladin-gatekeepers,
God’s refuge of acorns in onion skies
ruptured into oceans,
teleported into the inner-child eyes of a billionaire,
who chiseled thoughts into bound bosoms villages
pillaged among desires fleeting —
who never attained satori —
who only attained momentary opioid nirvana —
ApplePay the Dali Lama for his time —

Children
Destiny
Guilt

Accepted
Cut open

Wounds
Rhetoric
OK with us all
So… Surrender with me
Humor me with gods
Humor me with change
Humor me with political correctness
Humor me with the ideas you have, new music and
rhapsody beats
Into the void of tomorrow
Valley girls cloud salvation masters,
fetter freedom, poverty and wealth,
exonerate economy’s elevation descent
criminal yet happening

Alleged holy vainglory
the part of pride killed by man
Intricate spider entrapment
Flag, flightless processed into granulated spicy garlic
Iota of miseducation and missed opportunities

Who shouted from Amazon Prime rooftops
that everyone else was unhip,
While they themselves were hypnotized
by dipole-consciousness
Who blogged titillated totalitarian Twitter feed fucking
While they themselves suffered
ideological clap
shmanging shamans
in the temple bedroom
crashed their parking-lot minds
into dive bars, manure, Xanax
FDR run Nixed on banks,
deep throated analytical ego-dick
for a Green New Deal,
whose regime change recoiled upon the pristine Adolf
… that man who we joked
would never enter
our ADHD Snapchat hivemind,
yet we craved never-ending entertainment
and wondered off into astral projection,
our bodies tripping cacti
in desperate need of cataract surgery
couldn’t see why we received endless anxiety
Yuletide Russian roulette
Our paper-thin bubble of trust popped

Joshua Corwin, a Los Angeles native, is a neurodiverse, 2-time Pushcart Prize-nominated, 1-time Best of the Net-nominated poet and Spillwords Press Publication of the Month winner. His debut poetry collection Becoming Vulnerable (2020) details his experience with autism, addiction, sobriety and spirituality. He has lectured at UCLA, performed at the 2020 National Beat Poetry Festival and Mystic Boxing Commission Festival of Sound and Vision, read with 2013 US Presidential Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, Michael C. Ford, S.A. Griffin, Ellyn Maybe, among others. His Beat poetry is to be anthologized alongside Ferlinghetti, Hirschman, Ford, Coleman and Weiss early this year (Sparring Omnibus, Mystic Boxing Commission). He hosts the poetry podcast “Assiduous Dust,” writes the weekly Incentovise column for Oddball Magazine and teaches poetry to neurodiverse individuals and autistic addicts in recovery at The Miracle Project, an autism nonprofit. Corwin’s collaborative collection A Double Meaning, with David Dephy, is currently seeking publication. He also has forthcoming collaborative poetry projects with Ellyn Maybe including Ghosts Sing into the World’s Ear (Ghost Accordion series 1st Wave, Mystic Boxing Commission). Corwin is editing and compiling Assiduous Dust: Home of the OTSCP, Vol. 1 (forthcoming April 5 2021) featuring 36 award-winning poets, all demonstrating a new type of found poem (OTSCP) he invented.