The Monkey House

Coyote

Local Habit

In Machine

In machine we trust
with the only thing we have,
sacred fire shaped
this metal rocket,
bolts holding our hope
and love and sorrow and arthritis
in their mighty grasp,
steel wings feathered with loved ones
and tomorrows and faith in more,

in machine we trust and if
broken our trust will rocket us
together into the ground,
the lawyer marketing guru
musician toddler astronaut
fertilizing the soil with dreams
leaving no trace but children
in high-seats and little league jerseys
to lead humanity into space
with
machine we trust,

descend together
through the first layer of clouds,
fiery debris scattered on our dinner tables
filling our bellies,
cutting our knees
until we accept things
and meet the ground
head first

Maintenance Ritual

I sit on my porch
sometimes to tend to my destruction
like men sometimes clip nails,
trim beards.

I inhale smoke to kill cells
given to me by wise mother
to convert sweet oxygen
to meteor storms and biceps and love.

I destroy
maybe to make way for new
or maybe like the selfish child
lash out
like the time I attacked
the bushes on the side of the house,
hated them,
mutilated them.

We say he and she as if we’re different,
the earth has veins
and we say rivers, canyons,

some say it’s a shame
so pretty so young
I say we’re the river vessels
and there is another me

in a gamma ray
in another sky
in campfire coals
on another coast

and the infinite
mutilated bushes on the side of the house
come back stronger every time

Temple Burn

I couldn’t stay for the temple burn
but I lit a cigarette at 9 

right when the temple was to burn,
Interstate 5 holding
children and fugitives
in its slick serpent throat
for the exodus

plotting the course home
not knowing if it’s still home

knowing we left pieces behind

in the desert,
in the twisted metal locomotive rapture
spewing from the bedrock of a dry lake bed,

dust devils taking cues from
lasers and aftershocks
inches above ancient beasts
who left jagged-toothed skeletons  
in the dust to remind us
we come from vast places
and all are one

in the desert

razor sharp sadness throbbing joy
mom
ex lovers
that old knee injury regret regret regret
disease,
the stars,
death hot on my wilting tail
become the
supernova
release

the ink on the temple walls
pouring from the arms
of the women
embracing the beam
the men holding each other
in a circle on the floor,
the robed spirits hanging heads above,
the I miss you nana,
I hear you,
I’m sorry I was wrong
please forgive me,
please forgive us the children
of
we’ll meet again
in this life or the next,
the thank you,
god
or spirit or energy or universe
or whatever the fuck
this hurts fuck
this feels good,
brother,
mother
I found you and left you on the temple walls
and couldn’t stay to watch it burn,

but I lit a cigarette at 9
and held it before my eyes
and it burned in the distance,
wind roaring through the window cracks
like the flames,
my black hole imploding with the supports

speeding down interstate 5
I was right there by your side
brothers and sisters
of the black rock desert

I stood with you

I couldn’t stay for the temple burn
but I lit a cigarette at 9 

Burning Man

It’s true what the “burners” say. Trying to describe Burning Man is like trying to describe a color to a blind person, blah blah. Language is limited, no shit. If we don’t accept its limitations and attempt to give voice to our experience there’s no point. I’ve heard someone describe Burning Man as a “post-apocalyptic utopia.” It’s not a bad attempt. On the surface it’s a surreal, post-atomic desert oasis exploding with human expression and freedom; a mutated junkyard mural turned holy pilgrimage wrought with metal, fire, flesh, electricity, and beautiful sound. But once the flashing lights, pulsing beats and permeating dust die down and we’ve all died a little more, it becomes glaringly apparent that Burning Man is not utopia. Not even close. Everything about it is a derivative of our imperfect social and economic experience—down to the very last speck of dust. And there’s a lot of fucking dust at Burning Man.

The ethos of the Burning Man sub-culture is part of the allure. According to the rhetoric, commercialism has no place at Burning Man. No corporate logos are allowed, advertising is banned, and nothing is to be sold. In place of commerce is an old-school barter system where goods and services are traded for other goods and services of relative perceived value. On paper this appeals to the anti-capitalist hipsters like me, but it turns out to be more of a fun classroom-style exercise for the yuppie white hippies than a true alternative economy. Very few people trade actual goods or services that they themselves have mutually created without the aid of capitalism. It becomes a gimmicky “what-if” scenario, providing a temporary glimpse into what an alternative economy might look like, followed by a collective unspoken agreement that such a scenario couldn’t work and that we should all just go back to being capitalists when we get home out of laziness or because it seems to work well enough.

And the ban on corporate logos and advertising is completely rhetorical. Everyone at Burning Man brings with them untold commodity goods replete with big, bold corporate logos. I was first confronted with this discrepancy when we were waiting in the four-hour line to get in. There were rental trucks everywhere with big bold graphics on the side advertising why their service is better than the next. One burner altered the “Budget” logo so that it read “Fuck it,” a valid attempt at anti-capitalism that ended up revealing the hypocrisy of fellow burners. If corporate logos are banned, shouldn’t we all trek to Burning Man via make-shift rickshaws and homemade skateboards fashioned out of drift-wood? Everyone turns a blind eye to the rampant corporate advertising infiltrating every corner of the playa. More than just a criticism of the Burning Man ethos, it serves as a reminder that in our obese capitalistic culture, every little damn thing that we own has some kind of corporate logo.

Perhaps the most alluring aspect of the burner philosophy is the “leave no trace” concept. Every last drop of moop (“matter out of place”) that is brought to the playa is to be brought back with you. This means collecting your own trash and waste water, and leaving the playa completely untouched upon leaving. The more devout burners take this very seriously, and go to extreme lengths to leave no trace. I was even called an asshole at one point for ashing my cigarettes on the playa. I guess I deserved it, but I’m not sure what makes you more of an asshole, ashing your cigarettes at a festival that is based on burning untold amounts of matter and creating massive amounts of ash that is never collected, or being a short-sighted masturbatory hypocrite. I’ll stop ashing my cigarettes when burners stop burning things. 

One day on the playa reveals the Burning Man ethos as kind of temporary mass-delusion. There is nothing sustainable about Burning Man, in fact, quite the opposite. Just because you take the waste with you doesn’t mean you aren’t creating it. I was alarmed by the amount of waste that I myself created in just one week. In order to conform to the burner sub-culture, I felt compelled to purchase tons of useless, wasteful bullshit. I had glow sticks and Spencers-style trinkets up the ass, and so did everyone else. I was also fortunate enough to experience aspects of larger theme camps, including the incredible amount of waste they created. The fact is, burners pump massive amounts of dollars into the American economy every year, and create massive amounts of landfill-filler that wouldn’t have otherwise been created. Make no mistake, Burning Man is very human, and just like every human, hypocrisy pumps through its veins, but that doesn’t mean beauty and meaning don’t.

Burning man is the most incredible, harsh, stimulating, fucked-up, beautiful spectacle humanity has ever created. It’s not about “leave no trace” or anti-capitalism, it’s about the hydrogen bomb. It’s about the primordial fire; the twisted metal wizardry of light and sound and sex. Burning Man is what the Christians are afraid of. It’s the ultimate carnivale; the celebration of the side of humanity that has uncovered and harnessed the black arts. Not black as in vile or evil, but primal; utterly of the flesh. Burners have tapped into the magic of sensory pleasure and celebrate its every manifestation, and as such, the event draws the most interesting, expressive, sexual, attractive, hedonistic humans in existence. Only the hardest core artists, magicians, lovers, and cosmic children go to Burning Man to worship and cast spells and toil and trouble and kick up dust devils to the beat of DJ warlocks and fire mongers. Burners are the desperate for meaning, the voice to the endless nothing and everything, the unspoken energy, the vast steel nebulae in our hearts crying to be heard, the secrets no longer secret but silent. Burning Man is what the Christians are afraid of because it can’t be explained, and it may not even exist but in our minds and there may be only dark after the light or light after the dark but burners don’t care. They are its children, and they exist to burn.

Fuck the pyramids of Giza, and fuck the Taj Majal. Go to Burning Man. Not to play barter or trick yourself into thinking you’re not a wasteful being, but to grasp hands white-knuckle with your fellow humans and dance around the biggest fucking fire you’ll ever see and inhale its ash until you can’t breathe anymore. Go to Burning Man to return to the dust from whence you came.