Selected Poems (2006 - 2012) Read online

  Thus, I have no way of entrance to my favorite acquaintance- the pen, for she is my one and only companion. If I and my companion were as lovers- and she my guide racing through the images, a rush and run back and forth across the paper, (as she now does) – so do I relish her mercilessly- and the more so, or tossing and turning over in the sheets, a poem of exaggerations, which were translated- so not true- everything complete were lost in the translation- so we are left grasping at the straws. Everything simple and clean is the more clear and less complex. I am the shorter! I stand not so tall, but quite low to the ground with my ear to the pavement with a pout of my lips and a dribble down my cheek. Here’s to your virginal eyes, Mary prim and proper! I am five foot five and have a cold nose. I burn quick upon the wick.

  Had I thrown myself to that hard floor, my candle blown out by the wind- I would have listened for the shifting of the plates- I would have heard the wailing grief of dead men who had spent their kisses. Had I beaten my fists against my face, would I have amended my sins to God?

  Come forth and follow my dust to my smoldering ashes!

  By what ‘will’, would you ‘will’ to institutionalize the text book or rationalize your symbol? How dare you to try to explain it to me! I am the one who loves his personal purgatory more than most- and the whip. I love my suffering too much, and perhaps my name too little- Or my justifications too little. I step with a hoof and I consult only with my snake. My daemon has it in for you- guide me true- the snake eyes of youth. My silent martyr is more like the Christ than your bag full of obligations- as you bow down and peel your fingernails in urgent prayer- on the church tiles. It looks like despair, but there really isn’t much there- it’s only the world’s denial, or a world of denial.

  No, I shall not, could not justify myself to God. It is for the ignorant to be polluted by such a disease of admiration. Leave it to the vastness of the color spectrum and be content. No, not to be content! Detestable contents mark the common bowery- and marks the silk dolls as well with their clean white sheets spilled crimson. And it marks the good people with their good talk and correctness. It marks the lot of them! My wine is too sweet, and it has been made bitter from long drinking upon my lips.

  No bridegroom or wedding feasts for lepers’, and never enough neon visions- for all the shifting intoxications of my cold sweat in the feverish nights. Cursed we are in our separation from each other, and so natural that it be so. Better to be a childlike malcontent- recalcitrant- ranting and raving in the solemn night- with periods and exclamation points! Knowledge is sought- and hardly communicated- but I shout into the wilderness none the less. A melody within the symphony- a creek of light swells across the ceiling deteriorates into confusion- swelling like an appendage- a proverb, an adage, or a stormed upon door.

  Be it as it is, as I do not play with May- I like brisk winter. In truth I do not detest the isolation. I have ever been one to console myself in the late evening with a pacing to and fro on the back steps ever wanting for no place to go, for what I wouldn’t know. What I cannot dream I don’t wish anyway. I can’t piece together my shadow through that chain link fence- and the empiricists say it doesn’t exist. I run in circles outside the fold. I have an inclination toward endlessness, it is my way, to ever speak and keep the words flowing till they should blank out and ghostly cobwebs they are in premonition of the end. Not to speak of death- oh no- I would not speak of death my friend, when hope springs eternal in the breast of man! Don’t forget the apocalypse ethos! Its wants are holier, more divine, I would not call thee a foul old man, but such is a favorite thrill of my- pen. God, it would make me less independent to validate you. Tonight is no night to die, it is too quiet for it, and I have grown to be a lover of the moon. Not to die, or to die, well someday, everybody does. Give me my cross on a tombstone, or my words scrawled with a penknife on an oak tree in the yard. Will you share my heart? What is your name that I may carve it here alongside my own? (remember the walk along the shivery shore line.) I will remember your name. Will you remember mine? Think kindly on my mouse face and raven’s eyes.

  He was an incorrigible little shit, until his end.

  Hemlock and Hennessey by the water.

  How often does the heart yearn for self-destruction within my breast! I look upon the street light yellow glare, and worry away its weaving shadow shades- the mutterings of another soul when it dies- and here it is where they left it. The night is so beautiful and the day is ugly. The shadows are full and the steps can be heard in the night- while the people rest their beholden minds- I have quiet for a time. Resilient and stubborn I sulk too much. I have followed down many a dark and forbidden alleyway. The perilous nights forget their sick mornings. I’ve wanted to tick my tock its final drum beat, and slam it off the rails into the billboard with broken teeth. Send me to the bone yard you ugly utopian zealots!

  I often say that one day I will be shot down in my enlightenment by a man of common decency. My words can be judged and mocked to notoriety, or attributed to some delusion or insanity- but I am deprived of the necessity to be categorized. Don’t refer to me as decent or common. I have no need for brevity- I will have more than my fill before the party has died in the quiet of clanging bottles- like wind chimes under the duress of an impending storm. Bridge the gap between one eternity and another, urge on and purge the common dirge.

  This music may be nonsensical, but the song wasn’t sung to be listened to. I only want to be killed by the hero, his greatest villain. Hang all heroes and hang all tyrants should they carry guns with the good people! – Or if they would carry these people! Poetry is a solitary act. By the people and of the people so help us God. Rather, carry the candle with an eternal flame and disregard the near-sighted. I will only carry the load of my gifts. I will only be calmed within the wicked destructive depths. It is difficult enough, and I will not be subjugated. I’d like to mangle myself on a midnight trip to the gravel- It would prove my freedom in a sense.

  In that I presume I have come closer than most to the brink. Who would come so close to the brink, but a madman or a dreamer? How less satisfying for me. Lover of mankind! I have loved so much and learned so much and healed over too many times. I would steal away his orphans, and have none of his administration. None of his ilk or milk.

  I wonder who has not fantasized of the end while wavering on the forbidden road in the deep dead of night? – with the air cold and indifferent to the concern. (We could never be satisfied- you, me, nor the red haired girl.) Imagining if one should just tick the wheel a fraction left or a fraction right, he could become a sight enough to make even the detective investigator forget himself. You are forgotten so quickly to die in a soft bed. I’d rather have my death split my head, and the shocked faces to gather for an obscenity against their common tryst. Isn’t it ugly, my love? Formerly a man, now a tortured mess of torn tissues, overstressed sinews, bloodied, broken, and an empty stare. Here by the highway there can be no deception- as Mr. Forensics takes it down on a crinkled pad taken from his breast pocket. 100 miles per hour into the toll booth- they shall remember my sight! – with a million quarters flashing and spinning off into the night. To be sure only if my head were in some small way still there! I have seen more of this macabre on the internet. A human body mangled by a car wreck appears inhuman- like the spirit of consciousness were never present. And now it has passed out of cognition. Pick up my spare change- you badge wearing boy scouts!

  Enough of this sulking- bag it and tag it.

  Be a man! Be a man! We can at least come to bear it!

  Now you may say “he deserved it, for trying to go so fast- leaping when he should crawl to us, and honor our honorable fathers.”

  Stick me to a lamp post with the solid red light flashing, hung above. Here’s to your stop sign and the ‘don’t walk’ flashing! Here’s to your goddamn construction of a safe, steadfast, unblemished road! Have I proved you false?
Have I given you here an example outside the fold? Do not follow a man who walks on a razor’s edge- strangled by ribbons.

  As I say, I have come closer than most to slamming into the guard. I so infer by the breadth and depth of my intuition that many men hasten toward some suicidal derivation, and would have such phantom dread shocks from time to time on the brain- whilst driving sleepy uncaringness on a two lane desert road. Deserted road. All guns blazing for our suicidal ideation. Most of it is for fancy or flight. The heroic challenge met by the gallows. The challenge against all masters by their servants- fully flouted and flying- or for those inclined- the challenge to Napoleon on a white horse on the gallery wall. Standing before it, I can see it looks like a fine fiction. Could we not find a better animal? Go wherever inclined. Go ahead- go off the road- don’t walk the line- go wild into a tree and give the few prickly twig branches and the coyote someone to dance with in the pale desert moonlight.

  Surely I suspect my friends in this same Freudian death driving, in the dry chocking air- and I do suspect my friends most often. The man in all his hopeless despair who had no resolute faith or fair wings or care, and went off the bridge into an icy river bath, to drown himself in the catastrophe of the memories he left behind him. And the water fell like rain- but hung in the air like mist. He left a wake of blood that was like the blood that clouds in the tub after suicide, or on the wave as it crests after a shark fin slides by.

  But, a hanging, or pills is the romantic’s way out! FIN.

  Who hasn’t contemplated the charge into the fray or the shrug of the fates? Who hasn’t worshipped the freedom of the aboriginal who stuffs his vicious vigorous victories into his savage sagging gut? – full of body and meat. Or the savage in himself. Upon further consideration, my savage wants no consideration- wants no idols- my savage wants no ceremony- my soul wants no peace.

  I have grown too delicate to profess first my strength, and I would rather sit alone with my padlocked beast and my bars in front of him. Although, with my mad propensity for desperation and my yearning hope for dispensation- the vile specter thief with his sickle insists himself upon me to a much further degree. The emotion of it is more significant. It is like I am driven ever to the precipice of a cliff over the sea- but merely to look over the edge at the froth and foaming- or from above, down on your parishioners’, who froth and foam.

  I am not absurd enough to act on the impulse- it is only a thought by which I ruminate- and not through which my life to terminate.

  The trip is short enough- and no sense waiting on a space ship to pick me up.

  Nature is a violent and confessable sinner. It is the crucible and the rack! The cruelty is confessed in every wound and scar on these exposed cliffs – The waves throwing themselves in opposition upon the rocks- and breaking. Every man who suffers, and is forced to live in the mean time. The cycle of the white crests and the bleak valleys- undertows that would suck you down- or a craven eyed beauty with pink little toes- polished, effulgent, dripping, or so she knows- or a stately rose with pink petals- love for a mental patient. This is a fly trap! Once you get caught you never get back! Nature is brutal and survival is the reward- with your legs and hands foamy water thrashing- dragged down by Jaws, the great fish, like Moby Dick.

  Everything feasts on the flesh, and it is indifferent murder. The whores suffer in the bedrolls. They are beaten between the sheets- and they give themselves over to be used up, cut off and cast back out onto the lonely street. “I love my job,” says the mouth, trying to convince the eyes.

  I repress the impulse toward rape and wealth. I will not pillage or vengeance upon them. Rather, I am bid to come nearer to his mystery, a pallid dreamer, and to take flight from this vision- and the grace of God, should he deny me anything. I will not be drowned by the converts, even if you call it my purification or deification. There is a lake over this next hill beyond the boundary- I could float there among the tangled weeds, water treading serpentine- I am a tangled weed, a shrub, a chirruping cherub- may my smoke ascend above the ground like a grey puff of cloud. (When I have burnt it all out.) Charred embers as they descend- meet me at the very end! I will not give in ‘till the end. If only to defy you! Your means and ways, your securities exchange.

  There comes my friend, the wind, to lift me up to him. Oh, there is a gentle blessing in this breeze! And it comes from the north, and the city is in the south. Follow the northern star- and you can follow it home.

  Do not mistake me and in a way of fear or fury to reject me. I may be a mad clever man. But if I had ever been in earnest, (or have been of anything in earnest), I should have done so without the speech. I care so little for myself to aggrandize my own worms in the face of deadlier parasites who pervert the discourse- and breed fear slugs even in the curls of her hair. Medusa lady, what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice to deceive? Who would even dare? If he had ears and sight enough to know the hungry wolves feeding on the dead- or the wolves of war! Who would gravitate toward patriotic vitriol, or the horrible mendacity of irredeemable salesmen- resigning oneself over to the corrupt chairman- to bring accolades before the steel skyscraper? It is easier to concede and surrender, than to stick your head around the corner with the guns firing off- or to step out in a mine field of patriarchal hegemony. Presidents and bureaucrats, will you be my father? One must be above survival in order to survive. One must be an unnatural- or a freak to remain free. One must be insane in order to remain a man and not a machine.

  The speech is worth the while only as it reaches, brings forth and rings a bell, and reverberates- To crack the cement like a thick root at the bottom. Have we yet heard the conversation coming to a close? Have we yet heard the conversation coming to a close? I want it only if it is high- if it flies, if it is airborne and not clarified- (suggestion). For no trial is without fire and I would perish of even the slightest injury or inconvenience should I exist for pride or justice. Pride is his folly. Belief in justice, a consequence of the folly. May the merry piper and his lovely troop sing a glad old song over my box! Or even may my box remain unmarked. I am tired of living in a box! There, a contradiction in what I say. I have used ‘may’, ‘should’ or ‘could be’, when it is ever ‘is’ where the poet lives.

  What is it which makes this trip so insufferable? Is it not a mere passing of hours and tick tocks- unable to touch or be touched- for the swelling of my flesh- my heart and thought. (Remember the bloated body under the bridge- there are the water weeds in its mouth- and now it’s an ‘its’ and not a ‘him’.) Sing the child a hymn to put its mind at ease- and help it sleep away the day, or take the dietician’s pills sitting on the cold tray.

  Life, has it been? A building up of many slights of daily discouragement? Not able to specify a single small grievance, or a deliciously dripping egregious one. I want to stick my stake through the heart of my darkness. Beat me unconscious, but don’t ignore me or look at me cross. There, I’ve borrowed again. I digress- perhaps one should not speak of the reaper so near to the beginning- (as she rolls her eyes.) I have no time for you! Time is short. What or why not? I haven’t the slightest idea.

  Deal with it! I always tend toward the extremes- a polarizing figure is he who writes with dash marks, and wont be marked- or branded. I am one who is overlooked, wearing his contemptuous heathen’s crown- on his self-professed, amateur, anti-establishment throne. Come over here to laugh and point at the exaggerated clown have you?! I’m glad it were all amusement! Or one so prophetic and assured he uses words like ‘all’ or ‘always’, when never could these conditions yield a full harvest. One must be marked only by this. ?. A question mark. Why speak of the lord of the harvest? A riddle in an old drunken sage on the corner of the bar- holding onto his girth with jolly mirth, mocking the bulk of himself- buffoon over the stool- as his guts fall out onto his plate- spoon feeding the soul. He and I should learn when enough is enough. And what car
e I for proofs or other absurdities- or objectivity? Take your spectacles off readers and learn to love- think only to give into your heart, and cherish your divinity- preserve your dignity, for those of integrity. If there is one to be saved among the hooligans and fools, it is you. There is some madness in love, and some reason in madness. I am the rare one balancing between madness and clarity. Dare I try to escape from here?

  See, Freud needed a conclusion, a succinct one, two, three statement, so he analyzed his want to fuck his mother as a symptom of mass hysteria. Like it were in the mass, and if it were, what of that? The mass maintains and is satisfied with ‘such and such will be sufficient for me,’ and ‘this is what a good man does,’ and ‘my father before me.’ They cannot be asked what is sane in an insane world. Why does he wear such beautiful robes, your judges and priests? Let him beg for honors in an empty hall! I wish to vanish, or to suffer a death for every injury. A poet aught not name his enthusiasms a science, or a universal cause. No man should be satisfied with his conclusions- or with maintaining a conclusion – or a legal clause. I guess I missed the playing with his asshole stage and have been a wreck of it ever since. Isn’t beauty destroyed by the analyst? Beauty in anything is so tortured and unrecognizable here- hard to even witness her, or trick her to come out anymore- or like now as ever. She looks at me through the window- from where the curtain flutters, with a sad look. You must move down below the balcony so I can see you! They have so clouded my luminous sky with hate and mockery.

  Could there even a beauty in being a bouncing marble? Bounced from stone to stone and alone- men carved into the mountain marble- lifeless rock. When you give nothing, you gain nothing. Tradition is a son of a bitch, and the modern tradition is in opposition to liberation.

  Better he want to fuck his mother than kill people- as I always say ‘always’ or ‘never’- always better to fuck your mother than to never have a fuck at all. What is more the tender and true than mother’s love? Or were love necessary?