“Travails”
Out on the trestled railway, two hundred feet above
Cattails and lillies, the somber turtle rocks,
A whistled tune of long forgotten origin, Pandora’s Box
It opens, creaking, speaking, of something, perhaps like love.
Out on the solitary shoreline,
Amid the lonely Nor’eastern winds,
One vision of a forsaken life,
Appears among the roar.
Back on the rusted trainbridge,
Sitting high above the rushing fray,
Once they were both rivers,
bound for differing destinations,
But progress that gave one life,
Ended with it’s death.
Its corroded carcass
like a long felled treetrunk
Stretching forth across the Copper Canyon Waters.
Images of the austere past,
Remembered not all at once,
But single file pass him by
Crashing, one by one, like
every barreling wave.
His limpid mind now distressed
by waht could have been.
I who was a witness can attest
to what should have been.
Rail after rail he oversteps,
Inching ever forward
Beyond a broken dream
Into another chance
at waking to a voice.
In those malevolent seas,
In those timid rivers,
And on those snarling winds
And felt in the burning sun
That paint him summer rust
In the ominous vagrant existence
In the punishing elements
Is always the buoyant memory
and the sanguine expectancy
of hope
for a return
to what was.
—————————-
Why do I let this happen?
Why do I peer through these portholes
When I know that all that is out there
is green, impenetrable, murk?
I’m looking for something,
however cliche it sounds.
And of course, you know, I know
it’ll never be found.
Especially not beneath the rest
of humanity.
Nothing has ever been found down here
in the pillbox asbestos underground
except vice, and crime, and early deaths
one or two rags-to-riches dreams
I don’t know which I’m looking for
the amoral
or the abandonment.
————————–
All these deaths. All these obituaries.
All these people saying Rest in Peace,
my condolences. My heart is with you.
Those regrets and
words of comfort are not needed
for she who has gone.
One rarely thinks of the person.
We think of their facticity
Their life as an object
Or an abstraction
As history, as narrative.
We are often moved.
Yet we rarely think of
that moment that happened
just a day or two ago.
When that person met
What we are all waiting for,
eyes open.
What she felt when she
Lost her husbands hand
on hers.
What she felt as the sensation fled
back to whence it came,
“She’s gone,” somebody said.
The spark hid once again
Where? We can not remember.
Her heart. Filled with so many
fragments which she treasured,
is buried in the sun.
Consciousness said goodbye
with dignified eyes
to itself.
——————-
4/5/2008 6 AM
I want to stand
in the city
having spiritual
fits of passion
pour through my
chest.
I want to listen to
the peals of
glorious music
stumble over itself
but never cease.
I want to throw
purple flowers
down in the street
and watch
the cars
grind them up.
I want to dance
without shame
without threat
of being
castigated
for my cliches.
I want to laugh
not heartily
but silently
to myself
not for you.
I want to believe
in the lyrics of a pop song
in the ocean gods
in poetry
in my ancestors
in the freedom of consciousness
in love
these are my idols.
I want you to believe
in your own
golden calves.
In your own transcendent treasures.
I see them rising up now
in your nine to five eyes.
I want to fill this world
with people who build
statues out of water
I want every one to beleive
in their own
beautiful lies.
I want everyone to tell each other
their own
beautiful lies.
And we’ll believe in
every last one.
Instead of choosing
just the one
about Jesusmosesmohammedbuddhavishnu.
—————————
“And there was no fire”
I looked at a laughing lizard
in bemused delerium
Waiting for the seven o’clock bus
while a grey sky drizzled.
Echoing behind my eyes
Were half-remembered novellas
about persons of subdued interest
five or six pages of brilliant lies.
Spilling over come French and Spanish films
the least subversive of all the arts
with their fleeting revelations
Slipped in between the desolation of thrills.
A James Wright poem about hell
And a passage from Dante
or was it Bridgeport, Ohio?
This is all I think about.
Perhaps that’s just as well.
—————————–
Leap Year Blues
There is
An unattainable will to share
This flame inside my lantern
But
There is a world between us
There are two bodies between us
There is an inadequate language
that dies on our lips
when we try to say what we really mean
And the cage that chaffs our young bodies
can never be torn asunder
except by our perception
our uncompromising art
and perhaps
by love, but what do we know of that
except that we feel it in ourselves
but can you feel it?
And then it is only a recognition
of something similar.
I can never show you me from the inside
I can never show you you with my eyes
What is the difference between truth
and all of the wretched lies?
Just belief.
—————————-
Empty boys with business degrees,
Artists, too, have nothing to say
A road is just a clearing in the trees
And it can not hold the wilderness at bay.
Children that have become men,
Men that have stayed children,
They provoke without intent,
And they have no hope unspent.
For what is there that one can be
In this great mass of disconnect
What is there that one can be
That does not find intention in stagnation
Before the great head rush of eternity
taken like a shot of [null]
I know that someone out there has the answer
Go west young men just isn’t working.
—————————–
Unpardonable, undisciplened - an ideologue.
I’ve got nothing to say.
Powerless, antagonized - a frustrated dialogue.
I’ve got nothing to say, today.
Lost in the six a.m. weariness
of the previous error ridden day.
Yo mock me and
then I turn out the light.
I can see right through
the dark.
I turned out the light
and then there
was
something.
—————————–
Furthur on is my manifesto
The overman on a Greyhound bus
Traversing the old inspiring roads
Transcribing relentless energetic thought
Transcending a past life, a mouse life
Turning on the feline and staring him down.
Out over the horizon is an ancient city
that I will never find
Laziness lurks its streets
and the patient domestic herd smiles blankly
at its gilded walls, not the open gate
Its suburbs spread out against the world
A true slave needs no physical barriers
for it dares not to run
It dares not to risk the change.
It dares not to live
unless the master says “you’re free.”
A picket fence will never be my Doom
unless I so choose.
All that is sacred lives in me.
All that matters is that there is no ground beneath my feet
yet I still believe
On the terrace the young men come and go
Speaking of political woe
And out here amid the dirty snow
We pace the weird old country, to and fro.
Some birds like their ages and their prattle
Some birds fly further, they’ve won the battle.