A PRIVATE INTERSECTION WITH THE WORLD
A Place Away From The Torments
Fragments On Recovering The Wasteland
You Could Do It Better (Lyrics)
It’s a road,
this affliction,
a road to yourself.
How long can you stand
to be a freak
before you
take the journey?
The tolerance of others,
the pretending
is poison,
you allow their kindness
to keep you
from the terrifying road
back to your
wounded heart.
Somewhere,
something was done,
something was stolen,
and you were an accomplice.
Somehow, inside you,
the sun got turned upside down,
somehow
it became
the monster
that you run from.
And you became
a devotee
of darkness
and danced on broken glass,
you beat your wings
against your troubled head
until they bled
to death.
You gave
the diamond
of your white soul
to the one
who wanted
to marry
your impotence.
Affliction.
Sacred road of humiliation
strewn with flowers:
thank you for not
giving up,
for not freeing me
to be free
like they are free.
You turned me into a cripple
so I would not be fooled
by my walking.
You made me
live in green disgrace
beyond the barren desert
of health.
Sacred road
into Hell,
every hero
had to know
the dead of
his soul
before he could
rise up, and
deserve a song.
Every hero
had to do battle
with the monster
of the halfway point,
the monster of
premature life.
Torments with wings
and whips
drove him
to the depths
others didn’t need.
Past fire and mediocrity
and demons in the shape of
reassurances.
Down, to the very top
of the hidden inner peak.
Sacred sickness,
thank you.
You that made me stand out
like an animal
left behind by the herd,
like a bird
walking
when it should be flying;
like a tree
broken by a storm,
embarrassing the
forest
with its helplessness,
with its roots growing
the wrong way.
Thank you
for not letting me
blend in with the mediocrity.
Thank you
for making me be
a target
of myself.
Thank you for saying
"I won’t let you
not go."
For rolling the road
before me
like a carpet
welcoming
my disaster,
my holy disaster
of needing it.
No, I’m not like them,
I can’t
live gracefully
away
from
my soul.
You’ve wrecked me,
destroyed me,
turned me into a joke,
a catastrophe,
a form of dirt,
staining
every place that
doesn’t know itself,
you’ve mixed
the contempt of fools
with the agony
of my inner voices,
the things I could do
for orphans and widows
if I were not
so egotistically
incapacitated:
and yet,
you’ve also spared me
from killing myself
with the smile
of agreed-upon
high places:
hills that
gave themselves
the title of
mountains:
conventions and pacts
of stunted growth.
You’ve protected me
by making my
lowness
indisputable.
Sacred affliction,
thank you for this road
you’ve given to me
in the morning
of my tears
of self-hate,
this long
frightening
dark road
that leads back inside
towards the me
I want to be,
the me that the
me I am
won’t let me
live without.
I can’t hide
in incompleteness,
you’ve made
my damage
too obvious,
hurled my sick heart
into the middle of the
public square,
left me no other choice,
except to
descend into the pit of black
below the non-stop crash of
my aspirations,
below the blood of my exhibitionistic
discontent,
into the deep internal night
that no one can ignore away,
no angel forgive,
no jewel of pain outweigh
with its sorrow-born
beauty.
"Win or lose,"
the gladiators said,
"live or die":
the songs
that come from my uselessness
aren’t worth
the jester’s cap,
the leper’s bells.
The dark road
waits,
the black night’s
promise
of the sun
that my disease
is trying
to give me.
And my sickness
is only a road
to beauty.
And my sickness
is only a road,
a road
beyond the halfway places.
And my sickness
is only a road,
a road beyond them
saying you are all right,
and a road past
what they do not say.
And my sickness
is only a road
past the clay figure
that isn’t good enough for me,
it’s a way
of breaking my clay down
and making me
make myself.
And my sickness
is only a road,
a road where
absurdity and pride clash,
like shields that are chimes,
making music
of the new me.
And my sickness
is only a road,
a road back,
a road away from the outer roads,
the powerful futile roads
of being lost in sunshine,
back to the inner roads
of fertile quiet
where life is born,
and the godliness of being human
without pretensions of being
good enough,
without being oneself.
My sickness
won’t let me participate
in that sham.
And my sickness
is only a road.
I love it for
giving me that road,
and I hate it
enough to
travel on that road.
Sacred illness!
I will go now,
I will walk back
from your days of
disgrace
to the place
where pity cannot find me,
where death
stalks the weak
and old selves release souls of
gold
to the brave.
I accept this journey,
this taunting invitation to
brilliance,
this shadow-haunted,
flower-lined
road into the darkness,
the sacred birth darkness
of myself.
Sacred sickness:
I can no longer
say no!
Only
thank you!
My soul
is a battleground
between good and evil,
and shades of gray
are winning.
My desires
aren’t white enough,
my weapons
aren’t black enough,
my blood
isn’t red enough,
and my Pythia
won’t say
yes or no.
Mazes
won’t become
straight roads
just to appease
my anxiety,
no inner father
lurks beside my spear
to tell me
where the night
came from.
And my imagination
won’t
spare me
from the unpredictability
of angels
or the beautiful clay
that devils are made of.
Peripheral vision:
what a terrible disease!
My light
becomes heavy with thought,
ambushes have been beaten into it;
my darkness becomes
weak with
the
sweat of my anger
which is the
tears of mothers
crying for their monsters.
My sword is paralyzed,
life becomes a cloud.
The hero in me
and the villain in me
die,
the clear trumpets’ sound
is muted
by a mind,
a mind in the way
of
black,
of white,
of power,
of life.
Does gray
make me right?
Or only
useless?
Shades of gray.
I wanted a song,
I wanted a dawn,
I wanted to be a color
in the sky,
paint dripping
from the sun,
the wake of a fleeing angel,
a chariot
of losers
or victors
drawing blood
from Heaven.
I wanted to be
a shout from a high place
like thunder;
the sea
with an island
that wasn’t there yesterday.
I wanted to be clear,
and proud,
black respected by white,
or white respected by black,
not
gray
despised by both,
not gray
hiding glory
just to be right,
which means
not to know.
Shades of gray.
My search for angels,
my flight
from Hell, up to now
this is all I’ve found:
shades of gray.
Shades of gray
as truth’s clock ticks away.
Shades of gray:
my little rain-beaten house
beneath the howling storm of
great mistakes,
my little place of justice
not yet born
and monsters
not yet conceived.
Shades of gray
that must decide,
or be consumed by
what does not care
and cannot wait.
Something beyond
what I can see
beyond what’s here
beyond you
beyond her
beyond the me of now.
Something
in the fog
that’s more than my imagination
inventing
new sorrows
for itself,
dreams with "broken"
in their genes.
Something stirring
in this dark night
like a rat
who’s not a rat,
like a rat with a halo,
beautiful,
moving
in the dark room
of sleep
with a gift,
with a reason,
with a touch,
it has to be,
it has to be,
because the night
is so dark.
A Place Away From The Torments
It’s awful, awful, awful,
what to do?!
Go into the patience zone.
The burrow inside your mind,
the peaceful soul-womb,
the withdrawn heart-cave,
out of the light
that wants an answer now.
Go inside the dark,
into the silence,
sleep,
be a ghost,
give nothing but
your days.
What seems to be aimed
like an arrow at your heart
can be like a comet
passing far above you
in the night,
it will not only miss you,
it will miss the planet.
Go into the inner place
where it’s
not even close.
Be deaf, dumb, and blind in the city square,
sit patiently
by the oracle
of the wilderness.
Answers
come from the night.
Screaming day angels
only bring
reactions
that build bigger disasters,
like avalanches
that begin
with a single
stone.
Don’t listen
to the chorus
of conflicting necessities,
no matter how brilliant
the voices of exhaustion,
don’t let torments
overwhelm you,
hide from them,
be a fertile procrastinator.
When the choice
is death by fire
or death by water,
don’t choose.
"Now!
"Now!
"Now!
"Now!
"Hurry, it will be
too late!"
"Good-bye"
is a good answer
to the
rush.
Things that only
burn you out
aren’t solutions.
Who jumps up and down
to the point of collapse
trying to grab the moon?
The world is full
of moons
we don’t recognize,
and our hearts
are full of things
more beautiful
than the moon.
Darkness saves.
Quiet aloneness saves.
When times
are too self-importantly
hectic,
climb
to the heights of humility,
that’s where
the healers
live,
where new eyes grow into the heads
of all those who can be saved
by being unsure.
Sight
is the real power
in this world:
the gigantic
muscle
of clarity.
It takes time
to arrive
from the faraway
land
of yourself:
Waiting
is the Creator-God.
Trying to be a part
is the
Destroyer.
Be content
not to belong,
and that way
you’ll never be
swallowed up
by the
brotherhood
of the lost.
Run from the torments,
not to other torments,
but to your silence.
Disentangle yourself,
like an animal that
has wandered
into a
thicket of thorns.
Back out,
back out into your own mind,
your own heart:
strange and abandoned
inner lands.
Find the darkness
where life begins,
where you
begin.
That’s where
you’ll rewrite
history.
In the dark.
In the silence.
In the depths
that seem
to be on the side
of everything
you should have.
Thank you, skinny arms,
you made me be the diplomat,
you turned me away
from my ancient path
of war,
you made me need ideas.
You saved me from
the power of my mind
by making me run
past pride
all the way to wisdom.
(By the time I finished making the arrow,
I was not in love with it.)
You buried me under
playground bullies
until I could understand
the tears
of others,
you brought cruelty
out of its hiding place:
I did not have the strength
to uproot it
without feeling it,
to retaliate
before I bled
knowledge of
a billion brothers.
Thank you, skinny arms,
you saved me
by not letting indignation
find an escape route
from its full meaning;
by not allowing
the answer
to be bypassed
with a punch.
You stole my spear
but you gave me back
my heart,
you taught me the universal language
of crying
outside the walls of
the strong,
the tongue the world speaks
after the simplicity
of bombs.
You forced the river of
my fury
to go another way,
with the dam
of my own weakness.
You saved me
from making
things worse.
With these skinny arms.
Thank you, skinny arms.
You made me weak enough
to find the strength
that strength obscures.
The light of one’s own power
hides the existence of stars -
in the night of my defeats,
you showed me
the star-filled sky,
the higher ground;
you made the river of my hurt
flow through fields of
understanding
when they would have
rushed through
canyons of revenge,
you drove me to
the depths
that elude the mighty
with their clear,
shallow answers
sharp as the blades of swords
flashing
with stolen sunlight,
you would not let me
rot, triumphant, on the parapet
of robbers’ castles,
nor let me succumb to
the obvious,
which is what is
destroying the world.
You would not let me
defend justice
without knowing
what it is
you made me live
on the wrong end
of power;
and so saved me
from words
that make the blood
go away;
and from the white banners
that lead black hearts.
Thank you, skinny arms.
I remember that day,
dangling there,
unable to raise myself up,
that day I thought I lost.
But what I lost
was only a lesser me.
I cannot deny it,
I would have taken it
if you had let me take it then:
the first answer that came
to me.
I would have taken it
if you had let me take it then.
But you didn’t.
You kept the schoolyard gate locked.
There was no way out,
no way to run from the beating,
which was the whole world
being beaten.
You taught me the greatness
of peace,
justice,
endurance,
you wrote lessons
with my weakness
in my own blood
on the ripped pages
of my soul -
it was the torn pages
that made me whole -
you gave me a beautiful family
I never would have had,
if I’d been strong -
all with these
skinny arms.
A lion can beat you.
A tiger can beat you.
A panther can beat you.
A leopard can beat you.
A jaguar can beat you.
A wolf can beat you.
A bear can beat you.
A moose can beat you.
A buffalo can beat you.
A rhino can beat you.
An elephant can beat you.
An alligator can beat you.
A crocodile can beat you.
A gorilla can beat you.
(Even a baboon can beat you.)
A python can beat you.
An anaconda can beat you.
An electric eel can beat you.
A shark can beat you.
A barracuda can beat you.
A cobra can beat you.
A mamba can beat you.
A fer-de-lance can beat you.
A sea snake can beat you.
A scorpion can beat you.
A tsetse fly can beat you.
An anopheles mosquito can beat you.
When you think on that level,
being a "man"
isn’t really such a big deal
after all.
It’s a worthless metal
when it’s not alloyed
with moral value,
with divine discoveries
beyond mere strength.
Human muscles
that haven’t found something
worth fighting for
are just an
inferior form
of beast.
Giant, low-hanging balls,
giant sweaty "Me’s" stomping everywhere,
dark pollution
pouring into the sky
of unreached thoughts
from low-crawling beasts,
slimy hate and anger
poisoning the sea of
what this world could be,
blackening the wings of
souls
and washing beautiful dead futures
up onto the beach -
for what?
Is this what "being a man"
has done?
Until you embrace
the light
that is the center of being a man,
the reason for his
courage,
you are nothing
but the weakest of
beasts.
The dark tavern
ringed with bottles
of self-destruction
laughs at you,
the dimly lit streets
of your threat.
You are a joke,
an insect-beast,
not a man.
Beyond your fury,
your storm without greatness,
beyond the bodies
you lay at your feet,
which only mock you
with your powerlessness
to be more than you are,
lies real manhood.
The place
you fear to go.
Destroy all the world
with your soulless bravery,
make yourself master of everything
that condemns you,
hide behind noise and blood
from the one battle
that would make you
be a man.
You are not a man.
You are only the weakest beast.
Even killing me
won’t change that.
Dark creature of the night
waiting for the light
to hide in,
the flag that will make holy
the hunt.
Running dogs,
go to Church!
Escape from the hare
that could not
escape
from you.
You will find a way to do
what you want,
to live in your excrement.
The mind is beautiful
in that way
like a perfect pistol.
Why struggle to change,
why drag yourself over
broken instincts
when you have
a divine lying machine
between your ears?
All hail
to the murderer [hero].
All hail to his
blind inner eyes,
his perfect outer aim.
You are what hurt you,
and the cry of justice
howling over the
land of wounds.
You are the killer
and the weeping mother,
the callous builder
of airplanes,
with a cold untouchable excuse,
and the child
whose home
was just devoured
by a bomb;
and you’re
the avenging angel
of that child.
You are what you are trying
to rise above,
the low, cruel place
of pathological convenience,
and the highest ideal,
the most loving heart
that wants to take the whole world
in your arms.
You are the disciple
and the reaction,
the good son, the good daughter,
and the shining black sheep;
storm trooper of the
Master Race,
and Jew on the night
of broken glass.
You are the giant hangman
with an erection,
thrilled by the sex
of watching other people die:
God of a moment
that preys upon
its own doom;
and you are the martyr
whose crushed windpipe
will make others sing,
whose powerless body
will lead freedom
into dark citadels,
and give birth to futures
of light.
You are the stone square prison
in the heart
of the round city,
and the wild mountains blessed by forests
they could not reel in.
You are wearing chains
and running free.
You are the spinning
roulette wheel
of what they tried to make you
and the you that is not them,
the you that is trying to come out
of what is easier
to be what is better.
Round and round you go,
feeding them and starving them,
raising their flag
and your flag,
lost in an identity crisis
that means so much
more than you believe,
in your lonely days of living
in indecision.
The world’s at stake
inside of you.
The following poem was suggested to me by a summertime sidewalk scene (looking down)! The actual biological significance of the event was kidnapped for the power of the metaphor. Any number of prophets and heroes who have captured epochs of history, and the loyalty of generations, came to mind as I watched the tiny ant struggling to move the dead.
Ant:
engine of the dead.
I thought a dried-out
gone-looking bug was
somehow alive,
moving in spite of death’s victory,
until I saw you,
humble,
even self-effacing, beside him,
dragging him along
towards your own destination,
towards your own purpose
(or was it his?),
creating the illusion
of life in him
through your life.
Hurling your
tiny great heart
against
his demise,
I saw you propping up his
fallen glory,
his coffin-wings
that used to fly
but now
entomb him
with his
broken magic,
I saw you propping him up
on a summer day
and wondered why?
Why make him walk
as though you
didn’t matter?
Why give your soul
to him,
whose time is past,
why become his music,
why let his dead body
be the instrument
of a living thing
and so let form steal substance,
and so let
shape be the thief
of breath?
Is it easier to drag his corpse
than to believe in yourself?
Ant:
engine of the dead.
You give life to him,
but at what price?
How much of you
is lost
carrying his stiff body
on beyond its dances,
stretching oblivion thin,
obliterating the renewal
of everything
in loyalty to
a broken part?
How much of you
dies when you
become
the pallbearer
of the once-great:
that giant insect who is now
nothing more than a vehicle
you are driving
over yourself?
Has your war against his death
killed you?
Ant:
engine of the dead.
The Universe is waiting for you
with all its power,
to begin again,
you are the first day,
yesterday’s nova
remade in your image,
waiting for your mind to
cleanse the putrefaction
of shattered histories.
Be brave!
Be new!
Carry your own flame
and leave corpses where they lie,
the ground will know
what to do
with them.
Ant:
engine of the dead.
It’s time to be yourself.
Know yesterday,
but never be its slave.
Todays
are killed
by yesterdays.
Use that power,
that beautiful strength
you have given to the dead,
to meet the now,
to be among the living,
to be for the living:
to live!
Ant:
engine of the dead.
Be yourself.
Be the engine
of yourself.
Look at me.
Read me.
Last time.
Last time to go
through this same
shame
of standing by
the blood,
the stolen flowers
when time stopped,
and apologizing
with my body
still in the world
of their killers,
the world they ran from,
the world without beauty,
the traitor-world
that let down
the vision
on the mountain top
of the heart’s
truest moment:
the moment
where mortality
equaled
eternity,
weighed just as much,
because of the fragile, unconquerable
nobility
of what was doomed,
the flower’s moment
of crossing paths
with the stone.
I won’t let it happen again,
this hollow solidarity
without an act of courage,
on the road
they hallowed
with their premature
metamorphosis
into half-angels,
before the gift
of millions of faces
never knowing the pain
of being vivisected
for one man’s jewel
could be dug out of their
minds
and hearts
and given
the tomorrow
which was supposed
to be today.
They left holes as altars,
and a recurring day
the earth brings back to the sun,
a ghost that every year
walks
without me,
still the coward
loving them - saying he loves them -
on the other side of their
ideals’ price;
not yet ennobled by
a plaza, a dream,
an accident,
a night consecrated with injustice,
and a will
stronger than bullets:
a night when
flesh
defeated
steel
with the sacredness of its
vulnerability.
Last time.
Last time
I face this day
without being able to say
"I am one of you.
Today I am one of you.
I am an ideal walking,
my life is no longer mine,
but the light’s."
Fragments On Recovering The Wasteland
Don’t give up the day.
Look for its flower color
and land on it,
find its buried nectar
and bring it to your
dying heart.
Rework
the wasteland.
Be an artist.
Take that dark soulless material
they’ve given you,
find the weakspot
in its lifelessness,
and destroy it
with beauty.
Give it back what
was stolen from it,
so it can keep
you company.
Honeycombs
or catacombs,
your choice.
It’s all in what
you go to,
the flowers
or the tombstones:
in what you bring back
to the hive
of your own
self-construction.
I’ve chosen to be dead
for a long time.
I’ve been on a life-long
hunger strike
against the injustice
of this
imcompleteness.
But their insensitivity
has an iron will.
They won’t give in.
I can only start
to eat again -
to eat the scraps
left behind by lies -
or leave the world
forever in their hands.
It’s time to break the fast,
and be strong
in a world of sin.
Which doesn’t mean
to be dark,
only to fight for the light
with imperfection.
To live somewhere between their
thoughtless power
and my powerless
thought.
It’s time to break
the fast.
I was never an angel,
anyway,
and trying to be one
has only made Hell
stronger.
You matter too.
My noble impotence
let them rape you
through my own
self-destruction.
My high battle
was an abandonment
of the one I loved:
the center of the earth.
From now on,
I’m going to let the world
begin with you.
It used to be
a beautiful beach.
The sea came here.
Birds arched over it
in a
singing rainbow.
The sea sound kissed your soul,
and your bare feet
could step anywhere
on the beach’s joyful receptivity,
the sand between your toes
seemed to be the whole earth loving you.
Now this place is dirty,
the color of a smoker’s lung,
and you can hear it
wheezing
with its absence.
It seems hopeless,
dark,
without dark’s mystery
and hint of birth.
It seems over,
gone.
But not far away
the sea’s still strong,
it protests your sunken heart
with giant waves
coming in from
the unconquered blue:
the sea beyond,
and the sea in you.
Its strong enough
to reclaim
the dead,
to clean the world
that comes from
your heart.
It’s not too late
to love each other
again
on this beach,
the way we used
to.
The perfect blossom:
what a tragedy it is!
It’s on the edge of its beauty.
One step more
and it will fall off of its
perfection.
One more morning
and its colors will begin to fade.
And the rest of its life
will pass in being compared
to this day.
Tomorrow
its bowed head,
pardoned by nostalgia,
will not be the same
as this proud unwilted glory
matching the sun,
God and subject undifferentiated:
one.
Then charity and remembrance
will replace
awe
and the altar
will
belong only to the
faithful few,
falling with her
from being the heart of the world
to the
dark sad place
where greatness goes
when its
work on earth
is done.
Its work,
but not its longing.
Urinating,
writing a poem
in yellow.
Commonplace
hidden away,
left behind,
who would write
about that yellow stream,
quite miraculous?
Giving me life
by leaving me,
carrying away
what would
be too much for me,
beautiful
in its disowned way.
So easy
to be an artist,
to paint a moment
with this shining color,
this unneeded ray of light
that is needed.
Strange
intimate time,
sequestered
in the seraglio
of the body’s
constant brush
with death,
this is the color
of the will to live,
salvation
without a thought,
rejection meeting pleasure,
decay
held off for another day
by the little music
behind the closed door,
by the color of the sun,
a fleeting stained glass window
illuminated by life.
Before the quiet,
the disappearance,
the reemergence of the
myth
who hidden things
sustain:
dirty
sacred
things.
All right,
back to Patienceville.
This guy
is maddening, but can’t
take a frown.
No need to break him
down, for what he can’t change.
Once again,
it’s up to me.
The high ground
is a bitch
but I can’t stand
to see
the carnage of feelings
which being right
can bring.
So I’ll let it go,
go back to my room in
Patienceville;
suck it up, and
live with his wrong:
because sometimes
a soft wrong
is better than
a hard right.
You Could Do It Better (Lyrics)
You could do it better.
So why should I?
You could do it better.
So why should I try?
Doing nothing
is what I learned,
whenever I lifted a finger
I just go burned.
By the God of Everything.
By you.
No one can do
what you can do.
Why interrupt the spectacle
of perfection?
Applaud and bow
to the one who can’t wait
to set things straight,
don’t make a mistake,
don’t get in the way,
just watch,
it can be a way of life,
like people writing about history,
standing on the side.
Always standing on the side
for you.
Our lack of education
is your power
Our paralysis
is the wings you use to fly
And criticism
is the weapon
to keep us locked inside
You hoarded action
and left only inertness
for us -
and the curse of never being
good enough.
You left only inertness
for us:
the inerntess of being
swept along
by your limited genius,
your one-color rainbow -
your pilfered genius
stolen from a frightened child -
your dark-shade genius
that wouldn’t let anything else grow:
the secret to your unrivaled height.
Didn’t you take
my light?
Tallest tree
in the forest,
father of asphyxiated
saplings:
our failure is
your might.
But no use
sweating the past.
You are first
and I am last.
You’re the best,
can’t deny it.
No one sees how
you got there
and I didn’t.
And there’s no balance
that weighs
what isn’t.
Nothing more to say,
it will never go away.
Please let me watch.
Please let me watch.
Show me how it’s done.
Let’s do it again.
Let’s never let it go.
Show me how it’s done.
Please let me watch.
The experiment was a success.
Talent can be
neutralized,
no one is any longer
doomed by nature
to be great.
We were post-genetically engineered
to be disasters,
destiny was extracted from us
and our double-dream chromosomes
were spliced
with pigs’ genes.
Symptoms of discontent remain,
but it’s better
than that terrible shining.
They’re not bad,
just morally disoriented.
Up and down -
what’s what?
They’re lost
in the vertigo
of convenience.
False loyalties
built empires of blood,
made slaves’ chains.
Good hearts, blind eyes:
armies loyal to
false fathers
who thought for them,
beat their lives into
dark swords,
turned off weak souls
with a lie,
stole the hero-wish
to write a book of shame,
used one good
to create a thousand
evils,
sharpened beauty
into a blade,
tampered with the inner
dictionary
of right and wrong,
pulled triggers
held up to the head
of babies painted black,
engendered martyrs
who interposed their bodies
between truths they did
not know and
lies that took the form of
their mother.
False loyalties.
One little weakness in the mind
stole all the greatness,
misused the trust
of blunted angels,
destroyed the world
with those who wished
to save it,
deceived the beautiful ones
into throwing their lives
away
for dogs.
Camouflaged bug.
Green like a leaf.
No one sees him.
Not the hungry bird;
not the Three Magi
bearing gifts.
Secrets of the strong
need someone
to whisper to.
It’s not what it seems to be,
this being strong;
and where it’s not
what it seems to be
needs you.
Secrets of the strong
need a soul
that can take
the concealed crying
that’s needed to
make the armor fit.
Secrets of the strong
need someone
behind the game face
to bind these gaping wounds:
because silent blood
won’t coagulate.
Secrets of the strong
need to tell all
to the loyal mute one
of the shadows,
the one who could destroy him
but won’t.
The soft underbelly
of never being beaten
needs a kiss.
Secrets of the strong.
The real me’s not on
the map,
I need someone
who knows the way.
I need someone
who can handle the
hypocrisy of
my strength,
and sleep beside my weakness
in the night.
Secrets of the strong.
All the magic’s just a lie,
it’s only her,
the one who makes the spells,
who puts the dragon who guards the gold
to sleep.
I can’t be strong
in your eyes, or I’ll die,
you need to be
the place
where I fall apart,
it’s the only way
I can ever
reach the mountain top.
It’s the only way
I can ever
cross the sea.
Secrets of the strong.
I’m nothing
without you
seeing that I’m nothing
without you.
Secrets of the strong.
I’m not afraid
of anything
except not having you.
Because
I can’t be me,
all by myself.
Some minds
won’t see you friend.
They just won’t see you.
Your truth
comes in a wavelength
that their
senses can’t catch;
your beautiful roses
are all in ultraviolet,
your Taj Mahal
was built in infrared.
The wings of your genius
beat too fast;
for those without imagination they seem
to be air.
The power of your thoughts
travels in waves
too long,
like whales hidden for hours
beneath the surface of the sea.
The world looks elsewhere,
stops believing in the deep still waters
where you vanished,
they run to splashes,
bow down to splashes
of little things
by the shore.
My friend,
the stadium of love was built
in the visible spectrum:
histrionics
and futile inventiveness
dulling the edges
of truth
with brilliant play time,
words turned into Gods
off the road of human
life and death.
It’s not you.
Hyperbole -
gargoyles of vanity
nested in the architecture
of human contemplation
and longing -
tears that run from themselves,
cried too cleverly
to give birth to hearts.
Beauty
hidden underneath
jewels,
eaters of
divine faces.
It’s not you.
You were always to the side
of the circus
doing your own thing,
dying and bleeding words,
dreaming paradises into being
behind doors you could not break,
loving and mourning at the same time,
always real,
too simple,
too true:
a straight line,
never a curlicue.
You.
Not in the visible spectrum.
You.
How I love you!
So alone.
Always writing.
You.
How I love you!
Poems
knocking at your door
at every moment
and you letting them in
in the middle of the night
when others were fast asleep.
You letting them in from the rain,
dripping water all over
your house
that stayed the same,
your little
unloved house
that your invisible glory
could never
change.
You.
Always alone
with this wild
unseen beauty about you,
your phantom wife,
your lover and your
aura;
always rich in treasures that
bought nothing,
sitting on trunks
filled with shining gold
that no one else could see,
until you began to
wonder if you
were hallucinating.
A world blind
or one man deluded?
Hard odds to beat.
And yet
your pen went on,
valiantly true
to the flood you could not
restrain,
nor change
just to fit:
forever faithful
to the nude heart
that would not hide itself
underneath the
clothes of
what they called
poetry.
Does blood
lack art?
When words turn the lights
off, are they better
than silence?
You never believed
in these ingenious silences
built with words,
no,
you wandered alone
in deep nights,
half-street, half-God,
a solitary wolf with wounded feet
who could not stop running
after your own broken heart,
breathing feelings
into the darkness,
pursuing beauty
to the end
so you could have
a place to die.
Too single-minded
for applause,
too proud
for a roof.
You, my friend.
You.
Killed by the realness
that would never submit
to the distraction
of cleverness.
To the slavery of
craftsmanship.
You were always a Sibyl,
never an engineer.
You, my friend.
You.
Living,
yet dead,
except for the poems
that keep coming
and coming,
the poems
that have replaced you.
Poverty-stricken,
alone,
helpless with your beauty
that uses you and
destroys you
to adorn the deafness
with unheard sound.
Your altruistic ME
that carries the whole world with it,
because of the accident of your
honesty.
You.
Giving star-filled nights
not hidden
by temples.
Giving fields without cities;
giving uncut forests.
You.
Uncluttered.
With metaphors
like engines,
like angels,
labyrinths turned inside out
with the raw you,
the unbroken you
that would not yield
to the rules
of beauty.
The rules of
their beauty:
the beauty of
camouflage.
The beauty of
tangents.
The beauty of
cushioning
a falling soul’s
cry for
help.
You would not let
anything
hide the scream,
which contained
the hope.
You.
Unpoisoned by feathers
that win mates
but don’t
know the sky.
You.
Cleansed by
the exile
of being honest,
but filled with unending sorrow,
the terrible price
of your purity;
fasting
on the moon
of truth,
which circles
the deception,
refusing to live that way
yet unable to escape:
always in the orbit
of what you were above,
which was stronger than you.
You.
Without a nation,
only the country
of a pen;
and the flag
of your art
beyond art.
You.
The one I loved, and
will always love.
In spite of your maddening
demise,
your self-destructive
blossoming,
that does not know
when to quit.
In spite of the pain of
seeing you
devoured by your poems,
dropping your heart
into the dirt
of unreachable clouds,
refusing enlightenment
because it would kill beauty,
refusing the pain-killer of
surrender
and torturing me
with poems of
unsheathed longing,
making me bleed
your blood,
die with you,
need what you need,
which is what neither one
of us
can have.
You.
How I love you,
because of you,
in spite of you!
Raised up to the level
of the flowers
that must be cut down.
Yet I would not
go back.
For this vision
you have given me
I would stay
in this place too high
to live in.
As long as you are here,
writing poems.
You.
Not in the visible spectrum.
Not for them.
For us.
Hyperinflation
of words,
wheelbarrows full of them
to buy the same thing;
devalued
by emptiness
that thrashes about in desperation
to equal what has already
eluded it.
Another age
where form
has taken over.
Another coup of facades.
Decorate with unbearable newness
the old, which is the always,
which you can’t feel.
Cover it over with
colors that hide
your absence.
Hearts don’t have
to beat
anymore,
or even fit
inside a human chest,
hang them from the
ceiling
of the popularity contest,
giant, pink
unusable hearts -
clap,
don’t live,
masturbate
with the gift,
despise the seed,
don’t plant it.
And no,
it’s more than bitterness.
It’s a world thirsting
for words that matter,
words that go straight
to the truth,
words not in love
with themselves
but with the life
they were supposed
to bring.
It’s a call for
warrior- words,
mother-words,
field-of-crops words.
Life-of-the-party
doesn’t belong
in the sacred seat.
The prophecy awaits!
The fate
of worlds,
beyond
the stolen
way.