PERSONAL MAN, PERSONAL WORLD
Carrying On About The World And My Broken Heart
Whatever Sh***’s In Your Head (Rap Lyrics)
Cleaning Lady To A Spider’s Web
Little Boy Black Lightning (All The Way)
Laughing And Running In The Sun
Carrying On About The World And My Broken Heart
Carrying on
about the world
and my broken heart.
This small voice
can’t shut up
because crying over nothing
has brought me to
the door of everything.
One woman
taught me about
all the heartache of the world,
the weight of
history
fell on top of me
through her,
in her leaving
the injustice of ages of
squandered lives
I could never have felt
exploded in
my soul,
the emptiness
that came from inside me
showed me the way
back outside.
After one thousand days of poetry,
I was ready to
rejoin time,
to fight again:
for the woman I lost
was everything the world
needs.
Now I know
what it means
to be
a human being,
I know the hole
that has to be filled
because it’s in me.
Thanks to her.
The woman who I lost
where the little meets
the large.
It’s the point
where the lever
of my irrelevance
could move the earth.
Angel’s trumpet
in human hands
blew
low places
into the world.
They couldn’t hear
the notes of
Heaven,
could only
blow
their falling.
Angel’s trumpet
left me alone,
their false understanding
became oblivious,
left me crying
all night
for the light
they didn’t have.
Love discharge.
OK, I’m good.
Now get back
to killing.
Prove I’m more than
a gun,
give you some pennies
and some tears.
To live with yourself
you’ve got to
get rid of that
feeling
that you just
don’t give a damn,
so find one
zone of caring.
That will let you
freeze the
rest of the earth.
Oh no,
got to prove I can
love!
Find somebody,
find something!
Got to prove
I’m not just
about killing.
Loving one person
gives you the right to let
the bullets fly.
Love discharge.
Get it out of the system
before it cramps
the style of the night.
Love discharge.
It could even be a dog.
Take him for a walk,
then get back to your gun.
Love discharge.
Got to love one place
so you can hate everything else.
Sometimes the feeling’s
strong,
like some kind of moral
static electricity
building up inside,
got to touch something,
see the blue spark
of your goodness
jump out in the dark
without letting it
get in the way.
Showing it
is the best way
to leave it.
Love discharge.
Look in your
mirror that one false
moment
of helping,
then
avert your
eyes forever.
Pull the trigger,
now it’s OK to kill:
you love.
Love discharge.
A little love goes a long way
towards destroying the world.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Daddy lied.
He’s got a dark room
out in back.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Don’t want to believe it!
Don’t want to believe it!
Tears for who Daddy was
could burn the world up.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
How do you think he knows
it all so well: the
excretory tract
of Mengele?
Hunt the evil-doer
to the ends of the earth,
far from Daddy’s door.
Drown out your fear of knowing
with a war.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Monster-Target-Man dribbling
electric-shock drool all over
the naked Goddess Liberty:
that’s what got me
in fatigues.
Kill the bastards!
Kill the bastards!
How does Daddy
know this kind of stuff?
He speaks of others’ crimes
so fluently.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Tweedledum and
Tweedledee of Hell,
in towers of our sacrifice,
ringing righteous bells.
Tell me we didn’t die in vain.
Daddy, I believed you!
Daddy, I believed you!
Tell me it’s going to be all right.
Tell me the sun didn’t die,
it’s still there
on the other side of night.
Wake up and smell the Coffee.
Time to leave home, son,
Daddy lied.
A free heart can make a new home
where the dogs pooped.
Everyone else just runs for cover
outside the loop.
For a slave
it’s always too late,
Daddy owns Time;
like Siamese twins,
they’re joined at the mind.
When Daddy matters more than God,
the world pisses blood.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Daddy lied.
Better to cry, than to
close your eyes.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Time to grow up,
leave Daddy at the head
of an empty table.
Coffee in the morning.
Bye, Dad.
Coffee in the morning.
Sad, true coffee
in the morning.
Rain
that’s one degree
above snow
Freezing
without changing
a thing
No new look
just shivering
at the last level of
sameness that
you can bear
Despues de la caida
Didn’t we have a good time dancing?
Didn’t we have a good time emptying the glass?
Didn’t we make sweet love together?
Everything good must pass.
Nights in Atlantis
they’re gone, but we had them
No one can take that
from you or me
Nights in Atlantis,
we lived to the fullest
till it all
sank beneath the sea
Wasn’t life like a genie then?
If you wanted something, all you had to do was ask.
What difference was there between us and gods?
Everything good must pass.
Nights in Atlantis
they’re gone, but we had them
No one can take that
from you or me
Nights in Atlantis,
we lived to the fullest
till it all
sank beneath the sea
Crimes or conscience,
who cares in that golden land?
The stupor called life
makes its own rules for the strong.
God comes later,
but cowards come first,
to defend 4 AM against 3 AM.
It’s all the same till the dawn.
But some dreams sink
and others go on.
Everyone falls,
even the ones who watch others fall.
Some live first.
Nights in Atlantis
they’re gone, but we had them
No one can take that
from you or me
Nights in Atlantis,
we lived to the fullest
till it all
sank beneath the sea
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
They think that
hammers
are stronger
than truth.
But one day
the hammer
will break
on an awakened mind,
on a heart
that has no door.
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
The bigger lies grow
the harder it becomes
for them to cover over
what is obvious.
Like dead bodies
they begin to decompose
in the soil
of a question.
Enough of God is in us
to ask.
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
The seas
wear out continents,
lies wear out
themselves.
Something begins to feel wrong.
Cattle herds
are only moments
in time.
Power bases
built on stolen minds
may seem to be forever
like the pyramids
but time turns every top-heavy deception
into a house of cards.
Bad is Good
Bad is Good
Lies weaken
as blood is lost.
Caged birds
have winged souls,
they know there’s a sky
even if the shades
are drawn.
And blackboards
can’t teach over
the divine noise inside;
griping with dreams,
the discomfort capsizes
lessons
of paradise.
Bad is Good
Says who?
The sons say no.
History won’t be saved,
but it won’t be
owned.
There will always be
truth,
or fighting for the truth.
Bad is Bad
Good is Good
We’ll get the
world back again.
Their lies will give it
back to us.
I got the following message,
washed up in a bottle
from the sea:
I am Jacobo Arbenz III,
they did it to me again.
My green land
was turned upside down
by a heavy, sunburned hand
that didn’t belong
where the birds sing.
For a stolen fruit
they slit the throat
of the boy
who was studying
to be an angel,
they angered blue mountains
in the distance
but flew above them,
owning what they never touched
with a signature,
they deposed the midwives
and turned the magic, waiting for the night,
into endless fields of barren wealth
fertilized
by the bodies of those who came
before the orphans.
Dreams and blood,
they’re colors that clash,
nothing I wanted was ever
far from my mother's womb.
How did it plant the seeds
of weapons?
The soft guitar and
the one night when a woman’s face
seemed to be everything,
untouched by the burning sun:
even that was taken
from the flag.
Now, the only two colors left
are them,
and what they can
get from us.
And my palace was
ringed by bayonets
of progress.
Living in the land my whole life,
I didn’t know
what it was good for,
they had to teach me
with guns
in my hallways.
They had to
christen the ship
of their vision
with broken streets
and mothers
searching for their sons.
And once again,
I’m back here in the shadows,
washed up on the island
of getting
in the way.
I’m Jacobo Arbenz III,
wondering when this
dynasty of outcasts will end,
wondering when my green land
will have a friend.
Look for me
between the cracks
of the newspaper
in your hands;
all night I weave tears
into spider webs
to catch your awareness
that’s flying away with
my home.
I throw bottles
into the sea,
wondering if they will ever find the shore
of an ear,
hurl a hundred thousand hearts
into the wind:
because I still choose to believe
in ignorance,
instead of sin.
I am Jacobo Arbenz III,
saying what I said yesterday,
which is what I must say,
today, again.
I am Jacobo Arbenz III
throwing truth
into the sea.
Dolphin-safe tuna.
Hey, what about me?!
I’m the tuna!
Tiredness makes
great answers.
Walls you can’t
get over
make convenient
conclusions.
When you can’t go faster,
it’s a wonderful consolation
to tell yourself
that there’s no place further to go.
Maps of the world
are drawn
by weary spirits.
And we are all afraid
to fall off of the flat earth
of someone else’s
limitations.
God bless
the outlaw’s wife.
The one who
eclipsed the hangman
and the cowardly mob,
with a kiss
of thick and thin.
She stood by his
incited pride
before its time,
before "criminal" was crossed out
and replaced
with "hero."
In times of spit
and jeering,
she loaded his gun,
she hid
the ammunition
under her dress,
she said good-bye.
She soothed his last night
with memories
that hateful, blind wrongs
could not
suffocate.
In the dark prison
where they put him
to be alone,
he was not alone,
because she loved him:
something stronger
than bars
and walls
and being born
in the middle of the night.
And then,
after that intended tomb of darkness,
when the daylight
of contempt
stabbed his eyes,
and they hoped
for him to tremble,
pouring all their powerless power
over him
like mud,
he saw her
standing like a light
in the corner
and it was enough
not to break
among all those
brave enough to see another die.
His proud smile,
as the rope whispered
one last chance
to lose
about his frail neck,
was like a final kiss,
a thanks,
and a mirror
that showed her
the power
of her love,
the holiness
of her loyalty
overpowering all her faults;
when there was nothing else to do
she had become a lioness -
she was mighty herself
and mighty through him,
the gallows were his way
of telling her.
God bless
the outlaw’s wife.
As she watched him die
she saw the power of her work.
God bless
the outlaw’s wife.
Holy
as the Mother of God.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
Don’t look at her that way.
Don’t look at her that way.
Even when she forgets,
don’t look at her that way.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
White Buffalo Woman
came into your life.
White Buffalo Woman
came into your life.
She was never going to be your wife.
She was never going to be your wife.
Even though she smiled like you were the one.
She was never going to be your wife.
White Buffalo Woman
is here for the world.
White Buffalo Woman
is here for the world.
White Buffalo Woman
White Buffalo Woman
Mother and Sister of the world
She’s not your girl
Let her pass
White Buffalo Woman
Mother and Sister of the world
She’s not here
with that kind of love.
She’s not here
with that kind of love.
Step to the side of her high heart.
Step to the side of her high heart.
Your loneliness is your own concern.
Step to the side of her high heart.
She’s not here
with that kind of love.
She’s not here
with that kind of love.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
Don’t look at her that way.
Don’t look at her that way.
Even when she forgets,
don’t look at her that way.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
She’s not a woman,
she’s a spirit.
White Buffalo Woman
White Buffalo Woman
Mother and Sister of the world
She’s not your girl
Let her pass
White Buffalo Woman
Mother and Sister of the world
It’s just a little boat in a big, big sea
a nice idea drifting on a giant reality
The waves of every defense are rising up like walls
What a time to discover that I really don’t know it all
And my little boat to make a difference
is being bludgeoned by the storm
Sometimes I want to give it up
and just find some place that’s warm
And it’s between me and the sea now
darling, with you left out
You don’t even know I’m here
or what this lonely death is all about
Dreams make hermits and lose love
Obsessions are just victims of the sea
Next time the water rolls up on the beach
please let it touch your feet
Let all that’s left of me
apologize for being me
Whatever S***’s In Your Head (Rap Lyrics)
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Bible won’t stop it,
got a bomb, you’ll drop it
Koran won’t uproot it,
got a gun you’ll shoot it
What a good flag God’s become
now that you killed the Holy Ones
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh****’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Bible, Bible,
what can you do for my trigger finger?
Bible, Bible,
don’t say No, take me to an island
in your page
that will my let me build
a bonfire of my rage
And God said:
Got hate in your aura
go to the chapter about
Soddom and Gommorah
Destroy everything below
Be the avenging angel
of things you don’t even know
Got cruelty in your soul
go to the chapter about
the walls of Jericho
kill every man, woman, child, ass, and ox
in the name of what you aren’t
go to the doors of happy homes
and break the locks
Watch the smoke rise high
cause you got to maim, kill, or own
Sinful city - invent it, then watch it die
Love your neighbor as yourself
Forget that part
Love your neighbor as yourself
Forget that part
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Bible won’t stop it,
got a bomb, you’ll drop it
Koran won’t uproot it,
got a gun you’ll shoot it
What a good flag God’s become
now that you killed the Holy Ones
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh****’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Mohammed won’t end it
you’ll use him to defend it
Jesus won’t curb it
you’ll use him to serve it
Moses won’t nab it
you’ll shoot from behind his tablets
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Nothing will hold you back
cause everything flows
through the banks of who you already are
You won’t be changed - you’ll change it
Ride the river away from the mountain
to the lowest place
No doubt, no doubt
Jug with holes
only lets the water out
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tsu, Mohammed and Moses
all came to dinner one holy night
And you poisoned each and every one of them
They came to save you
but first they had to go through you
and by the time they came out
they were just a tool
Can you filter out the light?
Can you filter out the light?
Cause someone’s got to die tonight
Prism of a dark mind
only lets the darkness through
Can you filter out the light?
Can you filter out the light?
Cause someone’s got to die tonight
Find the words that kill, and leave them in
Find the words that love, and cut them out
Break the wild horse, the Holy Book,
and ride him to where you already are
A pair of scissors can do more damage
than nine-inch nails
And what do you carry God in?
Jug of holes
only lets the water out
Jug of holes
only lets the water out
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Bible won’t stop it,
got a bomb, you’ll drop it
Koran won’t uproot it,
got a gun you’ll shoot it
What a good flag God’s become
now that you killed the Holy Ones
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh****’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
The parted seas, they walked into the lions’ den,
they climbed ladders into Heaven,
they multiplied the loaves
but they couldn’t raise your soul
you turned them all into blood and gold
Couldn’t they see you coming?
Couldn’t they see you coming?
Why does a beautiful woman go walking
alone on a dark street,
Why does a beautiful soul give eloquence
to a beast?
They should have left you standing naked
with your hate
Go on and pray
Go on and pray
that nothing will get in the way
of you and your heart of night
Take a little piece of light
before it’s light
it will make the perfect knife
Whatever s***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Bible won’t stop it,
got a bomb, you’ll drop it
Koran won’t uproot it,
got a gun you’ll shoot it
What a good flag God’s become
now that you killed the Holy Ones
Whatever sh***’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Whatever sh****’s in your head
is gonna find a way to come out
Big Fat Holy Man
of the beer-drinking babies,
bring them into the
Church of Pretend
where they don’t have to
change a thing.
Clap your hands and sing!
Clap your hands and sing!
Big Fat Holy Man
of the ticking time-bomb losers,
bring them into the
Church of Carnage
where they can get even
with everything
Clap your hands and sing!
Clap your hands and sing!
Big Fat Holy Man
of the black sheep nation,
bring them into the
Church of Ease
where holiness is what
you’re already doing
Clap your hands and sing!
Clap your hands and sing!
Big Fat Holy Man
of the killer deer in the headlights,
bring them into the
Church of you
so you can be the
newborn king
Throw out the book of the
naked girl
Snow White’s bullets rule
the world
Family values start with
guzzling gas
And end with nights of
broken glass
Big Fat Holy Man’s gonna MC
the holy crash
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
Poke out my soul’s eye
so I can join the holy troops.
Hell always travels in groups.
Big Fat Holy Man’s easier to follow
than God;
and he hurt less than
the Truth.
All hail the newborn king!
Clap your hands and sing!
And the firing squad
is getting closer
Holy Man’s lining us up
with lies,
just drew an "X"
between my eyes.
Conscience: I deny you
thrice.
I don’t know you
I don’t know you
I don’t know you
Holy Man’s got the keys to life
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
just became mob rule,
and they’re armed with what love
denied you.
Big Fat Holy Man
Let him translate God for you
or the lightning bolt of putty minds
in his hands
will strike you down
in the silent space of your
blasphemy
of loving God.
Big Fat Holy Man
Go into his Church and get the stamp
of approval of the sick
on your forehead and on your wrist
Jesus is the face he’s given to 666
And the first shall be last
And the first shall be last
Last in the minds of the deceived
If you got enough soldiers,
you can get through the
eye of the needle.
What profits a man to gain the world
and lose his soul?
Big Fat Holy Man doesn’t care
There’s lots of clay to shape
before the Pearly Gates
and lots of Heavens
that have no gate
He never saw an angel
and an angel never stopped him
Big Fat Holy Man,
for an unholy age
Clap your hands and sing!
Clap your hands and sing!
Bow down to live:
all hail the newborn king!
Sword of a thousand idiots.
Let yourself be used
and you’ll go to Hell.
I’ve been too soft on you.
Loving you,
I forgot who was in the path
of your bullets.
She could’ve been my mother.
The mother of the me
I need to be,
if I hadn’t loaded your guns for you
by trying to understand you.
Why did I let you off the hook?
I blamed the magician
who pulled you out of his hat:
but rabbits can say no.
Sword of a thousand idiots.
You let yourself be wielded,
your broken will fell asleep
like a worthless sentry by your soul,
thieves stole the world
from your murderous innocence.
Without you, Hitler would’ve spent
his life spitting at the statues
he didn’t make,
Mussolini would have
thrown stones at pigeons.
What the monster’s isolated genius needs,
your thoughtless numbers always give him.
You are the ones who make the exception
be the rule, the curse of history.
You turn the ruthless loner into
the Queen Bee,
and swarm and sting the world
for her greed.
Sword of a thousand idiots.
No, you’ve gone too far!
When you saw the blood,
you still stayed in his hands.
Sword of a thousand idiots.
He cut and slashed the earth with you.
Without you, he would have spent his life
screaming at mountains that didn’t listen.
Sword of a thousand idiots.
Weaklings always fall prey
to the flatterer
who pets them as they die.
Ignorance loses its virginity
when a child bleeds.
Sword of a thousand idiots.
I wish I could forgive you.
But the eyes of the dead
are looking back at me.
Tonight, I must
speak for them.
Big dog
went ahead
on the path
God gave me
and took a shit.
Now I can’t be
myself
without walking in
crap.
It’s like being Hitler’s son.
I drew the Hanged Man,
so he could be the Sun.
Cannibal ate my heart
to get my courage,
went far in the world,
feeding on what I
could’ve done.
It’s like being Hitler’s son.
When I came with the
cure for cancer,
the world came with torches:
burned my house down,
because I was close enough.
They ran from the lion,
and killed the cub.
It’s like being the Devil’s effigy.
Kick it around
cause he owns the earth.
It’s like being an American flag
in Iran.
Set fire to me
cause I’m the only part of it
they can understand.
How I hate the man
who locked me out
of my own house
with his sins!
I can’t get this Hitler mustache
off of my inner beauty.
How I hate you!
I can’t bring more gold
than what you stole.
I’ll always be the grave
of someone they loved.
How I hate you!
Your life is the
Wicker Man
in which I burn.
How I hate you!
You sacrificed me,
and God gave you the world.
Cannon and God.
The one didn’t come.
Crying mother waited,
and the one didn’t come.
Vengeful brother sat down
by his abandonment
and studied the laws
of gunpowder.
The idea of the barrel
came to him
when he visited
the grave
behind the Church,
the place where his mother
died each day.
How he came to hate
the cross around her neck!
It seemed it strangled her
like the hand of the one
who made her weep.
Vengeful brother didn’t succumb
to stained glass pleas,
the choir of peace
degraded him.
And one night
he perfected the fury
of his inheritance.
The cannonball was like
gold in the rock,
his mind mined it
from the one place
he’d ever been loved.
The flash was his retort.
He’d invented God.
His enemy screamed Eureka.
From then on,
no one ever waited,
the walls came down
because there was no answer.
In moments of self-made divinity
the void was filled,
hope returned
as blood.
Cannon and God.
The one didn’t come.
That’s how
the other became
ruler of the earth.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
His sin.
Your soul.
Ignorance of the law
is no excuse.
Your excuse
not to think.
One times ten thousand
is one.
Democracy is the bodyguard
of the King.
His sin.
Your soul.
Ignorance of the law
is no excuse.
Book of lies has led
many a good reader
to the grave.
Close the book, write a new one
with your eyes.
His sin.
Your soul.
Good intentions don’t exist
until you own
your
hollow space.
Don’t let other souls
fill you up:
it’s not a shortcut,
it’s a capitulation.
Beware the man who knows it all.
Beware the man
who knocks on your door
with the truth.
The world won’t make sense
in thirty seconds.
Drowning men know a straw
won’t save them.
Yet nations clutch at straws.
They can’t tell they are drowning
in history.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
He spread a carpet
of convenience
beneath your feet.
His sin.
Your soul.
Angel said: "Birds of a feather
flock together."
Dark mind,
empty mind,
both sink
in the water
of a
burning world.
When you won’t climb the
mountain,
you become the killer.
A hundred million levers,
but only one hand votes.
The one who saves you time
destroys you.
Democracy,
Democracy,
what a wonderful illusion!
Dictator blossoms, like a flower,
with a million tired people
who climb aboard his mind,
their feet of thoughts
are broken,
they need a
ride
to Hell.
The assassin wears a cross.
When you think water is land
how can you be anything but a
lemming?
Wise within his lie,
because your mind is exhausted
by skies beyond reach,
by iron doors in front of
every heart,
you perfect the logic of the betrayed earth.
You are the angel
he uses to
destroy
what needs years.
His sin.
Your soul.
God caught you
copulating in the
bushes of
ignorance.
The unknown is the
best friend of
the strong.
The world won’t make sense
in thirty seconds.
Beware the expert
who comes to rescue you from
your confusion.
He is an expert of his own lust:
he turns his pleasure
into your truth,
he turns his desires
into the laws of nature.
Dictators,
concealed by your
consent:
they rule you
with the bayonets
of your apathy;
your weary wills
are the bombs they drop
on the world.
Have you seen the eyes of the
ones you saved,
staring blindly up at Heaven?
Only you could believe that
rigor mortis
is a form of gratitude.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
Put a map on the table.
Open up a book.
The angels have gathered round
your towers
in winged retribution
to watch you
devour yourselves
with goodness.
His sin.
Your soul.
Like lovers,
passion made you one.
Loving what was easy,
you lost the beauty
that comes from struggle.
Fever brings the vision.
The quickly-healed die
from simplicity.
God grows unkind
as the fury of mothers mounts;
their tears weigh more in
his balance
than innocence.
There is a point at which exhaustion
becomes murder.
No one can be forgiven for the dead child in the street.
You are responsible for knowing
who is driving your mind.
Put a map on the table.
Open up a book.
The angels have gathered round
your towers
in winged retribution
to watch you
devour yourselves
with goodness.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
Everything you do not seek
can and will be used
against you.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
Heil Hitler’s
learned to whisper.
Sleepy Samaritan’s
such a good
storm trooper.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
One day
the river
of one man
flowed past God
carrying the corpses
of a million minds,
downstream
from conscience slaughtered.
Red flowed from the
undiscovered ideas.
For one more century,
certainty eclipsed
the sun.
But God replies
in the serpent’s own tongue:
"Conquered ones
are not forgiven.
The earth is hemorrhaging
with surrender.
The ones who do not defend
their minds
cannot take shelter behind invaders.
Stand up for a perception of your own!"
The deer who do not run
are the strength of lions,
and the death of deer to come.
His sin.
Your soul.
When nations go berserk
God has to
put out the fire.
They never thought they were wrong.
There is no greater emergency
in Heaven
than a little laziness.
When nations go berserk
God has to put out
the fire.
They never thought they were wrong.
Every moment of greatness
made of lies,
has its Noah,
its beautiful exception,
its beloved bleeding one.
You’re no Noah.
Empty minds drown with
the wills that filled them:
the Rapture is only
for unbelievers.
When nations go berserk
God has to put out
the fire.
Time is filled with the pieces
of evil dreams
shattered by
the hardness of
God’s good.
Empires grow stronger
in the time God gives the ignorant
to wake up.
How patient he is with the transgressions
of the deceived!
But finally he must act,
give a weapon to someone’s indignation.
The clock of justice strikes;
it is the hour when the wolves starve.
They never thought they were wrong.
Is the city on the hill,
or only built upon the pinnacle
of the one who thought for you?
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
Beware the expert
who stands taller than pain,
and cries from his mind.
Tears that don’t wrench a
life off course
are not tears.
His sin.
Your soul.
The bones of experts
bar the way to Eden.
They were only excuses.
Experts and souls.
Choose carefully.
The darkest sins walk softly
on feet of surrender.
Experts and souls.
Your mind is the last outpost of God’s will.
Don’t let it fall
to an expert.
Your expert.
Your excuse
not to think.
His sin.
Your soul.
Our world.
White Crow
isn’t going to come.
Only you
can put your guns down.
Angel
isn’t going to spank you
or let you drink
from God’s cup.
You’ve got to get there
on your broken legs.
You’re the Sabine women
who were raped:
the only ones who can step
between the spears.
Heaven’s died
a thousand deaths
between right and wrong;
the signposts that point up
are pointing to you.
Crying all night long.
Do you need a sign?
Do you need to see her
standing on Tepeyac Hill?
The glowing light is your pain.
She’ll come to you
with a bowl of choice,
with the wine of doubt in her hands:
drink if you don’t want to listen.
She’ll never prove
it didn’t come from you.
Crying all night long.
Your eyes have given you
the answer.
Angel won’t enforce
the obvious.
She’s no succubus,
she gave you the world
with your name.
If you have to see her
not to dishonor her,
you aren’t worthy of her.
White Crow
isn’t going to come.
Only you
can put your guns down.
I like yellow
I like blue
I like purple
I like brown
I like red
I like black
I like white
I like green
Please like me
Please like me
I like hot
I like cold
I like warm
I like cool
I like high
I like low
I like everything
in between
Please like me
Please like me
I like tangy
I like tart
I like salty
I like bland
I like spicy
I like plain
I like bitter
I like sweet
Please like me
Please like me
I like war
I like peace
I like truth
I like lies
I like justice
I like crime
I like doubt
I like belief
Please like me
Please like me
Stone for you to chisel
with my eyes watching you.
You’ll never know.
I’ll change before
you know who I was,
and I was never anybody
but you.
My religion is you liking me,
and I’d burn a thousand me’s
at the stake
to preserve the faith.
Please like me
Please like me
Such a simple formula to live by
Please like me
Once you bite
of the apple of
non-pride,
you will stand aside
till time
drips every last drop
of apathy
into the grave
of Man.
Don’t let
the good Samaritan
take you
by the hand.
You have an appointment
with the
north wind.
Walk, Man,
or ride the last
beautiful horse:
don’t sit on a wagon
or
the whole world dies.
There fell the Woodland God
who never said I can’t,
whose toil rang out
in the wilderness
scattering thoughts in stone
upon the hillside.
There fell the Woodland God
who made the autumn mask,
who made the smile
deep with woods
upon another face than his,
who drew mysterious visages
among fallen leaves,
awakening spirits
from the footpath.
There fell the Woodland God
upon his back,
helpless like a dream
that the waking mind
has lost.
Green leaves about his head,
years of proud labor
like a broken crown
after the history books have moved on
and stripped the king of power,
weeping legs that would not answer,
his heart disconsolate without mourners
to stand beside his overthrow.
Time, at last, caught up
with his fearsome, tender spirit,
his tall standing
in the depths.
Pan is dead!
Pan is dead!
The holy flutes cry out
in language
invisible to the ears
of those
who sat upon the throne
of his self-devouring.
You could see it coming
from years away,
hear it advancing down the path.
A man
doomed to fall like a green tree
on a clear day
whispered, through branches,
by the sun;
as undeniable as a snapped twig,
or birds that have stopped singing
above a footstep.
A secret of the forest, he let go his axe
that made the trees be born again.
There fell the Woodland God,
carried away in the night,
his smile and his death cry
so alike.
Only mute woods knew him -
and those few who were brave enough
not to speak
when he sat alone.
Step softly, friend,
where tomorrow’s flowers grow,
there fell one
whose life rang out
in unseen beauty,
a brother of mine.
There fell the Woodland God:
the Woodland God
is dead!
Four
Six
Eight
Ten
Two goes into
every one
Hate him
Hate her
Hate me
Hate something
Hate yourself
goes into
every one
Humpty Dumpty
hated himself.
Humpty Dumpty
fell off the shelf.
All the king’s horses
and all the king’s men
were killed
by Humpty Dumpty
not wanting
to be put together
again.
Dress well
you’re going to die.
In the clothes of valor,
dress well.
Hold your head up.
Weak knees, go,
I don’t need you
since there’s no chance.
The bell rang clearly,
dark and proud,
the bell rang clearly
with every undone thing.
Beautiful broken heart,
don’t ruin this defeat
by saying, "Please…"
Stand up, tears,
now that everything I loved
has fallen from my eyes,
there’s no reason
to say no.
Dress well,
you’re going to die.
Ancient warrior,
walk the path again.
Tall tree
wants to fall
with green still
in its soul.
Nothing’s left,
where did it all go?
Nothing’s left
but one last thing,
the graceful gesture
of going through the door.
Light is in the dark,
power is in just lying there.
Coffin or vision,
I don’t care,
I’m crumbling towards something.
Let me bleed
till I turn white.
Don’t try, just fall,
trying is
never blossoming.
Let it come.
The darkness,
the emptiness,
stop pretending,
let it all
fall on your head,
dying in the collapsing temple
of yourself
is an honor,
it is like the moon
not coming back,
waking up the night.
When they cry "fire"
don’t run out of your dream.
It’s time to die,
that’s all.
Don’t do it for them,
and don’t flinch in front of them.
Dress well.
You’re going to die.
The Captain goes down
with his ship.
The warrior
goes down with his soul.
Beaten until you can’t stand,
the pain becomes a kind of sleep
sweeter than holding onto crap
by your fingernails.
You didn’t back down,
you were beaten back
into the earth,
maybe you’ll
come back
as a mountain.
But first
it’s time to sleep it off.
After you get through
the doorway.
Do it right.
Dress well,
you’re going to die.
Walk proud,
make their cowardice rise.
Shine like a star
burning with the fever
of all the light
it can’t get out.
A star vanishing from the sky
that has not relinquished being a star,
is the brightest one of all.
Those who could see its absence
amidst all the other burning lights
that mar the night
could follow the blackness
all the way to the
Messiah.
The one who’s sleeping
in the stable
of your afterlife.
He’s not of this earth.
He needs you to go.
Dress well.
You’re going to die.
You no longer
have a purpose
or excuse.
Shed the ancient wrinkled skin
of your mind
that led nowhere,
and crawl out new:
or perish!
No compromise,
no compassion,
no loophole!
Fall down, and
die,
don’t return
as the one
who clung
to life.
Dress well.
You’re going to die.
The bell spoke
in clear words
of gold, ringing
in the ears of fear.
"Your days are numbered.
Be who I put you here to be,
or be no more!"
Dress well,
you’re going to die.
Worms are waiting,
or the wings of eagles.
Tombstones,
or crowns.
The middle ground
is a killing field,
extremes are where truth lies,
after all.
Wipe away the dust
of sweetness to yourself,
climb the freezing mountain
or be frozen
by the shadow
of the mountain
that is too steep for your talent.
Dress well,
you’re going to die.
It’s about time.
The angels have come,
the unsparing angels,
and the fierce women
with swords
who flash amidst
the lightning,
the braided ruthless lovers
of greatness.
They’ve come
to rip you
from the soft harbor
of the earth,
to hurl you
into the night
of screams
and flowers.
The night
of the true self,
the holy nightmare
none dare to dream,
but those who cannot live
without it:
and this sickness
is proof
that you are
such a one.
The chasm
of this spirit sickness
that has opened, gaping wide
beneath your prudence,
to drop you
and all your wisdom
into a pit
of fire.
Dress well,
you are going to die.
Soon.
Will she be there?
It does not matter.
You will be there.
Dress well,
you are going to die.
The bells are ringing
with the euphoria
of your death.
Warriors are born
this way -
and if they should
die, in being born,
it is a prouder way
not to be.
I cannot last much longer
the way I am.
Something is on the way.
And I pray that I will meet it well.
I pray that I will meet it well.
My whole life
is a funeral procession.
I’ve been carrying
myself in a coffin
away from pain
towards even greater pain.
I’m the stone lions
guarding the door
to my
tomb;
pallbearer
of a beautiful dream
I wouldn’t
risk losing
by living.
Cracked angels
line the way,
clapping hands
they don’t have,
cheering
without throats.
There wasn’t enough
clay to give them
wings,
I kept it all
for my misery.
Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.
Maybe someone else
will do my work.
Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.
Once you choose pain
by running from pain
you’ll never get enough.
Persona non grata on the earth.
Ain’t nobody gonna miss
this soldier
when he falls.
Friends never came.
Enemies never stopped putting him out.
Conversations hid
in the halfway house,
touches ran till they forgot.
God wrote the word
IRRELEVANT
all over his life.
Divine graffiti,
and why not?
After all,
it’s His walls.
Soldier’s dreams were used
to fertilize
fields of black flowers,
whoever said
God
wanted roses?
Fools imagine
the Universe
is like them,
maybe we’re just strangers here,
singing beautiful impossibilities
out of tune:
the stars,
and the dirtballs that were left over,
skid forever
past our hopes’
failed brakes.
Paradise is booed
off the stage of reality
by empty stones
we try to rescue
with a chisel and
a mother’s face.
Oh Father, Oh Father,
why hast thou
forsaken me?
If we can’t make it happen,
why should He?
Warm and powerless refuge,
where are you
to help me survive the night?!
Soldier fading out.
Nobody said stay.
Fighting to the end:
but without a soul country
to defend,
the end
can’t be far away.
I wanted your eyes
and what they stood for,
but you clung to our
distance.
Maybe you were right.
Not much left of soldier, now.
Maybe you were right.
Soldier fading out,
fought his war already,
wheel’s turning
towards the next generation
of graves.
Soldier fading out.
Nobody said stay.
Beauty
standing in the midst
of dirt throwers.
Rise above
Rise above
they say.
Angel mind
will never fall
to misrepresentation,
to label-assassins
plucking strings
of the ignorant mind.
Call the mountain
a pile of dung,
and it will
still be a mountain.
But how many people
have ever climbed a mountain?
How many people really know?
Far removed
from direct experience
with Truth,
lies flourish,
barren lands
blossom with false knowledge,
the world
becomes a
Garden of Eden of
someone’s hate.
Survival of the Fittest -
it’s not the Fittest -
it’s merely the self-destructive
impulse of history,
God’s little joke
hidden inside the brawn
of nations,
and the souls of broken men
who are the dark-eyed engines
of nations.
Beauty doesn’t fall
because it’s weak,
it falls
because it’s too strong
to become
anything else.
Flies can kill horses.
Flies can kill horses.
I choose beauty.
Unsheath yourself,
I need your sharp point
to make the night bleed,
until its face turns
pale
into dawn.
Unsheath yourself.
I did not make you
into a weapon
to sleep
through the crying.
I made you to awaken
with the coldness
of love disobeyed.
Unsheath yourself.
I did not make them
to be raped and pillaged,
I made you to stand between them
and the ones
who came to uproot them
from the garden of souls
too beautiful
to fight.
I marred you
with ferocity,
to be their savior.
Unsheath yourself.
You lament my absence,
but I made you.
You decry the horrors that I permit,
but I made you.
I do not permit anything evil to happen,
you do,
by remaining in the
cowardly scabbard
of avoiding me.
It is you who
broke the balance,
you who did not hold up your end.
You who unbound the misery
and let it run wild in the streets.
Praying to me,
you lost the world.
Unsheath yourself.
Pray to me no more.
Unsheath yourself.
This poem is based upon the persistent rumor that Hitler actually had Jewish blood, a secret which he guarded and attempted to suppress by every means possible throughout his life. Although the veracity of that rumor is highly suspect (Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, p. 7 - 9), the very idea, nonetheless, provides a compelling platform for dealing with the issue of self-hate.
Hitler, Hitler,
were you a Jew,
did you hate yourself
that much?
One night
on the mountain
you met the Burning Bush
of your own self-loathing,
the impossibility
of ever being happy.
The fire of father’s beatings
and something wrong
inside
spoke to you
in the voice
of a new Reich.
Hitler, Hitler,
were you a Jew,
did you hate yourself
that much?
You broke the cross
to kill the map
of everything that wasn’t you,
and was you.
You never wanted to win,
you had to be
the last one
at Auschwitz,
underneath the ruined building,
the ruined world.
The Gods are fated to die,
and you couldn’t bear
to wait.
So you looked into the mirror
and marked yourself
for death.
You looked into the world
and turned them all into you.
Soldier slaves
ordered into coffins,
deceived by glory,
conquered slaves
painted with the color
of targets
to stand out
in the dawn that
humiliates darkness
with the sun:
the drunk sun that
staggers into Hell
with its
misplaced
rays of gold.
You cut your victims out,
like dolls from the paper
of God’s love,
so you could throw them
into the fire
burning in your heart.
You ran from the rumor,
the shadow,
stole light from
the nine candles
to give to fierce
processions
vivisecting the day’s black resting
from itself.
You kicked in windows
and filled trains
but couldn’t get it out of you,
couldn’t eliminate
every last thought of despair
and doubt,
couldn’t turn, into ashes, every last book
that was deep enough to drown in,
every last soul that might say No,
or whose Yes
might prove there was nothing.
You couldn’t send it
all away.
Everything you threw out
just kept
coming back.
You couldn’t stop
digging graves,
there were so many of you
to bury.
Hitler,
crippled Moses,
thief of Moses,
Moses running back to Egypt,
you wanted to
drown beneath the tides
with chariots and horses,
break the promised land
with a lie.
Or just keep building pyramids
for your nightmare father,
bow down to the belt in his hands
while you killed him.
You dropped poison manna
on the desert,
embellished the desert
with desolation;
the black groaning skies
rained all your
contradictions
upon the earth,
your admirable will
and your despicable blindness,
the shrapnel of your inner world
exploding everywhere,
tearing apart
ramparts of wombs,
generations
of children loved by angels,
hated by you.
You ordered the seas
not to part,
forbade miracles
that did not come out
of the steel belly
of death,
that did not have an engine
or a gun.
You made the desert
more a desert,
you gladly starved
the world
to get at yourself;
somehow, your bullet
had to go through
everyone else
before it could finally
reach your head.
You came down
from the mountain
with tablets
from the pit,
commandments of hate
spreading gasoline
over the wood of nations.
You came down from the
lowest point on earth
with your sacred
trigger-happy rule:
Hate others as you hate yourself.
You turned
your suicide
into
a global event.
Your wound became history,
you made sure to share your misery
before it broke you:
you took us down
with you.
Hitler, Hitler,
were you a Jew,
did you hate yourself
that much?
Megalomaniac.
Little Boy
protection.
So small:
that big he must now
be.
Turn the ant upside down,
become DADDY.
Megalomaniac.
Beat down
so bad
you can’t get back up
by standing,
you have to fly.
Your past just blew up,
like gunpowder
in a barrel.
You can’t ask
a bullet to walk.
I’ll show you wrong.
I’ll show you wrong.
I’ll get there.
To the place you couldn’t reach,
even though you
made the house shake.
Megalomaniac.
Piece of crap
will fight back
with his name in lights,
throw nations around
to prove you wrong.
Tyrants die
when their victims
rise up from the dead.
When they see
moths mating
in the moonlight.
They couldn’t stop them,
no,
they couldn’t.
Xerxes lashed the waves,
until the ocean
covered the earth.
I’ll kill you
by not dying.
Megalomaniac.
Stone walls need a
giant dream
to carry you out.
Smash through
like a battering ram
made out
of his fear,
just walking out the door
won’t do.
Moderation is
anticlimactic,
and that is
lethal.
A slave will never be free
without drama.
Megalomaniac.
They’ll name a town after me,
a town
that will finally
bury you.
They’ll fight a war
to drive you
out of my brain,
change the map of the world
to leave you out.
I’ll write a new Bible,
make all good things
be the opposite of you,
you’ll be last,
even though you’re the angel
whispering holy words
into my ear.
Megalomaniac.
The only defense
against being nothing
is
being everything.
No, that’s not quite true,
I have room for them -
it’s only you who won’t fit,
except at night
when my blood comes out,
when we’re reunited.
Like a hermaphrodite
rolling about the earth
unto itself,
making love and
hating
with no one else
to intervene,
we’ll change the world together,
your power
will become my power,
every time you hit me
I’ll strike back
by doing something great;
compress me
so I can expand,
hurt me so I can run,
tell me I can’t like a jockey
whipping his horse to victory,
expose me on the mountain
to die,
so that Spirit
can find me
like the good shepherd,
to turn me into the new King.
Megalomaniac.
I can’t help myself.
There’s nothing
in between you
and the Colossus
of me.
I have to go there.
I have to be that.
I have to prove you wrong,
be beautiful and loved,
for injustice only exists
when it destroys
something that’s loved.
I have to turn
what you did into a crime.
I have to rise so high
your lies
can’t keep up.
Like a gosling imprinted
with a parent,
any dwarf who shows up with a club
can become a giant,
rule one’s mind,
own you and hold you down.
It’s all a question of timing,
a simple matter of
who gets there first.
Only a real giant
can defeat
a giant who never was.
And that’s why.
That’s why
I have to go
to the ends of the earth,
that’s why
I have
to dig a canal
between the seas,
and walk on the moon,
that’s why I stand here
waiting for arrows of poetry
to pierce my heart
from places
I can’t see.
I have to be above you
to survive you.
I have to
kill you a thousand times,
to be sure.
I have to erase you,
eclipse you,
obliterate you,
and I’ll use anyone
I have to,
to do it.
Megalomania.
The only cure.
I pray that mine
will be useful,
help humanity.
But I have to be great.
Because of you,
I have to be great.
I hope I can control
the speed.
I hope I don’t hurt anyone.
But I have to be great.
Because of you…
The door of light
opened,
who can go in?
Who can live
in the field
on the white horse
when the thunder
of the gray herd
shakes the food
from the trees?
Who can fly
with butterfly wings
through guillotine
skies,
who can walk
on water
with lead loves,
lead families,
lead worlds on
one’s shoulders,
depending on
lead lies?
Janus Spirit must close his eyes
so Janus Stone
can see the
hammer coming.
Cleaning Lady To A Spider’s Web
Human World
Other World
sometimes don’t fit
Got to take down
this spider web
or they’ll say
I didn’t clean
Got to break
spider’s home
so people
don’t break mine
Little Boy Black Lightning (All The Way)
All the way.
The ones I like
went all the way.
Past the sign
that said "Turn Back."
Past the hour hands
that said
no more time
for that.
Past the empty glass,
past the parents’ pat.
Past the day
before the snake’s venom,
the day of bites
that teaches everyone else
to be daring
inside a canal.
How rivers
despise canals!
All the way.
The ones I like
would do anything for the light,
they never learned
the language
in which "dark"
means "light",
and "good enough"
takes the place of
"Destiny."
They never
opened
the dictionary of numbers,
where the shadow of clubs
that shattered skulls
hijacked by dreams
casts its dark spell
over possibilities,
they never stopped,
never slowed down
so that they might be a part
of the consensus
of defeat.
All the way.
The ones I like
went all the way.
Little Boy Black Lightning
is turning off the road
now.
For a while
he was like the foam
that gives the wave pride,
its plume
as it charges the shore
with nothing but its
ocean patriotism.
But now
he’s running back
to the ones
he was never going
to become.
How he used to cut them up
with his game
of being different.
All the way.
I like the ones
who go all the way.
Brothers
in self-destruction,
because the light
is booby-trapped.
He never should have
come out to play.
Judas
went halfway.
And Little Boy Black Lightning
has nothing more
to say.
Dead skin.
Wash it off,
shining new sun
underneath
yesterday.
Her or me
or just
a new prism?
Multiply the rays,
let flocks of colors
break free
of the one
word for light.
New world
was always waiting
for the old one
to crash.
The cracks in the window
are like a newborn’s cry,
morning and baby
made it
through the night.
Dead skin.
Wash it off.
I was always there,
under you
and your terrible pride.
You gave my love
the evil eye,
and used black magic
to keep me
in the closet.
New day.
When you said
I was nothing,
I laughed inside,
one too many blows
made me fly.
Sometimes
a beating
is all you need
to
become beautiful.
Dead skin.
Wash it off.
Lies,
the fool in your eyes
was supposed to be me,
but I turned the coat
inside out
now I’m wearing my soul
instead of yours.
Some people’s self-serving fears
can turn a column of dolphins
playing in the waves
into a sea monster,
turn the whole ocean
into a grave.
They’ll recruit you
to join the crusade
against yourself,
then mask it as
a complex.
I’m not your hand
and I don’t have to
go to your mouth.
I picked the grape.
Dead skin.
Wash it off.
False me’s
piled on top of me.
I don’t have to be
what you want,
or where you want.
Today,
I’m reclaiming myself.
Deciding to like myself
again.
The subtle, murderous abuse
is at an end.
I’m washing the dead skin off.
Underneath is me.
I’m sublimated man:
I can turn your bed
into miles.
Sex-chariot, engravings of winged lions
with your inlaid eyes,
can cut through
hours of history-darkness
without your skin
to take away the charge.
Lightning dies
when you kiss it,
and there are worlds
to scorch.
I’m sublimated man:
a giant mental penis
wearing armor
without the danger of
a woman.
Don’t throw yourself
in front of me,
the horses
of what you do to me
will run you over
on the way
to Armageddon.
I’m sublimated man,
know your place.
I don’t need you beside me,
I need you to be my wheels,
and my wound.
Not having you
will make me
want to kill them,
having you
will make me be
their prey.
I’m sublimated man.
Perfume poisons lions,
embraces steal
warriors from their dark wisdom.
The spear between the legs
only sets tomorrow
back to today,
the spear plucked
from its source
is free to fly
with all the power
of being empty-handed:
to pierce the future
with a new direction
or catastrophe.
I’m sublimated man,
ancient and unsaved.
Your love
is what
drives me,
and what makes
loving you
impossible.
I belong to an alliance
of angels
who do not want to fly,
we sit each night
and exchange golden alibis.
I will stand by you
and you by me
while the world burns.
I’ll say I couldn’t,
and you’ll believe me.
Your impotence
will prove my faultlessness,
my concealment
will exonerate your uselessness.
In flightless brotherhood
below abandoned skies
we’ll find a thousand reasons
to stand aside,
hidden by the tears we shed,
declaring innocence by mourning
as the world dies.
Below the path of wings
we would not unfold,
who will find us here,
so far from home?
Angels are imperfect,
only men are perfect
and do nothing.
Ten times the light came to us,
and ten times we said no,
because we had each other.
I belong to an alliance
of angels
who do not want to fly.
We are the power of the night.
We have each other.
Jaguar in jade
held in my hand
stalking my heart
Devour it
make it dark
After the eclipse
the sun will be wise
Jaguar will go back
into the night
hunt new prey
hunt with new eyes
The following poem is based on a novel I wrote during my adolescence, perhaps based upon an unconscious knowledge of my life trajectory. Thror was an aging and lightly-regarded warrior who rose to the occasion during a crisis in which more socially successful and respected leaders faltered: things left undone in life, powers saved up and not squandered by compromise, all came together with stunning force once hope seemed lost. As such, Thror became a personal symbol of the possibility of redemption late in life.
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
The hour is getting late,
the enemy is upon us.
The young ones,
the ones on top,
have failed,
their mountain
has fallen apart
in the rain.
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
Old-man-cage,
let out the beast
your love of others
kept contained.
Look at all the blood
you spilled
by letting fools
be fools!
Old-man-prison,
let out the sage
you condemned
in order
to protect the ignorant.
You burned the world down
with kindness!
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
The last battle has come
at the end
of a useless life.
It is time to set free
Betrayal’s child
of gold!
Rain - cold rain - fall on him,
awaken him!
Warrior, fight your way
out of being good,
God is waiting
for you to fall.
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
Bewildered, they stand
like children waiting
to be struck down.
They stand helplessly,
in all their armor,
in need of a thought,
in need of something
which their victories have
crushed.
Defeat is the
last garden.
His cue
is the rain
that does not stop.
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
Thror,
great Thror,
I knew you
long ago,
in life’s
bright sun.
But you needed storm clouds
to come,
you needed the end of
the earth.
Now, at last,
the door is open.
Death’s nearness
has changed the mathematics
of impotence:
Zero has become
more than nothing -
it has become
the power that makes
One
vast.
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
What has already not happened
does not own my last hour.
I believe that the power of the lion’s leap
comes from the obscenity
of his hesitation.
Memories forgotten
by not being made
finally catch up with you,
give you the freedom to be a ghost
while you’re still alive,
to haunt the life you should
have lived
with the most precious
piece of what you don’t have.
No, I am not over.
There is one more night to live
before the bell tolls.
One last deluge of me
to pour over the earth
for the woman who said No,
and the God who said When?
Thror,
great Thror,
I need you now,
I need to become you.
Written, in the midst of melancholy over things not done, upon finding an unexpectedly-blooming plant beside the window.
In one night
this magnificent flower came.
Still, I will not cry
for who I’m not.
I only believe
I’m a fish
when I’m in the
water.
Swimming, I believe.
Gasping for air on
dry land,
I don’t believe.
What should be
the proof
only makes me too weak
to believe.
Sir Isaac Newton Tropical
under the mango tree.
Laws of Life
are still waiting
to be described.
We know that objects fall;
the earth keeps us
by crushing us,
it tries to swallow us
but the rocks
get in the way.
So rocks
are the real heroes, here.
Some ways of
sheltering
are merely
deceitful ways of
imprisoning.
Some embraces
are euphemisms for
ingestion:
but the rocks
get in the way.
God bless the rocks.
One day an apple came
like a secret code
telling us
who we cannot be
and where we cannot go.
Balloons
like angels
play with the destroyer,
create utopias
in our earthbound minds,
rescue us
with the despair
of not
being able to go
where we dream;
all other escapes
depend on fire.
We burn our way
out of our blue home
to take our spit
to the stars,
or else come back down
with nightmares
neatly packaged
in
brilliant steel,
to blind the cyclops-eye
of cities
that don’t
know the password.
Apocalypses
filled with demons
need to know the law
of gravity.
Hearts never cleaned out
pull down
intentions,
which makes
world-endings
fly.
And Gravity understands it all,
it’s the medium
of unreachable beauty
that wounds us
into doubling
the power
of our filth.
We want
to say
I did it,
so we
become
gravity ourselves,
we race the earth,
try to drag ourselves down
before it can.
We learn how to make our
poison fly
for a moment,
just enough
to empower
our helplessness:
the invalid conquers
his disease
by becoming it.
One day an apple came
like a secret code
to the head of
Sir Isaac Newton
of the North.
What if it had
been a mango -
and landed on his heart?
What if the laws of Life
had come instead
of the law of gravity,
exuding sweet juice
and histories of taste,
ambitions of pleasure
and visions of powerless love
while the planets
just watched?
What if the laws of life
had come, instead -
not cold laws
shaping cold plans,
freezing everything
inside the borders
of the mind?
Sir Isaac Newton Tropical,
go and sit beneath the
mango tree!
New clocks of
joy are waiting
to be set
by your discoveries.
A poem
nobody needs to understand
but me.
Talking to myself,
speaking in tongues.
It’s coming from my God.
The physics formula
of my life
is coming out on the blackboard
of my undecipherable exhibitionism.
Did you go to the MIT
of me?
Then you won’t get it.
I just scribbled the Universe
in front of you:
Time being digested in the
intestines of
Space, which is really
only the loneliness
around storms.
Nothingness is the aura
of what moves.
For you, it’s only a flood
of symbols and numbers,
even though it’s really
your mother’s milk.
This is my poem to me,
feel free not to understand it.
There’s no reason why you
should learn Greek
if you’re not going to Greece.
This is my poem to me,
I’m dancing with the paper
because I’m alone.
I’m giving away my secrets
because tomorrow might not come.
My life is the sound
of an orgasm
meditating.
I have come to preach the sound
of the bullets that always miss,
which ring the temple bell
of what the ages
cannot lose.
I am the fallen Mongol
awaking as a tear
in the eye of China.
I am the broken eagle
of the Chancellery
lying at the feet of
what it soared above,
when, for a brief forever,
the sky believed it
was the ground.
I am the kiss
into which the Universe will
collapse
after its fleeing is destroyed
by the thought
of escaping into serenity.
The Universe will not accept a
lobotomy,
history will continue to
babble incoherently,
conferring eloquence
upon the brave.
I preach in madness,
to myself alone.
Who knows the Sibyl,
but the God
who is breaking her
in his arms?
Slash the
Gordian Knot.
A thousand closed doors
stole our patience
until we stopped
saying no.
Nothing was left
for the complexities.
Grab her,
procreate,
roll over,
watch him hit him,
sleep,
fall from the clock
into the gauntlet.
You can’t turn this blood
into gold,
sweat out love
in the modern sweat lodge.
Nothing was left
for the complexities.
The thousand closed doors.
Till we said yes.
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Armies, guns.
Baby Zeus played
with thunderbolts.
Then we came.
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Problems with a hundred heads.
Nothing was left
for the complexities.
Who was going to say no?
When you wait your whole life
for a good feeling,
for a real feeling.
Grab your wife in the dark.
Grab a country in the dark.
When you wait your whole life
for a good feeling,
for a real feeling.
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Nothing was left
for the complexities.
The thousand closed doors.
Of course
you charge through the one
that’s open.
The one they opened.
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Who was going to say no?
Nothing was left
for the complexities.
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Slash it!
Slash it!
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Did I say it already?
Slash the Gordian Knot.
Man stole fire from the Gods
to make the nation.
A hundred million weaklings,
plugged into the wall of history,
can light the world up
in its own image.
The voltage of
a hundred million defeats
can electrocute
the one who is above attack,
in the form
of those who speak
another tongue.
Battered clay
grows invincible beneath
a helmet.
I am nothing
said by multitudes
is the secret of
earthly power.
Great souls,
disdaining the pseudopodia
of what is less,
remain emaciated.
Genius
is no match for
an avalanche
of mud.
Man stole fire from the Gods
to make the nation.
There is no other yardstick,
once stories have been told
around the campfire,
than who is left standing
after helplessness
explodes.
Slaves are always the fiercest ones.
Beat the bull,
demean him in a dark tunnel
below the sand,
and he’ll charge
at any cape
you wave at him.
The horns of
knowing he’s nothing
will find the
blood
you choose.
Nothing alone
means huge together.
Who else would wear the
single-minded uniform,
and dare to stab the eye of love
with the sharpened point of
his impotence?
Who said revenge had to find
its real father?
When you have been
hurt enough,
there is no such thing
as a case
of mistaken identity.
Come together,
wounded ones!
A hundred million wounds
can be healed
with a transfusion
of the world’s blood.
A hundred million wounds
never needs to come home.
Man stole fire from the Gods
to make the nation.
Was it not said?
The meek shall inherit the earth:
the meek wearing steel.
Weak with weak creates a lie
that cannot be disproved
on the earth.
Whip-marks on their back,
but they never turn around.
It’s whatever lies in the direction
their eyes have been pointed.
Somehow, the guilty ones
always have gold
underneath their feet.
Come together,
wounded ones!
Too late to be you;
still time to be
melted in the furnace of anger
and beaten into
a sword.
You’ll think you’re better
when you’re dead.
Man stole fire from the Gods
to make the nation.
Have you ever seen
a field filled with blackbirds?
One man comes and claps his hands,
and the birds take off.
In the same way,
frightened souls scatter
into the sky of the ambition
of the one who God cast out.
There are magicians
who redeem the weak
by using them.
It doesn’t matter if it’s only in
their minds:
phantom limbs
are the guardian angels
of those who’ve lost
their legs.
Man stole fire from the Gods
to make the nation.
Nations are the bartenders
of the earth.
What other invention could have
kept the weak from
hanging themselves?
What other invention could have
kept the weak from
becoming strong?
Come together,
wounded ones!
There is a shortcut to everything you’ve lost,
it’s called the nation;
you can serve it without walking,
you can serve it without seeing.
And the meek shall inherit the earth:
the meek wearing steel.
Man stole fire from the Gods
to make the nation.
Eye-thumped
the Universe,
God is really dead.
Or is He only
at the bottom
of the winter pond,
like a frog
buried in the mud
until warmth
returns?
Eye-thumped
the Universe,
God is really dead.
Or is he only
hibernating at the bottom
of your war?
The more you
say it’s for Him
the farther away He goes.
You both know it.
Make the sign of the cross
over a bullet,
and God pukes up the world:
He’s got a weak stomach
for His own name
when it comes out of a gun.
Eye-thumped
the Universe,
God is really dead.
But it’s not your fault.
They put you on the wrong plane,
it didn’t land at the reason.
Too late now…
When you’re there,
reflexes take the place of God,
they have to.
You’ve got to be the first
and the fastest,
think I don’t know?
No time to check your soul-pulse,
anything that’s not ammunition
has got to be ditched,
even this poem.
And I mean it.
Your mother deserves
a son.
But somewhere,
Hell is burning
for those who knew.
Eye-thumped
the Universe,
God is really dead.
Or is He just waiting
for the world to go back
to the soft eyes of the first deer
lying on the ground,
when all a little boy could do
was cry?
Winter angel
wearing a snowflake
while God makes a phone call,
hoping to find someone higher up.
There’s days when God
needs a God.
Winter angel,
proxy God while the war
is raging.
She’s got breasts
to feed the world ice,
but knows enough
to give us each other
instead.
Winter angel
in the cold interlude
between forgetting and remembering.
There’ll always be divinity,
no matter what the temperature.
Winter angel,
spread your wings,
love us until the spring.
Love us until
God comes back.
Emergency generator.
Emergency god.
If you suffer enough,
you’ll never be alone.
Winter angel,
spread your wings,
love us until the spring.
Love us until
God comes back.
Time to take it all in.
Time to sit down
and light the pipe,
enough running around.
The answers are scattered all around you.
You never read
what you wrote.
Time to take it all in.
1980 was a big year.
You got beat up
in the first minute,
and didn’t let it come.
Beautiful things stayed in the closet.
Then came 1983:
1983 destroyed you
with your complexity and your pride;
and a powerful man’s
chance for revenge.
He’s dead now,
but his tower stands over the grave
of one of you.
It’s the year the library
of Alexandria burned down…
1984 the swans took off,
their wings
drowned out
losses,
became the dream.
But one swan
got lost in the other.
2000:
two swans fell out of the sky.
No Y2K,
just the tragedy of 20 years
of turning into glass,
until one good-bye
could destroy the world.
1989: the blood of lost love
stained the bed
of the wild sister,
I rode with her in the car that night
and became real.
1993: she faded, too,
she was Electra and Clytemnestra ,
she stopped watering the rose
because he was gone,
by her hand of not caring
for ten minutes.
1995: the inner candle was lit,
my soul looked into itself,
and fell in love; God left the back door
to me open.
But then came 2000, the year
already mentioned,
and it didn’t matter; I might as well be dead.
Hating myself,
I forced
the horses to turn back into mice.
I didn’t want the carriage
to go anywhere.
I put on the rags of
not believing,
because she was gone.
Giant of clay feet -
the woman who was my feet
is gone!
I was always propped up
by somebody…
Time to take it all in.
Twilight’s like a good smoke.
Look down from the hill before
night relieves the vista.
Beautiful, beautiful life
not lived!
You’ve been living something else,
not your life.
A kind of hurtful sleep
of running.
You’re so strong
to endure your
cowardice!
But don’t hate yourself,
that would only be the final blow.
Time to take it all in.
Light up,
and stop running,
stop walking.
Stop everything!
Even this poem must come to an end.
Smoke and look,
smoke and look,
night’s coming soon
to help you out.
Anything left?
Don’t rush to find it.
Wait for it.
The sun disappears:
don’t go running after it,
you’ll miss
the moon.
Stay out and wait.
Smoke and do nothing.
Stars will appear soon,
the night can
become a kind of day.
Stop running around
and you’ll see.
Take it all in.
You knew the answers
long ago,
you just never took the time
to listen.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Then you can be
with anybody,
or not be
with anybody.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Stand on the earth
God gave you
and you won’t ever
let yourself
be ridden away.
You won’t ever
let a fool
on top.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Then no beauty
will ever make you crawl,
no threat
will ever
make you drop
the gift.
Your legs
meet the earth
like the night
meets the coming sun,
while there is power in them,
all things will be well;
anything that makes
them weak
is wrong.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Answers will come.
Test her
with the feeling
that comes up
from the earth,
if your legs
lose contact,
say no.
Standing strong
matters more
than happiness.
Birds fly south,
the earth stays;
below the snow
the earth stays.
Put your feet
on the ground.
If they don’t believe it,
don’t breathe
them in.
Lies and truth
both wear
a thousand masks,
they’ll fool you
all night long,
only your legs will know.
Walk and tell.
Walk strongly
with the perception
that lets you walk strongly.
Great strangeness
is the birthright
of the earth’s
biological children.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Approval
on the way to death
is meaningless.
Rejection
that comes from the outside
is outside its
jurisdiction.
Inside
you’ll know,
once you’re willing
to be the only one.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Stop worrying.
If she likes you,
if she doesn’t,
if she respects you,
if she fears you,
you don’t need
to bow down
to her weaknesses,
you don’t need
to submit
to his misunderstanding.
Put your feet
on the ground.
For the first time,
feel you,
be you,
it’s your first
obligation,
it comes from a higher place.
Let selfish ones
call you selfish,
let self-seekers
call you egotistic,
let fools,
exposed by ten thousand years,
call you the fool,
because you don’t fit
seamlessly
into their poison history.
Sometimes,
you must disconnect
in order
to connect.
Pour out
friends who come with conditions,
in order to pour
the world in.
Put your feet
on the ground.
That way,
you’ll never be alone,
which means
you can be alone
until silence
rises, to create again.
Put your feet
on the ground.
The Universe
needed emptiness
to be born.
It needed all the suns to go out,
it needed endless blackness
and formless dust
to begin again,
to collect the debris of prisons
into the wombs
of giant spirals,
to hurl new chances
into the void.
Life was always there,
like water is in ice,
like ice is in steam.
Ages of nothing
had to come first.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Losing everything
is painless
once you know
how to stand
on the earth,
because it is impossible.
Your legs are the bridge
that won’t ever let them
isolate you.
Being a hermit
is sacred
when it’s necessary.
With your feet on the ground,
exile is the highest form
of companionship.
Put your feet
on the ground.
That way,
you won’t ever have to
hate
or run
just to keep yourself
from being killed,
you’ll know
how to be yourself
in the middle
of storms
of ignorance.
Since no one
can bring you anything
better than
you and the earth together,
you won’t be overpowered
by things that shine;
you won’t give away
your unknown purpose
for lesser things
that everyone can see.
If she comes to stay
you’ll love her to the end,
if she comes to
take you away
from you,
you’ll treasure
the color of her wings,
as she flies away.
Beauty was never safe,
why die
pretending?
Put your feet
on the ground.
Feel the power
coming up,
the power to be you.
Let them look.
Let them reveal themselves
for who they are,
they don’t know
the first thing
about you.
Feel the power
coming up,
it’s between
the earth and you.
Only you know.
Once you let yourself feel,
you’ll never
make a mistake.
You’ll do and be
everything in harmony
with what is,
they won’t be able
to make you
miss a note.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Men’s greatest weapons
can’t protect them,
their armor,
their warnings,
their hiding places,
their threats
are all easily broken,
like the hard shell of a cockroach
on the floor.
One angry foot from Heaven
is all it takes to show who’s who.
Put your feet
on the ground,
it’s the only path to invulnerability,
which means
you’ll never die
the wrong way.
Like King Midas,
everything,
even your death,
will turn to gold.
Once your feet
are on the ground.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Don’t try to be
above the earth.
Put your feet
on the ground.
The earth and you
together.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Put your feet
on the ground.
The only secret I
have to whisper
in your ear.
Watch me live
by it.
If I can do it,
you’ll know
what I mean.
Put your feet
on the ground.
Then
watch me no more.
Put your feet
on the ground.
You won’t get nothing back.
Most people are cowards.
People-sellers.
Betrayers.
Run-awayers.
Tough times come,
excuses blossom
like a hydra’s heads.
People lose their sight.
The moment of truth almost always
drapes you in a cloak
of invisibility.
The power-person
puts a yellow star
on you,
and friends
run for cover.
Even "Good morning"
seems like an act
of treason.
How easy it is
to become a germ!
No,
don’t waste your time
being noble
for insurance,
back-up is something you only pay for:
you never get it.
No, don’t be noble
unless
it’s what
you aspire to
in spite
of the asymmetry.
No, don’t be noble
unless
the beauty of your own blood,
given alone
in the cold rain
on a blind day,
moves you
more than the
contemptible self-protectiveness
of those destined to rot
on thrones.
Nobility is an act of
intimacy
with God,
it has nothing
to do
with the world.
Blessed is the soldier
who dies
for what he believes in,
pray that he is not
wrong.
Sad is the soldier
who dies
for what someone else
believes in
with his blood.
Herded by another’s
pride
into the killing pen
of mud.
Over the top,
given to guns that didn’t need
to be awakened.
Into the uniform
of the hated,
surrounded
by justice,
or just the same level
of transgression,
that’s come to eat him
for someone else’s
sin.
Trapped in the crossfire
of those who sent him
and those
who want to set fire
to those
who sent him.
They’re both killers.
Bullets firing
from his gun
are but a coffin.
Bullets
that can’t reach
the chess player
reach the
pawn.
All that pain
and fear
and diarrhea,
rat-death in a hole,
for someone else’s mistake.
Good-bye mother,
good-bye girl,
time to go,
nobility locked behind the door
of a crime,
it’s hard to die well
in Hell
without Heaven’s flag
in your hands.
And you know.
You just know.
It’s like a drowning rat
trying to
crawl out
of rising water.
It’s not fair.
But God’s still there,
He’s not
afraid of
history,
he’ll do anything
for a soul.
Blessed is the soldier
who dies for what he
believes in,
pray that he is not
wrong.
For all the rest,
there’s God
waiting at the end
of the night.
Mama’s coming home
as snow.
Wear me on your coat.
Go outside to play,
I’ll be falling
all around you,
cover you with love
just like in the old days.
Mama was a soldier,
went where she was told,
gun in her hands
was an invitation,
uniform said "Go ahead,
shoot",
mama wasn’t mama
over there.
Mama was a soldier,
I hope they were right,
the ones who took me
away from you
to fight for something
that seemed so clear
until you were alone.
Who will take care of the Earth now?
Who will take care of the Earth now?
Please don’t die Mother Earth,
please don’t leave your human family.
Please don’t die Mother Earth,
please don’t leave your human family.
Mama was a soldier,
brave before the war,
single-mother-brave,
bullet didn’t prove anything:
we already knew.
Warrior heart, Peace heart,
Mama fell between the two.
Mama was a soldier,
the way I fought for you
is the way I fought for them.
With you I knew
what I was fighting for.
With them, I could only guess.
I hope it wasn’t the spirit
of broken treaties
coming back to haunt us.
Mama was a soldier,
but it’s over now.
Snow is coming down,
pure white, in spring.
Flowers, wait a minute,
let me say good-bye.
Who will take care of the Earth now?
Who will take care of the Earth now?
Please don’t die Mother Earth,
please don’t leave your human family.
Please don’t die Mother Earth,
please don’t leave your human family.
Snow is coming down.
Mama’s coming home.
The hearts that sent her are black,
but pure white’s coming home.
She might not say it,
but I say it, with an apology,
to her.
Cause I didn’t hear her say it.
The hearts that sent her are black,
but pure white’s coming home.
Little sins
can’t stand up to forgiving tears.
Can’t you see her coming down?
Mama’s coming home.
Look, Mama’s coming home.
Who will take care of the Earth now?
Who will take care of the Earth now?
Please don’t die Mother Earth,
please don’t leave your human family.
Please don’t die Mother Earth,
please don’t leave your human family.
Three Fates
spinning destiny,
history is late.
What do you want,
three sisters:
a husband,
a child?
Why take it out
on us?
Three Fates,
weaving time
and powerlessness,
why so much death
in the fabric?
You, who have the
colors of life,
why do you dress
the earth
in black?
Three Fates,
spinning the wheel
of the future.
Perfect weavers,
why these flaws,
why these heartbreaks
torn into the
winter coat
of the lives
we must live?
What can I give you
to make you
change your mind?
What can I do for you
to make you love us?
Three Fates,
spinners of uniforms,
spinners of black veils
of mourning,
spinners of rags
after the Bomb has
stripped us
naked
of the cities we wore,
spinners of golden dresses
that burn the bride,
why do you bind us
in clothes that fit?
Three Fates,
almighty sisters
of the cave that decides,
throw out the dark cloth
that goes so well with
our fever-ridden face,
spin us something
we are not ready for,
spin us something
we must grow into.
Give us a chance
to be who we aren’t.
Three Fates,
what can I give you
to make you
change your mind?
What can I do for you
to make you love us?
Nations draw
lines between themselves.
One colors itself
green on the map,
one colors itself
red.
Beds create danger,
wanting to be "one"
can’t last.
Disintegration,
as a moment,
is ecstasy;
as a relationship
it’s death.
Nations draw
lines between themselves.
Lovers
must be nations.
Even holding hands.
Walking together,
there must still be
deep solitude.
Orgasm
is a capitulation
that must have
clear walls,
when it goes too far,
the treaty
is broken.
Love’s throat
isn’t Life’s throat,
one of them should be exposed
to wolves,
one should
be guarded
with the fiercest
vigilance.
Mothers don’t leave
their children
in dark woods.
Lovers must not leave
their souls
in the wilderness of
a kiss.
Nations draw
lines between themselves.
Armies watch
strips of land
elevated to greatness
by the accident
of being between
two minds.
Lovers need armies
to counteract
the foolishness
of hearts.
Hearts
leave souls
behind.
The smile of her face
descends
from Mt. Sinai
with commandments
of self-destruction.
Everybody’s afraid,
everybody
wants to
close the holy road.
With well-drawn lines,
love skirmishes,
and retreats back to
love.
Without lines,
love invades,
and kills.
Souls wake up
in the winter time.
Nations draw
lines between themselves.
You and I must be
careful with each other,
there’s too much love.
We’ve got to cool down,
love each other
at the right temperature,
something more than friendship
and less than murder.
When respect begins to burn
like a book
in a Nazi bonfire,
love’s gone too far.
Go on, break in,
take each other’s body
for a joy ride, but don’t forget:
there are souls involved!
Be wary of love:
swim in it,
but come up for air.
Nations draw
lines between themselves.
Lovers,
draw lines between yourselves
before love turns
into hate.
Iron ring
stand inside the iron ring
Come to me
within the iron ring
or keep your tresses of fire
for the dry leaves
Ring of iron
around the soul’s bed
No whore
who’s after a black horse
No rapist
seeking a low place
to flood
will ever get through
the ring of iron
God’s ring -
for a man
Iron ring
love me inside the iron ring
Don’t give up your wings
but don’t take mine either
I live inside the iron ring
If you want to see a whale
go to the sea
You know where to find me
I live inside the iron ring
No mystery
I live inside the iron ring
"Bring me the flower
from the seventh door"
the priestess said
"beyond the suitors turned to stone
Prove your love
before the judges
of the heart
old robed men
who come shuffling down the halls
of desire
with candles of who they were
heads of dead lions
and bodies of the young
Hurl your ship
into the waters
of my body’s reign
I am the ruler of the earth
I have blossomed
into godhood"
"Goddess" I reply
"I kneel
with a poem only
Nothing else can leave
the iron ring
Whatever Grail
whatever flower
whatever gold
whatever blood
you seek from me
can come from nowhere else
but from within the iron ring
The ring of iron
in which my slave-self
sleeps eternally
out of the reach of powerful hands
like yours
Never can beauty awaken
what the soul
has not learned to treasure
After God’s lightning has struck
a man’s weak spot
the skeleton
of his dreams
becomes the
king
of his final days
There is no more time
not to be himself
I don’t know where paradise is
but I know where it isn’t
It’s not outside
the iron ring"
Iron ring
stand inside the iron ring
Come to me
within the iron ring
or keep your tresses of fire
for the dry leaves
Ape in a cage
Ape in a cage
No wonder
he’s browsing through
catalogues
of disease
looking for a way
to die.
Self-destruction
is the only worthy substitute
for miles of green treetops
he shared with birds
that the pale faces
of voyeurs have stolen so
that they can watch him
playing with a tire.
Ape in a cage
Ape in a cage
Mountain wearing green,
beautiful face wearing the veil of
a cloud
that fell.
Fruits swarmed about him, then,
serving him joy,
and when the rain fell
it only made the sun count.
Underneath his
hat of leaves
he grew great within the sound
of dripping water,
never dreaming of Man.
Ape in a cage
Ape in a cage
What a disaster,
to be saved by bars,
to be ripped from the
uncertain green and
surrendered to the
invulnerability of a
gray box.
Devoured by his easy,
useless life,
he’ll spend
the rest of his existence
masturbating
in a corner of his
enormity.
No wonder
he’s playing with fire,
jungle’s calling him,
last drops of green leaking
in through
dark paths;
when you’re an ape
in a cage
you take what you
can get,
climb any
twisted reminder
of a tree.
Ape in a cage
Ape in a cage
Shakes the bars again -
how boring!
No wonder death is growing
on him,
like a cosmological theory
that seems to put
the stars in order.
Green knife,
cut the gray!
Ape in a cage
wants to go away.
Sickness is like a sweet
trumpet,
calling him home,
angels don’t look the same
when you’re in a cage -
angels have to change
their shape to
squeeze through the bars.
And your nightmare
is his friend.
Swinging through the
green trees of his will
one last time,
ape in a cage
is only looking
for the way home.
Road of no return.
Can’t come back.
It could have been another
but it’s not.
Three forks in the road
and now it’s this one,
this deep hurt road
winding through
a forest
of fallen leaves.
Sometimes
one longs for the unknown
of the forsaken path;
the glory of yesterday
does not wear
a crown of thorns,
it moves as easily as an eagle
soaring above
a canyon of pain.
But that glory is unreachable,
as is the logic behind it.
Blunders
climb upwards
like the steps of a pyramid,
it’s the hour to meet the God
of who you are
and who you’re not.
You wouldn’t be you
if you’d accepted
the gold coin
Fate put into your hand.
Road of no return.
Can’t go back.
The fool
got you here,
don’t rag on him now.
When the music stops,
sit in the chair that’s closest.
Clay is tired
of the potter’s
indecision:
Make me into something
before you die!
It’s a sin
to experiment
with yourself
forever,
better a monkey
than a half-made man,
better a tiger
than a gun without bullets.
Brilliance comes
when perfection
falls.
You’ll never know:
one day
you just have to
plant your flag somewhere
and make a stand.
Otherwise,
you’ll only evolve
into what you
couldn’t leave.
Bad
Good
Better
Best.
Aim for "Better",
"Best" is just a decoy
working for "Bad."
Road of no return.
Discomfort
proves you are there.
How do you think a butterfly feels
once he has shed
the grace
of being a caterpillar?
Halfway between an angel
and a worm,
it’s like being
a teenager
all over again.
The adolescence
of the old man
growing towards God
lacks the endless power
of the young
rushing towards love:
shield of hormones
is stronger
than shield of understanding.
Everything sacred is doubted.
Everything else is a blindfold.
Road of no return.
If I’d Only: the God of Collapse.
I Didn’t: the God
of Wisdom.
Time says:
put your pencils down.
This is who you are.
Grow within
your current
misunderstanding.
Don’t rip yourself
apart, and throw
the timber into
the fire of
the new you.
You’ll only burn up
everything
you’ve struggled for.
Road of no return.
It’s too late
to go back,
one leaf in the wrong place
changes everything.
Ancestors walked across
the Bering Straits
when there was land there,
but then the sea stood up,
and said you can’t go back.
So they stayed.
Get used to your new country.
Believe in the genius
of your mistakes.
Believe in the hand of God.
Stupidity is the weapon
angels use to slay small visions
that get in the way of great ones.
Road of no return.
You’ve washed up on an island
in the middle of nowhere;
you might as well call it home.
Crying for your shattered ship
is a way of drowning.
Road of no return.
Stand tall.
Right or wrong
in the
Mystery,
stand tall.
Choose boldly
from the wardrobe
of mistakes,
mount the twilight
like the last
rays of the sun.
Give gold to the
night.
Dare to be
half of yourself.
Road of no return.
Your only alternative
is to go nowhere.
Road of no return.
Take it.
Laughing And Running In The Sun
Swing low,
but for you.
Sometimes I’m
ready for the
chariot
to come down
from on high.
Leave cotton’s
new face
for someone else
to kiss.
Then I see you
laughing and running
in the sun.
You got here
down the road of chains.
Ruined, humiliated bridges
brought you
from the past;
the blood of
the dark continent
was spilled
to rescue
the world
you pass through.
We don’t deserve it.
But we love you.
Your beautiful face
is more than a history lesson.
Somewhere,
down there in the
cargo hold of what Man
has done to Man,
there was a soul that
didn’t have a single reason to live,
except for what you
might be
when God woke up.
Imagination
came in the night
made another slave,
took another step
towards you.
I know I can’t complain
in the shadow of that.
But slavery doesn’t
like whispers of itself,
it won’t mind.
I won’t kill my tears
just to be fair.
I feel like breaking.
Even though the weight’s
been lifted,
I feel like breaking.
But I won’t.
I’ll wear these fetters
for another day,
because you’re there,
reminding me.
He wasn’t wrong.
His chains were on
the way to you.
He wasn’t wrong.
I’ll wear these fetters
for another day,
because I see you,
laughing and running
in the sun.
When you love me
the world will be saved.
It’s a strange thing to say,
but I know it’s that way.
When you love me
the world will be saved.
Peace and the Earth go together
Moon and Night
Sun and Day
You and Me
When you love me
the world will be saved.
It’s a strange thing to say,
but I know it’s that way.
When you love me
the world will be saved.
All history long,
love has been missing life
and life has been missing love
Eagle wants to know
how to be a dove
Fire feels fine till it’s burned away
everything it needs
Victory always becomes defeat
and that’s when angry souls
go deep
When you love me
the world will be saved.
It’s a strange thing to say,
but I know it’s that way.
When you love me
the world will be saved.
When the sun comes back into the sky
When the water comes back into the sea
When you come back to me
The world will be as it was meant to be
Peace is the secret
behind the tears
And peace begins with
you loving me
and me loving you
When you love me
the world will be saved.
It’s a strange thing to say,
but I know it’s that way.
When you love me
the world will be saved.
Peace and the Earth go together
Moon and Night
Sun and Day
You and Me
When you love me
the world will be saved.
It’s a strange thing to say,
but I know it’s that way.
When you love me
the world will be saved.
Seven angels in stone
the healer made,
a sculptress and a wanderer
by trade,
who stayed in the place
the mountain died
for a thousand days,
killing it
with her vision of the damned,
turning it into faces of love.
For their families, they were
like angels fallen,
the sick: ambushed
by ecstasy,
stranded by lives given
to the same half;
fathers caught them dancing
around the golden calf,
and closed the door of blood.
Loyalty blows away like sand
in the wind of pride.
Abandoned sperm sent to war for
the sake of lust,
sons broken by contempt
who lost the force of life.
But then the angels came,
from a hand that knew not one of the
dying,
but had looked death in the eye
through the eyes of a friend.
She melted the stone faces and
made them warm,
gave lightness to the rock
and wings more powerful than neighbors and
fathers. She brought her friend
back from the dead with the thought
of keeping him alive in others.
Crouching amidst the hedges
by the fountains of the dying,
the angels sang mysterious tranquil
smiles, offered hands
not cold, like human hands,
though made of stone,
to bless the lost and raise the damned.
When stone cares,
life holds on.
People die
because the whole world
is trying to stamp them out.
Seven angels
made of stone
pardoned the tainted lovers
before the bell of the Muse
could toll
for a job well done.
The sculptress vanished,
her work complete,
like a cicada that sings
and dies.
But the seven angels in stone remain.
Go worship by them
where an infinite human heart
met the outcasts of the earth
halfway,
in the place where God forgives
what Man has damned.
Go worship by the sculptress’
tender, calculating silence.
No sickness can withstand
love that comes from stone.
Rising Sun
over my heart.
Night’s ending.
Sweated the fever out
with poetry.
Rising Sun
over my heart.
Cut my veins
and let the black blood
out.
The first-born of Egypt
were spared.
Rising Sun
over my heart.
The dark dug down
all the way
to where the water is.
A lot of people are going
to drink from this well.
Rising Sun
over my heart.
It’s over:
the night.
It couldn’t break me.
Night is the boot-camp
of the light.
I’m not the same man
who went in.
Rising Sun
over my heart.
Sure I’ll cry again,
but tomorrow’s tears
will be different.
Now that I broke my
rose-colored glasses
and looked my
nightmares in the face,
I can live here.
Rising Sun
over my heart.
Finally, my heart
is ready
to rise for you.