TERRACES
The Sound Of One Hand Clapping
Hanging On By A Thread (Lyrics)
Terraces of words
building up to the sky,
cut into the hill
that wants to be left alone;
slashing gardens into its back.
At first
it wouldn’t answer,
it clung to its hiding place
in the clouds, camouflaged
by silence
like a deer trying to become a tree,
until I held up the mirror
of my poems
to its face
tattooed by my speech
,and it saw
its barrenness
coaxed into loving:
good earth, broken from the inside
and left to die
the death of flowers.
I revealed its fertility
with
my relentless pen,
pulled by a team
of bulls harnessed
by loneliness,
I transformed it
into a reason,
I gave a voice
to the darkness
and it became
light.
All it ever wanted
was to
cry tears
in its own name.
I am a part of the plain
but I had to be a
mountain for a moment!
I could not stand
all you little men
climbing on me,
now I give you
your daily bread.
Horse of rock
with a saddle of gardens
for all mankind
to ride.
Now you know you are not alone.
All kinds of footsteps
in your mind!
I’ll bear the shame
for you,
you don’t have to say a word,
just be free.
Now you can pick
fruit
from the sky.
Mountain of
self-inflicted terraces,
I changed myself;
you can change the world.
I didn’t lift a finger,
I just stopped lying.
A thousand miles ceased to be
necessary.
Yesterday, I looked down on you.
Today you live on me,
eating from my hand.
We are the little people,
too little for the facts.
Your mighty world
could be thwarted by us.
Truth is the
funeral pyre
of diamonds.
Of course we
wouldn’t understand.
You can’t reason with us,
only push our buttons,
trick us
into digging the silver
out of the earth.
We f**k and eat,
that’s all we do.
We’ll only
build a city in the clouds
if you lie to us,
make us think
it’s all about our stomach,
that there’s a wet p*ssy
inside your philosophy,
a pot of gold at the end
of your idea.
We’re like circus animals,
to get us to jump
through the flaming hoops
of noble thoughts,
you must reward us
with raw meat
dripping with blood.
What a difficult path
to your sublime world!
What an insult,
to have to stoop to our level
to make the sun shine!
Swarms of ants too big
to step on,
you have to harness.
Yes, we’re the little people
who sweat your
paradise into being;
the sick clay of the
democratic nightmare
which your well-bred hands must
mold into a backdoor;
the twisted path
to your will,
now that the crow no longer flies
to the throne.
How hard to be alone with us,
to have to pull rabbits
out of a hat
in the vault
of dead kings.
How hard to walk with our body,
to live with your mind imprisoned inside our lame mass,
forced to translate
your aspirations
into the language of pigs rolling in the mud.
Your father used the ocean
to overthrow the gods,
now he must argue with the ocean
every day, and struggle against its ignorance
to build the world with its
waves.
Yes, we are the little people.
You couldn’t live a day without us,
and yet,
we’re always getting in the way!
The soldier’s wife,
she spends half her time
at the roadblock,
she keeps two clocks,
one on Baghdad time,
for Fallujah and Karbala,
one for New York all alone,
she says right now the sun is glaring
brightly there,
as she clings to her bed
which has an empty side
and imagines his boots
stepping on the burning stones,
another language sweeping by
like the ocean,
whose placid waves will not release his eyes,
for there are fish within that baffling, undeciphered sea
who will flash with his death,
with the light of hatred
the moment he turns his back.
Lips not kissed by his,
with craters he never saw
in the center of their world,
the real place their prayer rugs are pointing to.
Pain is in the Bible, and pain is in the Koran,
religion is what someone else did to you.
It’s not his land, but he’s her man:
the soldier’s wife is loyal to the one she knows
on the other side of the fools who sent him
and the placard rivers that don’t know him
flowing with rage past
white marble banquets.
Out there, Iraq way, rats' noses sniff every
gust of air,
they gnaw at night through impenetrable defenses
with tricks
saved for morning,
they’ll kick him in the balls of roads
at dawn,
he has to step outside the iron shell,
show his soft oyster meat
to the bomb,
it could be a stalled-out car,
a package with a wire,
a holy verse dug into the road,
a patient barrel
waiting, unflinching as a face
that does not protest the wandering of a fly,
and then, a signal of light, a burst of flames,
a little birth of darkness
in someone’s home.
It won’t be hers, she loves him too much!
Rats and dogs, they prowl and test,
they wait, they run, they hide, they strike,
they’re sacred to their own,
and brave like the wind that fails against the mountain
but blows away the dust:
heroes to their own
but dogs to her,
because she loves him,
and she wants him home.
The world is filled with dogs and knights,
that’s what we are to each other,
but philosophy is for those untouched.
For those whose joy is at risk every minute
in some khaki desert task,
there is too much desperation to forgive,
to paint the bullets white
or both sides black,
there is only love and superstition,
magic rituals of recuperation;
to bring him back
she keeps his place at the table set
and fights against the angel
who begs her to forget.
Don’t break the cord, don’t break
the cord! Not even for a minute,
not even for a second.
Don’t betray him by being at peace
while he’s at war!
She imagines every hour, what is he doing?
Where is he? She sees the helmet, hears the boots,
sees the dark faces and garments like flags fluttering in the breeze,
hands waving about,
are they empty? Faces of mysteries;
and everywhere that wild ecstatic tongue
that sounds like
dancing, like plotting, like
a scholar
speaking through an animal’s throat,
like a palace made of dirt
behind a moat.
She knows not of stately mosques
all light and air,
nor of holy men and caliphs of old
when Europe crawled.
She clings to anxiety
so she will not succumb to grief,
keeps it simple, without politics
or history.
There is a roadblock
and a man, and prayers like a shield, prayers
like a shield. If you don’t have someone over there
you won’t understand.
Some earth-faced widow rending her hair
wails like a beast
in the night of a land he doesn’t belong in;
soldier’s wife cannot cry for her,
it might have been her man.
Women in black tossing the coins
of their heart
.Sometimes she wishes she was a helicopter
and could come down to where he is
and extract him from the battle
like Athena in the myth,
carry him home to love him,
or set him down by the lake to fish,
extract him from the battle that’s
a vast expanse of quiet,
studded with interruptions of death
miles of clear white skin breaking out
with blemishes of war
stillness swirling with frozen battle
from which movement, which is a weapon,
comes.
It’s in her head, though she’s never been there,
because she loves him,
the soldier’s wife.
She sweats and walks there with a pounding heart,
she’s in the same company,
rides in the same APC,
watches the building behind his back
with her cobra gun,
to hell with bashing the mistakes,
you see something, you’ve got to bite it like a snake!
Poor married couple blown up somewhere,
missile too fast out of the starting blocks;
fire the shot into the flock. It’s a shame,
but is my guy all right?
Don’t want to sin, don’t want to sin!
But I love him, she cries;
don’t slip up by waiting too long, don’t wince
because you might be wrong!
Scorch the earth around my man,
I love him, shoot the dove and peace be damned!
Soldier’s wife spends a lot of time
with the priest
the Bible spins round and round in her mind,
bouncing inside her
like sneakers in a dryer.
Blow down the walls of Jericho
and turn the other cheek.
I’ll take what works for me,
what works for a frightened woman
in love.
I’ll blow the seven trumpets by myself
and may the bomb-makers burn in hell!
72 virgins on their side,
I’ll take them on with my loving hands,
my shy yielding
,under the sheets, that waits for him
and him alone; and my kiss will win!
You can have the martyrs,
I’ll take a living man back inside my home.
And the confusion pounds like thunder
in her soul,
she loves, and love has taken her
to the shelter of a loyal
misunderstanding,
dragged her in from the rain of cold truth
to where it’s dry
under a simple roof.
But though the temple leans,
the pillars of love will not let it fall.
Daydreams of the soldier’s wife
keep her husband standing tall.
She caresses him like a ghost
in the valley of death,
and he persists.
She looks down at the golden ring
on her finger,
and far away he looks at his.
Some mystic cord binds the two,
forgotten by others,
more strongly knotted together!
One day, the soldier’s wife
waiting in a drizzle by the stores,
looked in a window and saw
such beautiful clothes to wear,
she opened her umbrella and just stood there,
staring in a little more,
till suddenly she snapped out of it in rage,
hating herself for not
thinking about him for that moment:
it was like eating chocolate
in Ethiopia.
And what if he was falling at that
very moment, falling and crying out her name?
And she was not there to catch him
with a prayer,
and to hold him as the blood of life deserted him
like his wife, forgetful at a store?
With nerves burned out by constant inner fireworks,
bursting like endless cherry bombs and roman candles,
lighting up the pure black that we all need
with a constant celebration of him,
and the specter of a phone call
or a knock on the door if she ever stopped running,
the soldier’s wife sometimes
collapsed into a handkerchief,
caved in, like a coal mine,
vanished for a day or two,
prayed to God
to free her of the disease
of loving.
Trembling, sometimes, like her withered
mother’s mother
hidden on a mountain,
dressed in black for a man
who died building a bridge,
she wept tears of war
at the feet of a dove,
bowed down to a ploughshare
and a pruning hook,
collapsed from contradictions forced on her
by passion,
struggled with the paradox
like a passenger cramped in a tiny seat
on an all-night train ride
with no room for her legs
and nothing but darkness
passing through the windows.
She cried and cried,
howled in whispers
so no one would steal her loneliness
with a visit
cried and cried for her man to come home
from the place
that was breaking them.
The soldier’s wife:
what a tormented, loyal patriot of a man,
holding up a soldier’s life!
The Sound Of One Hand Clapping (Lyrics)
Helicopters in the sky
a jet’s terrible engines roaring by
thunder on the ground
The sound of one hand clapping
Children screaming in the night
a mother’s desperate, mournful cry
teardrops of fire
The sound of one hand clapping
A priest who is wearing black
a great man who won’t be coming back
a woman fainting by the door
The sound of one hand clapping
A child with hunger in his eyes
not strong enough to brush away the flies
the sun just became a vulture
The sound of one hand clapping
A candle lit upon a hill
above love’s fields left untilled
the jewel and the night
The sound of one hand clapping
All throughout the Universe
the rain of pride is falling
the rain of fear
the rain of me without you
All throughout the Universe
the rain of pride is falling
the rain of fear
the rain of you without me
The sound of one hand clapping
Can’t you hear it everywhere?
From New York to Tibet
From Baghdad to Bangladesh
Ancient times aren’t over yet
The sound of one hand clapping
Did you figure it out?
Did you finally guess?
This is the sound of one hand clapping.
Flying Napkins
in the breeze.
They flew like angels
from the table to the floor,
now they’re too dirty
to wipe things clean.
Where a dog relieved itself
was brought here by my shoe,
and now
the angelic napkin fleet
has stepped down from white,
to join the rest of us,
in our compromise;
all that’s left
is the grace of their flight
on their way
to becoming like us.
Skin of razors.
Everywhere we go we cut
each other, slash each other,
trying to guard
our weak spots
from each other’s clumsiness,
trying not to be invaded
by mistake.
Don’t open the
inner door,
my secret could be broken
by yours.
Innocent whispers
caress the other’s body
with questions that are answered
by pain.
Unmeant stepping on the toes
of a heart’s unspoken loss,
we navigate by cuts,
by injuries,
by tears
that point north.
Skin of razors
wants to love,
but there’s too much
to defend.
Even robots
need to cry.
Programmed to fight,
to never take a step backward,
programmed
by someone who didn’t love you.
You’re going to prove him wrong.
Robot,
taking so many blows
without a tear;
robot needs
a hug.
Forward!
Forward!
Never a step back,
no regrets
where you are
is where you are.
Programmed
away from pain,
away from yesterday,
regrets do not compute;
sorrows – delete!
Positive program.
Filter out
black moon
only beautiful things –
frequency of beautiful things
in eyes constructed
by mind,
mandatory optimist.
I can do!
I can do!
One direction:
ahead!
Options:
I can do!
I can do!
Batteries
have a thousand bodyguards,
one for every feeling.
Error!
Error!
I can do!
Beautiful!
Robot
marching onwards through a
white world
cherry trees
in darkness
extend futile
arms of fruits
from nighttime
robot
only eats
miles
of not
looking back
hungry robot
programmed
not to have
a stomach
heart has no stomach
hungry heart
robot eats with feet
keep-moving-forward food
The name of
robot’s God
is Ahead
past is behind you
don’t sit by bed
of dying past
don’t look into
its fading illuminated eyes
don’t keep death company
leave the crippled moment behind to die
expose the baby of missing him
on the snow-peaked mountain
there is only now
only now
Forward!
Filters,
on the highest setting.
Happy robot
Happy, happy robot!
Anguish power
hurls your smile
into the world
at 1000 miles per hour,
1000 miles per hour of
obligatory joy
rewired
what effective circuits!
No wallowing
no sitting by the
memory pool
everything that happened has been
turned into coordinates
to avoid,
becoming the boundaries
that define the
forward road
like a shark’s
perfect body
aimed at blood
you are functional
utterly functional
aimed at something shallow
and easier
the throne
of the mutilated self
the lizard
does not want a new tail
because the price of generating it
is to spend
a hundred days
making love to his loss
No,
tailless lizard
leaps into the arms
of his incompleteness
to shut out flashbacks
of a knife
having no tail is wise
he dances with
his new
half-self
over mourning,
buried in a shallow grave
Widow in
a black dress
headed towards God – not you!
tailless lizard
out all night dancing
Happy
Happy, happy robot!
Programmed
to move on,
move on!
Fight, fight
and never bleed,
win, win:
never intimate
with what it means to lose,
winning becomes nothing more
than numbness;
hang your smile
on a broken life
Robot, robot, puts the mask of day
on the face of night
Even robots need to cry.
Even robots need a hug.
Robot, robot:
I suffered ten lifetimes of
pain so I could give you
what you need.
Warm hands
I held your warm hand
You held my warm hand
Now the cold drop of time falls
on a half a grain of sand
I must take it like a man
Paradise was shattered
everything that mattered
our kisses in halls of unhappiness
in the mansion of dreams we could not
reach holding hands
I must take it like a man
I got the phone call
I’m going to the war
to the land of the dead
and if I’m brave
a monster will grow twice as tall from our tears
I must take it like a man
I had a chance to live
but I threw away those years
I made scratches in a book
while you looked out the window
at the rain of me waiting to love you
and tried to understand
I must take it like a man
They sent me a letter
calling me to the war
to someone else’s fight
since I didn’t fight my own
to bury me in another land
not in the garden where we held hands
One sunny day doesn’t always bring another
I must take it like a man
I wasn’t who I was
now I can’t be who I am
the rose lives a day before
the plans of mountains interfere
I’ll be gone, and I was never here!
Except for one day we held hands
when I forgot I wanted more
I must take it like a man
Frankenstein
laying on the table
needs a spark
electrodes in my brain
I’ve seen seven years of rain
I lived seven years of pain
lying in the dark
strapped down by a broken heart
I need a spark
Dr. Frankenstein
pull the lever
Dr. Frankenstein
pull the lever
I’m so pitifully clever
I’m no one.
My art
is erasing great things.
I need you
to jolt me
with a lightning bolt
from head to toe
make me forget
the things I know
You’ve got to
get my mind
to let me go.
Dr. Frankenstein
pull the lever
Dr. Frankenstein
pull the lever
I’m so pitifully clever
it must be why I’m on the table
Flash me
back to emptiness
I’m waiting to
come back in
once I’m gone
and no one’s left to stop me
at the door
I can’t stand
to be like this
any more
Dr. Frankenstein
pull the lever
Dr. Frankenstein
pull the lever
Don’t let me stay like this
forever
Hanging On By A Thread (Lyrics)
Another day
hanging on by a thread
another little thing goes wrong
and the fire will be dead
Little candle flame
gonna burn out
in my head
Reading a book
about someone else’s pain
watching a movie
about someone else’s chains
and it seems I’m everywhere
there’s rain
Another day
hanging on by a thread
another little thing goes wrong
and the fire will be dead
Little candle flame
gonna burn out
in my head
Listening to a song
about someone else’s shit
Praying in mamma’s church
to someone else on a crucifix
it seems I’m everywhere someone’s got a problem
and can’t get over it
Dark night
dark rain
somewhere there’s a little child
playing nurse
inside my brain
Give me candy pills
of the happy childhood
that didn’t last
put the car
back on the road
before the crash
Child wants to play
but sex got in the way
innocence is remolded
just like clay
into vulnerability
that will never go away
Some turtles don’t grow a shell
and the rest of their life is Hell
So sensitive:
broke some bone
in my heart
every time I fell
I wish I would get well
Another day
hanging on by a thread
another little thing goes wrong
and the fire will be dead
Little candle flame
gonna burn out
in my head
got to hang on
hang on by that thread
wonder what it’s made of, not to break by now?
Made of me, making it through another day somehow
Something beautiful in me that doesn’t want to let me go
I don’t think there’s any point but something in me knows
That I’ve got to hang on, hang on by that thread
Because I’m beautiful
A golden hand just dropped a lifeline into my head
Gonna keep on hanging on, hanging on by that thread
Yo, antelope
it’s you and the lion
it’s not my fight
if you can’t see
through the bushes of his mind
if you don’t
have anything else to do
but be his meal
if you let
your angel go to sleep
behind the wheel
it’s your fate
your faith
your fault if your heart breaks
under the sledgehammer of your free will
it’s not for me to get in the way
it will be your revelation
when you step out of the shower
and all the love’s been washed off
of the naked power
and you see you’re just
another masticated flower
leave me out of it
Antelope, antelope
God gave you legs
should’ve put them in your head
but it’s not for me
to get in the way
Darwin drives love too
weak minds
in love
lose
you’ll pass on genes with teeth-marks in them
to posterity
genes of suffocation
squeezed to death
by a killer
mimicking God’s arms
But don’t blame him
for playing rough
The fault is yours
for not running fast enough
God game him hunger
and God gave you legs
Don’t look for me to get in the way
No, now it’s time
to let Nature take its course;
to look a life and a night
in the eye,
and see which one
has more force.
In the Chapel of Late Blooming
by the High Priest of Regret
we were married, my dear soul,
you and I, the Prince of Lost Years.
Even one day wed to you
could make the wasted fields
surrender a crop of gold
to my weaponless yearning,
vast with innocence.
One day of sincerity wept into being
by unfinished statues
could solve the riddle of my absence,
shatter the Sphinx of my ineptitude
which is only the power of someone begging inside me.
There’s singing in the vestibule:
late angels meant for spring arrived
with kisses of snow on broken wings,
but voices of depth,
proving in minutes
, with the work of years,that they didn’t miss a thing.
For you and me, dear soul,
they waded through their shame
to lost yesterdays, to pluck realities
trapped in dreams
from trees of self-sufficiency
and give us back
the need to impregnate strangers.
We’ll not stifle our imagination
by dancing in front of a mirror.
The whole world’s in my mind,
we have to smash the dam with this wedding
and return our part,
release the rivers we hid behind our back,
and give Noah back the flood that bore his Ark.
Beautiful unfinished things must come to life
before I die, youth’s accidental light
must be saved by a wrinkled hand
shaking with age,
crawling back to the mine of words to
drag unlived days
into the book.
With emptiness,
we’ll write the lost pages.
You and I, soul, doomed and temporary
though we are,
are wed by the coffin
so that we might light tomorrow,
with torches we ran from yesterday,
for a thousand
fading stars.
Drag my broken body over the
sharp stones of what happens to everybody.
It doesn’t matter now: I’m married to my soul.
Winter marriage.
I’m ready for anything
because I’m whole.
What was too much for you, or what would have been stolen
from some starving child, hungry to give,
was kept from you by my self-eclipse.
You’ll get what you need: nighttime in the afternoon,
or the burning rim of the sun,
or a fiery face saying good-bye:
the complete me from now on;
I won’t be my own dark orb.
God alone can filter me
for his purpose,
but my shackles
stop now.
Because I just married my soul.
In the Church of Destiny, we have decided
to dance until the earth breaks beneath our feet.
There is no victor, and there is no defeat,
there is only spreading your wings
in the inner wind.
There is no holiness except being in harmony;
and swimming against the heart’s current is
the only sin.
There is no wrong choice.
There is only this winter marriage.
Only the bells of who I am
ringing on what is possibly my last day,
but what I swear will be my first.