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POEMS FROM “ABYSSINIA”
Brave Blue
Thy good was born in perdition,
Water wings springing from fire.
The big bang began this tradition:
Brave blue worlds from funeral pyres.
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Amazon Women
Amazon women cut off their breast,
That they might pull the bow the best,
And slay the rogues, before whom, undressed,
They likely languished unmolest.
“There’s no treasure here, the chest is spare,”
Hirsute barbarian soon declares,
Then, shot right through, his heart too, laid bare
Learns to rue the sex more fair.
A laying down of arms might have repaired
This wound that cleaves from him to her.
Now quiet and sweet, his constant stare
Beguiles her fingers through his hair.
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The Queen of Sheba
The Queen of Sheba's walking down
A road a hundred miles long
Thinking of the king she left behind
The desert's lonesome and it's bare
Her heart a heavy solitaire
She'll walk alone she doesn't care what she'll find
Cause the more she’s missing him
The more she’ll be kissing him
Going down to Abyssinia in her mind
Well the king of Judah's pining for
The long lost lover he adored
Who came and robbed the cradle of mankind
His kingdom's fallen all around
Blood has spilled upon the ground
His vision gone, her theft has left him blind
Now all he does is dream of her
Even as Palestine is burned
He babbles on, drunk on palace wine
Cause the more he's missing her
The more he'll be kissing her
Gone down to Abyssinia in his mind.
The Prince of Sheba's come to town
To meet the bearer of the crown
The tender of the tree that made him wise
But the temple's broken and it's burned
Twelve sons stolen, they won't be spurned
He'll march on Babylonia in disguise.
Cause the one who frees the king
Will be the long lost son succeeding him
Cyrus, sire, please let our people rise.
Or we’ll take you through the wind and brush
To a desert ignominious
Down to Abyssinia in her eyes.
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The Asian Mariner
Albatross my friend, come hither, come close.
Most loyal of birds, your desperate hunger,
Safeguards my boat as we search for the coast,
Of royal green land, gold, silver and amber.
Lonely at sea, lonely are we,
My crew of the damned, hemmed in by salt water,
Could offer me up the highest of tea,
Not knowing that it is not this that I’m after.
Oh for a touch of your silky white feather,
Your wingspan could lighten the darkest of latitude,
But it goes against nature that we be together.
By what reckless design might I alter her attitude?
I think that Icarus touched the sky like a bird,
And so for that moment of terrific bliss
Shot hot through the heavens, as he tumbled back seaward
He laughed as he wept: No mean folly, this.
Now lifeless and flightless, I wear you around me,
Coilings of conscience, fates intertwined
Like fibers in roots twisting up through a dead sea,
Our journey is lost. You, gooney, are mine.
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Letting it Leak
Like broken teapot pieces.
Cast upon on the floor.
We’d better stick together
If we want to drink some more.
Come take my hand and
Wrap it around your handle,
Press it to my body,
There won’t be a scandal.
When the spout is fast and ready,
And the past is finally prandial,
We’ll work together to heat the tea,
I will light the candle.
I’ve missed you since our fall,
Since love spilled off the table,
I’ve been kissing at the dried-up pools,
Genesising Cain and Abel,
Searching for the first edition,
Of our Chinese-whispered fable.
His truth goes marching on.
Truth. Go. March on.
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There You Are
There you are.
Are you there?
Would you be you,
Without your hair?
Was younger you you
When older you are?
How far would you go
To go very far?
You’ll go on a sally,
And drive your own car,
And walk through the valleys
In shadows of stars,
And sneak through the alleys
Of backstreet bazaars,
Heave ho on a galley
Set for Zanzibar.
(If you meet Rand McNally
Please send my regards.)
And then when you’ve wizened your pearls,
And done your mermaiding,
Come back to your world,
My girl masquerading
As a woman, unfurl,
And I’ll be there, waiting.
We’ll compare all our scars,
From fighting in wars,
Deposing the Czars,
And settling scores,
But you’ll still be you,
And I’ll still be me,
And wherever we are
There we will be.
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Fault
On narrow lonely pass
I met the holy one at last,
The one that made
The only sun to shine.
I spoke my artful thesis
That he broke the pot to pieces
And wouldn’t deign
To make them recombine.
He said fissures made by sun and shade,
That tear the garden from the glade
Are not the whim
Nor will of things divine.
Vicissitudes of Nature
Tear the earthly musculature.
The fault is hers, he said,
My son, not mine.
So I moved next door to Nature,
Read her garden’s nomenclature.
She confessed her work
Was accident plus time.
But without the cataclysms
That rent my soul to schisms,
I’d have never tried to leave
The seas of slime.
So curse your kings and emperors,
She said, those thrones whose bloody wars,
Divide the earth
‘Long arbitrary lines.
They scar me till I’m fallow,
Send whole races to the gallow.
The fault is theirs, my precious child,
Not mine.
So I stormed the castle of the king,
The one who split up everything.
He let this stranger
Accuse him and opine,
But argued, his protection
‘Gainst savage predilection
Allowed the growth
Of culture and of mind.
Lay the blame upon your muse,
He said, that liquor so abused,
That to drink her
Men would tear their eyes out blind,
Curse their fellow man,
Lay waste upon the land,
The fault indeed is hers,
Good sir, not mine.
At last we came together,
My soul upon this treasure,
This music resolution
To a rhyme,
But she was cryptic so I cleaved her.
I cut her and bereaved her.
The earth tore open,
Flooded dark with brine.
Our rift was deep and storied,
Mountains laid ungloried,
I pulled her into echo
And decline,
In a bid to change the weather
I dreamt the world forever
Fell in the ocean;
The fault, erosion, mine.
But the split released the spirit,
Of the earth, and who revere it
Cultivate a science
Of the signed.
Signals to salvation,
On the byways of creation
Point in all directions;
Falls, ascensions, twined.
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POEMS FROM “HOLY SHIT!”
Grecian
Let them hear if they cannot see
The path is underneath them
Loud I scream the way to go
But I might as well speak Grecian.
Let them feel if they cannot hear
The road, as day, is plain as
I give a stick to guide their way
But they stick it up their anus.
I cry, I beg, I plead, I mope
And still they all play possum
But dead they’re not, though soon shall be
When the world decides to toss them.
More than this, all I can do
Is hand them a four-leaf clover
And push them off to the side of the road
Or be sure to run them over.
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Home is Where the Heartbreak Is
Punks and pushers and pimps and prostitutes.
Dope fiends, derelicts, dreamers and drunks.
Gambling bet-wagers and gang-banging teenagers.
Stashing dead tourists in leather-lined trunks.
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Ears
Idears!
We lend you our ears!
Great and small, pithy and banal,
We lend you our ears!
Huge and tiny, fishy and briny,
We lend you our ears!
We’re dim, damned, and dumb here,
So swim, swam, or swum here.
We lend you our ears!
If there’s a notion in the ocean
that can be our secret potion,
don’t keep us in arrears!
We lend you our ears!
Eyes are the mirrors of the soul,
but ears are the hearers of the whole.
We lend you our ears!
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Jibberjabber
It was doggone fishy, You know, I never thought I’d see,
At long-last, our long-lost, long-gone secret history,
A ministry to the future, the mystery of what’s to be,
I stuck a jibberfish in my ear and it said these words to me:
Jibber jabber jibber jabber jibber jabber jerry,
That’s something I’d like to translate but I have no dictionary.
So I’ll tell you what I mean in words I think you’ll understand:
The world in which you live in is the handiwork of man.
No goddess, god or devil shaped this grand monstrosity,
Else it would have been built more perfect—can’t you see it, can’t you see?
There was no fall from grace, no interned apple tree,
There was only space, and the yearning urge to be.
Man is but a hand on an expanding branch of life,
Sowing and hoeing and growing under strife.
His curse is that his hand must dig the dirt under his feet,
And so is never happy, consequently incomplete.
But if he digs it right, his ground, and digs it with the soul,
Of all that came before him, he never will grow old,
And man will live forever and the tree below him too,
Though his fruit is sometimes sour, and his blueberries are blue.
Is that all? I asked my squishy fishy friend,
It answered, No, Deaf Lemon. This is a ballad without end.
The next lines are yours to write, erase, append and fix,
But watch out! Let’s have none of your bloomin’ human tricks!
Write your verses wisely, make sure to choose them well,
Or you and all your branches will mulch the fields of Hell.
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Prophecy
The savior of this world shall be badly-suited,
The savior of this world will be electrocuted,
He shall ride upon the skies
And have the clouds behind his eyes,
And when the time comes for mankind to rise
Our savior dies, our savior flies.
Perception is our savior’s aim,
Deception is our savior’s shame,
To show his mettle,
To score the settle,
He’ll turn his artifice into an art
And orchestrate a world apart.
In holiest of crossroads, where the myriad nations convene,
A stage will be set where the play of the gods will be seen,
His madness will purloin him,
His sadness will enjoin him,
You will be the man to man the machine
That makes our holy savior’s vision seen.
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POEMS FROM “BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST”
Free Vs.
Liberty’s freed the death of verse,
But all emerge diminished,
When philistine muttering tries to mend by uttering
“That poem isn’t finished.”
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Atlas & Demeter
Holding up the heavens,
She finds my physique stunning,
Though her waters fall, I’ve got blue ball,
And left Demeter running.
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Make a Monkey Out of Me
They say I’m a higher being,
But I’m too busy being high,
I’m supposed to know the whole universe,
But all I can see is the sky.
So make a monkey out of me
Go on, make a monkey out of me
I don’t care, just pick these bugs from my hair,
And make a monkey out of me.
It’s supposed to be only illusion,
That the world looks flat as can be.
But I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one,
Right now I’m rubbing my ass on a tree.
So make a monkey out of me
Go on, make a monkey out of me
I really don’t mind if you kiss my behind,
And make a monkey out of me.
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Slapped Serious
There is nothing new here.
It’s all been done or seen, at least in some primary state,
I’ve tasted sweet, I’ve borne the brunt of both love and hate,
And I’ve felt the little child wonder.
But now there are no more surprises.
What I haven’t done myself I’ve seen on T.V.
And what I still long to do scares me sufficiently.
Yet I am only in my third decade.
I am cold and calculating,
But only to myself -- I am warm and false with others.
And I secretly harbor a conviction
That if I had my druthers,
I’d give it all away.
But all I have to give is the monkey on my back
(The one that goes ‘ho hum, ho hum’ all the way home)
Please grant me this one request:
That the spectacle of death be more spectacular
Than the bloated marionette show of living
And that for that moment
I can relieve the strange and perverse misgiving
That shot through me when I emerged from the womb
Only to be slapped silly
And ultimately slapped serious.
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Water
Everyone lives,
And everyone dies,
And in between, cries.
That’s why they say we’re made mostly of water.
The flood of our tears
bathes the blood of our slaughter.
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