4 Recent Poems
I . The Double Face
‘I’ve seen the best minds of this generation’ turned into lovely ciphers, vacuums and holes of ideology, walking lock step into a prison of text, made perfectly redundant, able to repeat truism, memes like viperous phantoms, in the death rattle of the social network
And yet I’ve also seen a mother, in the park, and a child with an acorn, and I know that there are still snails, that there are still clouds, and mythologies, and mothers milk, and invisible allies made of rain, and the lovemaking of foxes
I’ve seen the best minds of this generation smashed against the ones and zeroes of cellular collapse, of jargon and obscure parenthesis, become biological machines, circle the poisonous rain, hypnotised by the dark illumination, glued to the pavement like drooling vipers, frenzied and pumped up with the mechanical music, a nothingness not yet hitherto imagined
And yet, I’ve seen a young boy embrace a young girl next to a highway, the light in his eyes filled with early dawn, his heart awakes with affection and intimations of a new freedom, and the divine soul becoming suddenly a possibility
I’ve seen ‘the lousy little poets trying to sound like Charlie Manson’ and yet I heard your language of sea shells and torn fabric, I saw your heroic breast full of pride and beauty, I saw you kiss the crowd, I saw you caress me with eyes, and I was witness to your divine spark
And can we stop the world from dying: no it dies a greater death every moment and an even greater the death and an even greater the birth, for here we stand in the jaws of annihilation, as moloch children of the new world order, where all the metaphysical forms collapse
No I won’t get on that train that leads strait to the ovens, or praise the digital moon or the chemical sun, for I know that there is still Helios, the god of suns and that there is still Cynthia, the godless of the moon
And that even if we have forgotten what a human being is and that there is nowhere to live, can I not say I was grateful, indeed blessed for just one afternoon with you sipping cosmic tea and falling into loves reasons while the gentle hum of engines did not disturb the primeval silence
No, I can’t be hypnotized to death by nullity, there is still juice here, there is still a place where the angel comes, there is still the forest of foxes and cranes and all kinds of hallelujah, the broken and the holy, the full, the crack, the perfect appearance, the tiny insect of exquisite beauty
Do I speak too directly, would you like to put a gas mask on my face, do you have an iron lung for my words? Am I saying things that cannot be said here, in the land of shadows?
Well, I am saying them anyway, because I am the lover and the lover risks all — and that is how it is and that is how it evermore shall be amen.
Yes, I’ve seen the future, and that kind of horror cannot be held in the human heart for long, for soon we will be dancing, soon we will be forgetting, soon the massive drift of continents, the heavenly music
Soon the donkey will ride again in the electric dawn, the sheep grow wings and souls, the death rattle will stop, and there will just be the man and the woman again, alone in the garden of eden, with the fruit and the serpents joke, and the world tree, all still in place
For it is always Eden dear, even as I gaze into the visage of the beast. Love still moves on the deep, even here, in this place that is not even a place, where there nowhere nowhere to live, nowhere to be, not even the semblance of a home
I don’t blame you for sleeping outside broken poet, because our homes are no longer homes, our hearts are no longer hearts; they have been eaten by moths, they have been stung by demons, they are nearly irredeemable
Except, that kiss, waiting on the bannister, that kiss that never left, that never was, that never came and and yet that kiss that redeems even one so foolish as I
11. The Hipster’s lament
The clever idiots are on the bannister
They glare at you with their savant eyes
But they never really touch you
The wordsmiths are deep in their furnace
Working their subterfuge, their banana revolution
But they never really know what they say
Oh how they burn in their cool intellect
Oh how they drift away from their bodies like angry sleepers
They think that they can win you with mere words
And sometimes they succeed for awhile
Until the next clever idiot comes a long
To dress you in a new lexicon
No, you were just another naked man under the hammer
When floods came, when the harsh times arrived
Your tenured halls could not immunize you to rats and plagues
You thought you were particularly clever Mr. Jones
But you never learned to really dance or laugh,
With all the metaphors you threw at people
You never really heard the ancient language
Though you mastered the revolutionary lingo
You never shuddered in the embrace of the deep
How pride caused you to show all your feathers
But how drab they became in the bright light
How you ran to the skirts of mother, banished from your kingdom
Another hipster under the wheel
Raging against the father in the sky
With nothing in your womb
III. The Soft Gulag
Comrade X you have been a prisoner
Of the minds jargon, of ‘ideological possession’
A prisoner of winning, a prisoner of losing
A prisoner of nihilism, prisoner of the eternal reward
Comrade X, of the future techno-utopia and bloody chains of history
Of lockjaw social norms and celebrity wet dreams
Of Karl Marx and of Any Rand
Of sexual monsters and puritan hags
Of the Right and of the Left
Of the rainbow and of the dark cloud
Of hope and of despair
And all those things are your chains
Now comrade X, free yourself from that soft Gulag
Become your own precious soul
Confess, repent.
Comrade X free yourself from even your own liberation
From the mechanical beat, from the robotic gyrations
From the academic masturbations
Comrade X, every man and women is a stranger on this boat
in a dark sea yet still Eden haunts the galleys
Comrade X do not divide the world, into the righteous and the holy
But know that the both live in your own heart
Comrade X can you survived the interrogation of your own mind, the depth of the mirror?
Comrade X free yourself from the hard flesh and the soft lie,
from emancipatory ejaculation
Comrade X free yourself even from losing your own chains
(But then put them on for me tonight, like a lap dancer)
Comrade X drive your stake into the very earth
Become responsible and awake: to a child, to a flower,
To a corpse, to laughter, to the fight
Comrade X
Know that the revolution is a giggle and a sham
And that the adversary stalks your own heart
And that your soul is women, who has been locked in a dark hole
Comrade X it is the heart’s expression that gives birth to the world
And wrestling with dark hallucinations, a drop of poison from the monster spleen
Comrade X, now! lower yourself to the earth and begin lifting up others — for that is enough, for that is what is needed, to wake the shuffling dead, to give meaning to tragedy and smiles to children
Comrade X, What will you do the morning after the rape of the world? And is your freedom earned: though the depth of your gesture, though the sharpness of your though, though the tenderness of your mercy?
Comrade X, the dream is over, Comrade X, the blood flows under the street, Comrade X are you a Man or a Machine? A Soul or a Cipher? A Collective or a person, A Song or a megaphone?
Comrade X. I hear the gravel in your throat. Comrade X, I can hear you singing for the executioner.
IV. Unnamed
I had declared the world an illusion and a joke, until you walked naked into the room. I had lit out for far places, until you brought me back into your smoldering mountain. I wore dark robes, fed entrails to scorpions, until you brought me some milk and honey. I wanted only to be a corpse, until you put mercury in my blood.
This morning was only grey dung, until you crowned me with a kiss on the nape. There are so many days like this: you undo my plans, my arc of logic falls like a card house on your lap. The old puritan nun in me shrieked, when you showed me your thigh.
I tried to write about the coming apocalypse, but you were still giggling. I tried renunciation and smashing mirrors, but that didn’t work either. My over earnest prose left you laughing in a midnight full of wolves. And now I am building a little arc, to try to escape from you, but it is no use. The waters have already drowned that boat!
Here I am, naked on the operating table. I am paralyzed, nearly lifeless, and yet I feel your hands all over me, planting spring flowers in my crania. I don’t know the difference anymore between orgasm and epilepsy, between religion and pornography. The more lines that are drawn, the more chains, the more space opens up. Everything is paradox here, somewhere near your vertebrae. Did I forget what to say, again?
Oh love, there is nothing wrong with my cock and nothing wrong with your pussy. They want to be included just like little children; they chase each other around the table, while the mind does complex crossword puzzles. They are just like horses in saddles, like Stalingrad in white nights. There is no reason for them, and yet isn’t the beauty of the snail, the reason. Let us not politick a minute longer, and sound our trumpets of love. After all nobody is listening to our love cries but the archangel, and maybe the neighbors. Anything to break the lock-jawed evenings is fine.
Let us be true renunciates and give up all our heavy concept clothing. Let’s be mad goats, geriatric rock stars, instead of cows and sheep. Do you think that God wanted an iron lock for a vagina? Do you think that God wanted pale white monuments to be erected in an eternal winter? Spring is here you pitiful fools. You must dance with Pan, with Lucifer, with Cynthia. Who care is if the moon is in cancer? Who cares if the sun is bleeding?
After all this is Paris, and everybody is kissing wildly. Doesn’t the snot green river and bumptious Notre Dame still cry out oh God, of oh God, the beauty, the beauty — an earlobe, a pencil, a star. So let us be chaste and find love again, where love was wanting, like some bright virgin with her ukulele and pigtails. Let us sing this song of love, after all love has not gone anywhere. She is still here, with her knee socks, her books of poetry, and her ridiculous existential questions. She is still here, whispering in our ear. Love, love has woken.
