Photo: David Murphy
Contents
Bouquet
Church Bell
The Cigarettes Play Farmington
Cloud Kingdom at Dusk
Death and the Safe Man
Death in Autumn by a Waterfall
And Death Walked a Few Steps Behind
The Disappearance of a Cat
Dr. Proctor
The Greatest Ocean
The Hollow Man and the Zealot
Imagination
The Immortal Rose
Maps
Moonbeams
Moths
The Poet
Seraphs in Black
The Tornado
When Your Back is to the Wall
Bouquet
There’re engines roaring in the street
loud and angry as a fire;
I am drunk, and I am thirsty,
and I’m feeling tight as wire
cause one spirit’s got me woozy,
and the other makes me pray,
but neither makes me holy
in any elemental way,
but they leave me lacking, thirsty,
with the dawn of each new day.
I have already begun to wonder
what price I have to pay
for an experience so vital
that I’ll never lose my way,
for I’m lost and I am hopeless,
and I always feel astray,
so I shut my ears to street sounds
and I let the liquor say,
Is this a comedy or a tragedy,
this inscrutable human play?
What of life does really matter:
Wealth… or appreciation of a day?
And which will make me stronger:
Affection… or a nuclear array?
I ain’t askin anybody particular
cause I don’t want to be betrayed,
but with every drink I swallow
I feel a little more afraid,
and with every hour that passes by
I feel my understanding further stray
as I draw closer to a cold truth
that – no matter how much I pay,
and despite which side I take –
there will always be this fray
between the open-hearted folk
and citizens who recite clichés.
So I guess I must do something
cause I don’t think we’re all okay,
and it don’t seem to help much
to keep drinkin or to pray:
one spirit’s in the bottle
the other’s too far away…
It’s like knowing you can’t catch
but still hoping for the bouquet.
Church Bell
The air’s dead in the cemetery.
Unmoving, the Spanish moss drapes
like monks’ robes in a monastery
in that gliding Reaper’s shape.
Live oaks stand as still as lead.
A sound. Through glossed air comes a knell:
sliding like glaze, sticking like dread,
conducting a new soul to its stone cell.
The Cigarettes Play Farmington
The Cigarettes were a hard core band full of righteous punks and rage,
The singer supported anarchy and sang it out on stage;
Lily was the drummer girl, a saucy lass in black,
She wore a fishnet pair of slacks; her thong rose out the back.
Jimmy was the trumpeter, always barefoot when he played,
Smoking reefers in the club and forever getting laid.
Molly was the bassist, she was a poet in her soul,
Writing chords and lyrics about Hell and money and control.
The city board of Farmington, a town conservative and straight
Booked The Cigarettes unwittingly for their Annual Harvest Fête,
When October came around the leaves turned orange and black,
The pumpkins ripened on their vines, the hay was heaped in stacks
Mrs. Trot put on a dress, her corset, stockings, and her hat,
And toodled out with Mr. Trot who was wearing his cravat.
On the way they met the Smiths, who ran the local mill.
They were dressed in modest best, as humble as a hill.
The evening started very fair, with meats and fruits and pie,
There was cider in the goblets and a pretty autumn sky,
And then the band began to play, you could hear them from a mile:
A pounding drum, an ominous hum, the locals lost their smiles,
Then on the stage a screaming rage, as the singer yowled and croaked,
The sun went down, the lights came on, the fires flared and smoked!
The locals of Farmington were first transformed by fear,
And then they caught the wind of it and began to lend an ear!
“This band is fuckin rockin!” shrieked Mrs. Trot and threw the horns,
“Yeah, this is how we celebrate the reaper and the corn!”
And soon enough the town of Farmington said to Hell with our respect!
And threw themselves into a night of drink and dance and sex!
And every year thereafter… the townsfolk booked The Cigarettes!
Cloud Kingdom at Dusk
On his back on a grass hill
lies a boy, who, in this dusky hour,
watches the sun paint a castle
with pastels on keep and tower:
a gentle peach upon the spire
that’s lit by cloudy dragon fire.
Death and the Safe Man
A man took no chances, and he kept his life quite dear.
He guarded himself more closely with every passing year.
Till one day while he was waiting,
He found Death grinning from ear to ear,
And Death said, “I hope you won’t my mind stating,
But it’s cost your life to live in fear.”
Death in Autumn by a Waterfall
In autumn’s gold-larched, cold Cascades
a river runs down a mountain—
whose slopes are hued in honeyed shades,
glazed in spray as from a fountain—
to kiss the stone of an abyss.
From water dashed against granite
a roar rises like plains thunder,
while the bay, from trees that dam it,
smells of moist earth from dense vapor,
and mist bedews sheer cliffs of shist.
And there in brumey, drizzly clag
waits the gloomy, black-robed reaper,
calm beneath a cantilevered crag,
to bear an old careworn sleeper,
with soothing hiss, to the last bliss.
And Death Walked a Few Steps Behind
Well, I walk hand-in-hand with Life,
And Death walks a few steps behind,
And wherever I go, and wherever I lead,
Death is sure to follow.
So I had a few words a few years ago,
With that reaper known as Death.
I said, “So long as you’re coming wherever I go,
I’ll go wherever I want.”
He said in reply, “That’s a very fine view,
Just keep in mind, my friend:
When your time comes,
I’ll take you away,
You cannot run too far or too fast.”
So I nodded and considered,
And I went on my way.
And Death walked a few steps behind.
The Disappearance of a Cat
Red curtains billowed open for that cat;
he waltzed onto the hardwood, so loaded,
his mouth slightly ajar, green eyes sparkling,
luring us into his act—a spider
deftly beckoning, weaving to music
of his own creation, dreamy and gold.
A costume hallucinogenic and gold,
he broke out with a well hung air, that cat
mortified the wild crowds, overloaded
as we were with his glitter and sparkling
hair. He played implications of Spider
and Cherry Wolves, lost in his own music…
*****
Is it madness? the press asked, Your music?
Tell us, how do the things you touch turn gold?
He shrugged, slunk away like a peevish cat,
but turned, It’s all in how you get loaded—
swig the right juice, you’ll be loved, sparkling;
if not, you’ll be trite, clichéd, a spider.
And there’s nothing so lethal as spiders,
save snakes, executives, and flat music-
but every new enigma is choice gold.
We all dug his edgy airs, his cool-cat
Oscar Wilde imitations, stacked and loaded
as they were in packages, all sparkling
and convenient, quickly shipped to sparkling
masses and to the corporate spiders.
And everyone bought his life, his music,
his t-shirt. His album went silver, gold,
platinum; Rolling Stone begged for that cat
to pose, provocative and well loaded.
Vulgar, he said. Not a chance. But, loaded
and stoned, his agent dragged him in, sparkling
as wine, and spread him out on a spider
divan with eight purple arms, swank music
regaling him throughout. And royal gold
sashes were draped across the kingly cat.
*****
One day he found nothing more in music-
each grain of gold vanished, nothing sparkling
left. And he disappeared with it, that cat.
Dr. Proctor
Bill “The Butcher” Proctor was the town’s local doctor
And he had had much more than a nip.
When a woman came in with a broken hand,
He took off her leg at the hip.
When the woman woke up she just looked down and sobbed.
“Why, oh why, do you cry?” asked Doctor Proctor,
“It may be true that you’re left with one thigh,
But you’ll get used to that by and by.”
“You fool, you bastard!” the woman screamed at the man,
“I came in to your clinic with a pain in my hand!”
“Hm,” said the doctor, looking down at her leg.
“Well. Yes. Hm. I see.
“In my condition I thought I saw something wrong with the knee.”
And he thought, “Left uncorrected, this could spell serious trouble for me!”
“I’ll sue your quack practice for all that it’s worth!”
Screamed his patient in fury as she wept and she cursed.
Dr. Proctor scratched at his chin, then he put her under again.
He murmured, “I’ll fix this wreck right up in a sec!”
And with the sound of a snick and the sound of a sneck
He cut off his patient’s head at the neck!
“There,” he said, holding her head up by the hair,
“There, there, there! Now, now, she can’t complain to anyone anywhere!”
The Greatest Ocean
When stars glimmered o’er the wand’ring gypsy
when waves dashed ‘gainst the hulls of clipper ships
that cut through foam under night’s diamond sky;
when young lovers touched their yearning hips,
their eyes glinting for each other like jewels,
hope lay in their hearts, fighting against time.
What is time but a relentless killer?
It kills men, leaves, larks, galaxies, and rhymes
with the same cooling, corrosive pressure.
Paradoxically, it kills even age,
which, like all things, it has birthed in its way.
Such things as sailors carry: hope, promise,
a lookout and longing for distant land,
are, like youth, destroyed by time’s steady hand.
Time, whose heart is a mysterious sea;
Time, that the universe must have to be.
The Hollow Man and the Zealot
The hollow man and the zealot lay skylighting the vast desert on their stomachs
watching for anything mobile and columnular, squinting into the waves of heat
and the low hellfire sun which dipped crepuscular like a ball of blood.
Above the crest of the world the sun hung suspended, huge and balanced,
and the men fell in to watching it as if towed by a riptide into Andromeda and Ursula seas.
It set in a neon cataclysm, banded the faroff mesas, until all else became parentheticals and mud.
When the moon came out, it came out vanilla and strong
like the sunless flowering of night blooming jasmine
while from the distance rode a backlit man not deadtired nor horseworn before the floating circle
and the hollow man whose diction was three parts doggerel, whiskey, and graveyardsong
rasped smokily, I tell thee wait; I have the time, the time.
He slid from under his belly a heavy revolver and spinning its cylinder made ready to kill.
Can’t hardly wait whispered the zealot who like all unwise men was mercurial
and who braided with such characteristic the strains of violence, insecurity, and assumption
and so saying he ran his hand through his short black hair as was his habit
and tendered the necklace of bleached doe’s teeth he wore for motives superstitious and bestial.
At a canter the rider lifted off his hat in that lonesome waste and the zealot spat in derision.
Hush hush hush! rasped his companion Hold your nerves and spit!
The rider came along across the shale, through the dwarf scrog and a crowd of desert bats
looking like some classical and celestial organism astride his white horse.
He wore a bandolier braced with bullets, pistols in his belt, a rifle across his back,
rode with the drumming energy of a raw heart while wondrousstar-staring as if the Leonids were at that
moment showering. He rode as if nothing lay or had ever lain in his course.
He rode as if, if he chose, he could empower a man to paint his godless world black.
The hollow man lay his thumb on the hammer of the revolver, cocking till it clicked and held.
He sighted along the barrel; just after he pulled the trigger the man popped crazy off his horse
and the hollow man seeing such sight rose and fired again and the horse fell
and so seeing turned his back and walked from that deathquilt without looking to see its pattern.
The zealot rose fingering his toothy necklace giggling at such dreadnought wanton force
then followed the hollow man, vanishing deep into the cobalt lit mesas and scrub chaparral.
The zealot and the hollow man sat sitting round a fire surrounded by soaring mountains
and near them sagged a dilapidated church, a steepled shack, with three rotten wooden steps
and inside: bare rafters termite ridden floorboards and a baptismal font of rose porphyry
carried by the zealot’s jackass through the metamorphosed and steep passes of the mountains,
and the hollow man sung singing, All the wicked man’s foibles and vile contretemps
the wicked man’s sins, the wicked man’s deeds, I make for free. I make for free. I have for thee.
And without a warning, the hollow man pulled from his holster his revolver and, aiming it at the zealot,
fired the gun six times in lethargic lethal succession and when the zealot dropped dead
the hollow man emptied the cylinder, refilled it with bullets, and left the fire burning,
for at his core he was empty, not full of hate, nor vengeance, nor malice, nor rot,
but full of no emotion, neither melancholic nor apathetic, just a husk of humanity in dread
shape with only a penchant for the spoken word and any skeletal song he might be heard to sing.
Imagination
Cloud castles, doors in gardens, and wizards
spring in good youth from the mind’s library
on whose fertile shelves live cabinet fairies,
bedtime monsters, and towers in blizzards
that fill with joy those of gossamer hair,
rosy cheeks, clean hearts, and wide awe-filled eyes,
whose grassy summers stretch timeless and fair,
flecked with apple trees and cotton cloud skies,
in which, come moony night, broomed witches flare,
juxtaposed by radiant mind with dragons,
in whose wake and sleep the child imagines.
The Immortal Rose
There’s deceitful beauty where trees grow twisty
in a somber forest that’s shadowed and misty,
where light shines through in arrowlike shafts
and leaves stir faintly from gentle drafts.
There in a clearing stands a crystal bell jar
with a red rose inside that glows like a star.
For centuries not a single petal has fallen—
neither in snowy seasons nor times of spring’s pollen.
Young trees around it have grown old and died,
Yet the rose has not wilted, faded, or dried.
Deathless, perpetual, unfading, enduring:
without change, the rose has no chance of maturing.
Maps
Cartographers formerly inked squares
with dragons near their peripheries
and precipices over which ships tumbled
to Hell, or rocks, or seas
never known before.
And quack chiropractors with pricking needles
tattoo courses: their phony kinesiology
tracking down one’s back like generations
sprouting from a family tree.
These are maps, each a colorful arras
of pictograms and symbols,
an archive of devils and seraphs,
of the cosmos and the void.
Maps, one and all.
And their significance?
What shall be their importance,
ages and eons hence?
When the streams have dried,
and the crabs have hidden
in the sand of the ocean floor?
Only that maps etch themselves
and have recorded our paths and their ends
which lie in the distance like misty Incan ruins,
faint epitaphs of their architects.
Moonbeams
Sometimes, the moon drops down a line
when fishing for him, or her,
who’ll climb starward that silvery vine
in search of wild adventure.
Moths
There are some of us moths flying to flame:
burning, yet unwilling to give a damn,
propelled by a force that we cannot name
to escape, to wander this wondrous land.
We set off, in any time, knowing why.
For, weighing against the fearsome unknown
is the certain, staid life that stultifies:
of birds that have lived, without having flown.
There’s risk in staying still: waiting to death,
softening, an awful suffocation.
Such active hope for new life and free breath,
brings us to the platform of a station.
And God knows we miss some things left behind:
The work unfinished, the plans unstarted—
sentimental things, a close friend so kind,
the living and heavenly departed.
But life is short. It passes with mad haste.
Life is but a blink in the universe.
It flashes by, leaving no time to waste
between birth and grave, cradle and hearse.
The Poet
The able word-smithy
Ought to be pithy
And must write well
For his clientele.
He should have felt sadness,
And had spells of madness,
Yet still kept some humor
For his consumer—
Because nothing beats levity
Except, of course, brevity.
Seraphs in Black
Against the rising beauty of the sun,
shimmering over an owl’s watchful eyes,
the apocalyptical black dead come.
Lightless labyrinths of deathly ebon
concealing nightmare beasts, dichotomized
against the rising beauty of the sun.
From trees, then across plains, desolate, dun,
thunder sixteen hooves guided by blind eyes
the apocalyptical black dead come.
Who race from four corners, the bloodless ones
taking, by frozen touch, their living prize
against the rising beauty of the sun.
They, in yawning hoods, take every one
judged guilty of slaying, sadism, lies;
the apocalyptical black dead come.
Who, like bright artists dabbing oils upon
canvases of horizons and dawn skies
against the rising beauty of the sun,
the apocalyptical black dead come.
The Tornado
I hear there is a book whose words
will let a man live life the way it was before.
I hear, too, there’s something to
be said for keeping a barren, empty store:
Samuel anointed David with a holy oil,
The Fisher cast away the rich and lifted high the poor.
I find a bit of poetry in most things
and have learned from the tornado
how to break the heart and make it sing.
I have learned the cruel ways of breaking down,
the simple pains and violent things
that make a man forget the man who he was before.
And if I read that book whose words
will let a man have life the same again,
I won’t wonder when the text recites
my kindnesses and wildest sins,
that it was actually the word of karma
that made me make my bed of needles and pins.
A thief touches a pocket and makes it thin;
everything is lost to a Philistine in war,
and if I say that such a light load can make you free,
I mean I can travel roads I could not walk before—
I can carry everything I own without straining my back
off the cyclone’s path and onto some new floor.
When Your Back is to the Wall
When your back’s to the wall
and guns point at your heart
then show them all
you won’t fall apart.
They’ll do their worst,
so now you should spit;
give them a curse,
and the hell with it.
Curse all their mothers
and die with a sneer,
for they are not brothers
and will not die here.
