Who are you And Where did you come from?
ELEGY FOR AN EMPIRE
Democans and Republicrats throwing Cakewalks of power, stately masquerades Frenzied, drowning Rats-of-the-Republic Offering bribes of candy and parades Are you satiated by the kingdom you own or Only content to consume and be consumed? All hungry gods and angry devils Devouring each other in their endless tombs 10,000 ways to split the atom but Not a single way to split the Earth How the Hell can you respect yourself When you poison the land of your birth? Can you feel the acid of our own undoing Pouring like rain from your tainted crown A tangible hostility in the acrid air As King Midas wears a golden frown Wrapping your children in fantasies Won't dull the howling bite of the wind When they're horse-poor and helpless You can't feed them with fictions Drink deep the waters of forgetfulness Our otherworldly and erstwhile prince Warm yourself on burning waters And sail away from the isle of eloquence Sow the simple seeds of revolution Break bread with a broke and broken nation Don't make an elegy for an empire The swan song of civilization
DEAR MR. DAVID RACKLEY
Endlessly searching for ends And finding only The six of clubs In the muddy gutter Across the street from The local courthouse Where no one plays With a full deck And pretensions of justice Are lost in the shuffle As dealers are jailed More readily than murderers And sniveling city councils Pocket the aces for Their buddies in real estate Before excusing themselves From the playing table When it's their turn To pay the blind Leading the half-blind As creepster cops costumed In blue-collar badges Extort lunch-money From college students with Sustainable transportation And bearded hobos Sitting too long On bus-stop benches Waiting for a lift That will never come As self-styled leaders Openly advocate Collective suicide Robed in transparent lies Fit for a king Fooling not even themselves Anymore or any less They demand their house percentage Then make you thank them For what they haven't taken yet As an arrogant little man Wearing a teacher's hat Vomits the status quo Into the bright faces Of a dozen hopeful futures And tells you to sit Alone in the corner When you say his breath stinks Or open a window His ego can't climb through As a thousand trumpets blare The same sour note Over every clear-channel And you can't turn the radio off But if you cover your ears You can hear yourself think "Even if I get all the chips In this game I can't really win 'Cuz we'll bankrupt the earth And there'll be no place left to cash in"
INSPIRATION
Inspiration, Why don't you ever call Before you come over? It's not that I don't like you But when you come waltzing in To my room at 2AM all the time The least you could do is knock It's not like you don't Have my number I call you all the time But you hardly ever answer And when you do You never want to do Anything I have planned For once I'd like To sit down for more than 5 minutes And get to know you better Before you run off again... Where the hell do you go? All those times that I can never find you? Do you go where the rain goes After it tumbles Down dirty rooftops And splashes in the searching eyes Of those looking up Not towards heaven But beyond it? Do you crawl through sewers And creep through curving drain-pipes Past a coven of black-widows Down echoing halls of night Until you emerge on the other side Where poisons are washed away And the creeks run clean again? Someday soon I'll build you a guest room... Don't look at me like that! I'm not trying to push you away You can still come and go as you please But let's face facts: You're a volcano and I'm an ocean We both make poor room-mates You're always swallowing hot coals Until unexpectedly you erupt From an angry depth that You hide from everyone And your ashes make the reddest sunsets But could we meet just once without Tearing each other apart? I know I accept too much I know I expect too much But I need you more than you realize I'll meet you halfway In a hot spring someday And we'll turn the turbines of the world With the raging power of our rising steam
STREAMS
I love the way you laugh How it bubbles up inside you Until it boils over and out your lips And squeals like steam Escaping a teapot And I find myself longing To fill your life with joy And hoping I'm your cup of tea I hate the way you make A chisel out of every mistake To carve yourself down to nothing To leave behind the discarded scraps Of dismembered emotions And compliments marked "Return to sender" Lying in a pile of knotted coils And I'm insulted by the suggestion That I don't know beauty when I see it I want to make love to you for a thousand years Beneath the towering moonlight Dancing by the river To the music of frogs But we're standing on opposite banks Like cats Eternally trapped on the wrong side of doors Or under feet shuffling into the unknown Like leaves disappearing downstream Into the dark deep night Where there's thin ice buried under snow Still waters run deeper than you know And neither of us has the courage To move first But this is no place to stay So I’ve just one more thing to say Life is a stream That can not be grasped Don’t fight the current When the water comes slipping past... You're so strange and so wonderful Now on the count of three Let's jump
MISGUIDED
Good-natured ghosts Traipse the landscape Trading gossip and paradoxes With other lost souls Sick of the smell Of these Hell-fires Got a prescription For the Scriptures Of dead gods And living liars Misguided by 8-cylinder engines Traveling through the South For the first time I can fully empathize with Dante Security-cameras stalk My every move A milllion-eyed monster Staring me down-- A digital Cerberus Shipwrecked in this desert Where the air is thick with grease From Kudzu to clay Demonic duties Have been out-sourced To tireless robots Who mark me as an outsider A criminal And stab at my eyes When I ask too many questions Unexpectedly Hell is full of churches Where missiles are tattooed With biblical passages To match the tramp stamps Of confederate flags And burning crosses That celebrate an Orwellian orgy: Making love with symbols of hate Making war with symbols of love
SOLILOQUY FOR THE BLIND
We’re on standby Waiting for the next flight Out of this small town Out of this small life Sick of the same routine Sick of 2nd guessing you I'm killing time Losing my mind Permit me this Soliloquy for the blind In what far-off field will You lay your head tonight My runaway calf? Never content with the present Always hungry for more Forever thrusting your eager face Through weathered fences of fantasy While truth rots in your trough The grass always grows greener In the lives we've never lived You take your glasses off And pretend to clean them A magician’s misdirection Sleight of hand or heart Points the way Down this serpentine path To a prurient mirage Of shimmering belonging With people so thirsty They'll drink the sand Ensared by the lines you crossed Eyes wide with panic Choking on the barbed- Wires of guilt Your trembling cries Echo through drunken valleys Of slipshod boulders and Beckon the wild dogs of lust To come out of their smiling shadows And eat you alive While you walk away As he hides in his cloak, With irony-- As with all godly secrets-- The lynch-pin of your illusion: It was never your eyes That kept you from seeing Wrapped securely in his arms, The Cadmean victory Of your affected charms
WHEN SHE FALLS
How she never learned To ride a bike or Balance her clumsy life Tripping over ant-hills and Painting her perfect body With bruises When she falls Face-first into the street Scraping her soft skin Across pale concrete How she cuts her wrists On the ragged edges of Other lonely hearts Losing her will to love Herself--or others She fucks in the blood Of her own selfish self-sacrifice And clothes her naked soul With her tired mantra “this is better than being alone” How forked tongues of fire Lick up and down her back Promising warmth But delivering blisters That burst open like seed-pods When she runs From where she fell Now who will bring My fallen angel Back from Hell?
AT FIRST, BUT LATER
At first Seperation anxiety To mourn the loss Of another being Who was my right hand-- Or arm or leg-- or Second pair of eyes. Phantom pains crawling Like worms Thru the fallow soil Of my flesh Chewing on the open wound Where our two lives Were severed But later As if an umbilical cord Were cut-- I am reborn A fledgling seed Fluttering in the wind Swimming slowly thru summer sky Melting with the warmth Of the morning sun Like cold honey Floating in hot tea Everything seemed suddenly closer Even the stars had changed They were no longer clusters of plasma Gazing passively From an astronomical distance But living beings Who carefully caressed The face of the Earth And curled their fingers Around drifting clouds While standing on the shoulders Of the tallest hills And kissing the cheeks Of frightened trees With laughter in my soul I find myself sleep-walking Towards dreams Of foreign, fertile land Where I can bury my hopes In the salty sand And wait For a late-season rain To awaken new worlds Within me... A place to put roots down
WORD FISHING
Late at night When the weave of words Has loosened I cast a wider net But still I come up empty Thoughts swimming thru Gaps between letters And memories spilling Out of the cloudy water Spinning like silt To the bottom of the sea My mind is a ship Sailing across the surface of things And my expeditions to new depths Take me to places without light Where my uncertain hands make new discoveries And fill my pockets with weightless treasures That explode with the pressure of oceans When I bring them back to the open air Oh, the wild beauty That can not be tamed With words!
A DIET OF CIVILIZED LIES
The other day I dreamt That I was the moon And the core of my being was eclipsed By one thing only I wanted to reflect all That is right with the world To shine with the secret strength Of unseen stars To light the path for those Who have lost their way From up above Everything was so calm and clear I could see forever And with the certainty of gravity I knew that the horizon was Just the beginning But sleepless clouds come without warning Circling like wolves And the emptiness of everything Screams a silence that's deafening So I was glad to leave those lofty heights That icy heaven of cold intelligence But not to return to the cities below A diet of civilized lies Will dull your taste for life Seek refuge in the abandoned Bastard-child land of the ordinary Where even the unholiest of moments brings A breath of life In all small things
SCARS DON'T HURT
Have you ever Been hit so hard By someone's words That you see stars? And the world fades to black Until you wake up staring, wild-eyed Into the worried faces of e.m.t.'s The lights of your souls locked Onto opposite ends of an urgent questionAnd as a crowd draws near You can smell their curiosity Is dripping with fear Like the cardboard culture They're still standing on Stained with blood and sweat And losing its strength And when they tell you it's plain to see You're hurt so bad you could die You turn down the offer Of an ambulance ride for A donut and hot chocolate saying Life without dessert Wouldn't be worth living And they're avoiding the question With their awkward attempts to pry Your social security number and current address Or other labels that don't stick Quite as well or as long In the safe recesses of your mind Given the severity of the situation Their politeness is unkind And later when the shock Suddenly wears off You're paralyzed with pain And you walk with a limp For months on end and Even though you'll bear that scar For the rest of your life The big surprise is finding out That hearts are like bones When they break they grow back Stronger than before And besides Scars don't hurt anymore