The Funeral Games
Nature knew I would later write about her
in the context of some Mercurial poem -
One that before collecting some dust
just barely missed the trash barrel
that had collected the more ill-formed siblings.
It’s a rather Spartan practice I suppose
to dash such children against the rocks.
It wasn’t their fault their feet were uneven,
that they lacked sophistication
or intelligence.
But we can afford to be totalitarian with ideas -
they are just ideas
just words, just images, just fears.
Needless to say Nature knew all this
so she donned a newspaper gray dress
and unleashed a dull cold rain.
She knew that I would rather concentrate on her.
To linger in the land of inhuman objects
objects devoid of necessity or individuality.
I suppose that’s why I love words
more natural than every raindrop, every cloud, and her hair
far more natural than her hair -
where does she think she is going with that wretched hair?
It was one of those days, or perhaps one of those occasions
where human contact feels unnatural
as if this should all be endured alone like an apocalypse.
Or maybe it’s just me.
I suppose Art has her hand in that
because she knows it’s more meaningful
to have impalpable, unquenchable pain -
it’s more heroic when you do things alone.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Comedy is ugliness without pain -
that’s called philosophy my dear friends,
eloquence, meaning, passion, yet
in no way reflecting the actuality of things
this moment, her hair, the weather.
Perhaps its because we are false,
perhaps we are the untruths in a truthful world -
but no, such is not heroic, such is not natural.
We are the actuality, the history, the ugliness without pain.
Who does philosophy think she is anyway?
Not entirely unlike any other lover -
just more seductive.
The kiss she takes is always better than the kiss she gives.
Wisdom when possessed cannot be desired.
You can only desire what you don’t have.
Like time. We never have the time.
Her horrid beehive hairdo eclipses my vision.
I spent our time together writing poems
that will never be read. Trash – by all accounts.
I loved them all and wanted the best for them -
but desire does not always make something true.
If it did it would be sunny, this would be a birthday party,
the woman in front of me would have a long raven tress,
I would allow my wife to console me with her hands,
and their would be no such thing as poetry.
He Never Spoke…
His voice, captured in ink
Knows not time on the letter
Too old to fold.
His thoughts could do no better
than to leave his mouth and sink
through the paper he gave his life to.
I had just told you, I had just said
my father was a silent man
His word sold for gold
A tongue tied Calaban
Emotions trapped in his head
like a cave. I had just told you.
What else could I have thought?
His hands were bigger than my world
too bold to hold
a sinewed story to unfurl
about a lesson too important to be taught.
I never knew what to do.
Now a letter, one of maybe thousands
written for the woman’s ear,
a soul to make whole,
Praises she could never hear
Deafness, decreed by the Lord’s command,
struck her when she was two.
That same beloved woman died giving birth
to a boy, too young to be without a mother,
They stole my soul,
No tears from father. He knew I would be worth
the sacrifice of the other.
She was the reason I was never spoken to.
Now a letter tells me this, after he had died
an old man, joining his beloved wife,
too old to behold
He’d been waiting his entire life
“Amen” was all that I replied.
The first word I said that was true.
What surprises morning brings
A man with nothing to wear but belief
Crawls, his belly toward hell, over
A street with cobblestone teeth.
Roadside vendors sell their vices
and prayers with stoney answers.
Above them the giant clock tower eye’s
hands are tied with tears
From the ashen faced sky.
Two lovers are the masons of a desire
Killing time, in self defense.
A cold beach and a cricket choir
Call the hourglass sands to dance.
Two opalescent squids trying to make sense
of each other and the dark.
The once proud city built with words by drones
is now nothing but loud concrete and silent windows
peddlers and thier prey, hungry men getting stoned
with happy widows, and the color grey.
Stories are passed like disease and wine
About the day David slew Goliath.
In the library their is a poet with a historian’s delay
with his good, but broken, arm in a sling
and his pen ready like a trebuchet.
He has spent his life waiting, waiting, waiting
for today. He watches the street and
does nothing, nothing, nothing.
He watches the naked man make progress
his open stomach feeding on stone.
The man must be insane, or even hopeless,
drunk, or maybe just alone.
The poet considers weeping for the happy man
Being stripped to his bones,
but such is the sorrow of fairy tales
Not the reality of his home.
Why They Still Play
They’ll still play, because their human;
even though life is away
They’ll still play
With Bones as their drumstyx,
Fingernail picks for fat licks,
Because their human.
They’ll still play the blues
Even with nothing left to loose
they’ll still play
On drums made of skin,
Guitar’s with sinews streched thin,
Because they are human.
They’ll still play for the new man
Even when he’s got nothin’ to say
They’ll still play.
They’ll take turns being the minstrel
Even though they are in hell
Because they are human.
They’ll still play bagpipes made of stomach
The lipless droning doodle sacks
They’ll still play
Each ghost wiping away the tears
From their hollow skulled peers
because their still human.
Hung
A tremendous blow
a heart string to hang from
curling like a question mark
Once inside.
A punctuated equilibrium
swinging back and forth
like a pendulum,
The crowd gathered sighs.
The man doesn’t die,
not yet, that would be kind
So he swings, swings, swings, in the wind
and can only whisper “why”.
A final exhale clings to silence, a nice clean note,
the summation of a life, leaving through the throat.
The Law of Non-Contradiction: Or why things die
It was on this very spot,
this pile of dirt we bought,
that our father once stood
He lived through wars we fought,
and he never forgot
that evil comes from good.
Is he in the wind, or in the mind,
the absolute of history, or the grace of time,
In her hand, or in the trees?
Perhaps he is none of these.
This body once contained
A child whose laugh sustained
the people of the wood.
But now this corpse remains
drowned in cheap champaign
that never tasted as it should.
Is he in the wind, or in the mind,
the absolute of history, or the grace of time,
In her hand, or in the trees?
Or perhaps he is none of these.
While turning old and grey,
he was recalled to say
“Dear, perhaps I’ve misundertood
The meaning of the day
or what price we pay
In persuit of the almighty good.”
Is he in the wind, or in the mind,
the absolute of history, or the grace of time,
In her hand, or in the trees?
Perhaps he is none of these?
But on the night he died,
While on his bed he lied,
He finally understood
That while some run, some will hide
some will fight, and others will abide
but no body shall be considered good
Are we in the wind, or in His mind
the absolute of his story, or the grace of Thine
On the land, or in the seas?
Or perhaps we are all of these.
Said the Judge, in review of case 3712, after having been presented with overwhelming evidence supporting the allegation that a severe policy violation had occurred on the eve of Saturnalia in attempts to directly challenge the already arbitrated disputes between the once Universal Institution and the Current Establishment as outlined in the Immanuel Act of 2007, to the movie store clerk
“In line with protocol seven, two, four, two, three,
In the light of evidence presented to me,
and the congregation of equals assembled here,
by the power invested by the supreme and austere,
His Eminence the Executive, so endowed by the equal citizens
In reference to the God they once worshiped, I sentence
you with removal, with no chance of appeal,
As stipulated by the case Crick versus O’Neil,
of your corporeal extensions, including but not limited to
Those eyes, which were used in the crime, to view
that heretical work, banned in 2010
By the initiative of the equal men and women
of the courts of Athens, which references a man
Killed for his impiety and his foul plan
To corrupt the children.”
“Did you, or did you not, use this book
As a blueprint. This same text which we took
from your apartment room, while you worked,
as the lovable yet utterly incomprehensible clerk,
of the local movie rental establishment
adjacent to the store, whose underground basement
served as the launching ground of your so-called revolution
to re-instate that odious institution
Whose former universality was stripped
by the Immanuel act, of 2007, for having gripped
the hearts of too many future elites
with such nonsense as a life more complete
beyond this one, such an act, so signed
removed that foul communion and any of its kind.”
“Also, in order to prevent you from further crime
we remove those lips which pantomime
a silent set of words, passed down in another heretical text
Whose name, so vile and so hateful that in such context
it would be a crime to even mention here,
In the hall of his Eminence, the supreme and austere,
Executive, whom pontificates such notions, which you hold dear,
So we do not have to. Then, having sacrificed the greater portion of a day,
He promulgates the laws discovered to Magistrate Grey,
Who then informs the equals, for their own good, of what to say
In response to impious questioning. The same questioning
which brings you before this council, and upon this reasoning
we will also remove your legs, which were used to transport
the foul ideas with the help of your loathsome cohort,
as seen in diagram A.”
“Next to be removed, by public demand, are your arms
Whose slow and deliberate motions have caused more harm
than a sea of bombs, a rain of bullets, or an army of men.
A clean blade will be used to sever your left, and then again
to remove your right, in accordance with the Humane Treatment Act,
so written after a man prematurely died of a heart attack
During the open stages of that days festivities.
We have planned for such activities,
so that your sentence will not be expedited, and be fair
To all those who will gather there
In expectation for the final blow,
which, as you and I both know,
will not come until the ship returns from Delos.
Which will take a month, even if the strongest fellows
are working the oars.”
“Then finally, after that month, you will be burned
and your ashes, according to the punishment you’ve earned,
will be fired from a cannon into the plain.
With no epilogue or tombstone to remain,
to preach your vile form of heresy
You will be buried with your philosophy
so that your followers will see
what destiny awaits those who follow your path,
and in the light of the people’s wrath,
Whose equality demands such reverence
that any formal act of severance
Such as the continuation of your sect
Would be declared a diseased insect
Whose continued existence cannot be allowed,
and having already vowed,
To sacrifice their lives to fight against such foes
It would become the magnitude’s duty to overthrow
That attempt at tyranny.
Such is the sentence for being found guilty
of the inexcusable crime of treachery.”
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: Or what it means to fall in love.
Somewhere, is some forgotten attic
Seven fanatic wise men drink
and talk while they think about
quantum love, and the leaping of
the heart super strings
between energy levels.
70 frantic fingers, bound with seven rings
Fondle rapidly aging pages
as dry as their skin. Silently the sages
calculate the weight of loneliness,
or the speed of sorrow,
and perhaps the exact arc at which
the heart’s super strings can bend
before they undo the fabric of reality.
A single breakthrough would make
the 490 years they spent worth
the 12 oz of gold around their neck. But
The wave of ink whelms
the stoic helmsmen, whose particle pupils
Dance unpredictably between
The different layers of meaning
Around the words “maybe later”.
The rising sun is a windowed reminder
that their getting older, and without sons
There are no heirs to move the boulder
already in motion. One wise man sees
Dust rising in the beam of light.
Perhaps a walk might do him some good
Perhaps he should, before its too late.
The Morning of Execution
The incarned beauty rests
reclined, her hemlock colored eyes
Preparing for her test.
Despite his recent arrest
the horror of the loved and wise
The incarned beauty rests.
Alcestis’ blood pumping in her chest
Her hands, resting on his thighs,
Are preparing for her test.
Unaware of the gathering guests
and the unfurling of the elydoric skies
The incarned beauty rests.
Aesclepius’ cock greets the morning in protest,
She wonders if his closest allies
Are prepared for her test.
This union required her to invest
More than this world so small in size.
Yet, the incarned beauty rests
Preparing for her test.
Naphta’s final stand
Bang! Salvific lead
Cuts the barrier of grey matter
Between Enlightenment and Renaissance.
Exit wound on the other side of time
Amidst the symphonic chatter
Of angelic choirs conducted by the highly nuanced
Finger of Adam. The barrel belches serpentine
Smoke toward heaven, the body to the ground.
A pistol dual for the destiny of man,
A savior can’t be found.
The argument is silence, the man is in shock
Mind succumbing to violence, a victory for the heart.
