O, Infinite Abyss...

Poem 82

2008-08-14T04:41:06Z

He stood on stage in the rain in 1969

And played his horn until the jail

Walls fell like Jericho.

He stood with Black Panthers

And sat below Old Glory,

The Star Spangled Banner

Crawling through the crowd

Until men in suits took him away.

And he’d call crying, lost, and inebriated

In some room, with some people,

Who had something that’d make

Him forget about the family

In the hills, the howls and cackles

He ran past in Greenpoint on his way

From school. And they’d sit

In unmarked white cars outside

His white house out on the island,

Waiting for him to slip.

And he died in Paris and was born

Again out in the desert someplace

Where people go to think.

And now he sits at the table,

Eyeing their drinks, As if they were

Bombs set to explode.

Poem 81

2008-08-14T04:40:06Z

And as the lightening advanced and retreated

Across the night, I was sure it existed off my energy.

It was my howl that rolled across the plains

And my tears that drowned the earth

And the beat of my heart pulsated pulsated pulsated

Beneath the ground, so that if you put your ear

To the road, you felt the palpitations of my spirit

Racing across the countryside, where two days before

I saw fireworks die in the dark sad innocence of the night,

Their tentacles kissing your face reflected in the window

That now stood before me.

And each time the sky erupted and your eyes closed,

I feared they’d never open again,

Feared they’d never smile wistfully as the fireworks faded -

Praying the reds blues greens yellows would hover for an instant longer

Like hummingbirds above a flower, before decaying

Into the consciousness of the sky. And now as the fog

Rallies beneath the fluorescence that hangs like a ceiling

Above the black road, I burst through the night, soaring

Beneath celestial conflagrations – each more ephemeral than the last.

Orange streetlight beams battle the haze, headlights drowning

And straining to hang onto outstretched asphalt hands.

I wasn’t here to decay into consciousness.

I was the Brahma, I was the life force and would not

Pause for evanescence, for mortality. I’d chase life

Through the heavens, and when I reached a dead end I’d abandon the car,

And when I reached the sea I’d abandon the shore,

And when I reached dawn I’d abandon time.

I could not be stopped and the wheels of my car devoured the darkness,

Each bend and hill a hindrance to existence. As the fog rolled in

Like tumbleweeds and the lightening poured forth

And the grass danced to the rise and fall of the wind,

A train fractured the symphony of my velocity.

I would triumph and was limitless and the train ascended

And I ascended and in our ascendency we scorched across time

Like comets. As the wind shrieked through my hair and the train’s horn

Forked through cracks and beneath doorways and between bodies,

I cried out for each house and car and light and tree and shadow,

Racing to an eternity somewhere between heaven and hell.

And echoing across space, I peered through the window

Where your eyes smiled in the incandescence of the blinking red light

That swung above my head, in the gnarled carcass of oaks and shadows

Standing before me, in the signs sighing stop and dead end,

And in the train’s infinite black hull as it bellows away somewhere into the night.

My eyes close. The world hangs calmly from the gallows and homes and leaves

And civilizations stand still - Lightening stumbles on, thunder sails across seas

Of granite and iron, rains pour forth. And for an instant I wonder

If my eyes will open again, or if I had evaporated into the night,

Smoke drifting amongst fireworks fading into the black.

Poem 79

2008-08-14T04:38:03Z

The crimson blood of dusk dried

Against the switchblade horizon

And in an instant we were bathed in darkness –

Pure and holy and cathartic darkness.

And all that we saw was seen

Because we knew the heavens were our playground,

That the scarred and tattered earth was our canvas

And the night was our kingdom

And we shouted long live the king,

Until our roars were barely more than a whisper.

We stumbled through groves and glades

Chasing stars that were really fireflies,

And fireflies that were figments of our ecstasy.

We were alive and with every inch of flesh

Longing to join the silence of the night

We came upon the metallic remains of our car

Buried beneath the rust of twilight.

We had played upon the steps of civilization

Without care, or worry, or consideration

For the consequences of our madness.

Our hearts raced, our skin tingled, our hair stood on end,

And we were happy to drown

In the animals noises of the road.

The sound and smell and touch of existence

Rang forth from the dregs of our being like lingering perfume

As the car sped off,

And in the blink of an eye we were 1000 miles away.

Poem 77

2008-08-14T04:37:04Z

The streetlights swayed above the black tar road

Like bright gulls on troughs and crests.

A fluorescent carrot dangling over our celestial bodies and minds

Leading to a moment, vision, place,

Anything that seemed to aim us

Into the dark of the night with reckless abandon.

Anything that moved us from here to there.

The destination was irrelevant - all that mattered

Was the chance to forget who we were for a second,

To exist and to exist and to only exist

Amongst the darkness of the soft night.

We cast our lots,

And chased the glow of far off stars and cities and fires

As our feet lusted upon the cold pedal

And we divided the night like a lion

Streaking through herds and flocks.

Like some highway bandit stealing time and light

We howled and raged on roads

Born upon blades of sawgrass

And born upon ghost dances

And born upon the backs of tree-lined streets and Model T houses

That we tried to escape from

Because we tried to escape ourselves.

Our fears and our hopes and our dreams swept across

Generations generations generations

And only ruptured on this penitential night

When we fled the sounds the smells the smiles

That receded behind us,

Only to chase those same things

In the horizon that stretched out before our eyes.

Poem 76

2008-08-14T04:33:13Z

He trickles off the curb

Beneath the green light’s vigilant gaze

With barely enough energy

To nibble at the air.

Like a tightrope walker

He slowly edges across

The ordered white lines

Leaning on his cart

With bags from the day before.

Car horns drain his silence.

The street and his face

Are buckled beneath

The weight of

Cars deaths,

Divorces pedestrians.

And time.

And his soft breath

Clings to the saturated night air

Alive with small insects

Flying about his

Tired head of white hair

And canyon wrinkles.

One day he had been

A holy man, a mad man,

A highway man

But now his void eyes

Converse with each car

Fogged by breathing,

A road block.

As I drive past

The old man stumbling across the street,

I pray he makes it,

Pray he gets home.

But he wants to be forgotten

Beneath the weight and screech

Of hot tires and horsepower.

So I drive past and he’s gone,

Leaving the white lines

Of the street behind.

Poem 75

2008-08-14T04:28:11Z

And if I had time and some patience

I’d write a real good movie

With love and romance and star-crossed lovers and all that stuff

And there’d be big dresses and oceans of flowers and a bunch of crops. Maybe some oranges or Something, I’m not a farmer, and don’t plan on being one.

A lot of work it seems.

And there’d be columns like that Atlas guy and they’d be holdin’ up an old white plantation.

I don’t know him, but his shoulders must get really tired.

Or at least I’d imagine they would.

There’d be a guy and a girl

Who’d go for picnics and ride horses and sit under the stars

Talking about Huck Finn or that Eli Whitney guy. He did something with gin, I’m not sure what.

All I’m sure of is that stuff makes you sick. I swear I tried it once and couldn’t see straight for a Month, honest to God.

And I don’t know if that Huck Finn’s still living, but if he still is it’d be pretty cool to meet him.

Well that guy and girl would laugh and cry and sometimes make some jokes

About that smiling man who was always cleaning the house and doing all kinds of chores,

Which would make everyone in the audience cringe

And look around to see if anyone else was watching and reactin’ like they were, because the joke was just bad.

But sometimes movies need that to keep you on your toes. You know?

Maybe their parents and aunts and uncles and cousins would really hate each other. Maybe even their pets would hate each other and that’d be hysterical

Because I had a dog once and she really hated all kinds of people and I laughed at that a bunch, Like the time she chased the guy who delivers our mail down the street.

Anyway, maybe one was poor and the others really rich.

I’m not sure if they had cars back then but if they did the rich one’d probably have one,

Like ones of those really nice big red ones that go real fast and have a radio.

Girls love that kinda stuff so I’m gonna get one sometime.

Or maybe the guy was pretty smart like me and the other one was blind or deaf or real dumb.

Yea, I think the families would hate each other and the guy’s pretty poor but could do long math Problems and stuff like that and the girl’s blind and deaf and couldn’t do any kind of math Which is kinda sad.

Not even the easy ones with just pluses and minuses.

That seems like a movie I’d probably wanna see.

Plus I love popcorn so I’d see it just to get that.

So this girl and guy are really not alike but still like goin places and kissin and whatever

Else people who like each other do, I’m not so sure.

And there’s tension and suspense and maybe something bad happens like a fire or flood or Earthquakes or something. Someone told me one time that earthquakes are God’s stomach Rumbling. Not sure I believe that.

Why would he be so hungry?

Doesn’t matter I guess.

But maybe the poor guy’s house burns down, but he’s still nice and loving and all

And despite the bad stuff happening they get married and buy their own big house

Supported by columns that look like that Atlas I talked about

But the columns’ shoulders don’t get sore or nothin.

If I were Atlas my shoulders wouldn’t get sore.

The audience is kinda at the edge of their seats and they feel the movie endin and whatnot,

And tears are wellin’ up in eyes.

But my eyes wouldn’t water because I don’t cry. Girls mostly do that stuff.

The camera kinda pulls out as the guy waves and he’s holdin the hand

Of his rich but really blind, and deaf wife.

And just as all those people watchin’ start crying, and noses sniffle, and tissues are taken out and People start shoutin my name because it’s the best damn movie they’ve ever probably seen,

The screen goes dark and the credits roll and a lot of people cheer

And it’d be nice because then I wouldn’t be here stuck in my room for the weekend

Because I can’t do math problems,

Not even the easy ones with just pluses and minuses.

Poem 74

2008-08-14T04:27:03Z

You take my hand trembling and with closed eyes praying fear and contrition

Fall, like the tears that stream down your face and now soar past our heads -

Trackless trains due at some eternal station where passengers wait

On platforms reading graffiti incantations that read “The End is near”

Or “Call now for a good time” scratched crudely into the flesh of walls.

Hurried glances freeze the ticktockticktock of time, whose hands move

Beneath waltzing shadows thrown from train lights approaching.

Yet as we drown in the cacophony of wind, all I can consider

Is the fate of your tears, and where they will fall, and how fast they will fall,

And whether mascara will run in tributaries across your face.

Our ragdoll forms fall slowly through air, abandoning

The gargoyle walls and windows that frame my shirts and her dresses

Strung upon the leather chair which consumed body and mind as you sunk into the Grasp of its exaggerated arms and

We’d sit there at nights and Sunday mornings encapsulated in the leather

And breathing softly so as not to flutter the newspaper upon our laps.

We’d be surrounded by moments frozen in time

Upon photographic beaches, beside monuments, beneath trees in which we forever Carved our names in hearts and wrote “Love Always” with a blade now forgotten in rust in a box marked Miscellaneous -

Moments which now merely reflect scattered office lights and a waxing moon

And television lightning strikes dancing and thunder crashing in laugh tracks which echo through the lonely hallways of the apartment.

We sink and tumble through city canyons as our intertwined bodies

Slowly fall apart separated by what seems to be miles of car horn air

That’s actually nothing more than inches between cobweb fingers

Hoping to trap the other’s hand in its disintegrating grasp.

I often asked myself what this might feel like - to be airless, to fly, to be Icarus

Whose fated wings melted with the heat of his own ambition as his Father,

Daedalus, cried dirges watching his son explode upon the fields of water

That ebbed and flowed below.

We fell and fell through air and instead of hitting pavement

We fell through the ground, descending through the depths of the earth

And out into the depths of space, where I scream to deaf lightyear ears.

I awake to the echo of my own cry, and question whether my howl was imagined or not

Because the angel on the leather couch beside me has failed to move an inch and

Disrupt the newspapers thrown upon her silent lap.

I welcome the shirts and dresses, the picture frames retelling tales from a vacation, a wedding, a picnic in a park with a tree reading “Love Always” encircled by a crudely drawn heart that more closely resembles an arrowhead

Discovered by curious children digging through a leaf-covered Saturday backyard.

Somewhere someone’s still working as rows of lights vertically illuminate

The soft wood floors that drown in the sounds of a passing train and the television

That still yells with an early morning promise of salvation, “Repent.”

And I laugh, because I only commit mortal sins in my sleep

So I have nothing to worry about.

Poem 73

2008-08-14T04:25:52Z

For two years I waited

Beside my window

Watching the traffic of time

That sped past the streets below

As trees grew and died

And were brought back to life

Beneath the weight of flowers and snow.

My feet stepped across the cold wooden floor

And formed canyons

Amplifying the whine and moan

Of my solemn procession

That seemed endless,

Only leading to the crashing of my heart against

Quivering ribs

As the spasm of each and every branch

Attracted my eyes to the light like moths

Unaware of their unforeseen fate.

Shadows pounced through the fogged window,

And my mind raced,

“Is this it? Has the time come?

Just a sad whimpering boy hidden

Beneath dirty clothes in a clattered closet?”

I would resist and fight and claw and howl

And there’d be glory in that,

I’d think to myself.

Glory.

But what glory is there in waiting beside windows

And praying that backfired cars

Are backfired cars and not gun shots

Ringing through the shattered night

Like church bells that reminded me

Of the oasis of day that would come

And then vanish like a mirage beneath the weight of dark

And flowers and snow,

Hiding the dew-kissed knife

That would wait until I fell asleep

To make sure I never awoke.

There was no glory in that,

Only trembling hands.

Poem 72

2008-08-14T04:25:17Z

Vieux Carré

She said he had survived the Stone Age.

A Neolithic Bacchant

Who preached in temples and barrooms lining

Scorched streets -

Singed by the ebb and flow of Desire

That seemed to mark

The cadence of time.

The rhythm of minutes and hands

Fell prey to the whims of the Blues,

Trudging along in an inebriated fashion.

He prowls along the fluorescent labyrinth

Of boulevards between Canal and Esplanade,

Flesh and night and ecstasy drown

In the swift currents

That blur the line between illusion and reality.

Paternal exaltations spur him on

As blood and spirits race through his body.

Whimpering lights entangle faces and buildings and shadows

Into indecipherable forms

That process behind halting steps to Elysium.

She stares into the shattered remains of her face

Glimmering wildly across the wooden floor,

His carnal mass lumbering

From room to room.

Words sear through her soul,

As laughter and wraiths waltz

Across the darkening crypt of her existence.

Harlots and sirens wail

Between muted cries from the forgotten phone,

Swinging softly as if hung upon gallows.

He said she’d had this date from the beginning.

An Epicurean Saint

Who howls into the black hole of his fury

With feigned volition,

Descending into the throes of primal carnality.

Unhinged eyes solicit salvation

From ceilings and walls that return vacuous glares.

The dregs of her being disintegrate slowly

As reality and delusion coalesce in psychological pyres

Of Varsouvian melodies and vacant smiles.

Her name echoes shrilly across the eternities -

Past the lights whispering “Open”,

And the blocks of buildings buckling

Beneath the damp sky,

Over forms collapsed in doorways and thresholds,

And spires grasping for last breaths.

Winding its way beneath muddy currents

And crops sprouting from sanguine soil

And tombs and trees decaying

Amidst white columns.

Poem 71

2008-08-14T04:22:31Z

She descends into spells

Of chimerical bouts

Pitting reality against a rush of blood to the head

She’s drawn blindly to the florescence

Of grinning jack-o-lanterns out of focus

Who bob to palpitations from hearts and speakers.

Her mouth attempts a smile

As rose-splintered eyes kneel before the altar

Supplicating with sly glances beneath cumbersome eyelids.

The saints of her lust lurch past,

Refusing approbation –

Their souls drowned in the flood

Of chemicals and duplicity that seem to burst from each smirking face.

The spinning room and vinyl

Chips away at her consciousness

Sculpting a huddled mass of lace and tears

Strewn upon the quivering floor

“Love me,” she howls

But her cry echoes across the ever-widening chasm

Between her and herself

Falling upon the death eyes and blind ears

That stumble by.

She cries not for love or for pain

But eternally for what may have been

Hopes thrown to the floor

Like the sweat that descends from the crags of her face

“Just bang the drum slowly,” I breathe

“And walk.”

“Walk to its beat, to your beat, to its feel. And don’t look back.”

But it’s a ripple in an ocean as the whisper crawls from my mouth.

Her eyes roll, and her head falls…

As does my heart.

Poem 70

2008-08-14T04:13:08Z

Sitting on my bed again

I’m waiting for barbed thoughts to leave my mind

Tiptoeing through it all once more,

I stare into my soul with silent eyes

But all I see is crickets’ chirps,

And hear shadows lurch across the room

Light plays upon the trembling keys –

Sweet lullabies that try to lead me home

Let’s crawl along that darkened path

Past dreams and fears

And houses made of fog

And weigh our eyes with vespered coins

Beneath the night’s darkened veil

Let’s hide again from my own being,

Being careful not go

Down to those depths where light is fleeting

And the qualms cascade like snow

Down and down we mustn’t fall

But down and down we simply do

‘Til night ensnares my eyes and body

Night ensnares my mind and soul…

kingwetz777 @ 2008-05-13T19:25:00

2008-05-13T23:26:34Z

For two years I waited

Beside my window

Watching the traffic of time

That sped past the streets below

As trees grew and died

And were brought back to life

Beneath the weight of flowers and snow.

My feet stepped across the cold wooden floor

And formed canyons

Amplifying the whine and moan

Of my solemn procession

That seemed endless,

Only leading to the crashing of my heart against

Quivering ribs

As the spasm of each and every branch

Attracted my eyes to the light like moths

Unaware of their unforeseen fate.

Shadows pounced through the fogged window,

And my mind raced,

“Is this it? Has the time come?

Just a sad whimpering boy hidden

Beneath dirty clothes in a clattered closet?”

I would resist and fight and claw and howl

And there’d be glory in that,

I’d think to myself.

Glory.

But what glory is there in waiting beside windows

And praying that backfired cars

Are backfired cars and not gun shots

Ringing through the shattered night

Like church bells that reminded me

Of the oasis of day that would come

And then vanish like a mirage beneath the weight of dark

And flowers and snow,

Sure of the dew-kissed knife

That would wait until I fell asleep

To make sure I never awoke.

There was no glory in that, only sweating hands

And trembling phobias.

Bang the Drum Slowly

2008-05-12T01:29:59Z

She descends into spells

Of chimerical bouts

Pitting reality against a rush of blood to the head

She’s drawn blindly to the florescence

Of grinning jack-o-lanterns out of focus

Who bob to palpitations from hearts and speakers.

Her mouth attempts a smile

As rose-splintered eyes kneel before the altar

Supplicating with sly glances beneath cumbersome eyelids.

The saints of her lust lurch past,

Refusing approbation –

Their souls drowned in the flood

Of chemicals and duplicity that seem to burst from each smirking face.

The spinning room and vinyl

Chips away at her consciousness

Sculpting a huddled mass of lace and tears

Strewn upon the quivering floor

“Love me,” she howls

But her cry echoes across the ever-widening chasm

Between her and herself

Falling upon the death eyes and blind ears

That stumble by.

She cries not for love or for pain

But eternally for what may have been

Hopes thrown to the floor

Like the sweat that descends from the crags of her face

“Just bang the drum slowly,” I breathe

“And walk.”

“Walk to its beat, to your beat, to its feel. And don’t look back.”

But it’s a ripple in an ocean as the whisper crawls from my mouth.

Her eyes roll, and her head falls…

As does my heart.

Love Always

2008-05-12T01:29:34Z

You took my hand trembling and with closed eyes praying fear and contrition

Fell, like the tears that streamed down your face and now soared past our heads

Like trackless trains due at some eternal station where passengers waited

On platforms reading graffiti incantations that read “The End is near”

Or “Call now for a good time” scratched crudely into the flesh of walls.

Hurrying glances froze the ticktockticktock of time, whose hands moved

Beneath waltzing shadows thrown from train lights approaching.

Yet as we drowned in the cacophony of wind, all I could consider

Was the fate of your tears, and where they would fall, and how fast they would fall,

And whether mascara would run in black tributaries across your face.

Our ragdoll forms fall slowly through air, abandoning

The gargoyle walls and windows that framed my shirts and her dresses

Strung upon the leather chair which consumed body and mind as you sunk into the Grasp of its exaggerated arms and

We’d sit there at nights and Sunday mornings encapsulated in the leather

And breathing softly so as not to flutter the soft newspaper upon our laps.

We’d be surrounded by moments frozen in time

Moments which now merely reflected scattered office lights and a waxing moon