Thanks everyone for helping me break the 20,000 mark

I have been as alone as anyone;
a pearl hidden from other pearls -
shut in the mouth of an oyster at
the bottom of the sea; amongst
the shell bound sleeping.

I was alone like that again in a room
full of people speaking. I don’t think
we knew how to be different, so we
painted lusters and memories onto
each other like skin.

And, our hope was:

One day to band together and form
a strand - idealistically wanting one
day to leave and overcome being
alone or hidden deep in an old woman’s
drawer.

I

I am hooked on the nipple of creation,
the mound of its sensitivity; its touch of
soothing - the sustenance of shape - the
way I am safe when I am with her and
I am fine.

II

…as a transient I walked and spoke the
mumbo, and hung with crows discussing
what the devil knows, after having been
stabbed by a horn, and dripped milk for
40 exiled years…

III

This poem is about an innocence of desire,
the pang of wanting, and my moan is an
attempt to wake something buried without
forgiveness - even kings are undone by the
madness of their passions.

There was a
spooky telephone voice trailing
and following a night shadow

What I said and said again and
all the words I ever heard, rose
from a cacophony valley of
singing

So I climbed the mountain and
planted a flag and added my
voice to the distant but present
din

I said “Hold me as I have ever
beheld you…”

And the landscape smiled and
the trivial birds chirped and the
ancestors continued dancing in
the valley below

Which contained and composed
her as a beautiful body, ultimately
unconquerable by any such as the
bear coat men

I knew almost all of her was
edible that her other explorers
had been mostly insatiable lust
lance corporals

Which for some crazy inexplicable
reason made her very hungry, in a
silent triumphant sort of way…
d
d
d
d
Image: The Stomach Dance
By Aubrey Beardsley

Poem written for VC who I call Angel…

Dear Readers,

I am in New York on a family matter, what can I say, I thought I would be able to continue to post as I have done 3 or 4 times a week - but no…there is just too much to see and do here.

This afternoon I leave for Boston for another 4 days and then this blog will return to its regularly scheduled programming.

Peace

Poetman

PS

What was it about my last post that caused such a hush of silence? mmmm….

I

I saw the mannered and those without manners - on dark
sidewalks, in stylish clothings and way younger bodies -
and the flash of salt that had dried on their skin glinted
under street lights.

I was one of them, ethereally hip at the stump grinding corn
maidens like a shaman - I was never gonna die cuz I carried
heaven and a clowns laughter in a vial of snowflakes which
I let drift over a cliff top like a Columbian.

Beat beat and bop bop - my shoes were Italian and my smile
was handsome - I was a killer, and would have slain the
disasters if I had had any idea of a right or proper way to
straighten from a stagger.

But now who gives a fuck, who but me cares a frig, twenty
five years later an old man tapping letters, writing sonnets,
chasing starlets and wishing that loves skin had never wasted
itself battling cancer.

II

I changed the tempo, and rearranged my meter and I hollered
about a collar and took off my clothes and burned Diana’s
garters and then I told my dream girl I was an insult too, but
still a seeker of her pleasure.

There are secrets in my drawers, and something inanimate in
my closet - and ten boxes of letters to someone named
anonymous stored on my garage floor and more latex urges
then Goodyear or a good year might ever stretch to fill.

I’ll get the guns out, and shoot at the back wall of my bedroom
and then place a 3:00am call to my neighbor Jim or wake his wife
Sue, and I don’t care if I offend them with my pranks - for I
have too, and must rouse all the arousals.

I will spank and crank and turn up the music and dance and fall
and recapture the blood spilled these many past years and refill
your cup, and then and only then will I sear my pain steak
bloody rare.

III

A popularity contest - what a joke…get you to like me, warm
to me, embrace me - you won’t and I don’t know which of your
arms will be strong enough to hold me on my journey to where
if any where…I am going.

Tempt me like a tempest, and uncork a ship from a bottle and
take a walk down its pirate plank and plunge into the sea of my
lunges - be my druid girl, my forever oracle serenely undressing
our better futures.

I am a schizoid bald baby crying and bantering - telling the truth
over and over by pricking a tattoo of the story of the nipples I
discovered as a young child playing doctor in a side yard between
two houses.

Where has the time gone - what I almost remember - Lily’s halo,
she was the brown Mexican girl I loved as a boy in Norwalk
California on a street overlooked by thoughtless kings…or any
of their spectacular angels.

I

Tell me without remorse or censor that
my hands are more a callus of trauma
than an incitement to lust.

He died on a different road a different man
than ever the man you will remember like a
mistress forever.

II

Tell me that now it is not the same - that it
will never be the way it was - admit that
what ever the past, I am not your only man.

To do anything less is to demean what
greatness there is still or may be again, and
I do mean we are more than an old potential.

III

Blind woman glasses and tape on your
ears are little protection bumping against
me the other soul on your lonely road.

What will be your bag of gold if you remove
from it the heat of your body and give away
its color to someone now departed?

IV

This death thing is killing the three of us -
he who has gone, you who may yet return,
and I who wonder about my place in it all.

Its belly cold now, its sad mind and heavy
heart, its where to then, after we’ve spread
his ashes on an isle of fire?

I

An arrangement of thoughts in the head of a
believer dances the woozy dance of a trance
hypnotized prayer maker partnering from time
to time with deliverance.

This is the day a saint sits drinking tea in the
vestibule of a church, wondering if his doubts
might ever bring him closer to understanding
the mysteries of motherhood.

II

Water of mother wash me, milk of mother
quench me, tear of mother save me - we are the
sons of women - who loved, stilled and
calmed our worries.

This is the day a hungry man will kiss the softness
of his lovers breast, cognizant of her faithfulness
and then sleep to the sounds of her singing -
dreaming of family.

III

Paint me mother and draw me loving and thinking
the most profound thoughts of others in the
university of your life, within crowds of beautiful
people who are laughing.

This is the day reason can fall apart, the day races
may be won by long shots, the day a boy will emerge
from a cave speaking a wonderful and comprehensible
language.

IV

Feel me mother, touch my forehead, watch the
trembling lips of my terror - sooth your troubled
child kneeling in his room, praying that his efforts
will not go unnoticed.

This is the day doves leave the pool of Lourdes
healed, this is the day firecrackers announce new
seasons, the day judges adjourn from criticizing
children and the innocence of their pleasures.

h

h

h

Mosaic by Beth Norton

It might have been in the morning
after complaining I’d been lonely in
a dream - waking and forgetting
what was resolved; that I realized
I was a vague expression.

I inhaled the days first cigarette and
a strong cup of coffee, and then I
walked over to my neighbor the
freelance miracle worker, and of
course he wasn’t home.

So I stole his newspapers

My dreams and their details were in
all the papers - not exactly as I recalled
them, but close enough. Every word had
been carefully placed in a column by the
up at dawn men.

Let me explain

I have carefully followed in the footsteps
of men all my life, and it has taken a lot of
stair climbing and comparing myself to
others to finally give up on the fallacies of
adequacies.

But then

I check my wallet to see if I am still a card
carrying member of the loyal order of ladder
men and well, of course I am. So I prepare
to either climb to heaven one rung at a time
or free fall to hell.

Either way it should be an interesting journey…

l
ll
l
;
Image by Rodney Smith: