She was a painted panther Black skin and velvet dye Her eyes had all the answers But her lips knew when to lie Her home was a silver wasteland A piece of moon was her throne at night She spoke only in shadows And heard only the sound of light Her shape was god and movement And her name was without a face People worshipped her from far Like a pilgrim without a place And before long we all will be dreaming Her dreams on the final bed Where all eyes turn inward ever after And no more any word is said Because she was a painted panther Black skin and velvet dye Her eyes had all the answers But her lips knew when to lie
Let me go And I shall be Something akin To a memory My flesh it burns My bones they weigh The nights are tough And it’s hard these days For my soul it wanes Like wax neath flame And I know the pain To always feel the same Thus there is no way Where I can sow A seed of pearl For a sea to grow So I shall pass Through the veil of sand Alone with eternity Hand in hand…
Pieces of sunlight on my shirt Golden flakes caught unawares in snow I wear the world As a witness upon my eyebrow
Pendulum thoughts, mine, Rising to always fall, falling to ever rise A deaf dance; this one legged tango Should I mourn The forgotten remembrance Of irony bound in common things Like water buried in a coconut or born in one who knows what it means to be a child Without being none I, myself, was born skinless In a seed of wild fern Wordless they named me; those voices in my head, Till I spoke and my friends began to fade One after another Like orange in marmalade
The wind upon the canvas do not dry the paint Nor a fire miles away Help me find my feet Of all the pain in the world; it’s the loss that alone tastes sweet With syrup on my bruise And sugar on my wound I limp away From weeping windows and waking walls For I heard my cupboard say the other day Wear less and be more Was that a dream, a dream Like Dali high on sour cream? I wish only to know Can my hand reach out to my heart and squeeze The last drops of Carpe Diem to please My soul; that cotton candy wrapped in light and luck Made In Bed after a night of soft….
Dear Diary I am exhausted Ginsberg and Sexton, Whitman and Poe Conrad, Tolstoy, Orwell and Thoreau I read about them all Copperfield and Twist And Einstein’s Relativity and Marie Antoinette’s false feast Should I sleep now Will the night ask me no more Questions and answers Legends and lores
There is a spider on the bed (Yes, it’s a thought in my head) Should I scream or be quiet (There is nothing to be said) So twinkle twinkle little star There are bottles in the hotel bar And many miles to drink before I sleep Till the laughter stops and it soothes to weep…
What heaven and earth shall answer me What fire and brimstone shall answer me What thunder and tempest shall answer me When all I ask in a whisper Is the source of their silence
They put him in an empty chair As blank as his eyes The studied wooden smile Peeled slivers Red and dripping From hands that stayed cold Upon the switch.
Ghosts of strangers Pale and long Scratched at the glass Like cats for milk They craved his gaze; Shuffling hair, straightening neckties So theirs could be the faces He last sees.
While gloved fingers thrust Rubber in his mouth So death could swallow his scream And not escape to haunt those Who broke the stainless nip Upon some pages In a file, soon to be laid upon a pile That stated his particulars And the supposed crime He agreed to Everytime.
He sat like a king upon a throne The helmet far too small For his frame He let it sit As a visor Of some knight from a game How was he to know This was no story being told That his hands were being tied So he could not hold Any secrets in his hide Which may spill Once the deed was done And justice restored Just for fun.
The pale hand moved Lights flickered and wailed Tiny feet gasped to run But fluttered and failed The puppeteer has left This marionette alone Never to move again On its own.
Glass hands closed in faith Mirror lips moved in prayer For the balance restored True and fair Unaware as ever These fixers of frames That many men in this lifetime Can carry one name
Naked pictures painted on the world map, a global ache this systematic subjugation, arraigned with signatures and rubber stamps and blue and black ink with red smeared hands from…
Ants committing suicide for sugar cubes, mountains sundered for a grain of sand, weighing a ton by common belief of a wishful world running in a race without an end around a toilet flush I hear music in the smoking firmament, the guttural snort and fart of the engine like Mozart’s Requiem for Modern Times; graveyards filled with scraps, dusty medals pinned upon pigeon chests, chest with springs and cogs inside, all mechanisms of a meager mind,
Breathed upon by gunpowder gods never crucified, but kept alive, unchained unlike Prometheus or castrated unlike Cronus, with 9mm eyes watching over the supposed universe, Lives televised, a miniscule mime renting life per hour, human carcass threaded, talking puppets mimicking everyday shambles with double exclamation and undying opinions; graffiti upon bathroom walls, the enlightenment of our age; our Bible, our Koran, our Commandments, our Veda,
An ocean of umbilical madness, Medusas of mind, writhing in the depths of drowned time, left helpless at the bottom, garbage cans, lobster traps, Ahab’s ambition, little mermaid’s fin, all part of the abyss, woven tales of Atlantis
Beggars upon sidewalk, watching the neon lights blink at the mannequins dressed and fed better than them, breathing in glass case while the Caesar supine on steps as flat piece of bread looks on: Et tu, Et tu, until a coin clatters in the bowl and Rome falls, democracy dissolved under the acid rain of paint thinner,
Red sky running, blind horse racing against the rider till the tollbooth where hands on hips the old man walks the zebra crossing, unmindful of the airplanes lined at the red light, waiting one and all to fly away, without passengers or Blackbox, to a land where runways end
Phantoms fasting upon a fingernail, the sound of anarchy, electric guitar with strings of lightning, rainbow flooding the floor, and the people waving, a mingled marsh undecipherable, a canvas coated with paint, avant-garde asylum overflowing with stone heads
Rows of velvet cushion upon glass, red carpet laid upon mud, hyenas laughing in the hallway in high heels and mothball tuxedos from pawn shop, faceless fornication behind the screen, lips locked together in war, breathes dying with alcohol,
And outside the Ghost of Christmas Past selling mint in the rain, poets pass him and politicians, all made of papers full of question marks and Venn diagram that depicts everything said and done, the saying it has the bigger circle and the deeds it had none,
The Van Gogh World waking, rivers of gas flowing under matchstick houses waiting for madmen, toothpick buildings dancing for children playing whack-a-mole, Las Vegas without lights like teeth of a key; all cards of the fleeting reality playing pinochle with constant uncertainty,
Dismal days these, age of enlightenment, recoilless Renaissance, people paying people to understand people paying people, round around the circumference of Drachma with Copernicus we fly, we fly, taking one day kryptonian crash course, and pretend to die with cries towards the sky; O father thou art in heaven, look down now and weep, for seven days you worked, and on the eighth it all went to dust, you knew it and yet you left it so, now weeds gather in your garden, and even Lucifer stays away and pray free from this drama; Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama
To speak Without being heard With words like wind Asleep in windchimes, To be far away, breathing in a distant past dyed sepia and smelling of crushed leaves: The aroma of time dried through the ages, To taste a fruit away from the tongue And let it linger in a seedless ecstasy On each pair of lips In every burnished breath between the lungs To weave sunlight In the skin of dewdrops And bare a rainbow upon the floor Brought home to a full circle To smile at the madness of it all And mean it in the mirror of mind Grassroots enveloping Memories I cannot find Now leads me to believe That life with all its thorns and petals Is more in the act of living Than waiting for it to settle
Life, look out This man asleep Is walking a dream His pulse, afraid of inimical things, dance At the incoherent din of the cattle bell, For he knows only the time of tommorow Prophesied by blind sages Sages left by the world to marinate in old age And he carries it; the cattle bell, it’s dead weight, it’s rue weight, like a talisman Through the thick fog of promises To the other side, where the light, yet unseen, seems to shine differently For the sages who have looked on the winter From far, would know something of the snow Or so he hoped, with his face coddled within the blinkers And crowned with a horseshoe
Life, look out The man asleep Knows not that he is sleeping And so as waves he worship the shore Unaware that he stands with men Too afraid to blink at the sea And soon he too would be watching the waters Shiver with each breath of the seagull Till his own wings wither and rot away Leaving him; this epileptic Icarus A common man among the common men Left to watch each sunrise And every sunset From the shade of a dry sacamore The hinterland of heart That burned in winter Knows both fire and ice is the same; Perhaps, in the slow dance of the dying fire He seeks the heat some more Perhaps, his dreams are dreams of a dream He dreamt he has dreamt before…
