WISDOM
#1
I've been alone long enough
to know some answers now.
Like rain is rain
and only rain and it really cannot
cause your pain.
Unless you want it to.
RUFFIAN
She flashed brilliant through our lives
like slivers of a shattered mirror
touched briefly by the sun.
Honed
to proud, unyielding points
by neutered relationships,
she strove resolutely forward
looking to neither side
and never back.
Who
was there among us could perceive
fire beneath the ice?
PICCADILLY
DAFFODILS
Ugliness is all around, Love has not a prayer,
Wrap your feelings in your heart, don't you ever care.
Youth is dead and gone away, Hate is going strong.
Old men turn and say "Oh where have we gone wrong?"
Hating,
cheating, all prevail; Colour is man's hope.
Hypocrites will sin and pray, waiting for the Pope.
Live your life and love your life! Give it all a heave!
Careful! You wouldn't want to say what you believe!
Piccadilly
daffodills, Londonderry downs,
See the people dancing, Jill, see the funny clowns!
Watch the lowly beasties turn into laughing men,
Look well, my pretty one, we'll not be back again.
Watch
the soldier lying there, floundering in the mud.
Won't you help him, see him now? Spewing over blood!
CNN reports the dead; take it on the chin!
The good guy never loses, bad guys always win!
Apathy
will kill us all, life won't be here long!
While we're here we might as well make it all a song!
We don't care what happens next, don't become involved!
Life's questions old, good God! Suppose that they were solved!
Piccadilly
daffodills, Londonderry downs,
See the people dancing, Jill, see the funny clowns!
Watch the lowly beasties turn into laughing men,
Look well, my pretty one, we'll not be back again.
CENTURY
BOULEVARD
Sitting on Century Boulevard
watching my life go by.
Oh, ain't it hard
to see people in their cars
who know where they're going
and who waits for them there
at home,.who waits for them there at home?
How
lucky are the people
who have a reason to go home.
CINDY
BENEATH BELLADONNA
dragging one limp leg over the side
the whore rises from her bed and calls
for her breakfast of gin and Winstons.
her name is belladonna
christened so in a gay drunken romp
in the early days of her whoredom.
once it was Cindy.
her
hair is frizzy red, matted in loose braids,
once it hung in soft waves of schoolgirl brown.
now her innards are twisted and crystallized
against all attacks however sharp
from within or without.
she doesn't bleed anymore.
applying
pink cherry frost to her faintly purple lips
she looks no deeper than the taut white skin
roadmapped in red by capillaries
all of which are dead ends.
she lights another cigarette.
she'll
never live past forty.
if the queues of johns don't kill her
her pimp surely will.
and even if his tried and true methods fail
to douse the last struggling shred of human spirit,
drugs never do.
and after that final gasp
when it all became focused
or perhaps remained a welcomed haze,
men in blue will sniff her body
and bury it.
but
before that, before that,
maybe one of them,
one of them who in his youth freed fireflies from jelly jars,
will touch her pimpled skin with compassion,
will see through forgiving eyes,
Cindy beneath Belladonna.
SO,
YOU'RE BACK
So,
you're back.
How
are you?
How was she?
You're back.
I love you.
So,
AIRPORT
People come
to watch the planes
come and go.
Some
come in pairs,
some with families.
I come alone
to
watch the planes
and dream of the day
I'll board one.
Alone,
perhaps,
but on my way
to you.
GIVE
ME NO ROSES
Give me no roses for I am dead
And have been so for many a year
Now, waste no moments crying for me
Shed not a lonely, beautiful tear.
Save them all for you
For you
Are still
Alive.
MONOLOGUE
you're about a welcome as a sip of cold coffee
go away now you weary me.
I want my days to march in ordered files:
wake work sleep, wake work sleep,
with time out for an occasional book
philosophy, maybe, or one of those "how-to" things
but nothing sexual or God forbid romantic
I want
to ride an even keel for a change no
what I really want is to hug my knees in bed,
the door shut, the world still and time as close
to stopping as possible.
oh,
hand me my cigarettes and stop frowning
no, I'll light it
why did we ever start this thing
whose bright idea...never mind, this will
get us nowhere.
I'm
sorry I feel like this
no, I am it's ugly
it's just that I desperately want to understand
what happened.
Let's
have the truth
my truth plus your truth shouldn't that add up
to the whole and nothing but?
see,
I have actual events tied in with suppositions
of motives and speculations of thinking patterns
until, well, there you have it.
it's
this nub of not knowing--
was I used or was I loved?
were you...or...
it's like a gnat in my eye.
I
need to people my life right now
right now
I want you to leave
take the past months with you and hang
the Do Not Disturb sign on the door knob as you go.
(don't go)
what?
No, I didn't say anything.
SUNDAY
AFTERNOON, 3:18. A CHORUS
dune buggies and motorcycles strike chords that vibrate
in tune with the monotone hum of the refrigerator
a barking dog punctuates the rhythm in 2/4 time
bassoons of flying jets, flutes of draining pools
a car with a bad muffler builds to a crescendo
and passes by.
it
wasn't yours.
desert
Sundays, ghastly white heat sends
unending sweat into all of the body's cleavages
a
troubled three-year-old whines
somebody shut him up he is disturbing
my masochistic Sunday
and
I was having such fun.
BELFAST.
TEL AVIV. OKLAHOMA CITY
I am watching tv, a comedy,
and suddenly it explodes;
blue tubes sing though the air,
one sails into my gaping eye;
rainbowed wires puncture my throat
one end tickling at my larynx;
it's feet waving at the hollow set.
I
am sitting in my living room
when the picture window ejaculates
bullets sprayed from a madman's gun.
My blood falls prettily onto everything
I look at a piece of my brain
lying like pink jelly on this week's TV Guide.
the night wind flows quietly while my baby cries.
I
am riding on the Metro bus.
Without warning I am one with the trees.
Every branch is my branch,
I am a vein in every leaf.
What I thought was a religious experience
was only a terrorist's bomb.
I am everywhere; I am dead.
I
am going to work in my car.
I see in perfect slow motion the red pickup
bully through three cars and a stop sign
before swan diving in mystical beauty
and landing with a kiss on top of my Pinto.
my head disappears past shoulder blades and breasts;
I am on intimate terms with my liver.
I
view my world through terrified eyes.
I see earthquakes in store windows;
Tornadoes in draining tubs and splintered dreams;
bombs in banks and bombs in toothpaste,
not to mention red dye No. 2.
I fear for the ozone; I clutch at my ovaries.
It's only as matter of time.
