Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The King in a Country of Rain (Poems)











THE KING IN A COUNTRY


OF RAIN


____________________________________


Will James




Contents






"There is another heaven & earth beyond the world of men"

Li Po




With Our Eyes Closed

Darkness descends without a sound on the wings of an invisible horse.
No one knows his name, this stranger in love with his own shadow.

We are walking backwards now with our eyes closed.
We have nowhere else to go.






The TV

They left the TV on for years. No one ever
seemed to watch it.
Often, I could see it through the open drapes
illuminating the room at night.
Eventually the TV caught fire.
Flames shot out from the walls
and the roof.
Someone called the police.

Neighbors gathered in the street.
They opened their mouths in wonder
but no one spoke. They watched it all
like some kind of ancient sacrifice
as they witnessed clouds of smoke
floating up into the heavens,
sending signals to those
no longer left on the ground.







The Hereafter

How many clowns would fit into a toy car in the hereafter?
Imagine them piling in. Imagine the laughter.

We search for poltergeists in a darkened room.
Will there be space enough for them to bloom?

We wake in a world of make believe, as we hover between
what is seen and unseen.

We scan the brain
and enter into that mysterious terrain.

Human consciousness is a mystical thing,
seemingly held together with two tin cans and one lone string.

We look out at the heavens from a darkened room.
Will there be space enough for us to bloom?

How many clowns would fit into a toy car in the hereafter?
Imagine them piling in. Imagine the laughter.








The King in a Country of Rain

When the rains came, who would have guessed that he kept a secret?
That he knew his kingdom would fall, castles and all.

He was no prophet. He was just a king lost in dreams
that no one could not quite recall.

When the rains came, who would have guessed that he kept a secret?
That he knew his kingdom would fall, castles and all.






Anna Nicole Smith in TV Heaven

The flashbulbs are so much brighter here.
After all, this is the land of laugh tracks,
big screen TVs and Cadillacs,
where games shows are broadcast twenty-four hours
a day and everyone is a winner. The thousand pound man
and the five hundred pound mom, can Doctor Phil save them?

Her bodyguard said her eyes were fixed and dilated.
The coroner ruled that a combination of pills
and chloral hydrate killed her.
Rumor has it that Andy Warhol
has already commissioned her portrait.
But Einstein wants nothing to do with it.

We open ourselves up to darkness but not to love.
Our heads are getting bigger everyday
while our legs are shrinking from disuse.
Did OJ commit armed robbery in Las Vegas?
Do flying saucers really exist? Can America be saved?
Stay tuned.






A Lonesome Dwarf in a House of Whores

He lived in a mythic kingdom.
His house stood in the shadow of a mythic mountain.
He was a small man but one of great vision.
In his dreams, he saw drones in the sky
and robots on horseback.
He saw men fighting wars by remote control.

He saw a hooded figure holding a sword.
He took this as a sign;
he took this as a warning.
He imagined the end of the world
as he lay beneath the shade of a blue tree. 
He imagined it all broadcast on TV.








Confession of a TV Addict

After we saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot on live TV,
there was no turning back.
Our old world had faded. Our old world had gone black.
Blue and pink lights flash across the screen.
Reporters pontificate at the scene.
The TV drones on,
we watch as if in a hypnotic trance.
(We do the zombie shuffle and dance.)

Our memories have been digitized, our brains blown away.
What story are we buying today?
The Boston Marathon bomber is on the loose.
Another eighty five dead in Syria. There will be no truce.
There are no umpires dressed in black.
There is no turning back.
Blue and pink lights flash across the screen.
Reporters pontificate at the scene.






The Sound of War

Lightning flashes in the clouds.
I hear the boom and echo
of detonations in the distance.
I hear the sound of war.
Bashar al-Assad uses white phosphorus
on women and children.
It blisters and burns.
Fire devours their lungs.
Their footprints are soon
effaced in the dust.

I hear the roar of the mob, democracy in the raw.
Intelligence is flattened, nuance is lost.
A diplomat in denial doesn't point with a finger,
he points with a gun.
Russia votes down a no-fly zone.
The killing goes on.
Lightning flashes in the clouds.
I hear the boom and echo
of detonations in the distance.
I hear the sound of war. 








Terror Blooms in the Ghettos of Palestine

I hear skeletons calling out
from the other side of a darkened room.
I will not sleep tonight.
There is another kind of war,
the war inside a man, where all wars begin.

Terror blooms in the ghettos of Palestine.
Children sleep with dust in their beds.
Their cries like the seeds of fish
are taken up into the clouds.
Rockets flare out of the Gaza strip.

The law has hooks for hands, it is not delicate,
it does not have a surgeon's touch.
It cuts and rips into the bone.
The dead fly over Israeli checkpoints,
out of the occupied territories.

The candles have been snuffed out
but the sorrow remains.
Children sleep with dust in their beds.
Their cries like the seeds of fish
are taken up into the clouds.





Aurora

Is that the humming of a god or a fallen angel that he hears?
There is so much white noise that it is deafening.
It comes in waves.
As he sits in the courtroom,
his hair dyed red and orange, his mind wanders.
He is not dreaming. He is wide awake.

He sees things no one else sees.
He heard sirens
wailing months before the killing.
He saw pools of blood at his feet.
He saw birds trapped in a cave with no way out.
(Schizophrenia is a diagnosis but not an explanation.)

A woman holds a white rose and prays for the dead,
others join her,
their heads bowed in sorrow.
A newborn baby is placed on his father's belly.
He does not know his child is there.
He is in a coma.

There is a bandage over his eye where the bullet
entered his brain.
A ventilator helps him breathe.
He does not know that twelve died
in the back of theater nine.
He does not know how the movie ended.

Is that the humming of a god or a fallen angel that we hear?
There is so much white noise that it is deafening.
It comes in waves.
Our minds wander. We are not dreaming.
We are wide awake.
We see things that no one should ever see.






The Woman in Dark Clothes

(for Edith Stein)

She adored Husserl, the depths of his thought.
But philosophy was not enough for her.
She became a student of love.
We breathe in the ashes of those burned
in the ovens of Auschwitz.
Flowers bloom out of the dust.
She walks with us in the darkness.
She is familiar with it.
She knows the way out.

They were not aliens from another planet.
They put their human faces on just like us
before they dropped Zyklon B in a hole
in the roof and waited for the bodies to fall.
That they shared in our common humanity
somehow made monsters of us all.
But why should we feel responsible
for their crimes,
when we barely recognize our own?

But the stain remains just the same.
It will take all of human history to recover
from that loss.
We breathe in the ashes of those burned
in the ovens of Auschwitz.
Flowers bloom out of the dust.
She walks with us in the darkness.
She is familiar with it.
She knows the way out.






That Invisible Country

This is not the end of the old world,
disfigured and gray and lost in the clouds.
Rather this is something entirely different.

This is not like the world at all with its scorecard
of wins and losses,
its long list of words and wars.

So come and float with me and breathe this cool air.
There is no need to hurry.
There is no one waiting for us anymore.





A Girl Called Heaven

She spoke to me from out of the darkness,
a prompter whispering from off stage.

She cued me to my longing.
I confessed I was trapped in a kind of cage.

She said her name was Heaven.
There was magic in what she said.

She spoke to me from out of the darkness
as I walked beneath the shadows of the dead.




The Eye of Winter

The eye of winter dilates and then contracts.
The fog descends.
Ghosts climb up the mountain.

It is dusk now and the world has turned a pale blue.
I can see my breath in the cold air.
I fumble with a key that does not turn.

It is for another door in another life.
I'm locked out; there's nothing left to do.
I will not find myself at home tonight.









Tuesday, August 6, 2013

TERROR BLOOMS IN THE GHETTOS OF PALESTINE



“Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Nelson Mandela

I hear skeletons calling out
from the other side of a darkened room.
I will not sleep tonight.
There is another kind of war,
the war inside a man, where all wars begin.

Terror blooms in the ghettos of Palestine.
Children sleep with dust in their beds.
Their cries like the seeds of fish
are taken up into the clouds.
Rockets flare out of the Gaza strip.

The law has hooks for hands, it is not delicate,
it does not have a surgeon's touch.
It cuts and rips into the bone.
The dead fly over Israeli checkpoints,
out of the occupied territories.

The candles have been snuffed out
but the sorrow remains.
Children sleep with dust in their beds.
Their cries like the seeds of fish
are taken up into the clouds.





Sunday, August 4, 2013

FROM BLACK TO BLUE

Listen here: FROM BLACK TO BLUE 

In my mind, I hear your voice
telling me that you had no choice.
That there was nothing left to do.
That your world had gone from black to blue.

Do you have nothing left to hide,
there on the other side?
No more secrets, no more lies,
no more need for alibis?

Was there nothing I could say
to make you want to stay?
Did you really have to go?
That's what I want to know.



*Note: While the poem above was written shortly after learning of the death of my childhood friend in 2004, the one below was written sometime later. My old friend struggled with both addiction and a mood disorder. I played rhythm guitar for him in eighth and ninth grade and in exchange he taught me how to play lead guitar and bass; he played with breathtaking virtuosity. He went on to become one of the finest jazz bass players in the Twin Cities.  Sadly I lost touch with him after I left Minnesota in the mid seventies and was never able to carry "the message" of recovery to him; that regret echoes in the lines above. What a loss...



SHE ONCE BELIEVED IN HAPPY ENDINGS

Once a stone has been dropped
into the depths of a green and living pond,
it cannot be recalled, the action cannot be undone;
it has become a part of that green continuum.
Reality has been changed,
altered, rearranged.

I met him in the eighth grade.
He took LSD on the weekends and was already
a guitar virtuoso. 
He loved the early Yardbirds, jazz and blues. 
He taught me how to jam.
He once fired me from a junior high band

but he was always kind. 
Years later a storm blew in.
Voices roared in his head.
He wanted to banish them to the darkness.
But how could he win
against such a big wind? 

Where could he begin?
Wishes changed nothing.
So he taped his ID 
to his wrist and put a gun
to his head
and squeezed the trigger until he was dead.

Each night his mother longs to dream of her only son,
before the voices and the gun.
She once believed in happy endings 
but no more,
not without her son, 
not in a world undone.