Baudelaire & Co

 

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CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

WILL JAMES

SAPPHO

 

for Christopher Dickey & Peter Fonda

  

 NOTECharles Baudelaire was the first of our postmodern poets. So we begin with him, where a small dose of his work will soon transport us into a country of dark dreams, of melancholy and wondrous visions. We will end with Sappho and the ancient Greeks (with my own poetry falling between these two countries, these two worlds).  The translations are mine.

 

—Will James

 

 

 

 

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

 

 

DEDICATION

 

TO THE IMPECCABLE POET

TO THE FLAWLESS MAGICIAN OF FRENCH LETTERS 

TO MY DEAR AND VENERABLE

MASTER AND FRIEND

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

WITH FEELINGS

OF THE DEEPEST HUMILITY

I DEDICATE

THESE INFECTED FLOWERS

 

 

 

 

TO THE READER

 

Masochism  error  sin  avarice

Occupy our psyches and tax our bodies

Like beggars we nourish our vermin

Fed by our neurosis and remorse 

 

Our sins are hardheaded  our repentance feeble 

We pay a high price for our false confessions 

Even as we happily return to our dark ways 

Believing that our phony tears will wash us clean

 

Satan  that Triune magistrate 

Lulls and rocks us to sleep  enchanting our minds

And the precious metal of our will 

Is vaporized by this cunning alchemist

 

This puppet master holds the strings

In filth  we discover charms unimagined 

And with each step  like automatons

We descend into the stench  into Hell

 

Like someone who kisses and bites 

The breast of an ancient whore

We take our clandestine pleasure

And squeeze and suckle on a dried-up orange

 

A million maggots swarm and a legion of demons

Inhabit our brains   

When we breathe  death enters us  its torrents

And unseen waves muffling our whimpering cries

  

If rape  poison  arson and daggers have not woven

And embroidered their unique mark 

Into the banal canvas of our lives 

It is because our souls are blank

 

But among the jackals  the panthers  the bitches

The apes  the scorpions  the vultures

The snakes  the whining and howling monsters

The mongrels  in the menagerie of our vices

 

There is one uglier  more decrepit   although he makes 

Neither grand gestures nor wailing cries 

He would willingly turn the world to ruins

And  in one gulp  swallow the earth

 

He is boredom — His eyes wet with disdain

He dreams of towering guillotines as he puffs on his hookah

You know him that delicate monster

— Reader hypocrite — my  alter — my double

 

 

BENEDICTION

 

When  after a decree of the powers supreme

The Poet appears in this world  this void  

His mother shamed   rails and raises her fist

To God who pities her

 

‘Would that I have given birth to a nest of vipers

Rather than to have fed this laughingstock

I curse that night of ecstasy and joy

When my womb was seared with this guilt

 

Since of all women I am chosen to bring

This scandal to my house and husband

And since I cannot toss (like a love letter)

This monster  this freak  into the flames

 

I shall transfer the weight of this crushing hatred 

On the instrument of your perversion

And twist so hard this contaminated tree

That its blighted buds will not bloom’

 

She chokes on the froth of her hatred

And blind to the operations of eternal design

She prepares a Hellhole of her own

A chamber reserved for a mother's crimes

 

Even so  under the guidance of unknown Angel

The outcast child is ripened by the sun

And in all that he eats  in everything he drinks

He finds ambrosia and golden nectar

 

He plays with the wind and the clouds

He chants  intoxicated by the stations of the cross

And that Spirit  that Angel  who flies and hovers beside him 

Weeps to see him happy as a bird

 

All those whom he would love (fear him) 

Or emboldened by his tranquility

Attempt to cause him pain 

And test on him their ferocity

 

With the bread and the wine destined for his mouth 

They mix ashes and tainted phlegm

And in act of  hypocrisy  throw away what he touches

The guilty step away from his trail

 

His wife goes about public places crying

‘Since he finds me beautiful enough to adore

I shall imitate the idols from long ago

And like them make myself over with gold

 

I shall burn incense and myrrh

And as I kneel eat meat and drink wine

To know if  I can topple the adoring heart

And make mockery of the divine

 

And when I tire of this impious farce

I shall lay upon him my frail but strong hand

And my nails  like the talons of harpies 

Will rip a path straight to his heart

 

That beats and flutters like a baby bird 

I'll rip all bloody from his breast

And toss it to the ground 

To feed the hunger of my favorite dog’

 

To Heaven  where his eye sees a radiant throne

Reverently  the Poet  stoically raises his arms

And the dazzling beams of his illumined mind 

Blocks from his view the raging mob

 

— ‘Praise be to You  Lord  who send us suffering

As a remedy for our impurities

Donate the purest essence

To prepare the strong for holy ecstasies

 

I know that you save a place for the Poet 

Within the blessed ranks of the sacred Legions

And that you invite him to the eternal feast 

Of Kingdoms and celestial Thrones

 

I know that suffering is the sole diamond 

Which earth and hell shall never mar

And that to weave my mystic crown

You must tax every age and every universe

 

But the lost jewels of ancient Palmyra

The undiscovered precious metals  the pearls of the sea

Set by your own hand  would not be adequate

For that diadem of blazing splendor

 

For that crown will be made of nothing but light 

Drawn from the holy fountain of primal rays

Where finite eyes  fully opened 

Are no more than tarnished  mournful mirrors’             

 

CORRESPONDENCES

 

Nature is a temple where living pillars 

Often babble and murmur in a foreign tongue

Man passes through these forests of symbols 

Which glance back at him with understanding eyes

 

Prolonged echoes mingle in the distance 

Reverberating in the chamber of a harmonious choir

Vast as the constellations on a clear night 

Perfumes  sounds  and colors merge

 

There are perfumes cool as the bodies of infants

Sweet as oboes  green as prairies

— And others are corruptible  rich and triumphant

 

Expanding into infinity  like amber  musk

And clouds of incense   a rapturous spirit rising

Chanting  transported by the soul and the senses

 

 

 

THE ALBATROSS

 

Often  for amusement  shipmates 

Snare an albatross  those big birds of the sea

That nonchalantly plot a course beside the vessel  

As it glides over the ocean waves

 

As soon as the bird is dropped on the deck 

These kings of the air  shame themselves 

And let their white wings droop and drag

Pathetically beside them like abandoned oars

 

That winged voyager  how weak and vile he is

So beautiful before  now comic  and ugly

Someone sticks a clay pipe in his beak

Another limps and mimics the cripple who once flew

 

The poet resembles the prince of tides 

This rider of whirlwinds who laughs at the archer 

When exiled on earth  the butt of jokes and jeers 

He cannot walk  buried beneath his monstrous wings

 

 

LESBOS

     

Mother of joy  mother of games  

Lesbos  where kisses are cool as melons

Or hot as solar flares    

Adorn the night and gild the day   

And give us joy  and give us games

 

Lesbos  giver of secret kisses  reckless as cascades

That hurl themselves into the abyss

Electric and alive  whirling and gushing

Gurgling in the shadows

Lesbos  giver of secret kisses  reckless as cascades

 

Lesbos  where Phryne’s breasts are judged by specialists    

Where sighs are answered with a kiss

Where Aphrodite envies Sappho’s shrine and rite

And even the charms of Venus shrink in size

Lesbos  where Phryne’s breasts are given the top prize       

 

Lesbos  island of hot nights

Where girls gaze in mirrors as they dress

(Hypnotized)  and touch themselves

And moan with superficial delight

Lesbos  island of hot nights

 

Let Plato scowl and frown

You are absolved by caresses and kisses

Queen of empires  queen of archipelagos

Followers of unending ecstasies 

Let Plato scowl and frown

 

From your martyrdom  you call out to be pardoned      

With hearts that fly       

Away from here  drawn by some radiant smile       

On a strange celestial shore

From your martyrdom  you call out to be pardoned

     

Lesbos  what deity can judge you?

Or condemn you?

Who can weigh on the scales of gold

Your tears  your eyes so grave?

Lesbos  what deity can judge you?

 

What is so wrong with tenderness  with love?    

Pride of the isles  whose hearts rise with the tides    

Your faith is perfect     

And you can laugh at both Heaven and Hell

What is so wrong with tenderness  with love?  

    

For Lesbos chose me to sing and chant

In praise of her virgin flowers       

When as a child I was taught the sacred rites

And mysteries of her sorrows

So Lesbos chose me to sing her praise

       

And so  I watch from above

Like a lone sentry with a long view    

Who sees ships on the horizon

That tremble in the distant blue

So I watch from above

 

And hear the crashing of the surf

As hear voices cry out on the rocks below   

‘Please bring back the body of Sappho 

Pardon her now

Release her from the waves and the foam’

 

Sappho  lover and queen of poets

Sappho so beautiful  so powerful

That Aphrodite surrenders to her song

Of mourning and love

Sappho  lover and queen of poets

       

Sappho  fairer than Venus towering over the world    

Sappho  serene and luminous   

In the radiance of her tresses curled       

Daughter to the ocean gods      

Sapho  fairer than Venus towering over the world

 

Sappho  who broke her vows        

Her body forfeit to a brute

The day she wandered lost

And died apostate to her own rite

Sappho  who broke her vows        

 

And so  Lesbos laments

Hooked on opiates for the pain

(Heedless of the honors of humankind)

Existing on those bleak and barren shores

And so  Lesbos laments

 

 

DON JUAN IN HELL

 

When Don Juan descended beneath the surf

Charon  that ominous beggar  philosopher  and cynic,

Once paid  granted him passage  and rowed with power

His eyes brimming with false pride and vengeance

 

Dejected women  their garments open

Their breasts exposed  writhed and twerked

Under a blackened sky  moaning   like sacrificial cattle

Being herded to the slaughterhouse

 

Laughing  Sagnarelle lingered as he waited for his pay

Don Luis  called out to the dead along the way

And pointed with a trembling hand

To the son who mocked him when his hair turned gray

 

Elvira  thin and chaste  shuddered in her black robes

Of grief  and asked for one last smile

From her lost lover and betrayer

In remembrance of that first flash of love

 

A knight in armor  a big man made of stone

Towered at the helm and split the black waters in two

Holding his sword at his side  this calm hero

Gazed at the wake and saw nothing else

 

 

 

ALL OF HER

       

A phantom visited me this morning in my bedroom

Thinking to catch me without warning   

And asked ‘Please of all the beauty and strange enchantment

 

Of her ways  among the wonders black or rose

Which object most excites your praise’ 

I answered ‘I love all of her  not parts of her  

I ignore all essences and differences in delight 

 

She dazzles me like the aurora

And she consoles me like the night

The harmony of her being is so exquisite

Analysis would split that unity into disunity and chaos

 

My senses fused each to each

To hear the music of her breathing

And breathe the perfume of her speech’

 

 

 

VOYAGEURS

 

For children crazed with postcards  prints and stamps

All of the heavens can scarce satisfy their hunger

How vast the world seems by lamplight

But in the eyes of memory how slight

 

One morning we set sail with brains ablaze    

And hearts filled with trepidation

Oscillating to the rhythm of the infinite

Upon the limits of ocean waves

      

Some wish to leave the banality of native skies

Some flee their birthplace  others change their ways

Astrologers blinded by the lights of heaven

(Fugitives from Circe’s tyranny)

 

Not to be changed into pigs

On earth  they fly high into Outer Space

Beyond the snow and the frost and revolve around the sun

Even as their scars fade and their skin turns to bronze

 

These true travelers with hearts like hot air balloons

Unballasted  follow their luminous destiny

And rise above the pettiness below

And chase the whirlwinds as they descend

      

Those whose thoughts are in the shape of clouds

Raw recruits who dream of shot and shell

Of mighty raptures in migrating crowds

Who can say  who will tell?

 

THE CAT

 

Come  my beauty  into the chambers of my heart

Holster the talons of your paws

And permit me to plunge into the glittering

And silver linings of your eyes

 

Let my fingers caress you from the top

Of your head to the arch of your back 

And when my hand tingles

From the static shock of your fur

 

I shall see the ghost of my mistress

Her gaze (like yours  my pet) is cold and deep 

Like a dagger that cuts and cleaves

 

And from the fount of her dark body

From her head to her feet

A fragrance floats  a dangerous nectar

 

 

 

THE BALCONY

 

Mother of memories  mistress of paramours

You are my ultimate pleasure  my true calling 

Do you recall the beauty of those caresses?

In the dying light at twilight?   

Mother of memories  mistress of paramours       

 

I cherish those nights illumined by burning coal   

The balcony beneath a rose-colored world       

Your soft breast  your kind heart

Often we spoke of the transcendent  the imperishable

I cherish those nights illumined by burning coal   

   

How wonderful the descending sun on a hot evening       

How profound the power and depth of the heart

When I lean in and kiss my queen

And inhale the fragrance of her blood

How wonderful the descending sun on a hot evening       

 

Remember how the night sheltered us within its dark walls     

And my eyes had to find yours  and there and then

I took in your nectar and your venom      

And cupped in my hands  your feet began to sleep    

Remember how the night sheltered us within its dark walls

    

I know the art of conjuring up happy moments

My head lodged between your knees 

The pulse of your beloved body between my lips

(The pulse of your gentle heart)

I know the art of conjuring up happy moments

       

 

Those vows  those fragrances  and infinite kisses       

Born again from gulfs that we may never fathom      

Will they rise once more 

Rejuvenated from the deep

Those vows  those fragrances  and infinite kisses?       

  

 

THE LIVING FLAME

 

They march before me  those luminous eyes 

A knowing Angel has made them magnetic 

They march  my divine brothers  my true brothers 

Who cast a glittering spell and illuminate my sight

 

They save me from snares and grave sin

They teach me the ways of Beauty and guide my steps

I am their slave

My being obeys this living flame

 

Charming eyes you shine like sacred candles 

That burn and blaze in sunlight

Unquenchable flame  eerie light

 

While they celebrate Death   you awaken and sing

You march  and celebrate the awakening of my soul 

Stars which no torch  no flame  no sun  can pale

 

    

THE BAD MONK

      

Long ago  the cold walls of cloisters were painted

With murals to warm the hearts of its inhabitants

To temper their austerity

To inspire them with pictures of sacred truths

       

Christ was both model and master

For those illustrious but now forgotten monks    

The graveyard was their library   

And Death was the portal to that sanctum

     

Even so  I will not enter into that now neglected space 

Untended by my hands  I am a bad monk

Plagued by misery

Banned from the walls of that ancient cloister

     

 

ON THE ROAD

   

A tribe of prophets  late last night  began to march

Their eyes ablaze  their children crying to be fed

Wailing with a hunger

And thirst that no breast could satisfy    

     

The men  their swords glittering  walk by

The caravan where their folks are gathered

They look to the sky     

Longing for signs long gone by

 

In the green grass  a cricket sees them pass       

And chirps ever louder

Because they are loved by a Goddess

 

Soon the barren rocks and sands will bloom

To greet these travelers with familiar powers 

Alternative empires   known only to them  

 

 

                           

 

THE BLIND

 

Consider them  my soul  how horrible    

Like marionettes  sleepwalkers      

(Weird figures in a dream)       

Eyes that dart  shadows of the unconscious mind

       

Their eyes (gray and blank)      

Look up at an unpainted sky  

Never looking down at the ground

Dreaming of some unnamed thing

 

They traverse the limits of darkness

(Twin pole of eternal silence)

While the city sings  laughs or chatters

 

Caught up in its petty pleasures and I drag

My jaded soul through its corridors and alleyways

And ask what it is that they (the blind) see

 

 

 

 

THE FLASK

 

Fragrances  perfumes that pass

And make all things more porous  even glass 

The senses awakened when opening an Oriental box

Whose hinges groan reluctantly after picking a rusted lock

  

Or when in an empty house  one opens

Some ancient chest of drawers

Where time and dust hid a musty flask

And the mind flashes between the future and the past     

 

A thousand thoughts like larvae laid

Quivering within their cocoon

Suddenly breaking free  their wings unfolding

Glazed with rose and gold

       

A drunken memory now flies

Behind the darkness of closed eyes

Vertigo draws one down

At the lip of the abyss

 

An ancient pit  where once again one falls

Like Lazarus among the shades

Newly awakened in old gown

Prodded on by memories and passions

 

So when I'm lost to the world  deposited

In the drawer of a morgue    

Like a decrepit flask  tarnished and cracked

Clogged with filth and dust

 

 

I'll adorn you with my shroud

A witness to your venom

A poison concocted by lost angels      

(The rust of my corroded heart)

 

 

 

 

WILL JAMES

 

 

 

 ONLY GHOSTS ENTER HERE

 

 The hand that held the gun waves to us in the dark

 The hand that ended the man depopulated a world

 There is no need to erect new buildings 

 

 Only ghosts enter here  this is a dead country 

 Illuminated by a white moon on a winter night

 We buy a ticket and make our way to the cheap seats

 

 The departed are with us now here on the other side

 Of an open-air stadium

 We watch a laser light show 

 

 We see an angel suspended above us on invisible wires

 The hand that held the gun waves to us in the dark

 The hand that ended the man depopulated a world

 

 

 THE LAST SONG OF THE BUDDHA

 

 I remember a story but it has changed

 Like a place or a city visited after a long absence

 I remember a song but it too has changed

 

 My eyes widen and then blink in a dark cavern

 I reach out in the darkness

 The chrysanthemums are cold

 

 Outside snow begins to fall

 I cannot wear the death mask of another

 I put on my own

 

 

 

 A VENTRILOQUIST HOLDS OUT AN EMPTY HAND

 

 Headlines flash across the screen

 All the shadows gather just outside the hospital walls

 Refrigerated trucks whir  and rumble in Manhattan 

 And Long Island in waves

 

 Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe share one last kiss

 A ventriloquist holds out an empty hand

 The lights come back on in the city while the world wakes

 Hooked on a ventilator and breathes with half a lung

 

 

 

 

 NUIT BLANCHE

 

 The portrait of a man in electric blue  a torso actually

 Hangs there on the wall  and further down

 

 The depiction of an electric chair

 Dangles in pink  red and violet pastels

 

 Oh how the shadows cry  the voices of the dead

 And turning now we realize too late  that we have passed

 

 Through an opened door  into a forgotten room 

 Where no one ever sleeps  and no one ever leaves

 

 

 

 

 A DARK DREAM   A DARK TRUTH

 

 I dream a dark dream and see a dark truth

 I see automatons with automatic weapons standing guard 

 In front of the Lincoln Memorial   I see looters 

 In Manhattan and Beverly Hills

 I see David Dorn murdered on Martin Luther King Drive

 For nothing but a TV

 

 Almost forty years ago  in the Dallas County Jail

 I witnessed an intoxicated black man 

 Put in a chokehold for over ten minutes

 His body limp  his eyes lifeless  blank  

 I was under arrest for DWI

 I was white and did not die

 

 

 

WARHOL AT THE FACTORY

 

He walks on water  he floats across the room

On the wall  his paint by number flowers bloom

 

He's one-part pornographer  two parts whore

(Billy Name hands out masks at the door)

 

Over there is a portrait of Chairman Mao

Hung next to a silkscreen of a floating cow

 

To the left are studies of Marilyn Monroe

And several images of Jackie O

 

A doctor makes his rounds

Brando and Elvis have lost a few pounds

 

Batman has somehow misplaced his cape

Ultra Violet accuses him of rape

 

They walk on water  they float across the room

On the wall  the paint by number flowers bloom

 

 

 

 GEORGE WASHINGTON ON A WHITE HORSE

 

 Apparitions line the White House walls

 Portraits of presidents 

 FDR  JFK  and Jefferson 

 George Washington on a white horse

 Reagan the first president elected after a divorce

 Trump and Clinton are there too 

 

 One lied about an intern and a cigar

 Another lied about Russian whores

 And a porn star

 False gods wear no shoes but walk among them  

 Their faces shine  their teeth glitter with radioactive smiles

Apparitions are gathering on the border

 Where once we made land in the dark on an unknown shore

 

 We are sleepwalking now (often forgetting our dreams)

 We cannot see beyond 

 The looming mountain outside our door

 Apparitions line the White House walls

 Portraits of presidents 

 FDR  JFK and Jefferson

 

 George Washington on a white horse

 Reagan the first president elected after a divorce

 Trump and Clinton are there too

 One lied about an intern and a cigar

 Another lied about Russian whores

 And a porn star

 

 

 

 GOODBYE MISTER BLUE

 

 Greta Garbo turns and takes the world in

 Some say she is a ghost

 Others say she has a twin

 A girl plays a toy guitar in a child’s room

 Her song is long and blue

 Her voice is strong and true

 

 A marionette dances to an old tune

 The umbrella man dresses all in black

 Minneapolis ablaze beneath half a moon

 The horses turn back

 The mannequins in L.A. are on fire

 The hymn books burn in the upper room of the church choir

 

 Goodbye Mister Blue

 The strippers in NYC are going to miss you

 Goodbye Mister Blue

 The Greyhound bus departs at noon

 Outside of town

 They’re offering free rides in a hot air balloon

 

 Charlatan or clown

 The understudy on the stage is going down

 Goodbye Mister Blue

 The whores in L.A. are going to miss you

 Goodbye Mister President

 Goodbye Mister Blue

 

 

 

 

 THE SHADOW KING

 

 A princess watches from her imaginary tower

 She casts no spells  she has lost all her power

 

 A shadow king blows smoke rings at the foot of the stage

 His mind is broken  locked in an imaginary cage

 

 A madman rides a lame horse

 Round and round a twisted course

 

 A train whistles and whines throughout the night

 Like a missile with wings it takes flight

 

 From the roof of a fallout shelter we look out at the stars

 From the roof of a fallout shelter we can almost see Mars

 

 A princess watches from her imaginary tower

 She casts no spells  she has lost all her power

 

 

 

 THIS GHOST TOWN

 

 Nero was born in this ghost town

 And with just one eye

 Watched the world die

 

 I see a rider on the horizon

 He rides a dark horse

 He’s a stranger  he’s way off course

 

 The mob outside my window makes do

 With a hangman’s noose

 They devour lies

 There’s darkness in their eyes

 

 Someone blows a lonely horn

 Everything is smashed  everything is torn

 We're locked in a box with no key

 No one is true  no one is free

 

 

 

 NARCISSUS

 

 Prince Charming declares his death a hoax

 As he wanders among purple tulips in a dark green field

 While his cousin  Narcissus 

 Wakes in a cave far underground

 Narcissus refuses to look at himself now

 As he puts his wings on backwards in a darkened corner

 

 He has not forgotten how everything

 Once bloomed in the world above him before the fall

 He does not speak  he lost his voice long ago in the void

 He paints stars on the ceiling by candlelight

 And imagines ocean waves  and billowing sails

 And harbors filled with faces other than his own

 

 

 

 THE BLUE TRAINS RUN AFTER MIDNIGHT

 

 Mary Hart at Mount Rushmore flashes a white power sign

 Or so some say   others say she is an automaton

 Programmed and planted by QAnon

 Decades before  a woman claimed the tabloid TV

 Anchor’s voice caused epileptic seizures

 Here in this darkness   the truth is rarely spoken

 

 The mob beheads a statue of Christopher Columbus

 And drags the torso across the square

 And dumps it into the lake   the ghost of Jack Ruby

 Watches from the shadows

 Wearing a mask and holding a gun

 We don’t follow him   he follows us

 

 The blue trains run after midnight

 While a boy sleeps with pics of poets

 Pinned to his bedroom wall

 Here the night is long and dreams are like fireflies in fog

 Here nothing is spoken

 Here nothing can be broken

 

    

 

 

 THE ANGEL OF DEATH

 

 The aliens have landed  they’re wearing gas masks

 And looking just like the military police

 Elmer Fudd has been disarmed

 Elmer Fudd will no longer have access to a gun

 A vagabond beats over and over on a plastic drum

 Here the world revolves around a make-believe sun

 

 The Angel of death poses on a beach dressed in black 

 Holding a sickle and wearing a crown

 A solitary woman sits in a corner and cries

 All the businesses are gone in the center of town

 Even as George Floyd is carried away

 In a horse drawn hearse

 

 

 

 (NOWHERE MAN) THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON

 

 Red lights flash  sirens blare

 A blue and white police cruiser flies across Manhattan

 Over his fallen and broken body

 John Lennon floats

 John Lennon

 Hovers

 His mind flashes back to when he was a boy

 And a band played behind the wall of his garden

 

 Debilitated by paranoia and delusions

 Mark David Chapman harassed Hari Krishnas

 And threatened

 Scientologists

 He sent telegrams to Satan

 Outside his holding cell  he is fitted with a bullet proof vest

 ‘No fuck ups  No Oswalds’

 The police commander calls out

 

 We are buried beneath falling ashes

 We hear the tinkling keys of a piano

 We hear a voice

 Like a hummingbird  it feeds on flowers and honey

 Our minds flash back to when we were children

 And a band played behind the wall of our garden

 John Lennon floats  John Lennon

 Hovers

 

THE DEATH OF JFK

 

Even before I learned

To stand or walk without some help

I was already able to decipher the paradoxical truth

Of the televised image—that the images

Were an illusion

Ghosts  Snowy pictures that talked

Faces and pictures I eventually could control

And manipulate with the turn of a dial

A surrogate memory where whole generations

Were consigned to a cathode ray tube

A world where images were transposed

Into myth  and I could become a companion

To the likes of Lois Lane  Clark Kent

Hercules and the Lone Ranger

 

The rain had stopped

So  the bubble top was removed

The president beamed and waved to the crowds

The first lady  a princess  in a pink wool suit

And matching pink pill box hat  smiled

Together they floated down Elm Street

In a midnight blue Lincoln Continental

A carriage for a handsome prince

And his bride

Mountain climbers call the top of a mountain,

The death zone

Unknown to anyone in the crowd

The presidential limousine invisibly

Passed into that zone

 

 

Jackie tried to turn back but it was too late

Soon after  the rumors began

There was talk of Castro  the CIA and the mob

Vietnam was engulfed in flames

RFK and Martin Luther King were shot down

Images of the dead were broadcast nightly

The TV was full of ghosts

But it wasn't a fantasy  it wasn't a myth

It began with the death of a prince

And his widow in a blood-stained  pink suit

They are still with us

It is going on now

We see her  we see him  transfigured

Ascending into the clouds

 

 

 

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 five thousand 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

 

DEATH RIDES IN ON A WHITE HORSE

 

An electric eye opens

It watches us while we sleep

 

It opens doors and windows and lets the others in

We hear them  their voices echoing throughout the house

 

We can’t quite understand what it is they are saying

A one-eyed fat man reads from a book

 

Of tarot cards and a crystal ball

He looks into the meaning of things

 

He sees the towers fall

He sees flashes of a burning world

 

The fool remains but no one is laughing

Death rides in on a white horse

 

The talking heads have all gone home

Satellites bounce signals into outer space

 

Who can hear us?

Who will save us from ourselves?

 

 

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

A MASKED MAN

 

On top a white stallion the Lone Ranger descends

A masked man

Debilitated and unrehearsed

 

What is it that I want to say but ultimately cannot say?

I have become nothing

A ghost deprogrammed and on parole

 

I walk out into the shadows of televised snow

Televised desolation   blue trauma by a descending sky

Man of blankness   man of sighs

 

 

  

 

9/11

 

And now  a second and improbable plane 

A blip on FAA Radar 

United Flight 175 

Approaches and then plunges

Into the south tower

 

Of the World Trade Center

Igniting into orange and red flames

While bodies fall

And then tumble like stunt doubles

Into the empty but televised air

 

THE MISSING

 

An egret whirls into the wind

And then turns and folds in upon itself and lands

Beneath a cloud of water

While in the distance

Airplanes at the edge of thunder

Murmur and echo

 

Like the thin mirrors of the ego

Glittering and lost  and I shudder

In the dark and consider

The dead (and all of their voices)

An unwavering remembrance

A delicate descent

 

 

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

 

 

AYN RAND  SYLVIA PLATH & THE BLUE FAIRY

 

Pinocchio had blue eyes

But hers are green

And when opened wide turn black

She once had a three way

With Woody Allen and Mia Farrow

But is no fan of their movies

She prefers John Barrymore and Greta Garbo

She sleeps inside a mirror and is older than she looks

She recalls when Marilyn Monroe

(In the guise of a blue fairy) met Sylvia Plath

In a London flat

Reluctantly  she sells stocks short

She chats on message boards

Using a photo of Ayn Rand as her avatar

Her thoughts are like books taken from the library

And never returned

She floats inside a bubble

She fears oceans and elevators

(But it is the going down that she fears the most)

On Thursday she wears a wedding veil

On Sunday she is widowed

Pinocchio had blue eyes  but hers are green

And when opened wide turn black 

 

 

HIGDON FERRY ROAD

 

On Higdon Ferry Road  I float beyond

The red warning lights of a dark country

Their beacons blinking on and off

And then vanishing

I hover above the hospital where my father died

Here my body has become obsolete

Vaporized and dispersed like a distant echo

Below this blurred world my father’s body

Rests in a silver urn

His limbs no longer hanging feebly from his torso

His skin   blood and bones  the hinges

Of his shoulders

 

Knees and elbows burned to powder and ash

Clavicle to breast  a box to clouds

Will flowers bloom in this fog or will they wilt?

When I was a boy  between talk of sex and baseball

I heard rumors of a coming air invasion

From Russia   I was afraid

I watched the sky  lightning flashed

Thunder rumbled  I saw airplanes

Coming out of the clouds  I hid in a garage

During the Korean War   my dad

Was a radar operator in Alaska  he too

Looked for air invaders from Russia

 

Often  he worked the night shift

And slept when he could

My mother often dreams my father

Is in the room with us

She says his presence has begun to fade

Not like a ghost but more like a blip on a radar screen

An echo  blinking on and off

And then vanishing

She hands me a box of his clothes.

I put them on and so he moves (and so he grows

And so I wake

And so I see and so he walks and so he breathes)

 

ON A TRAIN IN FRANCE

 

I’m on a train in France hurtling past nuclear reactors

They look like giant sculptures

Their hips and waists are shaped like women

They power all of Paris

They power the lights of the Eiffel Tower

And the Champs-Élysées

 

I talk to myself while I sleep

I try to decipher the signs  but nothing is certain

I voyage into the dark

I’ve lost my passport

Who can I call?  Where can I go?

When will I wake?

   

 

 

 THE ASTRONAUT

 

 The astronaut has been drugged  he sleeps

 With his helmet off

 The particles of his brain altered

 In the blue alchemy

 Of space

 His feet  arms  hands and legs 

 Have become 

 Unhinged

 From his torso  he sends out signals 

 Coded transmissions

 That are difficult to read

 He mouths the words to a song

 Only the deaf can hear

 He makes a false confession

 To his imaginary therapist

 And then takes it all back

 And holds fast 

 Once again to the truth

 He reads the news

 He watches TV shows

 Broadcast from an alien planet

 Revolving around an alien sun

 There are others with him  hordes of them

 Flocks of them  invisible now

 But not so far away

 We know some of them

 They are not all forgotten

 We remember those that once

 Heard our voices

 And looked into our eyes

 When will they parachute 

 Back into our world of air

 Land and ocean?

 When will they come back to us?

 

 

 

TWO POEMS WRITTEN IN PARIS (MARCH 2003) 

                             

Gusts of wind blow across the beach and with just one

Final turn  the surf crashes against the shore

They are crossing over now  breaking through

The green waves and white foam

Like flying fish glittering in the sun

Death carries a long knife there are shadows behind his eyes

 

The Pentagon insists that once Iraq is disarmed

The sanctions will come to an end

But the dead will not be paroled

From their prison cells

And their severed limbs will not grow back

Death carries a long knife there are shadows behind his eyes

 

                                 

Air raid sirens sound as clouds of smoke

Billow over Baghdad

And so it has begun  so that even now as flowers bloom

In pink  white and violet clusters  F/A 18 Hornets take off

                                    

From dark blue strips in the Mediterranean  their engines

Emitting vapor trails that drift and then vanish

Into the desert sky

And even now as women in white march in Jakarta

 

And protesters stand outside the Houses of Parliament

In London 

A mother discovers the torso of her missing child

And blue on blue fire kills another marine

 

 

THERE ARE NO HEROES HERE

 

 for Cindy Sheehan

 

 We are going nowhere now

 In a house that has no doors or windows

 

 It is just a place to sleep

 There are no heroes here  only mothers

 

 And fathers calling out to children

 Who will never come home again

 

 But why try to speak of this?

 It is like throwing ashes into the wind

 

 We are going nowhere now

 In a house that has no doors or windows

 

 

 

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

 

WE OPEN OUR MOUTHS BUT NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO SING

 

While a dictator is deposed   monsters wait in the wings

Their eyes shining in the darkness

From the top of the world everything seems so small

From the top of the world is a long way to fall

 

When the student of a poet guns down thirty-two people

Her books suddenly fill the library shelves

She is interviewed on TV    her books begin to sell

 

After over one thousand are gassed outside of Damascus

The president asks congress for authorization to drop

American bombs to rid Bashar al-Assad of his ghosts

 

We open our mouths  but no one knows how to sing

Even the stars have lost their meaning

From the top of the world everything seems so small

From the top of the world is a long way to fall

 

AFTER READING A REVIEW OF THE SACRIFICE BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

 

Out here in the undiscovered dark

I hear the voice of a phantom

(Or is it the voice of a lost relative

Calling out from the other side

Of an invisible hill?)

 

Across town  cameras flash

As a minister holds a press conference

In the vestibule of a church

He drinks from the poisoned water of his own ego

His finger points away from himself

 

More children are dying every day

Bombs continue to fall

While the world sleeps

No one controls this cloud we ride on

No one knows how to get off

 

 

 

OCEANS & TECHNOLOGY

 

Out here in this country of unending sleep

I inherit horses in winter

And blowing hands

 

Above the clouds  and the televisions of L.A.

(Where once a blue whore danced on a powdered mask)

A woman is broadcast on air

 

A former debutante manipulated by plastic surgeons

And ultimately disposed of by parapsychologists

In the Pentagon

 

Out here in the shadow of a paradox                    

I huddle in wonder   decomposed but undiminished

While a hundred warplanes

 

Fly over toxic foam (oceans and technology)

Breast implants found hidden in the hospital gown

Of a surrogate mother

 

 

 

 TELEPROMPTER

 

 HOLD US IN A HUMAN TELECAST

 TOP STARS AND BLANK EXITS

 

 WITH TELEVANGELISTS ON SATELLITES

 AND UNREMEMBERED HEROES ON BLONDES

 

 THE WATER COMES IN

 WE UNDERSTAND

 

 IT HAS COME THROUGH THE WIND

 AND THE CLOUDS

 

 HOOKERS BY BLEACH

 WHITE WIGS AND U.S. WARHEADS

 

 BILLOWING ON BYLINES WORLDWIDE

 BLANKET US UNMASKED

 

 X TELEPATHS ON TOPLESS HOUSEBOATS

 THIS IS OUR ULTIMATE BUYER

 

 PARACHUTES BY ULTRA LIGHTS

 HOLOGRAMS BY FOAM

  

 THE NIGHT BATMAN DIED WE TALKED

 

 The night Batman died we talked

 You told me that the boulder

 That stood between us had been removed

 And had left a hole

 In your world and you fell in

 The shadow of an ogre blotted out the sky

 

 Long ago  I found you sitting

 In Saint Paul’s

 In front of the statue of Saint Therese

 You said you were cold

 After marching in the streets of Paris

 Against the war in Iraq

 

 After that  you gave me a small blank notebook

 I scribble in it and fill it with words  incantations

 And prayers

 Batman has put away his indigo mask

 I have put away mine

 The ogre is gone

 

 

HIROSHIMA

 

for Miyoko Mitsabara

 

I heard the whirring engines of a B-29

I glimpsed its wings and tail  a sign

Of foreboding filled the earth and the sky

With the terrifying message that all must die

 

I saw the shadow of the descending sword

After the flash  the heavens roared

I fell to the ground with my hands to my head

I awoke in the darkness and the dust of the dead

 

I ran toward my home, but I could never go back

Everything had changed  the sky was black

I went to the river to escape the flames

I saw bodies sink into graves without names

 

All around me were the broken pieces of mankind

Had the whole world lost its mind?

Out of the chaos came a voice I knew

Was this my friend? Could it be true?

 

Her face was swollen with slits for eyes

From behind charred lips came her cries

I was twelve years old when the A-Bomb hit

Just a child when that fuse was lit

 

I saw the shadow of the descending sword

After the flash  the heavens roared

I fell to the ground with my hands to my head

I awoke in the darkness and the dust 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

 

 

NIGHT POEM

 

White stars and a white moon

Snow geese

In a flying V formation cross a blue sky

 

I could become as transparent as the wind

And dance to the beat

Of a toy drum 

 

And leave all my belongings behind

I could talk back to the darkness 

But would I be heard?

 

White stars and a white moon

Snow geese

In a flying V formation cross a blue sky

 

 

 

OF WINTER & WARS

 

This is a country of winter

Of old men and wars

And ghosts defaced in a white mist

Of trees with long black limbs

And snowbanks

Piled up high against the back of the house

 

Here the sky is a kind of blanket

Or shroud

For the dead

And daylight is like a secret

Hidden

In a book that no one has yet to open

 

 

THE PLANET OF THE BLIND

 

 Light shone all around them  but they did not see it

 They had eyes but they remained closed

 

 No one analyzed their dreams

 No one even knew if he they had any

  

 Like Oedipus they walked in a world of darkness

 They existed in a land of unknowing

 

 They built war machines

 In air-conditioned rooms  they piloted drones

 

 By touch and dropped bombs

 On innocent women and children

 

 Whirlwinds of dust blew all around them

 Radioactive clouds darkened the sky.

 

 Ultimately  they considered themselves blessed 

 By their blindness

 

 When the end came  no one cried

 No one was left to tell their story

 

 Light shone all around them  but they did not see it

 They had eyes but they remained closed

  

 VARIATIONS ON THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR

 

 "The strings are cold on the blue guitar" Wallace Stevens

 

 A boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle

 The moon heard it echo  the wind heard it cry

 

 The clouds changed its sound

 In another country  it fell from the sky

 

 Unnoticed  it fell to the ground

 There are words only heard in the dark

 

 There are stories only told to strangers

 We dance to radio signals warbling in the air

 

 We change our faces daily

 We turn the world over  we sleep when we can

 

 They wear masks of tin  they glitter in the sun

 Their rockets blaze they build warheads by the ton

 

 They talk of peace  but it never comes

 A cloud descends   the lies resume

 

 Their minds are empty  their hearts are blank

 We walk and stumble along a darkened wall

 

 We hear a whistle  we hear a call

 But we can't be sure  there are so many before us

 

 So many bodies pushing and shoving   hordes of them

 We become confused  we fall

 The boy adored the blue guitar

 He made a kind of shrine

 

 He bathed in the light of that star

 The world glistened and shined

 

 He was born again when he heard the blue guitar

 They are flying drones way up high

 

 (UFOs whiz around in the dark)

 A robot pushes a button and lives vanish

 

 Out here in the white sands of the desert

 After the blast  the dead disembark

 

 At midnight  the world turned to stone

 And with it  the human head was reduced to bone

 

 The mountains turned purple  the sky turned gray

 Rivers and oceans froze  the land filled with snow

 

 The world went to sleep  the world turned to stone

 Architects silently put their tools away

 

 The shape of things had become an empty hole

 The boy feared his dreams might stop  his vision fade

 

 The boy feared he would turn to stone

 The boy feared he would be reduced to bone

 

 In his mind the boy made a shadow box

 Of all the things he had known and seen

 

 He made a shadow box of violet  blue and green

 He remembered oceans  clouds and ponds

 

 He remembered all the things he had known and seen

 An X marked the houses of the dead

 

 Bloated bodies floated down Canal Street

 The Superdome was in total darkness

 

 The lights were out  there was no turning back

 The boy painted his fingernails black

 

 Folks waved white flags from rooftops

 The president did a flyover

 

 He kept his distance  his view was blurred

 Only Kafka could invent something so absurd

 

 A man went up into the clouds

 The man traversed an ocean for love

 

 He could have been an astronaut he was so far gone

 He was lost in the air

 

 He whirled and tumbled and when he came down

 His wife was not there

 

 The man examined the clues

 The man had a bad case of the blues

 

 The man made a trip to the Pale Horse Tattoo Parlor

 He wanted to commemorate 

 

 His years of clandestine service 

 In the company of shadows

 

 When Peter Lorre was his avatar and guide

 When the world was dark and blue

 

 The man heard the thunder roar

 The man was weary of war

 

 Children are gathering in the dark

 An idea forms and we begin to bloom

 

 Almost invisibly but not quite

 Think of the resurrection as a kind

 

 Of second chance  as a kind of blossoming

 Some died by fire  some died in a blast

 

 Some vanished like a vapor  some died in a crash

 We let go of our secrets

 

 But our voices seem strange

 We must move beyond this phantom feeling

 

 History has abandoned us

 The old-world fades but the ruins remain

 

 We breathe in its dust and it changes us

 We have no need of sleep

 

 We bloom like flowers in the night

 We know what it is like to shiver in the cold

 

 We know what it is like to stumble and fall

 But our eyes were opened  we heard the call

 

 We followed the light of a distant star

 We heard the sound of the blue guitar

 

 A boy blew out a tune on a toy whistle

 The moon heard it echo    constellations heard it cry

 

 On another planet  it fell from the sky

 The clouds changed its sound

 

 Unnoticed  it fell to the ground

 There are words only heard in the dark

 

 There are stories only told to strangers

 We dance to radio signals warbling in the air

 

 We fly by the light of a nameless star

 We dance to the sound of the blue guitar

 

 

 

THE POETS (LOST IN MISSISSIPPI)

 

The poets have grown mute  listless

They have ashes in their mouths

Their eyes are shut

They have forgotten the words to the old songs

 

I sit beside a green pond  the water is cloudy

It is snowing somewhere but not here

I’m often awakened by dreams in the night

 

By shadows that have not yet learned how to speak

A mother calls out to her child 

From an opened window

 

But he does not hear her voice

The world is big and vast

I scribble these notes in the air

And a cold wind carries them away

      

 

THE HORSES

 

The horses are gathering together

Out there in the dark

Over on the other side of the field

 

Once the fog comes in, they will float up

Into the clouds and drift high above us

And look down on us as we lay in our beds

 

They will listen to our prayers

And look in on our dreams

Later they will guide us back from the land of our regrets

 

And in the morning  the field where they

Once grazed will be empty

And any sign of them will be gone

 

 

 

 A DECLARATION MADE IN WINTER

 

 She disappeared in December

 Like a cat that no one ever fed

 Winter calmed her in a way that drugs could not

 She walked with apparitions

 A ghost

 Lost in drifts of snow

 

 The first known photographs

 Are like faded dreams  images of generals

 Dead presidents  mountains

 Or an ocean

 Hidden in the clouds

 Of a descending fog

 

 In spring  a ruby throated hummingbird

 (In white) hovers above a bloom

 I see it now

 A promise made in a cold month

 A declaration of peace 

 Made at the end of a war  a wish  a kind of hope 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

SYRIA (RUMORS OF WAR)

 

He sang a tune or two in a one-man band

Then hopped a train to a distant and nameless land

And in a boxcar  he heard someone say

‘You can’t take back what you never gave away’

 

There are rumors of war  there are holes in the sky

The dead line the roads but no one hears them cry

The living are throwing stones into an empty well

Their houses are bare  they have nothing left to sell

 

I hum along to a song that I know and understand

As I trudge toward that distant and nameless land

And in the darkness  I hear someone say

‘You can’t take back what you never gave away’

 

 LONG AFTER DARK

 

A train carrying

Contraband cargo

Passes by farms

And hills

On its way to a depot

Hidden

Far underground

 

While men in masks

And biohazard suits

Prepare for a disaster

And plot a course

For the stars

 

But oh the wind blows

Hard here

And will not dissipate

Until long after dark

 

 

 

DEATH OF A TELEVANGELIST

 

They claimed children would be blessed

And would impart wonders

To others by touching the TV screen

That the dead would be raised

By being placed in a room

With a TV tuned to their programming

Coming from signals 

High in the sky  (Surely the moon

witnessed their conspiracy to defraud

viewers of their savings)  

Even as the pope abandoned his papal palace

They continued to broadcast their gospel of prosperity

On satellites worldwide

They flew not on the wings of angels

But on the wings of private jets

In a platinum pink bouffant wig (like a drag queen

In a John Waters film)

The one sat beside the other

They lived in mansions paid for with promises

They could never keep

The fault was not in the Gospel

The fault was with them

(God is not a genii in a bottle to be bought and sold)

Paul Crouch is dead

But his body will not be resurrected

In front of a TV screen tuned to TBN

He is caught in the eye of a needle

There is no need to send any cash

 

 

 

ON A HORSE MADE OF SNOW

 

If this was the last word you ever heard

Would you give it back?

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

 

Once there was a princess

Who rode on a horse made of snow

She searched for a lost dove

She searched for love

 

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

If this was the last word you ever heard

Would you give it back?

 

Once there was a man who wore a black mask

He had a dark past

If this was the last word you ever heard

Would you give it back?

 

If I told you the truth

Would you let me go?

Once there was a princess

Who rode on a horse made of snow

 

If this was the last song ever sung

Would you let it go?

If I took off the mask

Would you take me back?

 

 

THE GHOST OF A GIRL

 

Imagine the shadow of a sail moving over rough waters

The waves like turbines

Turning over and over again, tumbling endlessly

There are no monuments where the car crashed

To honor the dead girl

There is just a stump marking where the tree stood

That stopped time

 

Like a limb that has been surgically removed  her mother

And father can sense her presence

Sometimes they can hear her voice

Coming from her bedroom up the stairs

Murmuring in a language that they can't quite make out

And even all these years later they believe she is with them

Reaching out  just beyond their grasp  just out of sight

 

 

THE BLACK ARTS

           

It burned white hot

He saw trumpets  trombones and harps 

Floating high in the sky

He heard symphonies echoing in a blue wind.

He transcribed all that he heard.

He sought out a queen, 

A star  to perform in his kingdom of sound

He held auditions  he had affairs.

(He practiced the black arts of the heart)

 

He exercised mind control

Women vanished  found later 

Floating in the river 

He sunk into a bog of mediocrity and despaired

Then a maiden appeared with long blond hair 

And gray eyes

When she opened her mouth  choirs sang and bells rang

She was able to hold the high note of his dreams

She drifted into a zone of his own making

 

He thought she would save him  he was the conductor 

She was his instrument  he pulled the strings

They went viral worldwide  his ego bloomed in the dark

He bought mansions on both coasts

(Barrymore once played the part) 

But their love was a sham 

The tabloids discovered the truth

They filed for bankruptcy  she filed for divorce

Lawyers kept the cash

 

 

A COUNTRY OF SNOW

 

A cardinal flaps its wings in a country of snow

Its blood will not freeze

Its red feathers are a revelation when all is white

 

Nightmares exist only in the dark

I must face the truth when the sun is high

when the world is luminous and open 

 

I rummage around in a closet that is not my own

I take a notebook and write these poems

I must give them back   I must let them go

 

 

 

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

 

I saw a spaceman in the park

I saw UFOs in the dark

I saw refugees on TV

I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky

I heard the wail of a mother cry

There are missiles hidden in the west

There are missiles hidden in the east

I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast

 

I saw a spaceman in the dark

I saw a homeless man in the park

I saw refugees in the street  

I saw UFOs on TV

I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky

I heard the wail of a mother cry

There are missiles hidden in the west

There are missiles hidden in the east

I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast

 

 

 

NO MORE GAMES  NO MORE TOYS

for Damien Echols

 

A mother had a premonition

A mother had the chills

Three drowned boys

In the Robin Hood Hills

No more games, no more toys

For the boys

From the Robin Hood Hills

 

A mother had a premonition

A mother had the chills

One had a fractured skull,

Three drowned boys

In the Robin Hood Hills

The police targeted a teen

A false confession

Placed him at the scene

   

They said he wore black

They said his life was off track

They said his art was obscene

No evidence, no DNA, but a jury

Found him guilty

Of killing the boys

In the Robin Hood Hills  

  

He wishes he could sleep

He wishes he could go

But he's in too deep

There on Death Row

A mother had a premonition

A mother had the chills

Three drowned boys

In the Robin Hood Hills  

 

 

 

 WE DANCE IN THE DARK

 for Judy Garland

 

 I put on an old mask that matches my worn shoes

 And make my way up the mountain

 To where only the fog blooms

 

 Her ruby slippers still fit when she died of a drug overdose

 In a London hotel  triumphant and alone  

 We dance in the dark  here in this garden of stone

 

 

 

 

 THE MAGICIAN (BLACK COAT & TAILS)

 

 Like a magician he's up to his old tricks

 Another show another fix

 His heart's in a box

 Bound by a thousand and one locks

 His world is whirling and about to tilt

 The knives are in all the way to the hilt

 He'd let them go but he doesn't know how

 If looks could kill he'd be a ghost by now

 

 From the shadows he calls out your name

 Just one shot and you're back in the game

 Your heart's in a box

 Bound by a thousand and one locks

 Your world is whirling and about to tilt

 The knives are in all the way to the hilt

 You'd let them go but you don't know how

 If looks could kill  you'd be a ghost by now

 

 

 

JB

 

January in Minnesota

Snow enshrouds the Mississippi 

The world is silent and white

He dreams of Florida

He dreams deep into the night

The ocean beckons like a mistress

 

He longs for a kiss

He once had a plan 

But he failed as a pilot 

And fell as a man

The world is silent and white

He dreams deep into the night

 

January in Minnesota 

The ocean beckons like a mistress

He longs for a kiss 

He once had a plan

But he failed as a pilot 

And fell as a man

 

 

 

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

 

 

NEVERLAND

 

He's got a boy in his bed

He's got monsters in his head

One more show one more shot

Is all he's got

He's a fan

Of Peter Pan

He wants to fly

Across the sky

There he goes

A king with no clothes

He's holding a baby above the crowd

He's talking to himself out loud

Another pill another shot

Is all he's got

He's dancing on the head of a pin

He's refusing to let anyone in

Another pill  one last shot

Is all he's got

There he goes

A king with no clothes

 

 

 

THE EIGHTH OF DECEMBER

  

It was the eighth of December

This is what I remember

This is what they said

John Lennon had been shot

John Lennon was dead

 

It could have been George C Scott

It could have been anyone

But a psycho with a gun

Had snuffed out the sun

Yoko took to her bed

John Lennon was dead

 

It was the eighth of December

That is what they said

This is what I remember

John Lennon had been shot

John Lennon was dead

 

 

 GHOSTS IN WINTER

 

 What do I care about Prozac and depression  price controls

 And the unemployment rate (blue voices in a dark room)

 

 While a lost girl wades through drifts of Minnesota Snow

 And apparitions huddle high above the frozen river?

 

 

 

 TIME BOMBS ON TV

 

 Headlines and mountain ranges vanish in the clouds

 A wizard floats above it all

 He hides his face behind false confessions 

 And a one-way mirror

 He holds nothing too dear

 He sells gossip and time bombs on TV

 

 He beams images into a billion homes

 He broadcasts fictions on cue

 He paints one head red  another blue

 The gray ones have been banished with Dante

 A few horses remain just outside the city

 But no one knows how to ride

 

 

 

 

 THE BAY OF PIGS

 

 A dancer twirls on top of a musical box and spins

 Round and round in a loop

 A child pulls the string of a doll that talks

 A TV anchor spins a web of half-truths and lies

 While his soul withers and dies 

 “Change your life”

 Declares an anonymous voice

 Pushing online degrees and bleach

 Between the pratfalls of Andy Griffith and Barney Fife

 

 An old friend of mine from Dallas

 (The nephew of CIA Cowboy and assassin Rip Robertson) 

 Told me tales about visiting Miami and New Orleans

 When he was a boy 

He bragged about his uncle landing with Cuban exiles

On the beach at the Bay of Pigs

 ‘What did your uncle say about the assassination of JFK?’

 I asked 

 He replied ‘Good shot’

 

  

 

 

 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 and map the brain

 And enter into that mysterious terrain

 

 Human consciousness is a mystical thing

 Held together by two tin cans and one invisible 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

 

 

 

 

 AS A KITE FLIES

 

 The water is high and green on the lake

 Harnessed to an invisible kite

 I float over islands

 I take photographs in my mind and ask questions

 Is the sky bigger at night when the moon is out?

 Do we dream when we sleep alone?

 

 Where is the beginning? 

 Where is the end?

 A thin man fasts in the corner

 A homeless man dies of a drug overdose

 When darkness comes  we promise not to fall

If we fail at love  we fail ourselves

 

 

 

 THE PINBALL WIZARD OF LAS VEGAS

 

 (for Larry)

 

 I walked around in a kind of bubble

 I could look out, but no one could look in

 I took only shallow breaths  the air was thin

 The oxygen limited

 No one knew 

 About the dark thing that held me captive

 In Las Vegas  my favorite cousin 

 Mangled his hand between the whirring blades 

 Of a machine

 All that remained was a partial palm

 I was ten  he was sixteen

 Soon he arrived at my grandmother’s house

 And I had to face the horror 

 Of what he had lost 

 His palm was bandaged 

 Hidden from view

 Wrapped up like a miniature mummy

 He held a white  plastic ball  and tossed it to me

 I tossed it back  he caught it

 By pulling on the bottom of his shirt

 Using it as a kind of glove

 For the ball to softly land

 My fears of facing him vanished

 I was free

 How did he know how I had suffered?

 Later the Las Vegas Sun 

 Wrote an article about him

 And his prowess at pinball

 (Using just one hand and a palm)

 He would often sit

 In front of his house  drinking beer

 Watching over his muscle car

 And when a can 

 Was thrown at his metallic prize

 He would be off to the Vegas Strip

 Chasing after the perpetrator

 Still later  he worked

 For the Department of Defense

 At the Nevada Test Site

 He held the highest of security clearances

 He married  but he knew the dark side

 Of man’s inventiveness  of man’s machines

 He knew that they could bite

 That accidents happen 

 So  he quit his job 

 His wife took pills and he drank

 The money ran out  there were fights

 It ended with the suicide of his bride

 He became emaciated and depressed

 His bones poked through his skin

 Somehow  he seemed to hover above us all

 Then the convulsions began, and he fell 

 Through the clouds   a diver

 Free falling   tumbling   without wings

 Without a chute

 

 

 

PARIS (THE CAROUSEL)

 

for Louise Cowan 

 

Children ride on white ponies

They go up and down

Airplanes could carry them higher

But they stay close to the ground

 

Refugees gather on the border

The lines are long

The children freeze in the camps

They say their prayers by kerosene lamps

 

The carousel goes round and round

It goes up and down

It goes up and down 

 

Out in the desert  rockets flare

They go up and they go down

The go round and round

They go up and down

 

Along the canal blue lights flash

The carousel goes round and round

Where children once rode white ponies

And stayed close to the ground

 

 

 

 

 

THE WAVES AT MIDNIGHT

 

I sleep with books of poetry in my bed

There's an ocean at my door

I hear the hum of voices in my head

 

The waves at midnight are dark and blue

I can't remember anything anymore

I've swum out so far  I've lost sight of the shore

 

 

 THE WOMAN IN DARK CLOTHES

 

(for Edith Stein)

 

She adored Husserl  the depths of his though

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

 

IN THIS HOUSE OF CLOUDS

 

Here in this house of clouds I'm awakened

By the flapping of wings

I hear the call of birds  I fly over mountains

 

Like the shadow of an airplane that passes over open water

I vanish with the wind  here in this house of clouds

I'm awakened by the flapping of wings

 

 

 

 

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

 

Before the Pharaohs ruled the world

She watched lightning flash through the blowhole

Of an ancient whale

She saw riders fall from the clouds like snow

 

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

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 SAPPHO

 

 

 

A PURPLE FLOWER

 

So what are you like dear?

Look how you tremble  look how you shake

 

A blossom  a tender shoot

A purple flower trampled on the ground

 

They say that Leda once found an egg— like a hyacinth

Virginity  where have you gone?

 

 

HERA

 

Be here by me  Lady Hera 

I pray

And talk of kings  those that sailed to Lesbos

 

They gained great riches there

Exiled they called to you 

And to Zeus

 

Followers of Dionysus be kind now

Help me 

As you helped them

 

 

 

FRAGMENTS OF A KIND

 

Come now long-haired lovers

Let us talk of the future 

Who will remember us?

The moon shines full the maidens stand at the altar 

 

He is dying  Aphrodite  Adonis is dying

What should we do?

Shake your fists

Tear off your clothes

 

The night is long and I sleep alone

Weep for Adonis 

Aphrodite 

Adonis is dying

 

Eros throw off your cloak  show me the sun

Set me on fire 

The night is long and I sleep alone

The wind blows cold down off the mountain

 

Come now long-haired lovers

Let us talk of the future 

Who will remember us?

The moon shines full  the maidens stand at the altar 

 

 

 

LOVE

 

When you are dead  no one will remember you

For you do not love 

You will wander in the shadows

You will roam lost in the house of the dead

 

Death is evil  so the gods say 

Some say an army of horsemen (some say ships)

Are the fairest things on this black earth

But I say love is the fairest thing on this black earth

 

 

APHRODITE

 

Glittering goddess   weaver of spells and incantations

Pierce my heart with an invisible arrow

 

And leave me undone  until we are one

Have pity on me  come to me now  hear my voice

 

Hear my cry   hear my prayer

Flee the house of your father   abandon that house of gold

 

And ride on your chariot with your white horses and doves

Come to me and laugh at my lunacy

 

And free me of my longing and let us ride

On your chariot with your white horses and doves

 

 

 

PERSEPHONE

 

Once decades ago in the aura of the morning sun

I  watched a girl picking flowers

And then from in the sky I saw a dark cloud

And I heard her cry aloud

 

Again I looked from my open door

But I could see the girl no more

The cloud had vanished  taking her away

To a world beyond the aura of the morning sun