EXTRAORDINARY PENNILESS MEN
A Poem For God On A Night On The Edge
Loving You Is A Lonely Place To Be
My Dream Ran Out Of Time, And Dido Won
Extraordinary penniless men.
Don’t be so quick to say no
when they invite you
to the free crack
in the wall.
The world needs
new tricks,
and even though no dollar sign
comes out of their ****s,
they can
do better than that:
pull an angel
out of Hell’s hat,
or at least a feather
to show the difference
between
angels and men.
If you don’t have to snort,
you can read
the golden book,
it only comes
in tatters.
Extraordinary penniless men.
We’re the librarians in the basement
who guard
the stairs of hope.
Hear us marching
to the beat of a different drummer,
don’t walk past the wise soul
of summer,
which autumn’s falling leaves
enthrone,
don’t stab the sun
with your withheld lips,
it will drip light
out of the question’s reach.
We have the answer,
we just don’t have the means.
Extraordinary penniless men.
Sacrifice yourself
on the cross of our obsession,
it has a reason.
Wager your genes
on the dice roll of
our brilliant uncompetitive minds.
Your soft deluded hands
could be the womb
of a new world.
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
la nube que se alcanza con la sange
el palacio construido con el dolor del inocente
el leon que mata para que su reina tenga diamante
Puedo ser su complice
a el le puedo dar mi cuerpo y mi corazon
O puedo decir no
puedo ser la defensora de un mundo mejor
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Para mi belleza lucha, dice el soldado
Quiere conquistarme con el botin de El Dorado
Soy pirata tambien si acepto las joyas de su mano
Puedo ser su complice
a el le puedo dar mi cuerpo y mi corazon
O puedo decir no
puedo ser la defensora de un mundo mejor
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Que poder tiene Lisistrata
Sin ella, el soldado no tiene nada
en su nombre inventO las balas
para ella el Diablo tiene cola
y el angel tiene alas
es una diosa, y es una hada
esta Lisistrata
esta mujer llamada Lisistrata
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Sin ella, el traficante no se meta en la droga
el pirata no saquea, y el marinero no se ahoga
las abejas pican, todas buscando la rosa
un sexo lucha para el mundo
pero el otro lo da su forma
mas poderosa que las armas es la respuesta de Lisistrata
su respuesta de si o no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Ni los presidentes
ni los reyes
tienen mi poder
ellos juegan
pero soy yo
soy yo que pongo las reglas
puedo poner las reglas
con mi si o no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
hoy acepto las joyas
de la sinceridad
y de la moralidad
no me compras mas con
las frutas de la hostilidad
quiero que llegue la paz
puedes quedarte con las perlas
con el oro que tu robas
con la plata que sacas de las lagrimas
puedes quedarte con la casa grande
si hay pobres al otro lado del balancin
no acepto la corona que necesita un gamin
Soy la diosa que va a hacer el mundo nuevo
con mi no
con las rayas del sol
de mi no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no
Lisistrata dice no, no, no
Private cuts
bleeding world.
Donna’s hippy lover left,
she became a Republican.
Eddie’s father hit him
then took him to the woods
and showed him how to shoot
the big-eyed deer.
Sniper grew on the apple tree.
Now everyone in the gun-sight’s dad,
the politics doesn’t matter.
White Boy Joey
got beat up in Nigeria,
now they’re all Uncle Remus
with a crack vial.
Alexandra got broken into
where she’s sweetest
by the vandal,
now she kills the one
who really loves her
with miles of ice.
Mary lost her Baby Jesus,
cried tears that sideswiped history,
the whole world rushed
to be nailed to the cross.
Private cuts, bleeding world.
Murray drove the forklift
through his daily dust
under the whip eyes
of yelling man
until he finally said,
"Bomb them all."
And Murray was just like Sam,
the master of crawling.
Sam was
recruited by TV land
to become a soldier of the voting booth,
gave the gun of his vote
to another angry man.
Said, "Here, I’m dying,
please do it for me."
A whole world
scribbling history
in its own blood
on the wall.
Little lives
that make
the empires
rise and fall.
J and D were going to have a baby,
something went wrong,
sang their love song
in the cold.
Prometheus stole fire from the Gods
and his reward was to be chained down
so an eagle could eat his liver
forever.
Now every couple passing by
is like that eagle,
J and D are killed by other people’s
happiness. At least the world used
Prometheus’ torch.
Sad and hopeless,
their wound stays home
while the earth
riots in the streets.
Their healing hands
were silenced
long ago.
Jack of All Trades
lost his eleventh crappy job,
built the Berlin Wall
in El Paso.
Programmed the cruise missile to home in
on accents.
He turned the bills he couldn’t pay
into a million Mexicans,
used them to keep his
heartbreaks from crossing over the
border to the truth.
No one wants to be the runt of the family.
Wally P. always hated
the Big Apple,
it could never remember
the name of his
small town.
When he saw its towers come
tumbling down,
he didn’t cry,
he just used them.
Turban World got to go,
the earth’s filled with New Yorks
that don’t go
fishing with me.
Private cuts, bleeding world.
How many treaties do we need?
Private cuts, bleeding world.
Hopelessness, or hope?
Too much needs to be fixed.
But one person can save it all.
Met them in a vintage photo,
met them in a film
on the other side of me.
Nazis in the past.
Black and white soldiers
running past
the burning truck,
eyes of steel traps
ready to snap shut
on anyone who sees them naked;
you make one wrong move
and their bullet
will suddenly
be f*****g you.
The Arch came later,
after the fields
in full bloom with the dead,
and the intersections
cluttered
with flaming tokens
of resistance,
some strange god
in the sky
covered his tracks.
The Arch -
the Arch pillaged
by marching feet
that were not its own.
Passing underneath
was their way of being
on top.
And the ocean waves of
Sieg Heil,
like a child playing
in his tub
who sends water
splashing onto the floor:
tub of a nation,
floor of a world;
bewildered looks raped
by the proud.
That, too,
was in black and white,
nations plucked from the
illusion of order,
which is only the down time
of chaos.
Black and white.
I saw it all in black and white.
It wasn’t of this world,
the nightmare,
it came from the
black and white world,
belonged to the world
of black and white.
Black and white.
The vintage moat,
protector of
our times.
Until one day, walking,
I suddenly found myself
wandering in the same
green woods,
and realized so looked
these woods to
the invading Nazi
and the dying Frenchman.
The Nazis were in color!
Every nuance, every flower, every leaf
as I see it now,
the color of human flesh and human eyes,
this is the medium
in which the Nazi conquered
and the Frenchman died.
Even the night was not quite black,
and the snow that tried, in vain,
to bring back holiness was not true white,
black and white were not the absence of color,
they were colors,
colors amidst colors.
The black and white world
never existed,
it was only the illusion of a photograph!
And suddenly,
I was no longer distant
from the attack,
from the men and women who
were behind the changes on the map.
The Nazis were in color!
Enlightenment came like a cold sweat in the night;
with a moment of inner dynamite
hurled against perception
a giant hole was blown in the wall
of the black and white jail
which kept them off the streets of my times.
The Nazis were in color!
Fairy tale’s end!
History’s insulation shattered,
two times screwed together
like parts of a gun,
something buried in the past
around the bend!
The Nazis were in color!
Oh death of black and white
which sheltered me with the camera’s
sleight of hand,
guarded my sleep and land
with the magic trick of a non-existent wall!
History does not have periods,
it’s a run-on sentence.
And yesterday never gives back the key.
Oh death of black and white,
counting sheep throughout the night,
must I now count wolves?
The Nazis were in color!
Not black and white!
The Nazis were in color!
I had a vision of dying,
of black helicopters in the sky
and barbed wire around Right
while Wrong stood high,
spotlights
coming from the Third Eye
of Liberty,
and blood dripping from
every question mark,
I dreamt I ran within
a herd nation
hiding from its conscience,
until the sun turned its back
on the earth;
and only those
who were eaten
by the hateful mind
and passed through its intestines
to its gun-wielding fingers
were not discovered
and destroyed.
Written with all due respect to institutions of self-defense when properly envisioned and legitimately utilized.
If you’re worthwhile
you’re going to have a file.
Might as well get it now.
Don’t make big Brother wait.
Don’t make the mindless killer
speculate.
Spycam up your ass,
blow kisses to the CIA,
they’ve got to be there
in case your girl’s
hiding Bin Laden
in her pants.
FBI Library card
and NSA telephone,
I’ll never be alone.
I’ve got a file,
therefore I am.
Patriot Act
come in like a cat
without bells,
the mouse of my mind
is creeping around the holes
in the big guy’s argument.
Let the Reverend kill Shakespeare
and send the monkeys home,
and by the way
shoot the little yelling man
who took his country back,
I deserve a file, to talk like that.
I loved the towers
more than those
who used them.
E-mail a telescope
into the head of the different drummer,
type your confession
which is too many questions.
We’re on it.
we don’t have the firing squad yet,
take a number
and wait
your turn,
doors close at 1945,
will open again tomorrow,
if you look the other way.
Used to be,
all the knights were out
looking for the Grail,
the castle was nothing but
an empty jail.
But now the king is back
with a crown
of crass gold,
he never understood what the holy fuss
was all about,
he just knelt
in front of his shit
and prayed for the sky to be
worthless.
And he dressed the cripples
in crusaders’ crosses,
to make the world bend
low enough
for him to reach.
Avalon just became ECHELON.
They’ve broken into the lofty mind
with base eyes
tied to base souls.
They scrutinize
the open arms of horizons
with stabs in the back.
They know you are beyond them;
you must fall off the earth
because they’ve declared it flat.
Information will pierce you soon,
it’s waiting like a loaded gun,
waiting, waiting
for one more fool
to tip the scales.
Transparency
in the arsenal of dogs
is the deadliest weapon of all,
they’ll kill the future
by dressing you in the
dunce cap of your
complexity,
steal a nuance from your
richness
to hurl to the empty and the filthy.
With rat poison, they’ll kill the
Gods!
Today, they build the wall,
tomorrow they stand you
against it.
How much living can you get in
before they find out
who you are?
Never mind!
It’s as inevitable as the stars burning out.
Might as well get a file now,
wouldn’t it be a shame to be the last
one to go,
to live longer
only because you were frozen
in your tracks -
because you didn’t ask?
Might as well get a file now,
it’s the only way to be somebody.
Every penny wants to be gold;
are you worth a bullet?
Cannon fodder doesn’t count.
Brave Man’s
just Bad Man’s hand;
and it’s Bad Man’s land.
He despises his tools
by giving them a medal.
Might as well get a file now,
let the cowards
gather around your integrity
like vultures,
and pick apart your love of truth.
Once there was a first man,
one day there’ll be a last man.
No one can ask for more
than to die in the right place.
Might as well get a file now:
Home of the free,
Land of the brave,
and everyone else is born to be
a slave.
But my file gave proof through the night,
that our flag was still there.
Our flag was still there - in me.
Patriot act, and patriot fact.
Which one are you?
And my file gave proof through the night,
that our flag was still there.
Damn Russians!
Damn Americans!
You killed Hitler.
You’re murderers!
Some people
are able to
build their
righteousness
on top of
the most amazing
misperceptions!
Blinded
to everything
except
their own actions
coming back
to them,
they dare to
wear the crown of the
victim,
to add the most precious jewel
to their treasure house
of thefts.
Invisible punches
bring counterpunches
that seem to be
the first blow.
Some people throw punches
in their sleep,
but people who are hit
are always awake.
What a strange thing, when
people of iron cry.
He who lives by the sword
expects to die tenderly
in God’s arms.
What an incompetent religion,
like a shaky hand that can’t hold
a glass of water
without spilling it.
Morals were
always such
cheap whores.
In and out of
Alzheimer’s,
the killers destroy,
while preserving
their right
to mourn the
consequences of
somebody else’s
self-defense.
The abridged version
of Karma
has no
chapter
of Genesis.
Moments come from nowhere,
there is no wheel,
just the affront of
a rebelling slave
whose chains
you never
saw.
At such moments,
swords
imagine they are shields.
Politics
masquerades as
forensic science
to prove that the
man who was shot in the back
was charging.
Excuses
pound the stranger’s dream
like artillery
until innocence is
leveled,
until the carnage was deserved.
Armies have
always needed
fairy tales.
Napoleon cut out God,
the middle man,
to crown himself Emperor.
The swastika
gave itself
angel’s wings.
The karmic wheel
is never captured
by the still photography
of politics.
There will always be some point
at which Hitler seems right.
Damn Russians!
Damn Americans!
You killed Hitler.
You’re murderers!
There is no greater
danger in the world
than the mirage
of a holy place.
He who will not look within,
in the mirror of darkness,
will be slain
by a cloud.
You must go far from God
into the temple of Brother Hate
where your
umbilical cord
reaches into
Hell.
No doctor can avert his eyes
if the patient is to live.
Ulysses blinded the Cyclops
with a burning stake
thrust into the only eye he had.
Don’t let the Ulysses in you
turn everything into day.
Angels can’t be delicate.
The scarab pushes around a ball of dung.
That’s how he got to
be sacred.
Judas ran ahead of himself,
that’s why he fell.
He didn’t know he could commit adultery
with gold
until Jesus was dead.
Know thyself.
Plunge into dark reflections,
baptize yourself in the water of
wrong choices and wrong paths,
swim
before you get wet.
Know thyself.
Run with wolves.
Spare the world.
You cannot perform
the Heimlich Maneuver
on a butterfly.
A I.P., quien persiste en mi corazon como el hermano del alma que era.
You had the power for that one moment
when my eyes froze like a deer
before I could remember
that all men die;
for that one instant when God’s trick
to keep us alive
made me look afraid
as your hate, tipped with a gun,
broke through the walls of justice, and smashed
into my heart, my dreaming skull.
For a moment, then, my physiology
raised you high, like a flag above your illusion.
I gasped for breath
and sank to my knees
as though you were the king,
though you were nothing but a lost soul
and a trigger.
Tears cascaded from my eyes
as blood surged out of my veins,
a crimson funeral dirge
that made you float in ignorant rapture
over my powerlessness.
But it is you who died
and drowned in weakness,
not the broken one
who writhed ecstatically in the arms of angels
disguised as pain,
incompatible
with the earth.
Give me a minute
to break free of this debris,
to get clear of this body that has surrendered me
like a flower opening up
to God.
Give me a minute
to escape the reflexes of ephemeral agony
and to return to the infinite tranquillity
that mocks you.
Did you shoot the sky? The sea?
Did you think the heart of the Universe
would stop beating,
or that the sun
would say your name?
A bullet lodged in the brain of the ocean
is merely spit upon
by all the water
of the world.
You are a fool.
Your little toy of death
is like a child
crying "Boo!"
To startle is not to vanquish.
To dislodge a spirit
from a corpse
is not to rule
what’s real.
Poor fool.
Drown your sins in cups
of lives you stole,
stick your egotism, rigid with self-love,
into a dark place
unlocked by lies
and stacks of paper that hold the faces of the dead.
Your pleasure is like vomit.
Nothing you can ever do
will save you from this day.
And now it’s you who are on your knees and crying,
like a sissy
inside the iron
you have to cling to.
Your lips can’t even reach the feet
of the dead.
They live, above your corpse
of excesses,
your futile orgasms and hangovers
that can never free you
from your leprous trigger finger.
Poor fool!
It is you who are a cadaver,
so far from the fields of the sun,
where angels dance
and will always dance
without you.
Good men don’t die, love keeps them
like candles at an altar.
As they dissolve
beneath the ground
the earth slowly takes their form.
One day, we’ll awaken
on top of a giant heart.
Door to the human treasure house,
gateway to the soft insides
of humanity.
Of course the dark iron God
is there,
ringing the doorbell
of guns.
He wants what you have.
He doesn’t want to be you,
he wants to hold it
without knowing what it is.
He’ll make every good thing bleed
till he can
make it fit.
His blueprint has no tear ducts,
just a grudge against hope.
Yesterday,
he shot an angel
by the fence,
his bullets raised our sins
another notch.
This time we may not be able
to get over them.
King of night,
with a child’s mind!
The gold coin
told him a lie,
and he believed it.
Feng Shui in a pit.
Balance the dark with the dirt.
The yin of piss
with the yang of shit.
Wise man: what can you do with this?
Now you’re finally in tune
with the history of the earth.
Blown over, burned, drowned, and buried,
the Four Elements are present
in your life.
Wise man: do you have anything more than light?
Feng Shui in a pit.
Balance the dark with the dirt.
The yin of piss
with the yang of shit.
Wise man: what can you do with this?
In some places
Enlightenment doesn’t matter.
You don’t need a wise man;
you need a ladder.
Casualty in paradise.
Blood seeped under the door.
One man’s Heaven
is another man’s Hell.
Can’t get away from it
cause it’s in someone’s mind,
no matter where you draw the line.
There’s always the Trojan Horse
of who we were.
Casualty in paradise.
The real world always catches up
with the fantasy
of being our own God.
It’s noble to try to break
the chains,
even though we are the chains.
There’s nothing worth living for
except throwing yourself under the
wheels of what’s impossible.
Everything else is too easy.
The stars in the sky
aren’t worthy of me.
Casualty in paradise.
Ocean knows where the island lives,
and always will.
One day the water will
cover the earth.
Paradise is the beauty
of flying the flag till the end:
the flag
of what God lost.
Maybe one day he’ll look,
and find it in us.
Clock is ticking down
to my dead soul
in somebody’s fat stomach.
Body on the road.
Pass it by, this is war.
It’s my body.
They’re on the way
to weighing a thousand pounds.
Ice statue woman wants the finest feathers
in her hat,
she’s going to dig her beauty
out of someone else’s earth,
bury the dead
in the hole her face comes from:
plastic surgery
performed
by extinction.
No more birds in the sky,
just the finest feathers in her hat.
Clock is ticking down.
Another morning
I’ve got to cut myself to be on time:
Razor blade, slash my flesh,
mutilate my skin
with my daily bread.
The beautiful book is still unwritten -
and unread.
Clock
Clock
Run away,
you’re dangerous
to the shallow premise.
Grind the mind
into a road,
your value is equal
to the velocity of
the army
you don’t impede.
You can’t believe it,
but it’s true.
They throw out light
because it thinks it’s above
the rules of the strong.
Clock is ticking down,
I’ve got nothing left
but goodness
sitting down.
Pyrite world
wears the gold out.
Loyalist.
I heard the old music again.
It cut me into pieces
alone
in the dark room.
Is this how it feels
to put bullets into your gun
on the night when
suicide finally
comes dressed
with pearls?
I can’t go back.
By the burning candle,
dripping wax of cowardice,
and the note of ideals I couldn’t outgrow,
I sit
while others sleep,
determined to commit
the suicide
of returning.
A horse
can outrun a car
after the road has stopped.
There’s no road here,
just my unfinished youth,
waiting for
an old man
to paint
a young man’s angel.
It’s the only thing
that will let me die,
let me become the quiet sky
that reaches the lovers I never met.
Loyalist.
I can’t leave it behind,
the beauty
that destroyed me
because I tried too hard to love.
I’ve got to stay true.
I no longer have the strength to be a traitor,
or the time to be my enemy.
And now, in the season of hard ground
and frost,
a woman has come
seeking shelter,
offering her gold.
How I want her!
How I want to spoil
the final chapter of my book
with happiness -
but she knows too much.
I’m too old for her;
I have to spend my last years being young.
I still have to write the spring.
I cannot fly at the height
of her autumn
or my winter.
Loyalist.
I heard the music
and like Gabriel
it would not let me go.
"Deliver the message!"
the angel said
with the blinding sword of
who I was afraid to be.
"You do not belong to you.
You are the carrier of a dream.
What chariot says no to a God?"
How he lashes the horses
of my fear
with my shame!
Loyalist.
Today, I finally let my dream
devour me.
It needs my strength.
How she hates foolish men,
her body is still bruised
by their starry eyes.
But I can’t become innocent,
I can’t surrender my danger.
As Perseus would not let himself
become a stone,
so I can only look at the
reflection of her beauty
in the polished
mirror-shield
of my impracticality.
Yes, I know.
Dreamers are hurtful people.
But I can be outflanked,
behind me is a whole world of
people who are not like me.
I can’t lower my flag
just because she’s lonely.
Guilt is what keeps the world
at the feet of men
who have no conscience.
How well the world turns
love into the storm
that wrecks the ships of change.
Loyalist.
I can’t go back.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood."
The ring fell off
when I chose the road
of the fool.
But I’m a loyalist.
Looks like
autumn-leaf love
is going to blow away, too.
But I’m a loyalist.
It’s too late
not to stay
until the end.
Loyalist.
Start to write it
on my gravestone.
Start to write it in
your diary,
it will lead you
to another man.
Loyalist.
How proud I am
to be
outnumbered
and unloved!
Merry Christmas
by the tree of who we aren’t.
Baby Jesus is coming
with the present
of missing you.
Merry Christmas
in the stable of a war,
baby who I sang to sleep
is going to bed
with people who hate him;
but love is stronger
than the staring street.
I hear you
pitter-pattering
in your pajamas
with sewed-in feet,
running to the lights
and packages beneath the tree.
Sled tracks in the dawn.
Santa didn’t leave a real gun.
Didn’t have a fake white beard,
didn’t have a country to leave him a cookie.
Merry Christmas
on the other side of home,
where "alone" takes up the whole dictionary.
North Pole
could make a grown man cry;
silver bells don’t ring
at the roadblock.
When you coming home?
Won’t say what they gave me
to say in the speech,
won’t cry bullets
down my cheek
or hold a stiff upper lip for the mistake.
I’d put icicles on the tree forever
if it could make
the world go away.
If we could find our way back
to Christmas Day.
Like a cricket
chirping into the wind
who you still hear
because you want to listen to him,
in your loneliness to let him in,
tears are crying for you
on the other side of the world,
the music of tears
playing on the face
of the one you love.
If you lift up your ears
like a dog
hunting for the sound of the footsteps
that bring life
you’ll hear me.
If you listen with your longing
you’ll hear me.
Out of earshot you’ll hear me.
The wind can’t blow this love away
can’t hide it
or disguise it,
whispers will fall out of the roar that makes
the mountains wake up in another place.
You’ll hear my voice.
You’ll see my face.
The shifting sands
make the desert seem like
another land
but it’s the same,
the wind changes the expressions
of the earth
but not its face.
The one you love
is everywhere
looking at you like a mother.
My heart beats
on the other side of the wind
and in the wind,
my absence
kisses you endlessly,
caresses you on the soul’s skin.
Listen to me!
Listen to me
and throw away
the word loneliness.
The earth
exists only
to keep
us together.
I am not.
I am but a hand which
justice made
to paint itself.
Therefore I cannot die
for there is no I
and what made me is forever.
Revenge is in reach,
mercy is too far.
My soul has lost too much blood
to reach mercy,
today I’ll make it
no farther than revenge.
Love, love,
it all came from love.
I loved you so much
that I ended up far
from love.
How could your beauty
turn into this!?
I miss you!
I cry out
with unspeakable loneliness,
scream your name
with burned fields,
defile your angelic hands
with their wounds.
How could
I bring you back
except to
shatter the laws of
time and death
with
this
inverted adoration?
Revenge is in reach,
mercy is too far.
Like an eagle,
I fly through the
rain of hate
hoping to die
to be with you sooner,
but somehow
the accident of winning
keeps us apart.
Why couldn’t I
give my love for you
to the world?
I just couldn’t.
My soul has lost too much blood
to reach mercy,
today I’ll make it
no farther than revenge.
Don’t put her name on the bullet!
Don’t put her name on the bullet!
Don’t break her halo
with your reflex.
Don’t let her know that
pain is stronger than love!
One day,
God will make a man
worthy of her.
But not today.
My soul has lost too much blood
to reach mercy,
today I’ll make it
no farther than revenge.
God exists
I feel happy
dying
a chorus of faces
is singing to me
I see a thousand
shining moon-faces
welcoming me
telling me it doesn’t matter
that I have done enough
been enough
I don’t feel the bullet
I don’t feel the knife
there’s a thousand miles
of divinity
between me
and the weapons
There’s things
I want to say
before I fall away
from my voice
to set things straight
but even that’s OK
the strange liquid
pouring over the glass
of my perception
is cleaning up after me
I see them in a haze
and I know they’ll know
one day
when linked hands of light
clasp together with the truth
in our hearts
and I feel sorry
for the weeping stragglers
who will look into my
coffin
and not see me looking
down at them with my own
moon-smiling face
and even here
as they kick my body around
with technology
I’m doing fine
deep inside the endorphins
and the adrenaline
that are only God’s
smoke screen
because He doesn’t give faith
away for free
and I’m fine
just fine
with the bitterness out
of my system
and the pain
and the fear
and the disappointment
and the pain
and the feeling of abandonment
and betrayal
and the pain
all the loose ends
come together with death
and God finally makes sense
He washes His hands of graves
in the place
where mothers and orphans
intersect forever
the straight lines of loneliness
curve in the holy space
inside life’s destruction
beyond its desperation
what’s lost comes back
separation is only possible
on the earth
and the earth gives way
to truth
where forgiveness ceases
to be a transgression against love
and worth is measured
by the sea
that swallows crowns
and I am, at last,
a bitter man no more
in my final dusty moment
of being claimed by genius focused
into an obsessed metal head
of being plucked from myself like fruit
to the sound of dark cheers
pissing all over myself
with God’s warm tears
crashing downwards
to breathe raped earth
I am a bitter man no more
take my money
take my life
take my trust
my dreams are bigger than I thought
and the door to them is opening
the door to what
they really are
and I am a bitter man no more
a beaten man no more
a mournful man no more
a tortured man no more
I’m going home
to everything I lost
to everything I missed
I’m going home
to the country where I’m great
without being anything
I’m great
what a sweet drink
this dying is
stay on, my friends,
you don’t deserve this joy
yet
you still have illusions
to conquer
beneath the moon
of my love
for you
it will all be over sooner than you think
and we’ll flow back
into one another
like warm water
like hot springs
in the snow
we’ll beat the cold
the dark will back off
and you’ll know
forever
what I know
now
A Poem For God On A Night At The Edge
Greater than my sins
is where I’m walking to.
Greater than the vows to God
I broke
is the good I did
as a liar.
Whenever He really needed me
I came without a promise
or a cross.
Why walk over the thin ice
of your frail soul to get to Him
when you can just be who you are?
He knows where you live.
Self-hate,
self-hate!
The gun of wanting to get it right
gone mad with paralysis,
which turned to hate.
Tonight I pointed it at my head!
Why would God let me pull the trigger?
That’s how a pen found its way into my hand
instead.
Stop, you’re so serious,
you’re hurting God!
Relax
until you are the perfect soldier.
A little drink
will improve your aim.
Do you know how many creatures
defecate within the sea,
in which we bathe?
Even so, the waves come up to embrace us with authority,
as though it didn’t matter.
And it doesn’t.
What’s pure isn’t pure;
it’s beyond purity,
it’s real;
it swallows up its own filth
with endless miles of forgiveness,
and dares to be clean
by doing what it does best.
It’s too busy being enormous
to succumb to its
imperfection.
God doesn’t like "yes men."
He knows the wild horses.
He made them.
Sacred Being.
What a fool you are!
You jumped into the mud
and came out shining.
You spit at God
by putting a bullet through your brain,
but the children
wouldn’t let you leave.
You are the clumsiest dancer of sin
the world’s ever seen.
Angels laugh at you.
Your goodness is like an elephant
trying to hide behind a lamppost.
You can’t escape from being beautiful.
It looks like your soul is going
to have to drag you behind it
to the place where you’re needed.
You can’t fall low enough
not to be useful.
You are even improved by sin,
it put some color back
into your pale cheeks.
Sacred Being!
Did you think you could
run away from God
by hating yourself?
Did you think the witchcraft
of your humility
could make your wings fall off?
Did you think sticking needles
into the doll of you
could kill the you
you’re afraid to be?
Curses are nothing.
Why God put you here
is everything.
Your crazy game of roulette
is just a trick
that loneliness is playing
on you:
the sword’s a feather
because it’s not God’s.
You can’t walk away with
something that’s His.
Get used to it.
You can’t fall off of the world,
it’s everywhere.
You can’t not be you.
You can’t make it be night.
God’s sun is shining, and you’re a sacred being.
You can’t make it be night.
There comes a time
when you’ve got to decide:
do I stay down
or get back on my feet?
They were wrong,
they cheated
and no one saw.
The world doesn’t understand.
Your glass jaw
wasn’t really a glass jaw,
it was a low blow.
The world doesn’t understand.
You have the right
to lie down forever,
to immortalize the injustice
by being beaten.
You can b