POEMS & LYRICS BY JRS XIX
Somebody Who Loves Them (Lyrics)
Love In The Time Of Cholera Remix
Obsessions Defeated And Victorious
A Vulgar Expression Of The State Of The World
The Humiliation Of The French Collaborators, Paris, 1944
Hilda’s Blitz Krieg Of Self-Denial
Captain Of The Ship Of Fantasy
What Did You Do With The Magic Moment?
Tiger made the arrow,
you made the poem.
It’s not an act of vanity,
I have to ward you off -
your absence off -
which is the most powerful you.
Tiger made the arrow,
you made the poem.
It’s not about being an artist,
it’s about not being ripped to shreds.
Iron words wrapped around me
so you can’t get through
even though you already did.
Tiger made the arrow,
you made the poem.
In the jungle your savage grace
mocked my thoughts.
Low to the ground with feline wisdom
in serpent sisterhood
to the earth,
no need for sky,
eagle of the ground,
you sucked the life out of my
mind,
who could run like you,
leap like you,
tear my paper world apart
like you
in callous, self-contained magnificence?
Pages, pages, thick with words
dug from the depths of my mind
like the mind-flash of the arrow
changing man from infant,
forest from grave,
I fortified my paper barrier
against you
with infinities stolen
from your breath,
gave the weight to words
and pushed it off my
broken chest
with poems.
Like Cleopatra smuggled in a carpet,
I rolled you up
inside my talent
and sent you away
from my jugular tears,
I articulated you into harmlessness
one night at a time
before the sun of you
returned to demand new blood,
compelled me to pierce my tongue
with cactus
and drip reflections of you
on pages
of worship.
Tiger made the arrow,
you made the poem.
This isn’t literature.
This isn’t poetry.
This isn’t art.
It’s you and me,
naked gladiators
in the arena
of love
badly translated.
Mixed-signal mayhem
in our hearts
on the sand of
things that went wrong:
right from the outside,
but wrong,
so wrong.
Who would believe the fairy tale
of what we could have been?
Swords in hand,
love, unspoken, on the sand.
Yes, I’m mad,
condemned to a lifetime
of writing about it.
Tiger made the arrow,
you made the poem.
This isn’t literature.
This isn’t poetry.
This isn’t art.
It’s an act of self-defense.
Yes, we’re friends.
Fifth column
of the heart.
This isn’t literature.
This isn’t poetry.
This isn’t art.
It’s an act of self-defense.
Tiger made the arrow,
you made the poem.
It never happened
it’s all in your heart.
This isn’t literature.
This isn’t poetry.
This isn’t art.
It’s an act of self-defense.
I’m going to survive you.
Water of love
wanted to go to everything.
You made the channel.
You made the channel.
Kept it away.
Water of love
won’t flow into your bedroom,
won’t go away.
You built three walls around your city,
three walls of water,
three moats
of me
to keep me away
from your whisper-hungry ear,
your frightened body,
the statue of gold
that turned your eye
into my detractor,
your non-existent man
shaped from dreams,
your dragon-ideal
that guards
the fruit on the tree
that the water of love
feeds.
The rejection tree has
roots
that reach deep
into me:
I give you the strength
to deny me.
Water of love.
Water of love.
You made the river bed
with your child’s finger in the earth,
drew the map
of our relationship
in the dirt,
and I poured through the wound
rushing towards
the intimate entrance
to your soul
but found myself
meeting the ocean instead
with only a hint of you:
your child’s laugh,
your woman’s hurt.
Time’s bleeding
from the ground
from the cut
you made for
me to live in:
your cut,
my water of love.
Where it flowed
was always your decision,
from the day
I realized
who you were.
Water of love
slowly drained my soul,
trying to reach you
through your perception.
Time to be a
cloud again,
flow up,
the vertical river bed
is mine,
my tears
want an answer
that only I can give.
You had me
and let me go,
will you ever know
the importance of love?
Beautiful river bed,
will you ever know
what passed through
you?
Angel made of mud
doesn’t believe it’s mud,
that’s where its wings come from.
And that’s how God made men and women
from clay.
He gave them self-respect
and they rose above their
material,
they believed in the purpose they
invented,
not the destiny
they inherited.
What was inside them, then,
burned like fire.
Who saw the ugly house
with all the light
exploding out of the windows,
with mountains of brightness
erupting like
genies from every opening,
from every hole bitten by brilliance
into the mundane
and the pointless?
Beggars aren’t rags,
they’re the way
they carry themselves.
Walk like a king,
and a crown
will appear
on your head.
Don’t let others define you,
don’t let them seep into you with
their ignorance;
turn people’s
judgments
into a gauge of their character,
in the center
of the storm
become the judge.
You wear the robe of authority
when you
irrigate
the accident:
believe me, it will turn green.
Angel made of mud,
forget what you’re made of and
where you come from.
Forgetting is the first
principle of
genesis.
Forget.
A halo will burst into being
above your amnesia.
Forget.
God forgot
which is how his divine pottery
turned into men.
His toys became real:
one day his daydream
pinched itself with armies
and said, "Ouch!"
One day his clay woman
cried out in ecstasy and said,
"There’s something more than biology,
there’s love."
The baby was an afterthought,
and that was
independence.
I can see your
face melt
in the
meditation of
sex:
back off, eternity,
the gun of
my second of life
is loaded!
Angel made of mud.
Don’t be what you are,
be what you hate yourself
for not being,
it’s as easy
as shaping clay.
Elope with God’s creative daughter,
divinity is not copyrighted,
imitation is sacred;
for the wise,
it is inevitable.
Angel made of mud.
If she doesn’t see you,
she’s not the one.
We don’t fly,
eyes fly and lift us up into the sky
with their sight.
Once charity
realizes it’s only the veil
that hides
the glory of the universe
sculpted into the form of a man,
you’ll bow down
of your own free will
to everyone.
Pity is crushed
between God’s hands of reverence
and obligation.
Stop this heartsick dismantlement of the self!
You need to find someone
with flying eyes!
Angel made of mud.
If she calls you mud
by not rushing into your arms and
promising the night with a kiss,
pray for her,
she’s more alone
than you.
Believe in the
power
of the inside horse,
throw off the imposed rider.
Don’t let yourself be invaded,
no matter how beautiful the eyes!
Don’t succumb
to your naked imaginary entwining,
don’t try to be a
perfect lover to the blind.
If you’re a painter,
remain a painter,
even though she’ll never see
the shouting roses of your soul,
or the blue teardrops of her lost opportunity.
Don’t try to convince anyone
outside of your stronghold.
When you do, you just stay mud.
Angel made of mud.
Time to fly away
in
someone else’s flying eyes.
Clay cracked:
something real grew inside
the womb of fantasy.
Angel
come out
and attract your
soul mate,
the days of being made of mud
are over.
You’ve forgotten yourself
into beauty.
The girl with one foot,
when she used to have both,
used to dance by the sea.
The waves danced
with her,
she was worthy of the ocean.
Though it stretched from
Africa to America
it wanted her
for its wife;
she was the joy
of the two continents
it touched,
the light of its life.
"Come dive into me,"
it sang with bouquets
of splashes
thrown
at her feet,
with gifts of fishes
to the hungry
who lived beside her,
and horizons
for poets
searching for a song.
"Come dive into me,
I’ll caress you into being a
dolphin, and cover you with love,
engulf you in the
ecstasy
of being a part of me";
but she only dabbled
on the beach,
danced where the white foam
gasped its last breath,
danced where the pounding surf
died
of love,
danced the most beautiful
fear
with all the protection of the
ocean near,
wearing earrings
of seagulls’ voices
in the wind
and the jewels of empty shells,
tossed as trinkets
to the child self
in which the woman hid,
never wanting
anything
more than a father.
"Let the woman free!" the ocean
roared, violent only to itself,
with storms of longing
that would not let
the world sleep,
tormented by the
thoughts
of the deep.
But the woman
could not
get past the
child. Not
even the sea
could set her
free, get her to
let her hair down
by the human face of purity:
its need.
And all night
the ocean
tossed and turned
and breathed
with the whole earth
trapped inside its
dream of her.
Until the morning came
and she, who had locked
herself among
strangers,
lost her foot
in an
accident,
stepping on the land mine
of an old war
waged against her soul
as she carried
flowers
to the market
to embellish
others’
bluffs of love.
White ceiling of pain!
Imitations of doctors
looking down
at her
with blood on their
gloves
and lights,
like they shine in
the eyes of prisoners,
illuminating
their coldness:
all perceived in a helpless
daze.
How much better
to be helpless
in the throes of love!
"We couldn’t save it,"
they said
on the way back
to their garden.
Now alone,
without a man, without a home,
the girl with one foot
dances with her eyes.
The ocean gently
watches her limping thoughts of
yesterday,
and sighs,
he returns each day to
the sad spectacle of her ruined
dance,
builds the beauty
suggested by it
into what it’s not,
connects the broken dots
with the intentions beyond
her reach,
creates her dance again
from the pieces on the
beach.
Though he has other
lands to reach,
in loyalty to the fantasies
of his past
he stays beside her,
promises her years.
He watches the broken
bird fly
in its tears.
The girl with one foot
would not,
and then she could not,
for only
dancing
could she live as a dolphin
in his midst.
Now there is nothing
but this; no raw material
for the
metamorphosis.
As always
it was
only in her mind.
The girl with both feet
in her prime,
the girl with one foot
past her time,
never deserved a thing:
that’s where they cut her,
that was her wound.
That’s
why she always went
back
to her darkened room
after testing the
sun.
Ocean still loves her,
watches her dancing eyes
when she’s not looking,
when she forgets.
He kisses her phantom limb
at dawn,
waters her shore,
and then moves on.
The earth won’t let him
stop there,
won’t let him stop being the ocean
for her sad eyes.
It was always her
choice:
to be a part
or stay behind forever
with a
broken heart.
First there was Eve,
then I gave her a face.
There was the Garden of Eden
and the Fall from Grace.
Running under the black clouds
with the
serpent below
and the lightning above,
I hid my shame
in a new love.
I lost the exact words of her,
but Eve remained.
Like hot wax
poured into a new mold
by my need,
I reshaped and
renewed the recurring theme.
The earth moves;
so do our hearts,
towards necessity:
St. George of my nature,
slay the dragon of sin!
When it’s knotted around your breath
it’s muscles earn the right to
ravage
the gardens of
invention.
It’s too strong to be called obsession.
Our deepest loyalty is to the
thought,
not the expression.
And I can say Eve
a thousand ways.
Eve, Eve, what faces
will you wear today?
From what naked form
or robe of
maddening discretion,
from what bath you step from dripping wet,
or body beautified by hiding,
will my captivity be born?
You are too magnificent
for this to be perversion.
From which direction will you come?
Into what night will you fade?
Though I lose you today
you’ll never go away,
tomorrow
has a thousand names.
And Eve is always first among lost things.
Timeless like the pyramids of stone
that faced down
the desert,
like the Sphinx
with its nose blown off by fools
that endured its scars,
the vices of men,
with dominating patience,
broken, forgotten everythings
topping from the bottom of history
with queens who ruled kings
and warriors who carved the
emptiness
into empires
to impress,
to instill willingness into flesh;
mating dances of wars,
inventions, poems to light a fire
in the eyes of the
harem slave,
now burst out of servitude
like the
goddess of liberty
who all come to,
to suckle
from her proud, free breast.
Eve was always mistress
of the Universe.
One great holy place
or islands in the sea
that the broken ships use
to limp to port
one storm at a time,
she is the eternal spirit that keeps
the human race
revolving around
itself,
she is our
blindness, and
the door to
God.
Eve, who lives half outside me
and half inside my mind,
the burning image
that is the compass of my life,
the dancing rack
upon which I hang
every worthwhile thing I am,
the ground beneath my feet
that stops the falling
and tells me what it is
to be a man,
what she responds to,
what her hands reach out for:
there the earth takes shape out of the void,
there I stand.
Everything else is wind and sand.
Eve!
Eve!
Don’t leave me!
Break another mask,
make me bleed with poems
for another
lost disguise,
illusions of you,
glances of you in the mirror
that look like her,
you’ll never run out of faces.
Even in despair,
if I don’t lose hope,
if I kiss the air,
one day, again,
I’ll find you there,
you never go.
She goes, Eve,
she always goes,
but you stay.
The part inside me stays
until it reels in
another match
from the sea of loneliness,
you change your shape
and elude my past.
Sad I am
by my broken love,
but Eve you do not cry for me,
you use my eyes
to weep new women
into the world;
like changing patterns
of water rippling in a pool,
you master the momentary
with your depth,
the life and death
of love is just a single breath
of your sleep,
as you dream
the faces that I’d die for,
as I build and burn down
cities for your masks,
for the mere garments
of the queen.
And nothing is as it seems:
as I write another poem
for you, through her,
bound, forever, to this
recurring theme.
Cold winter.
Everything withers away
except what’s real.
Leaves of falsehoods
fall to the ground
leaving only the
tree of beauty.
What do you have?
What have you kept?
Did you choose
the wrong God?
Victim of hollow
things,
victim of fantasies
that hid the water!
Thirst was made
by your eyes.
I passed
through the wall
of your
vigil
like a ghost,
while you prayed
all night
to the candle
of liars.
I could never
penetrate
your gullibility,
never
remove
the nail of
superficiality
which they hammered
into your deep soul.
Last night,
I dreamt you
drowned in a
shallow river
on the way to
the promised land.
And then I was alone.
Lynx, caught in a trap.
What beautiful fur
someone will wear.
The forest
will spend the rest of time
marking your
grave with deep snow
without your footprints.
Trees will bend down
with the weight
of the white world
that lacks
your eyes,
the wind will cry
to the graceless.
Why did you let them catch you?
Why did you let them
make you into
a coat?
For some bitch’s vanity
the woods are mourning
secrets
no one is left
to understand.
The stone face
erupting with pines
is dying
without the soft clever
feet
that felt it
into existence,
you were the self-awareness
of God,
the awakening of the raw power
of the earth
in a body.
Your mortal bounding
brought what is immortal
to life.
But you threw yourself away,
you broke the heart
of things that do not feel,
in a moment of self-deprecation
you chose her over you,
the woman wrapped in a coat
that’s all
that’s left of you.
You gave the stones back to stone,
muted the stars in the night,
killed their language of light,
destroyed the world
by ceasing to catch its meaninglessness
as it fell from forever to so what?
with your strange purpose,
your loyalties blooming from irrelevance
into altars,
your pain-filled ecstasies.
You despised yourself
with the Universe at your mercy,
brushed aside your beauty
with high thoughts that led you into
low people’s trap.
And now you’re just a coat
on the shoulders of a fool,
while the whole forest
searches for you with snow
and wind
and ancient kneeling trees
and slowly fades into nothing
without your
beautiful small steps,
your dancing invented center;
because you never understood
how great it was
to be a lynx,
hunting meaning in the snow.
Somebody Who Loves Them (Lyrics)
Some people have a gold watch
Some people have a silver chain
Some people have a diamond ring
Some people have a private plane
Some people begin with rubies
and with emeralds end
Some people got dollars, pounds, and yen
And some people have somebody who loves them
Would you let money fall from your hands
and watch it blow away?
You think anyone else
will love you this way?
Nobody steps on their gold watch
Nobody breaks their silver chain
Nobody tosses their diamond ring
Nobody blows up their private plane
You got love
but you want pain
Why? Why?
Why’d you leave the wallet of love
on the street?
On the money of love
I’m the president
But I can’t get past your defense
In your iron world I can’t make a dent
Green bills of my heart
flying in the wind
of your sad eyes
I could change your life
but you just walk by
You left your money on the ground,
tears on my face
You just let a million dollars of love
blow away
And all I can say is
Some people begin with rubies
and with emeralds end
Some people got dollars, pounds, and yen
And some people have somebody who loves them
Yeah, some people have somebody who loves them
Some people have somebody who loves them
Sex in a barren land
Start with her vagina
forget her lips, forget her hand
penetrate, don’t understand
love’s abridged version:
the modern man
What begins in bed
washes up on the shore of other lands,
her disappointed eyes:
the dead in the sand
it’s with her body
you learn to be a
beast or man
Love her
look for her eyes
Create the world
with her
Love In The Time Of Cholera Remix
Guerrilla love fighter.
Going to steal a little love
from the night,
going to hit and run
with the love gun,
take the grape
right out of death’s mouth,
kiss you between the skull teeth
then get back to the light.
You’ll bear the child
of real love
in the way your eyes
open in the morning.
Baby of faith
will cry at dawn
with the lungs
of your new gaze.
Clean the bloodstains
off the day.
Hell on earth
Hell on earth
Grim Reaper took over the country of the
waterfalls,
but guerrilla lover
can still get wet,
bathe beside the jungle birds
before the mist lifts from
the killer’s sight
we’ll love and
get back to the light.
Death sniper’s scope
peering from behind
ecstasy
won’t see a thing,
trigger finger
stopped by our undeclared
wedding ring,
we’ll wrest another moment
from the sorrow
and we’ll bring it back to
tomorrow.
Alive and loved,
we’ll shine,
survivors of the suicide need.
Caution-euphoria hybrids
still walk free.
Hit and run,
touch and love,
Devil below,
God above,
we’ll draw a map
through the land mines
of love,
and take back
the Holy Land
between our souls’ legs.
Our lust will lay a golden egg;
body enlightenment
without the curse
will percolate down to
the sacred roots.
Zen ecstasy,
Buddha path to release,
condom mind protect the deadly
free-fall thought,
grab orgasm by the horns
and guide the madness
past the incense of the Maenads,
their luscious ambush dance
riding your dim-eyed trance,
tambourines of forgetting
till it’s too late
pounding to the beat of
your emptiness;
past the hunger of the
Sirens and the Fates,
their weeping goddess voices in the sea,
we have choices,
you and me,
to spit out the pit
from love’s fruit
by beginning
with
self-respect.
It’s always been the best
answer
to death.
Don’t fall all the way in:
too shallow is starvation,
too deep is sin,
wise man faun
will walk the
tightrope
of your invitation.
Snatch the treasure
from temptation
and return
to contemplate the goodness
of quiet things,
tiny carvings on the golden wall,
between the baited jewels,
worth centuries of meditation.
Don’t erase
your graceful slow demise into divinity
with the flight of loaded passion
that aims to never find
the sacred warning
in the back of your mind.
Don’t block the
withering unfolding
with bitterness:
become a skeleton the green way,
in step with your season.
Save every
bound
before the limp,
boil love
till only love remains.
The hottest fires
burn
in the embrace of
coolness.
Just look into
the succubus angel eyes
that steal ecstasy with
frightful clarity
like pearls
from the
death oyster,
that love with self-love,
that fall with wings.
You’ll be freed
without being caught.
What’s going on?
What’s going on?
My life is one big
lossathon.
Love it, lose it.
It’s mine; prove it!
Can’t hold on.
Can’t hold on
to anything.
What’s in my hands is gone;
cause I’m the winner
of the
lossathon.
Blink and it’s gone
Slip through your hands
Hole in the bucket
Castles of sand
it’s like I didn’t want
what I want
Would my happiness
sink the world?
Does the blue earth
need me down?
Did I vex
the wizard of my soul,
hex myself
with the magic
of leaving it all
for someone else?
No one will hold it like I can
I want the Three Sisters to understand
Blink and it’s gone
Night becomes dawn
Reverse the magic
Let the weak become strong
I don’t need this lossathon.
No, let me come in last place
in the lossathon.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon
hunts with
hounds of solitude.
She amazes eyes
with the raw light
of the naked moon,
chases away the sun
to become the sun of the night,
takes over the sky
of the sensitive,
then disappears into the forest
with
lethal virginity.
I have spied
upon her
bathing in the river
of my
highest thoughts,
kissed her in intimate places
with years of self-denial,
worshipped her
in the temple
of my poetry.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
with her broken mind
that became a
million stars,
ideas without a home
shining in the dark,
fermenting my words
into the wine of
poetry.
She is beyond me
and imbedded in me.
Her madness
is hidden
by the breadth
of my vision.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
scarred by mortal impediments,
cut on the cheek
by the branch
of a tree
that prays
to her.
She drags
her celestial inviolability
across the earth,
limps low
with her lofty principles,
breaking with insights
that became heavy
when a child first looked in the mirror
and saw the tiny blossoms
of her breasts.
That’s when the goddess was born,
and the woman left.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
stigmatized by clouds
of ominous misunderstanding
until she uses my imagination
to part the dark curtains
and peek
with her face of light
into the cradle
of her mental child
which I am raising
as love.
Her celibacy,
passing through my loneliness,
is filtered
into seduction.
Her beauty falls upon me
like the night
upon the earth,
abducts me
to the limits
that infatuate me.
She accepts me now
like a tree
accepts a bird,
becomes its stepmother
by the grave of its exhausted wings.
She accepts me like the forest that hides her,
like a green leaf
held back
by a branch,
shaking harmlessly
in the breeze,
beside her discarded clothes
while she bathes naked
in the river
of my eyes
that only see
what will never happen.
So quietly moves my lust,
like a deer
afraid to be
slain by the arrow
of her shame!
Like a garment
concealed
by mighty distractions,
by burning suns and reeling winds
and histories
that take her mind from her body
and obliterate
the sensation of being touched
she does not feel me
wrapped around her every
movement
caressing her with the fabric
of my obsession,
she lets me cling to her
because she has lions
in her eyes,
miles of forests
and ghosts
that make me fade,
shielding me with her distant
and embattled gaze.
I am the victim
of her focus,
and saved
by being a victim.
Where dark armies tried to break in
true love weighs nothing,
and what is not said with a battering ram
is inaudible.
My love is not killed
because it is invisible.
I am the pauper of her tumult,
a tiny chameleon,
the color of the ocean
hurling itself against her purity,
I survive because
I can’t be taken
seriously,
I don’t ride a black chariot,
I don’t have the strong arms
she lusts for
to the point
of murdering.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
blowing the silent horn
of your need
in the night,
I hear it,
that’s why I’ve come:
to offer you
love without blood,
life without surrender.
I’ll leave my genitals
at the door
come in with kindness
behind the soul
you couldn’t find
among the killers
you craved.
I’ll contort my lust
to fit the contours
of your stunted glory,
your goddess might
and cripple woman.
I’ll reduce myself to
the size of your wound,
stand naked against the cold wall
while your virtue scourges me
for the sins
of the ones you loved.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
I love you more than life,
for you I jumped off the mountain
of my nature
to appease your injury.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
I love you
more than what I am,
but even so,
I cannot persevere to love you
after death,
after enamored nobility’s final breath;
after the deadly ravages
of my new shape.
The world will never survive my alteration
or your escape.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
I love you more than what I am,
but I cannot live forever
as a strand of your fantasy
as the phantom of your safety.
Artemis,
goddess of the moon,
when will you let me
be a man?
Touch deprivation,
skin wearing a blindfold
all life long.
Mama’s hug,
lullaby hands
not there.
Special friends’ caress
retracted,
intimacy recanted,
retroactive
starvation of the flesh,
mere impersonation of a lover.
Go back in time
to steal
the context
of the sensations,
reinterpret fusion
as solitude,
you’re impervious even to
the touches
of the past.
Cupids’ arrow
is supposed to be
soft
and hours long,
doesn’t need
to end with an orgasm.
Even held hands
can overturn
the sentence,
solitary confinement
in a body.
Sometimes
the candlelight vigil
of one’s love need
can win a reprieve
from isolation,
pardon from the
insurmountable barrier of
obvious damage.
A friend says yes.
Just held hands,
that’s all:
a little rain
can make a
parched land
whimper with love
and blush
green thickets.
What kind of cowardice
is this
that keeps us locked apart,
with miles
still
between our
hearts?
Obsessions Defeated And Victorious
When you back up from some obsessions
you see a fool in the mirror,
the gun smoke of your heart’s war against reality clears
and there’s nothing left but a
white flag
flying above the fantasy.
"She was never the one for me."
"What was I thinking?"
the rose on her arm says,
her beauty goes on without you,
love is dead.
People who don’t love you
fade like flowers
burned by the sun.
Sunflowers
that don’t follow
the golden light
of your illusions
wither in the heat of
your riderless dreams.
What has your loneliness done?
Obsession, obsession,
you’ve lost your grip,
her eyes moved past my doomed gift,
my silent chorus of reverence,
my mind divided into a thousand angels
singing by her bedside.
For her, God turned into a pen
and died.
Obsession, obsession,
she couldn’t pick her child
from the crowd,
she watched the chariot of love crash
without knowing what it was,
thinking it was
some other woman
staining the
church window
of my regrets.
She didn’t believe I could be so unrealistic.
Obsession, obsession,
when I saw
I was nothing to her,
my unworthiness made her unworthy,
she fell from the pedestal,
became a leper with a bell,
ringing warnings of her color-blindness
to flowers.
But that is when obsession falls.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
You back off, you rub your eyes,
you slap water on your face,
and she’s still alive, sitting on the throne of your
self-destruction;
you can’t snap out of it, can’t get away,
can’t get past
the beautiful obstruction;
somehow she’s changed the chemistry
of your brain, become the gatekeeper of
all your pain, the ruler of your history of tears,
queen of all the secrets which she doesn’t know
but which she owns.
She has power over you which is like the blood
in your veins, you’ll bleed to death if you break her.
On the mountain of your capture she stands,
holding your unused genitals aloft like Perseus raising Medusa’s
severed head,
with a polished mirror she conquered you
without looking at you,
she killed you without touching you.
Your heart is where she buries her dead,
your imagination is her domain.
She binds you with the chains of your sensitivity
lifting her iron dress to show a vulnerability,
she knows the gullibility of your tenderness;
then dances like your own invention
in the endless square of your loneliness,
becomes the only feature of the earth.
You fall to your knees with more lost days.
Obsession, obsession!
She uses your adoration like a bird uses the air
to save its wings
she glides for miles over your infatuation
to more practical dreams.
Your mind sees all; your heart permits all.
Will she ever leave me? Will she ever come to me?
Will this obsession kill itself by becoming real, or stretch itself
so thin it breaks? Will I be saved by the patience of my
absurdity, or rescued by the preposterous,
finally vomit up my slavery from the unpalatable extremism of the jest?
Is this bondage, or is this a quest?
Am I devoted, or just obsessed?
Will I ever be free from the one I love?
Hostage needs
the highest rose,
you won’t kidnap
him with a
ten-foot pole
Empty jail
needs a bank full of money
to be its door
you want
the standard plan
you’ve got to flash
your jewelry on the platform
north wind’s
got to
bend like
the kama sutra
walk the streets
of loneliness
with an offering
even spider boy
gets the kindness
of ecstasy
before he becomes
her meal,
before his dreams
are spun into
her eternal maze;
she strips the night
from her body and
he gets to see one dawn
before he dies
she flatters his soul
before she yawns
before his supremacy
kills him
In what deluded temple
does this man become yours?
there is always an altar of pleasure
before the throat is slit
goddess should know suicide is a gift
fierce Kali
dances with all his senses
lies beneath his imagination
one hour
before she takes out
the knife
to protect
the mysteries
of her sacred hurt
only gold
sleeps soundly
in the dirt
never has so much power
led to an old maid
you’ve smashed your way through the revelations
of history
to complete futility
forgotten
lessons learned from Salome
I know you don’t want equality
you want control
and you could have it
if you could just let go
until you fell all the way down
to the throne
if you would only let your helplessness
crown you
throw pearls to the fool
lie down, rise up,
reverse and rule
The Trojan Horse of love
never fails
but your pride keeps you
on the side
of the eternal game
you won’t play the winning card
in your hand
the queen of hearts
is going to lose her man
you call it dignity
but it’s only a self-inflicted wound
it’s beneath you to comfort the victim
of the sacrifice
so who will walk up the steps
of your pyramid?
even those who want you to kill them
will choose the misery of life
if there are no gods
on the other side
of the well
lure them to you with a moment of truth
talk to them with
your skin
it’s divine and it won’t mind
it won’t be polluted by his joy
never, never!
you think this is for free?
Captives have rights
they exercise through the level of conviction
they put into their flight
slow them down with the ancient weapon
of yes
turn their thundering departure into a token escape
light the fire that brings them back
bargain with your beauty
it’s not whorish
it’s the law
they are giving you a life
give them something
don’t pretend your body weighs more
than a human soul
Hostage needs
the highest rose,
you won’t kidnap
him with a
ten-foot pole
Every once in a while
in the daydream daze
somebody needs to step into the clear
and say
I love you,
don’t want to lose you in the fog
Never trust the obvious
never think she knows
every day you’ve got to show her
her name is written in your soul
Tired, trite, cliché,
don’t let master poet get in the way,
ring the rusty bell of love
over and over again.
You are the sun
you are the rose
you are the angel
you are the dove among the crows.
Been there, done that:
you’ll lose her if you think like that!
You can never plagiarize
what’s in your heart,
the dawn erased the tablet
of the gods
and everything you do from now on’s
new
You’ve got to say it again,
cause she wasn’t Juliet
and Shakespeare
wasn’t you.
Sometimes, the sun don’t shine
between the lines
Don’t lose her
just because your love’s blazing
in the middle of the sky
maybe she’s blind
Put her hands
on the world
that’s right in front of her,
don’t let her walk by
the piano of love
without playing what you feel,
don’t leave the music to chance,
don’t let her second guess
what’s only in her own mind
and what is real.
Write love
on every page
of her world
LOVE
LOVE
LOVE
LOVE
until she knows what she means
to you
give her a clear space
to decline or accept,
never let her drift away
because you mumbled
deep things
in the mist
or spoke in riddles
to save face
suffocated the cross roads