Poem: The Velvet Road

originally posted by: natalia

Did you think of me cause of death?

No. Because you are the poet I know best as a person. (I am not on speaking terms with very many literary people.)

Because as I'm looking back at my poetry it seems I am searching for death really hard. I'm so glad I never found death.

Some people believe that the goal is never to find it.

Guitar is cool. I don't play any instruments. I used to paint but I don't do that anymore, which I should!

Guitar is my obsession at the moment. I'm trying to improve my technique.

Well that sounds like a big book, I really enjoy all sorts of history but have a hard time reading about it.

I understand that the Quigley book is highly regarded. I'm only getting started but I'm already intrigued by the paradigms of human development that he describes, how they radiate from centers of civilization in waves that over time go out of phase with one another, producing peculiarities in the way different cultures develop in comparison to one another. I'd never heard this type of appraisal before.

I do love reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz though.

I like old thriller and detective writers for entertainment. Len Deighton, Eric Ambler, Ross MacDonald, etc.

What do you worry about?

Beating the clock of life. Getting what I want to do done. Humanity and its future. The psychotics and knuckleheads who run the world, plus the psychotics and knuckleheads that they dupe and control. Getting the garbage out on Tuesdays on time. The micro managing of the society where I live, Toronto, by people who shouldn't be allowed out without a minder. I could just keep going . . .

I figured out that I can't worry all the time or I will drive myself insane. I can't ]worry about things that are out of my control either.

I haven't figured that out yet.

Talk soon

Be patient if I don't reply right away. As you have probably figured out, I'm often preoccupied.

The Monk's Way

Becoming something is
A mistake to be avoided.
What one exerts to become
Is a tumor extruded slowly
From the center of bewilderment.

Better to be bewildered,
True to nature, but aware,
Surprised by nature,
Surprised by light,
Patient and observant,
Ready for the awesome moment
Of not springing into action.

Kiss Me!

Deep inside of me
I know what's up.
I'm already living
My next life.
I'm using it up.
Baby I'm not confused.
I wasn't kissed enough
In this life.
Kiss me, kiss me!
I want to be used.
Before it's too late,
I want to be bruised.

The Net of Words

This beach in Thailand.
Those pebbles, this wave,
The curl of this wave.
The curl of the next,
And another curling wave,
And another, curling wave,
Disappear into the sand.

These grains of sand,
A crystal fortress each,
Of atoms absolutely
Committed to intense
Indifference,
Each fellow from the rest.

Shells like ruined cities,
Abandoned by the living beings
That made them.
Intelligent effort discarded,
Still dignified and even
Sometimes beautiful,
But of life now vacant,
A shambles on a timeless shore.

A puff of wind in the face,
Unique for all time,
Yet gone,
As if it had never come to me,
As if I had never become me.
But I know I did.
I know I did come to be me.
The wind did come to me,
And I met it full in the face.

Smokin' Talent

(In memoriam for Amy, . . . and Pater)

Amy, Amy,
Ya shoulda stuck ta grass
If ya was here today,
I'd shove that crack pipe
Up ya ass.

A smokin' hot lay,
Ya had a lot ta say
But ya spent all ya time
Smokin' talent.

On ya cadava today
Pater Dockerty all bent,
With nothin' ta say.
He spent too much rent
Smokin' talent.

The Promise of Side Streets

So much for the promise of side streets
Observed from the window of a streetcar,
Lines of arching trees and trunks
Like pillars from an ancient grove,

Fences and hedges edged with shady walks,
Every street a library shelf,
Every house a volume unread,
As if lost centuries ago in Alexandria.

In Fredericton, in winter,
I haunted the streets.
I saw the glow behind the windows
Of dwellings,
Life enclosed and separate
Behind frosted panes,
But heard only the snow crunching
And saw there was no place for me,
In that place.

I wandered like a ghost unknown over Europe,
Feeling the uneven concrete,
Seeing the gravel, the grass,
The railroad tracks,
The dust, the grease,
Seeing whatever things
Had persisted,
To spite neglect.

And other things,
Things like me,
Hélène's flower petal face,
Alive to the presence
Of a wandering stranger.

I walked the streets and side streets of Toronto
Benighted, be-wintered, be-stormed,
Buffeted by wind,
But they were indifferent,
Like that lady
Pushing her battleship of bags up Bloor St.,
Brushing away my ten dollars
Without breaking stride.

And things and beings internal,
Spirits wandering in bewilderment,
Looking for entry points,
Bereft and lost,
Losers of all they valued so little
Until now;

Recognition, to recognize,
The importance of its loss.

Lost.

Moved only by vestiges,
Of desire,
Looking for entry points,
Looking for something remembered,
Looking for recognition,
Re-cognition,
Like my father.

The dream of my father,
Joy almost unendurable,
Changing into the outrage of a child,
Putting joy to flight,
Blaming a beloved parent
For his own death,
Putting him to flight.

Shame.

Shame because

The dream was not a dream.

Song of the Servants of Lamashtu

Busy in their white coats,
Servants of Lamashtu,
Singing the high notes,
Fearing the rage of Pazuzu,
Burble, bubble the words.
Submission mission
Munition contrition
Uranium cranium
Depletion secretion
Atoms effervescing
Rending never ending
Firing the wiring
Shooting, rebooting
And shooting again,
Again, again, again.

Invoking Lady Lamashtu,
Bringer of wounds
Never ending,
Bringer of wounds
Never mending.

A white flag
Can beg for mercy,
But mercy is a heresy
Never to be granted
By the servants of
Lady Lamashtu.

She never tires
Of punishing the innocent.
Mothers and children
Riddled with intent,
To satisfy Lamashtu.

Journalists like birds
Screeching a false falsetto
Sing their song
In service to,
The goddess Lamashtu.

Their song:

"Skin like brown sugar icing,
Licorice lips and strawberry eyes
Gun drops, gum drops, gums drop
See how an Iraqi baby dies.

Sugar babies so tasty and sweet
Baked by science, ready to eat.
Bubbles for hands, bubbles for feet,
Radiant children, let's eat."

Note: In this poem Lamashtu is a personification of Depleted Uranium, used in ammunition, by many countries, most infamously by the coalition fighting the Iraq War.

Lamashtu is a goddess of the old Akkadian (Iraqi) religion.

en.wikipedia.org...

In Mesopotamian mythology, Lamashtu (Akkadian dLa-maš-tu; Sumerian Dimme dDim3-me) was a female demon, monster, malevolent goddess or demigoddess who menaced women during childbirth and, if possible, kidnapped their children while they were breastfeeding. She would gnaw on their bones and suck their blood, as well as being charged with a number of other evil deeds. . . .

She bore seven names and was described as seven witches in incantations. Her evil deeds included (but were not limited to): slaying children, unborns, and neonates; causing harm to mothers and expectant mothers; eating men and drinking their blood; disturbing sleep; bringing nightmares; killing foliage; infesting rivers and lakes; and being a bringer of disease, sickness, and death.

Pazuzu was also a demon but an enemy of Lamashtu, an enemy of my enemy, so to speak. Someone up to the task of dealing with her.

Saints in the Oddest Places

In memory of Billy Danford, Hampton, NB,
survey crew on the by-pass, 1968.


Glowing pearls

Mired in the sty.

They suffer in state.

They tolerate

Us.


They are so sweet and helpless,

Like a grandfather clock,

Biding its time,

Ticking the minutes,

And every so often,

Chiming in.

Behold An Evil Man

The brazen image of an evil man,
Smiling and content to receive
The plaudits of the deceived,
Pleased with counterfeit praise
Of those who see themselves
In him and give their specious love,
The watery libation of Mammon,
The secret ingredient of which,
Flavor undetected by both chef
And honored diner, is irony.

What a selfish soul that cannot
Function and be whole,
That must deny the part
Of itself that knows
Deviation from the good
Is an amputating wound,
That must, therefore,
Having made that wound,
Endeavor to make life itself,
The living of it,
Commensurately smaller,
So the smaller, meaner soul
Can delude itself that it
Is living life to the full,
To that full extent, open
Only to a whole and good soul.

What desperation in that
Smaller, meaner man, so vain
And anxious to be seen as
No different from the good,
To deny and cut out variety
In life itself, with the aim
To make his own life seem,
An adequate response to life,
To propagate this fraud,
To lead others to the same impasse,
And finally to unmake the world,
From a mirror of his feebleness,
Into a reflection in brass
Of his own brazen mask.

The Rage of Pazuzu

A cicada spins.

Spins, spins, spins
On its back.

A cicada
Spins and sizzles
Vibrating tymbals
In the heat.

Whispers among the sisters.

Buzzing in the grass,
A yellow fan flies up,
Locust wings clacking.
A mote in the eye becomes
A whirling black propeller,
Is not a helicopter,
With wings it
Whisks from side,
The other side,
Past them so close
She can't breathe
A sigh of relief,
That her imagination
In the heat,
Her imagination. . .

In her lap,
Her eyes fixed
Upon a locust,
Brushing what must
Have been dust
From one antenna
Before taking wing.

Whirring in the ear,
Like insect wings
From within the air,
A hummingbird in flight,
Poised and still
Like black Pazuzu!

Tears dropping
On the coverlet
In front of her,
Pulled away to reveal
The child in front of her,
A lap full of flowers,
A bouquet of blossoms,
Bursting like bombs
From fresh, innocent,
Infant flesh,
Terrain of war.
A floral bequest
From the beaming
Breast of Lamashtu.

The work of the demon
The work of the demon
The work of the demon
Possessed and directed
By the invader.
The work of Lamashtu.
The work in the womb.
The work of the invader,
Even in the womb!

Engulfing all.
Poisoning all.
Poisoning children at play.
Reaching into the womb
To poison children unborn,
To mangle children unborn,
To murder children unborn,
To twist and tear
Children unborn.

The whirring in her ear
Became a whirling
Whirring, dizzy,
Lost her footing,
Pulled roughly
Away from the world
And seated still
Before black Pazuzu.

Wishing the return
Wishing the return
Wishing the return
Of the favors
They have done.
Wishing the return
Of the favors done.

Wishing them ill.

They came unbidden.
They came in rage.
They came in glee.
They came in greed.
They came to wrong
Right with wrong.
They came to pile
Wrong upon wrong,
To murder in the womb.

Worse than a plague
Caused by fleas
Disgorging into their host
Bacteria more primitive
Than ethics or morality,
Came the servants of Lamashtu.

Soldiers,
Exalted in that evil place,
Famous for freedom
From morality.

Like scientists,
They simply do
Their subhuman work.

Lost to the world,
She was lost
In a whirl of wings.

Lost.

Until she woke
To the faces of sisters,
Woke to whispers,
Woke from a dream,
Woke from a dream
Of eating their entrails.

Steady

Steady on six legs,

Brimming with confidence.

Steady on five legs,

Scratching an ear.

Steady on four legs,

Rubbing its face.

Steady on three legs

Is strictly hypothetical.

Steady on two legs

Is much too risky,

For an academic.

Seeking Truth In Things

Innocuous days that contain moments,
Vivid in memory, for some unknown,
Important, unexplained reason.

A blessing of nothing happening,
Except light on the trees and air,
Or being well in a still room.

Moments unhindered, when life
Seems poised like water at the brim,
Held, over its surface, from spilling,
By a delicate clinging to itself.

Suffering

Tired of being tired
Weary of fatigue,
I realized a classic
Formulation of the Buddha,

The suffering of suffering.

And this act of the mind,
This act of realization,
As if the Jina himself
Had entered the room,
Put my pain in parentheses,
Returning me to the shore.

Buddham Sharanam Gachami,
Dhammam Sharanam Gachami,
Sangham Sharanam Gachami.

The Boiling Tree

Meaningless days appeared
And disappeared, but
There are no meaningless days,
Not even in Fredericton,
Where grey and darkening clouds
Blustered along above the drizzle,
And nothing went right
And love was futile
And weather out to sea
And what made the Elm tree
Conspired one day to reveal,
As I blew off the hill,
An image worth the wait,
A green and turbulent portrait.

Summations and silence
Are superior to mining the mind,
Which is not as useful
Or pertinent to poetry
As waiting for the chimera,
Fully formed,
To emerge from the storm.

The Star Within the Stone

I speak to you as a dumb stone.

My friends followed the bison migration
Onto the walls of burnt umber caves
And into blue caves with starry skies.

I am one of them, alas, and with them,
An object of bone, stone and star.

Beware of this sullen stone.

A mace under glass is still a menace.
It may contain the spirit of its maker.
It may remember a scramble in the sand.

It may know you well,
Your shattered skull,
Your gate to hell.

The Folly of Immortality

Our friends, the fools among us,
Progress from life to life,
Learning the lessons at every turn
Of the wheel of transmigration.

Our idols, the excellent and learned,
Chained to immortality,
Suffer a lasting identity,
Unable to escape the grasp
Of those who worship them.

The Victory of the Defeated

We gave them our hatred,
Much of which is us,
And now they are gone
Taking us with them.

This is the victory
Of the defeated.
This is the defeat
Of the victorious.

Our desperate striving
To be rid of them
Passed over to them,
Out of our hands.

Our striving was a stone
We used to sink them.
We never saw ourselves
Sinking with them.

We can no longer
Give what we have lost,
Land of the home,
Free of the brave.

The Primacy of Pretense

Let's give primacy to pretense,
Admit we're only just pretending.
Sweep out tawdry authenticity,
Bestow pretenders our felicity.
Let's hide intrusive truth
Under a mystifying marmalade,
Hold fast to charm, bonhomie,
Laugh and sing and posture.
Edwardians tossed an epoch
All for pride and pretense.
Let's set aside sincerity
And pretend to be in the know,
While knowing we don't care
As long as life is fine and fair.

The Window to the World

I prefer social samadhi.
It's selfish, I know.
Others prefer to come and go.
They like lively variety.
They like to be stimulated.
They like the new and I do too,
But of a mysterious kind,
Happening in the magical mind.

They say that Nicola Tesla
Could design and operate
Electrical machines within,
And didn't need a lab or shop
Except for outer simulation
Of what a magical mind
Already knew to be true.
I believe it, I really do.

He could do more, I'm sure,
If so inclined, to ponder
The magic of the mind,
The jewel box of treasure,
The "wish fulfilling gem",
The tiny, empty container
With not one less item
In it than we can measure.

The paradoxical mind whose sum
Is more than the number
Of its presumable parts.
The hypothetical mind,
Assumed to be there, somewhere,
Checking the checking of the
Checking of its infinitely
Regressing checks of its sums.

Somebody came along yesterday and starred all my poems. That was so sweet. I have to admit I'm a shameless ATSer and live for stars. I had a few things on my computer and posted them all yesterday. They were things I wasn't sure of, poetically, but I decided to spruce them up and post them anyway as a kind of clearing of the decks.

What I've done so far is just a warm up. I want to do something really special and I'm going to work very hard to do it. I'm putting pressure on myself, saying that, but I've found that when I stick my neck out in an overreaching way sometimes, my terrible ego and pride will whip my donkey mind into a thoroughbred performance.

I'm reading Finnigan's Wake at the moment and strongly recommend it, particularly for poets. It and William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity are the most luxuriant books of language that I know and a great inspiration. I know virtually nothing about Finnigan's Wake, didn't study or read anything to prepare for it. I just dove in. It is a dense explosion of language with shrapnel flying in all directions. It is written in what I would call "stream of babble" and there is a smile or a chuckle on every page. It's a funny book.

It is completely bewildering at first (Finnigan's death delirium?), but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it as we move into an impossibly exaggerated encomium extolling the unrivaled virtues and feats of the cadaver.

But moving on, thanks for the stars and stay tuned to this space. I'm going to try to do some real magic word tricks, if fate and karma allow. Wish me luck. I will need the readers' best wishes to do it, . . . so its all up to you.