Rescued from Myspace: Untitled Poem

am i at the right station to catch the train i'm chasin'?
you tell me . . . is it just one of my phases, traces, ornate
races from place to place, cannonball-crazed through
this maze of worm-tunnels of the womb-belly beneath
this bawdy beldame, the city that i can't claim as home
where i'm still takin' chances? i fell in love with her like
one of those doomed romances.
she rode a wrecking ball through my poetry in one of our first dances,
raped my sleep-schedule like a lioness in heat,
laughed an icy gasp down my throat
with a January kiss to a reggaeton beat,
clenched me in her sweaty, dusky thighs in the August streets
right there where the juices run hot and the flesh tastes sweet
. . . by turns fiery and frigid, fitting firmly into the grooves and
ridges of my bipolar soul--and that's no small feat.
what makes me believe i belong here? i long to believe i can
be strong here, although i know i could go wrong here, become
just another outcast that the throngs fear, but i'm trying so hard
just to be here, to stay here . . . stay. please, just listen to what i say.
i want my poetry to be
what warfare is to a piano, like shooting a man
with a guitar solo, like ripping your balls off
and making you sing soprano
i want my poetry to be
the margarita-colored eyes of the 13-year-old street-rat
who sells me pot in the park,
to be tough enough to walk the Bedford-Stuy
after dark, to cry like an angel with
the body of a wolf, howlin'
like Ginsberg to Giovanni to Gilgamesh,
thrash like a skateboard-huckster kicking
apart a Wal-Mart, giving all the old ladies
a heart attack. am i on the right track?
you tell me,'cuz i'm still dazzled by the mystery,
still hassled by my misery,
still fallin through the shadows of my history,
stallin' for time still hustlin' twilight through a pen
that's runnin' dry.
hey, i only laugh when it hurts, but that's all the time--and you don't wanna see me cry.
i'm on a mission, receiving a transmission
that could drive like fission into the big dictators,
the master baiters who regard me with
derision til i'm screaming a revision
that's turning the tables, drive this corkscrew
into their souls, yank 'em out, tell 'em just for whom the hell's bell tolls.
write the runes of their doom on the walls
of this city, this bitch, this angel, this whore,this queen of mine--am i on the right line?
you tell me, 'cuz i'm running out of time.

Fearful Symmetry v2.1

Fearful Symmetry
(lines in quotes from William Blake)
***
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
*
In a time when clipper ships, sails belling windward,
plied the ocean currents in search of new lands,
mariners, sailors, explorers alike
populated the edges of their maps
with fearsome beasts, deadly bygones
like the manticore, the peryton,
the leucrotta, and the catoblepas . . .
*
and then, all lands had been sundered,
plundered, surrendered to the hunger
of these Conquistadores, these ravagers,
robber barons with maps and sextants
facile archaeologists who weighed the material worth
of each priceless find to a nicety.
and most priceless of all, native virgins fall
to the hands of those who claim Divinity
as a cover for their lusts.
*
now, the many-times great-grandsons of these
conquerors and the natives they raped
bear the marks of both their parentage
in the language they speak, in their lean and tawny
frames. they walk an urban terrain, and in it
they are the fearsome beasts.
they dance the streets to primal rhythms,
their blood runs with the rumble of drums.
*
and men such as their many-times-great-grandsires
were, now walk in terror of them, feel
themselves nearing some forbidden border
of their mental maps as that music reaches
them on some subconscious level, as those
chatoyant eyes glance in their direction.
their high-rises and briefcases are empty play,
and now the aristocracy is the prey.
*
survival of the fittest? so you say,
before you step outside when night replaces day.
lords of creation? i think not.
i see fangs of steel in the dark.
*
"Did He who made the lamb make thee?"

From the 2 Train Journals: Transcendant Transfer

pellucid, an almost
holy gray-and-gold light
illuminates this landscape,
tawny with teasel and reed, and
backed up against that
distant, homesick gray
the trees spell their branch-sentences
in letters that,
though i would linger here for hours reading,
i could not transcribe the first word thereof.
i tell my friends, transferred from the tropics
where Spanish is spoken,
"it transcends human experience,"
feeling doubly locked by clumsy English . . .
if i can't even phrase it in my mother tongue,
how can i hope to dance in their fluid language
well enough to make it known?
for what prupose was this gift given?
why was such a treasure placed
in such a broken vessel?
perhaps it is
the flaws in me
that allow some of that transcendancy
flow through, untainted
by my tawdry identity . . .
and perhaps,
that is the definition
of poetry.

Alchemy 101: A Poem

Alchemy 101
***
can i use alchemy to enhance my poetry?
or is that a faux-pas? is it a Freudian slip when i let my pheromones
combine with oils of white musk, sandalwood,
patchouli, and mango
to achieve some substantial subliminal impact,
and reach an even deeper level
in the trenches of your mind?
and how about those "energy drinks"
that turn me rabid, jitter my nerves and jive my senses
until i'm keyed up like a piano
tuned 2 octaves higher
than the rest of the orchestra?
oh, i see.
you thought i was talking about
metaphorical alchemy. we ALL do that.
this whole poetic quest is reaching for some Philosopher's Stone,
but i got a C in my Philosophy 101
for telling the professor that 90% of all philosophy
was just convoluted excuses people came up with
for doing what they would have done anyway.
i guess my philosophy of poetry is that it is alchemy,
a sort of neverending journey into Mystery
seeking the Sublime.
i didn't have to contrive a philosophy for this,
it's something that's encoded into my DNA
by the Master Alchemist . . .archived in the tomes of the Most High.
He teaches me as i go along . . .my alchemical skill is still
that of an apprentice, but Who better to teach
than the One by whose Word Void became Light,
and Death became Life
when the stone rolled away
to reveal the true Rock to a desperate world?

14th & 5th: A Poem, Before the Magic All Turned Black

14th & 5th
***
saturday afternoon splattered with tuesday paint
off the pathtrain on 14th & 5th
follow the rush of wind up the stairs
shades mask the wolfish gaze
stepping into a maze where
walking is like wading waist-deep.
sleep abandoned me, hypnos and morpheus
are on a hunger strike, leaving me
lean as a wraith, hungry like cassius standing in line
at little caesar's, hungry for a poem
like a slab of broiled animal flesh on a bun
. . .or maybe just the animal itself,
something i have to hunt down while it's hunting me
like lon chaney with a hangover.
something this dangerous shouldn't be so much fun
something this turbid shouldn't laugh, or cough, or
walk, or run . . . a philosopher's stone, stoned
and tripping on the heat-shimmer ripple
over sizzling sidewalks and street-corner alchemists.
i feel like i could survive on the air itself,
something i could reach out and cut into slices,
priceless and poisonous and a thousand times more
carnivorous than any lean and tawny frame
leaning in a doorway. eyes
cut slices of me, a little piece for each,
plenty of spectacle to go around. i'm just
part of the whole sideshow, you know, not
freakish enough to steal the whole thing, but
snapshots of my own, apple peeled down to the bare core,
down to my favorite incense store
where the shopkeeper kneels and faces the east
his eyes focused on something i can't see.
i feel like i should take off my shades
and stand in the sunlight, gazing up in awe
like a tourist, another visitor. it makes me feel
naked, but i won't turn my eyes away, and i
won't pretend that i'm not amazed.
this is like a book i've searched for all my life,
and if tomorrow finds me half a continent away,
it won't stop me from turning to the east
several times a day
to the mecca i found. or maybe it found me.
or maybe we just met each other
on the street. i won't look over my shoulder,
i know what's following me, and
what i'm leaving behind. when everything catches up
with me, i guess i'll be right here
where i still don't know if i'm going to be able to
breathe, and i'm terrified, holding my breath, but something here
is doing my breathing for me
and each lungfull is just another poem waiting
in the wings, and another poem
is stalking me. thank God
the pen is still mightier than the sword,
or maybe they're just two ways of looking
at the same thing.
perspective is a piece of fruit
on the branches of this unknowable tree,
and something that holy is dangerous, but the fruit is ripe.
i have so much work to do.
the time for harvest is now.

You Can't Move Mountains With Tales Like These

Nega-Sheep
***
now, you've all heard about how
we're like sheep. i mean, when
Jesus called us that, do you think
it was meantas a compliment?
alas, i'm afraid
sheep are stupid creatures
less brains than a cow . . .they'll walk right in to a slaughterhouse
and let you hammer their brains right out.
now, the time has come
for a new breed of sheep
to emerge, and so you see,
i am sort of a Nega-sheep.
my wool's not white,
probably quite tie-dyed, and
very seldom do you encounter
a sheep with fangs.
no, honey, that's not a smile,
i'm just baring my teeth for you.
yes, i bite.
this sheep fights back.
this sheep has a survival instinct.
this sheep has already been sheared
so some idiot can wear a sweater
but don't think this sheep's just gonna
let you hammer out his brains
so some idiot can eat lamb chops.
i got your chops, right here,sucker.
a sheep in wolf's clothing, yes it's true,
but i'll still bet i've got
more bite than you.


Varf!
***
Varf! Everything gets back to varf! What is varf? Where, there are
several potential definitions. Varf could be when your cat
hacks up a hairball on the carpet and it gets sucked up into
a vaccuum cleaner, where it develops a sort of vampiric life.
But, that's pretty nasty, so we won't contemplate that. Another
kind of varf could be a vampiric smurf, but let's just hope he doesn't
hack up a furball on the carpet while he's running the vaccuum,
because that would only complicate things by creating such conditions as "Smurfy Vampire Furf Varf," "Furfy Varf Vaccuum Smurf,"and even "Vampric Varf Smurfs Vaccuum! (Film at Eleven)." But the third and best definition of Varf is a tribe of Vikings,
who were also Veatniks (this was back in the day when
the letter B was excommunicated from the alphabet). They left their recipes on a runestone,
the "Varf Viking Veatnik Recipe Rosetta Stone," referring to such things as "Varf Vegetable Veef Soup," "Varf Viking Vaked Veans and Spam," and "Varf Viking Lizard Surprise." See, you didn't know that the fourth definition of varf is a kind of lizard. "Hey, there's a LIZARD in this stuff!" That's the surprise. It also refers to the fact that you have to surprise the lizard to get it into the stewpot.

Boxed
***
you think inside the box, and
lock your mind inside the box, and
throw away the key.
and then you start to forget
that there ever was a key
that there ever was an "outside"
that the box is just a limit
you've slapped on your head.
there are some people who use that box
like a harness.
they yoke your head to some idea, and you
just follow in line right into the
slaughterhouse, baaa baaa, baaa baaa . . .
oh, and just before they take away
your writing hands, they'll
staple your lips together, too.
if you hurry up, though, i'll
help you look for that key . . .it's gotta be around here somewhere.

Carpe Poem
***
"Seize the echoes of creatures struggling to live against the dagger of man."
--Orannia Hamilton
***
Seize
the naked poem, raw with
vibrant green light and
razored fangs, from the turbid air.
From dark moments, bright things
sometimes shoot forth
like meteors etching a rune
of fire across the aching
firmament.
*
Transform
each piece of dangerous terrain
into your territory, proclaim your
domain in the poetic tongues,
conquer your emotions and yoke them to your plow.
the Earth lies fallow, unless
it is broken to receive the
seed.
*
Blaze
your trail across this tapestry, and
make your path one of light,
translate the celestial messages,
make your relationships inspirations,
receive in abundance the
overflowing cascades of
blessings, flowing from on
High.
*
And may the poem always rise to greet you,
as welcome and expectant as the dawn,
pregnant with possibility,
where each moment
of ascending brightness
is a phoenix of experience,
and the poet is
reborn.