Requiem for loneliness

I. {Mister Lonely}



You lapsed out of your lonely cell;
Bobby Vinton had been serenading you
nightly.

《Now I'm a soldier, a lonely soldier....》

You called me over air-waves
that have since been lost in time.
Your voice smoking like a cigarette,
working on getting well, getting better.

《....Away from home through no wish
of my own.....》

Across borders we telepathically
played at endearment. I was distracted
by loves, you, the prostitutes
across the street from your Mexican
haven.
Both of us so close....so close...

《....That's why I'm lonely, I'm mister
lonely....》

You had a new tune mixed with old
stale misery, and my horoscope misread
when it said I could lift such weights....

《...wish that I could go back home.》

Now it is Autumn and it truly feels like
death; with these thoughts of Mr. Lonely
in my head I sort through sordid visions
of hell.

II. {Miss Lonelyhearts}

In a strange sulking mold of a suburban house, as ill used as her body, bruises and punctures could be seen, on the walls, her porcelain skin.... In ancient times she would have been a nymph or a siren, now, Mammon made a hollow wind sound that is her name. Like a ghost she haunts. Guiltily.
     
I recalled the tender years, when my first love asked me to draw her; I hadn't drawn in years, fearful abuse from authority had made me sick. Yet I tried, and tried mostly to seem like I wasn't trying at all. The end result reflected my lack of practice and focus and was easily excused with a kiss.

Then, in a youthful mold of a suburban house, we laughed over my attempt, though it felt more like a mask of humor to hide the violent thought that she hated her own face. 

Yet in this queer structure, private property, this different vision of the same princess struck me with a kiss. She thrust it upon my lips. Because I had ridden in on a quicksilver stallion and saved her from a dragon that looked at me with dead eyes.

How unfortunate for him I'd long been in a staring contest with death.

In this void of grief, black hole of love, the room for love was quickly imploding; My only regret was that those crystal memories of childish curiosity were gone....so distant.......

This was after the violence, after the excavation of the mummified scream that bellowed out so ghastly; plagued, we drove for hours, dreaming like drifters, ready to feel...

She was a rattlesnake with a tail full of pills.

This one makes you smaller-

This one makes you shake-

And we all fall down....

She came into my room, a hip death goddess, and hid memories like Easter eggs for me to find once the damage was done.

Ashes to ashes....

All in all, she was a bad excuse for sex. Kindness became burdensome.

We all fall down...«I have this sickness inside me...»
And then, what was left but more bruised fruit for the winter to freeze?


III. {Alone, but not lonely}

Tragic tears tear at me,
And the world is sun.
Frogs hop to die in the tread
of bastard tires
and all the raccoons that sleep
on the shoulders of these vicious roads
Hum the cicada hymn of decay.

We should have been siblings,
in this life.

Before me, all I see is distance. 

Anarchy enters this garden

Still missing Bosch, I awake in the evenings
and search the annals of specters for a lover.

My scars make for aimless maps as I

have become a traveler with no body on

cloud like wings.

All around me are designer brand lives.

The recluse abroad, in a sense there is such

drama, but when it is gone there will yet

be time for fear;

for coming back here, we who lived only

hours ago, find lady liberty guillotined;

from our windows on high, looking down

see her lost in the stormy sea.

Because life requires much time, it could

be called ‘patience’; because death scares

us- it is not.

For we must live and that is why death is

not called love

(despite what some would have you believe).

Love is a place to be
it is why the skull keeps its eyes open-

if only to catch a glimpse of it again,

and there is faith that skulls see it,

for they are always smiling.

Love in life, love in Christ, if it was once-

O, let it be again!
Yet the uncertain hesitate, we are all so uncertain,

if only we could go back,

get back to…

The world is round, it matters not what direction
one goes, if they stay straightforward they
will return to where they were.
Is it so with life?

Is life but a ball for the gods to bounce in court?

How dare these birds- birds, all around me!
Was it not a week ago I was in love with
all things that fly, now I condemn them!
What is terrible about them is they have wings,
yet they choose to be here and not there
let them be persecuted for choosing such
a toxic wasteland.

If only I could aspire to be such a bird, I would

be a bird thusly persecuted.

Let these feathered things be as trees marked for

felling- ever ready for an apocalypse.

The sky rubs on its rouge and I seek out my

dearest friend, the pharmacist, for her to take my
hand, pet it and tell me that all will be righted.
Everything will be okay.

Yet unbeknownst to her I am a bird marked for

felling and I’ve left my bloody flux upon her

hand; after I depart, when she goes to stifle a yawn

in the meaningless empty hour, she’ll contract
that disease which sickens me, all the more
now that I am back where it was founded.

Let her embrace her ennui and disintegrating

morality like a marked tree-

ever ready for the apocalypse.

So, after travel, when that one question, repeated
by different people, happens to come at sunset-
I would answer with a kiss.
It is, however, at every tired hour that I am asked:

“What of our former masters?”

Europe is a wonderful masquerade,
how I recall the girls in Spain, in the bookstores,
how lovely, in the ideology section
this pretty young lady squealed over Lenin
and was embarrassed when our eyes met-
acknowledging the red star on my hat
with such gravity, only to scamper off and be
beautiful and young.

Then the dark Spanish beauty, the kind
that one could dream of,
with rich Moorish history written into her
genetics; I stood in line behind her

and saw that she held fast a copy of

“Mein Kampf”-

ever ready for an apocalypse

Because life takes lust it could be called

‘distraction’- because ‘death’ is hard

it is not, for we must not

live always in ‘distraction’, if that were the case,
‘death’ would be called ‘focus’.

The night smears on its eye shadow, as the whorish
sky beds the many stars, I suddenly miss
the fogged lights of Paris.

Here is a land, with promise and beauty, yet
such evil that perhaps it is all tainted.
I felt closer to it when

thousands of miles of sea separated us,

but disappointment greeted me at the airport.

Now I only face the perpetual thunder storm of
US politics; and every thunder storm is the same-
we lose power…

Now I only face the constant look of sad or bored
bourgeois children and they affect me more

Than the man who burst into tears, while I was
passing him on a dark Spanish street;

for I could see with my hand on his shoulder

that his pain was earned and despite the hurt

he was grateful for it.

Having been robbed, he knows he once had,
and his yearning is knowledgeable.

Does that form of life exist beneath this recycled
sky?

Because life is filled with tragic ends, it could
be called ‘tragedy’;

because our skulls smile it is regarded as a ‘comedy’

and because God binds us it is a ‘divine comedy’

despite Dante’s preference for the former

the church made it what we know,
as we can only laugh for so long

before such hope filled laughter

turns to desperate tears grasping for divine closure.

  

Meditation whilst scaling a dream

Be it a spirit as provocateur or a
savior as a catalyst, the light that seems
to breathe upon the pavement of the roads
alights through the stale pornography of
the city, and still, it infinitely (or in jest?)
Delivers the promise of something- something...

If, then, I partake in the ingestion of sustenance
through a straw, while brain aches, melancholic-
if my jaw is wired shut, it is only through hardship;
and its sinew and muscles will be stiffened only by
the secretive nature of sorrow.

With no regard to lend consistency, my progressive

thoughts will yet exhume their party from the fallen
dust of absence and they will align themselves with revolution’s
wisdom; and in such times, beneath the beatific
glower of the moon, I often fail to fathom how even these
many regenerated cells could hold such
massive feelings of love.

How have I come to see
torment and exhaustion wax a Nirvana like resignation?
How have I seen it-
In the very way that the overt preservation of life begins to
resemble death.

“So where is it, then, that you are going?” a strange
companion once asked...

“If only to kiss the sea…” I answered...

While there exists this anti-matter, let there be matter!

Do not let the waste of callousness keep us from the beach.

And worry not- how this sun will murder us regardless
of atmospheric conditions,
eventually;
so if we’ve not yet liberated completely our killer madness by then,
we shall be baked out of existence.

Yet these holy demons have such feet,
AND I AM ALIVE- I breathe
and you
you comprehend this!
your mind pushes fluids!

So take your love and keep it close to your heart, as
a slumbering cat, and in its consciousness of pleasure- let it purr.

We took such steps upon the moon
to find what we can of infinity
in possibility
and only the weight of probability
inhibits our way. 

Yet even that obstacle
can be overcome.

So then why do you still burn, O, human?
Why, still, the hungry result of
immolation?
Still, mercurial venom like madness seeps into our
minds.
Fingers and limbs fight for room in such an expanse
and souls foam with the froth of rage
as the mind’s belly rumbles-
discontented.

Would the poet then in this time chime only lullabies 
in spying
the butterfly- ignoring the minds that design
the many fuses of bombs?
 
Orpheus: tranquilizer or public crier?
Minerva: appeaser or informant?

Far jaded by the bourgeois concepts of heroics,

I will go- walk beside those who too aspire in search for
the lasting spirit devoid of such vile mutations.

We- to be us, what a feat!
To be those expunged completely by betterment sought
through ourselves- with possibility for all!

With a uniform we call sincerity, to plunge into the
colonies of butchers,
and brush off billboards depicting images
of strewn up prophets in horrific torture...

And despite their boasts of possessing “the way”,
we know well that the path to the future
lies not beneath the agony of the past, but beyond it...

Ceremonious, it would seem, O, you puppets of Moloch-
O, you whores of mammon, that our portions of sorrow should be
relived repeatedly...
But alas!
Your powers end
where our shared tragedy as humanity begins,
and so it is- in such a way that your gods of envy and avarice
are served their deaths... 

Mysterious Night

A warm breeze for a cold night, and the northern hills

be peace as the air strips the trees, until they are as nude

as the bones of ancient priests.

As, tremulous, the party barks inside the house,

its humble foundation shakes and argues with

the far off dread in the trudge of doomed giants.

I stretch my neck and force my face out into the

breeze. The night seems to ask the same question I've 

heard all day: Aren't you cold?

Cold? I do not know. Perhaps on the outside.

For the world is cold enough, often enough.

Though, if on this night there is violence, awful

fists of home, terrible knives of war, and the guns

in the streets that only brother can use against brother,

once they've both been convinced that they are shadows;

the starvation only the innocent can know, the screams

that wish to free the skull from flesh- none in

the celebratory cloud will know any guilt

in forgetting it. ‘So, bless them,’ I think to myself, ‘bless them’

and the clouds part to show a beam of

agreement from the moon. Even if we never speak

a similar language, there is no reason that this love

should ever rot. On such nights, I would embrace all of

those who would see me die, a lonely number in a forsaken

land.

What insects, that have survived the cold, leer,

and they become Minotaurs; and they snort their strange

language when I press my finger to my lips for silence; the

flowers are satyrs waiting to die: ‘The King is dead,’

they say, to which I answer, “I know,”- so they say no more.
And somewhere God says to a group

of felled trees: “My spirit shall not always dwell
with man, for he is also of flesh.”

So bless them? Bless them. So be it.

This most wondrous flesh shall find itself in darkness.

Sonia with legs in the tresses of her dress, finds

me through the portal opened and, with her, out flows

a torrent of crowded rabble, shocked by a scream of

gaiety. At once she smothers it until it is muffled entirely

by the door. Sonia with her teeth clenched from pills,

scolds me for the search, yet she had found me;
“You are alone,” she says, “Which is fine,” and she

lifts her face to bask in the moonlight, “You would

never let the moonlight meet your loneliness.”

The night clicks away its intricate clockwork, as
Sonia sits beside me and pulls her skirts to cover her

legs: “Aren't you cold?” she asks.

She shows me detailed drawings of the moon from
her notebook and frowns from the uppers

because everyone else is drunk. All that is lacking

are the screams of dying locusts.

In the darkness we will find ourselves and one

another. Our consciousness will merge and continue.

And if on this night, some fragmenting psychopath
lurks in the darkness and watches us with hunger-
There, on the porch, we would not believe it.

The moon glows agreeably, yet it seeks clouds
to hide its scarred face; so with hands capable of
paradise, and loneliness shown bravely, we bade it
stay.  

Tankas for Kim Jong Un

Tankas for His majesty: Kim Jong Un. 


There was born a clown,

And his name is Kim Jong un;
he is such a fool,

He could never understand,
how culture works in our lands.

This is why he fails!
because his belly is proud,
and he has no balls;

a sad fatherless bastard, 
he wades through shit for nothing.

Poor sad Kim Jong Un.
history will see him die,
and the world will trive,

just because his soul is damned 

to many deaths and horrors. 

Elegy

Elegy 1

O, afflict me with your flogging tool;
Try my skin and flesh until, well tested,
forth flows the frothing bloude. For I've
been well bled before, nor was it a wretched

pain, no, not as wretched a pain as this. 

Wrench my heart, my lungs, my intestines;
O, vice, grip tight my stomach between your

ready metal jaws, have your way with this
waste of matter. No further use have I for 

what fills me- if only to prolong this 

existence which mine insufferable mind

has deemed obsolete. Woe! You selfish

ties that hold and bind me to this bloude
soaked earth, the worst that you have

done to me is having made me love you.
Now this hand dispels such worthless 

thoughts, in a journal, once baptized by

princely hands. Those hands, that once
rested upon my shoulder in the manner
to comfort that only shared bloude could

provide. When, many times those hands
formed fists they would beat my body and
limbs, as if to desperately shed himself

of what painful frustrations he could not
speak in the dark drunk night- I saw his

pain, his hurt inside, and I let him conquer

if just to stay alive. I had seen it in his eyes,
heard it in his voice, felt it in his blows.
How horribly he bred such empathy into me,
now I know twas the path to better manhood.

Now, if I shall be a better man, it will be
with his spirit guiding me. Here and now
Such pain I face, so close, I examine it, 

the reactions are that of two predators meeting.

It could, with such ease, render me hopeless
and in that- helpless against its will.
I would be deemed to fall, amongst the

many fallen leaves. Those tender tresses
that give and take the leap; to disintegrate 

would be pure mercy. Though mine 

mind still finds rooms of warmth, for, just
as many fights, there too, were moments,
of such elation shared; moments when those
arms were not in wrath, but they embraced.
Tears now form as I recall how I felt that
life that will never be touched again. Still
as tears form resolute, still does life continue.
Whither? To widen or heal this wound?
From where have you come, sorrow?
Do you not see this life? This beautiful life?
Defiant, my eyes make love with beauty.
Life makes through the suffering, love-

I have hope, I have pain, thus far not one
prevails above the other. He has left us,
he has left me; with fancy gadgets, smart
shoes, boots in agony. Suddenly every
'If only' becomes a burden. Never again
will his flesh fill this clothing. He has left
me with video games and a denim pouch
full of .38 special rounds, but one bullet
is missing. I now have a pocket knife with
'Courage' engraved upon it. These relics
were made by machines, someone somewhere
pressed that tiny cartridge that stole a soul
from me. So now I am left, to watch this
world. I watch you so able, yet so stubbornly

unwilling; fools, you are that sow woe for

petty pleasure and hollow accolades. 

This is your time, these are your people-

do not let them fade or be lost in the darkness
embrace them and fill them with color,
lift yourself to lift others, and always remember
to outrun the bullet. 

POEM

"Soul of Miss Lonelyhearts, glorify me.
Body of Miss L., nourish me.
Blood of Miss L., intoxicate me.
Tears of Miss L., wash me.
Oh good Miss L., excuse my plea,
And hide me in your heart, 
And defend me from mine enemies.
Help me, Miss L., help me, help me.
In sæcula sæculorum. Amen."
-Nathanael West, from his novel:
'Miss Lonelyhearts'

Dedicated to Chris, without whom I would not have been able to write about such subject matter so soon.

{Prologue}
As I sit writing, a beetle flew past my ear and hovered over
my ash tray, filled with ashes from cigars and cigarettes and
my pipe; it landed on the edge of the ash tray, proceeded to
dive into it, dug into the ashes and disappeared. There was
no further movement, though I sat and smoked my pipe over
two hours watching the ashes, thoughts swollen in my mind.
Finally I went inside, when I returned to the ash tray I decided
to empty it; I poured out all the ashes and with them, the
beetle tumbled out as well, stiff and dead. Something about
how that beetle made an effort to bury itself in ashes as it
knew it was dying made me think....

{Marketed Tragedy}

We are the mannequins we wish to be, with teeth made of pharmaceuticals;
Guided, placed in gums by gloved hands. With mouths of plastic and child
proofed. We are the bagged; and if we dance, we rattle, like an engine
ready to give. Put the cars and keep them in storage units; We'll count the
mileage with our feet and  taste the sun during the day- and night we'll bathe
the trees with light of lanterns. The alien glow of an efficiency bulb makes a
shadow show that is acted out by animated ink blot tests-
What do you see?
What do you see?
What dost thou seest?
The world projected on the back drop of your mind, do you ever see visions?
Like images spliced into a film; a flicker, of horror and pain, for but a fraction
of a second? With thoughts like these, uncomfortable, scary, probing
curiosity, the mind wants to search for a home, yet it only finds houses,
houses, houses, like meaningless faces in a crowd. In our TV lives one begins
to ask the Really important questions: Pads or Tampons? Handling a period
is handling a means to an end. It happens just like this.

{Epilogue}
Insert insightful introspective movie montage. Give me: contemplation.
I look at the screen of my smart phone and it boasts 18 missed calls & 26
unread text messages-
The heart asks the mind if this is mourning.
Lost in translation between the chest and head the mind answers:
'No, it's the evening'.
Doodling is not my thing, but here I sit drawing broken things;
The pen I use advertises a funeral service. It just happened to fall into the
bag that boasts yet another ad for the same business, along with an
expensive belt that he will never wear again. I was there when he bought it, 
at a little store in the nowhere town that my grandmother still lives in, 
where my mother came from. I watched him choose the right belt among 
so many, he had the man behind the counter engrave his middle 
name "Lee" where the belt designated the branding should be. Now all 
that remains is the belt, which no one can wear without seeming weird 
or if they have a "Lee" in their name. It seemed so sensible at the time...
The heart asks the mind: 'Is this irony?'
Before it can answer the digestive system interrupts with
a sickness fit of vomit. The body ran but it could not get to the
toilet in time. 19 missed calls, 20 missed calls. Puke burst from my mouth,
projected, splatter met the wall mirror in the bathroom, tasted of
chemicals, all over the pristine silver faucet. I looked at the mess
and thought: just like when someone puts a gun to their head and.....
which is all I think about as time becomes something beyond meaningless
almost insulting.
27, 28, 29, 30- 30 unread text messages. Flowers for the dead.
In my cell I am a castrated Abelard without even the comfort of my
Heloise. For we have become so detached, that caring is creepy; and
thus becomes a trend. Couldn't we then simply say: To hell with it all!
Let us be actors, always, the stage of life; when a character is killed
off they simply disappear- yet, we'll all meet again at the end of the show.
We'll meet for drinks and out-act one another's sincerity in complementing
the other's performance, displaying newly prescribed smiles that are
just placebos. In which instance, perhaps, these dreams are not our own.

It was toward the end, before I knew that there would be an end, that two
souls that are dear to me confided in me that they no longer remembered
their dreams, not as they did in their childhoods- there is such a sadness
in that. Worthless words, could I have but torn out my own tongue,
screaming while flogging myself with the useless muscle as I choked on
the blood gushing from my torn throat. I couldn't talk to either of them
toward the end, though had I known, I would have tied them down with
with my arms, I would have held them so hard our ribs would bruise and
the only reason I would let go would be so they did not die from crushing.
We all felt the same pain, I had no companionship to offer in the selfishness
of depression. If only they were as absent in my mind as they were in my
life- if only. Often, however, a light shower will turn to a heavy storm.

Tell love, tie your hair in knots, as the models in the hair treatment
Commercials do to portray strength. Split ends, doll, sounds like a personal
problem. Photographs to identify the dead. Meaningless procedures,
As if his own mother could mistake the corpse of her son sitting there in
his apartment.

Tell love, I had a talk with a voice from a past life, from a screen pressed to
my face spoke the voice of the mother of Jesus' son, who I once loved, who
died in Jodorowsky's mythical city of tar. In a martyr's fashion, he died too.
Often he and I would share a bed, as we often shared the invite with many,
lovers first and foremost in life. All of us so yearning needfully of human
heat; the heart of a girl ever ready to swoon with me in cozy hidden corners,
when love was easily sung in a darkened car. One final heated embrace, a
scene of lips and hands that searched the passion of which Hollywood
Can only dream of capturing on film to be exploited for profit. The the brief
coldness of parting, yet to find a warm bed, with spun opium dream clouds
and the savior's dear son would show me how Judas kissed his father.

So tell love, give me Doris Day circa "The Thrill of it all" 1963- in the background
Kennedy loses his head.
The mind and heart are incinerated, their ashes are mixed into the soil for potted
peonies all for her.

That time we simply drove off, we both smoked like steam engines, with
the whirl of the wind as we sped past Cypress trees that shaded horses; 
sun-baked brush waiting to burst into flames, here and there a creek slithered
through the valley and we found cows upon cows awaiting slaughter
like wizened beings in the shade of huge ancient oak trees that stretched out
their limbs all covered with moss. It called to mind another time with 
that unrelated brother when we sped through Joshua trees, almost becomes
the same, the nothingness of these states, London bridge in the middle of 
the desert, landmarks, very exhausting. Goats munched, heroin and a scorpion 
stung, hydrocodone and confused bees; all that our country knows of ruin.
How your spirit soared that day, you were my anchor, everything that was 
thorns in my mind, you helped me to walk through it all gracefully; we were
impervious, we were brothers. Now I wish I had let him know all of this-
thus the anchor breaks its rusty chain.