I WAS AT THE BAR
I was at the bar and this Indian came up to me and asked
me if I had been in Led Zeppelin.
I said I was with the Beatles at the time and didn't have
time to own a stereo.
The Indian bought me a couple of drinks and wondered where
he had seen me before. I said I was on the parole board and
that I might have got him off on good behaviour.
He bought me a couple of more drinks and asked if I ever did
mushrooms while getting a tattoo.
I said I was a family man and got off being the first guy on the
block to hang up Christmas lights. The Indian liked that and
asked me where I lived. I told them that I have a condo
limousine in Tobermory and that he should get out there
and see the lights.
He bought me a couple of more drinks and said that he saw me
in People Magazine. I said they were doing a spread on me
and Frank Sinatra, nothing important. The Indian then
went in the washroom for a while... when he came out he
was naked and started to parade and dance around the women.
When the police came by I told them I was a social worker
and this Indian was part of a controlled experiment.
That didn't work so I told the Indian that being on the
parole board I would get him off, again.
They took him away.
I was alone.
A Valentine Day's
Poem to Jan
A day comes on occasion
to bear the fruits of our delight
those rare and scattered moments
feeling as one might
when the first touches of Spring
warm the frosty chill of the heart
and the first fragrance of flowers
draws beauty to its art
We know from this experience
a wondrous quality of our life
that the love we bear within us
is thus removed from strife
And hangs like a new born bud
basking in a golden ray
that only comes to blossom
on this Valentine's Day
The Silver Thread
we need love as the day
needs the sun to make it
the day
it's more important than
the mould and prison of
the perfect body
for love escapes the body
and flies to embrace
the sun of man's naked
heart
singing, shining and
singeing its wings, but
not to fall to earth
for love knows no bounds
like a leaf that falls
from a sturdy oak, we die
as man falls, thinking
he is the oak and no longer the leaf,
he is swept up in the currents
of accident and indecision
thus blown past the
restful boughs of his
origin, he comes to rest
without purpose
we all hang
some unfortunately like a
hangman on a gallows,
while others suspended in bliss
on the silver thread
of love
love holds us intact above
all worldly concerns, and
affects us so deeply that
the world escapes
our feet
a sorrow
a sorrow has come stealing
into my way, and showing
no respect
for joys and light hearted care
it casts its shadow, as it dares
eclipsing my life and leaving
no bear outline of hope
for me
with blacken heart to rest content
I search for love, without relent
O, for the music and song
of yesterdays night,
when one candle of love
out shone all the lights
and now...
When this sinister poacher
has met me under a starry blanket
he steals my candle, the stars
and the day
leaving me to walk his path
of traps, and thus astray
but when all seems lost to
this cloaked rogue, when he has snatched
the reason to be, out from the sky
of everyday's view
I look to my own beginnings
to find out what is true
Night Vision
I saw infinity in the shell of a snail
which curled up to greet the sky
and swirling beneath its spiralling tail
an earthly train heaved a heavy sigh
For in the dry regions of a radiant dessert
beneath the moon and stars, so bright
a human caravan moved with slow measure
exploring dark regions of a soulful night
Margo D
Margo D is you ego a spree?
Is there concern for this fool
who come limping with mild pretension
without redemption
Margo D is your golden hair alive?
Delicate small body giving
to diabetic addiction and modern jive
dance radiant in a golden sigh
To Be Wingless
To be wingless death
But who after perceiving the joys
dares to away with wings the foole
The wingless journey is no closer away
than the soul is afar
The Cat
coiled snake with ears sharp and tail
whiskers for scrubbing and hooks for nails
spotted and concealed in colour carpets
hung Persian
The Gutter Window
the gutter window
its crude arch sprawls to eternity
dirt and sterility sift my mind
I grow from sterility
am soiled and have no seed
naked and bare
bearing no fruits
no tenderness of hope
no comfort from despair
yet I hang onto existence as if it
were my only child
Misner's Shack
On the coast of Eden
a mile in from the shore
lays an old deserted shack
the last refuge of the poor
Old man Misner owns the shack
and keeps all to himself
a recluse of the modern world
like a relic on the shelf
If we think of God's creation
the goodness that inspires awe
we see the shack become a palace
and God's word becoming law
But when we think just for ourselves
for private and personal gain
Misner's palace becomes a shack
and our pleasures become his pain
Beware of my Love
when the silent knives of the mind
turn on
beware of my love...
When the instruments of my torture
are paraded in fine procession,
cleansed by the fires of seraph and
raised exalted by the heat of passion
beware off my love...
For my words will drop from the sky
and raise the dead tissue of your
heart
And my soul will eat at the table
of your aristocratic pride and will
devour all opposition
For I will cut into you so gingerly
as to make you appreciate my love
When my words turn to sugar
and melt into your mind, taste what
poisons it carries
when candy thoughts contain blades
to be found by sucking
ever so fruitlessly on words
beware of my love...
For I will deal out words like cards to gamble
when playing on the affections of others
and when ice melts my heart
and you cut yourself on the feel
beware of my love...
Ambrosia
when ambrosia comes to call
we chill wine glasses of the night
toasting morning's meadowy mead
and the redolent bouquet that lingers
with thoughts of love
come child sit by my side
so we embrace the hearkening moment
and sip the sun's waters
warming ancient hearts of the wraiths
that silence has brought
shall we all the wiser
when love resurrects from a darken ash
the forgotten feeling of friends
and transcends on fiery emerald wings
a flame of past passion
it's of no real consequence
what the winsome vintage of our future
and past pleasures have in store
the present in all intimacy we share
to savour tears of joy
Tripping in Absurdium
Is the secret that we all share
a mis-demeaning adventure under our hair?
Counting fairies in the park
smoking rubies in our pecan coloured pipes
kissing the sun as it comes down like
honey
on the infantry
Were we stationed in Cornwall
on the last day?
Took up positions to chase rainbows
with butterfly nets
but the year was overcast
and we took to fishing like dogs to water
we used our nets but caught
milk-bones
For it was a marvellous day spent waning.
On the midnight train back home
we listened to music with attentive
thoughts
Bach was talking to God
and his speech was tailored in the
most passionate array of
sounds
where are you tonight, my friend
where are you tonight, my friend
among the forlorn and dead
amid sultry ruins
dying in some empty back street,
wasting the whispers of eternity
Do you smell the sounds of robbery,
perhaps larceny floating towards the day
break? The crime of the century is perpetrated
and sees not but a (g)host of innocence,
in perfect cryme
where are you tonight, my friend
playing backgammon in the park
playing solitaire with the Greek
the eternal loser
where are you tonight, my friend
in some exotic shrine half hidden in
the night. Under the illusion of a
mid-night Maya maybe
where one at day break worships
western education, to be reincarnated
at dusk to man to flame
to dust
where one will at day break worship
western technology, to be eaten by his
brother at night because the world
cannot provide
where are you tonight, my friend
circumcised by broken shadows
hungering for the taste of compatibility
desolate and crippled in the human tomb.
Yes, the world in all its simple pleasure
compounds to a price we realize in pain as pain
Spread the salts of realization on the wound
heal in less time, heal
in no time
where are you tonight, my friend
caught in some elusive dream
caught in realities remote
caught, crying as they crucify you
to yourself
Fragmented and thrown into garbage
and sewage to be eaten by the
western rat and spewed out onto
the streets
where are you tonight, my friend
In relation to yourself, god, are you
lost or is the world amiss!
Do you function, produce a space
to be filled in and the have coffee?
The tools we use, to ourselves
we bruise
And cry subliminal tears into
the infection of oblivion
where are you tonight, my friend
for holy is the night. Bless be it
in all.
The Cry
And the infinite hour is upon us all
The tree in simple splendour
reveals a solemn white body
cut down to be made into crutches
What thoughts flow through man's mind?
What hours, what time.
What fragments of his fortune are paid
to be reimbursed in heaven?
Reveals a solemn white body --
cut down to be made into crutches
Man's fate is a simple sapling growing
in the infinite hour
A Speck of Poetry
A speck of poetry
this creation called man
Somewhere under shallow skies
he sees what he cannot touch --
the universe
Jan 15th/ 1980
Spring's morning sparkles
I chime and chirp
with the birds
giving the warmth of a
thousand summers in
gladness for this day
Gone is the night
with it a heavy film
of doubt
I wash in the bird bath
and dry in the natural
radiance of this day
Cassandra
I
come down to the gates of Troy
on Easter Sunday
when the earthen cross sings of life
and time shall stand still within the
blacken fibre of history's page
come to where the promises of tomorrow
and tomorrow
are read to the sky and scatted like dust
that dance on the winds
of an old world
But we shall dance only to the words
of one prophet
knowing that the unknown will remain
that mysterious lady who gives
shadows and shapes
of oblivion
for a handful today's tears
II
and we would talk to Cassandra
for she is divine
and would tell us of great birds
whose songs
are like waterfalls,
of nightingales
who fawn with radiant
features the loneliness of countless
years
and she would tell us of waterlilies
in a rain forest whose shimmering
colours reflect pools of light
and of a jewelled consciousness in the heart
of this new world whose untold tales
cries up to heaven's green and
lost floral host
O, my sweet of sweets
my ancient blossom so blue
where man has misplaced his love
is surely to be found in you'
Lover of Lust
can you lust forever your life away
dream of wet dream causing you to wail
as town Casanova and sailor of passion
lover of lust hoist up your sail
sailing out into the midnight mists
the low light of Venus as guiding star
captured in her embrace of beauty
you whisper your worship from afar
the sweet kiss at the infinite hour
has charmed man's virginal delight
his dream of heaven's consuming flame
a self made martyr to her night
Venus radiantly aloof and ever aglow
permits no man to sully her ray
tantalizes his hopes on the rock of despair
floundering he sinks to the end of his day
can we see no end to her tortuous reign
caught and torn between earth's poles
man's futile fate sails on a seething sea
ever searching for a communion of soul
on the celibate sea of madness
allow the sirens to call you to port
their imperfection a disturbing beauty
and sensual gratification a perfected art
can you lust forever your life away
dream of wet dream causing you to wail
as town Casanova and sailor of passion
lover of lust hoist down your sail
nowhere place
nowhere place exists in your mind
not in your breakfast
it's a place you will never find
but past the toast...
If you take a trip on that cloudy
railway through your eye
you'll see a sign saying
you passed it'
but you try again
but you passed it again
it's insane
again and again and again
insane, insane
it's nowhere place in your breakfast
brain
suddenly you're back to reality
bib dib dib dib
eating breakfast toast with orange marmalade
as you sip your tea you ponder, then you
wonder, will I ever go to
nowhere place?'
(silly rabbit)
no-one knows, he lives there
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing
Witch of Coos focus attention to our lament
to our distraught mind of Eliotonian content
which shall cause us to skip down the 401
to meet our grave maker under the western sun
Fuck the western rat and his empirical
evidence of realities non existent
for him he see his hole, his cheese
and his family's carcasses
which he will eat and claim he loved his parents
to the death
And thus after eating and feeling well fed
let his dark thoughts converge overhead
like clouds who's rain and thunder cannot shed
their intellectual misery
When glories of malice
reign in the kingdom of his though
and the skies leaden with darken overcast
storms through words of malign rot
this rodent prince in his palace of pride
talks to angels and fools by his side
Witch of Coos focus attention to our lament
to our distraught mind of Eliotonian content
which shall cause us one day to depart
to opium lands enriched by a joyless heart
Anarchy
Once there was a king
whose only kingdom extended
beyond what he was capable
of ruling.
His name was God.
Once there was a man
who knew so many good ways
to be bad that it earned him
the title of
Jesus
Now it came to pass that
what existed in this kingdom
was the rule and mere reflection
of a mistress whose power
extended throughout the universe
Her name was
Anarchy
God praise Anarchy
Adore her garbs of silken satire
irony and confusion
Fashioned to hang ornate in
wardrobes of unearthly wonder
They distort neither the truth
nor inevitability of her one
and only law
The only consequence is that
there is no consequence
Dressed in the apparels of the highest
absurdity
She dances until this realization
slowly, senselessly, inexorably
crushes you
Thoughts
Thoughts that always unsettle
confirm the coming of the night
if we look to deeply into the dark
we just may lose our sight
Love
Love is an aspiring thing
that exceeds the earthly bound
if caged it become a bird of prey
that always wears a frown
Hate
Hate is an unpleasant word
expressed in many ways
we should bite the tongue that holds it
if there is nothing good to say
To All the DZ's in the World
Yes is it true that you eat more people
than one normally consumes?
Teeth razor dull to half with the spew
you with dimples and rounding oval screw
and how do you do it so well?
DZ why bring your consistent
inconsistencies
that no one knows but you
to my door, to say
Hello, wake up Walter
the world is passing you by
and so am I... goodbye'
Then smile your intentions away
An Awesome Magnificence
I went down to the Piraeus yesterday
to rock the cradle of civilization
with my childish poem
the Magyar sits in the house of magpie
eating in a magnanimous way
counting out his mistresses and magic
while somewhere a madrigal plays
O my sweet of sweet
my ancient blossom so blue
where God has misplaced his love
is surely to be found in you'
and when the strains of this sweet song
touched the Magyars mighty ear
he uttered forth a sigh of sorrow
and gave cry of fear
for somewhere in his majestic kingdom
somewhere not to far
a babe wrapped in swaddling clothing
will be worshipped under a star
and he will be the thin line between nothingness
and eternity
Ickity Picity
ickity pickity pock
Marx ran up the clock
the clock struck two
at the price of a shoe
licity mickity mock
ricity dicity do
Marx does like his shoe
but Freud is dead
and his scarf is red
impity limpity new
As Blossoms Bleed
As blossoms bleed the colour of Spring
Love infects the air with a supple repose
but then changes...
And is like a drunken fiddler
stumbling and forever playing
to the stars
Disposition
Who know the where and goes
of one so congenially displaced
in the middle, near the end
the beginning of which make you bend
the complexity of your grace
To be forgotten in reams of undynamic spew
the watcher waits and follows her shadow
to the place of no beginning
the emptiness of her face
Come through the door
and fear no more
of lost skies and forgotten foes
peace is but the memory that comes
with death, of death
Colours swirl as she crosses the floor
comes walking across and through the door
smiles insipidly
knowing nothing but a taste of no passion
in an empty cut cup
They say peace comes with death
and is the memory of death
but holding no disposition to secular bonds
she looks benignly, swirls around
grabs awkwardly at being
a woman
and then disappears through the door
Who know the where and goes
of one so congenially displaced
in the middle, near the end
the beginning of which make you bend
the complexity of your grace
What is it Now
What boring price is paid
by the person lost and unknown
yet I know he feels the sting
and pinch
does he flinch
to the meandering melody
of unanswerable thought?
What does he discern in a world
of complexities and ruin
sweeps it aside,
makes room to grow plants
and feelings
aware of the dealings
of you and I
What a laugh
is the joke personified in us all
illusions and feeling small
mop up your mind and in the far corner
of your houses pull down the blind
that no one find
some slight unyielding too important
to worry about
O my love
what a crazed notion
a house hiding emotion
fabricate our soul, man's insane goal
and pain, love, joy and hate
is but bait spewing a fate
for man
Is he late tonight?
Supper is ready
Redemption hangs in the air
for ye who trespass
ye dreamers and sleepers
of peace
A Moment of Silence
a moment of silence
has fallen on us
with the force of a sickening weight
wait for me to speak
in broken discourse, in bleeding
and dying ways
has April come dancing in full bloom
garments in rags of daisy and tulips
learning from Lear
of confessions
demented
and the solemn oaths of the
human condition
Euphrasy
I abide blasé so I'm inveigled to scrawl and scratch approximately something... what? Well, perchance not a what' but a why.' Why queries are commonly the ill. They commence out portentous except undergo besieged in every heading by legions of rejoinders. Everybody covets to notify you why. They stockpile stark sorts of erudition that they pickle employ to divulge you why. Why this, why that, why not this, why not that... and so it departs. Why cross-examinations devise these Lilliputian abysses within the passageway of confabulation. They insinuate at manufacturing something, pump up the cogent breach with connotation, routing and subjugating the lunatic to the distant reaches of the biosphere. The why query undergoes a pressure derriere to it. It is attentive to surmount the spear of light. Zilch else exceedingly executes it that manner. The why query chaperons you forth into the desert and you encounter the apostate, every incoherent Sufi and augur that wheedles your intelligence with phantasm. The why is the luminary that perforates the mortal china chest and divulges the pall at the bowel of existence. It singes out the antipodes and deodorizes the grey lesions of epoch. The why query is a crusade (ion). A quest i (am) on, a quest indeed... So, presently you abide blasé as well, I ought solicit my why query.
Mr. Nelson breathes a exalted maestro with multitudinous acolytes.
He is eminence for his euphony and abides a boost to his ventilators.
His cunning is the air of the hereafter fair albeit the present day fares
not digest him. Save we be adequate. He resolve persevere to
be lifted as a champion of prodigious delicacy, waggery and with the swell
of entity of Orson Welles. A garrison with a commission to smear
the illumination that Jehovah relinquished him with endowment, hypnotize
and momentous well-behaved countenances and garb. A Don of the preeminent
echelon and prominence.