Sunflowers
Sunflowers by Blake and Van Gogh
rhymes by Dylan and Reed score by Suicidal Tendencies song by Motorhead enter here into my mind full of windows to look through longingly full of full moons and clouds drifting darkly over them and a bed of nails for me of feathers for you white feathers full of shadows lurking full of cauldrons boiling full of runes throwing and long lifelines full of black humor and sarcasm knowing nothing sung by Eric Burden harpies hurling harmony in the comer full of gargoyles grinning full of skulls bleaching full of wolves howling choruses enter here into my mind full of empty armchairs full of warriors bathing in cold streams full of water for drowning brain by Da Vinci clothes by Vicious death by dying enter here follow the yellow brick road full of scarecrows full of bodies of rebel soldiers full of haunted houses you're here now, please stay I'll read your tea leaves I'll practice healing with the power of my hands I'll let you rest your weary head I'll feel eternity in your bones I'll kiss you to sleep in my warped mind, wailing saxes play on for you if only you- wouldn't leave. haystacks by Monet guitar solos by Hendrix crucifixions by Jesus arm in arm we'll stroll my mind and leave the desperado world behind you hold the candelabra, I will lead the way My Veteran (From Rage by JD Rage 1989 Rage/Allied Productions) I HAVE A VETERAN I DON'T KNOW EXACTLY HOW I GOT HIM, ONE DAY HE JUST MOVED ONTO MY BLOCK. HE LIVES IN FRONT OF THE CON ED BUILDING ON THE SIDEWALK. WHEN HE FIRST MOVED IN THERE HE USED TO TRY TO TALK TO ME WHEN I PASSED THROUGH HIS HOME, HIS LITTLE PATCH OF SIDEWALK. HE IS DISABLED USES A CANE HAS A CRIMSON FACE IS NOT OLD NOR YOUNG AND I WONDER HOW IT GOT TO BE THAT HE LIVES ON THE SIDEWALK SLEEPING UNDER TWO SLANTING UMBRELLAS ON RAINY DAYS WITH HIS CANE BETWEEN HIS LEGS. I'M NOT SURE EXACTLY WHY HE IS MINE, BUT HE IS. MY BOYFRIEND BRINGS HIM PIZZA, A LOAF OF BREAD. I BRING HIM NOTHING/ NOT EVEN A SMILE NOR A KINDLY LOOK IT'S JUST NOT IN ME AND ONE DAY THE POLICE CAME AND KICKED ALL THE HOMELESS OFF AVENUE A INCLUDING MY VETERAN. MOVE ALONG NOW GET MOVING BOYS, BUT MY VETERAN MOVED BACK IN RIGHT AWAY AND I WAS GLAD TO SEE HIM AND AS I PASSED BY THAT DAY HE SAID "I BET YOU'D BE REAL HAPPY TO GET RID OF ME" AND I KEPT ON WALKING BUT AT THE END OF THE BLOCK SOMETHING STOPPED ME AND I TURNED AND SAID, "NOW THAT'S JUST NOT TRUE." MY VETERAN GAVE ME A BEAMING SMILE AND HAS NOT SPOKEN TO ME SINCE AND EVERY TIME I PASS HIM BY I WONDER WHAT MY VETERAN WILL DO WHEN WINTER COMES. |
Three Minute Poem
from IN HEAT The Alternative New Year’s Day Reading, Café Nico 1996
This is the three minute poem
for the New Year of 1996
where I can not tell you enough about 1995
because there is no time
and if anyone else reads longer
than me they will be on my shit list
for a least another three minutes.
I lost people this year so important to me that
it ruined my fascination with death forever
but what am I without my death?
I will have to recreate myself again
as a living being and rising from the dead
is not a pleasant experience I can assure you
the one constant thing about being alive
is that it's painful
I wasted many hours writing responses to all
the ridiculous NY Press writers who
puked out articles about tattooed people being
morons
(Oh surely that is me - Am I not the Queen
of the Morons?)
and how drug addicts and alcoholics who are
trying to quit are totally stupid
since drug addiction and alcoholism
are such fun things
(Boy I never had so much fun as when my
cocaine psychosis had me seeing weirdoes
with shotguns after me everywhere or when
under heroin hallucination I watched visions
of my dead body trailing brown blood stains
down the drain in my shower stall –
what a blast I can tell you)
I have notebooks full of these drivelish letters
to the editor but did not send any because
I refuse to glorify these so-called writers
with my negative attention
or to do anything to help them get their names
in print ever again
I burned off all my long black hair
trying to look like Marilyn Monroe
hoping to attract someone to me
still believing in the "blondes have more fun" :
commercials even though I was blond before
and knew they don't so
I wound up spending a third of the year
looking like Mr. Clean who looks like
Yul Brynner who has the same birthday as me
And realized I had been twisted by fate
as usual that night I stayed up
rebleaching my hair until it broke off in long
brownish black clumps
and I cried for the old me who would never
never come back again
I stayed clean and sober in 1995, now
an eleven vear
hiatus from my slow suicide
and I have been clean and sober
but I have not been good
and have no intention of ever doing so
For some strange reason I moved
from my tenement horror railroad dump -
Apartment From Hell - that used to have
"out of the blue and into the black"
spray-painted on the gray kitchen wall
I am going out of the black and into the blue
and in my new place
I feel like I'm living in a hotel room
its too clean, too spacious
1996 is here - 12 years post big brother
and I have lost myself completely
oh punk may be dead
oh heavy metal is getting light again
oh where is my watch
I can't find it in this sea of boxes
I am late for everything
I can't tell what time it is
but I do know that three minutes is
approaching quickly
and that time, whatever it may be,
flies faster ever year until
the minutes whirl into eternity and
maybe when you die you don't even notice
because things are speeding by like tigers
chasing their tails so fast they tum to butter
or like this poem that is runny and gooey
because a three minute poem is like a
three minute egg especially
when you can't keep track of time
so why don't you crack the top open
with your spoon
and try to eat this poem
for all I know there
may be a double yolk or a chicken embryo
or a free coupon for
one entrance to the pearly gates
inside
Nico’s Mirror
(for Jan S.)
I would have been a mirror
but no one cared much for the way
they appeared in me
being more interested in re - al - i - tee
than funhouse rubberized contortions
Nico, we lied about the mirror
our bleak souls could not reflect
the images of life or even
comprehend them
we never liked to look at flesh
that wasn’t full of purple holes
signifying recent brushes with oblivion
under the skin
bleeding
or unless softened through pinpoint
pupils no bigger than
a needle tip
You knew too well how I walked
along pursued by tombstones
and other insatiable invitations
to the grave
obsessed with death
ever since the skull of Mr. Sardonicus
leered at me behind my bedroom door
when I was twelve
hideously floating there
every night as soon
as the lights went
out
and how I always tried
to see the spirits that shadowed me
my mortal body never fast enough
to catch them by surprise before they
hid themselves inside the empty air
and how we moved along
in some vague pre-ordained direction
insanely going backward
they trailed unseen behind me
these straggling windblown wraiths
and although they seemed to follow me
it was I who followed them
over the edge infinitely
over we would go
never looking down
while bouncing off the jagged
sides and crashing to the bottom
and never landing
anywhere
Nico, we have smashed to smithereens
but we were not afraid
we didn’t feel a thing
didn’t wince when the sharp point
broke the surface
didn’t feel a thing
numbed with chemicals’
synthetic pleasure
in love with death’s smooth
masquerade
its promises of peace
wrapping us in cool cocoons
cushioning us in the womb again
but always pushing our human forms
closer to the waiting void,
that parasitic shadow flung across
all attempts at reflective activity
tossing its heavy snowflake crystals
in our faces until we
whirl through moonlit
winter in a graveyard on a barren hill
this is how they see themselves when we
become their mirror
Nico, the atomic particles
that once composed you
now permeate this air
your essence in each breath they seize
they suck in deep their aching lungs and
gulp us down in hungry mouthfuls
they are beginning to lose touch
to disintegrate, to disassemble
to suffer wild hallucinations
to razor through their wrists
like we did
entering our trance
the enchantment of our blood
the thick and blackened liquid
drawn through cigarette filter
material and joined with other
delicious substances bubbling
in a bottlecap
Nearing the end like always,
we will surely disappear
some welcoming the long awaited
return to nothingness
some fighting to remain
where mirrors still return their
fierce reflections
I was possessed by the carrion mind,
delighting in my dreams
of precious maggots
when I looked down from
the forehead of some God and
I saw my foolish self
gazing up at ominous
enormous visions of our face
projected on the racing clouds above
while it scrambled blindly toward a cliff
I saw the universe move and
pluck me up just before
another tedious duplication of descent
and furiously hurl my rotting bones
back into the land of the living
so far back that I have lost my way
I tried to follow, Nico,
but can no longer find your bloody trail
other maniacs have replaced me
have filled my works
have filled my boots, so to speak
and filled their veins
but I am free
I tried be a mirror
but I am not
a simple piece of silvered glass,
no longer trapped inside a fabrication
but raw and on my twisted feet
advancing unshielded, pierced
with every sad and blistering
emotion
I no longer follow, Nico,
I will never follow anyone again
Forgetting pain
will doom me to repeat it
so where I go, I’ll bring with me
a memory of you
I’ll conjure visions
of your gory fascination
soft blonde beauty masking icy ugliness
harboring a grotesque demon
identical to mine
that champs and rages
waiting to emerge again
I’ll see myself in Nico’s mirror
a putrefied monstrosity
Forgetting pain
will doom me to repeat it
and so I’ll look again in Nico’s mirror
until I finally see the spirits
hidden inside the
empty air
I Was Never Female Before
I was never female before
and I have lived in many forms
my earliest memories are
those of an ancient turtle
in a swamp snapping my
jaws at giant buzzing dragonflies
diving deep toward underwater
caves at the sight of threatening
shadows of leathery wings
blotting out the light
I still have my shell
always bring with you
the most useful thing
I was a lizard too
a young lizard who wasn't
fast enough
Of all things I love to fly
The sight and sound of
feathers and wings
reminds me that
as a bird I was always male
and as a turtle and a lizard
I never learned the lessons
never wanted to
Raven Eagle Crow
Even in human form
an Egyptian astrologer
disguised as a woman
for safety's sake
I cared for nothing but study
I dreamed of learning the
secrets of the stars
I knew more then
than I will ever
know again
I learned why the brain is
left unused
in South America I was
half man half woman
but half of a thing
never quite equals the whole
I knew how to speak with
spirits
no stronger magic existed
than potions concocted in
my prehistoric turtle shell
attracting the essence
of both risen and fallen angels
I was dancing around a fire
when I first dreamed the
smashing orb of sun
rushing at the earth in
fiery anger
falling from the sky
with all the power of
a hungry bird of prey
It glowed and spun
intent on burning
I felt the heat
and awoke to
embers in the fire
and a feather
dead center
my wolf life was a hard one
during the time
of eroding wilderness
and disappearing forests
in the West
Native Americans were taken to
exist in squalor on the Reservation
I hid by day and watched
the invasion but could never
control my genetic urge
to worship the silver moon
I was beautiful howling
when a rifle blast cut off
my song
death came in blood draining
from matted red fur
panting I escaped the lifeless
carcass and saw its open
yellow eyes
glad to have died before
the hunter came to prod old
enemy wolf with the butt
of his gun
I reappeared in Europe as an
an artist
painting all the things
I had seen
until visions of the turtle
shaman wolf drove me crazy and
I committed suicide
I committed suicide
and soared off into Eagle
gliding cool wind currents
turning and swooping on
expansive wings
master of all below
tempted to fly straight into
the orange glow
and melt
descending in a rush of flapping
grabbing a small furry creature
in my steel vice talons
ripping into its flesh high
on a bare mountain crag
I miss the kill
and the suicide
and the sun coming down
baptizing my magic
I was a crow on
Connecticut Hill
a pet without a cage
I would perch upon
the large fingers of a man
who became my father
when I was born a female
when I lived this life as
female
learning lessons
of blood
of loneliness
of prejudice
of poverty
of escapism without suicide
of giving life
learning lessons I never
wanted to know
my father was nicer to me
when I was a crow
female is a harder thing
than wolf facing civilization
even with the feather
from the center of the fire
even with a
prehistoric turtle shell
from IN HEAT The Alternative New Year’s Day Reading, Café Nico 1996
This is the three minute poem
for the New Year of 1996
where I can not tell you enough about 1995
because there is no time
and if anyone else reads longer
than me they will be on my shit list
for a least another three minutes.
I lost people this year so important to me that
it ruined my fascination with death forever
but what am I without my death?
I will have to recreate myself again
as a living being and rising from the dead
is not a pleasant experience I can assure you
the one constant thing about being alive
is that it's painful
I wasted many hours writing responses to all
the ridiculous NY Press writers who
puked out articles about tattooed people being
morons
(Oh surely that is me - Am I not the Queen
of the Morons?)
and how drug addicts and alcoholics who are
trying to quit are totally stupid
since drug addiction and alcoholism
are such fun things
(Boy I never had so much fun as when my
cocaine psychosis had me seeing weirdoes
with shotguns after me everywhere or when
under heroin hallucination I watched visions
of my dead body trailing brown blood stains
down the drain in my shower stall –
what a blast I can tell you)
I have notebooks full of these drivelish letters
to the editor but did not send any because
I refuse to glorify these so-called writers
with my negative attention
or to do anything to help them get their names
in print ever again
I burned off all my long black hair
trying to look like Marilyn Monroe
hoping to attract someone to me
still believing in the "blondes have more fun" :
commercials even though I was blond before
and knew they don't so
I wound up spending a third of the year
looking like Mr. Clean who looks like
Yul Brynner who has the same birthday as me
And realized I had been twisted by fate
as usual that night I stayed up
rebleaching my hair until it broke off in long
brownish black clumps
and I cried for the old me who would never
never come back again
I stayed clean and sober in 1995, now
an eleven vear
hiatus from my slow suicide
and I have been clean and sober
but I have not been good
and have no intention of ever doing so
For some strange reason I moved
from my tenement horror railroad dump -
Apartment From Hell - that used to have
"out of the blue and into the black"
spray-painted on the gray kitchen wall
I am going out of the black and into the blue
and in my new place
I feel like I'm living in a hotel room
its too clean, too spacious
1996 is here - 12 years post big brother
and I have lost myself completely
oh punk may be dead
oh heavy metal is getting light again
oh where is my watch
I can't find it in this sea of boxes
I am late for everything
I can't tell what time it is
but I do know that three minutes is
approaching quickly
and that time, whatever it may be,
flies faster ever year until
the minutes whirl into eternity and
maybe when you die you don't even notice
because things are speeding by like tigers
chasing their tails so fast they tum to butter
or like this poem that is runny and gooey
because a three minute poem is like a
three minute egg especially
when you can't keep track of time
so why don't you crack the top open
with your spoon
and try to eat this poem
for all I know there
may be a double yolk or a chicken embryo
or a free coupon for
one entrance to the pearly gates
inside
Nico’s Mirror
(for Jan S.)
I would have been a mirror
but no one cared much for the way
they appeared in me
being more interested in re - al - i - tee
than funhouse rubberized contortions
Nico, we lied about the mirror
our bleak souls could not reflect
the images of life or even
comprehend them
we never liked to look at flesh
that wasn’t full of purple holes
signifying recent brushes with oblivion
under the skin
bleeding
or unless softened through pinpoint
pupils no bigger than
a needle tip
You knew too well how I walked
along pursued by tombstones
and other insatiable invitations
to the grave
obsessed with death
ever since the skull of Mr. Sardonicus
leered at me behind my bedroom door
when I was twelve
hideously floating there
every night as soon
as the lights went
out
and how I always tried
to see the spirits that shadowed me
my mortal body never fast enough
to catch them by surprise before they
hid themselves inside the empty air
and how we moved along
in some vague pre-ordained direction
insanely going backward
they trailed unseen behind me
these straggling windblown wraiths
and although they seemed to follow me
it was I who followed them
over the edge infinitely
over we would go
never looking down
while bouncing off the jagged
sides and crashing to the bottom
and never landing
anywhere
Nico, we have smashed to smithereens
but we were not afraid
we didn’t feel a thing
didn’t wince when the sharp point
broke the surface
didn’t feel a thing
numbed with chemicals’
synthetic pleasure
in love with death’s smooth
masquerade
its promises of peace
wrapping us in cool cocoons
cushioning us in the womb again
but always pushing our human forms
closer to the waiting void,
that parasitic shadow flung across
all attempts at reflective activity
tossing its heavy snowflake crystals
in our faces until we
whirl through moonlit
winter in a graveyard on a barren hill
this is how they see themselves when we
become their mirror
Nico, the atomic particles
that once composed you
now permeate this air
your essence in each breath they seize
they suck in deep their aching lungs and
gulp us down in hungry mouthfuls
they are beginning to lose touch
to disintegrate, to disassemble
to suffer wild hallucinations
to razor through their wrists
like we did
entering our trance
the enchantment of our blood
the thick and blackened liquid
drawn through cigarette filter
material and joined with other
delicious substances bubbling
in a bottlecap
Nearing the end like always,
we will surely disappear
some welcoming the long awaited
return to nothingness
some fighting to remain
where mirrors still return their
fierce reflections
I was possessed by the carrion mind,
delighting in my dreams
of precious maggots
when I looked down from
the forehead of some God and
I saw my foolish self
gazing up at ominous
enormous visions of our face
projected on the racing clouds above
while it scrambled blindly toward a cliff
I saw the universe move and
pluck me up just before
another tedious duplication of descent
and furiously hurl my rotting bones
back into the land of the living
so far back that I have lost my way
I tried to follow, Nico,
but can no longer find your bloody trail
other maniacs have replaced me
have filled my works
have filled my boots, so to speak
and filled their veins
but I am free
I tried be a mirror
but I am not
a simple piece of silvered glass,
no longer trapped inside a fabrication
but raw and on my twisted feet
advancing unshielded, pierced
with every sad and blistering
emotion
I no longer follow, Nico,
I will never follow anyone again
Forgetting pain
will doom me to repeat it
so where I go, I’ll bring with me
a memory of you
I’ll conjure visions
of your gory fascination
soft blonde beauty masking icy ugliness
harboring a grotesque demon
identical to mine
that champs and rages
waiting to emerge again
I’ll see myself in Nico’s mirror
a putrefied monstrosity
Forgetting pain
will doom me to repeat it
and so I’ll look again in Nico’s mirror
until I finally see the spirits
hidden inside the
empty air
I Was Never Female Before
I was never female before
and I have lived in many forms
my earliest memories are
those of an ancient turtle
in a swamp snapping my
jaws at giant buzzing dragonflies
diving deep toward underwater
caves at the sight of threatening
shadows of leathery wings
blotting out the light
I still have my shell
always bring with you
the most useful thing
I was a lizard too
a young lizard who wasn't
fast enough
Of all things I love to fly
The sight and sound of
feathers and wings
reminds me that
as a bird I was always male
and as a turtle and a lizard
I never learned the lessons
never wanted to
Raven Eagle Crow
Even in human form
an Egyptian astrologer
disguised as a woman
for safety's sake
I cared for nothing but study
I dreamed of learning the
secrets of the stars
I knew more then
than I will ever
know again
I learned why the brain is
left unused
in South America I was
half man half woman
but half of a thing
never quite equals the whole
I knew how to speak with
spirits
no stronger magic existed
than potions concocted in
my prehistoric turtle shell
attracting the essence
of both risen and fallen angels
I was dancing around a fire
when I first dreamed the
smashing orb of sun
rushing at the earth in
fiery anger
falling from the sky
with all the power of
a hungry bird of prey
It glowed and spun
intent on burning
I felt the heat
and awoke to
embers in the fire
and a feather
dead center
my wolf life was a hard one
during the time
of eroding wilderness
and disappearing forests
in the West
Native Americans were taken to
exist in squalor on the Reservation
I hid by day and watched
the invasion but could never
control my genetic urge
to worship the silver moon
I was beautiful howling
when a rifle blast cut off
my song
death came in blood draining
from matted red fur
panting I escaped the lifeless
carcass and saw its open
yellow eyes
glad to have died before
the hunter came to prod old
enemy wolf with the butt
of his gun
I reappeared in Europe as an
an artist
painting all the things
I had seen
until visions of the turtle
shaman wolf drove me crazy and
I committed suicide
I committed suicide
and soared off into Eagle
gliding cool wind currents
turning and swooping on
expansive wings
master of all below
tempted to fly straight into
the orange glow
and melt
descending in a rush of flapping
grabbing a small furry creature
in my steel vice talons
ripping into its flesh high
on a bare mountain crag
I miss the kill
and the suicide
and the sun coming down
baptizing my magic
I was a crow on
Connecticut Hill
a pet without a cage
I would perch upon
the large fingers of a man
who became my father
when I was born a female
when I lived this life as
female
learning lessons
of blood
of loneliness
of prejudice
of poverty
of escapism without suicide
of giving life
learning lessons I never
wanted to know
my father was nicer to me
when I was a crow
female is a harder thing
than wolf facing civilization
even with the feather
from the center of the fire
even with a
prehistoric turtle shell