Ah! The ravages of age

The turning of a page

by a hand

we know not

 

“In the midst of great love

everything is conceived

and everything is meaningless — but very holy.”

— Jaroslav Iwaszkewicz, Song for a dead woman

 

1

I love you madly

like a deer

jumps in the forest

filled with the strength of spring

and the crazy always

of the sun’s invisible haze

cursing through life, the incredible maze

lost we are I say …..

 

I love you madly

a brick through a window

a madman ringing bells

a foam at the mouth angel

wandering, singing, through many hells.

 

I love you madly

idea and essence, a fire unlit

waiting for the match

as a writer waits

a white page perfect as it sits

and others gather moss

the velour of their minds.

 

I love you madly

against the dead flotsdam

this unromantic age.

I love you madly

a monkey in a cage

squealing the jungle’s fear

the beast in man so near!

 

I love you madly

as all love must

love now, forever, beyond

the graveyard’s honest trust.

 

I love you madly

a ghost embracing your pale skin

fearless, floating beside you

an eternal moment, forever to begin.

 

I love you madly

despite the aloneness heavy

we carry in our bones

the sadness, I frenzied poet

in silence bleed alone.

 

I love you madly

twisted by rage, angry at mediocrity

that dares to step before you

monied, gathering only wage.

 

I love you madly

a tremor through these bones

it dances with the time

that would make them old.

 

I love you madly

in a heightened and bloated way

sure, unmoving rock

I slowly sway

and spread the world, the word

the news, the necessity of my craze.

 

I love you madly like a tear

so truly, gravitas

slides down the face

swiped by hand, licked

returning,

it nurtures without a trace.

 

I love you madly as a cloud

so lightly fills the sky

image after image it turns

never asking, needing a why.

 

I love you madly

a sound whispered passionately in the ear

a sign, a secret

a world our own we only hear.

 

2.

Miluju te k zblazneni

here in this square of stone

cold empathy

the huss of hawkers gutting

a colder German to see their wares,

old buildings with secrets offering frigid stares.

I love you with the crazed humanity

that fills this square’s past —

the butchery the clock has seen

I give you to cast

a spell so the future may be.

Milute se pravdy kazdemu prejte

these words cry out behind so it may.

I do and for you forever sway

singing a song …… I love you madly.

I love you madly

lost in the crowd.

I love you madly

more, more, all that I’m allowed.

I love you madly

deep into the heart’s hurried blood

turning I turn

everywhere I hear you hum

the song that sprites your eyes

gives me madness, a thousand sighs.

I love you madly

to death and beyond

in love with you, I’m fire

and fire is / was the first dawn.

I love you madly

though you’ll never know enough

how this world so strange,

gold everything I touch

with love of you so much

surreal, a beggar’s magical crutch.

Miluju te k zblazneni

through the few, the much, the any

the numbers this age only believes

though I believe the one is the many.

I love you madly

blistered lips, tattered clothes I am

the infernal greets the eternal

I run and hold up the flaying emblem of love

I am I scream, I am.

3.

Who are you I madly love?

Is it qualities alone

that push you above

the everyday lust, the ashes waiting to be

the mindless flesh begetting so slovenly?

No. No qualities alone do you possess.

None greets my grazing eye

but alone, purpose you hold

and stretch it over me to hide

as you build the future, a lifetime wide.

You are a person, but most, idea.

Complete,

an image gracing the picture of life

the ending, unknowing death we fear

as the pigeons fly away

— where I ask, where come night do they stay?

Young love I’ve built this madness upon

the uselessness of all

down onto I fall,

it is all done crazed in your name.

What’s absurd I’ve seen

cowering  before you as you played

the game all beauty must

a game of being, collected shining dust.

You are my shadow

every sin, every forget.

I rage and rage each day

each day, I howl at the sunset

and pray for more following.

Love, I love you madly

gladly, I’d hold up this heavy earth

just so you could live its meager seconds

and give, all else, a drop of worth.

Love don’t forget my mad howl

knocking down as I do

wall after wall,

just to let this too sane, same world

know the praise I pray for, for after all

you are my love for which I fall

and love madly here in the dream

the read I’ve hinted in this scrawl

that tells only I love you madly

whatever may befall

the deer that leaps past spring’s

green, growing sprawl.

 –  May 24 1997, 7pm

    Stare Namesti, Prague

Love as a tag alder

spreads free.

God’s fingers

stretching for

the heat of sun

or flesh.

The pulse of all existence

and

the hidden wilderness in all.

– a tribute to an old poet from one getting old

 

I have drunk in

the beauty

that was in

your fridge

 

and which

you were probably

keeping

for yourself.

 

Forgive me.

It was divine.

So pure

and so cold.

Forgive me.

I am getting old.

She said
forcefully, unliquor led
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in your bed!”
to which
I can attest
she never was
though my bed’s eternal springs
are now a little spread
by the life, she lives, as she does.

A Writer’s Place

“The swan sings on the lake of the mind”
– the , Silver Swan, Kenneth Rexroth

Seeing a man
in the distance
I knew
it must be you, only you
that Whitmanesque
everyman
so rarely seen on these
senseless streets.

You walked with a rhythm,
a side to side waddle of
a man smoothed – no soothed
by years of mindful contemplation,
waves rubbing, rolling, refinding rock.

You, with the blue jeans –
the scream of the common
and safari hat
cocked on one side
so you the hunter
melding meaning and moments
could hear the hammering
hearts of your everyday prey
so often seen
on these sacredless streets.

So many buzzed around you
in busyness
lost in thoughts of
hot dogs, hard ons, haftos
unaware of you
someone who has achieved
the unwritten writer’s aim –
absorption into the word
heard but healthily unheralded.

What if
you were Hulk Hogan
I thought?
How the street would hum for days
after your handsomeness
had passed, this way (away?)
Yet, I see you
Josef
caught in that
circuitous virtuouso
that only we know about
yet, unable to shout –
we walk the streets
with our masks metted on.

Seeing you
walking so sure
among us,
who suffer surely
yet so sillily (and willingly),
I saw you
measuring our merriment
in song
meters of mediocrity
pulling you along
into our midst
so obscurely (and surely).

I thought to ask you
about this or that,
let your smooth finish
shine upon me –
but thought better
as I watched you
assuredly deposit a letter
into the mouth of a mailbox.

You have other things in mind.

A cold pivo perhaps
(or an old love lapsed)?
To run home and
like a person who
having seen a U.F.O.
tries to live with it
the knowledge of another world
maybe
more important than our own
while the bread and circuses
keep things going around
keep lifting up the frowns
as some as yet unknown gladiator
eats crumbling, unleavened bread
and awaits his death
in the dark caverns
below the merry meant.

(P.S.) Didn’t Kurtz say (or sing)
“Exterminate the brutes”?
I think of all this
upon seeing you.

 

I resolve

to wear more purple

and not to pull up my socks

should they fall

to eat more strawberries

in the sun, one after one.

 

I resolve

to look more closely,

at the smaller things

buttons, spiders, dandelion dust, wedding rings

to sit more on swings.

 

I resolve

to stay longer in bed awake

and think and dream

about a boat I want but

will never make.

 

I resolve

to kiss my gal a little longer

to make love stronger

more often pull her in

to always, in all things, in spirit

begin, being …..

 

I resolve

to play with children,

like one of them

and collect fire trucks

and climb trees

and get my knees green again.

 

I resolve

to tell my mother I love her

a thousand times, all at once

and tell her she did well

thought all can so very well tell.

 

I resolve

to think of the good every day

and in suffering

know what I may

not be otherwise

each of us a crooked surprise.

 

I resolve

to look in that little fishes eye

the next time she’s hooked

to ask for more soup

and look where others haven’t looked.

 

I resolve

to look up more skirts

to sword fight with willow sticks

to spread my peanut butter just a little more thick

to burn, forget, the length of my wet wick.

 

I resolve

to lick my dog back

and to take a crack

at what I’ve never dreamed

to believe and pass by

all things that I’ve only seemed.

 

I resolve

to have my cake and eat it too

but if others need

bread ‘ll have to do

to do what needs be done

even if they don’t see the good.

 

I resolve

to buy myself more flowers

and to pick more wild ones

– the scraggly beauty of my love’s

luscious hair

to sit by streams

waiting for the gull on the rock

fishing

to be there.

 

I resolve

to listen to more of life’s honest

on and off, up and down

to lose myself in rhythm

and in that strange way

be found.

 

I resolve

to suck longer on fresh peaches

to not see the ugliness in leeches

to go wherever my will reaches

and getting there

eat my bread in joy,

drink my wine in peace

for this day will never

come again

just like this new year

will never ask when.

 

Scraggly and scowling

like a tree

caught on the rock,

this natural

biblical

self-certain

newfie of a man,

deserves at least a few

words in confirmation

of his swaggering work of art

of his staggering new found “ness”, torn apart,

as he screams out his speech,

spitting and screech laced,

 

“Get ya selves out of me fuckin’ face!!!!”