"My barn having burnt down, I could now see the moon"
We are all crazy
A lot or just a bit.
We are all crazy
Some just better
at hiding it.
What is the difference
between the thought
and the act?
What is the difference
between the idea
and the fact?
We are all crazy
A lot or just a bit.
Most just lost
never even know it.
There is one thing
only you and
your mother know.
The goal of life is
to find this
and then to cling to it
as long as possible.
The rest of life but
events, along the road
to knowledge of what
is shared with our mother.
There is always something hidden.
To live – try and find it.
I am hot
I turn on the air conditioner.
I am thirsty
I ring room service.
I am tired
I fall onto a soft bed.
I am bored
I turn on the TV.
I am upset
I run a hot bath.
Who or what can pinch me
so I know I’m alive?
She still believes in love
for she is young
and too, carries the white
all women must:
Never having asked
How the rabbit got in the hat.
Her stories all end
in happily ever after
and the only pain she knows
comes in the remembrance
of once upon a time
the weeds of her imagination.
And I
always calling
a spade a spade
(because I’m afraid),
will not tell her
about the bodies
I’ve carried
stuffed in bags,
their eyes reminding me
of the marbles
as a youngster
I once desired and thumbed,
their stiff limbs
tangled like
gathered forest undergrowith
waiting for the match.
I will not tell her
how the sound
of a smashed infant’s skull
cracks in much the same way
as her knuckles do
and that the smell
of burnt flesh
can too be perfume.
No, not tonight anyways.
Her unwrinkled skin
a canvas yet painted
by these hands so human
they’ve forgotten
how many they’ve hung
condemned or caressed.
I will let this grass
always believe it will
be green
and let her eyes light
fires to lead me away
from myself.
Atleast for tonight.
I stuff the rabbits
back into my hat
and try to smooth
my spoilt skin
with this tongue
that is always
in search of soup.
Living can’t wait.
There are always tomorrows for the truth.
Some nights I think
“what’s the use of it”
console myself with
the thought that somehow
all this shit
sickness, sex and song
does matter
and that I’ll have
a few words cut from
this cardboard life
to show for it.
then the morning
and I read the newspaper
about a man killed
from debris
falling from the heavens,
of 10,000 Bangladeshi’s
now bloated carcasses
courtesy of a monsoon
or
of a child
tossed from an overpass
onto the freeway below.
and it is all I can do
to get
one foot to follow the other
and hide my tears
from a god undeserving
as those silly questions
I ask myself
some nights.
I overheard some anthropologists say
(they said they didn’t mind)
that female chimpanzees could not
achieve orgasm
even if they did it
missionary position – belly up.
That said, I thought
I’d go to Africa
and find a beauty myself,
swinging from tree to tree;
free of life’s rhetoric,
never having heard of Germaine Greer,
unknowledgeable about the finer details
of her anatomy.
I’d bring her – back to them
and make a monkey of them all.
You said that our love
Should be honest as a bed,
Yes, that is what you said!
I said that our love
Should be noisy as a bed,
Yes, that is what I said!
Now can our bed be both
Full of honesty and of noise?
Yes, we said, such is the product of the difference
Between girls and boys.
– to Walt
Grass, O little blade of grass
How is it that you sit so still
Through summer’s heat,
Through winter’s fury?
To I, it is quite a feat
That you are never in a hurry.
Often I have wondered
How you came to be – right there.
Often I have wondered
Why it is you are anywhere,
So silent do you pass through life.
I don’t need to know
The categorical imperative
Nor understand completely
The holy trinity.
I need not know the reason why
It all began
Nor how come with firy splash
It will end.
I only long to know
Of your sweet solitude,
You little blade of grass.
Then,
Contented I will be
To sleep with questions
In this house of broken glass.
More than 40 years
have spun by me like
a drunk hurricane.
I have spent my life
going here, doing there
a homeless mind.
Now, I ache for
my land,
the unswum lakes and
fields of pine.
Two oceans away
gray hairs sprout on
my inflated head
the travels only kept
me dizzy, busy.
I skipped between continents,
got As and gave As.
Spoke to applauding audiences
and slept in Hyatts on satin sheets.
What for?
Better I stayed home
and chopped wood.
(to the 6 billion without AIDS)
If I were the Messiah,
I would walk the streets
Sandled, bearded, thin as they
Who hiding in the dark spaces,
Dispirited and deserted
Await the gathering light.
I would find these,
The last of this world
And with my warm touch
I would offer them immunity
From the harsh glare of the masses.
I would not sit in my white house
With one hand waving
My clitoral smelling finger,
The other hand
Wiping, white knuckled
My plastic wrapped toilet seat.
I understand the apprehension.
Yahweh still speaks to us.
Hide your children, your first born!
Look above!
The sky is black with locusts, flies and frogs.
The rumors persist;
Who now is poisoning our wells?
The lepers are marching on the town.
Our neighbors are kissing Lucifer’s white buns.
Yes. Fear, death, retribution —
They plague us,
But the rats know the truth.
So now we lock our beroom doors and condemn.
Tiptoing around in our smoking jackets
We kneel down and scour the carpet
In search of a stone to cast.
But we find no stone,
Only our own dirt and the message that
“We are all guilty.”
Science cannot cure us of this.
It cannot come to our aid.
Forgiveness is the only serum,
Love the only needle.
Come walk the streets with me.