What do any of us leave when
we leave this world except a
blemish, that is, a smear on the face
of Time that may appear further along
in the sphere of someone else who recalls
its authenticity in the form of say a word, an
image, a remark, a posture of body that enters
likely by Chance thru a corridor of Memory in
association with other factors or none
and then passes on again without us really
having had anything to do with it at all? We live on
despite ourselves in pieces and our fame,
justified or not, prevails.
Tag: author
A ROOM
When I speak of my heart
I describe a
Factory after hours. Light from
Half-open windows
Illuminates the dust
On the machinery
and faces, like rags,
lay scattered throughout,
ghosts of family, friends, lovers,
enemies.
Each one is given is their due
and passed over.
In this room, the temperature
Remains tepid, static.
A placid, windless vacuum occupies
The air.
Is this a comfort zone or a cell on
Death row?
Is it the bottom of the night where
We hide from blood, from fire, an
Asylum from the living
Where
We are beside ourselves or behind,
in a perpetual, pervasive
Shadow land
When
There are wars to be fought,
Children to be protected,
Skin to be investigated
All outside the
purview of this room.
Yes, outside, far away,
Nearly nonexistent.
I can see it all too clearly.
My heart is a room.
I have no use for certain rooms.
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MY PINK IN RECLINE
I am the sexy beast,
a sad clown
facing
the constant wall
of repetitive repetition.
I’m a house in Missoula Montana
broken inside
my pink in recline.
My mailbox is clogged,
My friends are nowhere to be found.
What to wear to my tragedy?
The young girl’s cheek is hot,
I can’t even find her jacket in my closet,
I thought the worst, that I would forget it.
Skull folks always fear public perception,
I donate earplugs, the virginal haircut to them.
Horizontal hunters number their disappointments,
Under the lamp, a matchbook coffin.
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THE SKY ANNOUNCES
The pain caves his brain
Like fast anxious fire
As
Outside,
The afternoon sun shines .
Nothing particularly untoward
reported . Only
A sense of the already been ,
The old islands of thought
Punctuated by angry siren swells,
stick figures and
Sweating somersaults of gloom…
But
There is a place and
There is a way that is
Better than possibility, the far-away sky announces
To this wreck it addresses
Whose head’s in the closet
In search for a bonnet
And a perfect drink.
The light moves fractionally (his head now out for a peek)
Yes, movement opens to a room in his parched
Brain, the pain subsides fractionally, and he hides for a beat
In a synapse of reprieve between his words.
‘Reshape this worldview ,’ the sky announces:
‘All is empty argument,’
Blinks the blue cool eye.
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AUTUMNAL BLUES
And, yes
Around us everywhere
The golden note
Autumnal glory, as you please,
Messaging the possibility
That ease may arrive
All dressed up as Sunday.
I lay in wait for Godot
With the same stumbling quality
With no ideology
No compass, no certainty,
All the spiderwebs that lead me here
That left me here bereft
The question marks looming
The leaves used up
The casual way they spread.
Perhaps I am dead
Like them
I had a home once
Where I belonged,
Now on my own I beg
Something miraculous must come
Yes, like the glory around us suggests
We are something other than
Appearance dictates
And presses so hard against
The thin film to
Evanescence and escape
Only motion and peace
And no suffering in the end
There is so much time to contend
And I am so tired of calling for
Something
Something
I don’t even know
What anymore.
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BECOMING
Sleepy in the afternoon,
sunshine bleeds thru my high windows.
Thank you for the transfusion this morning,
the digital dots that you connected,
as I sat by baffled by your sharp eye.
I felt like a statue (if statues could feel)
next to you and I was somewhat comfortable
with it. What is it about me? Have I become
totally redundant with age? Girls look at me now
with smiles that feel like charity, and I am
grateful for it. I thank everyone of them profusely.
Was it the aged Peter O’Toole who in a film begged
a girl for permission to sniff behind her ear?
I laughed then, but now I don’t! On the way out
modesty becomes us. It’s really all we have.
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CRACKS
Between the cracks I live
In a world between worlds
In the space between words
Like a twilight dance
A summer romance
A part-time dude
Someone who knew
The secret clue
That slipped away
Between the cracks
In memory in fact
It is what it is
It was it will be
An encompassing view
Both eyes well lit
On the party prize
That says we never die
Don’t try don’t stress
It’s here in nothingness
Between the cracks
Between the acts
Below the world
In flesh and blood
In skylight swoop
Beyond despair
Here and there
And everywhere
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HOW IT HAPPENED
We sit in opposition
Like cars gearing up for a
Game of chicken.
The wind blusters in your
Eyes, your piano voice comes
In crystals. I feel the years
Between us that have
Fallen off, revealing a hard
Skeleton of love in place.
But
How we try each
Other for fault! Your vanity,
my hands cut off at
The wrist. I have no
Stomach to pick through
These remains again or retrace
Plot points on the map
To here. I see it as a
Happy accident that
We have survived
Together at all,
Certainly not any of my
Doing. Was it the god
Of inertia who intervened,
limited horizons pressing
Against motion?
Were we not brave enough,
and if so,
Has it not taken us down
A step?
Or
Was it something else entirely,
A flame of recognition
That held a mutual gaze
And burned everything else
Away?
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TRANSACTION
You like the old coins
I drag from my pockets. You
say they are worth something
to you. Here.You have them.
They are worth more than
they were a moment ago.
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OLD HOLE NEW LIFE
There is an old hole on the other side of the rainbow
that you drop into
with all your dreams
and schemes and successes
shovelled away
to be consumed drastically
in the intestines of an anonymous animal
on the way to getting born again
into
your new old predicament.
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THE HORIZONTALIST
Lies flat or lays flat
Not a living thing on his mind.
Up or down like a pancake.
Down is better,
Down –
A tunnel into disappearance,
Space under the floor of the pillow,
Unlinked widespread
Carpets of form.
Practice sleep,
The one consolation.
Deep.
Neither hot nor cold
The neutral state
No body no taste.
Soundless music.
Up is different.
The sky’s the limit
A network of pinpoints,
Thought smudges
And crossed out plans,
Inhalations and breathed out
Despair.
Was she there?
Who was she?
Then spirals occur
And
Her face again becomes a blur.
Everything connected,
Everything infected with her.
Your head sits on a rock
And you’re tired.
You’re tired
But you don’t turn over.
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SKELETONS
Skeletons don’t have problems. I always knew this, so I joined Weight Watchers in order to lose all the weight I needed to in order to become one. It took me 3 years, during which I refused to eat anything heavier than a cracker, and getting so thin my friends and family deserted me, claiming I was less than the person they used to know. But I persisted, and one day I was on my exercise regime jogging along the sidewalk when an enthusiastic gust of wind pushed me up onto a tree branch. Nobody could see me up there at all, and I had to shout at some people to get me down, which caused them to surmise there was a ghost in their midst. Finally I died a pathetic death from a disease I cannot pronounce. I am now a skeleton in the dark with no problems, but with no fun weekends either.
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MY LOBOTOMY
Between the words there is rest.
Between the blizzard and the trunk full
Of rats
I pause.
Before a crown of stars,
The afternoon glorifications.
Yesterday my brain was successfully removed
Under fluorescent duress
Inside the white room
By busy gowned chaperones
Whistling as they worked.
Ten thousand glasses of water I ingested
At particular intervals between
bouts of spittoon mouth and
Terrible outcries:
For revenge.
For mercy.
All of the procedures they followed
Scrupulously
No doubt.
My head now feels as slippery
As an olive.
So please,
Thank the team for me.
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THE CHILD DEPRIVED
The child sees the back of her moving away from him across the room, for no reason to him, the door opens and she disappears. She is no more. But he remains on his hands and knees handling the glittering objects on the floor, which lay scattered about and draw him in; but soon somewhat less so, and the space around him turns white. A knot inside of him tightens, and a groan explodes at his chest, lengthening upward and eventually escaping his throat. It is a burst of yearning that is immediately relieved with tears, which spill until he tires. Worlds pass, and nothing. There once was a giantess that loomed and encompassed him with her soft folds. Everything was absorbed into her. She danced and the movement pleased him. He was not alone. He is alone now. This realization sends a swarm of black-winged creatures fluttering through him that bend his vision outward. The outside smiles crookedly back at him. Nowhere is safe. The child will continue. He may survive, though most likely, only part of him.
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THE OUTSIDE
The bleeding words of our fathers intersect the exigencies of the moment, as we keep tripping over ourselves in the seasickness world of every day. The great going forward into the outside, the dust of light, chimera and the arid spaces, the distant mirages, meetings and misunderstandings, missteps and footprints, reverberations and regrets, glancing against our will into rear-view mirrors, the images fading though not quite disappearing completely. Everything is outside, separate, set against us, a cause for mastery or evasion, the clock ticking constantly in our sleep, while what arises unbidden from the seabed is no more than random explosions, the ramblings of a lunatic machine. Questions? We do not even know what to ask anymore. All of the wrong questions have been answered wrongly, all of the right questions have never been answered. And nobody wants to be the last person standing. There is no inner world anymore, nowhere to get lost, to hide, only surfaces on screens that blip endlessly, idiotically, providing false information and dangerous messages. We may well all end up, just go out muttering inanities to our pretend friends. All this is played out against the canvas of the new normal, just another day in a fresh century, which is billed as for the best and guaranteed to please. Of course, the past still has its sway. The primitive appetites and ferocious outcries, DNA that rings sharply from its origins. The ape and the robot have been caught in an embrace. We can all live this, grotesquely replacing defective organs, staying young and void separately. This is the dream. This is the end game in the nightmare that won’t end. The truth is nobody really thinks it will come to this. It is too much for the brain to fathom. Thus it is denied as we fall deeper into darkness. In fact, it is only in the darkness where it can be tolerated at all. Nobody wants to spotlight the monstrosity, the gigantic elephant in the room, who may one day remember who he is. When one does not recognize inner space, all things become a commodity and all beings become possessions, alien to one another. It is not important to even try to understand. And if this leaves a vacuum, it is filled with pieces of death, so that we are stiffened in frozen blood and indigestible ideologies. To conquer death we must first die inside. In order to survive the prevalent mindscape, we must first turn ourselves into mobile corpses in lockstep toward the vague horizon.
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NO EXIT
Bitterness,
I have come to know you well.
I drink you every morning
as my coffee,
which is such a soothing mix
of warmth and sweetness tinged
With acid.
It asks:
What is it like to kill,
What would it be like?
Would it assuage the pain,
the nagging discontent
I carry as an invalid on my back?
Whom to bestow it on?
No one special,
only the act,
lancing the pimple, so to speak,
and the spray of white goo
on the mirror would suffice,
like my mother demolishing
my teenage acne,
with her scent nearby.
Is that a recipe for relief,
for the bitterness
that lives in my gums,
jaws clenched and ready?
You may see it in the lips
Downturned, sullen,
a picture of contained rage
as a memory passes,
a regret perhaps.
Yet I do not know why
I carry such poisons. I know
all things are born to suffer,
to decay and die.
Does a flower know bitterness?
I am not above a flower,
only another evanescent thing
I encounter in the mirror.
But the rancour is static,
metallic, situated at the
bottom, a constant irritant,
the bullet that does not fire,
that has no focus, no target.
I have no real enemies, nobody
I harbour hatred for. I rarely hate people,
only myself on an occasional basis.
And why? I find no answer, I rather
appreciate me. Origins? I know this: I felt
it as a child when I knew nothing
about the past. Perhaps I inhaled
a generic truth somewhere along the line
that there is no Justice. Anywhere for anything,
and so we are stuck (I am not the only one)
in a perpetual state of futility, a swamp of impotence
that grates and itches and cannot really be relieved.
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HAPPINESS (inspired by Donovan)
Happiness runs
Happiness runs on a magical ocean
Happiness runs on a mystical beach
Happiness runs thru you
And it runs thru me
It is freedom from
It is freedom to
All you’ve ever wanted
You have for free
See the balloons leaving now
The sky’s in place
With no specific destination
No reason for haste
We become suspended
In a private garden of space
Time has gone now
Gloom has disappeared
It is a world of appearances
As light as air
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I SEE ME YOU SEE ME
I am this to me. I am that to you. This is the real me because I know myself better than you know me. I have spent longer with myself than you have spent with me and I know me at a deeper level than you know me. This this is me, this I is not. This I is merely an observer, just as you are an observer of that. When you tell I that this is that, I don’t understand you because I never see that when I am looking at me. I only see this. It is not that I don’t want to see that. It is not that my mirror is broken, it is only that I don’t see it. Don’t you see this? How can you show me that that is me? You define that and then expect I to see it but you see me thru eyes that are not innocent. Your eyes want to see me like that, they need that. You see me with eyes that are less than honest, at least less honest than my eyes because I don’t need to see me like this. I don’t have a problem with it. At least I don’t have as much of a problem with it as you do. I could easily see me as that if I could see it. But you could not see me as this even if you could see it. Why I say that is because you have more to lose by seeing me like this than I have to lose by seeing me like that. I may have something to lose as well but I don’t mind losing as much as you do. It wouldn’t bother me to lose if I could see it your way. But I can’t so I won’t. What I want is for you to see me like I see me. That would make I happy. Then I would feel good about me and about you. Understand me. See me correctly. Don’t lie. Be honest. I don’t want you to see it my way just to please I. It would please I only if you could really see me this way.
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MANSON’S MUSIC
I live in this cell 23 hours a day,
One hour out for a shower.
I walk the walk
I talk the talk
I watch time crawl
all over me.
My brain,
It’s plastic
Like the toys you sell.
I make it into little figurines
And give it to orphans,
Scorpions for Christmas
And Easter creepers.
Where am I from, you ask.
I was born in the toilet.
My mother fucked niggers.
I grew up eating buttons
For Sunday dinner.
Then I hit the street,
Slinked down alley ways
After stray cats.
Some people flagged me
And I did a stretch at a boys’ school.
When I tried to bust out
They stopped me and
Shot me in the hole.
From there it went
Home to home
I didn’t see the sun in years.
So,
Am I Jesus,you ask.
I suppose I am.
I grew into it.
I have died so many times
For your sins.
Fact is
There is little else to do
In here.
And
I am also famous for starting
World War Three.
With
My swastika heart
And Charlie Chaplin soft shoe
I became The Great Dictator.
Of course,
After all these years
You still find me quaint.
You send me notes.
You reinvent me
On MTV,
Where
Bug – eyed I smile
Through your bars
And dance for you
With knives in my eyes
Like a trained seal
For your applause.
But I have never lived in your
World.
Not really.
Nor cared to.
I live outside your laws.
I stayed honest.
And
My pride is hard.
You will never break it.
It is the only thing keeping me.
Otherwise
I might have flown away long ago
To windswept desert reaches
And places only the Spirit is
Privy to.
Because
actually
I am Indian
at heart.
Savage
in nature.
You can see that In my clothes
And in my style.
And
If I have ever committed crimes
It was only to the unwise,
The upholders of all
Thin arguments.
I am
The Great Satan, you say.
No, not that way.
Just your ugly face in the mirror.
You
keep me alive.
You
keep me from you.
You made me immortal.
Beyond doubt
That
Is
true.
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HATE THE SIN
You killed a little girl.
You slit her throat with a steak knife
And now you wonder how it all came about.
You were a thief
You loved Princess Di for her heart
You had never had any thought about killing anyone,
Especially a child.
Until that day
At that time
Under those circumstances,
It came over you like a blanket
Covered you in darkness,
The you of the kernel
The you you knew.
You became an unknown to yourself,
Whom you hated
Whom you loved
For a brief instant.
It made the killing easy
Until it kicked in
And it was too late.
The black dog of vile
Won the fight
The white dog of radiance
Fell asleep.
I don’t know who I became
But he has left me.
Ron Kozloff 