The Wayfarer and the Lady in the Glade

“O, to be on my way again,” I cried with such exuberance that I couldn’t hide if I’d of tried. Mollifying a mind weary from the city’s blaring terrible noise.

From men in vicious packs.
From women in cheap hats and whores in burlap sacks.
From the shade that begs for a nickels worth of acknowledgment.
And from the delighted moans of the decadent.
And from the tax man spouting alms for the king.

In the long view I could only distinguish the largest tower in the city. Athwart that, there was only a faint, alabaster haze. I let my gaze wander and there in the glade before me, a dervish whirling, there she was. Arms spread and flailing, she went sailing upon the wind. Like a cinder, only slowly. And wailing, she did croon the tune by which she was moved. And she, so immersed in the hard, ardent, green garden, she never stopped. Never dropped this silly game that she played; alone. I stayed on the far side of the glade, but still walking.

Stepping to the rhythm of her song, I could not stop edging forward, like I was being pulled a rope knotted around my gyrating hips. I called to her, now closer. I tried to tell her the importance of what she did. And what she did to me. But as soon as my words had passed I grasped her horror completely. To be found in such a state.

She gasped and ran.

I called, “Stay, stay, there is something great here that you have made. We could spend eternity dancing here in the suns rays. Will you stay with me here in your own glade? Or ponder with me that dusty way?” But by then she was gone from sight.

The Wayfarer in the Town

I had been on my way nigh on three weeks when I arrived at a loud little town. The buildings all tall, with pointed ceilings and the ways all wide and clear. The men must have all been off at work because only women peopled the streets. As I gawked I was shocked to notice that all the women who passed seemed to be identical people, ad nauseum. Each face was painted to feign sameness with the rest. Each women’s hair all tied and died alike and it was really very boring there. I was all set to leave with out even getting supplies or even a shower. I felt deceived; this hamlet was to be my momentary reprieve from hermitage.

Just before I left the gates to the long way, I saw a woman whose face shone among all the others. With a kind of natural, revolutionary beauty that was entirely unembellished. Her frailty was severe to the point of vanity. She was clearly the model by which the other women had mutilated their faces and bodies to emulate. She created by merely existing: beauty’s own pretense.

I tried to tell her why she was different, what that meant, “Heaven-sent to show such heights exist.” But she seemed perplexed and eventually vexed, as I spoke faster to coax some understanding. She finally broke my flow saying,

“Why the hell are you so damn dirty?”

The Wayfarer Waits

I saw her in the exceptional stillness of a vagabond. By her severely immodest beauty I was frozen in wonder.
I blinked and she was gone.
So I waited in the knoll by the way, where I prayed she would return again.

Once I had awoken twisting in the winter, sure that I had heard a figment of her song on the wind. I screamed to a pale silhouette that did not turn. So I went back to my camp and packed full my pipe again. And drank sleepily. And I waited.

Spring turned with the dolence of winter.
With no more hope I shruged to the next town and left the meadow with a pile of stems athwart wilted, brown pedals. And hers was among the very first faces I saw entering town.
I cried to her, voice boyishly cracking, “How long have you been here? I saw you on the way, and called to you. I stopped my journey for a season waiting for you to pass again.”

“I know,” she said, “I’ve often seen you, sleeping through the morning.”

Babes in the Woods

He strides in airs of vague defiance.
She looks on in complete silence.
The lovers travel far
with dreams of walking among the giants.

They're in the wood, between the ways,
where shadows lie broken by sunrays
and the breeze wispers of the decadence
of fire-light nights and sleepy days.

They walk as if they dwarf the trees
and the sun shines jealously on the spot.
For they seem to him a brighter hot
even still the night may freeze.

She shivers in the darkening cold
and, stealing a bit of warmth, takes hold
of his arm
until she is wholly consoled.

The night gets darker and the way, stranger.
Still on their path they firmly stay.
They did not know the well worn way
may lead them headlong into danger.

But that they feared more than all other
things that cut and those that smother.
That they feared worse in the wild wood:
none's more than their fear of one another.

Three Regrets

I've never seen the sunrise
over the East rim of the crater,
where interstellar debris
sunk Reno City, three years
from now.

I let the world end when
I left it unattended to spend
the night with you, emptying
beer cans just so we would
have something to throw
at unsuspecting, oncoming
traffic.

And, remember that girl
that you said was too good
for me? The one with the
big eyes and the
big thighs
and you never shut up about
how she offered to make me
soup when I was hungover.
Well last night I threw her
under the N line at 47th and
Judah.
Not really, but I wish that I had.

Emergency Room Poem

The room is
sterile white,
with bright
blinding lights
that reach down with metal arms
from the wall. And the masked lunatic
sticks pins in my prick uttering something reassuring.
But the sound is unintelligible;
I hear only the slow droning of his benign tone.
"You're very lucky, you know.”
My own blood seems unusually violent.

An Essay on Religion in the Western Hemisphere

a Villanelle


Where dwells the long slumbering God?
Dozing through eternity, or
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

I spraypaint on a church facade
On the windows and every door
Where dwells the long slumbering God?

Enough reprisal, I'll maraud!
I killed the last minotaur,
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

The snake many times since been trod
Does with broken back implore,
"Where dwells the long slumbering God?"

So it is declared: jihad.
Where does the lord wage his war?
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

And, Nebuchadnezzar with his holy rod
Fucks Babylons favorite whore.
Where dwells the long slumbering God?
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

Bad

When I was younger I was myown beloved.
But I was bad to myself.

So I loved my friends and I loved their friends
but I was bad to them.

So I went to live in hermitage
but everything I didn't kill went
away.

And there was nothing.
It was good.

Second Person

The priestess kissed you for your christening.
Risen out of sin, you tremble as she removes
her facade. Revealed macabre. Accosted at
random and lost ten days in the malaise of futility.
Crescendo-ed to the gates of fated faces.

Lo,
you where found. Dirty and hurtin'. Behind curtains,
pulled tight like the drum. And some Tuesday blight
was always peeking inside. To no shame that resided
there, those outside still hide from desire, nature, and
twilight.

You know midnight, alright. Its the only thing you'll
stand tight for, in righteous fire. The moon is a tab
of extacy. The air is a cool, lucid liquor. Misunderstood
at nigh. And providing silent hindsight.

An Elegy for Jim Carroll

A good junkie,
could clearly articulate
mad hallucinations
of sight and mind
that seem so relevant the moment before they are forgotten.

And when brushing his fingertips across the placid surface,
how could he not have fallen in?
Lament
nearly drowned him.

He emerges and he is emaciated and his veins are enormous and his skin is pale,
but when he spoke I could have sworn he'd lived for ever, and would.