Once he lost it
Once he truly lost it
He softened the blow
With a jar of tissues
Strung around his
Useless fingers
Twice he lost it
Twice he truly lost it
He fostered the Beards
With a sack of hate
Strung around his
Lonesome fingers
Thrice he found it
Thrice he truly found it
He gleaned the flash
Strung around his
Nimble fingers
But he didn’t know it
And he didn’t try
He lost himself
For the last time
In a field of wheat
He’d seen
many times before
In a life
he'll never know
I opened up
On the mountain of kindness
I sharpened my tools
On a mountain stones
I tarnished my socks
En route to Dublarney
I stashed all my gold
‘Neath the shivering stones
I lost Ithaca’s rubies
Midway up over Iceland
I painted my soul
Searching for the divine
I locked up the priestess
over lunch with devil
I locked up the devil
outside my front door
I closed it in silence
Gathered up all my bones -
Oh,
I
never want to see tomorrow
but I know I will
I say "What's life?"
You say "You're living."
I say "I've had my fill."
I’d be a giraffe.
Yeah, a giraffe!
Oh man that’d be so cool to be a giraffe!
I’d meander throughout the Serengeti looking
for the most delicious leafs on my four twiggy legs and hooves
without any fear of the lions or cheetahs or hyenas
because I’d be too beautiful to eat.
Oh! I’m getting excited just thinking about being a giraffe.
Just Imagine!
My long, snake-ish neck would stretch
far above the skulls
and shoulders of all the other animals on the Serengeti!
Oh man!
I’d be able to see for miles from up there,
checking out all the lady giraffes from far away,
and then I’d strut.
I’d strut my giraffey strut across the plains next to the best mate,
and I’d stick out my
long
black
tongue around the branches quite seductively and strip the branches of their leaf-clothes slowly,
and all the ladies would love me.
Oh man, it would be soooo awesome to be a giraffe.
I waited for the rain,
Waiting there,
In the pouring rain.
I pounded the earth,
Feeling how it felt,
Smelling how it smelt.
I braced for the pain,
Screaming there,
In intensifying pain.
I founded a city,
Before it was built,
I made its flowers wilt.
I cut out my brain,
Lying there,
Without my brain.
I hounded my students,
Told them of death,
My final breath.
Desert sands and mesopotatoes,
Makeshift hands shake naughty oregano,
Promise City doesn’t exist -
Yet.
But in twenty-years
When I’m through with being me
When I peel off my ghost skeleton
Smashing concubines and pleasuring the sphinx,
The world will look like a disfigured spirit,
And I’ll take off my clothes,
press my face against your window,
my nose will look like a pig’s dainty proboscis,
I’ll shout:
Hangman Harry!
Is back to save the world!
Kill me now
If
You
Want
To
Halt
My
Inevitable
Construction!
A Danish goatherder will rise to the challenge
He’ll sever my face in horrendous places
He will be
the inheritor of love.
True Story:
I moved from Venice to Nowhere in my eighteenth year,
spent twenty years dusting off my soul in Tallahassee,
ate a grotty bit of slime in London, the month I lost my age,
found a legless priest in Reno when I thought God was my brother’s mother,
killed a sneakless hotel-bug on a motel-rug in an East-End Middle Eastern hostel,
I thought I’d get away conscience hungry monster-free, (but I didn’t and wept),
I prayed to the God of Ichthys when Greece was still cool, I think.
I never never sold my soul to nobody but the Devil’s Uncle’s Son,
I never never told my secrets to nobody but burning Phlegethon’s lonely guardian,
swallowed my bitter hate and washed it down with bitter beer,
and stomach-launched bits of Chicken Liver Tuesday in a Silver City alleyway,
when I died I thought I’d be forgotten, forgiven, forewarned of the faceless.
…
But I weren’t and I’m not
and what’s been is will be.
Now take a seat young ones
This is where things
Get a little fuzzy.
It is the death of death itself,
That makes a bookshelf just a –shelf,
That makes an eggplant just a plant,
That makes you eat things when you can’t.
The death of death itself.
It makes you fat.
