BLUES FOR A CITY OF WINTER LOVE.....

Listen to the sounds
of steel, tears, and fire,
upon the stage of fractured asphalt
beneath the anvil of the night.
It's the blues playing hard and loud,
they're singing the songs,
songs of this City,
howling in the midnight rain.
This soul is out on a winter wind,

love unraveling the heart,
hey baby, it's a hurricane coming,
a storm of the blues
ripping this City down as
the kisses of searing fire
are extinguished in weeping,
as we hunt down the winter moon.

Hey people, your temples are falling,
wrecking ball reality into the dreams,
urban pastoral painted with the life
of lovers, poets, singers, as the leaders
of the band now are on that stage where
their dying is true salvation whispered
on children’s lips,
now forever to be lost,
in the last rage as the City dances,
dies.





THE LAST RETREAT.....

On sore and aching shoulders the straps did tear,
the boots all brown, cracked, marching everywhere,
the roll of drums, the bugles stirring call,
into the breath of the cannons tortured roar,
onward they marched to a hearty drummers beat,
`till the hunger of death was the last retreat.

Faces fresh, young, stepped off the troopers ship,
rifles agleam, uniforms crisp, death on every hip,
ashore they came, these heroes of the day,
their lessons learned the proper army way,
led on by their officer on horse to battles crest.

Now life and tears fell wet from the wounds
of those tired, those dying, screaming youth,
who have come here to win the peace, again.

Now the hunger of death was the last retreat,
the rising sun so high above the marchers beat,
the fields lying bleak, fallow, below the dead,
earth now groaning in agony from battles dread,
and the officer on horse looks so proudly on,
at the valiant boys now broken on the guns,
and he thinks of other days, other rising suns,
when the hunger of death was the last retreat.









SOME AFTERNOON THOUGHTS IN A CAFE WITH ICED BLOOD.....

Boots came,
heard in the distance,
slapping pavement
in cadence sharp,
the approach is ever louder.

Sun spread out creating a
sea upon streets scorched,
not a vision liquid, cool,
nor casting rolling waves,
swallowing those who walk here.

Reaching far through paths
of stone, of iron, of time,
City grows in its dying,
lives in their endless tales told,
of lust, of living, of dying,
a pulse from Babel, a soul from Gomorrah,
rhythms of worlds in an endless
spiraling transition.

Watching the myriad faces
that show the roads
of their lives, of their lands,
a river flowing, that like asphalt
after a showers passing,
explodes into ripples of rainbows,
it is not a calm, a placid river,
often it twists, churns, with violence.

A stroke of a gold tipped fountain pen,
countries go to war, to conquest,
the soldiers, the children,
merely to become fallen numbers,
the lethal, sad equation of politics.

Yet here, somehow, in this place,
hope has not faded,
the doves have not flown away,
olive branches still hang
to cloak the cannons barrel.

Easy it is not, nor is
peace without casualties,
follow not the drums, nor the banners,
nor the boots so shiny hard,
life is more precious
in the remembrance, the memory,
of all the wars gone by,
the children sent to graves
unmarked, in distant lands.

The afternoon hangs heavy as the
ice filled gutter of an old house,
but that now has melted,
only the sweat of August, hot winds
flaying flesh, eating strength,
we must retain the dreams,
for that must be the future,
or it shall be Deaths horseman
that will ride boldly out,
to deal out our final hand.








IS IT BEEZLEBUBS BIRTHDAY,
OR
JUST ANOTHER CASE OF BONGO FURY.....

It was a night darker than dark,
streetlights ineffective,
bouncing shadows off the
buildings crowded close,
obscuring the fleeting shapes
of werewolf stockbrokers,
vampiric mortgage lenders,
and some shape shifters in their
corporate uniform of three piece suits,
hurrying to the final meeting
of the board of directors now
assembled in the polished oak
conference crypts of the American Dream.

The shamans looked the other way,
evil was seen, heard, felt, yet
unrecognized by those who claimed
to know the truth, to see the mystery,
some cried out, who will save us,
and the prophets hid in the great
cathedrals, the bishops counting
the red stained gold of pride.

It was left for the sinners, the
lepers, the castoff heretics,
to battle the Darkness, naked, alone,
with only the armor of hope,
between salvation and the final fires
of the holocaust called Perdition.
So I cruise down the midnight
highway through to Gehenna,
the convertible top full down so that
the sulpher laden breezes can fill
my lungs with the death screams of
this City of nights endless shapes.

Now watch the sinners with their
new cast silver bullets being loaded,
The hobbling lepers carving mighty
stakes of discarded wooden scrap,
the heretics erecting great pyres
upon which they'll burn the last,
the final cowering shaman,
the remaining cardinals of Mammon.

These are the hours of retribution,
the prelude to the slaughter,
the cleansing of the last deceiver,
the final politician.

JUST ANOTHER LENGTHY EPIC ON THE FORTUNES OF LOVE WRITTEN BY A REFUGEE FROM SOME KIND OF URBAN REALITY
OR
I'M JUST AN OLD DOG HOWLING AT THE MOON WITHOUT YOU BABY.


Love, you either have it, want it, or still haven't
figured out just what it means to you.
Not lust,
not that "I've got to get laid or surely I'll die"
feeling that we all get,
but love.
Yeah, that word that destroys empires, sends you
screaming for the nearest saloon,
that stuff that makes you go just a little
more crazy in the head.

If you can't define it, you don't have it,
if you figure that you can understand it,
then you're neck deep in bullshit.
Every time that you think that you've found it,
it just sort of slides away,
you find that grabbing smoke is easier.

You can't eat, you can't sleep, or remember just
what you're doing or supposed to be doing,
and yeah, if you're saying
"I've been there a few times myself",
the answer is no,
you don't get any smarter after the third or
the fourth or even the tenth time,
and being a horses ass just comes more naturally
to some people, and by the way,
this applies to both males and females,
there is no discrimination when it comes to
being a world class jerk in love.

Love,
the question mark, the riddle,
the Unholy Grail, or the Ultimate Quest,
it is everything, and it is also nothing,
without it we despair, with it we soar,
then all too often
crash back to earth in a fall unequaled.
It is underrated, it is overrated,
and on a good day, a really special day,
for one illusionary moment, one instant of insight,
you almost get the message,
then, faster than a bolt of lightning
eclipsing the summers day,
it's gone,
but that's love too.
A wind most capricious, staggering, bedeviling,
a roller coaster ride through the amusement park of life.
Love,
so much written, sung, praised, cursed,
yet we know it less and less,
so what to just go with it, wherever it goes,
at best, you'll be totally confused, do,
at worst,
well,
it just might kill you,
but without its passion coursing through you,
without it singing in your blood,
without its evasive breath of hope,
you can never be,
never be really alive.




UPON WAKING FROM NIGHTMARE.....

Face of night caresses dreams
with mute lips of sable,
turned back, revealing
sharp gleam of bone,
a single drop of falling
light.

Bed clothes tumbled back,
outline of weary flesh
in a signature of sweat,
clock ticks in somber eulogy
as a match is struck, touched
to cigarette.

Alone in the darkness of a room
sculpted in unknown
pain, vanquished love, the
City teeming in emptiness,
below the waters of hungry
sleep.

What has sounded the tolling bell,
shaken my naked shoulder
with chilled skeletal fingers,
disturbing a fitful hour of
rest taken in grudging need,
what indeed has sounded,
what indeed.....

BOOKMARKS FOR THE CLOSING OF A PAGE

Moon hangs full in the western sky,
it is the first hour of the dawning day,
greeting me with silver glances as Apollo
struggles with his wild steeds in the distant east,
golden orb of burnished fire preparing to signal another cycle,
yet another passage of dull work day time;
slowly the week is moving, ghosts of lost dreams,
weekend a mirage so far removed, far beyond,
it seems unattainable, a country never to be found;
soon November will come, with it a season beginning,
that will culminate in the final act of another year,
played out on a stage of frost,ice, celebrations,
for that is the rhythm of the pheres orbit of time,
each of us to act out our parts, with scripts unwritten;
and this is yet another stone of the great cathedral created,
of another chapter in the vast book of stories that comprises all,
and as the poem moves to find the day well advanced,
it also finds the days have drifted along currents of hope,
to arrive gently upon the beaches of the ending of the week,
another marker inserted to hold fast the memories,
to give a quiet pause to the finale of another movement
in that concerto, that symphony, called life.....

25 October 1999

BROKENHAWKE STATION.....

1 - The Coming ; Prophecy

Walls of black burned stone,
tumbled out in haste
across the shadows and the dust
of the deserts final night,
a single stone,
a darkened arch above the ruin,
and a hawke sits frowning,
frowning out the corners of his eyes,
at mans last mockery,
his memorial to ego,
his epitaph to will.

Sun pushes forth with reddened fist,
through hells defiant maw,
pools of false water steam
in boiling currents of despair,
deluge of urgent dreams
to drown the screams of thirsty men,
breaking hands against the stones,
and far above the scene of chaos
circles wide the frowning hawke,
his eye trained far below the crumbled walls,
the grasping, clutching hands now
stiff in deaths salute.

Hail kingdoms of the mad,
blessed are your blind,
forgiven are your writers,
who leave no thing behind,
leave no trace
in the shifting of the sands.

And the Savior walked among the stones,
a sandal strap torn with forgetfulness,
His way gone,
before it was found,
His words devoured by starving men,
long after they had died,
their souls claimed,
their bodies turned to dreams;
the Savior and the rock,
monuments upon the mirror of the sun,
the deserts fire quenched
in a falling of scarlet rain.


2 - The Stage ; Maelstrom

A floating spar,
a drifting keg,
all hands below,
upon the splintered deck,
all hands washed clear,
in the grey and greening salt,
the sea weeps,
her long sobs crashing on
rocks slick with age,
uncaring to the sorrow

of its lonely mistress,
or to the swell of time,
her breasts wrapped in rotting wood,
her crown of foam and flesh.
Sailors pray for land,
yet curse the iron plow,
the Savior walked out into the waves,




His hand cast out,
the wet draining out across His palms.

Behold the sinking craft,
failure of the dream,
rapture of the broken soul.
The Savior laughs into the wind,
it hurls back a mocking howl,
forsaken not,
only forgotten among the roots
of a dying, sculptured tree.

Behold the man,
fused with the desert sun,
falling into the frozen cinders
of the oceans nameless dead.




3 - Golgotha ; Transfiguration

Feet crunching down on stone,
sun passing behind clouds,
their ragged tatters blot out the day.

Perched on His shoulder,
like a brown trembling leaf,
sits the hawke, frowning,
with deception in his eyes,
illusion spelled out in his beating wings,
and the Savior spoke,

His voice a dry harsh wind
and the oceans rolling surf,
extending to the dying
the hand of quiet relief.

Death by sun and sea,
seeking for meaning
from dreams to epitaph.

Silent,
witnessed only by the ants
crawling out the pyre of stone,
as the tree of life bleeds
crystal tears on the rocks
of this bleak desert ridge.
The Savior and the hawke
lay expired upon the branches,
as drowning men look up
and weep the salt of
their anguish and their pain.
His passage giving storm,
His dying leaving life,
in twisted circlets of thorn,
sour froth on parched lips,
quenching neither spirit nor thirst.

How is there forgiveness,
where there is no crime...
Destiny falls without concern,
as He dies without a sound,
save the shudder of the earth,
and the sea rising to the sky,
against the final flight of
the now lost hawke,
but
In three days hence He returned,
Defying death, thus saving man
For all eternity…..

THE FEEL LIKE SHOUTING CURMUDGEON RAG

Hope springs eternal, or so the cliche goes,
more likely infernal, if the truth be told,
cockeyed optimists can piss off, because
reality shows us that hope will only get you a coffee,
if you got a buck plus tax;
and if people don’t really want to know just how you feel,
they shouldn’t ask you how ya feeling?
or smiling salesclerks telling you to have a nice day,
well I’m going to have any kind of day I damn want,
this is my epitaph to platitudes, to well meant
but poorly thought out sentiments from folks
who don’t really know and mostly don’t really care;
enough already, my blood sugar level is topping out,
with this endless flow of sweet banality;
some people may think me a pessimist,
others may call me a sour curmudgeon,
but I’m just an average Joe who wants a little
ration of truth, of reality, to leaven the loaf
we’ve all got to chew on;
so if you’ve been looking for a nice cute poem,
filled with garden vistas and true love,
you’re just out of luck,
because it just ain’t my day;
Amen, end of sermon, end of poem.....


31 July 1998