CHOIRS OF THE DARK.....

The eyes are shut, dark
windows with closed curtains upon
the reflections of an inner soul
that cannot be stilled.
Music is falling
dust filled with angry motion,
motes in some blind gods
final vision.
Is the TV on
or is that the sound of a
video unreeling in a chorus
that is perhaps your lost life,
or a choir of strange angels
gathered at the foot of your desk,
watching in bored anticipation,
as you create your breathless poetry
and deathless prose.
Or are they just hanging around
for your last gasp, so they
can take you to someplace far
darker than a bottomless well
bored through the core of the earth,
or at least somewhere under
New Jersey.

Laurie, Julee, David, Angelo,
write, sing, an epitaph for those
outside the light, beyond the edge.
Eyes shut, mouth open,
and does it really rain
sideways in the Aleutians,
or are you standing that way
in order to get a drink.

Music can be very loud,
or distinctly silent.
The lyrics filled with meaning,
or maybe without any
sense of anything at all,
mostly though, it should be
in your head, where it
bothers no one except yourself.

Are you very sure that you're
only two dimensions in a
video reality,
because you know that a
mirror is nothing but a liar
that can never reflect the truth.
Dark windows that you look
out through and can see nothing
because the tracks of your tears
have obscured the pain,
and the music is still falling
as are your dream songs now
screaming into nights heart.
Is that the TV on behind you
or is your life a hologram
that someone just transmitted
from a planet far, far away.

Choir of strange angels singing
the blues rather off key,
and you beg them to stop it
because you're going deaf with
the pain of sounds memories and
just who are these people who
invited themselves into your head;
The eyes are shut, dark
windows with closed curtains upon
the reflections that pursue you
into the sideways rain of an Aleutian night
somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike,
and close your eyes tighter,
for they are coming,
coming here.






























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.....