I've never feared anything but becoming a cliche, which is of course in and of itself the grandest of all cliches. My life has become a series of sanguine non sequiturs, like the perfect dream. And dreams are indeed the perfect things: not constrained by logic or physics or fidelities, we are Gods disconnected from consequence. And how does one write the next sentence, being occupied at every juncture by the inevitability of cause, a predestination, a preterition, an infinity of quantum couldofbeens that I will snuff out by not writing into existence. It seems unimportant yes but so is everything unimportant and so why not lend importance to these mysteries that consume lives and drive a man mad. The ones that keep him sane has led him to kill his fellow man for centuries and there is a peacefulness, or at least a self-containedness in madness, where one does only violence to his own psyche.

On madness, on madness! I cannot keep you from it. It is a poison and it dies with me and I am afraid to die. So taste it because you after all were the one who chose it not me we choose the hearts we love not the ones that pump us full of poison. So it is a different poison you are looking for? I think it is a good choice. This one works slowly. It's a chemotherapeutic salve; I see you happy and I see you dying and I can't stand it don't you see I'm not trying to drag you down I'm only trying to save you by showing you there is a different way. One madness trumps the other it kills it it replaces it. I want you I want you

I want you to be like me

The center of the real world

for/from isaiah zagar

somehow a fragment
of mirror is a fragment of energy
I inadvertently
hooked onto the future
by hooking onto the mirror
faces will look
for ever
thank
ever
one

I desire to change
what our world looks
like feels
like dreams
like
I'm on art

some people love the wine
some people love the honey
but I love art
some people love the flash
some people love the hash
but I love art
and I make it

out of trash I'll
teach you everything
I know in three days

have I got a building for
you filled with gold
art is the center
of the real world
as I grow older
mood swings emergence
of a quality of luminous consciousness

director of special projects
for the state of eternity
one would like
to have a life
that caused no confusion
said Jasper Johns

it has been necessary
to resort to a new medium
in a new path
investigative journalists
we cry for
them we herald
them we need
them desperately

precise intention
the work
of the insane the
flying monocle the
automatic impulse
a brief
history of
the future the
neighborhood comes
the very essence
of existence

south street is
a garden remember
walking around this
piece of fiction develops
in an intense
spatial dimension the
complex task
of describing an
artist's work yet
also rigorous and
exacting with
a sound academic grounding

i love
you and i don't
care if you know
and with the
fragments you can't
touch me here

it's all fine
just wash it in reverb
run it through the pedals
hey man it's all fine
you are here
to hear my droning

benn let's make
horror films
i'll play the rat sister
you do make childhood
sound so lovely

i'll bet the scalpel
was your favorite
pulling back that deadskin
to see the organs
glisten under the fluorescent lamp

nothing gleams like
the red firepump
in the basement
as the one bulb swings
and swings above it

the glissandos make
all the notes bleed
and purr it brushes your cheek
like a summer mosquito
it barely permeates the
membrane it wants to

she was lying in the reeds
for days they said
all chewed to pieces
oh the violence we do
i move inside you you squirm
i think we're not dreaming

There he was
Old Bull Lee
played a game
of William Tell
shot his wife
through the skull

That day he
became a writer

Euphoria
who's to say what is good?
I know
that I know

because of the way
your softhands so
rise and fall
I am lost in between
the 2nd and 3rd knuckle
because you wear every
curve like a red
wedding dress

life's canyonings
make me whoop and holler
and kerraw
like I have been
falling since birth

it is a good thing
to fall so deeply
into the bowels of the earth
because the sky never changes
and clouds smokemasks
wispy liars
but the fires
of the twisted smythe
light up the reveries and
warm my dry bones

I hold with the bacchantes
I would rip off every limb
for your music

so so so i have found
a way closer to god
should i tell you?

this is a poetry of secrets

sing sandpaper songs
keep the folks awake
the iron's hot you know

your beauty is ascetic
like the rusty old warship in the harbor

i don't wanna go
to sleep i don't wanna

sing hymns until
your neck tips back exposes
your gullet and snakes
come out and confetti

jesus cristo
i said i would
take you right here on the doorstep
it sells news
papers doll

sing softly and gasp
i promise to look
you in the eyes always
don't choke

To Our Posterity

To Posterity



trans. by H. R. Hays

1.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.

You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.

For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.

-Bertolt Brecht