Consumption Sickness

CONSUMPTION SICKNESS
CONSUMPTION SICKNESS ___________________________161
TWO PART INTERLUDE _____________________________162
CONNECTIONS _______________________________________ 163
IF GERTRUDE CAN CAN I ENJOY TOO? _________________164
DADDY’S SUGAR _____________________________________ 165
THIS COULD GO ON FOREVER _________________________166
THE GUTLESS AND THE ONE EYED ____________________168
DISBELIEF _________________________________________ 169
A MOONIE _________________________________________170
STIMULATE ME ______________________________________172
THIS IS IT ________________________________________ 173
ANYWAY ___________________________________________174
EPPERVESCENCE ____________________________________175
COMING OUT THE OTHER END _______________________176
I DID IT __________________________________________ 177
A PAGE OF JEALOUSY _______________________________

Consumption Sickness

Consumption Sickness

Smell the platter.
Extra gravy soaks
And surrounds red
Meat, dripping juice
Where the fork stabbed.
Are you clean or
Chemical, girl
Or boy, or what?

Hunger tempts my curiosity.
(Odds good against
Sick bulls.) Heifer,
All day long, plays
A bleating tune,
“I don’t love life.”
I don’t love you
But I eat you.

Two-Part Interlude

1.
She grit her teeth
And would not smile.
Her eyes mostly closed,
She bore, as always,
Her pain in silence.
Her wrists were bare
And I, nearby, saw
Her contemplate them.
Later, she lay silent
And still; shyly she smiled
Knowing that she
Had achieved her end.

2.
She lied beside me
And we did not touch.
It was too late for tenderness.
Love was a myth forgotten.

The mistake, hidden
In our frozen depths,
Like blindness to
The blind man, came
From hoping that the
Beauty was within us.

I shiver now and still
Know not what coldness is
But if death doesn’t take me
Tonight, tomorrow I might.

Connections

Connections needed
Inward; Circle’s extending
Being good– no where.
(Being bad the same.)
Grope outward, too far,
Miss the bus, run faster;
I’m chasing you,
Taking time,
Making time mine,
I live with a half smile,
Nursing my ulcerous intentions,
Will have primary effect
Like it or not.

I’ll have fun on the way,
Remain childlike,
Like my likes,
And be deceived
By what does not exist.
Immortality
Tempts the worst
Of us as well
As the well
Off and on top.
This garbage regrets
Itself. It will
Consume all of us.

If Gertrude Can Can I Enjoy Too?

Kids scream like seagulls.
There’s no fun in Heaven so
Enjoy, enjoy.
Take time off the wall;
Enjoy, enjoy.
I enjoy the thorn.
I enjoy the stem.
But roses are the whole
Thing; roses. Enjoy the
Rose; enjoy, enjoy
Enjoy the rose rose;
Enjoy, enjoy.
The rose rose rose
To enjoy the garden.
Roses rose; rose roses
Rose. Rows upon rows
Of rose roses rose.
And I still enjoy them.

Daddy’s Sugar

You’ve been on the auction block before;
The man banged his gavel; you were sold.
Gentle souls, like me, can not afford
To buy or sell the slave monger’s goods.
My very nature makes you worth less
To me than to those greedy buyers
Who trade for pleasure not for love.
Woman, tell me, when you had the choice
To be free or to be tied in silk,
What could possibly have made you think
That life would be sweeter in bondage
And love true between master and slave?

This Could Go On Forever

Maybe microscopic me
Will be a part
Of the final grief,
Or blown to the heavens
Upon a wail.
There’s no marvelous
Way to make a living
Life would be free
If there was.
Grandma told me
It was all right
To shovel scat,
Taught me how
To love the smell
Purple curtains, golden fields
Forty feet high, over my head:
Olympic practice
And potato fights,
“This is our field,
Our fortress, our mascot.”
I ran away, my belongings
Tied in a kerchief,
On a stick, over my shoulder,
And lived on sugar beets.
The money from selling
My toys bought beer
For me and all the boys
When we found a village
On the way.
Only five, I reached the bar,
“Bitte, fur alles ein bier.”
The castle was ours
For the day,

So I manned the parapet,
Watched the Rhine,
“No French men in sight,
No Indians– Manitou!
Where are You?!?
I’m an American!

I’m just a little American boy
Who was Hitler?

When I was six,
Dad brought home
A television;
That was after Kennedy
Was shot– everyone cried,
“‘e vas zo bretty.”
But all they’d air
Was old westerns,
Opera, and pictures of
Relatives in the East.
Wolfgang was killed
Trying to rescue his mother.
They called me Hitler
When I got back
From the Fatterland
They never tasted cheesecake.
I cried when my head
Hit the pavement; Remembered
Purple curtains and wild boar,
Across the auto bahn in a forest
As dark as Baden Baden,
Beside the no speed limit sign.
Mercedes were giants
Compared to three wheel eggs
And sewing machine engines.
Easter in Rome.
The ruins were small.
The Coliseum
Blocked the view
Of black, marble statues.
The fountains were pissed in
So I couldn’t swim.
The barbed wire is always filmed
So if someone dies
The world will see.
“We still are free”,
The microphone crackles.
My suit really fits
The fork’s separate styles.

The Gutless and the One-Eyed

The message tunneled around the outer edges
Of his tired old head. (All part of
And extravagant plan of escape,
The bullet cut it’s bloody way home.)
“The one eye that can see has no choice.”
The man quivered, the Gutless crawled out
Of hiding, the pistol dropped, and one eye
Popped out of it’s socket as sacrifice
To pay for lack of power– And what is left
Lacks any courage to finally find out
Where truth and reality lie. Gutless and One eyed
Lives to carry on an economic metaphor,
Lives together with separate fears
Of cost versus value obtained.

Disbelief

Shred me, tear me apart,
I love it like shit.
You think you’re fancy
‘Cause you talk so nice
But I’ve been to Paris
Twice and have gambled
With better merchandise.

I speak softly.
Are you relieved?
I scrape and bow,
For now,
And whisper, just whisper,
“When hatred is gentle,
The trickster’s deceived.”

When hatred is gentle,
The trickster is deceived.

A Moonie

Is a blinded dreamer who listens in his sleep
For prayers in tongues, lives personal experience
Through communal life and tries to see
Moon’s universal light, a reflection of truth
Or gets satisfaction from flowers sold
Or new members to work for Christ.
Is there any reason for him to believe
That the Second Coming has not yet arrived?
He turns to accounts of Biblical beggars,
Is a disciple of shame in the procession
Of progress, lives in houses that were bought
With flowers, pays taxes to the moon
By liquefying his assets, lobstering in Gloucester,
Ignoring his parents, inviting strangers
For philosophy and tea and memorized passages
From an abridged Bible “Have you been saved?”
He’ll ask, his eyes will sparkle with love
Well taught, must be always a friend to
Any lonely soul; even the woman who cries
While watching a Moon parade for unification,
“That’s how Hitler started.” She cries with
A thick German accent but, answer prepared,
He does his dedication in duty for love
And at ten o’clock sharp, locks the front door
And no more beds get warm from strange breath
“Come back tomorrow.” he yells from the upstairs
Window. He doesn’t worry what Moon was once,
Just listens to the rules except when he calls
His mother on the phone for a milkshake
Telegram and some underwear without stains.
No long hairs allowed, no drugs, no cigs
So he finds happiness in friendship and love,
Prowls college campuses and back alleys
To make a difference in someone’s life,
To clean up after the anti war mess
As ministers of the Holy Word,
To give children attention their parents
Are too involved to even understand they need,
To set the framework for a lovely world
In dismissing argument with rote, written
Answers that are pulled out of context
With Eastern spice and rumors of reincarnation,
Hints that the Devil’s rule may soon be over,
That, a thousand years past, three VI’s took
Hold of an unholy ruler, he gets lost in dreams
Of unification and hopes for so many brothers.
With such a father figure and suckling from
A motherly church, he’s resigned to existence,
So caring, so kind he practices smiling,
Lets someone else do the driving or is good
Enough to convert a house or a town
So there will be donations in exchange
For friendship, smiling and salvation.
He used to do drugs but is high on Jesus,
Haunts the highways late into the night
In search of souls to add to his cause
Because money from work done by lost young
Children just might mean respect from
The money mongers and wasted souls
So fill the jar for Jesus, for peace, for unity
For anything that you hold dear
He talks so smooth with a steady voice that
Invokes trust until, his insides all given,
He is but a shell, cloaked by guiltless good,
Somewhat useless in comparison to what
He could have been.

Stimulate Me
Open me, silly siphon,
Stimulate me,
Tickle me.
It makes me giggle and smile;
Sometimes I fall in love.
Sometimes I just watch.
Pretty colors bend me,
I taste the air around me
It tingles with promise.
Tickle me, more, more;
It takes more, always more
To make me happy. So give me
More. Satisfy me or I may be broken.
My head falls groundward.
I could scream but I won’t
Bad publicity. Incarceration
Twice because of my hormones;
The women regret me when I’m funny.
I need to be loved, need stimulation.
Stallions are rare and should be prized.
Make me a stallion.

This Is It
This is it. This pile of shit
Regrets itself. I leave
To chew long stalks
Of yellowing grass.
People scream insanity
Over the subway noise
And spit on sidewalks
And me; I sit back.
Caring is harmful
And confusion gets drab
After too, too long.

Anyway
Anyway…
Give me a drunkard
Any day,
A brother anyway
Not blinded but
In need of numbness.
Too fast we’ve gone
From good
To both good
And bad.
Kiss me,
Hit me
What does it matter?
Anyway,
Philosophy
Killed my father
And maybe me too.

Eppervescence

The eppervessent water comes sparkling forth,
Agitates the bowl.
Aaaah! What a way to spend a moment.
All I do, all I buy, everything me,
Is reflected in the porcelain
And knowledge grows
But knowing? Who Knows?

Coming Out the Other End

The whole world
Consumes me;
Still life,
Living artistry.
Multiple connections,
Wire and glass.
I come slipping
Out the ass end
Of youth
Still confused,
Still life,
Still looking
For truth.

I did it
I did it I did it
I made
Them
Think
That I was something
And you know something?
It was
not worth anything
Because
All it was
Was me
Making them
Think
That I
Was worth
Something
What
Is
That?
It’s me
Making
Them
Think
That I
Was worth
Something
And the way they are
They think
That
They’re
Worth less
If they think
That I’m worth
Something
They think
That they’re not
The only
One
Who is
Something
So I keep
Trying
To make them think
That
They’re not
The only one
That is
Worth Something
Without
Making
Them
Think
That they’re
Not something
And you know
How
Terrib
ly
Hard
That is?Edit