Ending Statement Love of Death 2nd ed.

The last page of the 2nd ed. of For the Love of Death had this statement:



Pondering existence is foolish;
it is much better to live
in the secure knowledge that
when pain stops, someone is through with you.

Death by Dr. Who

I tried to explain about the strange man
in the phone booth,
but nobody would listen.
He nattered about weird stuff:
Pity, now the universe is down
to 699 wonders,
in a Mad Hatter sort of way.
Twenty-five years and
they still look at me queer.
When I was a kid; it was comics.
Alternate universe, alternate issues going
forward in time and back in time.
Now it's Dr. Who.
Talk about social suicide,
talk about Doc at a cocktail party,
you're standing alone in a corner
with an empty glass.
If they don't like the Doctor,
strange isn't in their blood.
And if strange isn't;
where's passion?
Under all that conformity?
Fun counts.

            published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

LC Classification

Who says
that the guy who made
up the Library of Congress
system of cataloging
had no sense of humor?
BS is the classification
under which the Bible
is put.

          published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Shaggy Dog

Dead shaggy dog on side
of the road, a mop
that has cleaned too many
floors put out by the garbage.
Nobody comes to take
away the trash.

            published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

An Alter

A house spider drops down
upon an alter of hide,
pieces of bone, stone,
clay, bits of shell,
glass, feathers, porcupine quills,
teeth, and antlers.
The thin cable of web
touches the deer hair; it pauses
before continuing to a kill.

            published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

A Drop of Rain

There,
on the mantel
where the color of heat
ends,
I put my Buddha:
no place else
for it.

         published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd. ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Bombing Runs

The best way to watch a run
is from a great distance.
At night, those angry balls on the horizon are
like a thunderstorm trapped in the Snake:
sticky blood, sweat, and steel.
You can smell them.
But at treetop level,
moving up,
you can feel that orange cloud
burning your heels,
making them crispy critters.
Friendly fire is a way of life.

               published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

The Supermarket

A naked man in the supermarket
would freeze his nuts off.
The owners would in all probability
chop him into meat,
wrap him in plastic, and place
him in the frozen food section.
Of course the soulless matter
would be nutritionally impractical.

            published in For the Love of  Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

An American Neohaiku

At night on my door step
I watch the chemical trucks run North
the chip trucks run South
chemical trucks North
chip trucks South
there can't be much
left in the North.

           published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Reality

There is something about reality
within a leafless bush.
After winter has enthralled all life,
and leaves it stunned by its departure,
for a brief time you can see
the fields beyond the hedge.
The image is broken by
dark twisted branches, thorny and sharp.
Demons can't hide there.
Earth yields
bright colors which part
dusky soil to taste the sky.
Hills of grasses take on
their first dew, warm noon with simple
ease until weight of frost.
Then the branches sprout life of their
own and muddy the view until fall.

             published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

The Poet Who is Never Seen

dedicated to the character of Sabur in Chingiz Aitmatov's play "The Ascent of Mt. Fuji".


Sometimes the living speak, sometimes the dead;
eloquence in a corpse is most becoming
when you figure the thousands who walk
about with ghosts inside them, never speaking
or hearing any more than what has been said before.
Shadows that have so much effect that they
never have to step out on the stage.
Invisibles that are all around us,
inside us.  They have spoken and been
captured on a page, awakening and animating
what seems empty.  They fill up countless
lives with the lives of a few.
Watching, watching, always feeling what
is out of step and out of understanding.
In the turmoil they are apart but
burning brightly.  So brightly that they
actually become their own ghosts
which haunt us while they still live.
Giving everything inside for the future
leaves nothing for the future, nothing
even in the present but watching
the great work unfold as the world
changes.  Winter on the taiga is bad.
The white-death is all around and
prison is more than wire and a
bullet can expunge.  It is
fear that in the death, pain,
misery you will lose the choice of
dream; the fear you will forget how.
It is more than can be killed.
Even among the sameness of days
there can be a uniqueness in people
which makes them live; it is the
kind of ghost they choose.  It causes others
to live harder in the image of
someone they did not even know.
Hardness in winter is wrapped up in
anything which will keep one warm.
It keeps the man-made barriers
up so the taiga won't swallow the
soul, and so doing find out how
free it truly is.  The wire keeps
the infection of spirit from spreading.
Night and memories cause the
stones to roll down the mountain
into the dark.  Like the cracking
and building of the torrents of spring-thaw,
they create new signs of life.
New sins teach the winter-death
passes into spring as a
memory of word without meaning.
The reality is much more consuming
in its nature.  Iron-bellied men who
live on the edge of the forest take
second place to the feel, taste,
smell of the earth.  The touch of another
person's flesh isn't a memory
or a hidden thing.  It throws off
the furs of winter and lives because
of an unseen memory which kept it
warm.  Friends wouldn't be what they are
if they had not met in the past.
Their nature is wrapped up in every action
taken, every dream spoken.
They are changed by the specter of
friends who are not there.
The nature of the spoken word,
the fact of spell in poetry,
magic is the beauty of creating new
at the expense of a moment lost,
in the whirl of springs remembered.
For all the dreary
parts of the poet, the human becomes
the least of all burdens.  It at
least dreams the simple dream freely.
This the ghost in us all: betrayed
of what could have been for all
those who will hold both the ghost
and what is memory.  They
are the ones who will never be seen
except as a train standing off
in the distance; who the passengers
are is never known.  And they in turn,
while sitting on the train
will look out, never knowing who
was watching.  Each will only feel
the faint shadows of the words
spoken before the headstones
in the graveyard on the hill.
They linger in the air unheard.
Rails stretching off into the distance,
built by the hands beneath the ground,
are covered by the same snow which
falls on the hill.  Both are glorified
by the wild flowers in spring.
When it comes to the hearts of people,
each is affected by the other.
If the words were spoken,
they live with the daemon who walks in each.

              published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Statements

The world has been filled with statements.
We have forgotten the allusion
behind the illusion of each dust
choked word.  Where are the visions?
Trees moving as a laundry of silk,
painted colors in the wind
drawing back each upon the other.
They reveal the shadows that hold them
to the earth.  Yet the air is
there, shifting in hue and form,
exposed by each branch in motion,
each leaf swirled by the wind's
maelstrom of canvass sky.
The cloths and tapestries overlap forever.

                  published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Bar Conversation

"Do you want
company for the rest of the night?
I do, just coffee and talk,
that sort of thing.
I really could use it."

We were both pretty far gone.

"Well, what are we doing?
I'm drinking coffee,
your drinking beer.
We're talking."

"Sure, ok."

She was gone within a quarter
of an hour.  I guess
the interest wasn't there.

                 published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Bushido

The beast within us
is one we will never know,
but we are the same.

From the core we take.
It once was a useful whole,
now a sharper flake.

The breath of a sigh
outward from a falling chest
makes room for a scream.

Swords in the field teach
of the lungs, stomach, spleen;
what is in a man.

Off the shiny blade's
skin a candle flame reflects,
twin lights in the dark.

                published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Shape-shifter

If there is a price, I'll pay the fee.
A bargain in words to water a seed,
and draw down the moon from forgotten tree.

I'll sit in my house with pipe and my tea
doing arcane acts on a floor strewn with reeds.
If there is a price, I'll pay the fee.

There is always The Quest to find some key.
I'm waiting around for some form of need
to draw down the moon from forgotten tree.

The murky ruler of the wine dark sea,
would I worship him to share in The Deed?
If there is a price, I'll pay the fee.

Follow the Tao?  It's all one to me.
Let the yin and yang explain basic need
to draw down the moon from forgotten tree.

The death of all symbols might set me free
from masters of form and all of their creed.
If there is a price, I'll pay the fee,
and draw down the moon from forgotten tree.

                   published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Halley's Comet

I was reading a newspaper somewhere
about some scientists feeling concern
over all the light pollution.  We burn
off enough light to make the comet rare.
This was kind of hard for me to bear.
Most of my life I've waited my turn
to see what Twain was born under return.
In general people don't seem to care.
I once met what I took for an old bum
standing and looking up at the street lamps.
He said you can't see stars in the city.
The only place that you can see stars from
is back in the alley shadows.  He camps
back there, watching stars, needing no pity.

                published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

Litany for the Dying

Out there they are burning a stubble field.
The streets of town are filled with smoke.
The forests are on fire, and our fate is sealed.

Sun bloody coin, the smoke will not yield.
They are farmers of clay, just old plain folk.
Out there they are burning a stubble field.

Machines are the physicians, many lives reeled.
The pulse is weak, breath shallow, spirit broke.
The forests are on fire, and our fate is sealed.

Torch all the stubble, it's not there to shield
the life of a mouse, the soil to cloak.
Out there they are burning a stubble field.

Everything green the oxen have peeled,
faithless the gifts of wheel, harness, and yoke.
The forests are on fire, and our fate is sealed.

A child cries with hope to be healed
from nightmares and dreams which never are spoke.
Out there they are burning a stubble field;
the forests are on fire, and our fate is sealed.

                published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.

R & R

I see bubbles in the future!

     Just like in the kitchen, with writing there is prep-work on the side.  I like to call it R & R, Rest and Research.  We become greater than the sum of our parts. 

First Snow

. . . five-teen and walking
the "Quad" at the "U",
first winter in Michigan.
Ann Arbor has a body of water between
it and Hell.  My body felt
snow falling, flurry white,
for the first time.
It was cold on my face,
but I was warm in the pea-jacket
and watch-cap my father bought me.
White ice on blue
wool is still very real,
very physical to me.
It is that
kind of snow that makes it
winter, and remembering the first touch
of a beauty that can kill.
It washes away the years
between what I was,
what I am.

          published in For the Love of Death, the early years, 2nd ed., S.I.N., 1993.