THE POETRY OF
VOLUME 1
ONLINE VERSION
COPYRIGHT 2000 BY ROBERTO DIEGO
Published in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
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Email: robdiego@insmkt.com
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RACHMANINOFF AT THE FIRE LANDING
THE AGE OF SYMPHONIES AND CONCERTOS
TO THE GODDESS BEFORE THE SLAVE MASTER
DEDICATION:
FOR
MY ONE LOVE
WHO WAS HERE
AND SOON GONE
"We must be able to take a giant step, a decisive step, a step which like a jolt of an earthquake will change the entire face of the world...to mingle but not fuse..., darkness with light, the grotesque with the sublime, the body with the soul, the animal with the spirit."
-Victor Hugo (1828)
How gentle is the wind,
when it blows beside your window?
I am certain you don't hear.
It's as silent as my thoughts of you.
How fragrant is the air,
your companion when you are sleeping?
How I'd love to breathe in deep.
How I'd love to be there touching you.
How I'd love to be with you.
How I'd love to feel you touching me.
I am certain you don't know.
I'm awake with thoughts of loving you.
How slowly goes the time,
with your heart to beat the minutes by?
I would love to hear one beat.
I would make it last for hours.
How I'd love to be with you.
How I'd love to be there touching you.
I'm certain you don't know.
I'm awake with thoughts of loving you.
The sun opened my eyes,
and I found her on my mind.
I smiled into the room and
felt her presence there.
The light covered my face,
and I was alone with her.
I laughed into the day and
saw the freshened air.
She brought her lips to me,
and I felt the morning dew.
I reached to touch my love
and knew what we could share.
The room was in our lungs,
to soothe our waking minds.
The fragrance of our love was
floating everywhere.
With her hand
she touches her hair
and looks at me,
her eyes changing
as they look inside my mind,
reflecting the love I feel.
She responds with her hand upon my cheek
and with a smile.
I think of volumes
of words that could not express
the words of this love,
the superlatives
that could not begin to expose the magnitude
of the thoughts
we have silently spoken.
I don't want her to move.
I want her to stay
close,
so close.
I want her to look at me
that way.
If I could write
those volumes,
if I could recite
those superlatives
with the most eloquent emphasis,
I would not.
To share them with the world
would be a corruption
of a love
devoid of impurity.
To share them
would be to take
the color from her eyes
and the texture from her touch.
My Dear One Love,
You remind me of spring.
So bright, so new,
so self-assertively true,
as if you can't conceive
of being anything but you.
I've missed you so much
since you've been away.
I have only the image of your face
to help me through the day.
I'd like to hold it in my hands
and brush your hair away,
watch you smile
and close your eyes,
while you memorize the way
my hands feel on your cheeks.
Do you remember
when I held you?
In my mind
I've built a shrine
to commemorate the way
you rushed back to me,
and how you felt to me that day.
To have touched your life
makes me a lucky man.
How fortunate
to have held you in my hand.
My body's tense,
you know,
for lack of you to hold.
I remember how you feel
when you bring yourself to me,
and lay your head upon my chest,
and hold me tenderly.
I bring my lips
into your hair
and kiss you
endlessly, endlessly, endlessly.
I've thought of you a lot, it seems,
in broken thoughts and scattered dreams.
My chains of thought are not complete.
They've grown from self-inflicted schemes
to never know just what I see,
because I am afraid to be
someone who cares too easily.
The world is full of hate, you know.
Too many are the kind who show
a hand and maybe some concern,
while friendships never seem to grow.
They stop upon a certain place,
a sly remark, a smiling face,
a bound'ry left without a trace.
I've thought of you a bit today
in my own noncommittal way.
My mind is talking to me now.
Uncanny are the things I say.
The questions of you now abound:
A friend is this that I have found?
My mind is spinning 'round and 'round.
I used to be a wide-eyed youth.
I searched for love, I searched for truth.
But now I am a lonely one.
My mind seems like an enclosed booth,
allowing none to look inside
at sacred things that I must hide,
at thoughts that I must not confide.
But I've thought of you a lot, I find.
and somehow you have touched my mind.
There's goodness in the world, I know.
I'm glad I'm not completely blind.
For friendships grow, you know, like such:
There's more to touching than to touch.
To reach a mind can mean so much.
Is this the story that we've heard at times before?
About the girl who touched a pearl and wanted more?
And then on checking did not have the price to pay?
Are you the girl who touched the pearl that went away?
Are you the girl who thought that you could find much more
than those sad men whom you had loved at times before?
Are you still sitting on the sands upon his shore?
Are you still looking for your pearl to come once more?
Are you still hoping you can go with him someday?
Or will you with those unloved men forever stay?
Or are you hoping that your pearl won't come again,
so you can live your lonely life with lesser men?
Is this the story that we've heard at times before?
About the girl who touched a pearl and wanted more?
And then on checking did not have the price to pay?
Are you the girl who touched the pearl that went away?
Who killed Norma Jean?
They've asked before.
They'll point forever more
at sickness-all within-our sleeping Norma Jean.
Who killed Norma Jean?
Those who never had the grace to be.
Those so limited by all the lights,
the glimmering, shimmering, glittering diamonds
which they craved, yet could not see.
Those who wanted to be there
in that place,
that time,
that race
to touch the maker of history.
By grace, my friend, I was not there.
By youth, my friend, I did not care.
Who killed Norma Jean?
Those who did not have the care to know.
Those who came to see the show,
to watch a fantasy
enacted in real life,
to learn the lesson they could not know,
to close shut,
to damn, to spit, to love;
for Satan comes with pleasure,
and leaves us after winning.
Who killed Norma Jean?
Those who never had the will to live,
those who had no time to give
what they never had themselves;
that nameless SOMETHING
which they've suffered long to forget,
which they've never known but yet,
they knew they could not know, but knew
Who killed Norma Jean?
My friend, 'twas no one else but you,
if you are one of them.
Where was that nameless SOMETHING?
Lost in the caverns,
in the abyss,
in the vacuum,
in the deep and desolate
darkness
of the centuries
that never knew her smile.
What was that nameless SOMETHING?
that all engulfing hope,
that fleeting human mystery,
that sighed for,
died for
OBJECTIVITY.
Listen well, my child
For
all things have changed
And I have a new lesson that you should hear.
Forget for now the tales of joy,
The tales of magic and mystery and dance
That I showered upon you during our childhoods.
You must learn about the hater who hates
us.
The hater who hates
us
Does not want you to be his slave,
He wants you to be his slave
Before he kills you.
Don’t cover your ears, my precious one, from the horror
That I now teach.
Open your eyes.
See the the towers that once stood tall
and understand what it means
that they have fallen.
The hater who hates
us
Is not envious of
our possessions.
He does not want to steal them for himself—
He wants only to take them from
us.
He does not want to live your life,
Or be free and guiltless like you.
He envies only your guiltless smile.
The hater who hates
us
Tells himself that he is pure before God
While
we are evil, worldly, sinful and impure.
He tells himself
It is his duty to rid the world of
us.
The hater who hates
us cannot build
Our beautiful buildings
Our clean society,
Our wired and wireless world,
Our highways
And the wonderful accomplishment
That is you—the person you have made.
Our creed says happiness is possible
In this world, in this life—
Today and now.
His creed is to destroy
our creed
And bring the world to decay and decline.
You go to dinner—he hides in caves.
You dance and smile—he seethes at your sinfulness
You wear new and bright colors—he wears drab sheets
You proclaim happiness—he wants life to be pain and suffering
You smile and laugh—he hates your joy.
You try to persuade—he points a gun
You trade—he bombs
You create—he hates
You build for the future—he thinks he will go to heaven by destroying your
future
And what do
we give the world?
We give it freedom
Not force.
We give it rights
Not duties.
We give it accomplishment
Not envy.
We are life and joy
That’s what the hater who hates
us hates.
That’s what he wants to kill.
There is a lesson that fell upon us
From times quite long ago.
A man on horseback with sword raised high
Yelled, “This God is our God.
And in His Name
We must
destroy impurity,
Kill
all who do not cower before the sword.”
Today, his evil is
our good.
Today, he is the hater who hates
us.
How can there be peace
When the hater who hates us
Must kill
us in the name of God?
And now you ask, my precious child,
“Father, why do you teach
what does not ring
of life?
You’ve taught me only laughter
And gave me only hope.”
My child, you are young,
but I have seen a thousand deaths and cried a thousand tears….
That came from long ago and far away.
But after our day of infamy
My tears are here and now, today.
And you must understand what you have seen…
I had hoped to leave a better world…
I had hoped you would never know…
I had hoped we had rid the world
Of the hater who hates
us.
We must find our joy together
And we must regain our hope
So that we can smile again and see,
That the hater who hates you
Is only part of history.
This is our task in this our world
I stopped,
looked at the abyss in my chest,
saw the blood flowing
and gushing,
watched it color the greenness of my uniform,
color the patch on my chest
that spelled my name,
my name!
I sat
and watched my blood
color the brownness
of the earth.
I looked
into the sky
and asked, "Why?"
I cried
and then I died.
I am watching the snow through my window,
and I notice that it falls
like countless soldiers upon the field.
And the swirling wind is like the ages,
throwing them,
drifting them,
crashing them
into giant mounds,
and sometimes letting them fall silently
upon moist uncovered earth,
to melt into the soil.
And the sky reveals its color, white.
And it says
the snow will fall again,
the good shall die once more.
The ageless wind still roars.
And for what?
For some god,
or king, or prince,
or President
who decided to wreak havoc
upon the land
so that upon the mounds of history
he could stand?
Let him try to stand on snow.
He stood there, red-eyed on the street,
among the smoke and dust.
His wrinkles cried within his smile.
He asked me to be just;
to give him just a small compense.
He'd been a man of trust,
but victimized by dog-eat-dog,
betrayed by men of lust.
His blood-eyes searched within my face.
He hoped for fool and friend.
He said that I looked hard as stone.
He asked me to extend
my mind to other peoples' minds,
and then to comprehend
the way that small men feel inside,
then surely I would bend.
The wrinkled rivers in his face
began a flood of tears.
He asked me to have pity now.
He had no sly veneers.
He asked me then to look at him.
His face held many fears.
Then surely I would give to him.
He was a man of years.
I said, "I cannot give to you
the pity you desire.
For men who blame on other men
are men who will require
that pity is their legal right,
because they've lost the fire
that other men still seem to have,
and this I can't admire.
And I can give you no reward,
no matter what you say.
No matter what your life has been,
I never will betray
the standards I require of man:
to seek not to allay
the efforts that assume from life
in parasitic way.
He looked at me, and then he said,
“I've known men just like you.
You're always seeking honesty,
and that is nothing new.
But I have been around awhile,
and I know this is true.
You must cheat all you can, my friend,
for honest men are few."
I looked at him, and then I said,
"And I've heard that before.
You want to justify your ways
by claiming life is war.
But men who think like you, my friend,
are always very poor.
For I am here and you are there.
I need not argue more."
There came a man into our lives,
an aristocrat he was.
He tried to buy us with his lies,
and ah, he did.
And ah, he did.
This man became a friend of ours,
so we were led to think.
He told us tales for many hours,
and oh, so well.
And oh, so well.
He spoke of worlds beyond our own,
and away we went with him
to lands that we had never known.
And what a dream.
And what a dream.
And then there came the time he died.
We found ourselves alone.
And when we found that he had lied,
we stumbled well.
We stumbled well.
Richard, the mighty dragon killer,
once did it all alone.
He slew the left-handed dragon
and removed him from his throne.
Yes, he killed the mighty dragon
and removed him from his throne.
The king who ruled the world
was as evil as can be.
He told us many lies
and controlled our destiny.
Yes, he told us many lies
and controlled our destiny.
We knew not even then
he had done this evil deed.
He told us he was kind
and would give each one his need.
Yes, he told us he was kind
and would give each one his need.
Richard, the mighty dragon killer
once ruled our land alone.
But he turned into a dragon
When he sat upon his throne.
Yes, he turned into a dragon
when he sat upon his throne.
A story I am told
about a fly in from the cold
who found a room of men who hold
the world in their hands,
the largest of lands.
And he, this fly, did hear
the mutterings of men who fear
the Inquisitor to rear
the mighty blade, for fear they swayed
to agree, to agree.
"Yes, your Majesty.
Handsome mustachioed man, You rule.
Our Leader is no fool.
The world now beckons to His call.
Oh, Leader, great, and knowing all.
And came this fly to land, you see,
upon a desk of majesty.
While mighty men did squirm and twist,
a fly in from the mighty mist
thought not at all about the world,
the tragedy which soon unfurled
to swallow men in death,
a bullet in the head,
a frozen plain with bodies dead.
All from this desk this land was led.
But fate is just a fantasy,
and this great fly found destiny
to land upon the coat of He,
the great and mighty Stalin,
And while He rocked the earth,
they thought He knew its measured girth.
They smiled and whiled,
and craved for one shrewd looking glance
(You see, I say 'tis not a chance.
One must get close enough to touch.
You know careers are made like such.)
They thought great thoughts were brewing nigh,
but He, the Majesty, did merely eye
this measly great gigantic fly.
I
The tablets brought us ancient themes.
The gods were never grand.
The magic chants have cast their spells,
but all by slight of hand.
Mistaken laws have brought us hells,
the rules no longer stand.
The pen was born and changed the form.
Words rang across the land.
But hourglasses stopped somehow.
A gun has stayed the sand . . .
II
And man whose universals led
to great Romantic themes,
now crawls among the sewer walls.
His mind is lost in dreams,
with ghastly faces taunting him,
with nothing as it seems,
with nothing to stand proudly on.
His premises are screams.
He wakes up, but his fears will stay.
A gun protects the schemes . . .
III
And who will come to nudge the glass?
And who will face the gun?
Who will declare that man can know,
point out the rising sun?
And who will make of all men free?
Who'll kill the savage Hun?
Who'll stop the nightmares in the night
and cure men one by one.
There..now someone's come to ink the well.
The pen has just begun . . .
A child his but his cries, his smiles, his sighs;
with someone there to answer all his "Whys?"
With certainty someone replies.
The world is mighty, large, and wise.
A boy has youth, and youth abounds
with beetles, bugs, and nighttime cricket sounds.
The makings of a man he founds.
One wish: to test, to test resounds.
The god of life, young man, you surely are;
A countless face to fuel a needless war.
Resist, resist, young man, by far,
and bear an ageless, bitter scar.
A man whose end is waning ever near
has little time for ghosts and prayers and fear.
Oppression sometimes wants a tear.
He counts his goal, his means, his year.
I offer this, world:
the heart of my soul,
the beauty which is only mine to give.
Just let me play-for only this I live.
My mind is full of sounds beyond compare.
Listen-my soul I share.
Listen, it's there, it's there.
Ah, but do you care?
You glimpse my soul, walk by,
and if you have a chance,
you put your shoes
upon a spot
you could not touch
or see
but for me.
And so I tear my heart
and laugh
that I
who have so much to show
cannot be seen at all.
Yes, I stand alone tonight.
But I shall acquit my soul.
"Vengeance is mine;
I will recompense."
This, I'm sure will happen hence.
For the soul which knows perfection
can but achieve its own reflection.
I sit beside the window
looking out upon the scene.
The rain falls on my face
as it filters through the screen.
I think about the evening when we loved upon the green.
The clouds cannot erase the memory of that dream.
I thought of love,
and swore it wasn't true.
But now I see,
after all these years,
Roberta, it was you.
I bring back all the memories
of the times within my room.
They burn inside my brain
as I look around this tomb.
I bring back all the memories
of the beach in early June.
My thoughts of you now cry to me
that I've got to see you soon.
I saw your love,
and swore it wasn't true.
But now I see,
after all these years,
Roberta, it was you
I hear the plane above me,
and I think about the day
when in a fit of sorrow
my Roberta went away.
I wonder if she'll see,
when the sun passes her way,
upon a new tomorrow,
the words I want to say.
I'm certain now.
Yes, now I know it's true.
For now I see,
after all these years,
Roberta, it was you.
Ah, to have lived in the age of symphonies and concertos,
when man's mind was free to explore,
when they thought of growth instead of war.
It was such a giant age
uncorrupted by a mindless sage
whose thoughts were born of quiet rage.
Today there's dirty rock and blood to shock,
and abstract themes that come from dreams,
to tell us life's not what it seems,
that beauty's lost to panic screams.
But to have lived in the age of symphonies and concertos,
when men could flower only good,
when in gardens of glory all men stood,
to reach to the sky and smile,
to stretch in brightly witty style.
It was such a giant age,
uncorrupted by a mindless sage
whose thoughts were born of quiet rage.
Today there's jungle dance, and love by chance,
and freedom's song sings doing wrong,
and killing as you please, and stealing planes,
and expressing your disease.
The earth showed me its brownness,
as I walked the highway alone.
The excavation at the once barren field
was still going on,
and I could see
that day by day,
things around were improving.
The wind was hitting inside my left ear,
telling me that I was real.
It laughed in its
continuous way.
I heard it and laughed too.
I stopped on the overpass
with the superhighway beneath,
and watched the cars fall
out of my coat pocket,
and continue on their
singular ways.
Another day in my life.
What beauty this is.
To feel this way,
my way.
To be completely free.
I send my soul into the morning
to see the world as it can be.
And then I look upon the scenery
and know that this is what I see.
For I am on a ship of beauty.
The sun is lighting up my way.
And I am on a lifetime journey
and this is just another day.
But I must rise to greet the living,
and I must join the highway trail.
And I must deal with their neuroses
and smile at smiles that have gone stale.
They've lost their souls to some evasion.
They've lost their minds to something worse.
And I can't bear to see them dying.
They're caught in some gigantic curse.
I feel that I am something foreign.
I feel so cold and all alone.
I don't know how I have become so.
But one thing I have always known:
that they've betrayed their own existence,
and none has learned to use his mind,
and they have lost their own importance,
and they have truly all gone blind.
They close their eyes upon the morning,
and they have never seen the spring.
They've never known a moment's clearness
or heard the morning country sing.
They've never felt a morning dew drop.
They rush each day past shaded trees.
They've never known a moment's silence
with head in hands, elbows on knees.
I throw my soul into depression.
I see the world that they have made.
I numb my mind to what I'm seeing
in hope that everything will fade.
For I am on a ship of misery,
and tears are lighting up my way.
This feeling clouds my lifetime journey
and this is just another day.
But soon the day becomes the evening,
and I can go home with a smile,
to write a poem, see my lover,
to sit, relax, and rest awhile.
Now I have found a moment's silence,
and I have found a moment's thought.
And I look back to what I'm doing,
review the trap in which I'm caught.
For I have set myself above them,
and in so doing, joined them too.
For I have grown my own neurosis
within my self-sustaining view.
Yes, they are lost and they are dying.
But I am wise enough to see.
And I can point them to tomorrow
to build the world as it can be.
A man must be true to existence.
A man must be true to his mind.
A man must know that he's important,
for only then, he'll come to find
that he is on a ship of beauty.
His mind is lighting up his way.
How much I love this lifetime journey,
and this is just another day.
Love is hate and peace is war.
For your sake and nothing more
we have heard it all before.
You give life only through death.
You would stifle every breath
that says, "I don't agree with you.
I choose to live another way."
You'd make it his last living day.
And as you live your life of cheers
through all your long death-giving years,
before you die you want to know
that all the living men will go
to watch you placed beneath the earth,
and under buildings reaching high.
And all will come and some will sigh,
"This man was much, much more than I."
Oh, yes, a monument you'll be
for all the days of history.
They'll come, they'll cry, and they will see
just what a giant man can be.
But I, well, I will never go.
For I know something they won't know.
Yes, I remember children's tears
and long, forgotten dying years.
No, you don't mean so much to me.
I've studied that long history.
And I have seen Egyptian sands,
and there the pyramids still stand.
Most look at them still reaching high.
I've looked beneath, not to the sky.
The blood dissolved, yet men still die.
No, you are not much more than I.
The hateful wind that pounds my breast.
The cold of night, the heat of day.
The abyss beneath my feet.
The jagged rock that shakes the earth.
This giant oak where I am bound.
The laughing vultures at my sores.
These, my hated foes, my friends.
Why can I not die?
“Ah me! Alas. Pain, pain ever, forever.”
I want to rest….sleep,
I want to stop feeling what I feel.
But then I'd not be able to feel the pain,
and I want to feel it….to know its full measure
as it touches every cell of my body.
I close my eyes, and think of my love,
that deepest of feelings, that value above all values.
I sense the battle it wages against my pain.
It knows that it will endure,
for my love of life is boundless.
Their revenge and my misery are nothing against it.
“Ah me! Alas. Pain, pain ever, forever.”
When I walked the earth,
their silent scorn was seen deep within their eyes.
Their hidden hate was found only in their omitted
courtesies, and their vacant smiles.
Torture, my silent companion;
Scorn, my merciless enemy;
Solitude, my deadly fate;
Despair, my constant emotion.
But I love my glorious pain,
for it is my badge, my symbol
of the grandeur and exalted status I have achieved.
That I am chained upon this tree
adds nobility to my pain
and a reason to struggle beyond struggling.
I have become a god.
Had I dreamed that I would achieve such infamy,
I would have striven harder
so that I might have achieved it sooner.
Look at them now.
See how brother murders brother,
father murders son,
in subtle, vicious ways
with words and exclusions?
This age is everywhere a time for death
of all varieties,
and no one cries
when he sees his kindred brought down
not for that kindred's evil
but for his good.
This smothering of hope
for all men
leads to the despair
of those struggling few
who, like me, give life.
We are slaves to vane
mediocrity.
Look, see how the fiends
torture even children
who show the brightness
and the innocence of youth,
who still believe that
no harm will come to them---
if they are good.
See how long their effort will last
when they find themselves
trapped in punishment
for having succeeded?
Only few can be like gods.
“Ah me! Alas. Pain, pain ever, forever.”
Oh, how this nobility stings.
For it has always been thus:
The light bearer punished.
The possessors forced to give.
The sacred made common.
The intelligent muffled.
The fast slowed down.
The tall made to bend.
The happy made sad.
The beautiful made ugly.
The pure made corrupt.
The window tells me truly
that the night has come again.
It is just a tranquil evening
like the night before had been.
With Debussy singing to me,
I did set myself with pen.
I am happy on this evening,
but there's something wrong with men.
I would love to write of beauty
and of skies of crystal blue,
and of noticing the lightness
of the feeling that I knew.
I would love to write of touching
the soft skin of my one love.
I would love to write of loving
while the sun shone up above.
I would love to write of sunlight,
how it covers like a glove,
how it warms the soul within me,
sets me flying like a dove.
I would love to write of singing,
and of choruses so clear
that the many sound like trumpets,
soft, and clean, and bright, and near.
I would love to write of goodness,
and of people being dear,
of a land of only wisdom,
of a land without a tear.
But I read the news this morning.
Let me see what did it say?
Oh, yes. Blood and hunger, hatred.
But it says that everyday.
And I heard this morning's broadcast.
An Israeli had been killed.
He was ambushed on a road bank.
Yes, the killers were quite skilled.
And I saw a movie Friday.
Ah, so good, should get award.
Let me see, I can't remember.
I was actually quite bored.
And I heard that Christ was coming.
Yes, don't you know it's true?
He is on a flying saucer.
There are aliens with him too.
And I heard a baby crying.
Such a noisy little child.
He must have been a bad one.
Because his mother's strikes were wild.
Now, I think I've got an ulcer.
But, you know, I don't know why.
I am happy and contented.
But why do I sometimes cry?
The window tells me truly
that the night has been awhile.
And I think it is my bedtime.
So I raise up with a smile.
Now Stravinsky's singing to me.
So I'll turn him off, I must.
For his music seems like crashings,
and of smoke, and junk, and dust.
You put your sign upon the door,
"Do not disturb, not anymore."
And when you found that no one came,
you went on in and closed the door.
Depression came and came and came.
You put a smile upon your shame.
And no one knew for no one saw.
the door was closed and no one came.
You've lived this way for much too long.
I wrote it all into this song.
For all to see who cannot see,
who'll live this way for much too long.
You'll read this feigned obscurity.
The words are here for you to see.
You cannot see what you won't know.
It's safe to miss obscurity.
Read between the lines,
feel the pain - just let it be.
Then I'm sure that you will see
it was for naught,
it was for naught.
Something that I touched upon,
some subconscious premise,
or something deep within the essence
of my soul,
broke me free,
woke me up
to the fact that I am in love,
in joyous, ecstatic
love
with every beat of my heart,
every cell that I own,
every second of my life.
Oh, glory.
Let it last.
Let it fly.
The world is mine.
I am king
and reality is my throne.
Through the grayness
of your stale idealism
you look at me,
and judge me,
making me,
in your mind
the opposite of what I am.
Through the blindness
of your stained glass eyes
you do not see me.
For I am on the outside
looking at you.
On your side
is authority.
It rules you,
giving you
guilt,
fear,
and evasion,
and uses you
as a stone
for its
highway to oblivion.
On my side
is truth
as it is,
and a man
willing to see
the world
unafraid,
and to live
unburdened
by your side.
You join the human race,
a babe
comprised of potential for growth,
fueled with a fire which should burn
uncontrolled,
with an appetite
that you take for granted.
You join the human race
and become no human.
For the schemes of themes
thrown at you
thrust into you, like a twisted knife,
kill you
and your potential,
transform you into a carcass
of submission to authority,
and fear of disapproval.
No human race is it.
No happiness can arise
from the superficial mud
that solidifies
within your mind.
No life
can be found
in the philosophical fog
which guides your every choice,
in the principle by which
you live---
blind feeling---
Sanity is fleeting.
Most men are self-defeating.
They cannot hold their minds to it,
and strong men never seem to fit.
And Mickey Mouse controls the land.
He rules it with a waving hand,
and that, my friend, is that.
The hated men will be those few
who built the world for me and you,
while Mickey turned to rat.
The frontiers never saw the knights.
The East coast only saw the lights,
and soon they may go out.
For ragged men with ragged minds
will come to pull the ageless blinds
while Mickey starts to shout.
With squeaky voice, he'll tell us all,
"Mankind was made to always fall,
and never to be free.
The moon, you see, is much too far,
and we are too concerned with war.
Let's leave the frontiers be."
The speaker stood on his box.
He spoke to the others
and to me
of benevolent programs,
and wonderful ideals,
and common goals,
I listened
and mentally spat in his face,
while the others applauded.
I have listened to such speeches
for many years.
I have noticed this:
These speakers are all collectors
of money
and lives.
And to all these collectors
I say,
"Don't collect me.
I choose to live
and to achieve my goals
for myself,
and those I love.
Don't collect me.
Just leave me free."
I've read those words
which cut their razored lines
through decades of spiteful cruelty.
Above all else,
you are a man
who reigns as hatred's mighty foe.
How could you be?
How did you know?
How long did it take you to learn?
You see, I'm young,
with forming tongue,
and as you do, I burn
to end the savagery of man,
the sacrifice and blood.
We let them have the world
with lies upon lies upon lies.
and you've reclaimed it all
by introducing truth.
My friend,
it's yours,
it's yours,
it's yours.
They're really all that small.
If the world releases swelling bombs,
if the world succumbs to whining qualms
about how man should live.
If our nation turns to stone
and rules the freedoms we have sown.
If a Hitler walks the land
and says, "I am peaceful man."
If these things of which I say
come about some cloudy day,
I will have to go,
and shrug my shoulders on my way.
And I'm sure the things I write
will be buried by the trite
who think they know what's best for man,
who think they have the power and
whose heads you'll find among the sand
of an ocean full of lies.
The death bell tolls
upon history's long expanse.
The night consoles,
for someone has died.
Yes, someone is dead.
Was he a prince of world renown?
A general from some great Russian town?
Or a lowly meager peasant?
Will we cry,
or wonder what his life was?
Will we go on living as before?
No,
a god is dead.
We're free to run.
Look, I see a newly risen sun.
A god is dead.
Ah, yes, it's true.
A God is dead.
His name is Marx.
Sweet, gentle goddess,
stand shyly,
remove your gown,
let him see.
Stand naked before the master.
Cover those soft and innocent eyes.
Your mother taught you chastity.
The master looks,
approves those pinkish nipples,
those tender thighs.
You'll be his slave,
his lover.
Soon you will learn how to live
in a world you did not create.
Trauma has its awakening.
To begin with the simple fact,
and proceed to the universal.
To take that fact,
to expand its significance,
to identify its role,
its importance
within this universe.
To make awareness
a ship through space,
reaching farther, wider,
collecting, abstracting,
extending and culminating,
arriving eventually
at the most important fact of all:
the significance of man.
Toward this
my awareness has flown.
I lie on my pillow and I feel the pulsing sound
as it surges through my every cell.
Is it my soul?
No, it can’t be.
It must surely be you inside of me.
What can I do?
What words are there to say
so that you may know the depth of my devotion,
the all-consuming undercurrent of love I feel?
I want to hold you in my arms
so that you may feel that sound inside of me,
feel my veins rise and fall.
With you here surrounded by me,
I might then absorb more of your remarkable being
into my core
and you could feel my basic need which is you,
who are the fuel of my soul
the source of my every attention.
I want to drink you,
taste you,
and give you back in even fuller measure
that life that you have given me.
Since you became a part of me
all else is corruption
and you are the only beauty and perfection
in the universe.
I must go to a room where you have been
so I can breathe you
and recall every millisecond we spent together,
every thought, every kiss, every sound, every motion.
I can feel the air moving.
No, that pulsing sound could not be my soul.
Donna, you have my soul.
It must surely be you inside of me.
My mind blazed in its solitary way,
but my body too was alone.
And the burning question:
What is it that I seek?
I settled on the mountain
with my back to the green.
It pricked my skin as it cooled
me with its moisture.
And it seemed that my fire
subsided too.
I stared into
a newly risen sun,
closed my eyes,
and saw the erubescence
it produced in my head
as my entire body
was now engulfed in warmth, not fire.
I took in fully
the air that blew by my face
and noticed that it carried with it
the soothing fragrance
of the flowers below.
The flowers,
exhibiting only their beauty
and goodness,
and their joy at being alive.
How admirable it is
to display only the bloom
natural to your being.
Then music filled my head.
I heard the song of a canary,
sounding like no other song.
As I listened, I discovered
that she expressed only truth.
Above me
the arm of a tree
hung lowly,
inviting me to sample
the cherry
is tendered.
I picked
and tasted.
The shocking sweetness
made me suddenly
aware of myself,
suddenly aware
that I was alive,
and that except
for the five minutes
I was now enjoying,
I had been depriving
myself of life and enjoyment.
Then the fire
blazed into my mind;
the fire of the question
I had forgotten;
forgotten because
the answer
was in the rapture
I was experiencing.
Tell me that these joys are not mine.
Tell me they are not real,
that my life is unimportant compared to the
majesty of the universe.
It is I who must enjoy this majesty.
What is it that I seek?
I seek myself
and nothing more.
The world is mounted on a horse going nowhere.
It was placed there by a mindless demon, while laughing at the curse he'd cast.
The horse is dying of a gray disease.
'Twas injected by this mindless demon while looking at the cursed past.
The horse now gallops on in darkness.
He shakes the world strapped to his saddle and wonders how long he will last.
And Plato, and Hegel, Hume and Kant cry they are helpless to the mindless demon who laughed at the curse he'd cast.
The chains, and ropes, and the blades of war cry they were placed there for the good of heaven while binding and pricking