Posts Tagged ‘Stone’

Ray of Light

Posted: July 29, 2008 in Rant
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The results of dishonesty

The results of dishonesty

There is a hole in my heart, and I can’t contain the light that is pouring out. This is the brilliance of truth and the refraction of soul. This is the damage that is done to a human being when you are betrayed, blinded, backstabbed, and belittled for trying to be more understanding than is humanly possible to be. The Froggacuda has held his enormous, razor-sharp, whiplike tongue long enough, and the slings and arrows, the sticks and stones, having come from all quarters, determine that the defense of the 360 degrees is back by popular demand, and must be enforced with the unpredictable and uncanny gusto that is the Monster from Red Lake.

This site has been populated with what I once was and, apparently, what I still am made of: not snips and snails and puppy dogs tails, but fifteen years of poetry, ten years of making music, five years of DJ mixes, and one month of unemployment later, I am sitting all froggy on top of a pile of meaningless (to you) shit that perhaps someone will wander through and find a gem or two amidst this midden heap of detritus. Although the catharsis of inputting and then burning all of my available poetry journals is healing, it tears a lot of scabs off of present and historical wounds that should have been viciously expunged with a gallon of Bactine and a scalpel when the damage occurred in the first place. Except that I am a coward.

I don’t know why I am so creative; why I am able to pour my guts out on the kitchen table and read your fortune in them like some sort of Street Shaman or modern-day Gypsy — to help you, only to stuff my innards back into this ridiculously fat and out-of-shape barrel-like body of mine, smile, pat your head, tell you I am alright, and send you on your merry way with a little bit of Murdoch perspective to think about. It’s what I do.

I am so brave when it comes to telling the truth to other people. In my own private hellish closet where the real me lurks and shakes his fist at a world that I never asked to be a part of, I tell myself I am making the best of it. I live, I love, I breathe, I get up in the morning, I go to work (when I have it), I get shanked by friends, family members, acquaintances, business partners, bosses, co-workers, Sunday drivers, wives, fuck-buddies, Internet personalities, and the population at large, and it all it really makes me want to get this thing called life over with. That’s why I am trying to smoke and drink myself to death like a modern day Charles Bukowski. What is the point of all of this happiness and misery, anyways?

Seriously, what is a blog for besides spitting ridiculously self-centered screeds to an unsubscribed and uncaring Internet where my body of work will be lost as another couple of drops in the ocean of half-formed content scrabbling for purchase or publication like so many Lovecraftian half-formed nightmares populating the craptacular pages of the 21st Century’s equivalent of pulp fiction: WordPress.

I was going to wait until I had everything I had ever done (or at least kept and found again, only to be re-humiliated by rediscovering it) pumped into this overblown MySQL database before I started ranting again, but enough is enough, and the tongue must be let loose to rave in the dark as an orgy of one. It is terribly frustrating to understand that the highlight of my life is the eulogy I gave in a shadowy, barely filled cathedral for one of my best friends Bela Feher, who I miss like an arm or a testicle (he’d love that) even now, and I DAMN him for falling off of a big rock and leaving me here to struggle through this bullshit they call life while trying to console myself that I can’t die fast enough and that his wisdom, magic, and sarcasm is still contained within every ray of light from the hole in my heart.

[ original image courtesy of www.basehead.org ]

Achille’s Heel

Posted: June 9, 2008 in Poetry
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This is the slow motion
Of my Achille’s tendon unravelling.
Dimly I am aware
of something wrong
of terrible, horrible things impending
and that this is gonna hurt.
Again.

SNAP!
Scream.
Pain and agony.
My leg!
Ambulance on the way.
Stay calm — it’s going to be alright.
You’ll get medical attention.
Sirens and first aid.
Professionals stitching me back together.
Drugs (prescribed) and an IV drip.
Crutches.
Going home.
Rehabilitation and sympathy.
More pain, wearing away like water on stone.
And one day, I’m OK again.
I’ll appreciate my mobility and the experience.

But right now
in this relationship
All I can hear is the snap
And the snake of something crucial
something vaguely central
internal
Unravelling.

Heavy and Blue

Posted: October 27, 2000 in Poetry
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My heart is heavy and blue
Like a lack of oxygen
Some necessary energy source
A nutrient it is used to being fortified with.
This weight in my chest
Prevents me from breathing too deeply.
I walk hunched
Like there’s a rope attached to a stone.

Dictation:

Posted: December 22, 1994 in Poetry
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thoughts like knives
— no blunt smile —
grinding to sharpen
against the stone of today.
my low self-esteem
smarts when it’s smart,
because nobody hurts me like me.

Coping

Posted: August 5, 1994 in Poetry
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Sometimes I think about things,
and I’m embarrassed because
of the way I think.

I am just another person,
another human being,
and I’m sad because I’m supposedly
special.

I’m sad that I’ve been determined
to be smart or something.
I’m different, and that hurts,
and people need me because of my “gifts”
and “talents”.

I don’t refuse their necessities.
They need, I fulfill
and I’ll do my best.

But like any tool, my existence
is taken for granted.
We never thank the hammer
for hammering —
we don’t remember
how difficult a stone
drives a nail.

We don’t remember to thank ourselves for coping.

The Candlestick Maker

Posted: December 7, 1993 in Poetry
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Sometimes I come and I go
fall apart like a fool,
too cool to admit I’m wrong:
I’m no Annie Sprinkle
with a cervix to show –
I get stoned and believe in the Maker,
the butcher, the baker,
and I’m three men in a tub:
one with a sword,
one with a glove,
one with a half-cocked smile
and a shrug.

I Can’t Breathe

Posted: September 15, 1993 in Poetry
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why can’t I
just be another guy?
but I’m a person
with a snake-sharp tongue
and I’m a ripped flannel…
I shoot my mouth like a shotgun.
riddles and rhyming and rhythm,
not taken seriously enough to stay honest
just another number in the GTE phone list.
I lie and I lie and I lie
to convince you all
that the poet is just another human being;
that I am just another guy.

I thresh through these lines
like a dog wrapped in seaweed,
thrown with stones in the ocean:
I can’t breathe –
there’s all the smoke from the fires I’m lightning,
I’m telling the sheriff that I’m struck by lightning.
when does it all stop echoing ‘round in circles?
I think it’s just another dream.
I’m on a porch with a candle and a carpet;
there’s crickets all around
and I feel wonderful without the world dragging me down.
look, I see you don’t understand with a frown.

I can’t even repeat what I’ve said.
I can’t think of a poem I’ve written,
then read,
and thought that this is it, this is perfect!
I’ve even given up trying to rework it.
I don’t want to write for a living anymore
I feel like the homework that’s always lost to the dog
and I don’t remember whatever
I expected from myself anymore.
these fireworks of joy that I wished to paint the skies with
are nothing more than explosions
of white-winged moths from a log
that I’ve kicked walking alone in the woods.

A Letter

Posted: July 28, 1993 in Poetry
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Dear Mom,
I was so stoned the other night
that I was at awe with the world
like when I was a child
light and airy, care-free
and drug-free.
It’s just the weight of responsibility
that turns me to substance,
matter rather than mind –
a little more of the Kind
can sometimes give me back my pleasures:
the realities of the memories
I’ve dried and kept as treasures
from a time when my world was bigger.

Stony Summer Days

Posted: July 1, 1993 in Poetry
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I give myself the leniency
to sit and smoke beneath a tree
in fifteen minutes, a little break
from the summer school I choose to take.
I smoke with friends who’re in my class
from a little whorled pipe which I pass.
with smoky lungs and contented gaze
I stone them all with sunshine rays.

Painted Cave Creekbed

Posted: May 13, 1993 in Poetry
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with all those spring rains
the Painted Cave creekbed
is full of raw boulders being softened
by green children with
still, poised fingers like
ricocheting fireworks.

I poke my head under huge stones
into spaces like lion’s jaws
to the screeching of irritated scrub jays.

Zambone Machine

Posted: May 6, 1993 in Poetry
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why do my dreams lay siege to me
as if I was a fortress of stone,
a dragon unconcerned with men’s matters,
a river who just picks up the bones
of foolish dreams who jump the chasm
and fall to drown in icy water,
for I move the other cliffside at will
at each new attempt I aim to kill
my aspirations if they’re too upsetting,
if they’ll move me into uncertainty:
the Zambone machine, I clear the ice
and sometimes the results are not so nice.

A Short, Balding Dwarvish Bard

Posted: December 12, 1992 in Poetry
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It was a time of Dragon’s fire;
Twas then the souls of Kings were born
From darkness, fear of Demon’s ire
There rose a hope for those forlorn.
The simple men whose lives were led
With doors barred shut and fires high:
Those women who did fear to tread
After the dark had seized the sky:
These common folk, no sorc’rous king
Did bring the Magic to the World,
But not in Swords or Magic Rings,
But in the form of boys and girls,
Who, taught the strength of father’s might,
And told the lore of mother’s art,
Grew tall and strong against the night,
Grew wise and bold and good of heart.
This plaque which no one sees the same,
Is said to be a craft of Elves
To whom the tricks of Magic came
With ease; it is one of their spells.
Yet others call it Dwarvish make,
Their skill with metal’s not unknown,
But who had such the time to take
And sink this plaque in fireplace stone?
It took not Dwarf or Elf to cheer
The Hearth, the heart of every room,
It is the men and women here
Who saved us all from Demon’s doom.

Frog Haven

Posted: April 20, 1992 in Poetry
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I
the splayed hands of the roots
stop searching when I walk past,
but if I listen I hear them quiver
with life blood, holding boulders
when I climb down. unwrapping
and fanning the wind into life
are trees with green springtime leaves.
they swept me along like sand in an undertow.
I scramble and slip down through the branches
and jumbled rocks of the stream bed,
listening to the pianos of the water falling
into each other, over moss sewn stone.

II
beside a sheet of embroidered water
is a cavern of dripping stone:
Frog Haven, hidden behind
a bead-curtain of hanging roots
dipped in the creek,
pouring and pooling away.

III
we are the spirits who define this place.
here, the fall of clear water
is the curve of a spine;
here, the thrust of smoothed stone
is the swell of our muscles.
speaking with the voices of the different cascades,
with tongues of roots and leaves;
breathing out sunlight and forest dust to see by.
here, a trough has worn in the rock,
running happy with songs of mountain stones;
here, several strands of spider-thread,
or elf-hair, to be plucked by the hand of the wind.

On a Brook

Posted: April 8, 1992 in Poetry
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On coming to a brook I think I’ll find
A way across from rock to slip’ry rock.
The gaps between are wide and hard to time
When jumping ‘cause they’re just too far to walk.
My strides are longer with the nerve to leap;
A sure-foot method always startles me.
Even though I am not the one to creep
From stone to stone, then on a fallen tree.
The brook is lovely, dark and deep in those
Odd places where stones sit with mossy hair.
To run across, split seconds’ grip with toes?
To plot and place my soles with ginger care?
Still no one minded the time that I took
To doff my shoes and socks to wade the brook.

Without Trying

Posted: February 14, 1992 in Poetry
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I
I can wish as hard as I want without trying.
Maybe it takes a nervous breakdown
To examine the croak of a frog.
A rich man tapes his hands to his sides
Drowning in treasures but refusing to decide
Which pearls he wants to wear for eyes.

II
To the grey lands to search for the sunken man,
Glowering in the shadow under a rock.
“Come in under the shadow of this red rock –
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
Of ash, of bone, of moon, of stone;
Cadaverous, skin a dizzying kaleidoscope of veins.
I screamed, hands clenched to my eyes, alone,
Falling apart under that brittle stone.

III
pretending to have misplaced my watch,
I asked a current friend for the time.
she looked at me curiously, sadly,
then asked why I no longer rhyme;
walked away as I demanded an answer
from myself; I never saw her again.
time to find another friend.

IV
Sweating and dirty from working,
I keep forgetting to steal some of the diamonds
I’m mining for other people.
At home, I’ve got this dusty blowtorch
Right next to my aspiration to smelt the world.
Been a long time since I burned anything
On purpose. Last time it was my wings.
Pushing the dirt around on my face
With the same oily rag, I promise
Again to go on a picnic in a forest,
Then pause, shaking my head slowly
To get rid of an echo.

V
O black soil, heavy and rich, warm
With the fires of life, thick and moist
Under my nails, in my eyes and ears,
Filling my lungs with blood,
Burnishing my skull with her coppery breath,
Arms sunk to the shoulders in the forest earth;
Black earth goddess.

VI
A poem incarnate: thee, poet.
Vision, mind, thought, dreams,
Thinking in every sense of a word.

And a blackbird.

VII
I came forth with a handful of seashells
(to the froggy applause
of the people’s jaws
creaking in their mechanical sleep),
Following May, who’s going home
To dwell with her enigmatic stone.
Placing shells to wait on the sill
And for her to discover
Like a faucet-spray of dry flowers.
Walking on the sidewalk I’ve
Empty hands in my pockets,
Imagining how she’ll find them
Over and over.

VIII
Flying through the rain on a wind of strings,
He flew with the ease of a soul,
Tall and clear-eyed with violins in his hair.
I saw him from the shore
And waved him out to sea,
Rushing over the water’s open grave.

IX
The dreams,
they poured their hearts
out into the bowl of my fingers,
flesh and water and soggy stitches,
Lost and drowned
in the ashes of childhood,
the sorry sons-of-bitches.
I breathed into my palms,
Taking each by their tenebrous hands,
And throwing them into the darkened heavens:
stars like two flung shoe-fulls of sand.
Spinning around and around underneath,
Watching them swim, these stars, good-bye;
Constellations of the smiling faces
of my parents,
One on each half of the sky.

X
I ran through the stacks of cars
After him that flew away by the seat of his pants.
I, too, cannot answer the question:
“What is the grass?”
I can no longer remember.

Standing under a leprous moon,
In a field of strobed weeds,
In a circle of garish flowers
Bowing outwards,
Heads trembling in a sort of gleeful fear.
Looking at my arms, my hands,
my fingers,
The vegetation was purple, orange, yellow, green,
turned pale by the light of the stone in the sky
shown bone by the fire suffused in my eye.
The moon grinned, sunken in the dust of a scream.

Ghoul Flesh or Mr. Gnarly Rides Again

Posted: December 26, 1991 in Poetry
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I count the bones
rained from above
which sound like wood
dropped on stone
when they fall.
–
If I could,
I think I’d love
the long bones
most of all,
and the skulls.

Leonidas #2

Posted: April 22, 1991 in Poetry
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To Cthulhu I willingly chant the damning phrases from the cursed stone tablets and grovel in worthless supplication before the dreams of watery death sent unto me.

A Brook

Posted: April 6, 1991 in Poetry
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flows talking to itself,
deciding which way to go
and whether to meander
fast or fall slow,
doing leaf-laundry
upon the jumping stones.

A John Wilson Mutation Poem

Posted: April 3, 1991 in Poetry
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A big stone stood, still,
tall, the shadows fell along
quietly crawling,
rolling sunshine through the sky;
up, I looked, and winking,
understood.

Untitled Poem #99

Posted: November 20, 1990 in Poetry
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shadows have much to speak of;
a depth of water holds many mysteries.
trees hold secrets that men have never dreamt of;
a stone whispers to pass the time.

Hunters in the Snow

Posted: October 15, 1987 in Poetry
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The ice skaters turn and glide slowly
On the frozen ice
Oblivious
To the hunters, returning along the wintery road
Dejected and downcast
but the skaters go on skating
In their own little circles
In their own little figures
Some following and some leading
Under the grey, expecting sky.
Pausing at the outskirts of town
And looking at the scores of windswept roofs,
The lines of the gables braced against their burden
Of snow, falling sporadically,
Covering and blanketing.
Looking to the deceptively happy skaters
And those in the carriage or out on a walk
The happy cries of young playing tag on the ice
The hunter only notices; he can see the town differently, too
Huddled at the base of the hoary mountains
Rearing their stony snow-covered peaks skyward
Looming grimly, as the merciless wind blows about their feet.
Ravens sit mockingly in naked black trees
Rent of their covering leaves and stark against the snow
Or they wheel overhead, crying out harsh notes to the bleak crags.
Windows shut tight against the frost which daintily graces them.
The dirty, downtrod snow by the side of the road
Chilly air, in which his breath shows so well
And he scrunches a little deeper into his threadbare coat
And trudges after his miserably gaunt dogs
After his tired companions
Returning to a worn town
Bringing back only fruitless memories
Leaving behind only hopeless footprints.

Water

Posted: June 25, 1987 in Poetry
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Water
Trickles around stones
From way underground
Places where secrets sit
Still very unfound
It searches and pries
Through caverns and cracks
Picking up, putting down
Glistening, it refracts
Bubbling up, winding through
Under, round, over
Supplying things with itself
From sequoia to clover
Joining, growing, getting more
Gaining much momentum
The tiny little rivulet
Intent upon concentration
Down, down the water goes
Fingerlets, creek, brook
To stream, to river, to mighty ocean
A lengthly journey it took.