Everyday we lose a little part of ourselves to the rest of the world.
The only thing we can do is save that part in our hearts, soul, retrieve it daily from the ashes
And write.
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2 shots = happiness
3 shots = love
While 4 shots will
make you Bukowski
or at least you think
so at the bar.
and 5 shots will
make you a genius
as you stumble
towards the mic,
as you mumble
something incredible
and all the other
drunks applaud
(and that none of them will ever remember)
and by 6 shots
you are invincible
and by 7 you are god
and by 9 you are just a poet
writing sonnets to the floor
“oh floor, beneath thy
porcelain sculpture
beautiful, my love,
the world spinning,
swimming around
thy sorry sorry
skull.”
fin.
__________________
~ R.M. ENGELHARDT 2013
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MICHAEL
Wednesday.
Your keys were stolen by the devil; she used them to open all the doors of
distortion and sound, to turn out all of the lights living in the waking moment when
all of the young gods had grown old. Club Extinction, where life is blood & pain.
Reality, a new dialect of language & seasons, harmonies of invention. A new
industry of human consumption. Where did you leave those keys? You had
everything to gain and nothing to lose. You had the emptiness of an over
agonized poetry and a religion of your own that served the one. And in the dark
you wept cold bitter tears for a god that never cared or even remembered your
name. It was as if all of the life upon earth had just vanished in a moment or had
suddenly developed an expiration date. Hiroshima Mon Amour. Goodnight &
goodbye. Still hiding behind all of your intellectual armor, still fighting all the
infidels of time, the thought Gestapo and the killers of the sacred word. The
emperor of ignorance and all of his angels of destruction still pretending to be the
heroes, like the dead skin flaking off ourselves to become the new. But you
remained timid, docile. Stood back & behind and watched from up on high while
all the rest of the world attended to their dark responsibilities techno-fucked by
the man to become the last piece in a puzzle of intricate nothingness, the
universe. The dead phallic worship of a ghost who can’t find his own way home.
To be mortal, to be human to eat, to sleep, to shit….to fuck….to love. With your
heart, you’re head and your balls. To feel when within the night maybe you will
think of daylight, a longing for some long forgotten stranger or hope. To want
something that means something, or something that just matters. For somewhere
beyond the sea the singer sings about you and me but leaves out the part where
you became a pain in the ass. And I remember the day that the romantic died
and became the angry man. Was it suicide? Or was it murder? I guess we’ll
never know. Because when you fell the sound came down deafening like some
overpowering pop overture upon your knees and you finally came to the
realization that you are nothing but a moth to the flame in the afterlife, another
peacemaker sent gone bad. A transcendental agent of the temporal wake who
can’t remember even who in the hell he is. Wednesday… your keys were stolen
by the devil who sells real estate on the side and who can suck on a soul like
there’s no tomorrow. Make a note; never do shots with the devil, she’ll get
everyone else killed and will make you question your own existence, not to
mention, she’ll break your heart every time, in every time, if you just give her
half a chance.
IN CLEOPATRA’S EYES
“And all the light of the world surrounded her, and in her eyes there was
salvation. As the world and she slowly drifted off to what seemed like a million
miles away. Where all time stopped, streets seemed empty. And the world was
no longer there. And in her eyes there was still beauty, light…salvation”
‘How did you get here?’
I ask.
She smiles politely, and then says,
‘Time”
She had to cross the River Nile & a few other places,
Made a few deals with the Gods, and the Oracles and had to apologize just to
get the night … ‘Off’.
A few past lives & a bottle of wine,
But this time without all the poison.
‘I’m just sick of passing romances’
She cries, then smiles at me like a cat and asks; by the way,
‘You don’t know a guy named Mark Anthony … do you?’
To which I reply ‘No, not at all.’
As she touches my hand and stares into my eyes unwavering.
And then says ‘Thanks’.
Seduces me with all her wiles & and all her false innocence,
Her beauty still there, lasting & full of centuries of lingering pain
And hope.
And then she talks about her job, her life and all of her endless
Responsibilities. Asks me how my day went and wonders if she will ever stop
being so wild, and one day finally settle down
With a couple of kids … and a house.
Tells me about a number of all her failed past relationships.
Not based on love but only on power, appearances & success
That never ever quite work out.
And then we talk about the pyramids, empires and poetry,
Says she likes jewelry and wears a scarab necklace that she tells me that she
bought … at Macy’s.
But all the while I still keep staring in those eyes,
Where all memories and all histories last but all finalize, as they take me off
guard and once more willing to take another chance.
Knowing far better, than I should.
As we walk into the her bedroom, her skin like ivory
A beautiful tattoo above and yet below covering the
Length of her back, and her long black hair that sweeps across my body as all of
my angels watch.
For in Cleopatra’s eyes
I remember all time
Like emeralds
In the darkness
Shining in their light
Where I too tonight
Shall dream of all the mysteries
In this moment that is mine
Stronger than any romance
Or love
Now faded.
____________________________________________________
~ R.M.
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“you do sometimes look at yourself and think…you know, just sometimes, in between the first cigarette with coffee in the morning to that four hundredth glass of cornershop piss at 3am, you do sometimes look at yourself and think… “this is fantastic. I’m in heaven.”
~ Dylan Moran
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But his being a poet has made him a revolutionary who must fight on all terrains: on the terrain of poetry by appropriate means and on the terrain of social action, without ever confusing the two fields of action under penalty of re-establishing the confusion that is to be dissipated and consequently ceasing to be a poet, that is to say, a revolutionary.
~ Benjamin Peret
Excerpt from “The Dishonour of the Poets,” 1945.
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Stéphane Mallarmé, born March 18, 1842, Paris. Prose
Hyperbole! From my memory
Triumphantly can’t you
Rise today, like sorcery
From an iron-bound book or two:
Since, through science, I inscribe
The hymn of hearts so spiritual
In my patient work, inside
Atlas, herbal, ritual.
We walked set our face
(We were two, I maintain)
Toward the many charms of place,
Compared them, Sister, to yours again.
The reign of authority’s troubled
If, without reason, we say
Of this south that our double
Thoughtlessness has in play
That its site, bed of a hundred irises,
(They know if it truly existed),
Bears no name the golden breath
Of the trumpet of summer cited.
Yes, on an isle the air charges
With sight and not with visions
Every flower showed itself larger
Without entering our discussions.
Such flowers, immense, that every one
Usually had as adornment
A clear contour, a lacuna done
To separate it from the garden.
Glories of long-held desire, Ideas
Were all exalted in me, to see
The Iris family appear
Rising to this new duty,
But the sister sensible and fond
Carried her look no further
Than a smile, and as if to understand
I continue my ancient labour.
Oh! Let the contentious spirit know
At this hour when we are silent
The stalks of multiple lilies grow
Far too tall for our reason
And not as the riverbank weeps
When its tedious game tells lies
Claiming abundance should reach
Into my first surprise
On hearing the whole sky and the map
Behind my steps, without end, bear witness
By the ebbing wave itself that
This country never existed.
The child so taught by the paths,
Resigns her ecstasy
Says the word: Anastasius!
Born for scrolls of eternity,
Before a tomb can laugh
Beneath any sky, her ancestor,
At bearing that name: Pulcheria!
Hidden by the too-high lily-flower.
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“Poetry presupposes an inspired knowledge of man’s sensuous and spiritual nature. Smithcraft—for the smith was also carpenter, mason, shipwright, and toolmaker—presupposes an inspired knowledge of how to transform lifeless material into active forms. No ancient smith would have dared to proceed without the aids of medicine and poetry. The charcoal used on his forge had been made, with spells, at a certain time of the year from timber of certain sacred trees; and the leather of the forge bellows, from the skin of a sacred animal ritually sacrificed. Before starting a task, he and his assistant were obliged to purify themselves with medicines and lustrations, and to placate the Spites which habitually crowd around forge and anvil. If he happened to be forging a sword, the water in which it was to be tempered must have magical properties—May dew, or spring water in which a virgin princess had washed her hair. The whole work was done to the accompaniment of poetic spells.
Such spells matched the rhythm of the smith’s hammers; and these were of unequal weight.
A sledge hammer was swung by the assistant; the smith himself managed the lighter hammer. To beat out hot metal successfully, one must work fast and follow a prearranged scheme.
The smith with his tongs lays the glowing lump of iron on the anvil, then touches with his hammer the place where the sledge blow is to fall; next he raps on the anvil the number of blows required. Down comes the sledge; the smith raps again for another blow, or series of blows. Experience teaches him how many can be got in while the iron is still hot. So each state of every process had its peculiar metre, to which descriptive words became attached; and presently the words found their own tunes … Nor did the smith … let caprice rule the number and shape of ornaments that he introduced into his work. Whether he was forging a weapon, or a piece of armour, or a tool, or a cauldron, or a jewelled collar, every element in the design had a magical significance.”~ Robert Graves, from his essay “Harp, Anvil, Oar” in The Structure of Verse, edited by Harvey Gross (The Ecco Press, 1979)
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Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family.
Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars,
compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good
health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed
interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your
friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a
three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing
game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose
rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable
home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up
brats you spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future.
Choose life.~ John Hodge’s Poem
(Featured in Trainspotting)
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appetite for creation
by steve kilbey
Steve Kilbey saint steven shot with light
unfathomable ineffable god
needed some cat to dig some parts of his creation
that no one was picking up on and so he created me
he chucked me together nearly sixty years ago
and he said to me as he has always said to me
my man look at all this stuff !
and true enough with just the thinnest skin that is bearable
i have drunk deep of his creation
and verily i am staggering in amazement
did he realise….?
that he had imbued me with my own tiny propensity for creation
as part of him i strive to be like him
as a drop of water is to the sea
i have all of his propensities but in childish minuscule proportions
i cannot create worlds
so i create worlds within music and words and art
yes tangible worlds i weave according to my various ways
which are all laughable compared to my god
but still i am driven on to do this stuff
therefore i reaffirm my abhorrence of dissonance and ugliness
i scorn noise drivel gossip horror foulness stupidity in art
i cannot abide entertainment whose central theme is murder
not the detection of it
or the act of it
or the irony of it
or the apprehension n punishment of it
why would i sully my mind with this nonsense?
crime is crime
i find no entertainment in violence or killing
cops and robbers cowboys and indians goodies n baddies
what rubbish!
give me ecstatic confirmation of life
give me beauty give me radiance give me mastery
give me sadness yes but not misery
i reject miserable art
i reject art that is only angry
i reject political art ; it finds no place in my heart
i reject art with any agenda
unless its agenda be astonishment poignancy or love
i reject ugly bawling voices and ignorant words
i reject unoriginality
i reject the slaughter of innocent animals
thou shalt not kill!
did i fucking stutter?
therefore i reject war and i reject the slaughterhouse
i reject the paltry reasons proffered for them
i marvel at my gods creation
which stems not from such embarrassing notions
as the garden of eden or big bang/evolution
both so quaint and parochial
that if there is a future they will wonder at our naivete
or the idiots who thought it must be one or the other
my god is so sublime he cannot be explained by me
except to say he just IS
he is n he was n he always will be
hes a she if you like or not for who can tell?
i am limited by words
and our clumsy words
are like trying to paint a ravishing nude
with a coin on a concrete wall
we do not have the words
we do not have the minds
so i do what i do
i can only hint at it
he is my god but he is not a tame god
he does not appear in test tubes
he does not fit in some stupid old mistranslated book
i am more in contact with god than a thousand popes
for what have they created but misery strife inquisitions and complicity in pain
i reject your ritual and pomp and money
i promise you karma is waiting patiently on popes and ayatollahs that preach war
or teachers of scriptures that cast women in a bad light
because i have observed women to be the crown of creation on this world
but a lion or a lark would disagree
for the females of each species are surely beautiful accordingly
all creatures have a right to live and love
who are we to judge which may live and which may die?
who are you to tell me the god given weed i so love is wrong?
tell me did vishnu make a mistake when he created marijuana or DMT?
is the poppy or the coca leaf evil or the wonderful vine which is ayahuasca ?
is the mushroom or the cactus button an error made by god
because some warmongering profiteering WASP prick says so?
HUBRIS!
i reject their jurisdiction over my consciousness
the vegetal world was created by our loving god for us to use and discover
yes there are dangers
there are dangers in climbing his mountains
and swimming in his rivers too
so what?!
i reject destruction
i reject morbidity
i reject entertainment featuring autopsies and suchlike
i reject death metal and songs about putrefaction
i reject rap for its brutal boring misogynistic tediousness
i reject blokes drinking booze and screaming at sport on tvs in bars
i reject royal families
and ponces decorated with medals for wars they never fight in
i reject generals
and presidents who send others to death but never fight themselves
i reject barbeques
i reject cigarettes and alcohol which numb and sicken us
i reject the makers of such things growing fat on our misery
i reject countries that assassinate their own leaders
and stage phoney attacks to provoke more wars
i reject the prison industry and the caging of people
i reject the caging of birds too or anything unnecessarily
i reject hunting
i reject napoleon i reject hitler i reject bush
i embrace jesus i embrace krishna i embrace john lennon
i embrace dali i embrace picasso i embrace leonardo
i embrace poor vincent van go go
i embrace magic i reject horseracing
i embrace music i reject noise
i reject fun i embrace wonder
i reject pubs and casinos
i embrace yoga and greek myths
i embrace buddha i embrace shiva i embrace st francis of assisi
i embrace gandhi i embrace suu kyi
i am for creation
i am for the intangible the inexorable the inevitable
my songs are about spirit
my poems are about spirit
my paintings are about spirit
my bass playing is about spirit
my voice is about spirit
my daughters are about spirit
and my spirit
is about my god
and everything good i have ever done
comes from god
via spirit
so start here:
never ever eat meat!
_____________________
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New video of me reading the poem “Silence Falls” from my new book “The Resurrection Waltz”
at The Book House in Albany, NY. A special thanks goes out to my friends Murrow (Thom Francis/Keith Spencer) & Albany Poets for helping to create such a great night of friends & poetry.~ R.M.
An Interview With Albany Poets :http://albanypoets.com/2013/03/the-resurrection-waltz-the-new-book-of-poetry-from-r-m-engelhardt
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