Central
Park
Flowers bloom
next to rusting Pepsi cans,
Watered by the
spit of cocaine dealers,
And the semen and
vaginal fluid,
Of hot lovers groping under blankets,
Under stars dimly blinking through
thick smog.
Nightly haven for muggers, rapists,
fiends,
Whose every breath profanes the
species they,
So poorly represent, turning Plato’s,
Featherless bipeds, to dead plucked
chickens,
Soul-less, pointless wastes of
protoplasm.
Abomination-- not in itself but,
For the use it’s put to: a bone for
dogs,
Who’ve never tasted steak, and are
gleeful,
To feast upon the scraps of fetid
meat,
Clinging to well-gnawed bones that
they are fed.
Central Park, the bone we are to chew
while,
Smiling complacently at skyscrapers,
Daily rising where wild flowers might
have grown,
Our humanity proportionally,
Shrinking inversely to their daily
rise.
If I seem narrow minded and unkind,
Or blind to the beauty of Central
Park,
It is because I’ve stood on virgin
ground,
In summer, fall, winter and early
spring,
And cannot bring myself to love a
whore.
The
Subway
I stand alone in the dark Fulton Street subway station,
Breathing in the urine-scented air,
Breathing out clouds of steam,
A subway train rushes along,
Not stopping,
Biting at my eardrums,
With the painful percussion,
Of thousands of people,
Silently screaming,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
The air fanned by each subway car,
Rushes against me,
Pushes the ozone and the smell of burnt brake linings,
Into my nostrils,
Along with the air,
Sucked through the iron gratings,
Along miles of Brooklyn sidewalks,
Carrying the odor of a prostitute’s festering sores,
And the cries of a hungry, fatherless child in dirty
diapers,
And the hoarse moaning of a city councilman mentoring a
young intern,
And the cheap perfume of a fourteen year-old runaway,
Turning $20 tricks in an alley,
Smelling of stale Chinese food and wet dogs,
And . . .
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
. . . the smell of spoiled cabbage soup,
And the rancid remains of a hotdog buried in sourkraut,
And putrid lilies lying in a gutter,
All assaulting me, forcing me backwards,
Until my back presses against,
The grimy once-white tiles,
That coldly burn their graffiti on my spine:
God is dead,
Bake a kike,
Whitey sucks,
Kill the niggers,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
I don’t want to see,
The train finally passes,
Its lights receding into the dank,
Dark tunnel beyond the platform,
The screeches and screams slowly die out,
Their echoes sucking behind them,
The smell,
Of my,
Warm
Vomit.
The
Gospel (Revisited)
god is dead
he died of a bad
review in The New York Times
that accused him
of being
a fascist
and a prude
he is being
replaced by a new
non-sectarian
trinity
of
Me Myself and I
all of whom are
free
to kill god
and say
god is dead
god dead is
dead is god
is god dead
I think I have
heard somebody suggest
(and therefore I
have)
that the
Department of Health is soon to issue
new and improved
antiexistentialistdespairpills
free of
charge
to every adult
man and woman
sitting in front
of his/her
TV/Smart Phone/Computer
waiting for
godot
On
My Poetry
I am a child playing with finger-paints,
plopping blobs of multi-colored
paint,
which runs and clumps onto the
canvas,
making my attempts,
to depict what I see and feel,
into murky shadows of a world too
crudely rendered.
Incomprehensible swirls,
of my chubby little hands,
struggling,
with mindless tenacity,
to paint,
blurry, evanescent, unrecognizable
details,
as senseless as the death throes,
of a writhing salamander,
half drowned in a paint can by a
sadistic child,
and thrown onto a canvas,
to create art,
through the stains of its death
throes,
A child,
trapped,
in a middle-aged body,
staining with artless
hands,
unrecognizable
forms,
in a pointless
effort,
to render,
some meaning,
on the canvas,
of his life.
On
Pointless Introspection
I am an ostrich, hiding deep within
myself,
My head submerged in murky moods,
Screaming in a vacuum.
No, not a vacuum, but a sound-proof
room,
With walls of ten-foot stone,
A fortress,
Clammy, cold and, dimly lit,
That admits no sound,
But the monotonous percussion,
Of a heart that knows the one eternal
truth:
We are born dying,
And every breath that we take,
Every beat of our heart,
Brings us one step closer,
To the grave.
It is easy to forget a world exists
outside,
My diminutive cell when my teeth
chatter,
Not from the absence of warmth,
But from the absence of meaning.
Perspective, perspective,
perspective,
Echoes through my fruitless cell.
I am a foolish,
Ugly bird,
Cowardly bird,
But needlessly.
I heard a song today, a soothing
melody,
Sung by an angel dressed in woman's
clothes;
Oh, sing again, dear love, I had
Almost forgotten your sweet voice!
Alice
In troubled times I've called your
name,
My love, and clung to it as does a
child,
To the belief in Santa,
Or the sightless, to the hope of
light;
It is for me,
The visionary dream,
That drives perseverance,
And decries despair;
It is the hope of wretched souls,
In purgatory awaiting,
The seemingly forgotten promise,
Of their eventual release.
When my stale words confuse, confine,
Confound my mind, and images converge
Into the swirling blur of madness,
I call your name.
Then hopelessness recedes,
As does an incorporeal nightmare,
Slowly fading, leaving behind only sweat-soaked
sheets,
Yielding to the purifying rays of the
dawn’s rising sun.
A simple word, your name, but to me,
a powerful amulet,
Which pierces the darkness and melts
away,
The deformed forms that haunt and
taunt my darkest days,
And fills them with all on earth that
heals and renews.
A simple word which simply is my all,
a synonym for sincere,
Unpretentious love that seldom asks
yet freely gives,
That does not question, but simply
knows,
That does not quickly burn, but
always, and forever, warms.
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