Rushing anamnesis
wrenched from within
the melancholy dull
stare at the ground and
grow numb days
those in prison,
the sunstroked rich at the beaches,
mid morning Tuesdays
the head-down depressed
or proletariat drones
the compulsively aggressive
or otherwise hopelessly ill
gazing eternally into their pained souls
playing out the whim of indifferent circumstance, laughing
beautiful or intelligent, passionate and all that in their own right
odd, nice time before you really stop and
think how quickly it all careens
headlong
oblivion-bound
We all lose the scent and wander off into the brush
cavalier squirming aimless bird-like beasts of our brains
pecking endlessly
growing fat on the romanticism
It was strange
when
dear
sickly
hollow-eyed Dean
would speak sometimes
short, surreal manic episodes burst forth
untethered by this vale
a cruel logic inside
lost, sloshing about somewhere off deep
Generally he seemed lucid
all but sane
though at the very
edge of the map
in the white space:
MAGNETIC
Then a little fit of lunacy
intense and pointed would take hold of him
spewing the head's contents across all those near
and even some unfortunates only relatively near
I confess to indulging in a perverse pleasure
at the time
The collection of swastika knives
drunk drives
sad geetar music
and 3:34 AM cocaine typewriter
leer ‘round the clock slur-
blurred blues
Then a general creeping malaise
looking at the thin tall frame hunched
talking about time in the institution
how it passed
slow and strained;
speech as experiential mirror
“They use to lock me in at night so I wouldn’t go around the hospital and get pussy but I did anyway, in the nurses station where they kept all the medicine.”
Arm again wrapped around him
stepping on the white-capped
amber bottles
some green
or kind of clear
with blue tint
endless stretches of silence
staring at the carpet
or tile
or road
The Passenger
bent on anger
and alienation
as easy alternative
to patience
acceptance
freedom from being consumed by inner terror
The world owes me something
and I must demand it now!
Not wrong-hearted
nor he weak-willed
though with madness
and vice he was poured, overfilled
incapable of maintaining
internally generated peaceful path,
externally volatile by default
powerless over
chronic excitement of nervous system
the vertebrate circuit
is switched and all at once
everything heats up and goes
Dean, priest routine
speaks of all confusion of sin
and the punishments that
lie coiled therein
They’d take away his cigarettes again
As I drop him at the asylum
inside white wall
waiting in
brain bashing
worship-pool of the alone
the afraid
backward
and
absent eyed stammering sorts
steaming with madness
The thick medicine vapor rush
issues from behind the glass
Dean’s eyes meet mine
in shared helplessness
“I’ll leave you here,
I have to go,
new day tomorrow though”
Flip-out-time at the wheel,
lonely and electrified
miserably gravitating to the flickering
light of the doomed obsessives
and doomed myself to be
extinguished alongside them
Long month of nights
phone ringing
on and on
Western Union buzz and such
lost content
between doses
We disappoint ourselves
and all of the others
in
inept
end-times
Dive into fiendish mind
and follow the wet
flash
of the bulb hovering over
as it blinks in and out
There is a copy, blurred
of the moment
Looming shadowy down
Sinister,
this mass of error
shines through the gloom
drawing me
toward its light
Turning away
I long for the day
and disappear into the night
........................................................
