28 October 2009

Crouching Tiger

A place of pure silence.
White as the heart of the sun.
Unending sadness.
Something I can not let go of.

Kung Fu

In the bamboo forest.
Where it is cold.
Steel meets steel.
Blood paints the dried leaves.

58

Mind pure as empty snow.
Flexible as a reed.
Serene as the ocean swallowing a pebble.
Beautiful as the firs in the mountains.

Tibet

Sitting on the temple roof.
The tiles fall below me.
The master is shaking his stick.
Sleeves snapping like battle standards.
Say good afternoon to the sun.

China

Sun rising over snowy mountains.
The day pulls me to my feet.
Mind as empty as clear water.

Truth

This world is nothing.
And there is nothing beyond it.
So don't get your hopes up.
Forget all that rubbish about souls and sins.
Just breathe and eat.
Breathe and eat.

Space One

I am destruction.
Fire and ash.
The potential energy of the Universe.
Squandered.
Wasted.
Frittered away.
The black hole that swallows everything but fear.

12 October 2009

Boy

If he burns all your bridges.
Start collecting pitch and oak.
The river still needs to be crossed.

When your name disappears from his book.
Seek out the permanent marker.

You are the light in the darkness.
No one will hold your candle for you.
Even if they offer to.
Be ready to catch it when they drop it.
Have a match to relight it when they try to blow it out.

24 September 2009

Home

You were beautiful and kind.
An understanding angel.
Hiding your wings.

Smiling as you stand among the mundanes.
With warmth, not contempt.
Your hands bring peace and calm.

Your step is light and graceful.
As soft as your touch on our hearts.
Your kind words in our ears.

The world seems a colder place without you.
But it would be frigid.
Had you never walked among us at all.

The Universe

Unknowable
Inconceivable.
Divine.
Wordless.

Vast

I have built stars.
Set nebulae into motion.
Cleared lanes with supernovae.

These black holes are my creation.
Your earth a simple experiment.

And I am so lonely.

Creation

Resting in this warm womb of stars.
Less than an atom of a grain of sand.
A thousand, thousand, thousand, billion days in construction.
Less than a picosecond's building.

The master craftsman sits at his dilapidated board.
Surrounded by all the failure.
His smile lights galaxies.
His spark ignites life.

Stargazing

The gods walk along this ribbon bridge.
Speaking of the Universe in hushed tones.

They are flattered that we should believe.
Their mere powers created such majesty.

But the gods know that nothing can shape such beauty with intellect.
It is the power of chance and nature.

The gods are stargazers, too.

Forest

The true lesson of life
Is walk your own path
Hard and difficult though it may be
It will always feel more natural
And you will always know the way
While you are easily lost on the trails of others.

The stones are always sharper
And the fog is thick and dark
When you stray from your inner light.
Let this arrow point you home
Stay true to yourself.
Your path shall lead to places beyond imagining.

30 August 2009

East

Incense dancing
Curlicues and arabesques.
The scent of coke fires and polish.

Grooves worn in the marble aisle.
Dusted with thread.
Time-rubbed sarcophagi are sentinels at the altar.

Footfalls jive in the eaves.
Diminished inside wool coat.
The blanket of holiness on frustrated shoulders.

Winter lives in every breath.
Speaking through the chill on lips.
The wretched stiffness of fingers.

Pale, stretched canvas faces.
Lips red like wax seals.
Cupped hands, wicker baskets.

Mother Superior makes weak tea and listens close.
This situation is just begging for lies.
Religious, but only in these churches.

Letter

I humble myself before you.
Cover my head.
Clutch my beads.

I ask for nothing.
It is improper.
If I did.

I would ask you to protect my brothers and sisters.
From themselves.
For all of us.

We have emotions and reason.
Small brains to combine them.
Wisdom, mudane or divine.

Is always in short supply.

Infinitum

The clashes.
Great rolls of thunder.
Vast nebulae of light and magic.
Smoking, flaming, plummeting.

The sky is at war.
Below, it is just weather.
Up here, chaos.
Immortal against immortal.

Traveling

Look into the light.
Feel myself go cold.
Helium beneath me.

Their warm, strong hands reaching down.
A friendly grip.
"Welcome."

I will miss you all.

Passage

The wind is cold and smoky.
Dropping from the clouds.
Through the rain.
Wings soaked and fatigued.
Seeking a newborn soul.
We've come to take you away.
Now don't be afraid.

18 August 2009

HPP

Shred me with your talons
Drop my ashes in the sea
I can coalesce from nothing

The ubermensch has arrived
He lives with his parents
Warping time and matter

Reading the future in spilled milk
Cleaning the dishes
Arranging fries in multi-dimensional gateways

Piazza

A man lives inside my skin.
He's naked and taut.
Graceful and powerful.
Poised like a panther on the spring.

When he speaks, I feel like the block of marble before the masterpiece.
In need of sweat and hours.
The careful eyes of a master.

He lives there, waiting.
For an artist.
With the courage to carve.

08 July 2009

Smack

Tiny poly packets
In formation like soldiers
Buy an army
Feel safe.

06 June 2009

Sixty-five

Flashing by
Like newsreel
Wounds of war, farms, and vast cathedral
I hear the piano in my head
Like the artillery shattered glass

Smell the smoke and powder
Dance to the shouts
The firearm percussion
Awake fear
Roust the angel

Wild Flower

This flower
Petals poison
As sure as a firing squad
Makes heavy red dye

She swallows every drop of me
Eats me alive
Unclothed, swaying in the night breeze
I can't sleep from fear.

01 June 2009

Hyperspace

A copy of me.
Living another life.
Another, dead before his time.
More playing in grand stadiums.
With children.
Having sex.
Killing.
Living.
A copy.
Infinite Xerox.

Atoms

Barefoot on glass.
Radiate outward from this point.
A vast circle.
Perfect in every way.
Beautiful like the taste of her skin.
The flow of her hair against my belly.

Copper cologne.
Rising up from the road.
I ramble on.
Hear the sizzle as blood and asphalt copulate.
Somewhere in another universe,
I feel your tongue in my mouth.

Hell

Wind tears across the plain.
Carrying acrid grit and the screams of tormented.
Demon hands, tacky with filth, claw and tear.
A limb here and there.
Silent, as they pull me apart.
I chose this.

08 April 2009

Kiss

The smoothest skin.
Where my lips rest.
On a lovely warm curve.
A perfect landscape.
That I need to explore.
Like Cortes.
And paint with fingers.

Death's Personal Ad

I like black hooded cloaks
And bile-covered desert boots.
Scythes from the gulag.
And the big bony hands.

Living Art

In the warm summer sun,
We can bask in your glow.
The beauty of this art.
Is that it walks on two legs.

Media Watch

I kill men in the street.
Piano wire and artery.
Drive time performance art
You can't help but watch.
I see the flash from your cell phone.
All over YouTube, I'm inciting violence.

Revol

People gonna talk about revolution.
About little mushroom clouds and chasing 'crats.
They'll raise their fists and dance.
Screaming how there ain't no television coverage.
While the helicopters circle.

Everyone feels the revolution
With the prick of a needle
And the discharging guns.
The rush of blood to the nethers.
Arching back to the sunset.

Taste the revolution!
Get your iron.
Lick the life from your fingers.
A little pepper, a little cumin.
Delicious.

"The people who are good at waging revolution are also the ones that you have to kill once the revolution is over."

01 April 2009

Lovebreed

That feeling of illness a fog in your intestines.
Twisting your face in the mirror.
Where you see the scars, blemishes, and all the hairs you missed with the razor.
Brilliant pools of self-loathing reflected in the blood shed by blades on skin.
Perfection sought hand-in-hand with infection.
Stretch and scrape yourself back into the container.
Unfortunately shaped and mechanically awkward.

17 March 2009

In the Garden I

At the dawn,
They stand hand in hand.
Shivering in just their skin.
Pressing closer,
he feels her warmth.
She smells his scent.
'It is very cold', she thinks.
'Too cold'.
And they touch shoulders.

Landscaping

The eternal grass tickles my feet.
I am aware of each movement of muscle.
Feel your heart beat at 100 paces.
Hearing your whispers from the other side of the world.
Your touch.
On the dark side of the moon.

Faith

Morning light
Slaughters these shadows
That encircle
My children
Watching from towers
Shredded limb from limb
Inky blackness
Running in the flagstone grooves
Bathe in the gore
And exult.

Conquistador

I have found it.
Beneath this tree.
The gateway.
Feeding on blood and sorrow.
The leaves that dance in the hurricane of screams.

04 March 2009

Zen.

There was a big black mark on him somewhere cruel,

His mind full of cuts -- nightmares and tics.

He’s dead, sweet calm, enlightened and lost,

Across five hours of distance, my guts are spineless,

With my unnoticed desire, cheap and unwanted as a florescent light.

Diners and lemon pie melting into neon,

I was wearing pink socks up to the knees,

He couldn’t let that pass, no. He had to talk.

Smitten with his black wool coat, his manner,

My late night demands for coffee to keep us woozy and awake.

He talks of soccer practice and Boston Cocaine,

He tells me I can find peace and happiness.

There was heroin and maybe the Russian mob,

He tells me I should try to meditate.

He would have killed himself by cutting his throat,

I cringe to hear it, and he wonders why, so long past.

Now he’s zen, it’s alright, though he’ll keep his perverted pride,

In the back pocket, casual like change, the ugly, the bloody,

The things he did. He’s better now, he can talk about it now,

“You didn’t even know me then.” He pleads no sense

That anyone with born fear can’t miss the sickness

At the opening mouth from ear to ear;

The sickness at the very suggestion of the head

At a time like that, deathly silver in hand, all words bleak and roaring.

Giving in to the blinds.

Radio tuned to endless, pitched, and jabbering static.


-LIS (written January 08)

27 February 2009

Michelin Guide

Your words eat my words.
Suck their marrow and spit out gristle and sweetbreads.
Lick the bile and dab away with napkins at the corners of gashed mouths.
I'd cry for the loss of my children, but the cuisine.

24 February 2009

Vertigo Afternoon

Each corner lunges towards my eye’s corner
Every step shimmers, then rushes up to meet me
Both eyes strain to focus, then falls back to wavering air
Each cell is heavy and longing to separate

The snow falling as it stops suspended
May clear my puzzled mind with rational chill
Or it may only fall again and fill my head
With rolls of woolen, blank exhaustion

-LIS (written February 09)

19 February 2009

The Unlikely Friend

You disappear as sure as a ghost
To reappear two bottles in hand.
Which we disappear in a silent competition.
It's all smoke and mirrors and little illusions.

Love VI

Holding my palm over the spike.
I spit threats and take shots.
While you laugh and lick his neck.

Witchburning

It feels like jumping into flames intentionally,
Without suicide.
I can smell the fat on the soles burning,
And taste the stench of hair off hobbit insteps.
So at peace with pain and passing.
Would that we could feel like this without dying.

16 February 2009

Writing Poems

It is always like a picture
Sometimes grotesque, sometimes gorgeous
Can be the curve of her hips, or the red lips of the wound.
Some flight of gossamer fated urbanity
Or the ancient gnarls of arboreality
So real that my skin feels wind and rain
I take the hurts and touch the skin

For Ian

Quicksilver wit
Standing in the summer twilight
We hear silence in place of your words

Sea History

Laid out along the sea-rot docks,
Fish fillets in great lots.
The open sores of sailors mingled with their sweat.
Blacksmith hammers banging, the shouts of a bet.
Children with sticky fingers and raptor eyes
Tracking down coins and up woman thighs.
Scraps of chip wrappers and broken ale
Nights lit by the death of the whale.

Little Kitty

In this little alley
All full of piss
Buried in the nebula of cellophane wrapping,
A little kitten
Manged up and all scrawny bone
Eyes outsized from hunger
Gnaws away at something
Chews a hole in your soul.

Red

Wicked red flower
Soft petals in voluptuous cup
A scent as soft and subtle
Like kissing in a dream

09 February 2009

Owen II

When I think of you.
Candles burning.
Incense drying out my eyes.
Tears form.
For words and a dead man.
Long killed on the mud of France.

Dis....

I hate cutsie fucking rhymes
And clever couplets
I can't stand your screen printed words
On your ass like a billboard
Hate isn't really the right word
I don't hate much. Maybe nothing.
'Cept a couple of things that remain nameless.

I don't like how you seem to just grin and bear me.
It reminds me too much how I am of myself
With myself
Confused, 48 ounces of coke dancing powdery jig inside my sinus
While the captain sails in the vast ocean of my belly.
Reminds me of my uncontrolled imitation, allen ginsburg, stover, traviss, clancy
I was born to be a ghost writer.

Br

My hands aim to touch you
To hang on your hip bones
Like I am falling from a building
And the villain is stepping on my fingers
One by one
I aim to touch your lips with mine
Like I want to torch the collected works of Mme. Coulter
I think lips inspire more passion
Confusion, like a man standing alone in the park naked and drunk
Asking himself, why does my ass hurt?
I aim for that too.
So you read these poems and judge and criticize
Which I don't mind.
Just think less, live more.

T

If you want to play games
Let's play games.
I like games.
Childhood fucking games
I want to be angry, but I'm not.
So odd.

C

If I said, that,
Sex,
Bores,
Me,
Snore.
Make her cum, but I want to sleep.
Would you believe it?
Male mechanical, like using a wrench or hammer
Up down up down
Rinse and repeat
Always rinse.
Settle in for hair in mouth
Tastes like coconut.

I

Big balloon
Helium and methadone
Seated in corners
Orgasms in your vein

D(2)

Red bullets
Stacked on the desk
Little targets
Dead bullets

D

Burning bills
In the candle light
You are my love
The only one that keeps her mouth
Shut long enough
For me to think.

A

If it isn't endless.
I am unhappy.
If it does not hurt.
What is the point?
There are no wounds to bleed from,
and I am so afraid.

19 January 2009

First Nights

Passats tickle your neck
The bumps rise and fall
Beneath tidal breath
Watching shivers run down your spine
Your grip on my arm
Tightens as teeth
Puncture flesh
Disconsolate whimpers
What have you done?
Oh, what have you done?

Genesis

I watch Eve reading
Kama Sutra
Garden of Eden
While Adam munches apples
Hear them moaning, human-seeding
Building future
Apples half-eaten
Laying naked, skins sun-dappled

Constantinople

Where are my fingers?
To pluck out these eyes
Leave it trailing neurons in the palm
Who has the rage?
That burns out streetlights
And brings out creatures.

Bling

Pestilential crystals moving with convection
Stirring the pot, 'til sickness lives in my iris
Hair tickles, dances with your scent
Like a vampire, I'd follow you anywhere
Sharpening these teeth on diamond rings

Chinese Gordon

The drops like heavy opium
A great smack on the head
Your skin tastes of crushed flower and salt
My tongue can feel the tendons beneath
Like a braille line
Easily read with interest

Owen I

He dreams of bullets
Harvesting this youth
On green fields
Gone to quagmire.

Insect

Bounty paid
On all this ichor
Flitting wings
Heads under pin
Glass case
Dusty museum back room

Nerves

Heavy head
Pounding heart
What is the purpose of all this concern?
For things that always change
Life always in flux

Buddhist Palm

Passing beyond the clouds.
The man embraced the sun
Held it to his chest
While whispering old love songs.
Dove back to earth
Clothes flapping at nothing
Yards of useless feathers, all crashing to death
 
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Alchemy Codex by A. Berkeley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.