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"Marty Matz: Falstaff in a
Leather Stetson and Vest"
By Roger
Richards © 2002
It's difficult to say a little bit about Marty without
feeling like you
need to say more. He was a true poet. He lived a
poet's life. He was a
big wandering jongleur like his friend Jack
Micheline, through whom I met
him. Jack liked to call himself "The Last
Street Singer and Troubador".
There was something of that in Marty
too!
Marty was a profoundly complex personality full of
contradictions. He
was a man of Rabelasian appetites. Often at our
house he spent his last
$50 on a spaghetti sauce. It had to have
everything from special mushrooms
and sausages, fresh spices and an
olive oil from a certain region of Italy.
True - it would last a week,
getting better, richer and deeper with each
usage. There had to be
enough for whomever might drop by - be it 9:00 am or
4:00 am.
He was impulsively, even quixotically, generous - while at
the same
time enjoying the narcissistic selfishness of a baby. He
expected everyone
else to clean up his messes.
He was also, with Herbert Huncke, the greatest raconteur and
story
teller I've ever heard. And yet, he could drive you crazy
repeating various
Marty "aphorisms", especially when drunk. Things
like: "I never met a drug
I didn't like" ... "Beware the deadly
underdose"... "I can't believe in a
God who created men who outlast
their veins: ...and "Here's a 300 pound guy
with a nine inch dick who
hasn't seen it in years", ... etc.
He was intellectually brilliant. The first thing I ever saw
of his was
a translation of an elaborate Mayan Codex. It wasn't just a
piece of
terrific scholarship, but an intuitive interpretation of
imagery and
metaphor, the very cracking of an hieratic code.
It was amazing what he knew of anthropology, archaeology,
and history.
His Spanish was fluent and idiomatic. And just imagine -
figuring out how
to synthesize Cocaine into hand-painted dinner plates
- ship them from
Mexico to the states, and then stripping them in four
or five alkaloid
solutions until you had pure Cocaine again!
Between that and smuggling serious cultural artifacts out of
the
country, Marty was in serious danger of getting rich. He even
bought a
house in California. But his Mexican partner, an inveterate
drunk, out of
money, tried to sell the plates as Cocaine in local bars.
You can imagine
the attention that excited. They wound up doing three
or four years in a
Mexican jail - a veritable nightmare of bribery,
corruption, sadism and
violence. Marty saw four or five people actually
killed.
His poetry, like himself, was unique - exotic, full of
gorgeous images,
hyperbolic, haunted and musical. It was a kind of
"bal canto" lyric
surrealism. I've always believed that if you
wrote one great poem, you were
a great poet. Example: Mathew Arnold's
"Dover Beach". Look at Marty's "Now
I Know Where Rainbows Go To Die",
his poignant, original and beautiful
tribute to his beloved friend Bob
Kaufman - it has to be one of the great
poems of our time! Then there's
his poetic apotheosis of friends he loved,
Herbert Huncke and Gregory
Corso, and his Ode to his old friend Bobby Yara,
and an armful of
various other musical, symbolic gems.
My wife, Irvyne and I met him some twenty or so years ago at
our book
store, The Rare Book Room. First with "Tex", a tall, lith
toppless dancer
who had everything but a top! Then later there were
those now legendary
days and nights at the Chelsea Hotel with his
charming wife Barbara who had
inherited nearly a half million dollars.
It was a prodigal, moveable feast
of wine and roses with herbert,
Gregory, and a ton of friends. Then he and
Barbara spent some years in
the Elysian poppy-drenched fields of Tailand and
returned home,
predictably broke! Neither Marty nor Barbara did things by
halves!
However, like Hemingway, there was beneath his tremendous
gregarious
being, a deep profound saturnine streak. Like a commitment.
If Hemingway
could no longer live like Hemingway, he chose not to be.
Marty, in his
terrible physical suffering at the end, could not adapt
to a lesser life.
He didn't have the highest pain thresh-hold in the
world anyhow, being in
any discomfort, he would moan like a man with
multiple toothaches.
He told me two weeks before he died that he regretted
nothing. He was
a great poet and he knew it. He had lived exactly the
way he wanted to. He
even accepted the irony of his fate that he was
usually in the wrong place
for fame to catch up with him. Typical of
Marty's luck, he did a private,
taped reading before friends in San
Francisco with Jack Kerouac, then left
for Mexico for years. A few
months later, "Howl"was published and the
whole scene exploded on the
national consciousness, creating reputations
overnight that would
endure for a life time. Where was Marty? Enjoying
himself in Mexico
except for that period as an official "guest of the
government".
Marty was a poet and lover of astounding self-indulgence. We
loved
that huge bundle of needs. Marty enjoyed celebrating life,
himself, and his
friends. We won't see his like again.
"A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To
Enlightenment"
I have lost my shadow
In a field of imiprovized whispers
Forgotten my name
In the fragrance of poppies
Where ornamental
skulls
Erratically orbit
Luminous gardens
Of fugitive clocks
ticking umber blossoms
Through secret Winters that bite
There are
unschedule clocks above
A meadow where malignant toadstools hide
Among the false echoes of ancient invocations
And distorted
reflections
From a river stained by time
I have marched down
streets
Of embalmed moonlight
Howling like a mad dog
Seeking
some bone of truth
Some final curtain
Some ultimate destination
Free from the synthetic octave of dreams
And I have unraveled the
knitted mask of years
Searching for a way
To return to my green
drenched childhood
Yet only caught occasional glimpses
Of a past
gilded by
Imagination
In a fores of elusive trees
The calendar
has devoured the decades
turned my beard silver
In the blink of on
eye
As I passed my life shooting craps with destiny
In the pursuit
of worthless things
Yet I have never hesitated
To throw away my
wallet
To make room in my pockets for poems or rainbows
Which I
carried
Till the rainbows turned
To tattered colors
And the
poems
Became just dust
By nature I'm a nomad
A transient with
no abode
In this world
I choose to wander
From miracle to
marvel into wonder
I learned
All things open
And
Life
indeed unfolds
© 1994
"Laynes Song"
I would like to drown
In the erotic music
Of your undiscovered
latitudes
And lose myself
In the soft mists
Of your untraveled
shores
I want to touch
Your dancing shadow's ivory skin
Taste
the wind
After it leaves your Summer shoulders
Wrap myself
In
the mystery
Of your sensuous voodoo
Woman
I know your name
And it ryhmes
"Pipe Dream #1"
(For Herbert Huncke)
There are sacrificial whispers
To the North
Beyond the
river Ping,
Where elephant dreams
Dress in yellow leaves
And
ancient spirits
Wing down the barrel of my pipe
The hills are
drenched
With poppy blood
And a red mon
Drowns
At the edge
of my molten eye
This is the land
Of the reclining buddha
The
little wheel
The waterl buffalo's last dance
This is the place
Of green legends
Of silk and silver teak
Where incense mingles
With a cobra's breath
And in these hills alone
The chef
With his lamp
Is king
"World Within A World"
(For Jamie Rasin)
World within a world
Within a world
Within a world
Spinning
neon filaments of colored beads
Over some glass frontier of forgotten
calendars
Where the ancient voices of lost cities
Patina my
horizons
With the gilded secrets of endless years
I am moving
through jungles of my own making
Past wrought iron balconies and
gothic moons
Where the seasons are measured by pounds of rain
And
the greedy bones of Tyrannasaurus Rex
Exposed
Did not deter the
same petrified ambitions
Of another day
It seems the cycle will
always close the circle
That time can be caught in the fishnets of May
That triangles contain
Both the music of pyramids and the tears of
machines
That eternity sells for a song
So what remains when all
is said and done
My cluttered mind is torn
Between the good
counsels
Of seventeen brass pirates
Forever drunk on rum
And
an orchestra of hunchback monks
Who never learned to play
Either
instrument of tune
"Like A Bolt Of Green Lightning"
Like a bolt of green lightning
I have been struck
By prowling
celtic shadows
And the lingering aroma
Of your December hair
I
want to go beyond the edge of silver clocks
Alien passages
And
mirored senses
To touch the sensuous mystery
Of your flowering
depths
And rest at the edge of a wondrous sea
Where I shall speak
with castaway shells
And unscramble
The secrets of petrified songs
I want to be the hammer
That sounds your silent bell
Whose
resonance resides in the dawn
Invisible as a gull's wing
On a
frosted piece of marble
I know what I have seen
And I am caught
For who would prefer the jingle of gold earrings
Once he has heard
Jade
Growing in a stone
"Time Waits"
Time waits
A sometimes mossy line
Between November and the sea
Time waits
For me alone
Turning slowing from sound of bass and
neon solitude
To the two 0' clock ache of warm green on the mountain
Time waits
And somewhere
Out beyond the Mexico city blues
Two bird like hearts
Beat their wa
From dream to dream
Searching
For a field of music
In the restless palm of
eternity
"Ode For Bob Yarra"
(For Bob Yarra)
Friend
Explain to me your crystal rivers
The uncrowded geometry
of your brilliant dawn
Show me the sky's bark
The skin of
prehistoric beaches
The grand calculus of insect shells
The
algebra of tears
Help me
To forget
A herd of tired moons long dead
Where
Incan memories and exotic dreams
Stain the broken stones of times
Let us soar then
You and I
Beyond the confines of planet and
satellite
To reach that somewhere place
Not in this land or the
next
Where the sun is rising
Shing pure
On beauti without
interruption
"Burning Water"
Burning water in a parrot green sky
Over a magician's tower
Moldering
In an afternoon of golden dwarfs
And hourglass highs
Show me how to measure
The falcon's frozen flight
The meadow's
obsidian cry
My own deaf shadow
Shouldering the wind
Or
Show me the dream's shore
Instantly obeyed
Boxed
To fit
the mathematics of an insect's eye
"The Dwellers On The Fringe"
These are the dwellers on the fringe
The seeking ones
Neurotic
ones
Who each day walk from nowhere to nowhere
And back again
Tick tack toe of shoe leather on cement
Forty lepers weave a
wicker coffin for their dreams
These are the almost ones
The want
to bes
The may becomes
And never weres
These are the ones who
exist on the brink
Who cling to it
And sometimes lose their grip
To fall screaming into a chasm
Of turbines and time clocks
"Paris In April"
April's blue haze
Enfolds Paris in corners of gloom
Then
disappears into the sockets
Of crouching demons
Who watch the
centuries grow old
Under peculiar shadows
And copper schemes
While iron towers
Stab
The wandering clouds
And cherry
blossoms
Ooze from the cobblestones
The gargoyles
My friends
Practice their stone alchemy
On lunar balconies
And drink
cognac
In the spare angles of noon
Hoping
For a glimpse of
dead legends
Or Silver rivers
Where silent dreams sail off
As
the city is devoured
By its own strangled memory
Under a rattle of
abandoned cats
And rusty trees
"The Sizzling Blue Sun"
Against the fall of the sizzling blue sun
I weigh this gragmented
insect vision of distored mirrors
Where death waits
To entrap me
In a bird cage of onyx music and red peblles
Elongated pyramids
Never to rise or rub the earth's jade heart
In the double bellow
Of the star's cracked dome
Radiant blood refined
In a crucible
of Peruvian alchemists
Playing all the changes
In the major key of
time
And the endless season rolls
"Pipe Dream "7"
It may be smoke
That rings my head
Yet nonetheless
These
bamboo poles
Frame a cosmic roof
With surgical precision
And
it may be smoke
That weaves a hat of thatch
To rub against the
rain
And so it seems
It must be smoke
To make me see
A
black and orange spider
Come dropping down a silken thread
That's
hanging from the moon
For I have danced through Lahu nights
And
beat the stars
With mummy bones
To open the roads of dawn
I
have drank and cackled
With shamen of my choice
And smoked my 20
penny pipes
And yes it may be smoke
That brought me to these
shores
For I have always been
The jigsaw puzzle piece
Just
slightly out of whack
For any kind of fit
I am the month of
limember
In a calendar of 13 months
I am that total wierdo
Whose treasure lies
By planetary observation
Not in interest
rates
I sometimes with
That like some magic crystals
I too
could emerge
From green cacoons
Of my own making
Transmogrify
Into a pale sea horse
Who spends all day
Just browsing along
arbors
And fields of strange unholy dreams
"The Seasons Come"
The seasons come
The music rolls
As the circle closes
And
even if
A band of swollen mirrors shriek
In a theater of sweating
hours
And mechanized surgeons
Dissecting stone clocks
In a desert of cunning fish
There will always be
The solitary beauty
Of an ivory moon
In a sky of flaming roses
And the taste of green Octobers
On a
wine drenched rainsin wind
Trapped forever
By a ruby eye
In a
cage of dreaming owls
"The Asymmetrical Assyrian Rose"
The asymmetrical assyrian rose
Sticks the suckling moon
With
alabaster thorns
and dreams of Peruvian greens
Precise as the
knotted edge of June
Or the songs of Incan stones
Who else will
dream
Of double rainbow walls
Beneath a fantasy of emerald sky
And troops of marching stuffed dwarfs
Whose magic flutes
Of
gilded insect bones
Unleash a joyous wind of birds
And beat the
clouds
To buffalo brass
And yellow boxcar graves
"The Currents Of My Life"
(For Bruce and
Holly Hoberman)
The currents of my life
Flow through a phospherous ocean
Of
ashes and runaway laughter
Where planets and stars
Like fugitive
barrels gone mad
Roll down stone steps
To bite open the dawn
With teeth of light
So that I may clearly see
All those roads
That lead to a disaster of crabs
On a wounded beach
Or
illuminate that space
Where umbrellas of pain
Pierce cascades of
love
Beneath a landslide of invisible equators
And inedible dreams
My head is a buzzing hollow
Filled
With blimps
Renegade
astrologies
And alphabet seas
In the palm of my hands
A secret Nobembler lies buried
As
ancient rainbow burns
yet
In my heart
No diminished symphonies
Sing in the
pockets of squeamish winds
No ivory shadows
Tusk the paleolithic
schemes
Nor do abandoned moons
Sleep over skeleton rivers
Still
There is a truant season
When luminous wheels are
crucified
And the taste of fossil footprints
Are stiched to the
corners of cosmic rains
Then the price of stone
Shall surprise the yellow sky
And
mountains of bison
Shall suck the skulls of locomotives
Along
plains of forgotten flowers
And Indian graves
Then iron tears
Shall nourish a destiny of formless pistols
Planted with the corn
"I Know Where Rainbows Go To Die"
(On The
Death Of Bob Kaufman)
I know where rainbows go to die
I followed your footsteps
Across a strange uncharted land
Where silver whispers tried to
hide
Beneath demented shadows
And oboe skies
Together we walked through a fabled city
Of hallucinating green
And talked away
A thousand smoking nights
As your aching heart
Beat its bones
In times to bird's brilliant sounds
Over the
neon streets of murdered schemes
Yes I was there
And I saw your love proclaimed
In a fractured
smile
Like yesterday's headlines printed in blood
On a bumble
bee's wings
And yes
I would wear your eyes
On January 12th
The dawn came up
Singing the blues
The calendar fell apart
In the face of that wounded Sunday
And
even the redwoods wept
At your passing
But no bell tolled in the
bowels of Winter
The snail did not grin
At the grandfather clock
Nor did any roses grow
From the tail of a rusting comet
Only a
whooly starfish groaned
On a beach of stolen planets
As a tatooed
lizard
Shed its suit of cold echoes
And you danced with Harlem's
great king
Down the alleys of paradise
To a feast of blazing
umbrellas
I remember
Long gone doorways
Where ancient dealers leaned
And sold their twenty dollar bags of dreams
To those in need
And poet
I saw you buy the truth
In a red balloon
And like
some mythical alchemist
You cooked up the blood of stars
But
instead of death
You drew music from your spoon
"The Questing Streets"
The questing streets extend yearningly for many blocks
Only to
recoil convulsively
From the frightening finality
Of a destination
To grope bewilderedly
At numberless small squares
Where a
dusty sun
Apologizes to vague pale trees
That wait impatiently for
the tenderness of night
To brush away the eyes
With all their
questions
Even now
Sitting in a puddle of day
The shadows mock with their
silence
The transient forms of the city
Which darkness will
extinguish
How then speak of love
Or seek it
Through all the masks and
gestures
When loves too wears a mask
And even death
Is not a
straight line
"A Sky Of Fractured Feathers"
(For Don
And Joan Martin)
I listen to the burning resonance
Of unremembered words
Embellish
The ebony harmony of antique winds
Where strange
landscapes
Of tumbled whispers
And abandoned echoes
Hammer
A tin smile
To the lacqured edge
Of some demented shore
I
shall wander through the orange shadows
Of unstate tensions
Of
predatory dawns
Where electric visions impale
The turquoise songs
of chiseled stars
And crystal fish
Murmur
In the garnet egging
Of a borrowed tide
I will watch the waters burn
On Aztec hills
As lambent
hummingbirds
Are sacrificed
In the shade of obsidian rains
And
swarms of luminescent thorns
Pierce
A sky of fractured feathers
And lemon dreams
There is no place left to go
My friends
In some soon season
Please look for me dancing
Out beyond
The planet's jade orbit
Where I shall disappear
Among the clustered footfalls
Of
extinct tattoos
"Mystic Curtain On The Pyramind's eye"
Mystic curtain on the pyramid's eye
Fires curl under the rainbow's
arch
Foxes drill a fishes skeleton to my soul
Crab the October sky
But
Behind what ginger oxen
Do gloveless hands
Rub this
Winter's wind with no love
Or thoughts of uncoiling planets
On the
galaxy's mind
In what tubeless interlude
Does the bronze bear case
his watch
And nail a tuneless piano to the stars
"No Magic Egypt Ever Blooms"
(For Dwight
Thompson)
Let solar tides erode my aching shoulders
And opal songs
Cushion my battered knees
Worn thin
By the abrasive
architecture
Of alabaster crystals and ivory winds
I shall sail on a tatooed ocean
Of polychrome skulls and feathered
glyphs
To a convenient spot
From which to watch
Some unknown
star
Unscroll a green horizon of ancient murmurs
And copper bells
For I have gone
To the other side
Of the butterfly's tangerine
smile
Where blood shatters
Under the icy hammer
Of a blue
December's swirling agate sky
And I saw a woodcarver
skin the
Winter's echo
From an antique moon
Gone mad
And I understood in the foundation of my bones
That there
In
that place
Over zippered fields of unripened smoke
And baroque
hallucinations
No magic Egypt ever blooms
No final destination of
burning peninsulas
Or liquid dimensions
Could I reach
So instead went hunting
For my own reflection
With a net of
velvet elbows
But only caught
The motion of occasional dawns
Whose mystery sleeps on
In the visibile harmony of pepper trees
While snakes
Those ancestral enemies
Still drowse
In the
shadow of tropic urns
And a tormented equator weeps
"Under The Influence Of Mozart"
Mysterious rhythms
Finger the atlas of my heart
Where I have
roamed on many midnights
Through a garden
Of orange harpsichords
and silver bassoons
I am the perpetual wanderer
The insatiable traveler
The mystic
nomad
Forever moving
Toward some strange horizon
Of twisted
dimensions
And chaotic dreams
I am the chimerical wizard
The dancing warlock
The convoluted
emporer
The inverted clown
The fool who reeks of madness
And
the sweat of time
I am the great adventurer
The magical voyager
The eternal
explorer
Trapped
Beyond the final edge
Where unicorns sing
And the humming lemon sky
Is just another useless guide
Through uncharted landscapes
Of stone angles and unscrutable
smiles
What they say has no truth
Gerunds and jesters
Tossed by the
moon
Not a single soul sings out here
Nobody weeps
No demon
dreams
In the teeth of amber planets
That shine on unscheduled
oceans of legendary sharks
Who slam their alabaster tails
Against
the stars
An obsidian silence comes ringing down
Lace wears away jade
A
pineapple wind
Follows the tracks
Of a wounded September
To
that place
Where an old man
Filled with ivory whispers
Stands
under a forgotten lamp-post
And nods into Winter
I am lost
My throat burns
My mouth is stuffed
With the dust
of flaming mirrors
And whimpering clouds
I am greedy
For hours
For minutes
For seconds
For
fractions for parts
I shall lost myself
In a forest of howing gardenias
And
fossilized clocks
Wherre alchemical fish
Shall keep the right time
As eternity doubles
Without repeating itself
In the broken
sonatas of dawn.
"Ode For Federico Garcia Lorca"
Who shall be called poet after you illustrissimo
Who shall stand
with bared chest
To the pure cold
Drinking the music of the
Guadalaquiver
Patriot
Spaniard
Man of the ender eyes
Who shall have so
great a heart
So soft a tongue
Such a voice sunlight
To sing
the caresses of the warm wind
To the dreaming corn
The have come with tongues of brass
With twenty small knives
The have put out your eyes
They have come in their leather hats
With their rigles
At the
count of three
Have closed the doors of eternity behind you
Yet
The andulcia you warmed
With the petals of your soul
Wears your green strength with reverence
As you wore the blood of
Ignacio
Your heart smokes in the thing air of pacification
Your
broken arms hang bewilderly
Made impotent
By the constrictions
Of being a rose
"Nicotine Stained Dreams"
(For John
And Sammy Nobles)
A dismal dusk with a popish sky
Untracks a pack of forlorn foxes
And now the time has come
With its flowered ticking
And
fractured atoms
To scratch the peppered fog
To break the bars
To discover some fossil moon
Some undone bone
To set the
seasons growling
For I have my own skeletons to bite
And have wandered
In a
desert of umber sphinxes
Knowing all the right questions
And yet
The only things that bloomed
Were sad hallucinations
And
nicotine stained dreams
"The Dancing Skeleton"
(To My Wife
Barbara With All My Love)
The dancing skeleton
Dances across an amber beach
Where smoky
laughter
Stains the elephant's crystal dream
His four arms
represent the four categories
Into which all things
May be divided
His broken tusk and constant companion
The bandicoot
Identify
him
As the remover of all obstacles
For he is Ganesha
Son of Shiva
The creator
The destroyer
The greatest dancer of them all
And even as Ganesha's obesity
Contains the entire universe
It is Shiva's dance alonoe
That is the univeral moving force
In his steps are found the five rhythms
Representing the power of
his supernatural acts
Creation
Preservation
Destruction
Embodiement
And release of the soul from illusion
So dance skeleton
Dance
From Shiva you may learn
To loose
yourself
In the silent slices of dawn
That press against the
emerald mist
Against the granite columns of memories
Yet untasted
In the hollow mirror of time
That will not wait
Even for you
Tap your fleshless fingers against the air
Play a song upon your
ribs to wound the wind
Our world has many ears
Tuned to every tortured sound
And all
our yesterdays
Brave composed a luminous sonata
For dusty fools to
hum
In the ashes and cages
Of artless desires
Of fruitless
sweats
On the latitudes of death
So dance my bony friend
I see you raised foot
Poised for the
next step
Practice before
That hollow mirror of time
That will
not wail
Time that shall
In due course
Devour even you
And
return you to that dust
From which all living things have come
"The Hummingbird's Beak"
(For Laki Vazakas)
I have seen the hummingbird's beak
Stained with betelnut
In the
streets of Mandalay
Watched the poppies blossom
Into the nostalgia
of clowns
Seen a mist of cloving oboe notes
Rise above a mountain
of sugar skulls
From the glories of pagan
I would like to find
A way out
From the unknown corners of
death
For I only have half a map
to finger
The untasted
pleasures of a smile
Where is the magellan
To lead me
To those
unexplored coordinates
That pirates weave to mask
All the
unanswered camellias of the mind
For I shall unshackle the plants
And unshark the luminous words
That lie with the moons glowing
bones
I will fang the edge
Of a baroque December
And howl away the
Winter
In E minor
For there are destinies involved
And madness
lurks
Just on the other side of
That hummingbird's
Purple beak
"When Maguey Spine Burn The Wind"
When the dust of Mexico
Covers the intestines of my dreams
I
shall return
When Maguey spines burn the wind
And the skulls of
dogs
Pierce the daw
I will be there
Broken bottles and crooked
graves
Disturb the adobe sky
Indians dressed in the horns of
icicles
Dance on the roots of July
Mexico
The smell of rancid grease and sunlight
Sticks to the
armpits
Of my tortured serape
The stones of Paleque
Transfix
my navel
And I am lost
In a liquorish afternoon
Stuck to the
sun's side
Where barrels of moss
Sing
In the ruins of ancient
dreams
This is the way it was
Is
Shall always be
With one foot
stuck
In a pool of burning mirrors
And the other
Spinning
A frenzy of Microscopes
As clocks
Rape the frozen ash of rivers
And turn hummingbirds
to brass
On a mountain covered with teeth
"I Have Opened A Wound On The Sun"
(For
Howard And Hard)
I have opened a wound on the sun
And my days are filled with polite
handshakes
Dry smiles and stoplights
I am no longer dazzled by the
dew
And the rainbow holds no surprises
And I have forgotten how to
speak
With the smoking giraffe
Who inhabits the upper reaches
Of my dreams
The clock of my love
Is impossible to wind
Yet still keeps bitter time
For things that no longer matter
The roaches in my room
Refuse to recognize
The kindness of my
crumbs
And the unforgiving stones of my garden
Don't know me any
more
If I could
I would lose myself on the far shores
Of some
unclawed river
For I am decomposing in a suit of black satin
And I
have opened a wound on the sun
"In Search Of Paititi"
(For Roger and
Irvynne Richards)
In search of Paititi
The soul must go
Beyond the last known
port of call
Along a coast of deserted seasons
And unrecorded
skies
Outside
The ancient realm of time
The last unconquered
border
In the undiscovered mountains of the mind
A journey for
life
That sometimes begins
At the instant of death
As infinity
collapses upon itself
Relingquishing sovereignty
Over the flesh
In a system
Within a system
Within a system
In a dream
That spirals toward the light
As the universal energy transforms
And is refined
Moves freely beyond the edge
Of macrocosmic
limitations
And is aware
That orange
Is but the brilliance of
blue
Made incandescent
In a pig iron crucible
Of magnetized
constellations
Reflecting
No eternal Cancer
Exposing
No
galactic destination
No horizon of perfect truth
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