free poetry

Mom, I just fell asleep as you were telling me my story.
Listening to your voice and resting in your loving arms,
I dreamed I entered a grotto. The walls were painted blue.
In them were elaborate shrines; orange statues draped
with garlanded petals; their bases strewn with red roses
and yellow daffodils. It sounds very lovely sweetheart.
Then what happened? I realized that I was dreaming.
I liked where I was. I sensed there was more to discover,
possibly something profound. But the scene rapidly
grew dark and started disappearing. Then I heard
your voice again, narrating a new part of the story.
That is why I want you to be mommy’s good little man.
You must study and get straight A’s so that you can grow up
to become a mystic who can remain long in this sort of state.
Am I going to be famous? Haha, there you go again.
Your immature ego desiring recognition. Time to turn
the lights out, young man. You were already falling asleep.
Aw, but I want to hear you tell me the ending of my story.
Alright, then can we finally say goodnight? Sure mom.
I promise. The fairytale continues. The prince hunts
in the forest beyond the kingdom where his father has made
everything pleasurable to seem perfect so that his son
could be perpetually fooled into believing there was no such
thing as death; only an ambient absence serving to make
the palace feel more openly clean. He follows the unicorn
to find a tower in a clearing. His sight, from a distance,
mounts to the upper window out of which a long braid
of golden hair hangs. He gets ahold of it and climbs.
In the room an adolescent virgin up to this very point
has been pining for an urge that she could not discern.
Its ineffability is due not to the inherent dearth of words.
She has grown up alone; never been taught to speak.
A witch has fed her on candy, cookies and black milk
from her withered teats. The prince finds her beauty
to be mysterious and mesmerizing. He ravaged her
that evening after approaching the holy moment when
the hymen breaks slowly and reverently all afternoon.
He left at midnight down her hair. He snuck away in time
to be back in his luxurious bed by morning. His father’s
servants would check on him to report, as they did daily,
his apparent matinal humor. The witch inevitably found
out about the tryst. She saw the blood on the sheets
and devised a wicked plot to bring her adopted daughter’s
term of youth to its culmination. Around the tower’s base
she planted roses’ thorns. As the girl protested passively,
she sheared her golden hair, took her out of the tower
to throw her in a cage in a burrow underneath the earth.
The prince approached whistling happily and ruminating
how the pleasures of the palace paled in comparison
to making love with the goddess girl. Why would the old
bugger hide this sensual delight from me, he wondered
in spite of his own father. He called up the watchword:
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. The witch let fall
the rope woven of the shorn golden braid. Gautama,
as the prince was named, climbed to the top of the tower.
Through the window he was aghast to see instead of
the gorgeous maiden, the emaciated face of the witch,
beaming evilly. He lost his grip, fell back in abject terror,
and went plummeting down onto the thorny flower patch
headfirst. His eyes were blinded. He saw red flash.
Then the lights went out. Darkness fell after him forever.
He broke his neck; became paralyzed too. Medicine men
consigned by his father applied their talents diligently
to mending dislocated vertebrae. His spinal column
was repaired. The sacral channels coursed normally.
But he never regained his eyesight. Though they brought
him to the best ophthalmologists, shrinks and opticians,
he obstinately refused to be healed. After what I’ve seen,
he explained, I will never look again. Beauty… ruined.
The heart, the source and the object, polarities of love,
contact, adhesion, the nature of the element water,
the well that once replenished me… utterly dessicated.
I would rather remain paralyzed, be blind, deaf, numb
than face again such a cursed uglification of beauty.
The prince ordered the enchanted forest to chopped
down and made into paper. For me for my Odyssey,
my own personal Paradise Lost. The blind poet wrote.
Rapunzel, doomed, scarred, bald, wept in the burrow.
The witch won. The father did too, though he grieved.
Gautama resided for the remainder of his life within
the safe palace of pleasure, heartbroken and bored.
The, mother pauses to produce perfunctory suspense,
End. But that can’t be the way the story ends, mom.
Why doesn’t the prince kill the witch; the father die;
and he go rescue Rapunzel? Even if he is blind
he still can enjoy her touch. Maybe, she answers.
I guess you will have to wait to find out. For now,
you are tired. I want you to go to sleep. Tomorrow
is school. Lacking visual data with which to engage
for practical or inspirational purposes, Gautama had
to make due with describing sights as he perceived
them through the faculty of memory. First fruits
were dubious. They consisted in solipsistic reflections
on being the subjective witness to a unilateral state
driven in every instance by conflict between negative,
positive, and passive, neutral forces. Who am I?
the underlying question ran. Who will I be today?
Visitors to his sphere of hearing tended to be blunt
and told him he was beautiful. You seem endowed,
they said, with a luminescent aura. Jesus Christ,
they gasped, you have a halo around your head!
Mirrors sap the appearance of vitality, he explained.
I have forgotten what I looked like. I have some sense
through my fingertips, but overall I am in the dark.
I wear darkness like a shadow, a colorful dream coat.
I can move about in it with grace and versatility.
Observe the demonstrations of the choreographer
of a synchronistic swimming troupe. I am a merman
standing on the surface of water. He flaps his fins
and dives back down without a splash or a ripple.
Jesus walked on water. This story is instructive.
The master was asleep in the fishing boat’s hull,
dreaming of flying while being rocked by the waves.
His disciples awoke him to tell him that the tempest
had become too unruly for the hapless helmsman.
He dispelled their panic with his constant calm.
Leading them up the ladder to the deck to check
how hard the wind was blowing, he addressed their
unnecessary anxieties, Our bodies are merely dense
constellations of pearls of mineral water. He leaned
into the squall and motioned for the crew to gather
so that they could hear his Sermon on the Sea,
a complement to the one on the Mount, given recently.
Jonah lagged in the port grinding worriedly his teeth
in indecision over setting off to sea. God’s voice
had persistently been perplexing him. God does not
speak as do you or I, using sound, manipulating
mouths into linguistic applications of the tongue,
the lips or the diaphragm. Nor does God depict,
as photographers or filmmakers are wont to do
in pictures, or as writers or abstract painters who
are prone to employing signs. God is not like them.
He threatens not like the law with incarceration;
rather He prods like the supportive father, practicing
with His son the American boy’s baseball swing;
He coaxes like the eternally patient mother, helping
Her child with his homework. God is no cattle driver
rapping our rear ends with His switch. He is a cowboy
out in the pasture, popping wheelies on His motorbike,
the steed, Equine, waving the red-hot iron brand,
A, in front of the glazed-over eyes of us baby calfs.
The pain strikes and we mewl futilely. We are His.
I am Abel. I wear my brand, an arm-band of honor.
I am one with Allah. The third eye in my forehead,
the A where my eyebrows furrow stigmatizes me,
marks me off from the infidels. Cain kills his brother.
Get out of the Holy Land. Be banished, murderer!
Alright, exile it is. To expiate the blood of my brother
I will wander on to Golgotha to accept my crucifixion.
The carcass of the criminal who died beside Christ
alights off his cross and proclaims, I have holes now,
also eyes, in my palms. White women’s breasts
I wish to caress and admire. The A race multiplies
according to the covenant. They spread over the earth:
highways, malls, sprawling cities, residential high-rises.
The A is your curse. You are punished with insanity.
You have sinned against Allah, God the Almighty,
by barring his message, his only son, from your heart.
Off with his head! the Red Queen shrieks repeatedly
as the executioner rushes to expedite the dirty work.
Hurry man, one of her viziers urges the poor laborer.
Grab that axe, fool! But I don’t want to kill my brother.
Off with his head! Do it now. Just one quick whack.
Do not think. Action, Krishna counseled, is always
superior to deliberation. The black-hooded figure
closed his eyes and let fall the blade on the block.
The Queen is temporarily appeased. By lunchtime
she is bloodthirsty again. Why are those roses red?
she asks as she femininely dines. Because Queen
you ordered all white flowers to be painted in blood.
Hm, make me a crown of thorns then. It is done,
your majesty. Put it on. The humble weaver obeys.
There now, the sadistic woman taps her scepter
on the headpiece, forcing the thorns into the flesh.
What is this blasphemy? she acts flabbergasted.
You, a nobody weaver, assume the crown of royalty?
Off with his head! The executioner’s arms are sore.
A is a dangerous cult, the circulated rumors warned.
Propaganda posters showed the scraggly bearded,
wild-eyed, unkempt inmate, a ghastly fissure, skin
and bone agape, the third-eye chakra spiraling.
The word read TERROR. The subliminal command
was to be afraid. Cain is on trial for brainwashing
people into killing. Mr Simpson, your DNA was found
at the scene of the crime underneath the fingernails
of the victim, Miss Nicole Brown. How did you get
those scratches on your face? Objection, the defense
protests, the prosecution is pre-judging this man
because of the color of his skin. The judge sustains.
Mr Simpson, you do not need to answer that question.
It’s okay, your honor. It was a cat that scratched me.
The peanut gallery suppresses giggling. Simpson
himself cannot help smiling at his blatant absurdity.
The jury rests. The trial is over. The verdict is ready
to be delivered by Judge Ito. He pounds the gavel
and shouts, Order! for effect. Now just hold it there
Lance, his conscience, Jiminy Cricket, chirps brightly
from his shoulder. You may not want to be so kind
to this American football hero. Remember Ojichan’s
stories of being Japanese in the World War Two
California internment camps? Ito ignores Jiminy’s
feeble suggestion. Mr Simpson, you are not guilty.
The juice is loose. Parties cheer around televisions.
Pepsico’s Tropicana organizes a promo campaign.
The orange juice maker gives the product out for free.
Homer Simpson, the fat, bald, yellow cartoon character
drinks as much as he can with vodka, and belches.
His breath smells sour and sugary. Bart creeps into
the living room where Homer is passed out snoring.
He aims his slingshot into the open mouth and fires
a cyanide pill down his father’s throat. Snores cease.
Grotesque gurgling sounds issue. The body spasms
until being seized with rigor mortis. Bart sniggers
and shirks away, delivering quietly at the threshold
his famous catchphrase: Hey don’t have a cow man.
The commercial takes him into a convenience store.
He steals a candy bar. The Indian proprietor watches
a Bollywood movie beside the surveillance screen.
He crunches it in the parking lot, leaps onto a rolling
red skateboard and cruises on the suburban street,
careening through intersections. Centripetal force
pushes back his serrated hairline. Disinterestedly,
he munches and with his mouth full, utters the line:
Nobody had better lay a finger on myyy Butterfinger.
The police chief, a slovenly, unctuous man, almost
chokes on his doughnut. He spills a cup of coffee
onto his uniform when from inside the patrol car
he sees the young rebel fly by. He does nothing
about the truant. Matters more urgent than brazen
disregard of traffic laws are pressing. Patricide,
the radio whirs. Officers, go to the Simpson home.
Let’s roll, he imitates a character from a cop flick.
Yay! Ralph, his retarded son, and Silly, the clown
who is his imaginary friend, yell behind the grating.
They are playing deputy today. The chief puts on
the siren and speeds through LA to Nicole Brown’s
residence in Brentwood. Hurry up and eat your munchkins,
he tells his boy in the back. We should be there in no time.
And you’re going to need all the energy you can get
to do police work effectively. But dad, Ralph complains,
you bought me an entire box, plus this hot chocolate too.
That’s for you and SIlly. He likes to encourage his kid
to believe in this delusion. Ralph is dangerously obese.
He weighs over two hundred pounds already, at only
the age of ten. He wears a bra for boys to support
his gynecomastic, B-size breasts. His policeman’s
costume, smeared with jelly and powdered sugar stains
and soaked with spilt cocoa, is way too tight on him.
Fuhrman is the first from the Los Angeles Police Department
to arrive at the scene. He cordons off the perimeter
with yellow tape printed with black words: Do Not Cross.
This here’s nigger blood, he drawls derisively, a redneck
Ku Klux Klan member of the West Hollywood constituency.
Don’t nobody touch the vile stuff until we get forensics
to prove it ain’t comtaneated with the deadly AIDS virus.
Them niggers they all got AIDS, he notes as an aside.
Ralph, the cartoon retard, enters, wailing, waving his arms.
He is crazed on an intense sugar high. He slips and falls
in blood. Linda Kasabian LAPD’s resident medium, sees
the plump child squirm. Piggies, she clairvoyantly reads
written on the walls and draws a macabre connection.
Who could have done this to my sweet husband Homey?
The scene shifts from history. Real life falters to become
a crudely animated television show. Marge, the blue-haired
housewife, with a typical interest in New Age spirituality,
is consulting a psychic in the room where Homer was killed
while drinking screwdrivers. The guest star’s voice is lent
by Kasabian, a well known celebrity. She enters into trance.
Redrum is written on a wall opposite a mirror. She’s Danny
in the Shining, racing on Hotwheels through the labyrinthine
hallways of the Overlook to escape the raging Minotaur.
His father, half-man, half-bull, is a homicidal psychopath
who lost his mind trying to write the Great American Novel
in an isolated environment. Ghosts in the Hotel California.
The register is booked, though all the rooms are empty.
Linda was the most prophetically talented of all of Charles
Manson’s family of initiates into the order of Helter Skelter.
He, being an authentic, though very evil, shaman, could see
this, and feared her. Therefore, he sent her along that night.
His intention was to break and win her soul over completely
by compelling her to kill innocent human beings with knives.
Ironically, her participation in the crime would ultimately be
his undoing. She was called to testify on the supernatural
powers he exercised over the cult. He attempted to subdue
her spirit on several occasions prior by subjecting her body
to sex with multiple men and women, all of them fucking
her everywhere discontinuously. He overdosed her on LSD.
While she teetered on insanity, her mind remained intact.
You’ve got a father complex, was the first thing he told her.
Thus she was persuaded to join the Family. She thought,
he can see inside me, and followed. She was unimpressed
soon after, as she found that she could see inside him too.
Charlie, she told him without saying, you have the ugliest
father complex any man could. Your madness is biblical.
The defendant on the stand in the murder trial clearly is
the descendant of cursed Cain from the Book of Genesis.
Marge’s son, Bart Simpson, Linda Kasabian knew, not
through any divination, but through her life’s experience,
that Ivan Karamazov is guilty but would never kill again.
The father is out of the way. The mother must move on.
Manson went to prison. OJ Simpson committed suicide
in the back of a white Ford Bronco. Jack Nicholson froze
to death. The Minotaur devoured the man-meat popsicle.
Theseus, the son successfully negotiates the labyrinth.
He grows out of his Hotwheels, and with characteristically
American bravado, proudly declares, I’m Bart Simpson.
Who the hell are you? Glowering, with leonine solemnity,
Eat my shorts! Jeremy, Der Fuehrer raises his right hand,
Sieg Heil! A nation of Nazis roars in a frenzy of applause.
Don’t have a cow man, Mohammed adjures. Surrender
your soul to Allah. Cool, I broke his brain, the line from
the Frankenstein spoof episode. The string in the back
of the talking Bart doll winds mechanically to its end.
Finale. Here comes the plug: Surprise! This program
has been brought to you by your friends at Mars Corp.
Heehee, the butt of the joke, the heedless birthday boy
wipes tears of laughter from his eyes. You got me there.
1989: The kid pulls the string to activate the recording:
Nobody had better lay a finger on myyy Butterfinger.
A smooth, masculine voice speaks in saccharine tones:
Bite into a rich burst of chocolate-covered Butterfinger.
Crunch! A boy wolfs down a candy bar in a single bite.
Ralph loses interest in the talking doll; tells his dad
he wants a Butterfinger. Here, the father pushes a king
size candy bar onto his son dismissively, eat this and
shut up. You’re interrupting my favorite show. A chase
scene is taking place on television. Aw this is Snickers!
I asked you for a Butterfinger. Eh? You some kinda
Pepsi drinker? Snickers is the Coca Cola of candy.
Just eat the thing and be happy. People are starving
somewhere. Ralph obeys. The father casts him a glance
of disdain. Christ, he mutters, the kid will grow up to be
a Budweiser drinker. He is turning out to be a pansy.
Butterfinger my ass. Whereas every real man knows
the Coca Cola, Snickers of beer is Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The cartoon colors dissolve. The police chief father
is actor Dennis Hopper in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
He turns his attention back to the fuzzy black and white
screen action, but he is dazed and cannot concentrate.
He is reminiscing on a night in New York forty years ago.
Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper are riding around
downtown in a limousine with the immortal Andy Warhol
and his entourage of freaks. Champagne and cocaine
are flowing liberally. Nico awakes out of her stupor
and mutters in her deep, Northern European accent,
Fuck what happened? Hey you give me another one.
Nicholson leans over and kisses her lewdly on the lips.
There’s another one for you honey, he arrogantly sneers.
Everyone laughs but Andy. After the laughter dies down,
silence steeps the cabin. Nico is handed a brimming flute.
The pop artist quietly makes a philosophical observation,
The traffic lights… he focuses, are green, meaning go.
He struggles to continue. While the lines in the streets…
he pauses again, almost exhausted with the effort of
tracking the idea to its conclusion, are yellow, or slow.
The party contemplates this. Hopper rudely guffaws.
Everyone cracks up laughing. Even Warhol, who is
usually the paragon of lackadaisical stoicism, smiles
slightly, regarding his own reflection in the black window.
You are insane man Andy, Hopper adds amidst mirth.
You are one weird crazy motherfucker man. He snorts
another bump of blow and washes the residue down
with a copious gulp of champagne. Warhol, Nicholson
agrees as he digs into his own stash, you sure are
one of a kind. He snorts a line and lights a cigarette.
The car whizzes up Eighth. Beats pass, block by block.
Nico sings a song in Scandinavian. The limo arrives
at an underground nightclub on the Upper West Side.
They step out and disband around 4am in winter, 1973.
The message did get through that something wasn’t right.
A stink pervaded Camelot. The Knights of the Round Table
lit incense sticks in chambers and lay with concubines.
It was not ignorable. The source of angst is ineffable.
No one will acknowledge it. Whenever we try it ends
with one or both parties to the interaction raising
their eyebrows to mask their confoundment. Eyes avert
toward the floor. Excuses get invented. Indirectly,
it is mentioned that the present phase is finished,
and the meeting should break. The prince suffered
bouts of depression. Medicine men prescribed pills,
which he refused to take. The moon swung into Scorpio.
Sidereal forces affected seven layers of astral bodies.
The core slept within the hull and dreamt that outside
it was in the belly of Leviathan. Constricted in moisture,
I suffocate; can’t breathe. Wake up! You do not need to.
Waves threaten destruction. Their movements make
me seasick. Blah, the whale vomits three days of meals.
Jonah is washed onto the shore of a deserted island.
He is Tom Hanks in Castaway or Robinson Crusoe.
He creates ink by catching snakes and squeezing out
the venom into wells. For pens he plucks the plumage off
a peacock. Whenever one loses forever its fluorescence,
he discards it and takes another. He manufactures paper
conventionally, by chopping trees and slitting the wood
into squares. He manages to churn out reams. He wrote:
A message in a bottle. The vitreous vessel symbolizes
the body; transparent, scratched and smudged; strong
but breakable. My poems and stories must be protected
from the water girding my lonely island to the five horizons.
Aliens on other planetary shores are waiting to receive them.
Yoddle-ay-hee-hoo! Eyes you would not meet in Heaven.
There are no eyes here. There are only crows’ feet on
broken glass, landing in pain and flapping back up again
to the ceiling of our dismal cellar. Island, no eyes here.
Only what I see. Who am I? Tom Hanks, Robinson Crusoe,
the quintessential castaway? What can I do alone except
come up with things like writing ware? Was I really Jonah?
Peter, Jesus consoles the rock, accept it, you were born
out the belly of a whale. She was sent by God expressly
to swallow you because you wouldn’t hearken to his word.
He persistently beckoned you, and in response you only
ran to more far-flung extremes seeking escape. The rock
remains mute. Jesus picks it up in both hands. It’s heavy.
He labors up a cliff and lets it go over the edge. The rock
smashes below, shatters into pieces. A big burst of dust
settles. So long Simon Peter, Jesus laments for his friend,
looking down at the plethora of bread loaves and fresh fish
that have resulted from the sacrifice. My message at first
read, Rescue me. I tried to describe my coordinates. But
I was an amateur at astrology. Also, my eyesight was bad.
I had not retained my glasses through the purging ordeal.
I knew where the moon rose. I remembered where it dis-
appeared during the nights it didn’t come out. What good
was such information? Moreover, how to word it? Gah!
I groaned with disgust. It is my fate to never be found.
God did chase me once. But he has abandoned me here.
Who then did Hanks write to? Narcissus’s object of love.
In the center spread a pool that bore a perfect reflection;
crystalline during the day and obsidian radiant at night.
I gaze on you for hours; pass seasons under your spell.
There is no one beside you. I am fascinated with your face.
Dear little ripple of breath, would you like to hear a story?
I will take that as a “yes.” The agitation quiets. Listen,
nymphs, spirits who I have perceived by sinking to inner
sensory levels. Your creator is unhappy alone. Come
and keep him company. Once upon a time this island
was a mountain peak, not tropical but covered in snow.
Earth’s climate changed because the stars, suns of similar
influence to yonder nearest one, inflicted the end of winter
and augmented the oceans like dough in the oven rising.
The sole trace of that ancient era is this – the mirror pool.
See it’s blooming starshine? Cold water, cup your hands
take some up and splash it on your face. Thus Narcissus
was refreshed. A star is just as liquid, as vitreous as glass.
Roll scripture into a cylinder to peep through like a telescope.
Kids playing pirates. Lost boys walking the plank. Stick it,
like sex into the mouth of the bottle: the model clipper ship.
How did they get that in there? Jesus in this scenario doesn’t
feel it incumbent to climb to the top of the cliff. He hurls it
against the wall. There you go, Peter, you terrible rock face!
The rock’s eyes are blinded by specks of broken glass.
The shattering echoes – Tsch – all throughout the canyon.
The island now is no longer to safe to walk on with bare feet.
The paper decays. Jesus returns to Narcissus. The nymphs,
people from the past who potentially could have been lovers,
disappear and are forgotten. You, sterling night in chambers,
are my siren song. The king is called to eradicate the stench.
My subjects cannot be happy having to wallow in this bog.
I must employ my legendary heroics. The Green Goblin
perpetrates our sorrows and woes. I should gird my sword
and mount my steed to search for him. Comic book character
Spiderman swings on webs from Manhattan skyscrapers.
He crawls on the vertical walls and looks in upside down
through windows of office buildings. He spots the Goblin,
a genius scientist who has been possessed by capitalism.
His skin glows the green of cash. He signs a transaction.
Summarily, in some third-world country, poison is introduced
into the village’s water stream. The stock price, green mercury,
rises. The king in the fairy forest comes across a stalwart
being whose skin is green, making prostrations by firelight
to eerie idols that seem made out of material not of earth.
How virulently they gleam. Arthur interrupts to ask if he may
warm his hands by the fire. You are more than welcome to,
he is invited. Here, have a seat on my toadstool. He does.
The toad, as his weight sinks, croaks. Its back is as soft
and cozy as a beanbag. May I offer you medicine to drink?
Please pour me a cup. With one sip the king is stripped of
the false semblance of hierarchic royalty. He methodically
nips at the absinthe, watches nymphs sport through the fire,
and listens to the stranger’s tale of how the forest came to be.
Evergreen no longer meant a coniferous entity such as a tree.
It was a scent, similar to the artificial strawberry flavoring that
chemical companies put in bubblegum. Evergreen, the name
of a perfumed piece of cardboard, hangs on rearview mirrors,
the perennial Christmas ornament. The kingdom devolved away
from the worshipful purposes that were propounded at its origin.
Take a walk in a modern city. Count how many goods are sold
and how many are dead. Divide the product by pi. Communities
accreted to pay homage to these issuances. My love puppets,
Rada and Krishna, the ascetic introduces to his guest, the king.
You made these then yourself? Arthur refers to the eerie idols.
Yes I did. I had to. They were already in my heart. How could
I not let them out? Their manifest qualities were hummingbirds
trapped inside of cages without a blossom to drink. Here are
two primordial likenesses of love. Krishna just fucks everybody.
He is making love to me right now. Mmm, so good. Aha, yes!
Don’t stop. I am about to have an orgasm! Yes… Yes… YES!
Br, such magic electricity. All you have to do is open yourself
to Krishna like a mother spreading herself for her baby’s birth.
The grey matter in Arthur’s skull became infused with green.
The nectar had a delicious effect in lightening out the crevices
that he had always avoided as if they were unseen: chasms,
abysmal and vast. Nothing whatsoever to fear. RadaKrishna
is in your heart. What have I done, the king regrets, to keep
the forest away from my kingdom. I am not really a monarch.
I am the monkey man, Hanuman. RadaKrishna is in my heart!
Hello in there, darlings. Are you nice and warm? In response
the heart beats harder. Now that you have these superpowers,
the Green Goblin counsels, go and rule London benevolently.
I will! And who shall I say you are, should a biographer ask me?
I am Gautama, the dragon. The being shifts its shape; turns
into a giant lizard with wings, the size of an eighteen-wheeler.
The fire smolders into coals. Arthur is cold. Intoxication wears
off and dawn looms grotesquely. The dragon opens its jaws
to consume the fire’s remnants. He rears up and gulps down.
The seer can see the lump convulse through its long throat.
Gautama giggles. The green dragon spews pyrotechnics out.
It lifts off on wings and zooms away westward. The sun comes
up fully. Birds chirp delightful melodies. The forest is tinged
with morning dew and cool clear air. Rimbaud struts through
ruts in London slums, not minding, actually enjoying the stink.
In revery, every second he comes up with brilliant inventions.
It is 1873. He plots the game that one hundred years from now
will be branded Hungry Hungry Hippos by Hasbro Milton Bradley.
Later, in lucid depression, he regretted not going with Gautama
and flying away on the dragon’s back. It is just, he hates his fate.
I had to stay here in Hell and suffer through more cyclic existence.
It is the way of the bodhisattva for the poet to refuse to write.

Sometimes I think I should have been a…
I could have been the… -est. Stop!
The master hits the disciple with a stick.
The pain smarts for hours afterward.
That thought should never have arisen.
you double your error by lending it voice.
But it occurred, the disciple whined.
His tone betrayed his state of fragility.
The master whispered, Sh. Brought
the disciple’s head to rest in his lap
and caressed his hair. Yes it did,
my child, as did my punishing stick.
The master put his hand to the rod.
The disciple winced, anticipating shock
from another surprise beating. Hehe,
the master chuckled. The disciple felt
the paroxysms of his mean mirth
course through his legs. He thought,
I want to hurt you, you unfeeling
vindictive, daft old son of a bitch,
but did not say a word. He clung
around his master’s knees tighter
and nuzzled his nose to kiss his feet,
which were visibly grimy and smelled.

The red sun dropped in my dream.
Hey did you see that? I asked
one of the tourist bystanders on the promontory.
It didn’t set. It FELL below the horizon.
This is a very bad omen, according to interpretations.
You can guess what it might mean…
It is night now and I don’t know it
but I’m dreaming, making the most of a nightmare.
TERROR, the one-word headline read.
This is propaganda, the educated deduced.
Yes but it is effective, the accuser himself agreed.
The definition basically is there are
two holes, equidistant, both of the same diameter
but of profoundly different depths.
In one of them, it’s simple,
a prize lies at the shallow bottom.
Reach your hand in – it’s yours.
But think: halt – it could be the other.
This is the proverbial tunnel
down which Alice tumbled into Wonderland;
Maya, the Sanskrit for Illusion,
the overarching concept of all real religions.
Row row row your boat gently down the stream.
Merrily merrily merrily merrily life proceeds to seem.
Go blow your goat. Yes I believe in duality.
So what? You don’t, higher than mighty?
We are not, as they say, “one.” That is an oxymoron.
“We” is a plural pronoun. If you were to say,
I are one, the utterance would not be grammatical.
(unless of course “you” were substituted for “I”).
Terror after terror. Agh another fantasy!
The eidolon in my mind is a monkey.
Help! I can’t get it out.
The primate god of myth, son of the serpent
and Brahma. It is a flock of birds
crowded into a constrictive cage.
How would you like to free yourself
and be liberated from all this illusion?
God yes, I really want to!
Lord, your servant is listening.
Bid me as I should do… But the voice is gone.
The signs shrivel to husks.
It was no personage who spoke.
No vision or augur; just another eidolon.
God, damn son of a bitch.
Got me riled up again with this chronic, relentless anxiety.
And miles to go before I sleep. Thousands.
Distance from the world. The gap is unfathomable.
The bridges are to towers of castles of sand:
tenuous over the merciless assertion of the tide.
We are one and God is in all of us.
The ancients connected their thoughts
to a pantheon of deities. They divied up the goods.
This is the kingdom – the power – and the glory.
One for you, the demented candyman
chirps as he doles poison out to children.
And one for you and one for you.
Back home a girl in a cute Halloween costume
croaks. And one for you. Hey no fair!
She got two. Did not. Liar!
You are hiding one behind your back.
Alice, is this true? Her expression
at being caught betrays TERROR.
She is hallucinating badly.
She has gone from seeing double to a thousandfold:
the insect eye. The Mad Hatter dosed her too much.
The poison destroyed her brain.
She died years later in a state institution.
Poor Alice, the goddess lost. Poor bird Wendy…
Long live Queen Dorothy! Ding-dong the witch is dead!
It was the cyclone, the rabbit, the wood sprite
who seduced and led her to walk the fatal plank.
The hero always will come and save the day.
What is this garbage you are reading?
Uncle Sage poses to his adolescent nephew.
This here’s comic books. This’n’s mah favoreet.
Boy, this ain’t nothin’ but Maya. Pure pornography.
Wake up! Throw this into the fire.
When I was your age I was a pyromaniac.
Sage, the boy’s father interrupts the teaching,
what are you saying to my son?
Call in a bomb threat at school,
he whispers furtively to the kid out the side of his mouth,
tell them this is Columbine. Enough!
I told you, no seditious messages, either overt or subliminal.
You agreed to abide by my stipulation. You lied.
I took you in as a bum. I got you a job at my company
so that you could start your life in society over again.
Yet this is how you repay my brotherly generosity?
Indoctrinating my innocent son with unquiet rebellion.
Get out! Get out of this house, I say.
That’s cool pops. My conformity was a charade.
I am an anarchist guerilla on an undercover mission
to plant seeds in enemy territory.
You won’t even notice. You’ll be in the wastes
one day, prospecting, drilling for oil
and all of a sudden a tree will spring up.
Its leaves will block the sunlight from your solar panels.
You won’t be able to make any more money.
Security manhandles Sage. Before being
escorted away, he gets in one last word:
Hey kid, don’t forget, burn your books!
Wipe shit with paper currency! Incinerate the machine!
Shut him up, the evil brother orders his men.
One of them sticks a knife down Sage’s throat
severing off his tongue. These guys are not rent-a-cops.
They are certifiable bad-asses: third-world mercenaries
who have been trained in US Special Ops camps
and are getting paid well in an impoverished economy.
The kid who witnesses this is upset and confused.
Sorry for the ruckus, the father coos like mom.
Forget about it and go back to enjoying your comics.
Here is a hundred dollars. Go buy yourself some more.
Before exiting the father gives the signal
to the most twisted of all his henchmen to ensure
that there are no matches or lighters in the room,
left on the sly by Sage, for the boy to get his hands on.
It’s for your own safety senor, the mercenary sneers
as he nears the kid cowering in the corner.

The dove carried back the olive branch across the waters of Flood.
Noah knew that land would be hard to starboard. The great god
Poseidon tugged gently at the reigns of his horse, the porpoise,
Leviathan. The creature in response averted its gills to swim
in the directed way and gyrated its flippers to augment its speed.
Noah cracked his whip – “Faster you brute! Faster!” Leviathan bashed
its nose on the shelf that led up to the desert island, destined
someday to become the rocky peak of a holy mountain.
Two trees stood in the sand – of life and of knowledge.
Noah got out of his boat with his animals and his family.
He set the craft adrift in such a current where in days a meteor
would fall precisely from the sky and smash it to a scattered mess
of flaming smithereens. He trained the monkeys to climb the trees
and send the family their fruit down. Hungry, they ate everything
including the seeds, which when they shitted out sprouted
into baby trees. The desert island in decades became a forest.
Under canopies of five hundred foot leaves, the chosen people
chopped up the originals with sharp, heavy flint hatchets
and used the logs as firewood. Both life and knowledge burned
equally well. Seers saw prophecies emerge out of the smoke
and then in the ongoing embers after the death of the flames.
The old man throughout all this time was walking down
the ebbing shoreline, observing the waters of Flood abate.
Once the altitude had sunk enough, the peak of the mountain
became cold and inhospitable. The forest that had flourished
in centuries turned to stone. With nothing left for the people
to eat, they carried out an exodus downward to the coasts.
Some set up ghost towns, old fishing villages, Cape Cod
in the offseason. Some got stuck and never made it beyond
the plateaus they would have had to cross to get to the ocean.
Societies were raised. Hierarchies ordained. Caste systems
put into place. Nomads roamed and thieves lurked everywhere.
Alchemist pirates, whose gold was the soul, growled,
“Rrr me mateys. Now here methinks is a fine bunch of stout,
lean-hearted buccaneers!” These men never shaved;
were missing prominent teeth; had hats on imprinted with
the insignia of the skull and crossbones; wore diamond-
studded eyepatches. On their shoulders sat perched
red, blue, and green parrots that occasionally, apropos
of nothing, squawked out with, “Polly wanna cracker,”
at which request the bird’s host would shove a stale chunk
of bread into its worm-tongued beak, mumbling, “Shut ahp.”
Robin Hoods did in those days abound, American Che Guevaras.
The long-haired straight-faced revolutionary, a red star
in his black beret, poses for propaganda, enjoying a foot-long
Cuban cigar. Robin is a fox in Disney. He pulls out an arrow
from its sheath and sets it to the string of his bow.
He winks, aims, shoots… He wins! “Hooray! Tree cheers
for our hero Robin Hood: Hip hip…” The sheriff of Nottingham
is a surly lion. He is upset that that mysterious archer
who took away the grand prize used the reward to stand
everyone in the village pints in the pub. “The people
are supposed to pay liquor taxes for their drinks,”
the lion laconically whines to his cohort, the snake.
“Ssso true your majesssty.” “Majesty?” the lion feigns
humility, “Why, sir snake, do you insist on addressing me
as if I were royalty? I am merely the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Not ssso, my lord, if I may be so bold as to contradict
your eminence. You are king of divine blood, at least to me.
And someday soon you are bound to fulfill your dessstiny.
You will be an idol in the minds of these ignoramuses,
the English, and all the far-flung colonies…” Meanwhile,
in the new world, Che is organizing a band of guerillas,
Native Americans in pelt skins, armed with bows and arrows.
“First we take back Manhattan!” he says to them in Spanish
through teeth clenching in his mouth his trademark cigar.
His hands are not free to hold it, as he is using them
to demonstrate the proper handling of a Soviet AK-47 rifle.
His buffalo soldiers reject firearms. They say, “We must not let
our spirits sink to the level of joining with the gringos’ machines.
Once we do, the cause of our revolution is lost forever
to the white man’s perdition.” They mobilize in the Battery.
At the preordained sun stroke, they burst onto the floor
of the Wall Street Stock Exchange. An arrow pierces
the chairman’s throat. He collapses over the edge
of the balcony, still clasping the hammer that was to ring
the bell that would open the market for that trading day.
His skull smashes on the marble floor, spilling his brains.
He is unconscious as he dies of asphyxiation on blood.
The killing was symbolic. The good guys do not want
to harm anybody. The guerillas hold obsidian knives
to the collared, neck-tied pudgy jugulars of every executive
who works for a financial firm or government bureau
in New York City. They demand a pow-wow with Power.
The president of the USA broaches in, holding up
his hands in the sign of surrender. He begs the leader,
“Take me instead. Kill me if you want. But please return
the country back its beloved executives. I am their chief.
Accept my life as a sacrifice.” Che laughs heartily,
the gutteral paroxysms of the proletariat’s stentorian
icon, who happens to be a heavy smoker. “Nonsense,”
he speaks in broken English for the president, who knows
not a word of Spanish, except maybe for “hola,” “cerveza,”
and “hasta la vista baby.” “We demanded to talk to Power.
You are nobody but a coward. The proletariat isn’t stupid.
We know that you were forced by those who really rule
to turn yourself in for the sake of these enslaved slave drivers,
businessmen,” he grits the word, “and that if you had
refused they would have tortured you beyond the threshold
of pain. Whereas we anarchists kill seldom and when we do,
humanely. You stink, pig. We don’t even want to have you
as a hostage. Get out of the People’s Stock Exchange.”
Che kicks the rear-end of the president, who is now down
on his hands and knees, pushing him toward the exit.
The rulers consider the situation serious. Che is invited
to meet with the absolute master based on two conditions:
that he come alone, that he bring no weapons, and that
he refrain from smoking. He is led by a chthonic type suit
through the wreckage of the World Trade Center bombing.
He is feeling apprehensive already since he stubbed
out his last cigar on the sidewalk of Church Street.
He hankers for nicoteine. His worker’s boot crunches
over the charred skulls of the firefighters who were
victims of the calamity. Uneasily, he looks up to the sky
where the historic Twin Towers once rose, and – Flash!
- he is inside a building gazing at light fixtures in a ceiling.
Thanatos leads him to an elevator. A bell dings. Doors open.
Thanatos gestures to Che that he enter. A button is pushed.
The elevator ascends rapidly. Several seconds later
he is eighty stories up. He looks down at the marvellous city,
astounded by the height of the view. “Come forward!”
a deep echoing voice commands from behind a cubicle
in a shadowy section of the otherwise sunny office space.
“But I thought,” he says in Spanish (his exact words are
“Pero pensaba…”), that the World Trade Center was destroyed
on September 11, 2001.” “It was a hoax, Mr Guevara,”
The voice pronounces the revolutionary’s name wrongly;
‘Gwuh-varra,’ “designed to conceal the nerve center
of Emerald City behind a curtain of empty space, so that
we who are in power could do business with less transparency.”
“A hoax? But all those people killed…” “Digital imagery.
No one died. Those who cried that they lost loved ones
in the false disaster were brainwashed and/or bribed
by the secret agents of Oz.” “I must say,” Che replies,
“I am impressed by the thoroughness of your evil plot,
despite that I detest you. Congratulations on this facade.
In financial terms, Oz has been quite successful. Kudos.
Anyway, I am here to declare that the Native Americans
are taking the power back. We will slaughter your executives
if you do not capitulate to our one demand: Cede to us
California. The land was never yours to begin with.
You stole it from Mexico. We will let you keep Arizona,
New Mexico, western Texas, but we want the Golden Coast,
from Baja to Alaska.” “What are you going to do with it?
Organize a mass cult of hippie pot farmers?” “Mas o menos.
We are going to reestablish the worship of Wakan Tanka.
California under us will be a highly technological modern
libertarian agronomy. Okay, we have drawn up our terms.
We will allow you to maintain your military bases there
on the one condition that you supplement the training
of your personnel with the education which we will provide
in the liberal arts, subjects of peace. And no one is exempt.
Everyone from generals to line cooks must attend the lessons.
Is it agreed?” Oz chuckles sardonically. “No it is not,
comrade amigo, communist dog. You are not even fit
to lick the mud off the sole of my boot after I have done
a wine tasting tour in Napa Valley. You are a non-entity.
We had you killed by a group of our mercenaries in the 1960s.
As for your army of Indians, they’re even more dead than you.
No pictures of them exist, however many millions there were.”
The hero of the Cuban revolution goes pale. “Yo…” he doesn’t
know how to answer, “Do you mind if I have a cigar?”
“Yes I DO MIND!” the voice behind the cubicle boomed.
The light-weight cardboard walls shook with the low vibrations.
“You were told you could not smoke in here.” “I am not sure
I understand. Can you come out of there and explain to me?”
A portly dwarf pops out of the box. He looks less like a midget
than he does an aged, stocky ex-athlete, seen from far away.
“I am Oz, great and powerful,” the dwarf declares himself.
“You said I am a non-entity?” “Eres eso amigo, compadre.
We both are, as well as the Tower we are standing in.
That is why I appear in this ridiculous, un-PC aspect.
I have no constant form. But I, unlike you, do thrive
on the other side in the realm that is known as reality.
There California, New York, the whole fucking shitshow is mine.”
Oz smiles malignly. “But comrade, I can see you are stressing.
Why not go ahead and have your smoke?” Che thankfully
fumbles in the pockets of his green fatigues for a cigar
and a box of communist matches. He strikes one: no light.
He tries another: not even a spark. He panics. Disappears.

The Chinese do not want to buy the same things that we do.
Yes, they frequent megastores, but also traditional markets.
Housewives may purchase live hens and carry them home
squawking by the feet, their daughters’ hands in theirs.
They have no alternatives. The government is more
openly war-minded. The fascists are publically amassing.
They have no regard for our well beings. They deride our pleadings
for peace and mercy. They would rather bulldoze homes
in the countryside to carry out ambitious reforestation schemes
than let us live our lives as agrarian pagans, and see us to the city.
Here we live on top of each other, crammed in so close
that we’re forced to hear their music and animated conversations
about topics of which we can only catch a word here or there,
that I would never even think about, let alone discuss.
Ach! This small talk is killing me. I need to get out of the city.
Go back to the countryside. There I had a garden.
Mother raised me and my family on vegetables she had grown
herself and cooked in her kitchen with loving motherly care.
Mmm yum Christmas turkey! We sure love the way mom makes it!
I’m sick of running into people and having to say excuse me or hello.
I don’t want to buying anything. Exchanging currency feels dirty.
Engaging in commerce, selling labor to an employer is like
standing before someone who trusts you and telling a selfish lie.
But that is what you do here. The buildings are boxes,
the streets are squared, the ways we have to walk
are so unavoidably constricted that I have to squeeze to get by.
Suppress another shudder of visceral anxiety. I want to scream,
but I know that I would cease the incipient outcry
when those around me would think: Tsk, some crazy person.
Come on Ham, let’s get the children away from this madman.
I guess this is sanity: the ability to maintain a lid on the urge
to act out irrationally. I hear a heart beating under hot water.
The city is attacking. The slumber I fell into has gradually receded
in incoming tidal waves of waking consciousness.
The balcony I have rented overlooks a parking lot.
Out beyond, between other 24-storey apartment complexes
I can see treetops, wires, slowly rolling cars. If I don’t go soon
someone will come and call on me. And I don’t want to encounter
anyone; I’m not in the mood. I gather my things to leave.
Taxi to the art district. I stroll the streets, smoking,
turning randomly off into alleyways. The works on display:
generic. Nothing worth looking at for more than a couple seconds.
Everything is unoriginal. I try to be impressed by the anthropological
significance of there being a place like this, but I am not surprised.
It’s the same as I was told about: A must-see attraction
should you have the opportunity. Yes, I can see the charm.
Still, now that I am actually here, it just all seems so… sad.
So I turn into a bird. Set myself free in a woodsy district
and fly off on my own. I was inside a tiny cage, flapping frenetically.
I was enclosed in with this other bird who had lost its will to live
and just sat passive in its own and my acid shit at the bottom
of the cage. I identified with the bird. Its avian brain could never
learn there would be no escape. After every failed attempt
to fly it sinks and non-verbally thinks: No! Wrong! I need to…
Bash against the bars! Be unable to spread my wingspan.
I gave the petshop owner a hundred yuan and ordered him
to hand over the birds with angered urgency. I turned
and said, We have got to get out of here, meaning this part
of the city, where if the birds were to be set free
they would hardly be any better off. They would likely live
in ongoing states of fright amidst this traffic, urban dwellings,
not a trace of any but neon greenery, and die soon from poison.
We taxied to where there were woods. At last I opened the cage.
Seconds were of the essence as long as those creatures
under my care were suffering… Goldfish, gerbils, turtles
and other such animals that were sold in that rotten petstore
certainly aren’t as happy as they would be in their natural habitats.
But this is where we differ, us land dwellers, to the great
beings that soar dashingly through the blue at all sorts
of creative verticals. Gravity weighs us down. And we become
complacent. We live in a cage that stinks of shit.
Our water and food troughs are filthy. We are so packed
in with one another that we can barely move, the constant contact
is sickening. We can endure it. Our energy settles
once our hopes are given for lost. The bird, however, cannot be
so easily sedated. He has the magical ability to fly!
to go anywhere he wants, as high as he possibly can.
I freed those birds from the city as a symbolical act,
but also and primarily because the moment I witnessed that bird
slamming itself about in grave desperation, I reacted
empathetically. I bought the two birds and walked
up the side of the street, furtively looking out for an available cab,
doing my best through my aura to bestow calm on them.
It won’t be long, I said to myself and repeated, it won’t be long…
I am no land-bound man. I am a breeze-blown blackbird.
Did you know that men can fly? Yes, of course, they do so
through their thoughts, which unlike other animals’
can center on the divine. As the Wright brothers could tell you,
for a man to fly it is difficult and very challenging. It takes
many persevered attempts. One must cope with crashes,
despondency, doubt, ridicule, loss of motivation, but it can be done!
Look where we are today: in Hong Kong, having been in Shenzhen,
headed for Kolkata tomorrow. O my, it’s a Christmas miracle!
Christmas – in the sense that this is the winter solstice,
a fresh and novel wave in the chronological ocean of years…
May you prosper new inventions, ideas, ten million dollar ones!
Mwhahaha, the evil in the background erupts. His laughs
fade away, strange and mysteriously… Thoughts ascend
in airy flight. They dip, swivel, and dive. They arise off our heads
like steam from a hotspring in snow. In the sunlight,
under the stars, walking, dreaming, discovering water,
getting naked and going swimming. I am a stately blackbird.
I wonder what a goldfish – Dip – feels like when it – Swerve –
swims around in water – Soooar… Can’t be anything like this,
I, an imperfect man, muse on one of my vaunts into nature.
Human nature is inextricably complicated. Disregard any easy
answer. There isn’t one. You see, we have, our minds are
possessed by these psychophysical aggregates.
How many thoughts normally course between two disingenuous
parties carrying on a conversation? No telling. Definitely fewer
the shorter the interactions get, the more we push away.
It is our dilemma that we must solve if we are to receive
our divine reward. To cope with who he is versus who he must
be in society, in relation to others, is the main preoccupation
for every wise young man. The religion of evolution
teaches that in the beginning we were muddy-minded beasts.
We have been trying to purify ourselves for the past
thirty thousand years through the process of alchemy.
The future must come to terms with itself. I don’t have an answer.
This is no utopian manifesto. I point out what needs to change.
There! I am a little girl playing the magic witch game.
On whatever thing I point my wand – a perfect stick I found
in the woods earlier – its essence is immediately altered.
Take that frog for example. Which one? There!
The frog turns into a handsome prince, his lips deliciously puckered.
Now that stone over… There! It turns into a towering mountain.
I am bored. I put my stick down. Sit on a rock by a stream
and watch and listen to the amazing water pass. I leave
the city proper. I am still technically within its limits,
but this place isn’t so overwhelmingly urban. Much greener.
Ah yes! I can fly! I am a free blackbird again. There! Now…
There! I flap upon an air current, a thought: I might pay a visit
to the energy force that orchestrates every movement in the universe
today. I head for heaven. I knock at the pearly gates.
The gatekeeper to the Emerald City peeps out a squeaky eyehole
and demands, Yes? What do you want? I seek audience with God.
Ehe? He is occupied at the moment. May I take a message?
Um, no. I would rather see Him in person. Please I have flown all the way
from the poet down on earth. I only want to pay the Energy my respect
and make a humble request of It. But if He is busy – I suppose
I should have made an appointment – tell Him I am grateful
that there exists a green section in the city, but it is vastly not enough.
I don’t know when was the last time His Excellence deigned
to check in on it, but the city has gotten completely out of control.
I suggest it be destroyed, but, and I must emphasize, benignly;
no bloodshed, famine, plague, or war. Just a purely peaceful
abandonment of that way of living. I would like to see a kind of
Great Green Brave New Emerald City Utopia of the Future!
while I am still alive. And I’m due to die by 2063, at the latest,
so the Energy better get crackin’! I will pass the word along,
the gatekeeper responds smugly, and shuts – with a squeak
as well as a bang – his eyehole. I wonder if he will, or whether
he was lying… I shrug my wings, leap off the edge of a cloud
and head back toward earth, where my head is at present.
During my descent, I decide resolutely that if I don’t start
seeing some improvement soon, I am going to come back
with an army of pacifist blackbirds and coup d’etat Emerald City.
I am intimidated. I hate confrontation. It always brings out the worst
in my ego. But I am a bird inside a cage, trapped in an onerous city,
unable to accept that there is no escape, bashing myself
against the bars. Here thoughts do not have room to fly.
They bubble up and seethe underneath ceilings, become stagnant
pools that fester. Our minds are untreated wounds; grotesque gangrene.
Ehhh, the cries of misery moan. Sounds like they are faking it,
I judge as I walk by on two strong, healthy legs. The cripple is begging
for money. Except in the hope that the sky isn’t just a memory,
that it still exists somewhere far away, the bird witnesses its first
dawn from the branch of a tree – and that is indeed not even space.
Hope… Puh! I am already under sedation. How much struggle
from internal conflict have I already swallowed without speaking
up and taking action? Mental pain is a drug. Take your antideppressant.
It will also cover your symptoms of schizophrenia and sociopathy.
Its side-effects include loss of self-identity and impotence.
But you will be able to live a normal life again. The more you take,
the further you can tolerate things being wrong. This can work
to our benefit. We can use the drug, pain, as our vaccine.
Now that I am immune, I can go undercover as an agent into the city
and not fall apart in seizures when I am subjected to its human pollution.
I can carry out covert operations, an extremely skillful spy.
The author, the Cold War-era operative, occupies enemy territory,
taking pictures for his poem-report with his camera-equipped eye.
The most perspicacious tracker, the prim Harvard man explains
to his hierarchical superior, could not detect that when I touch
my finger to the rim of my glasses, like so, a tiny camera
in the nose-piece snaps a picture. If I can just get into their central
headquarters and get anywhere near their top secret documents
we should have all the information that we need to win the war!
Ingenious, the poet smiles, very good agent Orange. Carry on
now with your child’s play… I am doing nothing for which I could
be tried or prosecuted. I am a blackmarket dealer in ideas.
And even in states where thinking along particular lines
is sacrilege and punishable by strictest law, I am still exculpable.
This isn’t explicitly forbidden. The dumb government cannot verbalize
eloquently enough to describe what I am doing against it
and label the subversion illegal. I am therefore able to go
about unsuspected, like a blackbird high above people’s heads
My totem protector, go be free. I have opened your cage.
Birds, messengers to the divine, come swarm the city like locusts.
Authority does not fear my freedom because it is quite isolate.
But if everybody were blackbirds, the myth about the power
that cages us would like past flaps of wings dissolve
into our destination: Sky! Right after the poor petshop owner,
who I harbor no ill-will against, being only ignorant, forgets
his service to the city; wanting only for himself, grabs
the pink bill I offer him: a hundred yuan for two birds’ freedom.