The Fatties

Autumn Collage


by Serge Gurkski

for Holly Rene Hunter because she saved my life


Take a deep breath and start reading


Dionysus


In the woods of the Parnassus

they slaughter a sheep

on hot coals:
Pythian odes
evaporate

kingsandqueensandsiegesandfalls,

heaviest air

implode in my praying warriors' brain.

Cutting down my
fears

she saves me


Out of the Parnassian woods
I exhale poisonous
dust
upon
another world lost.
My waters are stilled.


I

The devil in me

Don’t come closer
Because I promise danger if you do.
You ask me why I smile?
Because I knew you’d give a shit on my warning.
So sit down, sip wine and listen
And now know this:
I used to be a peaceful man
Before I came to this place
But what attracts you now so fatally
Is just a mask,
That the demon has put on my face.
That demon’s name ‘s Dionysus,
The king of elegance and terror,
And I am his sparkling bait.
Help yourself with wine, please,
And while you’re at it,
Why don’t you take a cigarette from me.

It will somewhat ease your pain
On our fun ride…

She asked for the bathroom,
And while she was wasting
The last free minutes of her life,
I stood up and walked over to
One of the wonderful windows
Made of Butzenglas ,
And watched the landscape
(Through a Bull’s eye pane that is,)
Beyond the castle freeze in agony.
And suddenly the floating in of memories:
Bohemian Krumlov on a cold February day
In 1608… Gore at the castle…

But she returned
And I smiled her into comfort
So that she might find
Delight in the stories
I was to trap her with
Which went like this one,
Which was the first:
“One day past or future – it matters hardly -when
Dionysus tightens his grip on me once more-
He leads me in paths so wrongfully dark
Off the Bourgeois track
And through the snowy sideways of
A pretty city close to the Alps.
For you are with me in that valley of death
And I surely will dwell…
In that house of booze.
Amidst those present
-Gamblers not boozers btw
Except this one
Grayed-in-the-wool guy
Who’d stomp his left hoof
With annoying loudness on the floor-
Stood ostentatiously
Our landlady ,our barkeeperette
Body yummy, nose crooked though
(Though this being no obstacle)
But a plenitude of blond hair
Enough –to cut it short – to distract me
from keeping strict attention to my glass.
She would not take a drink
But as I applied this technique:
Pretend to be fascinated by whatever
She seems to find worthwhile to share
And be assured: her sweet little
Subconsciousness will tenderly start to vibrate for you…
Alas, she kept me from drinking seriously,
Which alone would have saved me
From committing what
Evades me now.
Because the rest of the night
Faded into a blur –a mere smear of time-
Sentiment-free
At least
Retrospectively.
And while taking the cab
Next noon to the next exhibition
Of … grandeur
And equipped most orderly with
Emotional painkillers
I – with earned concern - could not help to notify
Numerous police cars heading at
A place I could only
Faintly remember.

II

We pass the gate …. our path emerges for a while (Ernest Dowson)

One summer night in 1989
You will find me spread out
All over the marble-floored,
Ample parlor of my parents’ house
Who are spending their holidays
On an arbitrary Mediterranean shore.
The moon is not yet out when
I take a step outside on the patio
Smoking my cheap strong tobacco
And not the heavy Cubans
Oh so presentably resting
In the teakwood humidor
But at least sipping (no: drinking)
An unbelievingly expensive red wine
With grimly anarchistic delight,
While I let a most majestic massacre
Of some Straussian waltzes
Namely: Ravel’s La Valse
Burst out into the extended neighborhood
And let it beat a couple of horny tomcats
Deep into the dark bushes
On the brink of les jardins de mes parents.
Nice people by the way
When off.
And finally when bored enough
Of the splendid view, evening breeze, smell of flowers
In short: the luxury
I take a cab downtown
To get dirty…

I only don’t spare you the smelly fact
That I molest the cab-driver by farting
So much that as soon as we hit the city limits
He stands on his brakes and tries to throw me out
And only decides otherwise
After I have stuffed a big note
Between his bad excuse for teeth
Because you, my sweet lady,
Might be inclined to think that I am
Bragging with my huge knowledge
Of cultural history when I blether
That when I hit the second or third bar
This night I happen to meet
An ugly Frenchman
And very relaxedly get into
Discussing the most important 400 years of French literature
Starting with Villon, ending with Rivarol,
And a short outlook, even
On the Renouveau Catholique
Which I will try to acquaint you with much later.
I end up here with confirming
To this funny frog in heavily broken Creole
That I don’t like Le Breton
But mean Le Pen, what an ugly mistake!
Anyway, I don’t find anything resembling a bathroom here.
So when I move myself further complete with full bladder
To the next nicely decorated filling station
I hint out to my new friend
Who just happened to squat along my path
Most innocently
The wonderful cream-colored old-timer
Waiting opposite an Irish bar
With – because it is summer-
Open windows.
I smell the fine leather while peeing on the seats
And I don’t become aware early enough
Of the owner both of bar and car
And it costs me a lot – including money –
To appease him.”

It is most appetizing to watch you chuckle over this,
My sweet guest,
Let me serve you another glass, bottle, gallon if you please, of
Шампанское (Crimean Champaign)
And take some oysters if it helps.
How soft your cheeks feel!
I’m not a vampire, you must know,
I prefer things to end
When they end.

And now and i know you won’t mind this
Let’s get into a slightly dreamier, bluer state of mind.
How lovely your head rests on the purple cushion
While your lips and tongue and lungs make love to the shisha!

“ Nowadays I prefer Miles Davis
But back then exploding in this discotheque
is Jeff Healey RIP
With “See the light”
The guy was blind
And quite the groover.
So I dance along and fall over
A stout G I’s feet.
This Joe or whatever is a bit aggressive tonight
Or maybe the rest of us is, hard to decide in hindsight.
And so we fight back to back
Not sure why but we win
And earn us a taxi back home.
And it feels good to ride home,
The 2 of us sweating musketeers
On the back seat of the cab.
I confess that we two don’t look too polished on this early pre-morn
And black eye staring into black eye
I all of a sudden have this absurd idea
To show him, show his ears , make him listen to
Ravel’s La Valse
And while I force the neighbors to listen again
I will admit to you
That he didn’t care,
Well, how depraved can you get in one single summer night!
I hand him I don’t remember what it was – some filled glass
And our Joe, he thinks he is at his shrink’s
And makes this confession:
“Buddy, didya know that Ah Am a murderer…”
Grins the bastard. “Of coazze not, but it’s true…
Ya know: I cut off someone’s head.”
I just nod and switch records,
Put some relaxing BB King on the stereo
And blow some reefer smoke into his, this
Dangerous bull’s, nostrils.
He takes it all in
I am so glad when Joe relaxes
Well, his time is up soon anyway
So I listen: She (he hands me a photo)
Was my girlfriend back then.
When I had just returned from the battlefield.
And that bitch, ya know had been cheatin on me all the time
While I was earning our living by risking my life any second out there..
And I come home and call her and around
The corner I see them
And my baby has his dick in her mouth
And I guess it was then that I kind of lost control
And drew out my machete and…”
But I will spare you the details of that somewhat
Some may say inappropriately gruesome slaughter
my new friend had committed
back then.
I cleverly refrain from inquiring of him,
My sweaty stony Jim,
We are bro’s in arms, mind you
What had happened to his girlfriend.
And it is not yet dawn
And I excuse myself for a pee
And when I return I am full to the brim
With holy anger some evil angel of the old bible must have blown into me
And do you see that knife, where did it come from?
And in the Lord’s own name
I slaughter the sinner
And cry over his bones
As any decent Christian would do.
But over a decade later
When I happen to stroll into
Strassburg’s murky Cathedral
Our Lord speaks to me thusly:
My son you err. It was Dionysus back then.
And I am so filled with joy
Because I had only been possessed
By that filthy, outlandish Thracian demon
When I did the abominable.”

I end there
And as I have foreseen
You have fallen into a warm somber slumber.

III

listen to it

Markéta Annapúrna

A pretty sentimental interlude

It is long past midnight,
It is that wee hour of 3 am and the fat blue moon
Is firmly nailed above the winter forest’s silhouette
I supply our lungs with some chilly December breeze
Then close the man-high windows and I cry.
You rest and sway
Within a satin dream.
I nervously watch over us.
The demon has left me for tonight.
But Zágreus will return on New Year’s Eve
And will as surely penetrate your soul
As he has once pierced mine.

You don’t even know where we are right now:
Inside these walls a princely madman once has raged
And killed a daughter of the town
And slaughtered her so cruelly that even
His father, Mad Rudolf II from Habsburg ,
The Holy Roman Emperor himself,
Henceforth completely neglected
His despicable bastard.

As candles melt in front of goblins
I sigh a bit. I light my cigarette
Then turn towards your face
And to your soul within your dream propose
Let’s fly, let’s float away…
Did you know
That your red fair hair
That close to me
Whips my mind
Into arousal
And your lips which I
Hardly dare to touch
Are of a crimson darkness that
Devours the shiver that is me?
And so we fly.
You are so soft inside
And outside and everywhere.
All of a sudden
I see red-eyed hares chasing foxes and
Roebucks hunt their hunters
And we ever so slowly
Flip and flop and
Float upside down
Over this little Bohemian town
And I press your head against my chest
Because I don’t want you to see
Madman Don Julius d’Austria
Stumble across main street
Spilling his rabid terror
Into the faces of terrified passers-by
And so we fly to the East and far we fly.
And we come down hard
Inmidst the 天山 tiān shān, the heavenly mountains
Next to the little green Buddha’s hidden grotto.
Who will heed, feed and save us
Or so say the folks.

IV /1

listen to it

Two arts

You awake from a whirlwind
Of enticing emotions
I can see that you suffer.
Let me offer you help.
You need, I think, to be taught
Two arts urgently
In order to stay alive somehow
After Dionysos has taken
Possession of you:
The first one is how to
Get over your hangover
In such a way as
To keep you craving
For his venom and
Always craving for more.
The second will then enable you
To make your mind
Hover loftily above
The hard depression
That sure would hit you
Had you stayed
With your heart
At the ground.
Take this smoke first
And then a pill
Before you down
Your breakfast glass
To hail our master
Still – as of yet
Unknowingly.
Oh, you do feel sick?
I promise not to watch.
See, you even already cackled!
Turning around now.
Sir? – Yes, the lady wants
Tea … with rum,
2 shots of it
Wait: make this
Rum, tea-flavored.
My sweet, I love it
When you smile.
You are not hungry I suppose? Ok,
I’d like to show you a photograph now.
Yes, she is, should rather say: was beautiful.
This is her story, her and mine:


IV/2

listen to it

How Petra died

You see me entering the town
On a slow train bound to the West
I’m definitely suffering from
A kind of drug-induced amnesia
But I sure know
Where I’m going to
Got his address penciled down
On cigarette paper
Plus some money and dope
And even entertain an
Admittedly queer kind of hope.
There was this friend of mine
Old-timer junkie
Quite clearly already
Very much over
All edges and me
Conquering this incredibly
Tiny city apartment.
Our friend, who never showed up
Had left us with his keys.
We did some qualified boozing,
My junking friend got us needle stuff,
But was not used to the smoke anymore,
Gave quite his very peculiar Hamlet one night
At the downstairs of a station
And earned his place
Most valiantly in
The town’s loony bin.
Holy loneliness. It was time
To fall in love:
For once Mr. Mushroom, the friend with the keys,
Had reappeared from his psychedelic woods
And on my leave he asked me
If I’d join him for a party
And it was there where
I fell in love with
His friend’s girlfriend
So deeply
I almost did not feel
The joy of liquid morphine
Rushing through
My veins anymore.
Her emerald eyes sucked me
Into the very core of her being.
We crash, unite, the world
And all its pain is gone
It is just us beyond all misery,
The bitter stench of death
And sweet decay.
But after all this carnival
We start to leave each other
Slowly, smoothly
Disappearing more and more
And there’s no way
To hold her back:
Her soul is bound to die
And mine is forced to watch.
5 years later I find you dead
You’re curled up closely
On your bed. You are so tiny,
My love, as you hug
all this messed-up linen.
I see drops of dark blood
Staring at my unbelieving eyes.
How only could you go that way?
Later your mom and me,
We’re cleaning your room
I’m wondering about
The color of those latex gloves
That I find in your dust-bin
Pink, green, yellow
Kinky stuff? But no:
It’s just forensics.
The crime scene unit
Did their job.

V

Hope

4 minutes ‘till the shops will open.
I had almost fallen asleep. Cigarette? Sure take one
Your body is so warm.
Loud Sun! Even the sun is showing up today!
Birds! There may be land in sight!
I dream of you besides me. It’s a crucial day.
Hope is always what it could be like.
Will we ever set sails to cross this dismal drunken sea
Against those waves of joy and horror?
And both of us, we watch that glass of booze,
That’s still half full, we will not die right now.
It’s either risky life or some kind of comfortable death.
We’re circulating round our headaches
But know of ways to fix this.
Your eyes glitter warmly at my crotch
But that’s long-past luxury
Only blood and heroin will flow
Through our wounds once bodies.
After the fix I lose myself
In your weak bleak arms
And we stare for hours
Into our long-lost future:
And we stare into death
Suddenly after 5000 light years
You bend your face to me:
Wait!
And I applaud you trying
to make it to the bathroom
Only a couple o’ hours later
You reappear somewhat fresher
Citrus in the air
You snuggle up at
The curious skeleton
That used to be me.
You want grass. You talk:
Baby………………
We’re not gonna make it over the weekend
And long before I catch the meaning of your song
I am into purple dreams again; Birds twittering
Love into my ears.
So we have just 4 grams for 2 fucking nights left now, you fucking asshole!
I show her the “reserve”… the beyond– h- stuff
Fist-big eyes of hers:
Great Church Choir plus Organ
Relieve Toccata
All in her eyes.
And we smoke gruntingly
Like Vietnamese water buffaloes
There is no escape


Acrossin'


I. Viva Mexico!

Sue and me
Twist in the lil Ti-juá-na joint.
Perfoming our laid-back moves
To Poncho’s Watermelon man…
With Sue’s boobs pointers to
My heaven.

Enjoying myself
But keeping an eye on the palish newcomers
Crossing the borda nightly
Joining our party in saddle-bagged shirts
Elvira, the happy whore, likes
Texan sweat to lick off hairy breasts…

As for Sue and me: We move
On…

Wai…, wai…, wait a minute babe!
So you … let your gun
Eat his forehead?

Girl, girl!
Starry night, Sue holds out in her cherry-red convertible
While I kiss the bending sky and
Sue’s just her usual, sexy self
In her burgundy velvet dress

And I bite her ear and her nipple and you know.

You know not what else
Wanna, I ask, make it down to Guatemala tonight?
She nods her red-haired head: Aye; sir!
I open the Tequila bottle,
You mean like a 1000 Miles?
Hand over the poison, she yells,
And yippie-I-yays into the dark.

II. Brazilian R’s

Somewhen later we cross the Venezuelan border
Hitting right for the coast.

Snow-white Columbia was nice to us and no troopers around.
So we’re finally on the beach, sable blanca, we fuck hard
afterwards stretching out to the murmuring ocean.

Meat tomorrow! – meet Tamara?
Uh- huh! You make, making me bite and suck
Your lips.

Shrill you: you get the fuck outta me!

And into tomorrow’s noon
Swinging out in the trocháic breeze
Future-wards my dreams
As I am teaching you
The impossibility of
Brazilian R’s,

Just a hissing, me says,
Almost like before you cum.

É pau, é pedra…

É um pouco sozinho

III. Deeper sheeper plus some psalm 23

Let’s, I let my mouth reach out for your
Orejos, get rational for a sec, ya? Si!

So you’re that little man supposed to help the gringo outta el norte de su país[?]

Manuel (which you’ll do)
Cause I,
majéstico MI,
will
Transport you to Jeffersons
Mia patria liberata,
(mi paìs libro?)
Los Estados somewhat Unidos
And you can even
keep
Your Spanish there.

My home-cunt
Re
Alizs, please, thatcha
so lucky to meet me in a state
Off border lines.

Course you, mi asinho, don’t get me but
I buy you the drinks and

I will, no: And I wished I’d be
Neruda’s Caballero solo,
Gentleman alone, gently fucking
This swell senorita serving us our
Drinks.
Pray, the Senorita’s my shepherdess
Sheepherding my hardness
Mi Rigor!
She .. leads horny me,
Thrice-hornèd me,
Sigh!,
Around her moist pastures.

She’s hot in my ear,
With her lipsticked
Kissing my neck and
Her fingers in my jeans.

Pray, pray! As I cum to
Murmured Espanol:

Oooh Baby!
Nada mi faltará

Mi COPA ESTÁ REBOSANDO

Soo-Zee I yell

Y la senorita dice como así:

Mi nombre es
Maria Lara Estobál

I have to sit down now
Grabbing a cooled bottle of Chilean
Sauvignon.

And the wet brown of your eyes says:
mi coño está muy mojado

(H)ey man!?

Amen!

IV. X4 or pomp in the Pampa

They need a poet out on their limb …

I sit in Northern Argentine Desert

Don’t get me wrong: my purse is filled with Sue’s stolen money

So I sit there and watch a family of beige-colored foxes
Do what foxes do, if you leave them alone.

And I think: m’écrie
A cleaning up of memories is due.

I stay at Ricardo’s hacienda
“You can stay”, he said,” for’s long’s you wan…”

So let me update you:
Mi chica Suzie is dead:
How comes? Comes like this:
In Peru of all places
She overdosed the smack.
La Bella e finita!

How I cried!
Still cry

No no no no no no no!

“Come” said,” to my place”,
Elisá in suburbial B. Airés

“I’m in grief”, I tell her on the phone,
“Nada mi gusta right now.”

“Ey ey”, she hurts my ear, “you come, yes?!”

She is an excellent poetess, just ugly like hell,
Or maybe that is why she is so marvelous with words.
I’d married her if she wasn’t that hairy.
But maybe I will…
Un vaca,big as a
Mountain of flesh,
Lets its .. tongue,
Lets the monster of her tongue
Hang out.
Maybe a message to me?
A Message to me:
Her incredibly huge brown eyes
talk to the behind of what I hide,
talk to the behind of my well-developed frontal lobes,
making my bridge hum.
As Ricardo is not a rancher
I suppose, you, my welcome stranger,
May be an encephalologist.

See how easy it is to make a learned person smile.

So you are and you are eagerly eying my bottle of schnaps as well.

Okay then…

ну что ж, as we Russians say instead:

So we drink
And his name is Tom
Not Igor or Alexey or Leo
As in toll’s toy
“Серёжа, “he says:
“let’s – as night approaches – set up
два, two issues worthy of dispute.
Are you with me?”
“So much and so long,” I respond.
“отлично, Serge: So it is agreed we
First let the grey of our we-s, let our brains
fool around with Davy Deutsch’s multiverse concept
as presented by him in CA in ..?
“in” I say, “let’s say: the latter 90ies…”

“Can”, I mumble, “we have Gaye up for a light side-issue?”

“Uhm”, the Tom man replies, “Russian Soul boils down to,
- to keep this serious – boils down to Евтушенко
and … Булат”
- “Окуджава?” (me)

“Yes.” Tom’s awake now.
What a lil Schnaps can do!
Well, Russian minds
Operate best on purified alcohol,
And me, German-Polish maverick, too.

“So we go for the shoot-outs now?
And have not even yet decided about topic two?”

Tom’s switches to Russian: “Right. Theodicy?”
I: “”Post-Leibnizian? You wanna bring up modern orthodox theologians?”
Which makes him laugh: Ok, стихи?
” боже мой!” I sigh, “really, Tom ?

Poetry?” -
“да, приятель, Тургенев?” -
“Now we re talking.”

He mixes our booze with Argentine buffaloes’ milk

Красноярск! I watch the sun eager to leave us.
I pronounce красно like грозный.
“Milch der Frühe,” You drink more.
“Suicidal poets?” me mumbles, rollin’ a cig.
“Not really, uh: … Multiverse now, ok?”
On to Deutsch.

I laugh: “I mean .. I understand him so well…
craving a fucking solution here
but…
Well, I am wondering if you could bring a pro argument?

A non-metaphysical one”, I add.

“You’ve only read his paper, right?” I ask him.
“He’s more convincing when he
lectures”

Tom leans forward. “We both know that we can’t really
Discuss the multiverse issue. It is simply too metaphysical.”

So Tom’s brain goes somewhere else:
“Serge, my brother”, he says, “ talking space we have to get micro”

I nod of course.
Which is funny because 5 (in words: FIVE) Argentinian vacas
have just joined us and all of those 5 cows bow down their
monstrous heads to Tom’s remark.


Boulevard Blue

I.
He sipped cheap coffee , inhaled tobacco, glanced
down and along a dusty boulevard
brimming from life impossible,
love nonsensical, tears sparkling
silvery and if licked off, of easy salt,
she was precious as cats’ moans and worth a
yesterday’s lover’s sigh; So he kissed burnt lips
like dead flamingoes , leaving a crush of sand
on his tongue. “May I leave you
a dime and a rose still bleeding her color
of love?”, he mutters, while strol-
ling on down. …

II.

There’s a bit of rosy blood
in the first morning hour of the boulevard,
dashed with pencils white and blue,
but the colors are rehearsing still.
Out alone here he opens his eyes
to an unkind, hard world at first.
On the look-out for the wounded and the poor,
birds and babes are hungry for weak and loosely flesh,
nagging and yelling and biting ears.

His head is full of ache still, like it
would want to fight him, which is absurd
of course, but there’s a cure ; he has a
cruiskeen by his side, a booze-filled flask,
sparing him a sun rising sober.

She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue,
in her own mad mind she’s in love with you, with you.*

To be authentic: it hurts!

————
*Strange Brew

III. (sunny)**

Sit now, unrelaxed though,
upright in front of a world murky.
At times like these I think
Pat Martino or similarly eloquent
Jazz guitar, to brush away
what infests malevolently
the seat of my happiness, my heart,
you know: ridding unhappy thoughts like these.

Swing two doves like Egyptian princesses,
circling each other around and again,
coo-coo-kissing life, blowing my mind off
to wander in and up and out and away far, far.
Farther! Ship of troubled clouds:
Swing my brain away! Sway. Let us dance once
for all!
But of course all gets better some
time.
Like soon later.

………..
** built upon I confess an extreme interpretation of the song: Sunny ,-)

IV.
Mom’s a mess: I’m gonna make it without her
mostly. I’m singing mothers all day these days.
Mothers-Of you know … eMs of destruction, war, blood, hate ,
Hope, milk of consolation, peace and prayer and pain …

All there is, but not from your tits again, not again!
Instead let us paint a warmer, pastel fantasy:
Let me let you take me there , dream bluez.
Rhyme with wine, just feeling fairly fine.
Bourbonize me , hun, for fun. So I drink.
Squinting my eyes, saving vision. Triple shot of that stuff.
Still realize too much shit going on. As I knew.
So phallify, I mean: get it up, man if you still can.
Like life is boring but you must not say so, says mom,
You lack inner resources, says Berryman. God! Reasons for
Huff enough now? Cheers then and therefore!
Says me. And at three amen my barman sends me home.

As if, need more of it? Read Vaihinger then, dammit.
As if I as perfect alcoholic would rely on anyone else than myself!
Like lacking resources! Like as if I would! Like his Philosophie des Als ob
but have booze home. Fictitious beverage. Leveraging lose brains maybe.
At least I still cackle. Canticles. Of despair. Mommyfied.
Momma, I lack your female resources.

As long as the poison flows from bourbon nipples.
Mom
I
Thirst.

———–

inspired by:

- George Thorogood’s version of One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
- Music by The Mothers of Invention, George Clinton, Red Hot Blues Sisters
- Berryman: Dream Songs
- German philosopher Hans Vaihinger (Philosophie des Als Ob)
- booze, mothers

V. Background singing

[ “ if you get too cold / I’ll tax the heat. /If you take a walk – and this is often / I’ ll tax your feet”
Junior Parker: Taxman]

Back on the street, he ambulates,
circling a park , little park in shades to the
right hand side, humming Al Green self-soothingly
to himself, thinks again, he’s best alone,
best alone again. He’s
all smiles into the new day,
listening to background voices,
singing final harmonies,
to harmonize his soul with death.

VI.
Sitting in a bar down the boulevard he’s reminiscing good things to get the day going, possibly good.

[I don’t know if there is a way to reverse sarcasm into metaphors of deep loving, but I wanna try it out.
I met a gin soaked ball-room queen in Memphis …* ]

Rock’n Roll on your hair

Thank God it’s morning again, night been too long, baby,
because nights make me suicidal
and we rather not like that, do we?

But yesterday you sent me a pic that blew my mind away
with sun in your hair and wind fooling around with it.
I love those little strains of red-blonde hair kissing the air,
a celebration of life, and if life’s so sexy, I want to live some more.

So I met my queen of love in Miami,
she had to heave me right across the lovely shoulders [*]
of her mind to save me from the dark thoughts of my night.

Let me blow my thank-you’s in your hair.
You saved me from ultimate despair.

————
*Rolling Stones: “Honky Tonk Woman”


Detox


I LEAVING

Today is another drunken morning, but
the night before yesterday I had
reduced my dosage to 25 %:
I slept for one hour and felt mildly euphoric.

Shower but do not shave: but put on
expensive after shave and a freshly
washed t-shirt plus jeans,
brew coffee and take my meds.

You can tell, I am serious about
turning my life around today.
I take a mini-sip of left-over rum,
fasten my belt and leave the house.

I am first attacked by cold sweat
after my 10 minutes walk to the drugstore,
where I buy tiny bottles of alcohol.
I feel shitty mounting the subway.

I have meticulously calculated the measure
of time left between getting out of
the sub and entering the clinic: 30 minutes.
In the clinic’s park I have to wipe the sweat
out of my face again and enjoy the icy wind,
feel paranoid, smoke and carefully
suck the drug from the can. I get nervous.

I need another smoke and a tree to hold on
to get in control of my wounded stomach:
No time to puke. Someone left a bag on
one of the benches. I notice but ignore.
With guilt and shame and a frozen face
I walk on. AND GO IN

II ENTERING

I know, the clinic was a house outside the main tract,
about a 10 minutes’ walk away, so I slander
through the major building rather relaxedly still.
The whole hospital is on strike but I think:
for us, addicts in constant emergency the docs
will make an exception: And they would have!

Still am comfortably in time when I stand
in front of the detox clinic. Roll and light
a pure-tobacco cig. A guy steps outside
the building, smokes too nervously, mutters
whatever we mutter when we confront the truth once more:
self-victimization, self-humiliation and the diff:

It is a constant struggle – believe me –
between giving up in isolation and begging
for help. “You don’t make it but you would like to?
What’s holding you back? A long-gone father, you say?
A little rape back ages? Come on! Is it fiction or fact?

And others understand and others cry with you
And you leave them all behind to
get raped by the drug again.
I cannot prove anything but my suffering.

III INSIDE

I ascend to the first floor sharing the
elevator with Mr. Nervous Alcoholic,
the mutter-man. Out of shame we ignore
each other as if we did not know.

As soon as we get out he disappears.
I follow the corridor, the sweating starts again.
There is a small row of seats, 8 to be exact
just in front of the glass cube behind which
the nurses work. I curse myself for not
having drunk more. The sweating is annoying.
Vis à vis my chair sits a young black-haired woman.
From time to time she lifts her pretty face
and sinks her brown morphine-veiled eyes
into mine. A nurse approaches me. There is,
she shrugs, no consultation today, we’re on strike.
She takes a painful closer look at me: Cold sweat!
Withdrawal! – I say, I don’t know. Wait, I’ll see
to get you a doc. The brown-eyed girl smiles at me
and I know I’ll see her again.
I try to ignore her by reading the pamphlets
strewn across the chairs: We’re on strike but
for detoxing call this clinic or that. I know all
of the 5 clinics mentioned. In case of emergency call.
A guy approaches, his body a sigh of contempt,
the only thing I might like about him would be
his addiction. After some rambling he leaves.
I still sweat and want to get out. I’ve been
sitting here for 20 minutes. …


Angry Lamb

Flight from Munich to Cincinnati was dreadful.
Want this Arabian airlines, what was their name again?
Will find out. Now let’s get outta here quick.
E…, something starting with E, uhm?
Climb down the stairways in my new lambskin boots.
It’s May but ice rain greets the passengers. Dig nature’s irony.
Kentucky of all places! I know I’m mad.
Booked hotel room (2 stars) in Louisville.
I’m following my intuition. 2 stars: might serve fresh seafood here.
Cab driver’s a Cherokee. Does he know the alphabet?
Tell him: language beautiful like all the Iroquoian tongues.
Fascinated by the 5 nations ideology, too. We drive
2 hours. Ice drizzle. Hotel room roach-free. Need to sleep.
Too late for breakfast. At noon I have a problem.
My lost lover’s anger has morphed into a
Clump of weakness. In the lounge I order homegrown Bourbon.
Watch a Fox channel 30-somewhat. After the weather report
I have to get outside for smokes. Back I lean over to ask the
Bar tender, a Diné from Alaska appropriately named Paul.
“Paul, if you were free…” He chuckles. “No, no, seriously:
Where dya go?” – “Guess … Chicago.”
“You can smoke in your room, yaknow?”
Tell him to book me a flight. Not gonna see her.
Roam the Blues town instead. Am maybe not acting
Wisely but feel : the anger is gone.
Might turn into a ram if need arose.
“Hey Paul!” I shout, “or maybe: a train?”
———————————————–
Part II (across a bridge)

Am ready to leave. I am not.
Should at least call her once
For a maybe rendezvous,
Belated dalliance. Hugs to make up for the loss?
Flight canceled. Tornado warning.
Instable season. Should have known better.
Marissa, Czech ancestry, serves me breakfast.
I know what she thinks as she puts down the bottle.
I feel guilty. Guilt costs 5 bucks. Her tip, my price.
After she left and right before I drown a glass
I reflect: She still thinks I’m shit. Should stop wasting money that way.
Promise to myself, while gulping down the golden brown
Liquid, to only hand out bucks for open-faced smiles.
Decide also to go from Chicago to Minneapolis. My new
Poetic mission. Need to cross the bridge Berryman didn’t.
—————————————————————
Part III (keeping what flows)

Call her in the end: “Not true!” – “Yes, meet me at the … hotel, room number 32”
When she is here I want my mind to photograph her brown eyes
To keep. We get naked, order oysters. She gets drunk, too.
“Whatcha tell mom and the kids and … Richard?” – I’m,
I confess, not really interested. We exhaust each other. Desperately.
What a gift to watch her walk naked through the room!
‘Keep this forever; it won’t come back.’ I think. “Look,” she says:
“ bought that for you.” It’s a hardcover, 1957 first edition of Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, her fav.
Of course I cry. “You know,” I tell her, while we watch a porn on pay tv,
“I was really dreaming us into that house you’d once been living in.”
You smile but you don’t turn your head. “Just leave,” I say, “I’ll take a shower.”
Next morning I fly to Chicago hungover by pain, not booze.
—————————————————————————
Part IV (in coherence)

I board the plane and fall asleep. Gonna be a long night
Because I haven’t booked a hotel room. I dream august.
Her house with me, kids, cats. The fish pond outside.
We need no license here. Something greater than you, me, sex
And the sun hidden behind a blue fat cloud is out there,
Is in here, inside my dreaming. SA—TO—RI!
“Sir?” – we land. “Miss?” –“Yes?”
“Sweetie,” she grins, “you need to be taken care of.”
Gosh, I’m not Peter O’Toole; I just need MOM, any.

She’s preparing some kind of meaningless breakfast
While I peruse her CD collection. She is sweet and nice.
Seems, we had sex and she no complaints. “The Sears Towers?”
I know that of course but I play the game. She saved me one hundred bucks.
She smells good but her nose annoys me. I think her nose is a geo-
Metrical figure not yet described by Plato. An N-eder of sorts.
I have not the slightest reason to complain, cleverly avoiding mirrors. “Serge!” – “Yes? Hannah?”
“I’ll leave you the keys. Will be back this weekend.”
I’m so grateful.” Do you by chance have a city map?”

“Ya, sweetie, over there, gotta go!” And after she left
Her Persian cat snuggles up to me. I relax, sipping Henessy,
Will leave a 20 $ note on leaving. I cannot make love to geometrically imbalancedly
Nosed women too often.
———————————————————
Part V ( Almeida)

Once I thought I was deep; Now, gazing at Chicago’s silhouette
I find out about me: shallow, greedy, multiphobic. Old, losing my sex,
My identity, a liar, opportunist, mene tekel upharsim.
Cozy here, love the carpet: when drunk you can
Fall down on it and sleep. Glad I got no gun.
Cats seem wiser. Almeida, Hannah’s, stalks around the app,
Purring preorgasmic, tail curled like a walking-stick.
I can read her mind: the neighbor, who feeds her,
Will be here soon. I leave. Goodbye Hannah,
Wished I recalled what it felt like to commune with your body.
Down and outside it’s not windy at all. I light a cig, read the Tribune’s headline
Walk a while alone, cautiously. I don’t want to fall down again.


Post-detoxified


R.E. Lapsus‘ Notes

[Disaster Versed]

Neither the icicles I let plump
into the glass of rum 54
nor the coke, I drowned the beast
with,
helped to
ameliorate the taste of the brew.
The rum, it tasted better pure.

I loved the pain on the gums.
Deeply immersed in the would-be
of it all, that is:
A laughter-brimming life.

[Restrained]

Helmut, the male nurse with
that subtle and malicious grin
and body movements like a
tipsy ballerina
releases me from my nightmare bed.
There is something like outdoors
wisdom in the gestures of his mind.

[Consolation in green]

So I lapse on…
On Lorazepam, into the green
hitting my eye as I enter the
balcony.
You, they say, were brought by the cops
and you smelled like resistance,
mutters polyphonically the Choir
Of Hebrew Slaves assembled
‘round the ashtrays on said balcony.

A majestic linden tree has spread
its branches for a greeting hug
and an abundance of dark green leaves
is consoling me.

[Blues]

It would take a truck-load of
titillation and stirring adventures
over tea to free me from
that pleasing self-condemnation…
would … truck … con!

[Later in my]

El_el- L_ Life: this is what happened.
It all started again with me breathing, simple,
and then being cornered by three lunatics
before breakfast.
Me with better no head on
but a hole to be fed with
pain killers (need the brand?)
So we did not
(as you might have suspected)
discuss the issue of the blue
of the sky first
but instead
Emily, the once beautiful anorexic
pressed her fingers into my neck
and that makes me

Closing my ears to the mutterances
I watch birds dancing loops in the warmed-up
air enticed by the smell of the green Linden leaves

and I keep on concentrating on not listening
at all
which does me good,
(which would have served me better)

I then hurt

Falling down in
a purple cloud of pain.

[whirled world]

It then – excuse my heavy tongue – happens
unbeknownst to the center of the self of me
that
I talk. Gripped by
a sudden panic that I might have been cut down by a stroke
ebbs down
when
I detect the usual whirls
of illogical life over a smoke
we heal by gulps of distilled water
running down inside
the core of our being:
drops like seconds drop
drop

[Take up the bread of life]

Me is sighing and chunks of memory
bitten off by the drug

I’m a slow syncope waltzing
back into life’s left-overs:
still a magnitude, PLEROMA

the fullness of the essence
spreading out
like holyfied fungus
mush rooms the house of my brain.

Befallen is the bread of
sanity you feed my corpse with
and smudged the chalked walls
of the ship of the church
the never-landing

[Schmerz]

And there was light on
The 3rd day: embalmed by
hopeless dark.

Lit a match to make her burn
as
playful wind demons
braid the black strands of her hair.

With her cigarette lit she
leans over closely

She
is wet kissing
against
the gloomy-clouded background
of my now.

She is like victory in a game
of painful chess
in the endlessness
of her absence.

[She'ol]

Once – as done in the mind by Huxley-
you’ve crossed the loftily-veiled
threshold
of perception

there is this
shady grin of welcome,
hiddenly vitriolic
and
sweet.

Ripped off a heart,
lessened and minus
the symbiotic pathos
you venture into
the ancient forlornness
of the cave-like place:
created by diabolos, (Greek: the whirler)
upsidedownist,
your fundamentals
torn apart.

And your eyes being screamed at
by the impossibly meaningless sufferance
of what there is to be:

Like that one woman, faceless, kneeling
awaiting beheading
on the brown green of the ground
of the soccer stadium in Kabul
and it was done
inshallah
will be done again
authorized by
faith
bebopping
the warmhearted
logic
of us,
the cool.

[Böschungsbrand _ Burn O’ The Brae (Scots for talus)]

Burns of whom I loaned the moudiwort,
Scots bro, chasing phrases in the highs
O’ Gaelge and gluing them together
in the lows of booze,
Burns, also, said
It is the moon, I ken her horn,
That’s blinkin’ in the lift sae hie;
She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,
But, by my sooth, she’ll wait a wee!
[Willie Brew’d A Peck O’Maut]

No more burning bushes to my brain!
And her moonship’s guidance always preferred
over an unknown god’s petty
ill-phrased Hebrew mutterings.
As, as you ask me, for the drinks,
in the plain light of the day I recommend
a quick drowning in the uisge barrel,
to readjust just your shattered lines of thought
and readjust your attitudes towards us dudes, too.

‘nuff-s

[Maybe Milton]

Or from a voice beneath of
“where the shadow both ways falls”

and:
“nor slept the winds
Within thir stony caves, but rush’d abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vext Wilderness, whose tallest Pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest Oaks
Bow’d thir Stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer …”
[Paradise Regain’d, book 1 and 4 respectively]
I take my breathing and last solace.

[An Urge]

If you like me
Wake up to
Your Life

Is the Crown
Of A Tree
We hide under

To Puke at
Too

And if Both
Of US
Are Nothin’ but
Ill-developed Machinery,

After Killing the Engineer

Would – If you find the time –
You Consider The Option

Of Offering your
Swollenness
To my Probing

To coite our Brains Out
For a NEW Beginning
Again!

[Rock and Roll]

And every time you make the scene you find the joint is jammed
(C. Berry, Oh Carol)

Feels like something in the morning
as the dark’s cummin’ up again, the fucker.
Think that Keith would agree that Carol
is Chuck’s major contribution to R and R and not Johnny B. Good ,
see above quote

Back to marginal(ized) lives:

So I awake in a clinic bed, the linen all tossed
around my formidable body.
I decide to leave the annoyingly green mattress
for a little pee walk and then walk along the
corridors of lesser enlightenment
to meet.

people

They’re smoking!
2 hot women suff’rin’
leanin’ ova their chairs
ovulating pain screams and
cries for help
and the strong boys
are all but willing to help ’ em out.

Disneedify them!

Amid those pleasant company I
Took my seat to smoke and
join the chatting.

A guy looking so much alike James Dean
my hurtin brain’s getting into trouble again,
directs the sweetness of his voice to me:

“Weren’t you restrained just a sec ago?”

I’m chuckling, not at him, he’s scared.
But Im not gay so I let my reddened eyes
wander over further…

There is a junk bride, married to the smack.
We fight with words a little, I’m not
attracted. And then there is

a blonde longlegged cat
on tabs,
who needs my lighter
once or twice

and I could imagine to fall
in love but
not this time.
She will again not make it
this time but
prefer to run away again
just like always.

In my dreaming
i’m ridden into sweat by the H orse
and fucked oh so good.

But waking up to Darjeeling tea
plus cream, I am forced to
face the monsters of reality.

I attempt to hide by painting
But just end up reviving
Reality multicolored.

In my muscular body I’m such a whiner:
Just touch me and I fall,
But the pretty female psychologist
keeps telling me to
strut my non-existing muscular emotions
and hide the bulging traumata.

[Meeow]
Her body had stiffened since she lied dead
My guess was: 3 hours.
I was relieved and the morphine forbade me to cry.
Her light pink tongue was hanging out
Her pupils huge and black and full of
The knowledge of death, the final question answered:
Que sera?
Her body was so light:
No more than 2 handfuls
Of dead leaves crumpled
Between my fingers.

I loved her for her trusting me.
I miss my little black and white.
Good bye forever, Sheila!
Fare so well

Memories mess with me
Drown what is dead, what has died
Bury the gone
Leave me cleaned
Of pain.

[I’m putting it simple now]

All of us, all of us wear
Pork pie hats.
Let me chase away the
Clown in my eye first.
We can, we need to talk
Now.

The dark-as-can-be trumpet’s the third solo
and such sweet torture
to my heart’s ear …

while incessantly the beloved ugly man
keeps telling stories by fingering
his giant wooden bass
in love.

[Oh Charles!]

I have been aware and a worry when
News of his death in NYC hit us…

And Charles, now that you’re dead too, let me
Invade the spider web of Blues you span
To make Lester sleep more safe and
Also to comfort and console his
Brothers and mothers and sisters

You my Mingus have never been that
Delicately sweet again on the bear-like bass

Now I stand here open-mouthed:
A trouble en face that trouble spelled World
Spelled life, life spilt like I spill the booze
Of my, the honey of my doubts
Carved into the skin of that
Ancient tree of poetry

[Thank you Brian]

I leaned back on the Modigliani-shaped chair
in the coffee shop before I tried out
another explanation:
“Imagine, I said,” there is no God but instead
a kind of breeze, or a wave
and that the surf’s up
and that I feel it when it’s there
and that I jump now …
risking everything…”

So he got that.
Wave vs “God”

[Fairies]

We don’t drink Celan’s dark milk of dawn
After getting up, no. We feast on life
So utterly strange to us
It feels like party, and kinky
And kinky of course is always good for us
So we feast into the day.
Into today: I raise the cup
of milk coffee to my throbbing lips.

All of this is so smoothly to take
I almost feel like I entered wonderland
And now that I am not even chained anymore
My mind gets a rest.

There is medication to take and supervision
There is a drowse to spare me worse
There is black lightning hurting my head
While I talk to the blonde girl
And I think I’m drooling.
She must not see, but her eyes
are not on me as she talks to me
and I break down.

Lisa’s shadow is all over my cushion
And the smell of the sweat of her armpits
And her hand caresses my hair. I dream

Her hand is holding mine while she is counting.
She feeds me pills. I wished I could lick the back of her hand
I want to close my eyes but I just have to save the
View of her skin and hair and lips so close.
To remember when memory hurtfully fails me.

And Lisa , the nurse, is a whisper in the corner of my sleepy eye.

I panic when I cannot open my eyes.
Tender voices inform me:
They fed me too much Lorazepam.
I grunt and blackness.

I
fall

On the sixth day I can move and read and eat and talk again
And watch. And sleep.

The cop said, there is no way we let you die here.

I wished they had

[Exit all]

Docs – I learn – have been on strike,
Exit docs;
And now for the band.
Band in my head I mean …
Exits band.
Lisa: I mount her, lick the wetness
From her open lips and thrust
…
And Lisa: exits

Exit laughter, madmen, making mad noise,
Head shaking, handing out cig paper
Money and joking.

Exit new friends, doubts, pain,
Exit heart burn, and headaches and
Inappropriate erections.

Exit what I did not tell you and
Exit Life

And all this drama is because of
losing you
and losing myself in you.


Barbara


I. Remembering Barbara Lost


He got lucky earlier tonight
when serendipity met chutzpa in a
bad friend’s apartment, he left with
pockets stuffed with grass.

Everyone hunted him down for handfuls.
He had a private party with sensuous Barbara,
who healed him with gymnastic expertise
in a glass-walled hotel suite at a startling height.

He sadly watched her do her fix
nude and desirably voluptuous,
obscenely present in her flesh,
obscenely absent in her mind.
After a pee and a cigarette,
she relaxed and opened up to him, opaque.

Hungry and horny again,
he later tried to seduce her mind.
They were floating together in overlapping spheres
and awoke to different mornings in the same, surreal light.

II. Pendant la nuit

It’s night and from a distance
World’s turbulences appear asleep.
Our perturbed brains seek rest, too,
Embalmed in highly censored memories
Our bodies in that dim-lit living-room
Are mollified by gratuitous doses of
Pentothal. As I can move still, I ask you:
“ Babsi, wouldya mind some
Bruckner?” You grunt, I nod and slam
The CD into the slit, because I
Need his Fourth to get the most out of my high
And swiftly click through to the Fourth movement,
Bewegt,doch nicht zu schnell. And close my eyes.
Leave me alone, bitch! But a slow-motion look
Over to your deluxe chair tells me that the anesthetic
Does its proper job on you. Or Bruckner did. Anyway
Before I float away, let me state the guy‘d be good therapy
For ADDed America because he feeds your flickering ears with
New themes every five seconds, keeps you busy. And only then I notice
I haven’t shot the damn stuff in my vein yet. All the better, I think.
I pour myself some greenish Escorial and smoke and revise
My choice of music for the night: Scriabin Poème de l’extase.
Then I sink down with the sodium thiopental gripping my mind.
It drowns me in Scriabin’s exploding waves of brass and I suffocate.
Suddenly tiny islands of light appear and reach out for me smiling.
On small chuckling sailboats of flutes, clarinets and strings patches
Of myself sail forth on unsteady waters communicating with a
Merciless astronomer, call me: time, Dumbshits.
Finally our saviors, the fires, emerge and
I awake because you kiss me out of this nightmare.
You hand me a glass of buttermilk and a reefer
And I grin at you: “Must we flee?
You explain: “We’re just keepin’ the house good, but tonight
Maybe, we slow it down a bit and enjoy
The view from the Alpes maritimes.” -
“And read some Mistral and smoke herbs and make love?”


III. Naschmarkt Passion

We are lurking around the Naschmarkt
In Vienna, greedy for something special to nibble.
I need your entertainment to numb the pain
Of candy craving, so we share anecdotes
Of the most hilarious punters we’ve met.
You feed me a ciggie, we suckle on a can of cheap beer
While I give you the tatterdemalion’s tale,
Who handed me over his belt before he knelt down
On the floor of one of the filthiest public bathrooms
I’d ever smelt, and yelled at me to hit him harder,
Amidst a terrified group of innocent travelers,
Which made the reeking sap ascend the steeple of the vein*.
You chuckle with disgust, and then bewilder me with your
Haunting story of a harmless foot fetishist named Herb
I even happen to know from self- help groups,
A arms Hascherl, as we say, a poor lil loser.
You so made sure, you tell me, he got a beating
After he came between your high-heels,
Because he scared the crap out of you:
“If he does not hunger for the honey
Dripping from between my legs, am I not
Almost obliged to fear the worst?”
I nod, feigning: a pervert, for sure.
And while I puke, the candy-man shows up
And we disappear into the Vietnamese clothing shop
And chase the dragon hidden by colorful silk scarves.
I don’t have to love you as long as I still need you.

——————–
* S. Plath: April Aubade


IV. After Club Reminiscing

If I wore dreadlocks, I would be in for ya know…
A dirty finger dance. But Babsi does! Shit!
Out in the Caribbean and moneyless.
Of course we’re not really in the Caribbean.
It’s just good old yellow-fogged Berlin. Hail Jamaica!

I have no clue why my white brethren are that lame.
Ignacio invites Babsi and me to his place. It is
A noble residence in the Kantstrasse.
It is an apartment on the second floor. Altbau.
I’m confused, jealous. “Ig?” – he turns around
I need to look into his eyes. “I know what you want, Serge:
Yeah, I have it all up there!” He thinks, I’m not able to love
A woman. Fucked be his smack! “Babsi, you won’t?!” I whisper.

I’m back on the streets, riding muscular horses, bought
Blue Sunglasses. While I’m watching a Japanese family
Hushing by ( to Schloss Charlottenburg?), a dread-locked
Flashback hits me. I calculate my losses:
“Do we ever really lose what we love?” I ask
The human catastrophe sitting next to me.


Themes over Hiatt


1. Not close

where am I
when I open my tired eyes,
at about 5
to a young Ukrainian morning,
to a young morning in the east

over lead-gray fields
yellow mist hushes
and
in a far distance rise
black clouds and steeples.

I close my eyes again
and I try to ignore what is uncomfortable:

too many losses too soon,
my pastures are emptied out
but for sterile greens,

Leeves, i bite leaves for
what else can I do then,
I let my mind ride a black
stallion of hope out into
lighter darknesses than I envision.

Let, sweet, me not quote here

de profundis,

I breathe still so
what? so what?

In this morning I liked to live like
man lives in summers
sweat-drunk,
surrounded by
bee-rich blossoms
of colors full.

Breathing out poisoned sugar
gathered in nights of
unwanted gifts of,
of
you.

2. Unspelled

to be free now
makes rich,

Richer than a bee:
than mancanbees
guiltlessly
crawling out of shadows
drowning me in fear.

It feels good but so
unusual
and like new
I concentrate
on deep, deeper
deepest pain:
who allowed you to hurt me?

Was it mom or
another demon like her?

Get out of the shadows,
the murky darks,

take my hand monster
and before you talk smile
dare
like me

3. Something's coming up

after night mares

fresh and rosy and smelling
like new spring,
fresh like new light
on abused dawns,
like fainting new life.


We old know all
how to rekiddify us scary,
jumpandshout again for
now

Out of crowd of mouths
joy by force of desire

so she left me or i her we us.
Roll tears down.

summin deep is what i am
round and big with now
a ball

I wanna , must go
down South now:

close up souls
lemme pray sweetlings
Allow for a bit uv
outofmindjoy
blues:

I hurt kingly.

If I open
will you come helpin me up?
Help me help help me!

Oh beautiful bird of baptism blue:
saviours of my failings, come!
Come!

I bow
And in the afterthis morning:
After thisses and thats,
painbehindnesses

this man growing wild on words
instead of a cushion of sleep
sings to himself sorrowless life

sings
still

4. What can we sing in the end?
(for Mel)

For my, myest,
in my deepest
or what in my self pierces me most
is due to raise
a voice soothin':

sing sweetest to me,

paint me a frame
to live safe.
my tongue is bitten of
oh from all the fun
and still love bites
over perfumes of fresh
desire, evernew
you then have to
dance to new tunes.

Now I am a ball
with feet ajumpin' still
and my legs in the air.
Wanna jump with me?

5. For (you the living,) Parker

I, like no one, can't foresee future,
any oddities aside,
I am glad to have met you,
a brilliant man already
and who and how big
will you get who can tell.

And do we care?

Your heart must grow
bigger than any planets up
in our mutual skies

look up friend
and be good

6. Grandish finish

Batten down the hatches

is it says:
prepare for bad times
or
why if in love's frenzy
you'd step so far?
Your secret and I leave it with you.
So instead: a dance.

Me and my last fellow hittin the street,
so we sit there and him is a jealous of me boots

Someone, a nice fullah
gifted us smokes.
Dig!

You know , and all the things you do not know..
But my boots are of dark leather
and slippery on posher grounds.
I can trample down the world if
but
I dont want to but rather
smile you down.

Hobolore:
my friend and I

ok, the night is there
and clouds cluster warmth
for us
so because we have
no needs but time,
i wanna please you and myself
before we go.

HOBO GOSPEL

Is that my friend your last bottle?

(and this is how the free ones dance )

been walking around in
blue cloth jackets and ties of gold
know all of this petty crap inward out

had good smelling women
on every fucking finger of my hands

And cadillac-a-lights, the epitome
of suck asses:
a big Kuh to impress the world,

So my man,
Tom or Joe or Jim or whateva ya name is,
cheerio

Man, he remarked, as i handed over the bottle,
you sure got a mean tongue.

He needed a fat drink
so I held my tongue mean.
Gods! He sure was thursday.

It is a couple of hours before a
new dawn,
and we're a-booze-a-.lit,
and moon not a sphere.

So as yousee: slighterly drunk.

But wild decent folks
parkin under stars.

I have I say as of late
this heart-throb.

My doc, whatcha know?
My stinking felloow bends over
and after listening closely
to my heart: you have a shunt.
Don't talk dirty, I respond,
right my man, be funny
and he has
through all nights open eyes
and anyone else
would have to pay big money.
for a heart like this..


It seems, I say,
i think,
my shoes break.

It is maybe 2 or so,
he says.
And he shakes his ugly head.
Let's gonna care tomorrow
again.
So yeah, he falls asleep with me
left half empty bottled,
I gladly mutter:
I mean no holes
still and so far.
And bla


The hatches my friend,remain unbattened.


Iced Beers

I. Iced beers and warming laughter cognac-dipped

In the end

even I made it

out: to steer my I-boat

thru

the frosty blows of air

promising-threatening

us over here

with a harsh and extra-chilly

cold so

heavy-weight that

only ice bears

can dance to it.

So I had one two three

ice beers with the

medium-sized,

measured by degrees of

danger to the public

being me,

guys

To cut it short I

could relax.

I re-talked what

depressed me most

and they even listened.

That’s rare, because

if you join them for

a happy blue hour

time, male-ish you, you

don’t bring your family

with you.

Makes perfect sense btw

bc you do not step into the open

for no cause: you

meet your guys exactly because

you just RAN away from homesweethome

but now HERs castle. See

my point?

Wai-wait, dont touch me yet,

I hardly know you and

you not me, we are not

yet friends.

But some magic made it that

from a dark blue sky of

ice, some flakes of

heart-warmers

rained down on us.

(to be continued)


II. blue feather fell down to die


So out in the cold we

stood around a bar

room bistro table

enjoying our lagers

when the brother of

the tobacco shop keeper

all of sudden pulled

out of his jacket a

suppressor and I said:

Lemme see what you got there

and so he did and I thought

weighing the piece of

metal in my hand, quite

heavy. ‘d never had thought.

I said I thought they were light.

K.then I proved myself wrong

and later there

was a birthday party going on

and because there was no

one to be shot that night

I started to relax with

the pills in my pocket I need.

You see, that is how

we make it down here from day to day.

After all those turbulences

of my heart and my brain

and several other hearts

and maybe brains too, I

fought my way back to my only her.

It is true that I made love to

the fashionista and that I told you

that I did not, so

ok I lied , so what? I am back now.

I needed the touch. So blame it

on me.

The timbre of your voice

colored so sad

is what breaks me finally eternally

or wait, what was the .. to quote it cor

rectly (not erectly,-) )

theme of the love song

we can’t hear anymore…

and as we move on yes

my main influence is

Hubert Selby

and I let his somber voice

dance and cakewalk and tipsily

sway over Buddy The Guy’s

take on sweet home

slaughterhoused Chicago.

And now beat the shit out of the

meat I once was but

don’t die unaware of this:

feels like I am gonna
let my fingers sing
and hum and moan and yell
my last of the last boogie
woogie blues swampy,
Lou i see Anna
tunes to tune out of all this

seems I m a
am simply not made for this,
god is a fucked up designer
If I know one thing I know this:

So home-school your heart
with the poisoned sneaky whisperin honey dripping
bull shit
from
xtian liars smearing their
how-to-be-best-to be good
around your – and all over too ,-)
your wantoning
pretty lips:

And then
die in vain to prove
an unproveable theodizee,
all you

you and me ever needed

to deterioriate

into the finest of slumbers

and now I am drowning lightly as a

feather (which is not easy and a-

gainst your best intuition

a rather tricky fucking pretty hard

thing to do)

Basta and Amen

and arriverderla

wherever that might be. ,-)

a blue feather fell

down to die but,

but not yet ,-)


III. iced were the beers and my heart too


( listenin or rather swoonin over Laura Fedele’s

venti-nove dollari e una borsetta di cocodrillo, la sua ommagio, her homage to Waits)

(Still dunno how but) I

made it out and speed-stumbled

over to

the pharmacy

about a 5 minutes horseride

away from my misery

just that there was no horse to mount and ride

candies are principally lost on

horsies not there. Did you not know?

polizia e arrivata tarde*

the cops late due to

per colpa di un café*

Due to a cup of coffee.

(not an espresso of course)

So there parked a police car

right in front of where I had to

go.

or stumble, whatever. I knew

i had to make just another joke

for the farmacistas

in order to get my nocturnal fix.

So I, in a rush. came

up with a silly joke but it

did its job. Walked out

in a pre-orgasmic state of

mine .

Went then over to the groc’ries

to get what else I needed

to round up la mia notte,

this my

night of si

assoluttamente

absolutely

chemically induced

mia notte di gioia

my joyous night.

Which was when

I almost made a grave mistake.

You know just like a bum

I sat on a bench letting

the pills do their job on me

and I had a bottle of beer

rolled a cig, only to notice that

I’d forgotten a lighter.

continua ,-)

(whenever i fall in love i am prone to die … ,-) )

what a wonder listening to Blues can do to you. ,-)


Sorry for the detonation (Fashionista)


(owe the title to a fight with someone close to me, I at least thought*)

Fashionistas leave their needles on my floor.

Seems I’m the ashtray now I’m gettin into arts deeper.

Some of … find it nice to watch a poet maudite bleed.

I can tell, I seen it, they cum …

then! Mean lipstuck pussies, well,

coking the snow out of its white

but I am in need

for

a detonation

call it whatcha wan’

I need a touch

detonating on my skin,

instead of a hiss from

oh so by nature

blown-up lips.

(grace à dieu, ,-). thank god, she knows no English)


————–

* and I may well be wrong. To put it into the finest of the poshest Queen’s French Mince alors! Sigh


Catalunya por contrabajo triste

Catalunya por contrabajo triste *// Fashionista Blues (así o así)

————————————————————————————————————–


Catalunya, belleza oscura, tiene un resfriado de blue y ahora he sido infectado, mi también …

———————————————————————————————————


dedicado a Carles Benavent y mi fashionista

(desafortunadamente no en català)

———————————————————————————————————


Un diario on a Friday with a cold:

It was a smooth moon of a morning noon,

I was in a mood almost velvety

and that be-

cause of our sun, she

stroked me with her feathers of gold and tender

and encouraged me thusly

to meet my delirious day.

As if

it was about time:

but I yelled back with a

voice a mess of mercy less though

but got up.

I let my fingers by heart learn,

by the heat of my heart, mi corazón,

a new blue blow over funk

and by that heart (a punk of

a tramp and inside sad)

I made them learn it,

learn it by a heart

not mine anymore

because by then she was already gone.

Por eso tengo

I by now have

to rededicate it to

una mujer hermosa y

maravillosa:

La fashionista,

mi nuevo amor.

So my heart sings to her

en su ausencia,

in her absence,

una noche de

primavera azul,

as life pours down on me

sad and drab drops of

a heavy-weight rain

of fear of loss:

temor de pérdida

before we even

found us.

¿Cómo se llama su nuevo amor?

esperanza

——————

* Catalonia for a standup-bass sad

or

Fashionista Blues

(whatever you prefer)

Catalonia, dark beauty, caught a cold of blue, and now I am infected too, me too.

For Carles Benavent and my fashionista

(unfortunately not in Catalan)

my fingers on a tipsy of a haste wrote the piano blues I refer to (Fashionista Blues) and the intro bass lines Carles plays, match almost exactly the rhythmic pattern of my right hand! It’s too cute because you would think, this rhythm is a left-hand voluminising (adding volume or roundness) growl dancing clumsily , but… enough of that for now. I originally intended to hand my blues over as a present of sounds unkempt to my now-not-and-nevermore lover. Have fun!


Parker Flights


I. An unnoticed so far crash on North Beach,Cali, just last night


poem about a 4 a.m. night flight

when a Jazzairplane crashed into Bob Kaufman’s

forehead forcing him to … sink down

on his knees and starting to pray

to Kerouacian pantheons

pre-dawnishly

wineless his only offering

a second-hand reefer

a big-titted queen of

the surfer beaches

with a mock-gracious

but sexy wet-lipped

smiiiiiiiile spit

at

his pitchdark feet.

We meet Bob in adoration

of a majestic vagina glistening

in darkest purple and

GAIA’s pussy

grants a grin

to our poet

that he takes

maybe wrongly

for an

invitation

to dive audaciously

into a sweet giggling

sea of lust infinite…

We start now:


II. A planet of the mind with three moons

assai mosso e arioso


Enters the guy who’s Bob’s chronist,

2 bottles of rum in his blood a-raging

and a handful of pills working their evil

ways out from his stomach

using the semi-permeable

Border-lining for crisscrossing overs.

Serge tumbling his path paralleling the

shoreline of an Awakened and lazy

long after midnight pacific

Sees no one and nothing

but three moons

spiraling in courteous manner

(höflich as Einstein

would’ve put it)

each around the other

while listening to the portrait

of a Tracy whose last name

is a twin with the one of the poetess Ann*.

Serge thinks, which of the planets

had three moons again? None!

You could ignore the 2 smallest of Pluto

being denied his civil rights by deGrasse Tyson

and play with Charon, Nix and Hydra, but

Pluto’s not a planet anymore

and it would be unfair to

P4* and P5** too.

————————————————————————————————————–
*S/2011 (134340) 1

** S/2012 (134340) 1

*** Sexton. Tracy Sexton. Was Jaco’s wife.

the song is Portrait of Tracy (by Jaco Pastorius)

best version in my opinion is here

Neil deGrasse Tyson, ya.

Him! , he denied Pluto’ planetishness.


IV: Obsessionism fighting ostracism

Bowing down into these eyes
filled with disastrous
personal histories, his
eyes a crying howl-wail
into the breath of this
sea of madness* we
linger upon unsaved,
but alone, but still alone.
Brother, brother, can you hear me,
can you listen to
my sympathetic whispers?
Serge pulls out of his
never-ending pocket a
- polished from the rubbing of tonight -
flask of AMARETTO saved
for sweet communions with
the sighingly fallen
leaves of sorrowful
in that golden-brown
October of all-so-well-
- knowing and totally
wreckshipped hearts.

Bob-a- baby-now
grasps-grabs a gulp of
taste of the wonder that is
a fluid of almond distilled
into sweetly numbing
the unbreakably broken
hearts by drowning
them into benevolent
smilings of healing shelter.

Serge, the man who came
to save you by
saving himself, squats
close to the
man in pain and
mumbles into the
growling waters
a quote from a poem
by Seamus Heaney:
“What’s in the sea and the waves that keeps you spellbound?
Here earth breaks out in wildflowers, she rills and rolls
the streams in waterweed.”**
—————————————————————————————————————-

*song by Crosby Stills Nash and Young

**Seamus Heaney: Virgil Eclogue I


V. Mirror's mirror's mirror


Breakfasting Kaufman and consorts at dinner time,

digesting with due desire, due to a black jazzed brain,

I can’t avoid taking critical notice of a lack of

syntactic power hidden behind signals

of alarming sound, fraught with lasciviously teasing

make-ups of mellow and surreal perfumes.


In a night grown-up enough for a fatal appointment

with a sun still yawning at the oblique breaking of the dawn,

I watch and reflect upon a poet’s reflections on

a sulkily wailing and moaning saxophone, itself

reflecting upon the huffy human condition

by turning somber blackness into blue delights.


Gurkskogony

épopée délirante lautréamonthéâtrale de mon nativité étrange


I. Scattered disc

It’s close to midnight on the ides of March.we write down the year

one thousand nine hundred sixty three Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi

on a coaster on a table in a bar in a United States Armed Forces

garrison town in southwestern Bavaria.

Must have been then or close to it that a sparkle of

one of the icy planets of the scattered disc hailed down

and right into the almost boiling seminal plasma of GI Bill

thereby nobilifying vile male lust, transforming it into a trigger for holy

insemination of a fecund ovarian follicle of a B-girl

neither pretty nor smart but willing to go farther than

her contract demanded… .


II. GI Bill: a portrait from a distance far

also an hommage to Dave Brubeck in heaven


Actually America to me spells mainly Jay A Zed Zed

you might not be with me and you’re free to dis-

agree but America is just the mother of it.

Swing and Bebop, Cool and Free,

Fusion, Blues and Bossa Nova, import from Brazil.

In nuce: take 5, Dave, and brubeck it down on me please.

Age of 13 an aspiring pianist, my fingers fox-

trotted in vain of course to the sheet music of 5 over 4

and instead of me tickling the ivories and the ebonies

they rather tickled me but it was only them

who laughed. A cruel case of unrequited love.

I tried to connect via Jazz to my Dad but only

could hear the border-lining voice of my tipsy gipsy soul.

And that’s that.


III. Ladies on the loose


How is it that my house’s burnin down

whenever I clinge, Serge in heat, to another female hottieness?

I of course -what a question?-

love salted mango and figs dipped in honey,

taste her belly while I lick up the drops of her longing.But

my house of heart keps burning down

meeting ladies on the loose.,whispering to me:

“Lick my cherry sweet

it tastes fine, somewhat salty

now you ‘ll be mine!

Put your hands on my ass!

Bring my pussy to your tongue,

lick me til I beg for more.“

Then they leave me with my heart on fire


IV. Lovebirds mine

My lovebird flew away

but it returned picking up the crumbs of your longings,

then took off again. What a volatile, elusive guy he is!

What a loser this bird is!

Is he crashed or what? I need my love

going on with me. And I will only whisper

my desires to her..I love her yes. Adore her.

I want to be inside of her deep. I want.

I hope we won’t going to meet, but if we do

I will be strong enough to tell her to go

and to leave me alone. I can’t take women

(into my apartment these days.)

But I am afraid she will come.

Because she hasn’t hit the sun yet and I want to help her to go there


V. Whore-Talk

There’s a heartburn turning away while I listen to her,

talking about small Turkish cocks not impressing her much

when back then she was a whore.

She is a warm woman to talk to,

So how could I leave her out, the season being

that cold ? And we talk about her sister in arms.

And how she not so well copes with her love affair

being over. And only pain is what she’s left with..

She tells me of her former lovers and I hug her

to feel her body. I won’t be her lover, but the feeling was pretty .

And that’s all I want to share.


VI. Serge is in the loop


It´s gonna kill me but at least I was free.

I cleaned my flat so I won’t die like Cobain.

Should I have to wait for another 50 years

till I get freed from the world as I know it?

I’m in my prime.

Should I strive for hot sex like

Neruda’s Caballero solo does?

Should I read even more books,

getting wiser day by day

with people getting angrier because I

know just so little more than they do?

Never ever have I been in the fishbowl

like Amy Winehouse or Ann Sexton.,

moribund of love both, but exposed

myself so much I can’t

refrain from blushing.

So you could say, shame is my cancer.


VII. Il faut que tu saches que*:


I caught it, it caught me?

I am not sure anymore.

The virus of love

will just not go away,

pass out or die.

It will stay with me close.

You can see it

in the sparkle

of my eyes,

you can read it from my lips,

being hungry for your kiss,

you can feel it in my touch.

and perhaps my love is strongest

when we fight.

Sweetest Taylor, call me Burton,

but I doubt that

I’ll watch Who’s afraid of

Virginia Woolf ever again.

I’ve had my share.


VIII. Too plastered to die yet


There is in Joyce’s “Dubliners” a story

of a man found dead on the loo of a pub

(dead from boozing, it is a pub after all.)

So I thought, while I am at it:

let’s rap and ramp down

the fear of death and

instead ramp up the joy of being alive

still!

Baby, be my maybe baby,

be the sweetest stanza 1

of my best poem, talking love,

that has yet to come

alive!


IX. Watching eagles mate in mid-air

Eagles are mating

below swaying clouds,

just like angels do above.

Smiling wet-eyed is the best,

I feel best then. Don’t know why,

and even better than best I feel,

when my lover kisses my tears away.

Those eagles are fine, but

you are much finer than

any eagle could ever be.

I’m bluer than the moon in full.

I’m your snowman if you need my drug.

I give for free

if you will pay back physically.

And should it all turn out

not the way we wanted,

I demand that I reincarnate

as an eagle mating in mid-air.


X, XI,XII Closing Time

X

It must have been 7:30 a.m. on my life clock,

when early on an august morning,

yawning out bulgy clouds

of amassing grey into the

whispering yellow of the back

of the stage design

of that summer’s play,

my parents kidnapped me to Italy.

For a first taste of what life could also have been like.

XI

Closing time’s close by by now,

so let me share another last

anecdote with you

when the world still made

la bella figura and still impressed

this boy in me, shy and blonde

and blue-eyed me. Me with a ball on the beach

being scared of the waves of the sea

and me knowing nothing yet

of the pain that comes with love for free.

XII

And by now, when my life clock

is close to midnight with me

in the mid of my life

I must admit that questa bella figura,

the world was once to me,

only comes alive again,

when I trigger and tease

my neurotransmitters

to make all my heart’s memories

fall into oblivion

and let my smiling mind

sway into a swoon

I’ll never return from again.


XIV. I.: Brain DUI *

“Oh, dearest, sweetest bartenderessa?“ -“What’s it, baby?“,
her boobs, stretching out my shirt**, in stereo inquire.
“Can we have some more of the same ole liquid Blues please?
I promise to double the tip! But can you make our drinks triples?“
- “By we you mean …?“ – “Means: my friends and me“ – “ Your imaginary allies then?“, pointing at the books in my head and: “Deal“, she says, “but don’t you drown them before you drown!“
She is that smart, you see? As if this was about smartness.
“Drown in what?“, my eyes ask winking at my shirt on her.
“Get out!“ she yells, letting me in.

But my allies had to stay out. They were not missed
(so soon).


XIV, II.

I wonder who

It took me, friends and foes, years to be specific, to find out which combination of liquids
would serve me best taste- as much as spiritwise: one third of rum and one of coke is best
shaken, not stirred with a last third of cherry liqueur*. I doubt that, but cheers first to all,
Kerouac or Berryman would have declined my offer. At least , as I a writer, have the precious
priviledge to, now they’re dead, adapt their tastes to my needs and propensities (monetarily
speaking): so I dunno if I have already told you that remarkable anecdote about John, Jack and
Serge, that’s me, sitting in that Dublin pub already Bloom had visited with Stephen D. , if only
in James’s head bedded on a cushion on a short bed in a rented room in Zurich, Switzerland,
and me, somewhat euphorised as almoast always at that hour of the night, gave a parody of
Burton giving a parody of Thomas reciting the Bard’s: From fairest creatures we desire increase…you know all how that one goes – if not much more – with all those weird diphthongs hopelessly mispronounced, when suddenly …


XV. The minor stanza on a minor issue

Manufacturing meaning

Drinking myself into another snowy-feathered Friday morning I

watched with chemically subdued excitement a yellow-breasted

tomtit that confusedly by the cold had landed on my balcony for

food, so I - after her second landing decided it would be nice to

watch them feasting on the crumbs and corns I’d oh-so-generously

had thrown out on the floor outside. But to now turn to something

slightly, if only slightly more serious, let me talk about this:

Watching. but actually more listening (bc the distributants are not that sexy to look at it. Right, I hear you, but as if that was the point. It’s not! to a quite belated TV Firing Line (yeah, Buckley)

pseudo-debate about anti-evolutionists bs.

Money, as we know. makes the girls go round . Sorry, half-seriously so,

for the misogynist implications that misogynists and feminists will draw from that.

It is of course: Money makes the world go round, which is still wrong but

hits closer to your home, not necessarily mine.

So there is this „institute“ at of all places Seattle,and shame on Seattle for that, proclaiming

-on no peer-reviewed grounds,

trying to – by avoiding of course scientific evidence –

to reinstall a Near Eastern godhead of the

gaps. It is for good reasons -though back then being unaware of the

implications that are ever so easily derivable from – don’t be shocked now – Gore Vidal’s

take on the crucial overtake by sleaky xtian rhetors of pagan Greek (and Syrian) teachers

teaching you of how to talk in public to impress.

I’m not even any longer a Chomsky fan, liked him for a long time, still

think he mostly is right, though never bought his moral truisms, bc that is a sophistic knock out argument.

To cut it short: If anyone “likes“ this without knowing what I’m, talking about

I have a very hard time (that I’ll shorten) to take them serious.

Translates as: I won’t.

Cheers, it’s Friday, have a party but leave me out, because I already had mine.

You got it? Even?


XVI. Happiness is not just an illusion*


Do love this motown ballad but still am

not with it – other then, when run out of booze money -

nono, I’ve been happy as a giraffe dancing with a hippo

on a dark blue moonlit night on any Egytian cataract,

close enough across the border to Sudan, tripping

Nubian, so no. No no, not with you here, you rest of

palish America. Refuse to buy your sadness just because

you don’t get it right. That would be unfair to myself.

You simply don’t have that impact on my state of

mind and soul and it is not for the best, it is not

so? agree with me. Promise, not to hurt you by

holding up that finely made-up truism. And

please, and that maybe a start, this is about dreaming

away pains. It’s about overcoming them somehow,

if invoking them once more to self-hurt you

once more. No, I am not in that boat, endings

in the long run are always happy. No more

searching anywhere not needed. So I know. What

I do, attacking the obvious, you always considered,that was

true on the empirical basis being me.


XVII. Cusp to the brim


Stompin in the morning

with my lights down low still.

Sun’ s just the same it was a day ago

Moon waves blue lullaby-good byes-

In the mornings a black čādor چادر

on my windows, feels like I

can’t stand the rain. *

monsoony mafiusa**“. Light me

up! In my window, but she’s

not here with me bringing back

sweet memories to me, no.

And she’ll never come back,

so that is sad. Gotta a finger-

snapping Blues. You hear me here?

You! Dontcha wanna play with me?

Oh dont you want want want

it too? Play my game and we’ll be fine-

Had a struggle with myself

but I am on the boat again.

‘T’is only Rock’n Roll but that’s all I got.

Like the spermia to the ovum,

like the salmons in their season

swim up against their propabilities.

I will go on and make it right by

making it oh so wrong.


*mafiusa is Sicilian Arabic: the beautiful.

contains some lyrics in low doses of It’s only Rock’n Roll and I can’t stand the rain (by Ann Peebles et al.)


XVIII: Love and me: the problem and how to


maybe overcoming it and heal myself on the way:

It does seem so that when

me and the girls fool around

I always lose the game but not

without hurting the lady too.

Can you help me. Pappa shrinks,

to never do that again? Please!

Desensitivize me and accompany me please!

The cloud of night now covers my horizon.

It spreads out its soothing hands

to cover me and you and our misery.

I laugh in pain, the pain’s to great to cry

anymore. It slits up my heart and

my hope and my all

I have been living for.

There’s going to be tomorrows, I doubt it

strongly but they must come!


XIX: Beijing, Northern Town


I insist, it is not England
or Norway to that, there
even in Munich is a smog cloud hanging low,
hope,she has some fun up there.

I managed to get as of late
David Hawkes’ translation of
Songs of the South after
2 years, mind you! Ok, the
first edition (1959) But fine with me.

Now look at the sign
and you know something more.
I know Chinese well enough to not need him
but how do you pronounce Ch’u?

Certainly not with a putonghua voice.
And there’s where the intricacies loom.

Cities, houses, break them down to your convenience.
Your ap-l-easements shall be valued and
your offer confirmed (or: fullfilled? ): You get in where never
ever someone laughed, you get into
voluntariously to where from no-
body ever returned. House of Holy, turns out I’m
into a bin for losers. Noone ever will get
missed, neither you and nor your place
at which you should have been.
Earlier.

,,,,,,,,,,,,
[the last stanza is a bridge to 離騷 LI SAO.In particular to the epilogue stanza translated very finely by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang: Since in that kingdom all my virtue spurn,
Why should I for the royal city yearn?
Wide though the world, no wisdom can be found.
I'll seek the stream where once the sage was drowned. ]
My Chinese has become a bit rusty (have not used it for 6 years). Therefore I will first stanza 20 and then return to Li Sao and encounter pain.

———————————————————————————

Rickie Lee Jones: love it when she sings „Do you like it, do you like it like that? Rappin a fat scat? And then scats!!!! yay!


XX. Indecencies on public airwaves

An epitaph belated

for:yes you guessed it right: George Carlin,

another brother in heaven now. Must be so.

quote: you are the eventuality of an anomaly. Unquote

(George Carlin and I cannot even pronounce it! Ha! That’s rare, believe me. )

http://youtu.be/3cHJQkuuLNs

00:38

And George Carlin once more talking bout his Dad in an interview with a very young Jon Stewart:

He couldn’t metabolize ethanol …. effectively.

http://youtu.be/UzmD9GEpdTw

at 00:20

and here:

http://youtu.be/IgbXtlrGdLs

at 04:22 is to be found cream of the crop Jazz poetry .

Ok, let’s get started!


You know, baby, it gets harder

(day by day)

no, not that! We’re not

talking “dawn“ wood. No, Life!

It gets harder

with all the nice guys dying all

the time and leaving back their

lovers. likers, comrades, babies and sexy friends

Like George did , oh so unfair!

My best weatherman or for the smartasses: meteorologist

which in Greek means specialist for the lofty,

forecasting life thusly:

The weather will continue to change on and off for a long, long time

and

Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely scattered light towards morning.”


FCC v. Pacifica Foundation ever so nicely

ruled by a court supreme if not sublime

preventing “unwanted“ speech from entering

your home.

This language is so close to comedy

I can see the judges chuckling while

dictating their sentence.

And if they did not, they’re extraterrestrians

in my book.

I found a magical number and it spells like that:

22-06-08 05:55 p.m. PDT or if you, snob that you

are, prefer HAP ( Heure Avancée du Pacifique).

The minute you departed.

What a thunderstorm, what a volcano of

mostly inadequate rantings you were and

how you so much enriched America’s

genetic nervousness about all things holy!

And what a light went out when you passed!

(If only I could puke tears I’d do it now)


XXI. Nonnegotiable love affair lament

Again kidnapped by Dionysian powers luring me into

their dark realm of sarcastic laughter, I failed

once again.

And yes I should have known better …. in hindsight.

Excuse my sarcastic laughing now. Because it seems so

that the world we share has not been built around you

just to please you, nor around me for the same reason either.

If only once I could take a leave, nothing final,

mind you, just a spree to the tropics, a vanilla hideout,

a jump into the softly raging waves of the sea

wet-hugging Bimini. But that’s negotiable. I take

the Seychelles if you don’t have a need for them.

They’re welcome to my wildest fantasies.

Until I have to return to you and whisper

tears of begging: Turn your love on me again.

Again and again and again until it’s

finally too late let us try
again.


XXII: Investigating pseudo-mini planets close to Neptune, be they cis or trans


„Or even“, she says, „immigrants from the Kuiper Belt.“
“But only illegal ones, I hope,“ I reply.
“Sure, did not you know: Kuiper spells south of the border?“
South is good applied to a circulating circle, but ok, I take it to mean: trans.
Or: trance. As someone mainly interested in women, words and vodka
(permutations are encouraged) this sparkle from the scattered disk
I mentioned in my Stanza # One gifted my mind with
a remarkable genetic trance-ability. Mostly quite confusing
to everyone including me.


XXIV: si le vent frappe à mon porte


If the wind knocks at my door

and tells me it is time to rise again

I follow …


And out in that final night

to be followed by a new day

lighted by a bleaker sun – it’s winter -

than the day before, I cannot but just

follow the call of life again.


That’s just how sentimental

it will ever get.


Hope pales, wishes dwindle. Lovers

lie more, the more I

reincarnate. Also a kind of

evolution. God becoming

more gnostic day by day.

More distanced, more cryptic,

more of and like themselves.


Displaced birds roam desperate skies,

They gyrate towards final singularities.


I so had wanted to have wanted maybe you

or anything alive and fine to me, but

sincerely once at least.


Will then you, sparkle in my soul,

raise me up to my ultimate

beyond?


XXV: Chicken picking on echoplex


We must not play gods if our hearts

don’t match the marbled ones

of those adored up at Athen’s

Acropolis, with all of them

deities slaughtered ever so nice-

ly by Jesus meek and mild.

Come and go Constantine the

obviously unavoidably great.

(And yes, I don’t like you at all,

Mr Kavafis:You may have beeen as Alexandrian as they come.

And that’s not for your having been gay but because of your

ever so arrogantly anti-Julian the Apostate-attitude,

as if Mount Athos had born you in pain. )

Once having been a real god (of Thracia) myself,

cornered ever so sweetly by hot model legs

spreading out over clouds of sweet smokes.

Oh don’t you mess with boogie piano man,

he always means it right. Say hello to Mr

Conkeroo and then with a sweet smile

greet your night. Just another one.

to cum.

You’d preferred it vanilla? Wrong wish!


This is for all the bums of America (and beyond that

piss-colored horizon):

My message spells: Keep going on!

For the all drop-outs of all the big fat

in-corporated states,

handing out bad tasting candies to

all of us losing out. And it spells:

I’ll bite your finger cause I lost my gag reflex.

Oh baby! Of course

I meant no mean when I

told you that your

love would be invain. What

do you think of me now?

I’m glad you don’t bother

but rather have turned back

to your sweet and strong num-

bing perfumes, chasing by inhale

the muddy brown air-waves of earth

away.

Your Rum’s not smelling that fine

as it did last night? I’ll tell you why:

Yesterday, it was only yesterday, it was alright

to drown another lost day of your life

into

Well they tempt you, man, with silver

And they tempt you, sir, with gold

And they tempt you with the pleasures

that the flesh does surely hold*

but wrong!


(So sorry for the French, and even the more so

if it is Greek to you, may it be katharevousa**

or dimotiki***.:

Chicken picking on the echoplex:

*lyrics from „Pink Cadillac“

**Καθαρεύουσα

*** δημοτική


XXVI: Gardener of Love


Mostly to my astonishment girls start distancing themselves from me,

but then I think: It had been high time anyway. And I always prefer them

leaving me, because my own good-byes hurt me so much more.

So hey! yeah, there’s another one down and up

and a-drowning in Niagara falls.

What can you, a gardener of love do but

hatch them for a while till they float and fly away again?

Once their heart turns to cold, you

better step away.


XXVII: Slopes of the Ozark


All the grass on the Ozark slopes.

colored green by the sun.

is dipped into touches of blue.

Call it Bluegrass if you need too.

Three hours later on the highway

You meet another brown-haired black-eyed

cutie just two steps away from the local

whiskey bar. You of course invite her

for a dance and there you roll.

Next morning though you notice

another ring on your hand and you

ask yourself: how you made it from

Black Oak, Arkansas to Las Vegas

and back from there too that fast!


XXVIII. A Gift To Myself


Floating on the waves of memory back

into a strawberry-blonde kid’s here and now,

I can, for the first time in almost five

decades find traces

(absconding the light of your lightest touch and ephemeral like butterfly wings)

of a “happy childhood“,

to which by any means belongs learning by heart

this Rhapsody in Blue in order to sing it to myself

at times of boredom or pain or both. I was rich in those and there-

fore sang it often.

As a song to myself.

Letting all the sharp Blues contours cut the surface

of the forcedly pacified waters of convention.

Beware the neighbors! Bullshit like that.

And delighted in it.

And rightly so.

Because a single blue note

saved my life.

B

in C sharp minor.

Thank you!


XXIX: Pratidanam – returning the compliment


Je ne sais pas non plus comment vivre sans toi.

Non, chuis pas malade si tu me demandes.

How to live on without you I don’t know anymore.

No, I will tell you, should you ask, I am just fine.


My heart is a prince among the small people:

all those delicate fragile souls yearning

for warmth and a smile.

Whenever I sing a song smooth

to myself I do it to pamper it and to

embalm it with all the sympathy

it does deserve.

Pratidanam is sanskrtam and it means:

a present you give for a gift you received,

and sanskrtam – that is Sanskrit, the ancient holy

language of the same people who collectively

dreamed up both: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata -

compounded but ever so carefully by Panini who wrote

the most advanced grammar for 2000 years to come.

Panini, a Leibnizian mind, winking at us from a far far time

and a far far place.


XXX. “Out of a misty dream,“

recited Lee Remick Dowson’s poem, “our path emerges for a while …“ but that was no dream: a nightmare it was. And yes, the ocean knows no time.

Ebbing and flooding and ebbing and flooding again

erasing the traces of sorrow by washing away all castles built on sand.

And the ocean is life, in which all spit-out Jonahs are to drown.

Sooner, later, but finally always.

I have not made my mind up yet

in who to better trust:

a lover liquid or rather one of flesh,

but anyway I ‘ll be and stay a slave.


XXXII. Hurry

sorry , ‘m in a hurry

shops are gonna close soon

runnin out of money

runnin out of booze too

gotta better run now

rockin down the alley

better gonna get me

what I think I need

will be broke by sat night

till then I have fun.


XXXIII. Nap Girl


You need to get in the flow with

me now.

Won’t you

mount my blue balloon as it takes off

to softly friendly skies

and kiss their charmer, that’s our sun?

Let’s sail off into another swinging night

of lush and lust and love and lay- lay back

with me:

Sail with me and let’s bump on chuckling clouds

before they rain themselves dry and drown out down

on thirsty soils of yearning

and dream up fantasies of better no returns.

Smoothly talk to me, please!

I laid down my arms:

The roses are not on war anymore.

————————–

“Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you.”

from the lyrics of Georgia on my mind


XXXV. Sunny, sunny winter time


Sunny sunny winter time

and me out there tryin to get me

another fix. Brother brother

can’t you please spare a dime

on me?

Went over to the river,

watched me out a bridge to pass

away,

humming Berryman all to myself

closest ever

to that draw of the bridge,

but it

would not work, I was

not stoned enough yet to

leave earth and life like that this day.

Watch me tumbling down

to the shelter, mumblin

obscene prayers to myself-

Man, I am on the low-down.

Can’t you help yourself this time?

Someone just had snapped away

a cigarette

and the butt was glimming still.

So I put it up and leaned out

over the railing,

closed my eyes and inhaled

the nicotine and mem’ries

of a pretty woman smiling

right into my deepest dark.

Wandering along the bluely shaded alleys

of a long and so missed

past,

But now they’re

missed no more.

(had help with this -not to mention chemicals – by Boz Scaggs and Duane Allman, which is why I ll fatten this one up:)

Bozscaggities

Came across some melodies

made me wanna swing.


XXXVI. Bozzscagitties


(Miss Riddle, I’m stuck in the middle again!)

I rather feel I do not want to dance to this tonight -
yet-

“It’s a long way home and it’s late and yet we pretend.
It’s a long way home and you called last night: Just friends!“

yet I can’t resist the beautiful
trouble you are
to me
tonight
and you know who I am but
I have
no clue about you.

You suggest. I better play along
nicely, a voice a caressing velvet
to please you best-

with my voice playing along nicely
and it better be

a lower baritoned velvet

touching
your ears.

To do it to you

best!

(Payday)

My Shoe-shiner could you kindly keep it down?
Do we really need an apocalypse right now?
….

Come payday: “

Crystal chimes meet wah-wah: friendly intercourse
Sun’s a friend and she helps me walking out and
down to town on a friday night.
Straight into another
superbly star-lit night-

Dancing in the limelight.
Swinging in a tumble
and we softly fight …

Closed-eyed tongue of mine
whispers oh so wetly
to what deep down
on the marvel of your body
you first tried to hide
from me.

Let us just pretend,
we can have it without end.
Let me pay you back
all those sweet things
you have done to me:

I smoothly promise,
I will nothing but
apocalipsofy your
ever so sweetest epiphanies.


(Desire)

Oh would you please
let my heart have another
deep
blow of this sweet sweet smoke!

Congenialize me-
Let’s surprise them all now!

Let us paint indigo clouds
over and
out on the moon-blue!

Unless you scream
to make me stop it,
I will keep on
BarryWhitin you
as much as
I want and
can.

Our’s are all the nights to come …


XXXVII. The days are getting stranger the closer ends the year.


December sun in windows, my lungs yell at me: it’s winter

but Boz’s fine guitar wavezzz zzzz round my brains

swingz the bluez outta me what eva i’ was

it fine.

“Your baby’s out runnin wild, hangin with the crowd,

puttin your bizness in the streets talkin out loud

sayin you bought her this and that, how much you done spent

I swear she must believe it’s all heaven sent.

Hey now

Better bring that woman round to this sad ole truth,

the dirty low-down

Now I have to have to wonder, wonder wonder who taught her how to talk like that,

oh boy!

gave her that big idea

nothin you can’t handle, nothin you ain’t got

put your money on the table and drive it off the lot

turn on your love light, turn your maybe to a yes

same old schoolboy game got ya into this mess.

Yeah, you better come on back to town,

face the sad sad truth, the dirty lowdown

You ain’t got to be so bad got to be so cold

This dog eat dog existence sure is getting old

Got to have a Jones for this Jones for that

This running with the Joneses boy

Just ain’t where it’s at

You better get on back around

To the sad, sad truth, the dirty lowdown

…

and forces me to smile against my best intentions /

whatevuh you got.

Pagliaccializin me…………………………………………..

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Heyhey Mr. Do, it louder, louder, do it loud to me.

nothin you can handle nothin you ain’t got

You gotta have a jones for this, jones for that,

runnin with the joneses boy

just ain’t where’ it’s at ….

——————————

thank you, Holly! For the Joneses,-) to cute and Pagliacci!

Lyrics in Italics by Boz Scaggs


XXXIX: Talking Dogs

night pissed its usual anger down on me.

Don’t get pathetic now: it

simply rained and I was waiting

in front of the store with leaky awning.

Out of smoke, beer-guzzling.

Waiting!

Eventually still in time,

howsoever, they made it, they

entered leaving me with the dogs.

Knew the two big black sissies,

better: they know me. Kept them

still. (Almost) no sweat, But for the little one!

Would you believe it? She yapped her

tiny lungs out at that giant Saint Bernard.

Both of them tied he started to growl

and my two new found landerly ladies got

nervous. Furious to defend her lil sis.

Women! Needless to say I had my fun.

Needless to say, because all my neighbors

say and my girlfriend too and even people,

who don’t know me at all: He needs a dog,

I asked: could I get it, the small ruffy?

My friends, proud owners, shyly looked away

and told me: we’ve just give her away to

a guy we know, to be released next week.


XL. Clam

I meet a girl every now and then, who makes me wanna feel like any other man.

(Devil’s Blues by Charles Mingus)


Fingers still clam from

last night’s Bourbon

snap the fresh dark

new and blue

baby night

Night is a wizard

whose magic stick

brushes over

the wantoning tip

of my lips

to make a clown

of them

They slapstick inebriatedly

to their master’s choreo-

graphy,

love

me

Me has got fingers

clam still from

last night’s rendez-vous

with a bottle and you.

——–

shhhhhh, this just for Holly:

My anywaybaby

love you anyway

anyway I

hurt and you

anyway hurt

love

anyway you.


XLI. Advertisement for myself

You call me public relations?

I call you: yes!

One for shamestless of the shameless

swinging-it TX gal Becca

Glad no are you

not of xmas

with an haunchy-aunty

conquering your boudoir.

I so love it

s over

and no new

family crimes

occurred


Call me blind

You call me blind?

I call you: yeaaaaaaaaah

and gladly so


XLII. Rio De La Plata Estuaries’ Dainty Dalliance Dancers’ Deluxylight


or AC/DC’s The Jack performed live at River Plate


Heavy


metal sonnet deranged against my best

bad intentions boogie me down

best bad cat in the west

stomps dionysian. Seed is sown.


The seed of blow me blue,you

rhythmifies the jelly oceans

on those wobbly hips of your’s anew.

No pressing need for further promotions.


The masses in a chorus shout encore!

Baby, let’s them have it please!

It’s gonna put them at bluest ease.


Sweat is cooling on my skin at heat.

You even rock the most obese.

I’m gonna take your sound out to the streets.

(quod howsoever erroneously est demonstrandiddlydum)


XLIII: The Best


re-Joycing

best out of love with

you

best out of love with

me

Our love’s not in a light attire*.

Could not I just jubilate?

Within my hand I **

hold your’s again!

I will and forever I

will remember

stanza seventeen.

There is no -mind you -

word to make you mine again

It’s fine. I can’t amend.

———————————————————————————————

all ** to and owed to James Joyce: Chamber Music.

Because I love his movement 17 the most. I had a little love affair with it.


XLIV: Big cat laid down one eve


reminiscing in a cloud of wabi-sabi

precious mem’ries ’bout his

past was so-so.

Miss I, did I

anything?

There’s a

breeze in the curtains, outside lingers

a cat with sun-burned fur :

Trotted over roof-tops chasing

sometimes sparrows, mostly sun beams.

Fell once four floors down through

a chimney as wide and dark as his

Mother’s womb must have been.

Hurt not, ran off and just bit off a mouse-tail.

and this too:

Watch a tomcat balance his feather-light

paws like he was “on Broadway“ tripping,

sun, and so me, out there in day’s noise,

on the street, hell but fun.

I’m boxing back shabby me out into the air

sailing, dwindling down again mudheapupwards

but stay away from the skunks, their grins,

I need a fix of fresh of all.

Squinting and roll-rubbing the floors a bit.

Grinning tomcatishly at life.

Reminiscing thusly lay my cat.


XLV. Flood My Soul.


like unseen angels sent from

some unknown somewhere …

right into my soul

(from Precious Mem’ries)


Еще не вечер, it’s not yet night

with the sun in me and

all of this night of

light no more

still to come.

So I cakewalk out

strut my stuff and let

the good times roll,

mais si: moi, je

laisse les bon temps rouler,

as long as I can

or the Unknowable

will let me have it.

Wearing rain drops just like pearls

beautiful you meets me

on the street our dance floor

and we twist along

through this wet and gray day.

When you let me touch your skin

I know the answer to the question:

Why’s there something rather than nothing?

Why do I exist?

The answer being You.


XLVI: rhododactylos


There’s a bit of rosy blood

in the first morning hour of the boulevard,

dashed with pencils red and blue,

but the colors are rehearsing still.*


Rosy-fingered dawn, Ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς

kisses him softly awake

to a world he finds hard to love

at first sight, at least.


He needs a warm coat of booze or smack

or best of all: both

to make it again out on the streets

cackling with arrogant disgust.


He can quote Homer to himself
(Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ... )

but that does not buy him

a bowl of soup nor cigarettes

nor a friendly bottle of Rum.


He must refill his tank

of senseless but meaningful

hope again.

He grabs the glass filled

to the brim with a musical Jinn

and consoles himself by

listening to Sappho's praise

of Atthis, unique among

Lydian women.


The Lesbian queen of poetry

stole the rosy-fingered epithet

from Homer's dawn-young sun

only to give it to her blue love-thirsty

moon: σελάννα.


XLVII: Been a long time


shortcut:

I can't count the tears of a life with no love.
Seems so long since we walked in the moonlight
making vows that just can't work right

(from the lyrics of Led Zeppelin: Rock'n Roll)


„But the overall impression,“
I was standing there with a guy
you would very much assume
to meet you in NYC downtown corners,
so him:“ is that of an erupting volcano.“
I said yes, but where's the fall out,
meaning coke of course..
Just follow my hand, he said.

Smiling like a newly-crowned king
I asked him (still in the bathroom)
yes, fine, but where's the light?

He chuckled: “There is none
I could procure for you.“

Got it, made love to a woman
I didn't like, and
stumbled
into another darkness again.


been a long time since I rock'n rolled.
lonely
lonely
lonely
lonely
long time.


XLIX: Sábados


I. Todos os meus sábados

(all my Saturdays)


Can it get any better

than starting a Saturday morning

listening to a soft and sexy

bossa

Sung by Diana Krall in Paris?

“Look of love“, even if you

are alone and have no one to

look at lovingly, you still

have memories to make it

swooningly into the day.

All the rivers you cried

over me cannot match

the river I cried over you.

As huge and wide and deep and wild

as the Mississippi is the river

I cried over you.

It has benefits being alone

every now and then.

Didn’t you know?

So now you are gone and it’s maybe best so,

but your body I miss its warm embrace

שׁני שׁדיך כשׁני עפרים תאומי צביה הרועים בשׁושׁנים׃

Shenei shadayikh kishnei ofarim teomei tzeviyah haroim bashoshanim

Your two breasts are like twin gazelles, which feed among lilies.

And I am so needy,waiting for sunsets,

especially in these mornings, when they need hours

to set up their light and the day just won’t come up

again.


II. Garota (girl)


O seu balançado

é mais que um poema*

She swings better than a poem.

and beautifies life (she’s) meant for love.

Bottles of red ale

hailing down from

Éire. Kilkenny to specify

I drink and sit and cry

and blind I let

my mind cakewalk

itself out of reality.

Not much to loose there anyway.

I know, I am loosing this game

not meant for me to play.

Right from the start, it was obvious

I would, but as long as

I am still here

let fate cast the dice again

and once more. I take

every eyes I get,

as long as they are

looking at you.


“Ah, se ela soubesse

que quand’ ela passa,

o mundo sorrindo

se enche de graça

e fica mais lindo

por causa do amor.“* / **


For the love of this girl

I tried hard but it

was not enough.

I failed again.

I might not have been

made for love.

I’m not, I am lost and bluest

on a Saturday morning,

when everyone else

is starting having fun.

Talvez.

Perhaps.
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*From the lyrics of garota de Ipanema

Impressum

Texte: Serge Gurkski
Bildmaterialien: Serge Gurkski
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.01.2013

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