These were all written on a typewriter in a little attic apartment in Berkeley, California. It was a year of confusion and sporadic clarity; a year of many disagreements with Mr. Monday and the mirror, but I had many friends, good friends. We sat in circles in this attic apartment, in this chambre, in this Cuartito Techero, and played music and read poetry and reached for our hearts and extremities and flesh, which caused even more confusion. It was also a time of creation and transformation, even transfiguration in certain cases… It was a stir-fry of youth, vehemence and great intentions, and these shuffled pages were drawn from it, from the most truthful deviance. Thank you for coming.
With this Kafkian obsession
Waiting,
for some Metamorphosis to have mercy
on our souls,
Yearning,
for our mirrors to wither,
Craving,
for our hands to loose.
In the midst
of egocentrical dirty fingernails,
of cuddled decadent livers
who whisper and hiss
and poke my ribs.
As I sit in silence
and pour whiskey in my mouth
and look for understanding
and attempt to love the void.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Rimbaud, Verlaine and Some of My Friends

True Story

The creation was imminent.
They heard women hiss and whisper,
the tone rose
and a bird of shame sat on their shoulder,
as them, lonely with themselves yelled,
“shame on you Book, for lying to our face!”
The velvet curtain fell,
but from the end of the empty stage,
from behind the burgundy void they wailed,
“you are dismissed stone tablets, we don’t need you anymore!”
There were whispers one more time-
Deception and a sense of loss
filled their brothers’ eyes-
But since there was no law they could embrace,
NO PROOF OF WHAT THEY SAID!
Names were brought upon theirs,
limbs were torn from their bodies,
and their crimson blood flowed and blended
with the precarious sewage of Paris.
When they were torn to nothing,
left as nothing, to rot as nothing,
they poured themselves a drink
and played Russian Roulette for a bit (no casualties were grimed).

The creation was imminent!
Women and men both hissed.
The tone did not rise this time,
for there was no gold to pay the band.
And with their same old ugly bird
they attempted a sonnet in Bb.
Then the fish wept, the horses wept,
God wept (both male and female),
they wept-
Back in the apartment
they lit a cigarette and drank whiskey,
forever they continued with their Favourite Game,
until one day:
“Iconoclasts!” someone in the crowd yelled
“Genius! Genius! Here, sign my breasts!”
“no” they replied, “I don’t believe in genius,
and my passion goes extinct in your dour face.”

Epilogue:
They walked back home laughing and making funny remarks about the ways of the judge. They never again sung or wrote or played their game, they sat and sat in front of the fireplace, smiling and waiting for the mercy of death.

Pepel, Berkeley 2008
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