Happy Birthday

Independence Day 2008
Berkeley, Ca
Forgive my dark mood
and my languid determination.

The process is skipping
All fingers point
To a funnel with
Pompous executioners and
Grand self inflicted guillotines,
The room closing in, the lights too dim.
Any tie to the past broken,
Unplugged and corroded by excessive use.
“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”
Says a postcard from California
“Would you lend me a hand?”
Says a postcard from a room.
“We are a bunch,
A crazy bunch of horny heroes.”
Says a flashback,
But I won’t be obscene…
You see, I am far from obscene,
I am a prince, a gentleman-
And I will not break before my mother’s death.
But I won’t be obscene…
Everything is tied
To your rusty candleholder
And home is in the mind
And the mind is in the gutter
And there is not enough will
To pull it out:
A beautiful fetus lies on the ground
Perfectly dressed in a frock and a bowtie
And an Independence Day bonnet
His hands tied to his back with umbilical cord
And his eyelids sowed together with white silk
And his mouth mumbling, drunk-
But I won’t be obscene
For that would mean being free.

Something Very Personal

05/07/08
Berkeley 3:07am
Hangover, still.

Does this madness pass?
Will it cling to my spine?
They say it does.
I thought there might be some truth ---- in ambush (I knew)
In drunkenness and sliced wrists,
In blistered feet of prepaid lovers,
And there is, blurry in the might of doubt.

Eyes gloom in front of the mirror
In some white lighted diner bathroom,
And vents buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz steady.
There in the sink: truths scattered and thrown like used needles,
And purple eyebags turn to seek,
But no one seems to know what it is,
And the broken tongue licks the bitter rust.

Innocence lies taut like a wounded soldier,
Your will flickers,
And I can’t lend a hand to the child I once was
Who now seems so ballad and past.

All along the piano whispers,
And for some reason,
The pianist has such conviction,
Even though I only listen when I break,
But I break often and monk myself towards redemption.
Yet,
Is it anywhere to be found?

As I drop a tab of reality under my tongue,
The spider webs of these corners are abandoned
For some breast feeding loser archangel.
And God walks out of the room
With a certain sense of defeat upon his lips.

Yet it is the excess
of forgiving nights,
briefly Interrupted
by sunstrokes on hairgelled heads and nyloned legs.
And so silent are the nights we yearn
For multiple tongues,
As we constipate our minds
Between redemption and group masturbation.

Where is the respectable silence?
Do we awake pernicious madness?
Or will this hair shed
All its tradition and Latin?

Mighty Cricket:
Shall you now sing the anthem of my ancient conscience?
After I have tried to blow and polish your crystal paintings?
Later I will lick the dust of my churches.
But will I find home?
Or home be fourlegged benches?
Anyway, you have never been of any help
But to whip the memory of my golden manger.

I will leave these keys to thump
An ill purpose
And a faithless prayer:
“Deliver us from mystics,
Hold us from deceiving.”

Yonder stands truth
With the patience of a grove.
She leaps
And leaps for us
From the beginning of our path,
She will wait
And wait in peace
For our addictive ego to retreat.

Be patient unaccepted semened faces!
Be patient you who’s words are raped and sentenced.
Be mindful
For your truth
Is nowhere to be found in the mighty cosmic gateways,
It is within all of your sweet pathetic faces.

Redemption is nothing but the search
Of what was lost in the process of finding,
And who said truth was more
Than simple yet repeatedly wounded solitude?

To a Wonderful Woman #2

Half Moon Bay, California
02/25/08

Vow at my doom
I was your cocoon.
Don’t mind my flesh
its not what it says.
Embrace these withered fists,
be stronger than me,
weep my retreat,
heal my disease.

Don’t be my shadow,
weave my Nirvana,
Don’t dwell on my past
it is what it was.
Send me out to the wild
when the time is right.
Ignore my intention
desire my redemption.
Don’t burn your suicide,
cease your vocation.
Review my success
in the lines of disgrace.

Pardon my mood
never is how it should.
Save one lock of my hair
for when I am not aware.
Vow at my doom
I was your cocoon.
Don’t grieve in my mourning,
just thank you for coming.

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