Okay, now you may be wondering what this section is all about. It’s simple really: over the years I attempted to write several poems that were related through a common theme. As you can see, I very rarely dabbled in this kind of poetry. However, I felt these two groups should be represented separately from my other works.
THE DREAM SERIES
As you will notice, the first poem in this series isn’t written toward anyone specific (at least not that I can remember), but from the second one on I intended to make each poem about an interaction with one specific person. Each poem was meant to have a dose of humor but also a moment of serious reflection. I wrote all of these in 1998, and until now I actually had forgotten them. Maybe it’s time to pick up with number five…
“Last Night I Had a Dream (i)”
Last night I had a dream
that we were perfect,
the world was perfect.
Wishes were tossed aside disregarded
forgotten scattered
like sand slipping from your hand.
And I,
I was the complimentary
king to your queen,
god to your goddess,
husband to your wife,
dark to your light,
hate to your love,
love to your hate.
Romance burned our hearts
and we rose purified from the fire
rising above it all
drifting so high that
not even the mountaintops
interrupted our sight. We saw the
sun and moon unite saw the tombs and cathedrals
crumbling into a halo of gold.
Our hands never lost sight of one another.
Sacred chants broke my skull, and who was there to
collect the prizes, the treasures from my head?
Pulsating inside me is a river of elation
waiting for me to swim in its majestic depths.
Yet even in the darkest shadows of its mystery I can still
see your eyes, your face, your figure can still feel
your embrace and only yours forever.
“Last Night I Had a Dream (ii)”
(Adalena Kavanagh)
You and I were on a couch
friendly again
cushions missing
springs sticking out
to locate their loneliness,
to protest their station in life.
Burned my retina on a falling star
and told you about it.
You showed sympathy, then said to me,
“Dad told me last night
that he’s bisexual. The three of us
(third person being your sister, I assumed)
were baking cookies all last night
when he just flat out told us…
yeah, we baked sixty-three cookies.”
And a pause came then, during which we heard
the television sigh, the television speak
a eulogy we once thought belonged to Blake.
“Yeah he told us some of his experiences,
it was really gross…
we made sixty-three cookies.”
And I with my oh so wise ass,
ass that had farted out a long stream of jokes
ever since I could talk…I said,
“Yuck! I don’t wanna hear about any homosexual encounters
that deal with your dad and sixty-three cookies!”
You, with a playful slap to my tummy,
crowned me idiot, but you didn’t mean it,
and we shared the same fate
to never awaken.
A sigh never contained
this much peace.
Your eyes, infused
with neon ages of lost Egyptian kings,
have never read my name since.
“Last Night I Had a Dream (iii)”
(Jill Hanifan)
We were enjoying arguments
in the naked classroom.
You were standing, I was sitting.
Momentarily lost in myself
I felt that
you and I were kindred spirits…
myself a weak torch striving to
burn away the tapestry
of hypocrisy, lies, betrayal…
wanting so desperately to be honest with y’all…
you the vision of a worldly, confident,
and well-adjusted station in life
that I wanted to reach.
Office hour madness followed, activated
when you showed me the picture
of the woman you were planning to marry.
I could see a truth in her eyes
that you somehow missed, so I
said shouted exclaimed howled,
“Jill, you can’t marry this woman!
She’s using you for your body!”
And without missing a beat you replied,
“I know, and that’s okay, because I’m
using her for her money.”
Nothing more was said.
Like a phantom I floated
out of the office, riding high on the waves
of some revelation
that I have yet to obtain,
and I sit here alone in my bedroom, smoking and
waiting to comprehend.
“Last Night I Had a Dream (iv)”
(Wayne Wehnau)
Fixing a majestic dream in my eyes,
the kind which ejaculated
purple clouds of information
like a vapor trail flowing through my head,
I was standing there in the living room
like a falling god, my kingdom
disintegrating with me.
You were there too
with your addiction to the physical world,
you were there with
your two-faced musclehead lingo.
Dada wizards ruled the television screen
although they didn’t even know the way
in which they twisted those crazy
satellite waves.
The eye of God is the eye of technology,
the robot deity studying our spirits
fluctuating and flowing
from one turmoil to the next.
My heart beating stronger with
laughter, I said in your presence,
“I’m gonna be eating some Chinese tonight…yeah,
her name is Cindy Lau.”
But the laughter broke while trying to enter
your iron ear. Just an innocent joke on
an old stereotype of me, ravaged by you.
“Why is everything a joke to you, Steve?”
you raged. “You’re always fuckin’ joking,
always laughing.”
And I paused…saddened, unable to
comprehend why, after all these years of
knowing my humorous nature, you got angry
and were trying to crush my spirit.
THE MIMIC SERIES
These poems were written for a class I had in college…which was actually taught by the lady who is featured in “Last Night I Had a Dream (iii).” In that class, Modern Poetry, we studied several poetic movements such as Dada and Surrealism, as well as certain specific poets like Johny Berryman, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath. This is how it worked: we had to take our poetry anthology home, read it, and then write a mimic of the movement/specific poet we had just read. What follows are the very same poems I submitted to that class. By the way, these did get graded…not on how good they were as poems but on how good they were as mimics. Not meaning to brag (but we all have to once in a while), but the lowest grade my mimics got was an A-.
“Expressionist”
Crazy caterpillar
crawl the distance
of 1,000 years.
-…___--….-..--.__..—
Stonehenge dreams
of Martian ecstasy.
Mangled hands reach out
to love my glass.
Pigs bleed
in sapphire dreams.
Let this sacrifice
wash all sin from me.
An intense sarcasm
that shares my
disease.
This knife,
dead under the sun,
cannot help me.
There is
only one outlet
to connect me
to my conscious mind.
Hazel mornings transform,
melt and fade,
seems they take forever…
only to suddenly solidify,
to become
a war-torn memory of me.
“Futurism”
my teeth crushing bones
devour myself
while a revolution
cracks the skin of the world.
Yes, a revolution! using words,
using sorcery
and chains.
We have become rigid,
we have become fixed,
we have become sand.
Statues made of flesh.
Until one day
the statues move.
They break the mold…the moment in time…
in which their creators
had once left them
forever frozen.
STANDING STILL MYSELF.
I collapse (stage left)
with the spotlights
burning my optic nerve.
Failing falling I twist time
to use it as I see fit.
“Forerunners”
Gods
fall
so distant
below
us, away from
us.
Upon HITTING the cement
their bones turn to powder.
Deep with my heart
I can see a frac ture there too
as all that precious crimson fluid
seeps out from smashed limbs.
The earth absorbs this liquid
(like some drunk swallowing his wine)
to heal its skin.
And this torment always haunts my dreams.
Absence of wisdom,
guiding light extinguished.
From the sky
I
we
beg you
to speak your name forgive our silence, our ignorance and
our isolation {{{insulated}}}
and killing one another.
Once words were our prisoners to expose shame and sorrow,
to promote a chance for change. Now they
escape us.
“Surrealist”
Countless deaths are measured out
in my teacup.
A buzzing noise rips across the sky…
erases my head…examines my teeth.
White Anglo number and letters
decorate her eyes exploring the wet grass.
Rich authoritative British voice,
sounding so full of knowledge
and addressing Chinese topics.
It makes the stars fall down.
It cripples the sky in its sorrow.
Distant shadows cannot crush me now,
not unless the pyramids
stop whispering secrets to me
when I eat, when I collide with supernovas.
“Negritude”
I am not moving
along these boulevards
unless something
refuses to give way.
When will the dull gray concrete,
drained of all life,
crack to reveal
the gold surface underneath?
I see their mouths
so animated
so full of righteousness
full of riches.
And where
are the dreams
that I once had?
They stole from me
when my fingers were weak
and their sticks
upon my head
sent my brain reeling.
“Objectivist”
The aging projectiles of misery
hit me-
different sidewalks of America
winding down beyond the
shadows
clutching their candles while
Manhattan tips the stars
turns them inside out
using all its
resources: its beggars,
its Chinatown gangs,
its street vendors and rapists
all occupying a space
in the catalog of fear
which I skimmed
while sirens screamed
around me, blood
decorating my hands
and the cries of
my victims’ agony
still dwelling in my ears.
“Berryman”
So simple, the answer Derek seeks.
A desire to move tongues, save time,
and drop the secrets from his mouth.
Not of him deny the power to shout
or the rusty memory of well-used Sheiks.
Today, he thinks, love could be mine.
We need your misery to fill our beds,
and Derek says he has no life to share.
-I need to break the silence once again,
the words I saved beneath my tongue begin
to weigh too heavy, filling up my head…
no other thoughts allowed to dwell here.
She keeps her wisdom glowing; let me see…
She keeps the sunlight captured in her eyes
of jade, the sacred sound of her voice pouring
into my spirit…keeps me flowing, flying…
forever living. She returns to me
the strength to lift my wings to the sky.
Inaccessible the joy is which
once gentle fingers could unwrap.
Now, mouth sewn shut and spirit diminished,
Derek believes all speech is finished,
yet he still seeks to defy and break the trap,
avoid the stuttering, shake away the nervous twitch.
“Ginsberg”
China your sorrow and wisdom forever inhabit my histories.
China your skull-goblets have become the only truth
that pour blood and agony in my ears.
I hear the peasants groaning, the monks meditating, your
emperors growing fat on greed.
China across a century I can see your hands building railroads.
I can see your youth breaking claypots of memory and
throwing all the shrapnel into seas of demons.
Money, money or we break your store goes the shakedown in Chinatown.
You should have heard them bitching in class today.
China I told them if they don’t like it here they should
go the fuck home they were not happy I felt not one
twitch of shame.
China you keep your people in two positions: bent over
or on their knees whichever suits your mood at that
swift moment in time when the stars all connect your
phone is ringing it is Clinton giving his support.
China you suck the marrow from the backbones of your people.
China if we turn your image inside-out we collect a
vast rainbow-kaleidoscopic variety of beauty clinging to
our brains yet how can you.
You defy our hopes for you, you need to change.
The world will not tolerate your evil forever.
You are getting prepared for the pyre.
Demolition of your dark core is just a peaceful demonstrator’s
death away, although you will never admit innocent blood
has burdened your soil.
China I took my first whack at the Great Wall with my
hammer and chisel today.
“Plath”
Even the teeth in my mouth cannot manage a decorative yearning.
Just a gasp or a yawn to illustrate
Who may burden the windowsill with breathing if rain comes-
A scent, a lovely scent
Bitterly received by
Ugly boy, me-
Nervous, with a stutter
Opening my garden, wanting to let her see.
Uprooted now by cruel black hands,
Oh no not now, what have I
Done to let the spears of pride strike home
In a field of murmurs, in a crypt of whispers.
“Eliot”
We must depart, you and I,
and disappear if we can,
if we are allowed.
If not you then at least I
must learn how to ravage the night
because I have felt too long
the weight of living.
In my dreams, the trees are bleeding again
while the harpies gleefully rip their bark-flesh.
These thoughts question my spirit
when I sleep…coming and going like rain.
How do I overcome this prison?
Whenever I try to move my limbs…
whenever I attempt to lift my tongue or
raise my voice to speak,
I feel the chains weighing me down.
This arc is a rainbow which only
gravity could draw against the sky,
the eternal dream.
And I…I have fallen
through the mystical days of anger,
passed all the tests and obstacles
that this straightjacket we call society forced on me.
Have I gained acceptance…have I dismembered myself?
Wo juede wode wenti…
Ich bin tot, Ich bin tot.
Let us eat our lunch with exact wisdom,
let our clothing fall away to show the truth.
THE “AMBER” SERIES
This will probably be the hardest group to explain, but I should start at the beginning. I don’t know how many people reading this are familiar with the role-playing game AMBER, which is based on a science fiction/fantasy series written by Roger Zelazny…probably no one, but it doesn’t matter. At any rate, this is how the creation of the following poems came about: one night several friends of mine were gathered together to play AMBER, and my friend James was the gamemaster. (If you don’t know what that is, it’s simply the person who runs the game.) James offered to give my friend Johnny and I more experience points if we wrote a poem that mentioned Amber in it. (Don’t worry about what “experience points” are or what “Amber” really is…they aren’t important to this story.) So Johnny and I wrote some funny poems that did involve Amber, but we were in a silly mood and started writing poems about our friends. And that is how the following little ditties were written. By the way, they were all composed on May 27, 1994.
“Li’l Kitty Kat”
Li’l kitty kat
Li’l kitty kat
His brains were bashed in by an Amber bat
Li’l kitty kat
Li’l kitty kat
When you sleep you look like an Amber mat
Li’l kitty kat
Li’l kitty kat
Amber exists where he once sat
Li’l kitty kat
Li’l kitty kat
You look like an Ambrite who’s really fat
“L’il Tweey Bird”
Li’l tweety bird
Li’l tweety bird
Your feathers shine like an Amber turd
Li’l tweety bird
Li’l tweety bird
Ambrites think you’re just too absurd
Li’l tweety bird
Li’l tweety bird
You sing for li’l Amber nerds
Li’l tweety bird
Li’l tweety bird
You don’t fly in li’l Amber herds
“Josh”
Josh Josh
Wears Oshkoshbgosh
Josh Josh
Can’t even mosh
Josh Josh
Through the puddles he’ll slosh
Josh Josh
Lost his virginity to a Macintosh
Josh Josh
Uses a condom for dental floss
“Adam”
Adam Adam
Don’t look straight at ‘em
Adam Adam
All those chicks…he hasn’t had ‘em
Adam Adam
It’s hard to make rhyming jokes ‘cos your name is Adam
Adam Adam
Your big tits I cannot fathom
Adam Adam
Doesn’t know a sir from a madam
“Steve”
Steve Steve
His virginity will never leave
Steve Steve
Upon butt dumplings he does feed
Steve Steve
Wipes his buttocks with his sleeve
“John”
John John
Likes to fuck his front yard lawn
John John
Raped a cow and then a fawn
John John
Named his prick after James Bond
John John
Forgot how to put his condom on
“Wayne”
Wayne Wayne
Pokes chickens on trains
Wayne Wayne
Likes to stroke his main vein
Wayne Wayne
Tried to fuck the rooster on the weathervane
Wayne Wayne
Pounds his crotch and feels no pain
