Getting My Poems Together And Burying Them In A Trunk

Getting My Poems Together And Burying Them In A Trunk

When I am at last fed up, with my
miserable shit-bit poet's life,
in the madness of this horribly twisted
thalidomide world;
I seek a place of refuge.

Searching for amulets to protect me.
A spell which will restore.
To take me far from sloganed commercials
which guarantee whiter teeth and where,
“Jesus saves” is only a fading verve
on a bumper sticker unread by distorted
gardens of “Mokes” and “Millies”, beaten old
and weary by bips and bops from everyday
existence. While each one of us stumbles,
seeking redemption, in voids of smoky
suffering at neighborhood bars.

I see them,
all without colour,
misshapen,
their moxie missing.
Staring at ballgame
after ballgame after ballgame
when the series
of the world is replayed along with
endless refills from whiskey shots
and cheap beer chasers.
At every season, every
change of channel
we smile aimlessly,
as if this was our own proscribed dose
of thorazine. Seeing only talking picture boxes
where Sadam Hussein makes his pilgrimage
to Graceland and John Hinckley vows
his eternal love as Brother Swaggert
repents his own
while Ted Kaczinski plots bombs and smiles.

24-7 cable channels constantly bring zeroness
and melancholy to my soul. I watch dim watt
lamps of seeming Asiatic sulphur burn my eyes.
But then again everything is turning Japanese,
except tabs of ecstacy taken to ferment our minds.
Smelling spent matches and charred tobacco
overwhelmed by disinfectant from uncleaned urinals.

And even that release of nicotine has been taken away
by do-gooders trying to clean our lungs and souls.
Regardless of how their help frustrates
causing more manic despondence.
Always returning to another glass,
another bottle, another toke, another hit,
another pill, another supposed escape.

Each episode fills me with anguished dreams.

And I am too desolate to write or even speak.

As flowering vowels strangle in my sighs of despair.

Just like the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti felt
when his young wife committed suicide.
Overcome with grief so that he buried
his most precious words of promise with her.
Taking to drink and drugs.
As if it would put an end
to suffering. Pain gnaws at me,
like rats
feeding on me while I listen to them scurry,
back and forth, tearing pieces of warm flesh from me.

And somehow, I think of getting my poems together
and burying them in a trunk.
Locking them away,
never to rise again in bright consonant air.

But eventually; I am always struck
by that image - Vincent’s bedraggled print,
hanging crinkled upon this barroom wall.
I can not tell you why it is there.
Unframed, unadorned, tacked to that place.
Among neon signs placed haphazardly
between faded old posters.
But, it is a clear space
in the midst of chaos.
And I remember about
the artist and his paintings of inspirational genius,
or was it glorious insanity?
Those frenzied
brushstrokes flaming bright yellow
and orange petals. And those shunned stalks,
suddenly foaming green and chartreuse.
Beneath his sun’s boiling cauldron
which poured down raw pigment,
on those
artful swatches of Arles,
as if a Being
was entering judgement on his mania.

And I recall the myth,
when I am about to bury myself in the grave
depression of wordlessness -
that consuming the seed of sunflowers,
somehow mutes the misery of man.