The Governed Body

Who here really gives a damn about them?
Consensus counted them among the dead
But that is from the outside looking in

View skewed through an archaic paradigm
Fabricated by a body of lies
When hunting a corpse just follow the flies
Behold the new century’s FRANKENSTEIN

Unworthy of the statement,
IT’S ALIVE!

Fight to the death for a last gasp of life
Yet, so eager to commit suicide
But moments away from the finish line

The Scars We Bear

My Blue,

I’m so sorry I know not what I do

Whatever this dark relapse cancer; black

How you could only get me to react

To dead things you attempted to bring back

I’ll scrape & claw through hell just to say that

Love laughs when life lives & like Lazarus

We bear witness to the grace of our GOD

Hope delivers a miracle that gives

Perhaps the happiness you seemed to miss

Lost in a blink & traded for a nod

 

My Blue,

How many times to tell you I am through

It really doesn’t matter what we do

Though I once swore I’d stick to you like glue

I’m now sorry that I ever knew you

Onto others as they’ve done onto you

 

My Blue,

I’m so sorry that I used to be me

& now too weak to allow you to leave

& now it’s so hard for you to believe

That hands so soft played such a part in this

Creating another life of sickness

Though we already know the excuses

The years of pain & vertigo circles

That social life always induces

Revolving psychological abuses

Onto others as they’ve done onto you

 

My Blue,

Though not every word we said were true

We’re sorry whatever we did to you

Her lips have turned asphyxiated-blue

His thoughts are projections of shades of blue

Look now as heaven slowly turns dark blue

ZENspeak Spoken Word volume 5

Hey fellow Word warriors.

Strange days around these parts. The final edition of the ZENspeak publication has arrived. This self publishing foray has been a trip. At first, I didn’t know what to think of self publishing. I am of the generation that thought, crazy though it may be, the artist was paid for his work, not the other way around. But in this age where everything is turned into a racket, it was silly to think that something as potentially commercial as writing, would be safe for long from the evil clutches of American marketing. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it will give volume to millions of voices that had otherwise never been heard. I thought self publishing could dilute the credibility of art, letting any Joe with a couple hundred dollars available, loose on the art scene. I thought the only people it really empowered were those with access to money. Thus the impoverished, were where they have always been, left in silence. I thought money would come to dictate art. But then I thought, that’s how things already are. I thought a lot of things. But here I am, self publishing. Maybe I thought wrong. I tell you what dear reader, in the last six months I’ve learned: editing, publishing, promoting, digital photography, editing digital video, and developing and publishing a web site. And of all of it, I can honestly say none is more daunting than the book’s formatting. Don’t say I didn’t warn you aspiring hacks.

The 5 edition of the ZENspeak spoken word features 4 poems including: HyperREALity Of The INNER City; The Magic Show; And She Says She Wants Darkness; Gothic America

HyperREALity Of The INNER City is the result of a prose/poetry hybrid I’ve been developing for years. This is nothing groundbreaking. Many have attempted this before me, arguably, Arthur Rimbaud to the best effect. Usually, this style has a phonic ring to it that enables the reader to identify the poetry embedded within it. I wanted to strip away all such poetic devices; no alliteration, consonance, half-false-full rhymes, anything that gives the piece poetic characteristics. But it can’t be read as straight prose either. I want the reader to feel this discord. It just doesn’t fit. It’s strange. The subject deals with the O.G.s of the inner cities. O.G. is an extravagant term. They are just bums that have been bumming for decades and have achieved a certain type of “hood fame” for basically just surviving fiend-dom. These old timers believe they are privy to a certain esoteric knowledge. That the youngsters just don’t know the secrets of the game the way that those that came before them knew the secrets of the game. But those secrets wind up being no more than lies and death, and they don’t come cheap.

The Magic Show rewords every bad relationship I’ve ever had the unfortunate luck of getting involved in. A particular one came to mind while penning this piece. It started out pleasant enough, with a girl who thought I was the cat’s meow. I always did these magic tricks for her. She’d go nuts for them and always try to get me to tell her how I did them. After a few months of tricks, I broke down and taught her the in/s and out/s of my magic. She never wanted to see any of those tricks again. She seemed mad, once she found out how simple the tricks were, and that there was a time when I had tricked her into believing in them. After we broke up, the whole relationship and how it turned out, seemed to be reflected by that lesson in magic. At first, it’s all sparks and intrigue; but, in the end, we fall for a trick, and once we know the trick, the magic is gone, never to be regained. I don’t stick to form and rhyme schemes very often. Show and Darkness are two of my better examples of such.

And She Says She Wants Darkness has been traveling with me for years. It has always been one of my favorites, but I never could find it a proper home. It was too short to stand on its own. When the ZENspeak book came along, I found a perfect fit. Darkness was born of a time that I was reading a lot of Milton and Plath. Milton’s blank verse was definitely rubbing off on me and Plath was a monstrous influence on me. When I read Plath, I feel as if I’ve been reduced to a child psychologically. She throws me into a world of boys and girls and daddies and mommies and everything seems normal on the surface, but there is a terrible distress bubbling under the surface. Darkness is a brief account of a girl that has a pretty uptown life, but she also has a second life, a darker life, a second face that no one from the uptown area has ever seen her wear.

Gothic America comes from my constant entanglement with the romantic literary movement. I wanted to illustrate the romanticism of the United States. Most Americans suffer from a romantic-self-aggrandizing. We believe that we are everything good that is holding this evil world together. That it is up to us to save the world. To give the world freedom. Even while we are destroying it. It’s not just that. Walk up to someone and ask them what they are. Bet they don’t say that they are American. You may hear, “I’m Italian, or German, or Dutch,” but you won’t hear, “Why silly sir, I am an American!” We blame our heritage for little quirks like our temper, or our inclination to gossip. Ever hear, “I just can’t control my anger, you know I’m Irish.” We remain connected to our cultures, but in a way that doesn’t require much leg work. We don’t practice the rituals and traditions that come along with a culture. We have a romantic sense of what it means to be German or Irish. All of this brought me to the funeral of Percy Shelley. To those that don’t know, Percy had drowned out at sea. Back then, a body found at sea was quarantined, not to leave the beach for the possibility of contagions. A small group of Percy’s inner circle collected on the beach, to burn his already decomposing body. This resulted in a story that has been dramatized to an effect that would make any true romantic proud. Some accounts tell us that Trelawny plucked Percy’s heart from the ashes of this raging fire and wrapped it in Percy’s poem Adonais. The heart, and its clever wrapping, were later to be sealed in Percy’s sarcophagus. The detail that his heart was wrapped in his poem, Adonais, is not wasted on those with even a cursory knowledge of Shelley’s work. Percy wrote Adonais as a tribute to the then, recently deceased John Keats. Keat’s tragic passing at such an early age, deeply affected Percy. Beautiful this symbolism may be, the real account differs slightly. By the time Trelawny reached for Percy’s heart, the organ was carbonized ash. The heart was not buried nor enshrined in a tomb, but was ultimately entrusted to Mary Shelley, who eventually passed the morbid keepsake to her and Percy’s son. With all this said, I thought of America, how she seems to be dying, and who can really face the reality of this. Who will light the great pyre for her? Where are our prophetic romantics now?

…and if you get a chance check out the ZENspeak book. There’s a twenty page preview floating around.

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/deadBEATpoetry

An American Rising

I The Circles Revisited I

I’ve convalesced with the best

You can see my footprints

Across the Margate Sands

Somehow lived to bear witness

To Eliot’s Waste Land

What I’ve known I now believe

A moment of dying

Turns eternity to beauty

Letters; shades of their former selves

Never fail to form the words of Gods

Archaic languages spoken fluently

Dreaming dead dreams of desolation

Obtained my very own, house of pain

See much denial but we’re all the same

Release me from the benediction of being alive

A blessing not always a guarantee life

We dead reside where death is the inspiration

No longer vainly, I commit suicide

Not for myself, but to acheive spirituality

Traverse through the means of verse

Descend into the limbo so rehearsed

Where there is nothing divine

In this dark comedy

Only the “comfort of being sad”

Converse in ranting-ramblings with the insane

Stained from the sins of an absent dad

Circling the seventh circle with Plath & Cobain

Soulless souls lost in this abyss

Said T.S.,

 He’d show me fear in a handful of dust

Forsaking the God in which they trust

& I nod down to number nine

There, politicians;  preacher/nationalists

Beckon me to invoke Ezra’s influence

Bestowing sight in a land of the blind

II Number 9 II

Then, as if struck by a swift-sudden chill

Groaning & shivering, almost seemed still

One man stood mumbling, looking out the gate

The dream through which moments ago I came

He began to stir, pacing & waiting

Noticing me, he approached debating,

& you! Do you know, what it is to be?

Oh Hannah, my Hannah, I’m so sorry…

Being in time, time in being; I wrote…

Never mind the swastikas on my coat,

I told a thousand Jews a thousand times,

Intended to change things from the inside.

Interest lost, he turned back for the door

Though he muttered, he spoke to me no more

I waded through vapor rising from ice

Bodies frozen still by their own device

& across this sheet was Ronnie Reagan

Freezing, begging, with the other masons

I neared the middle of the frozen room

There HE was feasting; guarding her blue tomb

You are the Beast & I am your disease.

I did as you pleased; me, you must release.

Must I now? Here you dictate what I need?

Best not hesitate! On your knees & plead.

But still quite curious, please do pray tell:

What would charm you from a warm home like hell?

I must confess, I sizzle like the best.

But I’ve nothing left & there’ll be no rest.

My suffering is, with or without you.

Turn me loose, I’ve given you more than due.

There lives no truth in the Father of Lies.

With that he stretched his mouth & outpoured flies

This buzzing a noise I did recognize

My alarm buzzed; the dream now realized

Ashes To Ashes III

The power of the prodigal son

He returns to resurface

As his life renewed begins to surge

How your home has missed you

Crying out to forgotten kingdoms

& you return with empty arms

But soon to be filled

For forget this unforgiving nepotism

& their esoteric whisperings

They fear that which has nothing to lose

& we’re penniless but priceless

For fire has tempered steel

We all wield the power to resurrect thyself

Can’t be explained until it’s learned

Until you are burned

Baptized through fire; my sins I will purge

I ascend from the circles

Back to this land of the truly lost

Entombed fabrication of commercial realities

Where every act of love has its cost

& it’s burying us alive

Here I find myself amongst

Manifestations of manufactured identities

I once mistook for individuality

Don’t step over that line

Your neighbor is watching

So soon it is that I curse my return

Sometimes a journey so dark

Can illuminate where a better life finds rest

Granting great passion to kings

Inspiring songs poetry sings

Those moments pop legends sing of great glory

But we, the weak

That sought little reward to no avail

We pursue the darker/deeper quest

Yet, one way or another

Lord of the kingdom or Prince of thieves

We all search for an empty Grail

& I am just too tired for their games

Not matter how eloquent

I leave with the loves lost too soon; leaving

For the shores of Avalon

To draw from its winter waters

To extinguish infernal burns

Go gently gather my ashes

From the lands they’ve been scattered

Collect them in a Grecian urn

END…

(excerpt from ZENspeak ©2013)

Buy ZENspeak publication now at:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/deadBEATpoetry

official website:

http://zenspeaknine.com/

The Ninth Circle

I.

I have convalesced with the best
You can see my footprints
Across the Margate Sands
Yet, somehow lived to bear witness
To Eliot’s Waste Land
What I’ve known I now believe
The poetry of dying becomes a thing of beauty
Agnostic letters forming the words of Gods
An archaic language still spoken fluently
By dreaming the dead dreams of desolation
Obtained my very own house of pain
But I must set adrift from this harbor of shame
To be released from the benediction of being alive
A blessing not always guaranteeing life
I must reside where death can be an inspiration
No longer vainly, I commit suicide for spirituality
By traversing through the means of verse
I descend into limbo & purgatory
Where there is NOTHING divine
In this dark comedy
Only the “comfort of being sad”
Accompanied by the ramblings of the insane
Schooled by the inherited sins from an absent dad
Circling the seventh circle with Plath and Cobain
Soulless souls lost in this abyss
Nodding down to number nine
Where politicians preach with the nationalists
Which makes me recall Ezra’s influence
Allowing me to see where I once was blind

II.

Then, as if stricken by a sudden chill
Groaning the only movement, all seemed still
A man stood mumbling, looking out the gate
The gate through which moments ago I came
He began to stir, pacing and waiting
Noticing me, he approached debating,

“And you! Do you know what is is, to be?
Oh Hannah, my Hannah I’m so sorry…
Being in time, time in being; I wrote…
Never mind the swastikas on my coat,
I told a thousand Jews a thousand times,
Intended to change things from the inside”

Interest lost, he turned back for the door
Though he muttered, he spoke to me no more

I waded through vapor rising from ice
Bodies frozen still by their own device
& across the sheet was Ronnie Reagan
Freezing, begging with the other masons
I neared the middle of the frozen room
There He was feasting; guarding His blue tomb

“You are the Beast and I am your disease.
I did as you pleased; me, you must now release.”

“Must I now? You dictate what I need?
Don’t hesitate! For on your fear I feed.
But this is quite curious, please do tell:
What would stray you from a warm home like hell?”

“I must confess, I sizzled with the best.
I’ve nothing left and I’ll never have rest.
My suffering is, with or without you.
Turn me loose, I’ve given you your due.
Your not my Father, just dad, Prince of Lies.”

With that he stretched his mouth and out poured flies
Their buzzing a noise I did recognize
My alarm buzzed, and the dream, realized

III.

The power of the prodigal son returns
As a life renewed begins to surge
Call out to the forgotten kingdoms of heavenly affluence
Granting the power to resurrect thyself
Baptized by fire; my own sins I will purge
I ascend from the circles
Back to this land of the truly lost
The entombed fabrication of commercial reality
Where every act of love has its cost
Here I find myself amongst
A manifestation of manufactured identities
That I once gravely mistook for individuality
So soon it is that I curse my return
Sometimes a journey so dark
Can illuminate where fear finds its rest
Thus granting a great passion to kings
Generating the songs of which the poets sing
Seeking an eternal reward with little avail
We all must pursue this empty quest
While we search for our Holy Grail
Those loves lost too soon; leaving
For the shores of Avalon
I draw from its waters
To extinguish my infernal burns
I gently gather my ashes
From the lands they’ve been scattered
Collecting them in a Grecian urn

http://zenspeaknine.com/