Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
All comedy, all tragedy. . . .
In the Beginning GOD created the Heavens & the Earth
In the Beginning GOD created the Heavens & the Earth
Did He put His head in His hands when He realized what it was worth
All of the sorrows, all of the sin
All of the hatred, pain w/o end
In the Beginning GOD created the Heavens & the Earth
Next GOD separated the Night from the Day
Next GOD separated the Dark from the Light
Did He anguish over whether He'd gotten it right
Back-stabbing angels, original sin
If He could do you think He would,
Do you think He should do it again
Next GOD separated the Night from the Day
Soon came the day that GOD made a Man
Maybe just for kicks, maybe some deeper plan
But Man is an atom on a speck in a mote
God runs a whole universe mister - that's all she wrote
"To say nothing of God is not to say that God is nothing."
- ROBERT T. PENNOCK
The Cattle of the Sun
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I was digging in the cemetery, plowing up the past. Bones
Came flipping out at me, furious & fast. I
Wanted it to end, but I wanted it to last.
Digging in the cemetery, plowing up the past.
You must remember this:
Power has a brutal logic that morality will not deflect. We
Rewind the video to find a scene that hasn't happened yet. Long
Lives evolve & mutate 'til there's nothing to protect you from a
Long-forgotten land mine or a fatal character defect.
We must rustle the cattle of the sun in
Preparation for the feast to come. The
Chimes will sound, the blood will run when we
Rustle the cattle of the sun.
Throwing dice w/the Devil, wagering my soul. My watch was
Beating wildly, my heart ticking slow. I'd
Rather not stay here, but where else would I go?
Throwing dice w/the Devil, wagering my soul.
Life is long, too long, maybe, or our view of intervals too narrow. We are
Swaddled in violent entanglements, lingering traces of time's trickery. Coffee
Piping hot & pie & unholy ministry. What
Random misery, what derangements await us,
Oh. . . .
These faces are so impenetrable.
Fade in on dark headstones in dense fog. A
Shadow disengages itself from the grave,
Flash of silvery light.
There are thousands of shadows of men waiting,
Waiting for a golden dawn to come.
I was digging in the cemetery, plowing up the past. Bones
Came flipping out at me, furious & fast. I
Wanted it to end, but I wanted it to last.
Digging in the cemetery, plowing up the past.
The Careless Lover and the Deep Lake
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Casual rover near the watchful lake,
You tarry, skipping stones across its skin,
Heedless of each perilous step you take.
Ripples extend and then founder again.
Carillon rivulets duly record
Eternal epochs, while in shallow pools
You bathe. Dripping memories, turn toward
Pursuit of transient acclaim and jewels.
But I would see you swim beyond shore's view
And dive beneath the cobalt waves until,
Passing night's portal, golden light pours through,
Disclosing eons we each instant kill.
Devotion awaits; discard suspicions:
Unfathomable love sans dissentions.
Valley of Roses
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Been walking thru the valley of roses under dark skies
Cold wind in my collar, ears stuffed w/lies
Walking thru the valley of roses under dark, dark skies
Thinking hard on the riddles in your eyes
Gonna sit right down under a weeping willow
Rich soil is my bed & take a stone for my pillow
Sit right down under a weeping willow
& I won't study war no more
Been walking thru the valley of roses under dark skies
These shocking allegations no longer come as a surprise
Walking on eggshells under dark, dark skies
A thief in a priest's disguise
The executioner's a shadow against the setting sun
But for the grace of God he thinks look how all the criminals run
Lives collide like billiard balls behind marble walls in lecture halls & shopping malls
Towing debris for years & tattered fears stained in sloppy tears
Running blind thru razor fences w/proud disdain for mortal consequences
The ice man cometh cometh
The ice man cometh cometh coming down
The ice man cometh the ice man cometh
Feel the sun's warmth all around
Been walking thru the valley of roses under dark skies
I seek no blame or cause or fault
Walking thru the valley of roses under dark, dark skies
I lift my eyes to Heaven's luminous vault
The Stars of Your Face
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In the vitreous darkness of wintry night,
When the olive-colored moon remains yet unborn,
Stars weave weird paths thru twisted spacetime
In the violence of nativity & the silence of icy locality,
Piercing the gloaming, glittering on
Time's broken foamy bracken.
As I stare back up into the unblinking countenance of God,
Embryonic memories of awakenings rattle thru old neural labyrinths,
Lightening traceries of nascent opalescent cranial sutures,
Soft skulls shimmer, delicate coral, warm, salty pulse.
These legions of spear-bearers descend en masse,
Swarms of stinging insects, ancestral hordes of debts unmitigated,
Fire & blood dazzle adamantine weapon points
In the cemetery hour of shock-sharpened senses.
I recall the electric surge that threatened to carbonize fragile flesh,
The furiously insistent magnetism compelling anatomic coalition
& the vital devastation of two phantoms in contact,
Solidifying the point of intersection & discerning only then
The insubstantiality of all corporeal concerns.
I have witnessed the same swarms of astral configurations in your eyes.
I have drowned in the galaxies coiled 'round your heart.
I have drunk from the tides of wine that pool in your blood.
I have honored the divine in the lines of your palm
& deep w/in concentric stratums of your sacred pearl of sentience.
There, I have caught fleeting glimpses of myself.
How then could I not love you, my wife, my destiny, my universe?
You are my heart, my soul, the core of my own world.
How could I profane the temple of our troth?
That narrow dividing synapse, elaborate fissure, that disjoins us houses the
Mainspring of Creation.
Our love is unfathomable, a savage hawk in flight,
An eternal sandstorm continuously rewriting the globe,
Infinite waves intersecting on the sea.
All winds blow from that infinitesimal fount,
All songs sound from the trumpet of our love.
All life springs from that bubbling well,
All possibility ensues when I'm close to you.
For you are the stars I stare in the night.
You are the inexplicable future I'm forever chasing.
You are the essence of my very own being,
In sickness, in health,
In poverty, in wealth,
No thing in this world has any convincing reality to me
But you.
Atoms
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I am a witness the scene of the crime
I am a chronicle, sign of the time
Heed my testimony, these things I felt & saw
My battle wounds are fresh, my emotions raw
The continents are shattering, refugees scatter in all directions like wild, maddened ants
Economists chatter in nonsense sentences, interest rates stumbling thru a dangerous dance
Disease flames thru desiccated flesh, reduces species beyond recovery
The atmosphere evaporates & cancer rates tempt pharmaceutical companies to pursue old discoveries
Sweat shops, cloned crops, the Dow drops, grunge rocks
Digital pagers, new agers, raised minimum wagers, plugged in web pagers
Karnal bunt, poached elephant, the President says: "Let me be blunt"
Downsizing, economizing, executives rising take to philosophizing
Domestic terrorism, deregulation
Racial schism, hostage negotiation
Nuclear deterrence, plutonium smuggling, struggling to not fall down
Savage children, insane clerics
Myopic pundits, doomed heretics
Tropical jungles burning, all the men I ever admired turning cartwheels in their graves
Jesus saves, Allah rules, locker arsenals in the schools, dropping smart drugs, communal cerebration industrial raves
Jesus rises from the dead, lands a book deal, looks ahead to the screen play & summer box-office receipts
I've seen a million miles, a million rules, a million simulated smiles, a million earnest fools, a million instances of self-deceit
Progress stops, the unraveling starts
Feel your atoms fly apart
Withdraw your savings & spend
This world's been condemned
But we may yet meet again my friend
Some sunny day
I am a witness the scene of the crime
I am a chronicle, sign of the time
Heed my testimony, these things I felt & saw
My battle wounds are fresh, my emotions raw
A Poem w/o Words
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The sea heaves as sloshing wine, bloody red w/foam.
Salt burns the nostrils under an old lactic saffron moon.
Trekking along the springing edge, sand crunching underfoot,
I re-live lost desert nights w/honed vistas of inconceivable clarity.
The hiss of surge, spitting retreat of brine, the smell of driftwood smoke
Conspire to sear unsuspecting nerves, dispatch inflamed coursers thru my veins.
You crawled out of Earth like a poem w/o words.
But no Sea Goddess rises to my redemption. Stars turn their backs on me.
I am a treasure map that's torn in two.
I am a rusted anchor on the floor of the sea.
I am cast adrift on melancholy & bitter memory.
How can these eyes be now so dimmed?
Luna haul your glistening nets back out to the Deep.
My hands are now tired & soon I shall sleep.
Annals of the Dead
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Have you opened & read the Annals of the Dead?
I have.
Have you perused the catalogs of human deformation?
Twisted limbs, stunted growth, splayed rib cages, bulging skulls,
Horrific, naked human flesh.
We are too human, I sometimes think.
How can these monsters & freaks arrange their lives?
They are catastrophes of biochemistry.
They dwell in a realm of experience beyond our ken, & yet
They are no less real than we.
They eat & breathe. They endorse checks.
Their homes are air conditioned.
Have you watched us tremble in pain?
& do you feel no shame?
Have you enumerated the rashes that deform the skin?
I have.
Have you tabulated sexually-transmitted infections,
The curse of desire & love?
How about the parasites, the amoebae, the tapeworms,
The flukes consuming the liver & lungs?
Would you walk w/the meningococcus?
What of Haemophilus?
Have you watched a fish-infant gulping air,
Its insides crawling w/certain death?
I have.
I have swallowed it all up like a hypnotic motion picture
Up for every important award.
The foreign director splashes a dazzling smile for the flash cameras.
His celebrity status ignites the idiot night.
We've all been infected w/a terminal disease, a
Familiar but nameless bacillus.
We are all the damned, cast adrift.
Sometimes we celebrate. Sometimes we cry.
Always we die.
Have you no pity all?
At the least reserve your judgment & mark our progress
As we float down this dark river in fever.
Record the voices of the dead.
These are the only voices which can teach us
The fragile wisdom of spirit & flesh.
Listen.
Have you opened & read the Annals of the Dead?
I have.
Rock & Bone
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
'There is no normal to get back to.'
The pestilence abides.
It is patient & persistent.
This smiling face masks dread of
Lingering sickness.
What brutal, emotion-depleting task
Awaits the optimist in the land of
Rock & bone?
Now, everything whirls about
A precessing axis.
Molecular structures fly apart,
The heartbeat fails, the soul's exhaled.
Disembodied spirit voices wail,
Grief stuttered past splintered teeth.
The eye of the insane god blinks. Chandeliers
Clink, cut glass trembles in tectonic vibration.
The veils are down now &
Everything is strangely. . . .unchanged.
These microscopic legions unleashed & unfenced,
The deluge of irrationality, the
Biological slaughter of the sinless:
There is nothing to forgive,
No transgression you may repent.
This is the train wreck in the pupil of the eye of the sun.
This, the bursting pulp around the knife attack, the
Final dissolution of faith.
Speak not of 'back to normal' to me.
& all of the lives which you have constructed
Have dried up & are lost to the breeze.
All the lies which bring us so much comfort
Are fallen autumnal leaves.
All of the dying, suffering voices affirm the worm
Who's waiting in the wings.
Wine & poison are grown indistinguishable, as are
Loaves of bread & stone.
Slowly burn your candle down
In the land of rock & bone.
Theater of the Insane
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
These words & worlds are stolen from us.
Now lost, they cannot even be imagined,
Much less recalled.
The Past, our executioner:
Bound in looping chains of
Damnable juggernaut clockwork DNA.
The Sun was swallowed while we were astray in Dreamville.
Blood freely runs w/o
Conscience in the lucent geometry
Of cruel perfection, of impossible logic.
Suppose for a moment there is no cure.
Suppose there is no cause.
No reason,
Only why w/o because,
Only genes & dazzlingly crushed consciousness
Hurtled against the blood-stained & brain-caked wall of
Space & time.
Feral in exhaustion. . . .the mind asunder & broken. . . .the beast paces in his sterile cage. . . .sniffs the anesthetized air. . . .information comes in defined packets. . . .munitions in precision jackets. . . .warfare promptly justified. . . .you run you hide. . . .watch your back no one on your side. . . .flowers fed on sanguine pools. . . .cactus thorn pushed thru your thumb. . . .afterglow on damaged retina. . . .made to swallow pills of unknown efficacy. . . .treating an imperceptible malady. . . .trying to believe the unbelievable. . . .trying to deceive self to relieve sense of impending doom. . . .trying to stop the war w/a peace bomb. . . .sobbing in inner chamber of the heart.
Planets atoms & magnetic fields. . . .spirals of unwound DNA. . . .miles of optical fiber snake in & out of technological decay. . . .pounding surge. . . .drowning in miscommunication. . . .all the lines are down. . . .shredded w/in the core of the pulsing star. . . .breaded & served up w/staring eyes.
The invisible monster at the hub of the city. . . .the crashing commercial passenger jet. . . .jabbering skull in taxi cab. . . .exchange of hard currency for goods & services rendered. . . .get me out of this space. . . .fallen thru holes in the ocean. . . .all vital juices sucked out. . . .screaming for solitude for silence. . . .seeking to gather up scattered fragments. . . .to recover memory these things I can't afford to forget. . . .the little stealer of lifetimes. . . .the small griffin by the bedpost. . . .come to gnaw on remembrance.
Though you might mistake me for human. . . .I'm just a shell. . . .I yearn for beach smoke & ritual fire. . . .I burn for neurochemical desire. . . .to see alien colors dancing. . . .romancing strangers & swallowing their eyeballs. . . .exhausted & worn out. . . .too tired to recall whatever I came to doubt.
Relays chatter,
Clatter, pass the baton from state to state.
Mind cannot be created or erased.
Spiritual mutation. We are
One sparkling, shimmering superintendence
Subsuming this flawed spectacle,
Theater of the Insane.
Too Much Experiences
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
What I really want is this:
A long journey, solitary,
Which ends in a desert of misshapen rock & cliff
Sandstone towers, red ochre, under plain navy skies
W/o clouds or contrails
Only stillness-
No intrusion.
Scarlet demons bleeding ruby irradiation
Multiply-articulated night-lights from Hell
W/in misty vortex, bronze-rust phantasmagoria
Aquamarine luster
(The disease hits the pores)
Dirty peasants haunt me, disembodied phantoms
The tail-ends of the dead, smoke curls as from
Crushed ends of expiring cigarettes,
Unexpectedly their vital prejudices retained.
I, drunk on data, excess imagery, my
Spirit must be fractured, ruptured. I
Fear the apparent imminent unveiling dance
About the shuddering edges of reality,
Tiny tongues of hungry, happy flame.
Prehistoric tree, gnarled phalanges desperate to catch
Or else be flung to
Chaos, to progress.
Old laws of physics spinning deep in the mud,
Twisted up neatly w/in perfect bud
Of a rose which threatens maturity.
Ocean waves, lambent, heavy air, which swell - too slowly,
Massive. Beneath, a yellow presence rising bulk.
Lightning flash hits the promontory - too silent.
One old man who stands there in brown robes,
His arms, still strong, are spread wide
To raise a power from beyond
Invisible tide.
I have read. . . .Too much, methinks.
Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Weinberg, Hut & Rees
I do not fear Ice-9
I fear vacuum decay triggered w/in cyclotrons
I fear assimilation by database
To be or not to be. . . .
I fear other possibilities.
I am grown sick experimenting on the paths of wisdom
Pale vomit heaves w/secret moons which we may not know
Stoned on senses too long deranged
On poetry, on poverty, on painting, on Siddartha, on Christ
(On Comet, on Cupid. . . .etc)
Inspecting individual bricks of a rotting lighthouse
Too many investigations that sift down to mere sand
The living fruit sliced open in arrogant dissection
Too rich this fruit, too warm fleshy steaming
What wretched creature stirs on the shell-strewn shore?
What conscious cataclysm contracts to scratch the dark door?
Yes. . . .
I am sick in time
I am sick in time
I am pierced thru the soul
Pursue no vain inquiries
You'd prefer to not know
Eternal eyes & ears to slip
Dewy slime along spider web of bone
Now gentle music roars moaning agony me &
Molecular forces labor to desecrate chastity
My fingers shattered stone.
All slips into an acid ocean
Motion of glass snakes shake saw blade grass
Devour beating hearts slow & grow,
Mutate into peacock w/human face & lips that whisper
'Your enemy draws nigh & will eat you alive.'
My senses are broken strings suspended
Dust motes worry about statistics & Gauss
The phantoms wander about w/o discernible purpose.
The famous acrobat plunging in fatal flames, but
The pools of time are deep &
Space endures profane assaults on names.
Fly beyond repetitious cycles, rotation
Beyond fraudulent jugglers & silvery spheres of art
The maddening mathematical tolling bells
Drag sore belly across foreign dirt & grit
Pull leathery orbs from scorched sockets &
Put them in your flannel pockets.
Slice clean thru wagging, bitter tongue
Immerse the splattered chassis in the fiery cauldron
From which glowing Creation's cautiously w/drawn.
Not to be re-forged
Not to be remade, anew
Not to suffer to be reborn
To fuse w/sterile, lifeless soil & twist,
To integrate, to grow inert,
Deny to comply, yet fail to resist
Embrace the violent maelstrom
At the core of the worm
To swallow one's tail
The fetus turns w/in,
Blinks:
Unexist.
In Space
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
You're a wrathful meteor
Streaking thru the star-swept ceiling
W/all your senses reeling
Your logic circuits melted
& I can't forget you
But when I try to catch you
You burn searing holes thru my soul
You're a violent thunderstorm
Kicking scarlet sparks across the pristine desert
W/an advance army of whirling dervishes
Blazing lightning bolts rise from your tortured eyes
Ripping thru hot & crystalline skies
To strike me where it hurts the most
You dissolve from my fingers just like a ghost
You're a power to be reckoned with
Rising like Lazarus every morning the way you do
Nothing less than Heaven's glory fit to adorn the likes of you
A miracle incarnate w/your heart titanium encased
When I advance upon that sanctified chamber
You respond w/alarms & celestial anger
Where I once found faith now lies coiled danger
Am I another perilous animal
Injured in some half-forgotten foreign warfare
W/a belly wound from the blade of an unclean corsair
You know what they say about wounded animals
You contemplate coming near me
You wonder should you fear me
You perceive the paradox quite clearly
I'm a demon from the underworld
I devour goodness & light for my breakfasts
Then explode unprovoked & leave no living witnesses
I make trust seem such a challenge
A blade precisely slicing thru a brain exact
Can you bridge the chasm to make contact
There's no such clause inside the contract
Or maybe I'm a predatory bird
Who's hanging on your every word
Waiting for the chance to go for the liver
Yes I have seen your suffering
Your death-stuffed thoughts, your veins in knots
The living corpse that daily rots & nightly heals again
I have slipped inside your skin
But we're two desperate astronauts
Tumbling uncontrolled thru space, our capsule lost
There's no hope of rescue
We thought we saw the manna rain down
Maybe it was brimstone, the fearsome way it came down
& the unmistakable way it chars the throat
Yes you & I are lost in space
Running out of air & out of grace
I tell you that the time has come
The time when we must change into something new
Something like nothing this world ever knew before
The time has come to close our eyes & hurl ourselves into the open skies
W/no one there to catch us
No more touch-up paint & patches
No more playing in the fireworks factory w/matches
I am not your parents
I am not the model of perfection that sulks inside your skull
& you are not my puppet
You are not another of my servants
This is no time for patriotism or foreign currencies
This endless parade of emergencies is killing everything we stand for
This is not about our countries
This is not about kindergarten heroes
It's like adding endless lines of zeroes
What's the point when you know where that will lead us
It's a gluttonous leech that bleeds us
The time has come to change
I will leave behind the wounded beast
You will leave behind your relic collection
We will leave behind the past
Look one last time w/fondness on what brought us to this point
Then leave behind the past
Together we can build something new
Something that will not scare you
You & I are one thing
You & I are a sovereign country
We are diminished when we're apart
The time has come for what's past to end
The time has come for you & I
To fall in love again
It's Too Late
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Hangin' 'round these premises w/uninvited eyes
Gimmie cornbread 'cause I'm hungry
I'll give you salt water 'cause you're dry
The stars & stripes are fallen
Country's blown to dust
Mule's dead by the roadside
Plow's devoured by rust
Season of silence
Season of tricksters
Blood on the sleeves
Season of whispers
Call up the preacher
Call up the ring-bearer
Season of love becomes the
Season of terror
Seen a shadow in the field
Seen my brother in the mud
Seen a shadow in the field
Tears come down in flood
Too much desolation
Too much despair
Too much desolation
Too much despair
Too much of this world extinguished
Too much goin' nowhere
See them big trucks rollin'
You know you gotta hop 'em
Some things go so far
You just gotta stop 'em
Give my regards to my loved ones
Never thought to shame 'em
But it's too late for me now
Tell them I don't blame 'em
Proteus
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Melting in & out of reason
Slipping thru each season
This hard logic is our treason
Breaking time in murder holes
Extruding vital pulsations thru narrow-mouthed ducts
The seed conveyed in milky mucus
Swallowing the blazing loops & logos
Each corporation w/its corporate font
Beer cans tipped in the high saw grass
Wind flickering 30 years in a tree like shredded rags
Families clasp hands to cross the street
Fathers carry babies
White clouds drifting w/o purpose
Wild rattle of the basket wheel
One soul one soul one soul
I can't find myself
I'm scattered in too many places
Distributed thru foreign memories
Bit by bit
Descended down too many lifetimes
Uncatalogued triumphs & crimes
I don't come to you in love or hate or friendship or vengeance
Did I drown vainly expecting rescue
I could bite these fingers off
I could devour your body
You pass w/in you mix you bleed
You merge your blood in my blood
Wine swirls into the water clear & clean
Seawater tides & Mother Moon night
These eyes pull down stellar membranes
A cool spread to submerge these cruel contemplations
These stinking organic molecules
This bilious eruption this disgorged effluvial suspension
This bitter chalice of lymph I'm forever quaffing
These hours like wayward olives
Plucked out green eyes rolling
These people & their brutish telephones
This asphalt these aching bones
This gridlock of reverence these dry wildflowers
The sputtering engine the billowing carbon dioxide
Greenhouse gasses
Concealing sun glasses
Primitive masks & icons & walls & artifice
If I could crack open your skull
If I could hack off your limbs
If I could set these palm trees ablaze
Screaming torches against the nightmare
And ignite these vulgar cities
Then you could name me basilisk
So that I'd fit in your jigsaw puzzle
The picture could paint itself for you of
The righteousness of God
If I could poison your wells
And contaminate your crops
How is it we can go on being shocked by the
Fragility of flesh
I'm sick I'm sick
I'm dying
Dissolving slowly in acid
Drip by drip
Somebody get me a goddess quick who
Weeps for humanity
I wish that I could purge myself of
The indexed evils of men
A black & tarry liquid substance would pass
Forever from these lips
Smells of bile & napalm & clamorous pleas of captured soldiers
Their nights become photographic negatives
Their eyelids snipped precisely away reveal
Pale & wet inside clam shell
Trembles & softly throbbing
To sleep the deep sleep of whales
Of what do whales dream?
I don't mind dangling in this razor wire
I don't mind the blood & pain
I recollect the pyramids & the paintings of
The torments of the saints & the golden light
Bizarre chimeras, winged fiends
The serpents & the smoke that boil up from the pit
Oh:
I swam in your eyes
My nerves synapsed w/yours
I remember distinctly your cells, your smells
I remember the secret kingdom
We required no wedding bells
Now I am an erased word
Now I am a voice emanating from rusted bicycle chain
I am ice tumbling down thru space &
I am these trees
I am concrete
I am these sparrows so briefly to fly
Bubbles in a marshy swamp
I am you
I am you
Timeless tales of Aesop
Too complicated for you to get your arms around
Everything is wiped out
Living on borrowed time
We open pages between protons
Firebomb soft civilian targets
We eat ourselves
Cannibals & lechers
All the edges are grown too straight
The corners are too sharp
Am I seeing it too clearly
Should my vision be more bleary
Too much UV protection
Should I take pills for correction
Patience
Forgiveness
Respect
I'm weak I'm sick
I haven't eaten in days
The Book of Proverbs sounds like a commercial
Give me Ecclesiastics any day
My mitochondria are stressing
I imagine free radicals punching holes
W/in my churning liver
Mix spit w/dirt & make a man
Or clay & dragon blood
I'm protracted thru infinity
Spread flat across a neutron star
Radio chatter lost beyond the galactic edge
I'm a panting fish dying in a frightened child's hand
Inches from the edge of land
I'm a premie w/internal organs twisted under God's screwdriver
I'm an obsolete motherboard
Streaks of light
Ribbons of light
Swarms of embers glimmering
Pattern against the murkiness
Hope against the soullessness
Holiness holiness or just
The night-bombing of Hamburg
If I could be floating like a flag
Like a pennant high above the ground
Against a blue summer sky
If I could hear the playground sounds
Chains of swings rhythmic creaking
Oh least common of all denominators
How do I abhor thee?
Let me count the ways
Am I splitting under pressure
Closing in on nirvana
Am I dying w/o a witness
Am I striving for forgiveness
Am I riding on a fast train
As I spiral out of my brain
Useless death, unnecessary suffering
Human weakness of mind & heart
Making the monumental reach for
The too mundane
We build a broken monster
Too flawed to take a step
& justify short-sightedness
In columns of profits & loss
Brave barrel-chested soldier
Air & bone behind your eyeglasses
Pretty girl w/tired child
Tugging your hand homeward
Security guards roaming the halls
Vigilant for the next offender
Forgotten plant w/curled leaves
Silent witness of barren commerce
I've grown new eyes
I've grown new ears
In this hypervision
Everything comes on a bit too clear
I could rip out your heart & lungs now
Wouldn't mean a thing
You see, you can't really kill anything
All this sweat all this mud
All this semen all this blood
Just regard this creature you've created
& you w/o a clue
I'm a smoky cauldron
I'm the witch's brew
I want to spit
I want to \\\\
I want to \\\\
I want to \\\\ you out of the world
I want to reconstruct the fabric of time until
You never were
The gods are athirst
W/craving for blood
The soil cries out for a new dialectic
Of human grandeur & misery
You are diamonds you are jewels
You are sap in amazon vine
You are leeches you are citrus
You are radiator steam thrashing from a car crash
You are diaper rash
You are well-circulated hard cash
You are the sun & you are the moon
You are my true love
You are a sand dune
Here one day gone the next
Your face in perpetual motion
Blowing away from rills in single grains
Against luxurious skies
I swam in your veins
I walked in your poor muscles
I rolled around in your belly
I flew w/your wings
I laid slain pheasants before you
I licked your wounds &
I washed your feet
I celebrated you in victory
I splinter in your defeat
One soul one soul
We can't see far enough in time & place
Prisoners of chemical syllogism
Baubles of biology
Jerked like marionettes
Creating fictions of loyalty
A flexible system of mutual fealty
As we bubble & hiss in the pot
Collisions of vegetable & meat
Under amorally expressionless celestial canopy
We're one thing
You try so hard to differentiate
Pick apart the good & bad
To recapture a moment that we had
But that corpse is rotten
Don't tell me I've forgotten how it used to be
You can't distinguish health from ill
Secure in the faith that the time that you kill
Does no injury to eternity
Only dry sticks rattle inside my chest
Now grown eternal as stone
You may find me still sitting on this bench
A couple billion years from now
These brains & minds & souls bend symbols
Into origami simple physical laws prohibit
Justice is a happy pastime between wars
When hard truth reasserts its dominion
Crimes must be punished not to advance probity
But only to maintain law one more day
You were a fool when you broke the rule
& now it's time for you to pay
& I am this bush
& I am this tree
& I am this throne
I am the blue sea
I am the mountain
I am the fire
I am the breeze that can
Carry you higher
I am creation
I am destruction
I am the bandage
I am the truncheon
I'm lost in the sky
Am I under the chair
Am I woven thru the bristles when
You brush your hair
I am the song that you'll never forget
I am the nagging doubt when you bite your lip
I am the insect
I am the groan
I am the dynamite
I am the bank loan
I am a miser
I am much wiser
Than you'll ever be
I am the pine tree
The red wine that used to be
The air in the tire
The fork & the knife
The hunger that engulfs you
& chews your life
I am the crunch of the boot in the sand
I am the truth that you can't stand
I am broken
I am exploded
I am the living dead
I am the blinding aftershock
That shines on in your head
I am the moon
I am the sun
I am the stars
I am the one
I love you so
I love you so
I'm a bomb
I'm exploding
I'm poisoned
I'm expired
If I had a bitch-shaped knife
I'd cut you out of my chest
I don't know what I'll become
Now I am nothing
Just a vapor
Maybe some salt
Even I don't feel me here
I return to the holy place
I am amazed again that you can't tell you perished
Pools & fountains in the desert
I must arrange a ceremony
Suitable for your remembrance
In this holy place holy place
May God restore my soul
I rock back & forth
Back & forth
My memories are excessive
Exquisite
Recollections of velvet lips & whispers - do not put to voice our secret
We transcended time & space
& this place is now become a shrine
Don't speak it aloud
False vacuum undulates pregnant w/potentialities
Brings forth the particle zoo
& all the fractals one physics can muster
Leaves us dangling under heroic star cluster
There'll be no duplicity in these querulous times
You can deny complicity or confess your crimes
The Freeze
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
There's no use to say a word
All the best lines have been spoken
There's no sense to shake my hand
All the promises are broken
You stripped away all innocence
In vain I pursued a truce you could support
On my knees I begged your grace & mercy
You remarked how the days were growing short
Listen to the barn owl screech
Listen to the hell hounds bay
Did I deface your divine mind?
Did you have to have it all your way?
I'm standing in a damaged doorway
In the staleness of minutes faithfully accruing
Wondering what's become of the one I love
Wondering what the hell I'm doing
I'm waiting thru the darkness
In a freeze that won't lift
I never felt the Earth stop turning
I never noticed the wind shift
You never saw how the angels adorn
The spaces surrounding the pledges you neglect
You grapple in a world I'll always scorn
I reside in a world you'll never suspect
So I'm stepping out into the street
The door behind me closing
The city's full of secrets
The good girls are all dozing
The stars above are blazing
I feel the collapse of distance
I blink & draw new breath
Feel like I might wink out of existence
Colossus
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Global pulsations silent as space
Unborn jungle barbarous garden at dawn
The savages creep thru mists & steam
Tumbled stone temples half-devoured in vine
Hot rain falls upward bubbles sputter in muck
Smell of musky cat breath
Rancid meat growing green
Satisfying slam of ATV door
The click of the button
The squeal of what's unreal
Small minds flashing down telephone lines
Too much unformation too much null-data
False opinion disintegration
No human relation no vital connection
No direction no polar star
The punk picks up electric guitar
Cyclone of sitar
Finger cymbals chime like divine rain
We merge into space feel self erase
Jigsaw lives snap into place
Where is the grace at the end of the chase
Tripping thru trip wires
Holy commerce beneath steeples & spires
Of corporate megalopolis
Insatiable colossus
The screams of jet fighters
Misconceived precepts destroyed
Their payloads deployed
The two tribes engage
Caked mud on glass faces
Machetes & spears & napalm & beer cans
Arrows shredding blue suits as administrators attack
While blasting old Rolling Stone rock'n'roll soundtrack
Broken teeth strung on necklaces
Under banana palm hats
W/psychedelic scrawled prospectus & psychoactive blood additives
& Picasso oil swirls upon black waters
& Dali flames leaping upon high seas
Indicator species burn out, extinguished
Infirm cold warrior's grip grudgingly relinquished
The future on steel knife edge
The night's ledge, the white man's pledge
To defend the indefensible
To embrace the reprehensible
To put out one's own eyes
To great lies & series of small compromises
To merge w/the surge in stock market purge
To submerge in the gene pool
Where the ultimate self-interests rule
To liquefy one's competitors
Ripping atoms from atoms
Baryons from baryons
To disfigure spacetime
To break symmetry
Global pulsations silent in space
Frozen fire in fractured gemstone
The blood & the mud & death comes in the evening
Stretching of membranes, retching in cold chains
He's gone insane he's a saint he's a holy man
Seer of visions
Conjurer of conditions
Suffering premonitions of what is & what's been
His circuits are glowing
Sphere of influence growing
His nakedness showing
He's a logic bomb or a Christ
He's on the big stage
He's a mouse in a sterile cage
His cerebellum exposed in operating theater
He's coming undone under microscopic inspection
He escapes no detection
Files no defense for protection
He's dismembered in the Kleig lights
He's a hero tonight & he'll be reassembled
His scattered pixels rekindled
To emerge in new consciousness
To be reborn
His senses reactivated
His slandered name rejuvenated
Washed in sacred wine & re-consecrated
On the bloody alter of Man
For he is the sacrifice
He's the lamb of salvation
His heart plucked from snowy breast
So the rest of us can rest
& sink w/in troubled distant dreams of
Some ancient garden
Where the lion's powerful claws rake the unicorn
& the savage angel bearing a flaming sword
Harvests the fruits of Heaven's labors
At play in the fields of the Lord
Man of Two Worlds
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
When you're waging war on multiple fronts
When you're facing too many mountains that you've got to climb
Like doing too many jigsaw puzzles the same time
Do you feel regret for unwise choices, or
Do you catch yourself listening for unspoken voices?
Because I keep hearing murmurs
In the long night of the soul.
& I keep sensing that this life's not whole.
I know I'm living in two worlds, each w/its own law:
One world of conflict, one world of awe.
I know a woman who catches her thoughts sliding
Down facile channels she'd never have selected.
She could have chosen differently but that decision she neglected.
She said: "I'm ensnared in a complex network of phony expectations
That hang together in precarious balance & force me into compromising situations"
& I keep hearing whispers
In the long night of the soul.
& I keep sensing that this life's not whole.
I know I'm living in two worlds, each w/its own law:
One world of conflict, one world of awe.
I know a man whose focus grew ever sharper.
He forgot his heart in the struggle & the strife
& came home late one evening to discover he'd misplaced his wife.
He said: "The enemy is subtle & judgment is swift.
In the violence of the tempest don't disregard the delicate drift"
& I keep hearing utterances
In the long night of the soul.
& I keep sensing that this life's not whole.
I know I'm living in two worlds, each w/its own law:
One world of conflict, one world of awe.
How do you reconcile opposites & make uneven ends meet?
How do you choose between the temporal & the divine?
I feel the flaming sword at my back & I'm walking on a line.
This familiar world of the senses is a symbolic approximation,
& this world of whispered voices is much more than simulation.
Because I keep hearing voices
In the long night of the soul.
& it's clear this life's not whole.
I've got my feet in both worlds, each w/its own law:
One world of conflict, one world of awe.
Shield
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Dissolving back into the mind of God,
Whispers & rumors & conflict divide us from the infinity of infinitudes. We were
Wild animals in the forest clearing, exposed
In the miracle times before the world was yet full-made,
Innocent yet of the hunger for domination,
The insatiability of elegant cannibals.
Tides of dissonance tore the shore,
Retreated from the Moon's pull to call up reserves &
Come back us for more.
When iniquity gently beckons
When dim foreboding looms
When the bitter rose of my darkness blooms
When the sweet promise of refuge
Is ensconced in temptation's amicable cloak
& the winners can afford to cut their losses
While the despondent losers go for broke
I raise you up to be my shield
I turn to you to be healed
I turn to you
When earthquakes turn beneath my feet
& shattered glass rains down
When our murdered king's corpse is discovered
Bereft of bejeweled crown
When our trustees turn to base idolatry
& our wine turns to mud
& mortal vows that I have pledged
Burn like poison in my blood
I raise you up to be my shield
I sense the deep earth power you wield
I turn to you
To you I turn in my time of terror
To you I turn when my allies flee
To you I turn when each alternative is an error
To my undying wonder you turn to me
When thunder resounds w/in my chest
When ears bleed from piercing battle horns
When I can't recall how I acquired this shirt of claws & thorns
Between my thoughts of resignation
& the questing eyes of haggard death
Amidst the snare beat of a desperate heart
& the fading of frail exhausted breath
I raise you up to be my shield
My oath is given, my fate is sealed
I turn to you
Seed Man
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
She thinks I wanna be her
seed man
She thinks I wanna hear her
new plan
She thinks I'll never understand her
color scheme
She thinks I don't care about her
girl dream
But I never signed on to be just a
seed man
I'm looking 'cross the river to a
new land
She thinks I gotta head wound, became her
enemy
She thinks I poisoned her wells & caused all her
misery
She's confounded by her mystery so she's gonna
end it
She's got her off-shore account, by God she's gonna
spend it
But I never signed on to be just a
seed man
I'm looking 'cross the river to a
new land
Someday maybe when these towers blow to dust
Sir Lancelot will slay her dragons, give her someone she can trust
Yeah, when champagne flows in rivers & all her fireworks bust
Someday maybe when this circle starts to rust
She thinks I wanna break her
adamantine heart
She thinks I want the Rolls, leave her the
golf cart
She thinks I'm too dumb to see she'll author our
history
She'll never know she'll always be the same lost
girl to me
& I never signed on to be just her
seed man
I'm gonna cross the river & enter that
new land
Wish on a Star
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Wind blowin' out thru my eyes
Sentence fragments trip out past my teeth
Maybe I'm a spectator outside of time
Looking back at someone who looked a lot like me
Looking back thru the rain & hail
The fire & smoke
I hear myself laughing but
I don't get the joke
I guess I loved you way too much
I guess I had too much trust
Now I wish I could hate you
How I wish I could hate you
You know we had completeness
You know we owned the world
You know we walked fearlessly as one
With the banner of our love unfurled
& you know you somehow went astray
& demanded to be worshipped like God
You know you killed our perfect love
You know you killed our love
I guess I loved you way too much
I guess I had too much trust
Now I wish I could hate you
How I wish I could hate you
I'm hangin' out on the borderline
Watching for a chance to make my break
The sun keeps rising earlier but
Every day it seems too late
Looking ahead I see fog & mist
Fog & mist
I hear people laughing but
I don't know what I missed
I guess I loved you way too much
I guess I had too much trust
Now I wish I could hate you
How I wish I could hate you
Lord of Hosts
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the LORD
"Cross me sucker & you'll die by the sword
Keep my commandments, submit & obey
Deny your free will & do it my way
Keep the formation, stay in your place
I made you to suffer in an insufferable place
To chase low desire in a hellish rat race
Lust & greed & jealousy your goals
Under my whip running over sulfurous coals
I bring disaster & pestilence to your town
Give me your most pious man, I'll hammer him down
I'll slay your poor babies in a bloody dawn
I'll massacre the innocents, every last Jew will be gone
'Til you shake your fists Heaven demanding:
'Whose side are you on'
But vengeance is mine," sayeth the LORD
"Cross me sucker & you'll die by the sword."
Road Work Ahead
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
It's unclear to me just how I'll ever lose these disintegration blues.
Feels like a funeral but no one died, like the thought police are marching & there's no place to hide.
She plowed up my pride, left me for dead by the highway side,
Ooh, road work ahead.
She played her cards, I called her bluff. Looks like you're never tough enough.
This black coffee'll shock these cells to life. The birds still sing. Did I dream that life?
Little toys, little clothes, little shoes with little bows,
Ooh, road work ahead.
I could slam myself against an Alaskan mountain range or swim down in deep ocean 'til my senses rearrange.
From your perspective you'd think I'm not coping, but I've seen better times & places for hoping.
My friends tell me that now's the time to pray,
Ooh, road work ahead.
& I don't mind the free advice, I smile & say: "You're very nice"
Maybe there's something broken in every soul, just a little tic we can't control.
Is that why I worked so hard building up the soil under this green back yard?
Ooh, road work ahead.
No more gunfights boys, won't quarrel or shout. The sun hangs low & I'm heading out.
You can count on me, my compass points true. Get beyond these ripples in reality, I'll break on through.
Watch for falling rocks. Beware of dangerous curves.
Tell Rose I hope she never gets what she deserves.
Ooh, road work ahead.
Ooh, road work ahead.
Breath of the World
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Is it broken coils in staircase DNA?
Is it complementary circuitry w/in the skull?
Is it scents & colors that spin & hypnotize?
Is it bits of syllables uttered in a critical moment?
Is it the pull of planets?
The seed of cancer w/in the fetus?
The shell of skin we cannot slip?
The smooth molding of fat?
The puckering lip?
The fascination w/fleeting ecstasies in a corporeal world?
The song of the siren? The scream of the gene?
The curl of hair? The curve of an ear?
Pink voices the color between channels
Tinged w/fetal blood &
"Sick in revolutionary dreams," Jane says
Just before she buttons open my eyelids & smiles
Mocking faintly. I smell
Rancid ichor of old volcanoes
Unpleasantly out-gassing
This earth is slipping & maybe we will
Just plunge into the cracks between
Dried out atoms
Crackling inside abolished traditions
Defiled aesthetics & cultural forms
Where we unscrew skullcap & unsnap brains
Can we get out from under these heavy shadows where
Unvoiced tongues flop like fish on hot concrete
To transmit our names in piscine language
Most mysterious. Yes,
All facts are melted & we
Go & come living such lives as we dare, but
In reverse order now, or caught between
Two crashing cars. We are
Positrons, mere electrons moving
Backwards in time. We are
Fauns & freaks
Pawns & geeks &
Our king is slain
His corpse out in the rain
Decaying
Is it that nameless emotion
Is it hot hormonal acid poured
Thru pre-adolescent neural circuitry
It must be
Our lady of the oroborous
Suck your tail
History has retreated into its womb
West & east are fused w/in
Singularity. Films of cold war
Alongside fractals & star wars
The past is more alive now than
When it was the present
The future is yesterday
Who will be my guardian & guide
Who will be my shield
Alone walk I w/in the night of the soul
Immersed w/in familiar space that
Instantly explodes, all my senses are deformed extended
Changed beyond what ever they were
& submerged into swirling vortex
Aural phantasms pronounced, fully saturated w/in
Strange noises, sights, & sensations
The eyelid movies
This was not what I expected
This was certainly more than what I knew
I pursued wisdom down a twisting ever-shifting corridor
Lined w/colored steel mutating
In tempestuous tints
Metallic & immaculate
I existed
I the lucid neon dream
Standing 2-d cut out of this world
Seeking a truer vision that holds
Beyond the chemistry
A porcelain place beyond this space
Trans-dimensional solidity of the graal
Promiscuous atoms sharing photons
I seek the firmament
Hardwire adhesion w/pulsing mind of God
I am unhooked from this corporeality
I tell these things to Jane who smiles
Mischievous but understanding
We race down pipelines the straits can't smell
We attach we attain Frida's
Siamese heart
We share seed we share blood
We bleed concurrently w/a talking plant that opens
Billions of tiny mouths to exhale & transpire
For we are the breath of the world
Spines in our hands
Thorns thru our tongues
We are the breath of the world
Mending
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The rose grows from the bruise in the brain
The pain paints its stains on the moon
& your eyes glitter like diamond skies
As the night turns over blue arctic ice
So I see you can't quite make the connection
Don't let this free ride get in your obstacles' way
You & I might spin apart in violent motions
Or pass like silent ships steaming over lonely oceans
Used to be all these people wore simpler faces
& shared a common basis for their stories & their songs
Up to me, I would fling open all these cages
Down the corridors & ages, you could all come along
Black crows croak in the wheat in my dreams
The seams of scenes splitting & then they fray
& your face hangs suspended in space
Translucent image, I long to embrace you
Time is bending & you could use some mending
& I'm not pretending, I know I need mending too
So I'm sending you this invitation to another situation
We could start a brand new nation that's big enough for two
The rose grows from the bruise in the brain
The pain paints its stains on the moon
& your eyes glitter like diamond skies
As the night turns over blue arctic ice
The Darkness & the Light
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I scaled the highest pinnacle, the cold winds snapping at my robe
I saw the serpent's savage jaw unhinge to swallow the globe
His long tongue was a scythe harvesting vast fields of stars
I heard the drums of war thundering & desperate alarms
The vomit of the dragon was impenetrable, it assaulted my sight,
Snuffing out the day & obliterating night
This darkness poured over my vision, blotting all like blackest ink,
Clotting in the narrow spaces you'd never expect it to be
Now I've seen history churning, turning out hopelessness & despair
I search every crime scene for evidence but discover mere confusion everywhere
I dwell in an unusual present when time cannot fail to bend,
Accosted by a species of illusion that you might not comprehend
But I want to come out of the darkness
Back to the land of confidence & sight
I want to make it out of this darkness
Find my way back to your bright light
There is a soulless void beckoning, a vortex that's consumed a multitude
You must face it naked & weaponless, armed only w/raw fortitude
The temptations to secede one's humanity are legion & false goals come fast as exhalations
So keep your head in the whirling maelstrom & rein in delusional expectations
A light is shining in the darkness, a warm, suffusing glow
You'll recognize it in the good men do, you'll feel its confident flow
The demons of time are powerless before the dancing flame
So build your house to let the light in & exalt God's name
Now you have delivered me out of the darkness
Back into the land of consequence & delight
Yes, I have made it out of the darkness
& now I grow strong in your bright light
Ooh-Ee Blues
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Hear that lonesome train whistle blowin' thru the rain
Smell Katie's coffee burnin' on the stove just like she always burns it up for me
Feel the poison spread like oil across my brain
Betcha I'm gonna kill this pain, ooh-ee
When I was down in Texas how the hot wind used to blow
When I was up in Michigan, just grim-faced strangers & stingin' snow
When I was out on Riker's, had pals most fearsome & unruly
Now I'm captive to Katie's sweet charms, ooh-ee
Devil's got his devilish pitchfork
President's fingerin' the pulse of global history
Katie's gotta whisper today's neighborhood gossip to me
I gotta new box of shells & salt for salt, ooh-ee
I got them ooh-ee blues mama, got no peace
I got them mean ooh-ee blues mama, I ain't got no peace
Give you sugar for sugar mama, make this misery cease
The Coral
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
We extend our arms
We stretch thru space & time
One thing we shimmer
The sinner & the saint somehow
No matter now
& conversations like this one
Armies turn into white blood cells rushing to site of infection
Or a tumor The ocean prevails
Reduces human intercourse to trifling
All this human drama stuff
All elements of colony organism
Awaken sense of reciprocity between all constituents w/in the corpus
Shock to perception: wake
We always were are will be
Endpoints on secret network
& somewhere in it all
& over long decades the individual must dissolve
& humanity culminate in transcendent fire
Unrelated to patriotism or nations
Spitting white noise at neural synapse
Violence in conversation as if
We see the whole world all wrong like we
Wear insipid blinders we can't discern &
We've just got the whole story in paradoxical inversion
& inferentially it doesn't matter which side wins
For the cadence of the slowly throbbing beast
Sustains its protoplasmic extensions thru pink time
A genetic thing if you can't connect
An analytical engine can't perform beyond its hardware but
This undulating creature that fluctuates thru time
All time past & future IS
We swim thru the ocean but
The organism is itself precious
Not the cells
Saturated in all this history neurons
Sizzle in hot & greasy hours of
WWII documentaries & WWI
You think of the species as vast colony organism
Splayed out thru time
Or like a coral
Just a longer point of view there are
Much deeper currents underlying the whole shebang that
One colossal organism
All one thing
Re-Entry
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Voice #1: "Hey, I just wanna say that you guys have done some real fine work"
CapCom: "Well. . . .We've had a good time doing it"
Voice #1: "You have a good bedside manner"
CapCom: "Gee. . . .That's the nicest thing anybody ever said to me. . . .Okay. LOS in 60 seconds entry attitude. . . .We'd like omni Charlie & welcome home"
Voice #1: "Thank you."
Been rising much too fast thru a deep
Column of water
Nitrogen boils up, bubbles up thru
Clots in my veins
Now I can't see straight, can't think straight
Can't tell truth from lying, lying
Can you give me comfort, shelter
Can I float w/you a while
Been so deep down in the darkness, madness
Never noticed the oppressive insanity
Been standing so far outside my skull
Funny how it never even dawned on me
Now I can't see straight, can't think straight
Can't tell which way the wind is blowing, blowing
Can you give me comfort, shelter
Can I float w/you a while
I can't think, I can't sleep
All these thoughts collide inside my head
I can't eat, I can't drink
Drink in every poisoned word she said
I come down crashing, crashing
Smashing in slow motion, can I
Crash softly into you, cos
I can't see straight, can't think straight
Can't depend on my own humanity
Can you give me comfort, shelter
Can I float w/you a while
The ice man cometh cometh
The ice man cometh cometh coming down
The ice man cometh the ice man cometh
Feel the ice thaw dripping all around
JSC PAO: "The spacecraft should be out of blackout this time. We are standing-by for any reports of ARIA acquisition, the C-135 type aircraft"
Flight: static hiss
Network: "Not this time, Flight"
JSC PAO: "Coming up now on three minutes until drogue deployment. Standing-by for any reports of acquisition. . . "
CapCom: "Houston standing by. Over. . . ."
Seen too many clowns bearing balloon bouquets
Marching in the funeral parades
Dreaming of octopus wrapped around my head
Desperate flailing, beak snapping my eyes
"I'm hit! I'm hit!" the pilot shouts
Painting the sky in billowing shades of gray
Now I can't see straight, can't think straight
Can't think straight, can't think, can't speak
Can't tell if I'm living, dying, am I still trying
Can you give me comfort, shelter
Can I float w/you a while
I come crashing down, crashing down
Falling satellite, jet plane screwing down the skylanes
I come falling down, tumbling down
Broken pieces of sun & rain surround me
Thru the noise & thru the heat
Rattling down & crashing down the stairs
My bones are breaking the air is shaking
The clock is taking too long between ticks
Now I can't feel the world I used to feel
Don't know am I freezing or burning up, burning up
Can you give me some comfort, shelter
Can I float w/you a while
Network: "ARIA 4 is AOS, Flight"
JSC PAO: "Got a report that ARIA 4 aircraft has acquisition of signal."
I've been broken up & battered, battered
Shattered in the hurricane
Can't hear my own shouts over the wind
My flesh is in ribbons & I can't recall my own name
Too much darkness, too much darkness
Too much doom, too much despair
Bring some light in, let some light in
Find a way out of here, cos
I can't think straight, I can't see straight
Am I arriving or departing
Can you give me comfort, shelter
Can I float w/you a while
Voice #1: garbled
CapCom: "Roger that"
JSC PAO: "Report of two good drogues. Coming up now on main chutes. . . .Standing by for confirmation of main chutes deploy"
CapCom: "We show you on the mains. It really looks great"
JSC PAO: "Extremely loud applause as main chutes come through loud & clear on the television display here"
Recovery: "This is Recovery. Over"
JSC PAO: "We have a report from Recovery that has the craft a distance of four miles from the ship. The smoke you see is venting of reaction control system propellants"
Voice #1: "Coming through five-thousand"
Recovery: "Wonderful. This is Recovery & your chutes look good. . . .This is Recovery, we observe your RCS burn. Over"
JSC PAO: "As you heard the conversation between the Recovery helicopter and the crew of the spacecraft. . . .The floor of the mission operations control room now crowded . . .We have reports that the spacecraft is descending at a point four miles due south of the ship"
Recovery: "Passing through one-thousand feet. . . .Coming through five-hundred feet. . . .Splashdown!"
Buddha
Copyright 2000, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I.
I have returned from an arduous journey on the heroes road,
My skin seared under ten thousand pitiless suns,
My vision pierced ten billion times by
Night's phalanxes of lance-bearers.
I have slept upon the sand-strewn crests of stainless white dunes
& hacked a narrow path thru sickly miasmic jungles
Whose breath, still as a coffin & choked w/moisture,
Floods the lungs & crushes your diaphragm.
Eight miles high I glided on wings of hawks & more,
Blood drying on my talons, clarity
Splashing across my eyes. I paused for purgation at the
Theatre of Cruelty. Then, to the floor of the sea,
I crawled upon my pale belly, a sightless worm
Intent upon the fumes of snowy detritus.
II.
I am the soldier returned late from the war
At the border towns where sleep gives way to the Abyss.
I am a messenger sent by the Gods, or the message itself.
I am the victim of plague, stolen too young from life.
I am the angler, playing out line,
& the angry fish, weaving & yearning to fly.
I am the politician w/baby-fleshed hands,
Isolated from the masses I'm sworn to protect.
I am the physician, the scalpel, the organ impassive, exposed.
I am the disk jockey & the radio waves passing thru
Ragged atmospheres & your unfeeling flesh, the voice of Babel,
The Voice of the Swarm. I am the weight the end of the
Sounding line, plumbing your shallow shoals. I have
Tumbled to this planet, I have melted from a comet,
By cosmic rays distilled. I am ink that recreates scripture.
I am the hurricane that engulfs the coastal city.
I am the purity of fire that expunges sumptuous falsehood.
I am the flash gushing from a sawed-off shotgun
Disclosing unnatural detail in a liquor store.
I am the taxi driver who cherishes his animosity
For his wealthy fares. I am a forgotten black & white movie actor
Flaking apart in a forgotten tin.
III.
I am a starfish. I am a sea horse. I am a chaetognath.
I am a weed on the edge of the highway straining after diesel rigs.
IV.
I was an apple picker. I played
Drums in a sweaty Southern bar.
I was a starving sailor who feasted upon the forbidden flesh
Of the Cattle of the Sun. I have
Murdered the innocents w/the edges of words,
Have sacrificed a thousand of my lives to spare those
Of strangers & other assorted fools.
I invested in rigged land schemes & the fortunes of nations.
I turned to mysticism when corporate science failed me,
To politics when the markets blew up,
To ranching when the police located my residence.
I was a quail waiting in the cholla shadows.
I was a lizard on a baking brick wall.
I was a cougar slipping past a nylon tent
Under a crescent moon. I was a rioter in the
Hot summer night, smashing glass counters &
Stealing cigarettes & lunch meat. I was a trivial traitor
At Salerno during the Allied push. I was a
Draft dodger despised by my father
Until the death barges filled up the harbor.
V.
I was a part-time stripper whose tips kept her in college full-time.
I was a quarterback whose neck snapped on the ten yard line,
Who refused the wheelchair & died of pneumonia at twenty-seven.
I was the congregation's favorite priest, secretly
Terrified of facing God. I was the
Girl on roller-skates taking chances, exchanging slow glances
W/presbyopic transients in front of their heroin dens.
I was the housewife in the 50's who never admitted
That her husband drank too much. I was out of touch
In the 60's w/a narrow tie & flat top & shaded eyes.
I stole Mona Lisa's smile, scoped out a monkey trial,
Floated opium down the Nile, went to Florida to try
Cross-dressing for a while. I clubbed a faggot's head open
In the Stonewall Riot. I added a cup of sugar to the tea in Boston Harbor.
I was a Black Panther. I was Ruby's cancer.
I was Oswald's twitchy trigger finger. I held the lantern
Steady for Clara Barton.
VI.
I am the labor-broken Mexican
Resentful of rapacious gringos. I listen
Under covers at night to the music of the Negroes.
I remain an unidentified corpse rotting in a Salvadoran dump.
I'm the secretary whose office shook
When the tornado came down across the street.
I'm the last fireman who died in the blast of
Hell's exhalation thru Chernobyl's roof. I'm the
Pet shop clerk who privately thought the activists had gone
A little bit too far. I'm from the Tibetan highlands where our
Children die w/o antibiotics.
I struggled reading Neruda &
Switched to reading palms. I'm the
English rock star whose ironic lyrics shield me from self-loathing.
I'm the porn star too bored w/living to contemplate suicide.
I'm the circus barker whose only daughter ran away to join the Marines.
I'm a virus. I'm an ibis. I'm a bear wading in Alaskan streams.
VII.
I smelled the green hair tonic in a Mexican barber shop.
I prowled the streets of Prague at night just to test my luck.
I smelled the perfume you wear on my
Pillow in the morning. I heard the
Whistle of a distant train when the union busters struck,
Giving us no warning. I carved a sacred holy word into an
Intaglio stone. I checked into an asylum.
I emerged from a supermarket.
I swam next to you in the public pool.
I watched the mud blow over geyser vents.
I judged pathetic criminals in a petty town.
I drove International Harvester in the cotton fields.
I was a shipyard welder on the Baltic who
Fixed clocks on the side.
VIII.
I'm a nun resting at the Cafe du Monde, enjoying
Coffee & bignettes. I'm a mime detained on
Trumped-up charges whose walls are closing in.
I'm a comic doing stand-up. I work the register.
I pump your gas. I lived to tell of Dien Bien Phu, but I
Never said a word. I own a shrimp boat.
I float a sampan. I lived in Tajikistan. I moved to Iran.
I won at Monte Carlo. I cheated on my husband.
I plundered your museums. I defiled your statuary.
I cry at sad movies. I shot cows w/BB's.
IX.
I'm a Korean in an LA market, iron over glass panes.
I'm a weight lifter on the beach checking out the tans.
I'm a diabetic couch potato watching church programs.
I'm a high school student in suburban Cleveland with
Fantasies of killing niggers. I'm a failed painter in Spain
Dying of TB. I'm a web page designer in Sacramento
W/no one to meet on Friday night. I'd like to embrace
Positivism, but I'm not really sure. I'm a closeted
Real estate executive just diagnosed w/AIDS.
I'm a commercial airline pilot tempted to buy a
Urine purifying agent. I'm a tobacco CEO
Persecuted by politicians. I'm a hit-&-run victim being
Cut up for transplants. I'm a novice sky-diver shouting
Wildly in the air. I'm a hungry refugee,
Infected machete wounds in my legs.
X.
I came out of the dream cave, the vibrating world
Gaining on me in waves, strumming,
Thrumming like tightly-stretched steel guitar strings.
I wandered into the card game, the
Knight of Swords stole my name,
Took a seat on the cyclopean infinity train, my
Selves receded as swelling spheres in all directions & times,
Molecules oscillate & rotate,
Heat stretching bonds. I yawned & I
Swallowed my head by accident. I was
Ray-traced & erased from this place,
Replaced in V-space,
Pierced by the tester's shock waves.
In my chest a new atomic clock,
My eyes replaced by video sockets,
Adrenalin does not affect how fast the timer ticks.
My nerves are circuits,
My fingers rockets.
I am static across the channels, I am
Slackers in ripped flannels.
I'm re-examining the
Anti-mycobacterial properties of sulfones.
I'm in aerospace. I'm in optics & genomics.
Between the sheets of your bed,
W/in fluid-filled chambers in your head,
Between your buttons,
Between the lines of your hypertext.
After the ball drops & the blades above your necks,
Inside your wine bottles, inside your lungs &
In your veins. I'm the throbbing chromosome
That whispers your symbolic name. I've
Traveled a billion light-years
W/in the flicker of a galaxy-spanning eye.
I ride electrons
Across the aurora-flaming sky.
XI.
I'm a Kenyan widow in a co-op
Avoiding my brother-in-law's devouring gaze.
I'm a holy martyr whose bomb killed a dozen dirty Jews.
I drove cattle across the dusty prickly pear desert.
I floated in the cream poured down by a voluptuous moon.
I drank in the shadows of small town bars. I inhabited a
Recurring vision that haunted Robert Falcon Scott. I
Drifted w/campfire smoke & sparks into the wash of
Colored stars. I feasted with
Coyotes on the remains of the flock. I
Talked briefly w/Jesus when he was just a carpenter.
I was a medic in the gangrenous
Spanish Civil War.
XII.
I'm a deep-sleeping mole on ice
Awaiting the signal to work my sabotage.
I'm a hot-shot pilot on a secret mission
High in foreign skies. I'm a prankster in a
Prison of my own construction. I'm an
Architectural destruction specialist. I'm
Wearing a kerchief over my face as I
Hurry thru the trees of Katyn. I'm
Leaning over the peeling window sill
Counting loose change an ice cream stand.
I'm staring down the barrel of a 17 inch color monitor.
I've come unstapled on the active substances in a
Certain kind of cactus. I'm the cancer in your
Pancreas that will digest you to death.
I'm the reassuring male figure on channel 9 who
Makes you feel your world is safe. I'm an
Astronomer on a mountain top who nightly
Scrutinizes the face of God.
XIII.
I'm a thief.
I'm a cop.
I'm a breakman.
I'm a cook.
I'm a waiter.
I'm a wild cat.
I'm a vampire bat.
I'm a hermit crab.
I'm a secretary.
I'm the President.
I'm unemployed.
I'm a vet w/both my legs blown off.
I'm a right whale whistling across eternity.
I'm a racist.
I'm an Arab.
I'm a Nazi.
I'm a Jew.
I'm you.
I'm you.
I'm feeling like an exploding fire cracker.
I'm feeling a little blue.
I'm a pacifist.
I'm Vincent Van Gogh.
I'm Shirley Temple.
I'm Neil Armstrong poised above the surface of the Moon.
I'm Gerald Ford.
I'm Geronimo.
I once read a book about Georges Seurat, but I
Never got the point.
I'm Pancho Villa.
I'm Diana Ross.
I'm a washed-up rock'n'roller who
Can't bear the thought of stopping.
I'm the wizard Merlin.
I'm a bus driver.
I'm a bull fighter.
I'm a sky diver.
I'm a high-wire acrobat.
I can't talk w/you, & you can't talk w/me.
Seems there's nothing you & I can
Agree to disagree about.
But for these disappointments,
For all these fears & cross-firing dreams & schemes,
You & I are just the same,
Just like the Buddha.
We are flowers unfolding, folding.
We are the skies re-sealed.
We are secrets hidden & revealed.
We are seamless, continuous,
Now, forever: solitary, infinite.
We are one.
XIV.
I have returned from an arduous journey on the heroes road,
My skin seared under ten thousand pitiless suns,
My vision pierced ten billion times by
Night's phalanxes of lancet-bearers.
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