Texas
Copyright 1987, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down
On all the deserted oil boomtowns
There's only a trickle where the river used to flow
Oh, down south that dust does blow in Texas
Baby, baby, baby, back in Texas
They gotta sky so big you can't believe
They got it rigged, you gotta leave
Texas
The earth is hard and the clay is red
It once was wild, now everything's dead
The storm comes riding up from the coast
To blow away every miserable ghost outta Texas
Baby, baby, baby, outta Texas
They all lie so big you can't believe
They got it rigged, they gotta deceive you in
Texas
Then she'll come walking in like your wildest dream
Then she's gone in a flash of green
And for a while you feel torn in half, but
Later on you can only laugh about Texas
Baby, baby, baby, about Texas
And they can cry so loud, don't have a belief
Then they walk out proud, you feel relief leaving Texas
Baby, baby, baby, leaving Texas
They can cry so loud
Then they walk out proud
Walk outta Texas
Tyche
Copyright 1987, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Balloon drifting early morning
The air is chill and still
Fast cars paint the desert
The mountains breaking early purple
Corona of light like burning spears
In the arena soap bubble spheres rise and wobble
Bursting in colors and weird music
And a blind woman with a dog
Holds the wheel intense in silence
The dog teeth sharp growls low
Turns it spinning
Turning quiet turning clean
She sails the secret seas between
On a sandy beach in Mexico
Bright bags come to life along the shore
Embers of fires still yellowing
Mellowing coal-glow
White courtyard brilliant sea dove
Colorfully puffed planes triangle overcoated blue seas
Fine brown feathers waft in slow-draining tide pools
And empty long-necked bottles emblems yellow and green
Recall guitars gently weeping yawning sleeping
Steak rare and tender love
No one remembers what they could not rise above
And a blind woman with a dog
Plys the seas an underwater queen
Waves rise in silence part divided plover wings
Who knows the things she's seen
Sailing the secret seas between
In New York City
It's more than you know
In New York City
In New York snow
In Washington state
In Washington D.C.
In New Orleans
It's so much more than it seems
In Brazil in Australia
New Zealand Portugal Wyoming Tierra del Fuego
Duluth Moscow Perth Singapore on the moon
In the month of June
On a train in a tunnel
Just before the lights go out
Then when absolutely nothing's seen
She sails the secret seas between
Horse ranch dust and Texas skies
She minds the foals
Looks along the long fences and thinks
Of places that she's been
She remembers long-lost friends
People that she's known
Miracles she's seen
Mistakes that she made
Prices that she paid
And a blind woman with a dog
Turns the wheel intense in silence
The dog teeth sharp growls low
Turns it spinning
Turning silent turning clean
Sailing the secret seas between
Wooves
Copyright 1987, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
Howlin' again at bitter moon.
The light is green, nothing's seen,
Nothing's heard but wooves.
The Aztec sold his warrior soul
To white man's rock and roll, but his spirit heart
Was ripped apart by wooves.
Howlin' again at bitter moon.
The light is green, nothing's seen,
Nothing's heard but wooves.
The young mother on the elevator
Felt her blood chill, the car stop still,
Smelt copper blood spilt by wooves.
The Aztec sold his warrior soul
To white man's rock and roll, but his spirit heart
Was ripped apart by wooves.
Howlin' again at bitter moon.
The light is green, nothing's seen,
Nothing's heard but wooves.
Oh, blood.
Oh, blood.
On blood they prey.
They prey for pain.
It's the jungle law.
Oh broad, scarlet river gush.
Oh God, deliver us
From wooves.
Howlin' again at bitter moon.
The light is green, nothing's seen,
Nothing's heard but wooves.
Eat Meat
Copyright 1988, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Eat meat - cabbage thoughts.
Eat meat - flower thoughts.
Eat meat - clean your plate.
Eat meat - carnivate.
Eat meat - we lowly shrubs are immanentized too.
Boiled flesh and scalded blood in a pot of stew.
Or a Texas barbecue will really hit the spot.
Eat meat - come and get it while it's hot.
Eat meat - and have mercy on my fibrous soul.
Eat meat - though I'm just a lowly vegetable.
Synchronicity made scientific.
Paranoia is ultra-addictive.
Corruption keeps itself in check.
Botanicals deserve your utmost respect.
Eat meat.
Eidolon Ascension (Sudden Death)
Copyright 1988, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I wrote a new song for acoustic guitar.
My producer said: "Make it electric, it'll carry you far.
Sell off that old pick-up truck and buy a fast car."
I wrote a new song for acoustic guitar.
I didn't mind the chicken moving on my plate.
It's no worse than the last moments of a first date.
I just wish you'd been more cryptic about what you love and what you hate.
I didn't mind the chicken moving on my plate.
So you crossed the River Jordan before your time and took
A suite at the Motel of Lost Companions where the greatest late artists reside.
You were on the brink of super-stardom, but they told me you suddenly died.
Now they'll give you a star.
You're a friend of mine wherever you are.
I'll drink an unvoiced toast to you and shelter you in memory.
I'll bear you like a shield when this living leaves me tired and lonely.
And if I had the chance to tell you one last thing only,
I'd thank you for the road you showed us, the dreams you walked in and the stories you told us.
And when I'm feeling blue, in dreams I'll walk with you.
I'll play out the scenes only in my dreams.
Only in dreams,
In beautiful, beautiful dreams.
Now I wear these shades of blue so you can't see my eyes.
They may be cheap and dirty, but it's a useful disguise.
It's eidolon ascension, ruin on the rise.
I wear shades of blue so you can't see my eyes.
Majesty #1
Copyright 1988, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In the misty shades of dusk and umber
And the rumble of distant thunder
I watched the eagle soaring through
The summer's evening sky
In the silence like a holy stone
The visions seen are not the visions shown.
The harvest grown springs not from the seeds sewn
But you don't think to wonder why
All the bleary buttes melted in shadow
Wild erosion sculpts a mesa-tapered plateau
And the river's a silver ribbon when
The last light hits it right
All the canyon faces turned to pink and rust
The skeleton oak shivered in a gust
Of a canyon breeze. I knew I must be
Seeing beyond my given sight.
And the night spilled across the land then
The Milky Way spanning the canyon
The cool breeze lifting, gliding,
Flying above the boulder and the tree
And the eagle's floated down to her nest
The world settling down to rest
You always suspect what you'd never guess
Pressing back the curtains of majesty
Eater of Souls
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Eater of souls
You devour my blood
You befoul me in mud
You slink back to the shoals
Clutcher of breath
You wait in a dark place
You anticipate my face
As you embrace me in death
Master of ghouls
You love your dank swamp
Where your victims rot
And your minions drool
Maker of evil
Taking delight in the terror
Are you the sin-bearer
The Egyptian boll weevil
Now your black flag's unfurled
Tattered white hair blowing
Your black maw is growing
To swallow the world
These horrors I dream of
Did I finally discover
An authentic dream lover or another
Vampire of love
Everything
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I came crawling across the desert
My lips were black and cracked
The Arab with the curling beard
Smiled and handed me a golden cup
Of sand
I passed within a dream
Where you waited at a golden oasis
And you gave me relief
You are everything to me
I can see the geometry now
Underpinning our relationships
There's a satellite turning in the atmosphere
There's a laser pulsing underneath your skin
There's a spider stretching through the miles
On his silken skein called heritage
There's a smudge of blood on your cheek
It's a crimson tear when you blink
We were bloated on the high seas
Dead bodies where the ship went down
Sharks were tearing at old flesh
Sun-baked
Bright shining hummingbird
Lift us up give us new life
You are the angel in soft leather with iridescent wings
You are everything to me
I can hear the silent music
Backbeat of the world
There's a waterfall of crystal velvet
There's a gentle rain on your face
There's a cave beyond a gravestone
There's a crypt that's shot with treasure
There's a fish that walks among men
There's a wish that keeps us going
There's a sewing woman with a big dog
There's a frog prince with a golden ball
We were falling up into the sky
Riding on a sparking fountain
You were spinning in a white dress
I wore a white tuxedo
A magnetism of mystical proportion
Archangels sounding silver trumpets
We beheld the four corners of the world
But of all that I could see
You remained everything to me
And we can taste the nectar of Heaven now
Honey on our tongues
There's a delicate bone that makes the new phone ring
There's a dinosaur that creeps invisible
Flux and flicker
There's a zipper that protects the stars
There's a bar fly with both wings broken
There's a ruby jewel you can walk inside
There's a demon with holy light in his eyes
There's a trigger and it can be fired
There's a hired killer who can't find his prey
There's a day for the two of us
There's a night of trust that's coming
You will meet up with me
There's a hinged moment when you'll finally truly see
You were always everything to me
Felinity
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
She comes to me when
I Least expect it
And the city busts open
Leaves me disconnected
Priestess of the earth
Renew the birth of our union
Offer communion at our reunion
Light up the tall tiara
I've butchered cattle fresh from dreaming
Scheming mildly in fallow fields
The unconscious river yields
A monstrous new catch
I'm a cat
Cat's eye
You pry
What you saw
Cat's claw
You're a rat
What it ain't but
What it seem
Pyramid slaves scream
What you thought you seen
Did ya did ya
Ingots of gold stacked
In the sun's heart
Like junked cabs or
Clumped crabs
I'm mystified
Hostage lover
Flag strips bind your eyes
I'm free to foment dissent
Chaos spring from the white noise heart
Of blood and dark
After-hours critics
Why don't you write your own tickets
In neon crayons along steel canyon walls
Or with your leaky fountain pens inside your garbage bins
Coiling spring in the darkness
Is there no savior now among us
Whence springs sorrow there founts hope
Tightening spring tension building
The determination and the danger that you bring
So the thirsty pattern's exploding
In our genes
Fire shining blue guns for
Succeeding kings
Or for hire and you know
Surely what that means
The motorcycle loner done us
No hero's now among us
Just a giant with a broken jaw
Who knows what he saw
Scrapes my throat raw
Just like cat's claw
She comes to me
When I neglect the sparking fountain
She's an angel from the hollow mountain
Egyptian goddess be near now
Take my sorrow and don't cry
She sighs and wipes a tear from
Her clear blue cat's eye
Fighting Fires
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Me and my attorney got a special relationship
I'm the dog he's the tick
I call him up when I get in a fix
Man he knows some clever tricks
This snake's for hire
We're walking on a wire
This snake's for hire
We're walking on a wire
Me and my attorney got a special relationship
I'm the dog he's the tick
I call him up when I get in a fix
Man he knows some clever tricks
This snake's for hire
We're walking on a wire
This snake's for hire
You throw money at a fire
Holstein Dream
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
He woke up with ice cubes in his lungs today
He felt the sun was far away
The years hung like a stone at his neck
The brave bull's beautiful life was a wreck
And the sky crashed down around his head
Smashing into his king-size water bed
His wife rolled over and asked him
What's that that you said
He tried to recapture the days gone by
The fleecy clouds the pie in the sky
But the pretty clouds that he'd seen
Were nothing but a holstein dream
With country kitchens and checkered curtains
And barnyard plays and fishing days
Just dead brown fields that never grew green
Nothing but a holstein dream
Like a pig in a poke with a sharp stick stuck down its throat
It was nothing he could hope to joke about
Like a young man of wealth who's been stripped of health
Or a surrounded general overcome with doubt
Like a ship at shore when the tsunami hits
It was much too late to sail away
The gods he'd prayed to were hypocrites
There was no time to learn a new way to pray
And no place to go to get away from it all
The attraction of the mall was just too big
And the country boy was a city pig
No roof to raise or trench to dig
The country boy was a city pig
Oh my God where'd I go wrong
All my life I tried so hard
To do the things I thought were right
This role of Job is a bitter reward
For a life-long struggle against the night
My wife who seemed so satisfied
Is leaving me to find herself
My son and heir has lost his mind
And married a tramp who's after his wealth
God I only want an empty field
To lie down in and hide my face
In Gaea's breast I'll make my shield
I've looked many places but in every place
I see visions that can only mean
My life's work was a holstein dream
Was the milk just clotted and not rich with cream
Was it only just a holstein dream
And the brave young bull was hollow and old
And his fervent heart broke and turned cold
And the quiet realities of relationships he'd denied
Became a cage to confine him 'til his cold heart died
And the cows out in the alfalfa and clover
Grazed stupidly as the cattle trucks rolled over
They loaded each one meek as a mouse
And drove them to the slaughterhouse
They bred them for timidity and efficient yields
To yearn for fleecy clouds and fertile fields
But the pretty clouds that they had seen
Were nothing but a holstein dream
With catfish jumping in the river
And warm campfires when the night shivered the trees
With a bitter breeze shadowing the silent spring
Nothing but a holstein dream
He woke up with ice cubes in his lungs today
He felt the sun was far away but
He smiled and touched his young wife's neck
The holstein dream's not over yet
King Boogie
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Are you the King babe
The King of rock-n-roll
When you died tell me
Baby where'd you go
A matter of pride
Or something you don't show
Are you the King babe
The King of rock-n-roll
Should I maybe kneel
Kiss the ground at your feet
Are you an angel
Or some jerk off the street
All your magic power
Could not save you from defeat
Should I kneel before you
Kiss the ground at your feet
You must be spinning baby
Like a top inside your tomb
Is it crowded in there
Or is there plenty of elbow room
How's it feel to be immortal
Did you gracefully embrace your doom
You must be spinning baby
Like a top inside your tomb
They use you to sell tabloids
You must be shuddering with pride
You once had the Midas touch
But you were a slob the day you died
You're a warning to your inheritors
Who came along for the ride
They use you to sell tabloids
You must be shuddering with pride
You've got devoted disciples now
Baby you're on a roll
Too bad you're beyond their worship
It might have saved your soul
Throw away the sequins
But it's a belated goal
Are you the King babe
The King of rock-n-roll
Safety
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I used to want to see the world
But I never liked to fly
I was too afraid of falling
Down out of the sky
Safety safety
Build me an iron suit of armor
Weld me in real tight
Life in the modern world
Doesn't feel right
I took my family to the mall
To buy them imported toys
They deserved a special Christmas
They'd been good girls and boys
Safety safety
Sears Roebuck blossomed in a fireball
The wounded were bleeding everywhere
If they don't start doing mandatory strip searches
I won't be taking my family back there
I'd like to live out in the sticks
Watch the clouds and aeroplane traces
I'd put turrets on my country home
Shoot down strangers at thirty paces
Safety safety
It seems reasonable on the surface
But I think it might spell trouble
I'd prefer the claustrophobia but
How long does oxygen last inside a bubble
If I had a rocket ship
We could sail away beyond detection
And never be afraid of falling
When up's in every direction
Safety safety
With tubes of meat and stockpiled Tang
I'd laugh at the news on my TV
My wife and kids playing magnetic Monopoly
I'd really love my canned family
Table Scraps
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Hear the cell song
Keep the beat and march along
You can't stand alone for long
You can't resist the cell song
I'm scribbling in the red-hot rain
Peel back another layer of my brain
So you can stick your thin steel probes in
And map the pools of social poison
I'm waiting on an aeroplane
To fly away from my native pain
And if I could I would set Estevanico's head on an iron spike
And cut Coronado into bait-sized strips and go
Fishing for northern pike
I got blisters on my callused hands
Catching hazardous waste balloons at Disneyland
I dreamed of drowning but I did not worry
In my dreams the hangman does not hurry
General Custer came to my house looking for a place
To make a stand and save some face but I
Kicked him out and barred the door
I know what he really came around for
I walk by the open doors in New Orleans
Where you can look inside and know what it all means
And I think about Sweet Jane who really let me down
And I wonder what kind of lover she finally found
Richard Nixon calls me to his table and he buys me a drink
I'm grateful but I shudder every time he speaks
I smooth the dew off my bottle of beer
Thinking how easily a worm like him could disappear
In a swamp down here
You can't quell the cell song
Ring the bell and it rings on
You can't escape the surf and roar
Or forsake the surge and debris on the shore
Emotion has a death-grip on life
You'll loathe your loyal loving wife
Encapsulated in your fading fantasy
Captivated by the things you can't quite see
You're a stone that I carried too long in my heart
I'm tossing you out I don't want you no more
You're a diamondback rattlesnake that's wrapped around my chest
I guess you're the one that I love best
Hear the cell song
Keep the beat and march along
You can't stand alone for long
You can't resist the cell song
I've got a brain that's like an onion
It can make you cry
On my big toe I've got a bunion
I feel like I could die
Mike Wallace has been talking to my friends
I hope he's not planning some big expose
All my enemies are looking at me
But I'm looking the other way
So you think it's time you got divorced
You were always a push-over when it came to fashion
No you say she's got claws in place of fingers
And her razor teeth she's been seen gnashin'
And her eyes have been flashin' laser beams
And she screams like a tiger when you make love
Tell you the truth I've heard of stranger things
When you shot the dice what were you thinkin' of
The sparks of mentholated memories bring a chill
When I blow upon them to stoke them up
Just black scenes of histories but I can't get my fill
She was the sweet hemlock in my loving cup
You can't quell the cell song
Ring the bell and it rings on
Love and anger fail as tools
To try to bind emotion to rules
You rationalize your fear of falling
In God-given talent or some manufactured calling
A child perceives only love and fear
A man feels when the maw draws near
Red crabs scuttle all over my skull
Smoke curls 'round the towers under the moon
Bleached bones are dancing around a harvest bonfire
To a snazzy banjo and steel guitar
The world is limned in lightning blasts
The glory seems fitting but it never lasts
I think of marksmen in Texas towers
And Ophelia at the riverside looking for flowers
I peel back my brain and pluck another orange segment
And pop it into my mouth for your entertainment
And if I could I surely would go back to Texas and steal her away
And ride off into the sunset singing kai-yi-yippie-yippie-yai yippie-yai
Kai-yi-yippie-yippie-yai
The Good Earth
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
He woke up he felt distraught
His life and neck in a choking knot
It was a noose he'd tied with pride
Now too convoluted to be untied
His features were sour he said nothing to his wife
She was a chain he'd lugged around most of his life
And his kids whom he loved more than he could say
Were an anchoring ball that got heavier every day
He said nothing he just went outside
To the decaying farm where he'd brought his bride
And he took it all in stride
Yes he took it all inside
This good earth is mine
This good earth will sustain me
This good earth will forgive me
This good earth is my redemption
He tried to milk his cow in the dawn's hue
He fed her corn she gave back tar and glue
He tried to shoe the horse to prevent her going lame
She kicked him in the teeth he felt it jar his brain
So he left to repair his protective fence
The barbed wire bit into his hands
Another day's damning evidence
He could not master his own plans
He was a control freak he was wired for life
He was cut down by trivial pursuits
He felt it in his temples like a knife
He wiped his head and blood dripped his boots
It mixed in the clay and around the crop roots
He thought it might put up early shoots
This good earth is mine
This good earth will sustain me
This good earth will forgive me
This good earth is my redemption
But he was no warden of the land
He was an isolationist who could not arrest the blowing sand
Or the run-off cutting down his borders
Or time assigning his companions conflicting orders
And as his focus narrowed and his anger unfolded
His vision collapsed and his sense of justice exploded
And the noose jerked him right up off his feet
'Til he was swinging high and swinging neat
And he prayed inside his head
But not to God but to the land instead
This good earth belongs to me
This good earth only I will sustain
This good earth I alone can maintain
I know its wants it knows my needs
I am soil and this good earth is me
Up came the cold hands
The hands came rising
Up rising came the hands out of the good earth
He could feel them around his ankles
The weight of the world pulling at his heels
Tight fingers clamped around his boots
Increasing the tension of the noose
There was no last wind
The good earth dimmed in his eyes and the knot snapped
It caught him in the back like a bullwhip crack
It sucked him down in cool brown loam
It sucked him down into a lonely narrow home
It swallowed him up he was lost to his land of birth
They never saw him again
Sucked down into the good earth
Up Here
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom
up here you can see the ends of the world
handfuls of little stars angry gods hurled down
turning on a saddle point
on the peeling surface between the spheres
i can't go on but i
can't go back
i love the jealous diamonds but i can't explain
the burning skein of pain that binds and blinds us
tries hard to define us
and fails so miserably
lost in a crowded wilderness with no one here to guide us
up here you can hear silence like a new sensation
and the sounds of failing communication that separate that below from above
and lovers from love
i'm a joker without an audience
i'm a fool dancing upon the ledge
i'm edging up to a new truth
i'm a turtle laboring in yesterday's hard shell
i'm in a hell of a mess up here all by myself
looking down on the wilderness
there's no temptation now among men
to induce me to be like them again
up here i hear the silent wind and descend
lobo solo like a monk who slipped the bars
a handful of stars enshrouded in sheepskin
White Hat
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I'm one of the good guys baby
I wear a white hat
And if I get scared and run away
I always come back
I got a six-shooter
And a Navajo guide
I got a feeling it's time
To go for a long ride
You got a good reason
To hold out for a while
To every season
You bring a smile
Right now I'm freezin' but
I can last another mile
I shot down the false doctors
Rode like the wind for the Alps
My Navajo took their steel funnels
In lieu of the traditional scalps
A little boy in blue was holding daisies
He bothered me he was too out of place
Boschian fever tore my flesh like bullets
Now I can't forget his face
Animator Animator
He's the animator
I dreamed you let me in your room
I could smell the sweet perfume
Your big bed cool and soft like a rack
I could feel you claw my back
And in my moment of sanctimony
You pulled the rope and the steel blade
Crashed down in righteous testimony
To the oaths we never made
We got us a hide-out in the mountains baby
We're the only ones who know where it's at
We wait for the posse to come blasting away
Sometimes it ain't so easy when you're wearing a white hat
World for Two
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
We need a brand new shining god
Someone we can crucify
Something we can live for
Justify a new excuse to die
We need a new nigredo
Dead black bird
Putrefaction blind and numb
I am black but comely
O ye daughters of Jerusalem
Misty landscape of ruin and loss
The serpent is nailed to the cross
The albedo glowers in the great glass
Transubstantiation of the white stone
Moonshine on the crossroads
All flesh turns to limestone
Dark Death Valley nights
Bright Las Vegas lights
A man cries aloud in agony
And bleeds white light into an alley
Wagon wheels and skeletons of mules
Pale bones in the moonlight
Swirling curl of bauxite
Red dawn rubedo
Libation and cibation
Sublimation
Consecration
Fermentation
Exaltation
Projection
Yod He Vau He
Let us meet together at the cafe
You come to me then you turn away
And I've got to get back
To New Orleans
I've got to recover
The febrile dreams
O Dreaming City
You are not Tereu
O Dreaming City DA
You are behind mine eyes
Flicker of the pale skies
You are wise
Be with me always
Always be with me
DA DA DA DA
A world for two
I envision a world for two
And everything else is just a backdrop for our amusement
My universe is big enough for just the two of us
We are the one thing
We are the god
Alchemy transforms this power
Into the philosopher's stone
A world for two
A world for two
A world for two
No revolution that's all been done before
You and me
A world for two
Crushing Life
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Aren't we all the same
Nothing seems to change
2000 years of progress
The suffering remains
To me you're an art-lover
I'm a nest-builder to you
Your secrets I won't uncover
My facts just bewilder you
I'm a dust mote
I'm a fly speck
You're my goddess
What d'you expect
I feel the same way you do
You feel like I do too
A neuron in the universe fires
An opportunity missed, a life expires
Just to make you smile a while
That's my only plan
One taste of your parting lips
Just to brush your hand
I'm a spark in the dark
Of the pressing millennia
I'm a broken piece of night
That can't be reassembled right
I'm being slowly crushed to dust
Under the weight of God
I might last another fifty years
If I survive your loves and fears
If I can kiss away your tears
Dark Design
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
dark side dark side
coils of fear
you are ever near
keeping friends and other strangers
at a distance
an evil sentence to amend
original sin
take this example that it
never happen again
so you're finding it difficult to get close to me
i'll hand you no excuses there's more here than meets the eye
i contain and control a hurricane
product of a dark side
with more moving parts engaging
than i'd ever have designed
had the design been mine
raging silence
mad to control
mental assault
psychological dismemberment blow by blow
shut up shut up
hold your tongue
the peter pan curse you shall stay
forever young
most people can escape it
let it slide though it rises now and then
but i can't subjugate it
it's central to my self-knowledge
believe me when i tell you
i stand before you without defense and powerless
don't fish too deeply beneath the surface
you'll catch a monster eager to devour us
coiling spring in the darkness
is there no savior now among us
whence springs sorrow there founts hope
tightening spring tension building
the determination and the danger that you bring
to die to sleep
to sleep perchance to dream
ay there's the rub
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil
must give us pause
there's the respect that makes calamity
of so long life
pulleys gears springs and levers
a complicated dark design
behind a paranoid fleeting glimpse
severed young from self-confidence
pitiful soul-carvers with notched knives
pre-empting lives thrust futures aside
leaving blinded men with patchwork plans
to construct self-destructive dark sides
Get Away
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
It's time to get away now baby
From the complicated noise that surrounds you
There's all these faces
In all these places
Monitoring every gambit you pursue
It's time to get away now baby
From the values these strangers embrace
There's a woman in fine clothes
White line under her nose
Laughing at our lack of grace
It's time to get away now baby
From these angry streets
Horns are honking
Nothing's more shocking
Than my list of defeats
It's time to get away now baby
The party's much too phony for me
The beautiful people I trusted
Have corroded and rusted
Under thin veneers of piety
It's time to get away now baby
Before they throw us out of here
Makes 'em feel so smart
Pulling us apart
Their motives are much too clear
It's time to get away now baby
Better split while the splitting's good
My spirit's fading to gray
Time slips away
You know you said you would if you could
It's time to get away now baby
Guess I gotta chose a track to ride upon
Don't dreams always come true
In ways mysterious to you
Tell me baby whose side are you on
It's time to get away now baby
Chisel some rules to guide us
Come along for the ride
Baby stick by my side
There's no future that's denied us
Inside Out
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
how do you take it
you take it inside
when there's no place to run to
take it inside
shuffling your deck of faces
take it inside
but when you're out in public
you're laughing on the outside
shriveling like a prune inside
we're not like those other people
we're strong enough to take it inside
maybe they know something about love
but we're blue chip certified about pride
the hard kind that shelters you inside
slip into a shark skin shirt
and smile so they can see the teeth
infect them with your own rotten doubt
turn their secret nightmares inside out
world's a deadly place deadly place
gotta take it inside
no one out there you can trust
take it inside
don't show no emotion
anything you say will be used against you
though sometimes the loneliness might seem too much to bear
the worst sin you can commit is to show you care
suck in your gut and bury your doubt
or your weakness will turn you
inside out
Quietude
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Ignorant armies clash by night
To alter the face of confusion
But tonight in recession I begin to perceive
Accomplishment as time-compressed illusion
Waiting in a dim room beneath my chair
I can feel the silent blue falling sphere
And the years starlight spanned steel-ice space
To slam into my balcony rail
With no one there
So please hear me tonight
Let me in don't question me
Let me near you
Don't fear me
I'm too tired and too detached to fight
I'm too numb to your quick observation
A cloud in a spoon with no sensation
Meaningful matters bear me no relation
I'm not out to make you happy
I'm looking for no saving grace
But I would crawl six miles across the sun
Just to see your face
Big silent sphere roll on
Hollow church bells toll on
Silent melancholy mutating patina
The filters are gone
The soap film has all blown away
Tonight I want to hold you but I
Want you in this slow way
And I, the solitary scarecrow in a friendly disguise
And you, the only God I recognize
No other faith I keep
Now I lay me
Down to sleep
Texcoco
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I come to fight
I come to die
Flashing obsidian swords cut the gray sky
Singing slicing up the wind
Calf-deep in black mud
The long feather-worked banner
Shimmers like a hummingbird
Quetzalcóatl
And thick-spurting purple blood
Coils thinly in the sucking mud
I've seen all these places
In another time
Lifeless blocks of stoic faces
Priests in filthy robes with knotted hair
I've lived this better life somewhere
I've known this seductive dream of better days
Better times and better men
Other disasters and other ways
Every dream must end
Lightning licking overhead
Rain and mud and blood and thunder
I come searching for
A new wonder
Battle cries over my city
Sacred city
Mighty city on the burning lake
But the gods forsake my city
My city's torn asunder
The white-skinned infidels plunder
Leveling the past as the
Feathery serpent foretold
A curse to kill a living dream
A fever for glittering gold
Road to Heaven
Copyright 1989, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
The whole place just blew bloody up
Who do you suppose planted that stink bomb
Soon the cops will come running
And firemen still pulling asbestos jeans on
Some moon-jumping cow knows how
If she don't know how then she knows something
We were twisting at the reception
The band playing a pretty lame version of
"Changing of the Guards"
The world fell five feet away from me
I trod on your train and caused a big stink
But you give me a wink cos
You know what I'm thinking
Plaster powder's raining on the groom's family
A mini-series riot right out of NBC
There goes the punch bowl see the yellow peach slices splashing
Those ain't no peaches babe but no one else is laughing
You can catch big mouth bass with bait like that
You know where it's at
The bride's maids are all rolling tumbling down the aisle
Stick around you'll see the Pied Piper in a little while
Honey your groom's off trying to take control of a difficult ordeal
I've just about got the window open so come join me on the sill
Now here comes the best man with your garter in his hand
Some things you're better off not contemplating
How much longer you gonna keep us all waiting
Now some kids are looking my way
The road to salvation's hard to follow but my route is shorter
This situation's getting too dangerous so
Here goes a roll of quarters
Riding to Heaven on a Guernsey
Sometimes your irresolution just burns me up
What's up pup
Where do you want to be next June
Where shall we spend your honeymoon
20111020
20111019
Lines, 1980 to 1986: Selected Readings from the Black and Blue Books.
Two Untitled Verses
Copyright 1981, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
1.
We hate ogres, and they hate we.
We kill ogres very carefully.
We stack their heads in pyramids.
We find their lairs and kill their kids.
2.
Dianel was an Ungodly King:
Of him the kindly sadly sing.
The last to rule great lands in Fear
Between the mud flats and the mere.
The Wisp's Destruction
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
"Heed the will-o'-wisp!" said adventurer wise,
he called Guldo of the Staff.
"Think twice before answering fearful maiden cries,
for to do otherwise would prove you daft.
"In mires they dwell, making most realistic imitation
of errant venturers astray in the wilderness.
And the unsuspecting soul who seeks this apparition,
his company his wiser companions will shortly miss."
Upon hearing these words the healer named Metless
trembled uncontrollably, for such was his way
of reacting to such news which, as you might guess
always resulted in his acting quite fey.
Elladan i-Arturian, a foppish man of letters,
self-proclaimed worker of magic, well-constructed in the head,
completely failed to respond to the lore of his betters,
being already in fact quite predictably dead.
In the martial arts Anarion by no man was exceeded
but by Tholcrist, who was rumored an Archer for a God.
Anarion shuddered in his boots and imprecations uttered,
whilst of the end of the will-o-wisp Tholcrist mildly thought.
In snowy forest most cold and crisp
forayed we were by fiendish beast
contesting our journey south to east.
But under the standard of Furble the Bold,
who single-handedly (or so we are told)
saved our lives and procured gemstones rare,
for he alone slayed after finding its lair
the dreadful will-o'-wisp!
Curse Him
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
We were eight
Hot on the trail
Of the source
Of our dreams.
Far from our homes
Seeking our fate.
For should we fail,
We would perforce
Fall short of our schemes
To save the entire world.
But in debate
Did we later wrangle,
For, of course,
We were imperiled
By gnolls and gnomes.
Upon a dark horse
Brightly and richly detailed
Under black of night he roams,
Neither more nor less than he seems.
Zangulv he's called, worker of wrong,
Taker of lives, petrifier,
Vampire, friend of will-o'-wisp!
Here now I end my song,
But not before prior I tell of nights cold and crisp,
When Zangulv invaded and plundered,
And all that rhymes is "wondered". . . .
Fifteen More Uses for an RFD
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
1. Its obvious use (i.e., its intended use)
2. Kills bedbugs
3. Tricks highwaymen
4. Gong
5. Target for shot-putting
6. Attracts monsters worth many experience points (see #4)
7. Fab hubcaps for wagons
8. Iron source
9. Conversation piece
10. Jelly bean dish
11. It's magic (see #3)
12. Easily connected with metal poles
13. Use to signal aircraft, once they're invented
14. Gambling (land up or down)
15. Bird bath
[A/N: "Rabbit Food Dish."]
Bloody, Bloody Home
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
From distant lands did I set sail
With courageous fem in bikini chain-mail
Upon dreary seashore I did assail
And proceed to nuke a bloody whale
Back, back, take me back
To my bloody, bloody home.
Adventuring reeks, it rots, it stinks,
And I can't stand sleeping alone!
Later that night we were assailed
For my servant once again had failed
Yet in spite of all I was not paled
For then the fifty trolls I nailed
Back, back, take me back
To my bloody, bloody home.
Adventuring reeks, it rots, it stinks,
And I can't stand sleeping alone!
Hobbits
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Hobbits are a distinguished race.
When men's ways fail they set the pace.
They eat fairy-cakes and drink popcorn wine,
and they smoke weeds in pipes and write a line
or two when the days are peaceful and calm,
and nothing rhymes with that.
Adam is a hobbit brave:
he dwells in a house, not in a cave.
Furble picks locks and that's not all;
and he's short: he's not too tall.
Periatan is his son, an assassin in training
who walks in Malandris, sunny or raining.
The Unpublished Guldo, Pt. 1
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
There was a young cleric named Metis
Who found profound urge to eat lettuce.
In this idiosyncrasy we obliged him,
But later came to despise him,
As once when excited he wet us.
Anarion was a fighter from Marcus
Who made many a foe a carcass.
But one night we learned him a cad,
Being most wicked and evil and bad,
Secretly sampling slain Boojumus snarkus.
There was a professional called Elladan
Who was omni-inferior in all the land.
He searched for Serah,
But committed so many faux pas
That the Arch-Mage soon made him un-manned.
Once there was a thief so famous
D.E. held him most crafty and heinous.
Furble rose up after ale and meal,
And with holy wrath and a good blade of steel,
Stabbed Mr. D.E. proficiently in the anus.
Atanimir was a sorcerer of such renown
His tale was told in every town
Concerning how he conjured a majickal mist
(Some say by spell; some say he. . . .well, you get the picture)
And so blinded Bahamut and brought him down.
There was an introspective warrior called Drest
Who loved all women for their personalities.
He took him no wife,
Yet led a thrillic life,
Taking it on the run.
There was a young lad called Micky
Who wore hoods to conceal a hicky.
He ever denied it,
But we all realized it:
An invisible dryad traveled always with Micky.
The Unpublished Guldo, Pt. 2
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Allaman was a clerical lord
Called "Sir" by some; by others "Gourd"
Of his talents Allaman was quite proud,
But with a burning spirit he was endowed,
And his opinions were generally ignored.
Drest will be an Elven-King
Of whom the harpies merrily shall sing.
The first whose realm will be fair and free
Between Marcus and the Sea.
Elladan sat alone on his seat of stone
And mumbled that he was all alone;
As for magic, he wished he had it,
But wit is hard to come by:
Done by! Gum by!
Upon a knoll he sat alone,
And wit is hard to come by.
Lines
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I regarded the lines drawn on the page,
Constructed there by a learned sage
In the lore of stars and every planet,
And so disdained my trade of Mage.
Each star spun round like a dizzy hornet,
Like a nest of sparks and one had fanned it.
A famous astrologer he was, no man wiser,
Except They as built it all and planned it.
Despite the fact that I already despised her,
She the Wise is proved a pretender to be a miser,
Reluctant to reveal her most profound thought,
In fact less learned than that astrologer and scrier.
I regarded the lines prognostication-fraught,
And none may declare me a liar.
Their like I have ever since sought,
But in this world such skill's accessible not.
Sasquatch
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Sasquatch is tall and furry.
He has big teeth and feet.
Sometimes he's in a hurry,
Sometimes combed, and neat.
He eats both bread and meat,
And sometimes on people he feeds.
He makes his gum by chewing wheat.
He garnishes his meals with weeds.
He wears a tie and tweeds.
He picnics in the falling rain.
He stares at sesame seeds
And at water going down the drain.
He thinks that life's a pain,
But we all know the truth.
We are sayers of sooth
Who proclaim Sasquatch uncouth.
The Retreat
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Zap! Snap! the wise crack!
Stab, slay! Jab, flay!
And let us march us back to Marcus
You go, you cad!
Run, run! Under moon and sun!
Move those feet or feel the beat!
To a place more merry across the prairie!
Ho, ho! you cad!
Pound, bump! Squirm and jump!
Move along and sing our song!
Faster, faster! or else disaster!
While we beat the dirt and you get hurt
To a place more merry across the prairie!
Below, you cad!
Three Warriors
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Crews an Elf is a reckless man,
Preferring flame to frying pan.
A berserker with a heart of gold,
Or maybe of silver, or perhaps, we are told,
Of brass, or of copper, and indeed it may very well be
That his heroic heart's wrought of some lesser alloy.
Alan wields a mighty sword,
So fantastic we know he could never afford
To have purchased it, or have had it wrought.
But we think it odd its true owner has not
Sought out this weapon, famed bringer of pain
(Unless he was by the blade's thief slain).
Herzboz can any man or Halfling lick
Unless he's very, very sick.
We like to ride with him on a boat.
He looses his cool, and up his throat
Explodes his breakfast and yesterday's dinner,
And poor old 'Boz looks green and thinner.
Hxpxnrd Heroes Like General Vrxndizehn
Copyright 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In the year 3014 A.D.
The world almost ended in an
Atomic catastrophe.
But some men in Peru survived,
As did some kiwis in New Zealand,
Although they emerged from the
Catastrophe in a highly mutated form.
Although they became intelligent,
They also became excruciatingly
Ugly.
When the men from Peru found them
Some six thousand years later, the
Mutated kiwis, which now called themselves the
Hxpxnrds, became the recipients, or
Butts, of many cruel Peruvian insults and Jokes.
As a result, the Hxpxnrds took up arms and
Destroyed every last man, but their rule was
Short-lived, as two years later the sun
Became a red giant, and they
All perished.
Acme Mung Killing Boots
Copyright c. 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Perspective:
Use it or
Lose it.
Drawing Straws
Copyright c. 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Phasepants
Should put many fighters
In the room --
If his towel
Is with him.
Mortem Confundet Magus
Copyright c. 1982, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
"They were in the wrong place
at the wrong time. Naturally,
they became torqued."
- Attributed by Furble Gardner
(probably erroneously) to one
General Nggullgth,
King of the Twits.
A Tribute to Shantakart
Copyright 1983, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Shantakar was a ma-gi-cian.
I sed it once; I'll say it again.
Shantakar was a ma-gi-cian.
I sed it twice; I'll say it again.
Shantakar was a ma-gi-cian.
I sed it thrice; but ne'er again.
He's dead now, as he bit the big'un.
When we think of him we miss'im.
He used magic and other substanci.
Now we pay less for our sustenanci.
I knew some slugs and nasty Cleeks.
Disc-gos suck and magic reeks.
Grubs
Copyright 1983, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I seen this cow, she had no leggses
When she grazed, she grazed on peggses
A blow fly accosted her bovine self
And she weren't in the best of bloody health
She done got grubs along her back
Which made her cough and made her hack
They wouldn't let her in the best of pubs
On account of her bout with the bloody grubs
The veterinarian used her as a model
They popped the grubs out in a bottle
Like, the Nuke Song, 'Ey?
Copyright 1983, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Nuke the bleedin' twits, 'ey?
Nukem where they sits, 'ey?
Givem nervous fits, 'ey?
Blowem t'bloody bits, 'ey?
I'm like standin' in a city, 'ey?
I'm like hummin' m'little ditty, 'ey?
I ne'er wannet t'be an hero, 'ey?
So why'm I standin' at ground zero, 'ey?
So like, the hoseheads are lobbin' nukes, what?
But like, I've put up my dukes, what?
Them fallin' bombs I seen, what?
Now I'm all scaly and green, what?
So like, take off to the great bright north.
So like, take off: it's a beauty way to glow.
So like, take off to the great bright north.
So like, take off: it's a beauty way to glow.
I'm like a bleeding mutant, hail I say.
A total natural refutant, hail I say, but what?
I'd like frighten little tykes, flail all night and day, 'ey?
But they got blown off their bloody trikes, assail all day butt rot, 'ey?
Hail, hail to the civ-i-ale.
Hail, hail, but hail.
Hail, hail, all Human beans must fail.
Hail, holy grail.
P.S. physics sucks.
Duck Raja
Copyright 1983, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
We've sn'er sassed a more towelless frood
than that dimwit Serah dude.
He punches doggies and that's not all.
The Furb's a short one, but Anarion's tall.
Crews is reckless as a moose
drinking juice in a caboose.
Yareth mounts dragons - claims 'tis keen.
Allaman's snosey, Metless mean.
We hate orgres, we hate rats,
we hate desert breaker cats,
we hate fishing, we hate grubs,
we hate hobbits who sing in tubs.
We like Springsteen and Dire Straits.
We like tarts with group discount rates.
We play poker in dead of snight
and look a fright in morning light.
We hate adventures, we hate peas,
we hate when we skin our snees.
We talk to trees, we talk to squirrels,
we talk to very little girls
We talk and talk, we kibitz,
we play tiddley-winks and pick-up-sticks.
We kill dragons, we snuke whales,
we kick it and boogie when it hails.
We speak Elfish hour after hour,
we speak Demonish and e'en Flower.
"Hail," we say, "but who are we,
but kind-hearted adventurers journeying meekly"
Snowles are fiendish and sno less,
and I'll bet that you can guess
that Baal is King and Raja's rich,
Mr. A bit it and Heckhate's a witch.
Hostages go.
Make Muffins, Not Love
Copyright 1983, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
There came from Mucus an assassin
whose name was Bahir Ali-Hassan.
As a child he made pies,
under Mucus' fair burnt orange skies,
of mud,
using Mucus dirt and his former
play-fellow's blood.
Q. What's worse than having to go on a wretched adventure?
A. Yareth's cooking.
Bragi's Harp
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In Asgaard where sit the Twelve as One
Among them doest King Bragi dwell
Reflecting quietly on all that's done
And an be rais'd strife or hearts burn
With temper'd song weaves he a spell
Fit e'en sublime heads to turn
T'attend his lulling craft
And rethink revenge and senseless wrath
Cedo's Queen
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Around the glowing coals they rested,
warm air devoid of smoke contested.
While zephyrs stirred up frigid gales
old legends all their attention arrested.
Stories they told, tales of dead whales,
of festering blubber-suet in the dales,
and of messy pratfalls they grinning jested.
Then forth came she, fell sorceress,
most steady of brow would all confess:
the Lady Peggy, gloomy Cedo's Queen,
of arcane Forces of Dread possessed.
All poise they lost when she was seen.
There trod one drawing powers from between
both the more occult, and less.
Cruel spells she cast and all who heard
Dark Peggy's smooth and silken word
were quick to tender service bold
that would balk even lowest scavenger bird:
to dare most horrid putrefiers and mold,
to face zombie Cetacean and strive to hold
down breakfast, lunch and last meal third.
To littoral sands they came, charmed whalers brave.
Their services nobly and freely they gave.
At bones they tugged, yellow maggots crunching:
in the high name of Science did they thus behave.
They hauled at flesh, no thought of lunching.
Green entrails they bared, loops billowing, bunching.
They waded in its sloshing grave.
No earthly shower that smell could quench.
They nursed dark thoughts of Cedo's witch.
For though Peggy had pleaded Athena's case,
and encouraged them in the foul and oozing stench,
not once had she joined them in that task so base
to save dead bones from Neptune's surging race,
though she confiscated the ossicles to the very last inch.
They made to depart in rancid odor girt,
to put behind them goo-thick pools and dirt.
Queen Peggy made her last good-byes,
tempting with hex, their will to subvert.
But they knew that behind the guise
of fair-seeming words lurked even more evil lies,
and a sales pitch for an over-priced Cedo shirt.
Some Lines About Bulls
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Sometimes I wonder when I sit and rest
if ever mankind might pass the test.
We race against time but don't see a goal:
vision like that of Mister Mole.
For all our brains and intellect fine
are we truly much better than the kine?
For even mere bulls could overrun the Earth
given unchecked exponential birth
with death reduced to an acceptable rate.
Then foolish bulls could attain this fate.
But then the bulls would no longer thrive,
there being a struggle to survive
in a universe finite in goods of worth,
as we find on Mother Earth.
Any Heaven is mankind's to make:
social reform - no moral foundation to shake.
But with some men more holy, more beloved of God
we'll never be blessed with minds open and broad.
With the decent off tolling on Sunday school bells
I think it more likely we'll just make us more Hells.
Given ken even dumb bulls might better appreciate
the responsibility of close management of life's fate.
They might even cooperate and consolidate their wit
and make a Utopia - not just more bullshit.
Lines on Tines
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
There's no mistake - you have to yourk
when someone gags you with a fork.
Honeybee lycanthropy
is (thank God) a rarity,
and a werity.
Werewolves and vampires flee from fires
while fey kings flock to funeral pyres,
and dead men glance up from the mires.
Hearken to the zombie choirs:
"There's no mistake - you have to yourk
when someone gags you with a fork."
Utensil symmetry: a shaft, four tines.
Admire the grace, the beauty, lines.
What were the hopes, the fears, designs
of the poster of bills, of badges, signs?
Power, energy to control,
and laminatory rolls just to unroll.
Ogres and fiends, even Mister Troll
all cry out loud from Hell below:
"There's no mistake! You have to yourk
when someone gags you with a fork!"
[A/N: A couple of rum & Eegees, 'ey?]
The JE Refugee
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
I was worried deep inside,
but I nursed my wounded pride:
so many times I'd already tried
to warn them.
But fear drew closer every day,
and I had to find some way
to make them hear the words I'd say
that might save us.
So I put on my tie,
and I had my last try
at convincing them.
Listen gentlemen to my finds.
I know that you will change your minds
when you've seen the portentous signs
in my data.
You all know Jupiter's far away,
but I've rechecked the math every day
since our last meeting in early May
in North Dakota.
Well they looked at me like I was crazy,
and they shook their heads, annoyed,
and they ignored my graphs.
September's end drew more near
but no disaster did appear,
and they all laughed, but my fear
only intensified.
In October the first shudder was felt,
a tremor crossing equatorial belt.
Loosing hands we all were dealt
from the heavens.
Well I fled into the mountains:
a refugee from the wreck
of the Jupiter Effect.
Lines from Outer Space
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
In days of old a story were told
in Elvarie village, fortress, skating rink,
and, indeed, next to the sink,
of an heinous beast
(which were to say the least),
that filled all lands with dread.
None peace might they find in hamlet
(or lamb) till that beast were dead.
When this creature fell
heard her life the Elvarie would quell
she decided to have some fun,
and set out on daring plan to run.
So inspired were said plan,
it were tremendously successful throughout Elvon-land:
by seduction when she were able
(and oft by force, in pig-stable),
she proceeded to spread her dread.
(And that's not all.)
King Dave's head were filled with dread.
Elvarie molested, yet strangely none were dead.
A malady once rare implanted among them,
which once rooted none might stem.
'Twas thus the Elvarie were lost then,
for all themselves terrible were human.
Now, their fate were wretched, but they knew
that into it they'd put their shoe,
and that better were human than submit to such rule.
[A/N: A translation into the semi-intelligible of an original work by the Unknown Poet, called "Lines From Somewhere."]
Algae on My Mind
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
They say we need the MX.
They say we need the cruise.
They say we need to brush our tweed
and scrape our muddy shoes.
We need more elevators,
and another shopping mall.
We need less preen, more dental hygiene,
more lymphocytes and gall.
Bu I simply can't keep track
of how far we've fallen behind.
Can you relate? I can't concentrate -
I've got algae on my mind.
Oh, algae on my mind,
oh, algae on my mind.
I can never find
how we've fallen so far behind,
cos I've got algae on my mind.
Have you seen the coils
in the cloverleaf?
They turn and twist,
some truth we've missed:
they give me no relief.
But I simply cannot keep my thoughts
focused all the time.
These roads at last are chloroplasts:
Spirogyra on my mind.
Oh, algae on my mind,
oh, algae on my mind.
When will I ever find
just how far we've moved behind?
I've got algae on my mind.
At dinner at night,
oh, what a fright!
I gaze into my plate:
it galls, it galls,
they're all end walls,
and each is replicate!
I flee in terror, I seek to dissolve
my attention in a football game.
I pray for rest in that glass breast,
but too soon it's all the same.
It's a forward pass, the run is good,
six points and now two more,
but with the close-up I understood:
the ball's a zygospore!
Oh, algae on my mind,
oh, algae on my mind.
It's the only truth I find
when I've got algae on my mind.
Algae,
oh, algae,
oh, algae:
algae on my mind.
Slime
Copyright 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Bleah. . . .
Le bléah.
Shergar
Copyright c. 1984, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Woop tee-do,
Woop tee-dee.
I put some shergar
In my tea.
Magic Reeks.
Magenta Shore Monody (Excerpt)
Copyright 1986, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Lurid mists moiled and churned
amidst the Eight, bedizened, perfect.
Fairy-cake for Ardachoke they spurned
and swapped circuitous path for Direct.
In ocherus miasma, bereft of compense,
e'er pursuing interminable lark,
poised on the brink of perilous imminence:
gazed they in mortal trepidation upon
lambent seas and mordant Dark.
Semi-Like Tribute 'Ey? to Like a Threat to Hail I Say But Our Welfare, What?
Copyright 1986, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Adam was a master-thief.
He's a Hobbit.
Adam caused many monsters grief.
He's a Hobbit.
Adam shattered crystal balls.
He's a Hobbit.
Adam lobbed rocks down scary wells.
He's a Hobbit.
Adam touches nemeses in plain daylight.
Such a Hobb-twit.
Adam shakes all armor in sight.
He's a Hobbit.
Adam Adam.
Leather armor clad him.
Legendary destructive tendencies, and fleas:
Adam had 'em.
We fish in lakes.
We fish in creeks.
I seen this fish.
Majique reques.
CLW Clerihew (Woop-Te-Doo)
Copyright 1990, 2008, 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Peerless Pater Metless, as a Baraka,
Quaft his vino and a drownt cucaracha.
He petitioned Pallas Athene t'assuage his
Tremendous GUT, but
She (naturally) passed on the prayer of the
Timorous NUT.
P.S. Discos sulk.
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20111002
Today We Slack
Copyright © 2011 Ernest Bloom.
What's the matter with all these
People? Zombies musta sucked
Out their brains. Who left the door
Unlocked and let the body-snatchers
Inside? Wake up you idiots! Alarm!
Open your eyes! Allen Ginsberg
Howled back at an earlier generation.
Can't you feebles emit more than a
Plaintive text or a tweet? They grind
Your future into sweet sausage and
Stuff it down plutocrat and pop whore
Holes by the bucketful. Pissant
Treachery, lumpishly pissing every day
A little bit more of the world and your
Own soul away. Where'd my world go?
Where'd my good ol' world go? And I
Don't wanna hear about the superior
Next world, my hamstrung dear. What's
Wrong with all these morons? Looks like
Their brains leaked out in the night,
Puddling the pillowcases oily green. And
Anyway I can't see why you'd want or
Need shocked alive by the likes of me. So
Go on and sleep, little dreamers; baby
Don't cry. Today we slack; tomorrow
We die.
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20110924
The Boy Who Got Everything He Ever Wanted
Copyright © 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Unlooked-for, it bursts forward out of sleepy surroundings right at you, screaming and inescapable with the kill reflexes of a Bengal tiger, like you're staring down the fiery throat of the hurricane that lurks at the end of the universe. Call it Ragnarok. Apocalypse. All those tomorrows, and tomorrows, and tomorrows. That's what it's like, to me. Or. . . .It's like peering into the dark tubes of twin barrels, getting a whiff of a blue metallic oily smell in that infinitesimal instant when you know you've pulled the triggers: certain death, only you know it's only a cruel, self-deceiving game you're playing because it ends nothing. It can't. Something happens. You slip or stumble backwards by some autonomic reflex, recalling bitterly that taboo place in the underbelly of your mind that you found and touched quite by accident when you were so young you forgot about it long ago. Maybe it's like an auxiliary and untapped vestibular function of the middle ear, a kinesthetic mechanism of balance that operates in the fluctuations of fate, an involuntary dodging of the silken spider web snares that catch the rest of them. I don't know. It's only guesses, and not even that. Cheap simile. But what else is there? Not much else. Or everything.
Now and again I produce a small pocket notebook and pen and I scribble down a few words; on a good day, when my mind is more clear, maybe even a whole sentence. But it's random, my thoughts adrift in time and memory. Someday I hope to rearrange the words I've put down. Make a more coherent story of it. But mostly I do not write, but I only sit still on this low, padded bench and stare straight ahead. Over time the guards have lost their curiosity for me. They tried to speak to me sometimes in the first few weeks, but I've no use for small talk. Now they leave me alone, knowing I am not right in the head. Me on my bench, and this clumsy, Lilliputian sketch, which is my own cruel idiot tale. But how to tell it? For the entrée into my story I choose late summer in Paris, 1799.
Ahh, summer in Paris. You know how that goes. I was there on military business, in the loosest sense of the term. Guard duty, and occasional fortuitous plundering, at Versailles. It was a plum detail and I made sure the assignment fell to me rather than venturing abroad as so many of my countrymen were doing. I needed the respite. Une entr'acte, a brief interval for personal reformation. I was coming out of one of my dark spells, you see, and don't think I mean a bout of depression. One embraces the times or goes mad. Perhaps, as I've heard it said, the lives and deaths of human beings is the medium in which all great art is made. I don't know or much care. Such philosophical absorptions leave me cold. Nevertheless I, as so many in those days, longed for a measure of absolution. I could have found it easier elsewhere in Europe, or even in America. And yet Paris is Paris, and maybe she is the exclusive cure for her own disease. And I know how it sounds, but it's true: I really did see Belinda for the first time framed against the velvety cool twilight of evening in the Bois de Boulogne.
It was not yet the real Bois de Boulogne, of course, but no matter. I was astride my roan Jerry, riding home among the mulberry trees, when I saw her sitting on a white park bench, her little five year old girl sitting close by her side. As I rode up I saw her long nose and black hair falling in rings around her white neck. She was looking toward the ground, at first, although she must have heard my approach. And then, slowly, she raised her eyes. They were the blackest and saddest eyes I've ever seen, before or since. Immediately my heart was pounding. That was strange. Unusual. An almost forgotten sensation.
I saw right away that they were starving, the familiar semicircles of darkness under their eyes. Having just come in from the countryside, I would later imagine that they were fortunate it was I who encountered them first. Belinda's beauty was an impossible temptation, and these woods were unsafe. She raised her chin at Jerry's clopping approach. Such surrender in her shining eyes, black in black. I knew what she was seeing, me in my uniform. Who would want to see a soldier? Still, when I was a dashing thirty-two year old I must have decided I would age no more. My red-brown hair tends to fly around my head in an unkempt boyish way, and I know from experience that my smile can work wonders. I did smile at her, and I remember marveling at that, because I had not smiled in years; at least, not that way. And then she smiled a little, tentative and obviously fearful. I could tell it was an almost forgotten expression for her, too.
That's how it began, much the same as it always does. The details are unimportant. I told you. This is only a sketch. She told me, in a few sentences, how the two of them had come down from the north. They were tired and hungry. Belinda needed food for herself and for her child, and I. . . .I found I needed Belinda. I offered her a warm meal and a warm bed for the night. I'm afraid all I had was a fairly thin stew, but they seemed grateful enough to devour it. They took my tenuous tick-mattress by the fire, and I spent the night in the barn with Jerry. I didn't sleep much.
Belinda and little Fawna stayed on with me. The first arrangement we made was that I would provide their meals in exchange for Belinda modeling for a portrait I wanted to paint. She heisted at the proposition until I made clear what I had in mind: I only wanted her to sit in a chair in the room while I painted her, working by candlelight in the evenings when my guard duties were over. Fawna would be present at all times. Although I visited the salons and always tried to keep up with current trends, I hadn't painted in ages, and the portrait took me many weeks to complete. Very much I desired it to be right. The dark hair, and the sad, dark eyes, so sad and lovely, looking away to her right, away from me as I painted. Was she so unaware of her beauty as she seemed? I wondered. I used to look straight at her for a long time while I was painting. She would blush and I would smile, but I would go on starting. I could not help myself. Perhaps I didn't want to finish the painting, for then I would lose the excuse to stare at her. I would never let Belinda see the painting while it was in progress, covering it carefully with a light white sheet each night when I had finished, but Fawna used to sit behind me and watch as I worked.
So the days passed. Belinda and little Fawna gradually became more trusting of me. They were happier times than I can tell, but only in subtle ways which most people, I'm certain, would have overlooked -- even Belinda. But yes, she could not know how she affected me. It was those tiny details of human connection that mattered most. Fall was in the air and each night was a bit more crisp than the one before, but within my soul the opposite was true: the deep pack of ice seemed to be breaking and thinning at long last. Ghostly traces of humanity stirred and curled someplace deep in my chest. I became more aware of my surrounds, and of the wider world outside.
When I came home at night, approaching the little château where we lived -- so we called my rude little shack -- I would sometimes hear her soft voice floating out through a window singing some country folk song while she worked. I would pause outside in the frosty cold under the stars, secretly floating in the gently lapping ripples of her Calais accent. She had taken on the housework, tidying things up, cleaning up the messes I'd accumulated over the years, making something more like an authentic home for us all. In those sweet few months I watched the two of them eating regularly so that, eventually, each meal did not seem to them a miracle out of Heaven. In the warmth of day they strolled together under the sun, and when it was cold or rainy out they stayed safe and warm by the fire, out of the elements. They grew healthier. The dark circles under their eyes began to fade, and more color infused my dear Belinda's soft cheeks. Each day I thought her fears receded a little more and her mind, like mine, grew proportionately serene. It was a magical season. She never spoke of her past or of her daughter's father, and I never wanted to know about it. There was no past in those days. None of us wanted to have a past. We did not want to think of a future, either. The present was all that there was, all that there needed to be. It was a beautiful maintenant that could never end. No one could ask for more.
I think it was already October -- Brumaire -- when the portrait was finally finished. We held a feast with a fine pork roast and much wine, and even oranges I'd managed to pluck from the palace. The feast was a great success, with the three of us sharing numerous little trivial tales from these carefree days of our lives. We all laughed and sang as though there were no happier place in the world to be than my little hovel, and maybe that was even true. Both Belinda and I were feeling just a little heady with the wine when it was time for the ceremony of the great unveiling. I brought the painting on its easel to the center of the room and, with a great flourish, I swept the covering sheet away.
Fawna was clapping energetically but Belinda, I noticed in a moment through my intoxication, seemed astonished, and maybe somewhat stupefied. I looked closely into her face. She was not reacting. She looked stunned. Momentarily Fawna fell quiet, realizing that her mother was in some strange distress. I grew apprehensive. What was the matter?
Belinda continued to sit speechless for a long moment, gazing steadily at the portrait. Finally, very slowly, she raised her head toward me where I stood behind the enormous canvas. Her eyes moved up to meet mine. They shone very brightly. Today, all these years later, I can still hear the exact intonation of every trembling syllable of her hushed voice: «Vous m'avez trompé, le capitaine Lurant. Je n'avais aucune idée que vous étiez un peintre magnifique.»
Then suddenly I could breathe again, although my heart was thudding laboriously against my sternum, just as it had a few months earlier one fateful evening in the Bois. I knew she could see clearly in the painting precisely what I saw in it, and what I saw when I looked at her, as I was doing now. She was looking directly at me and she did not look away. I covered my confusion with a laugh and by pouring more wine. Later, when little Fawna had gone to sleep, Belinda and I went for a little walk outside in the cold moonlight. In the nights that followed, Jerry had the barn to himself once again.
I never spoke of such matters to my Belinda, but during all this time I kept myself apprised of news from the wars, our losses and recoveries. With my general knowledge, or better, of the continuing difficulties wracking the country, I had a premonition of what was to come. And so I was not much surprised when, soon, Paris passed again through the thin waist of revolution's hourglass. One government falls and another one rises, and I was ordered to quit Versailles for the front. I could have easily digressed myself from this venture by the usual method, but life is in the living and not in disengagement from work and duty, or so we often deceive ourselves. And anyway, I knew with certainty that I could go to war without fear of falling in battle, and I admit this Napoleon intrigued me. With promotions I could make a better life for my two wards, and then we could all get about the business of living happily ever after.
But preparations were required to keep my Belinda and little Fawna safe during my absence. One very cold day in February (Pluviôse) I hired a coach to conduct us into Paris. It would be their first time to see the city-proper. We bundled up under furs in back of the carriage with Belinda's hand in mine and Fawna sitting on my lap and watching out the window as we jounced along. They were both very happy and excited to see the city, and when we had arrived and disembarked I jubilantly showed them the sights. Even though it was cold the markets were crowded with people. Belinda looked with wonder upon the massive, towering buildings and the teeming swarms of people. We stayed in a hotel that night, and the following morning the three of us went to a small chapel near Bercy. There, Belinda and I were wed. One week later I departed to join my regiment for its march on Genoa.
How do we live with our past mistakes? How do we bury our tragedies and forget lost love? But those unanswerable mysteries, I have learned, are nothing compared to the future's burdensome weight. I hold my destiny in my own hands, but no one else's. Since the days of Midas, and before, it's been the same old story, and that story is this one, too. Each man kills the thing he loves. Oscar Wilde was treading over ground long since picked clean when he wrote those words. That doesn't mean he was wrong, though.
Within ten days of my departure I received a letter from my beloved Belinda. Our little Fawna was down with the smallpox. Despair seized me, but I was far away and powerless. She had contracted the illness during our trip to the city, I knew. Two days later I had a second letter, only one sentence long. Poor Fawna had succumbed.
I wrote many letters home in the days to come, but I heard nothing in return for three weeks. Finally I received a letter from an old man whose hut was located a mile from my own. The disaster was complete. Belinda had not told me that the same sickness had befallen the mother as well. In desperation some few days after her last letter to me, she had managed to walk to my neighbor's house, where she died the following day.
Of such wicked comedy and tender tragedy is life's tapestry woven.
I remained abroad for years then, fighting across Europe. Burying my memories of a few happy months. Wherever the fighting seemed heaviest, I was there. Trafalgar. Prussia. Madrid. I was still among the living when we crossed the Berezina at the end of that sorry, freezing year of 1812, and I knew it was finally time to break with the past. Enough French bombast. Quaint America could use an experienced fighting man.
But before I sailed I thought to return home one last time. It was thirteen years since my wife's death. Time enough. I went back to the little shack where the ice over my mind had, for a brief season, been melted. But there was nothing left to see. The place where I had lived had long since burned down, and the old man who had been my neighbor, who had notified me of my wife's death, was himself decomposing in some lonely grave. Nothing remained for me. I looked on the ruins for less than an hour before setting out on the long road that would bring me to New Orleans.
After that. . . .everything else.
One day, many years later, I was in the capitol of my adopted country. I'd had occasion to travel to Washington several times before. How the city had changed over the years; but then, how everything has changed. I was there for pleasure on this trip, not business. It was an early April morning, and I found myself walking along the Tidal Basin near the Bureau of Engraving and Printing where so many visitors from Japan tend to congregate. Why shouldn't they? The Yoshino cherry trees were in full bloom, reminding them of home. The first trees were sent as a gift from Japan in 1912, three decades before that friendship would be tested at Pearl Harbor. Now, as I strolled the city in 2010, relatively few veterans of the Second World War were still to be counted among the living. I'm one, but that's another story.
How, you ask? I don't know. All I have is similes to tell you what it's like. With each new generation the scientific understanding of space and time changes. So to put it in our most current idiom, perhaps it's like shifting between alternate parallel universes. Maybe it's like that -- who knows? Every time two outcomes of an event are possible, maybe the universe splits into two alternate branches and both outcomes occur, but we only occupy a single branch, so we only experience a single outcome. Maybe it's all in our minds how we perceive infinitely branching reality. Maybe, when I was young, my mind accidentally stumbled upon a way to control which branch I land in. Yes. Through an act of will, of determination, I can control what will or won't happen to me. You see? I choose. Like I chose the branch where I'm always thirty-two years old. Where I'm safe from undo injury.
The branch in which I can never die.
I walked along the mall on Jefferson Drive and crossed on 7th Street to the National Gallery of Art which, for some reason, I'd never visited before. I'd been there for perhaps two hours when I began to discover the French impressionists. As I ventured deeper, each new room was like a chamber of memories opening before me. You see, some time previously I had returned to Paris to paint for a few decades, the better to cleanse my mind of the smoke and wails of the American Civil War. And now there they suddenly were again, Degas and Manet, like a bolt out of the blue. I had watched them paint a few of those canvases that were on display. I remembered the sounds of the sea on the rocks, the cries of the seabirds, the smell of their paints. . . .
Not just Degas and Manet. I remember Robspierre and Murat, and so many others. Remember them? I knew them, personally. I actively supported the cause. And so I know something about the Terror they unleashed -- the Terror we unleashed. That ran rampant as the bands of long repression finally burst.
And now I think I know something that Robspierre never knew, although I suspect maybe Murat did. I know how all that terror can come together and condense and settle into the brain of a single individual, eating away behind a single pair of eyes. It is a singular variety of horror that no one else has ever known, my own private Hell in life.
I came around the corner into another gallery and the hidden, crouching Bengal tiger that was past-and-future cruelly unified lurched out at me, took me by the throat. For immediately, on the far wall, bursting toward me, I saw Belinda.
Sometimes two or three of the security guards will meet by chance in a corner of the room and speak softly together, usually about basketball scores. They pay me no heed. Sometimes a young woman will watch me as I sit staring forward, unmoving, at the portrait on the wall. When this happens I usually see it from the corner of my eye. It is now a familiar and tedious drama, she imagining how it would be to run her fingers through my fly-away red-brown hair. It is usually the hair that first captivates them. She will try to engage me in conversation, almost invariably asking me about the painting from which I cannot turn away. I try not to be rude, but I do not encourage them, and eventually they go sadly away.
Belinda. To see you again now in such splendid, excruciating detail! How did the portrait survive? How did it end up here, in Washington? I don't know; it is an unimportant tale from the past. Belinda! To be so close to you, to see you a few feet away, dark eyes, dark hair, the blush in your cheek, but to be unable to touch you. Your mournful lips that I can never kiss to the smile that for only one week I saw bloom like a perfect rose. Your dark eyes are forever downturned. Never will you raise them to look at me with passion as once you did. There have been many wives and lovers since you, and there were many times many before you, but never again can I touch your hand or kiss your lips in this never-ending parade of cold and empty faces that is life without end.
Mon Dieu! How can I embrace this hollow modern world? I am incurable with love for a woman who's been dead for centuries.
THE END.
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20110922
Two Kinds of People in This World. . . .
Copyright © 2011 Ernest Bloom.
. . . .and we all know them (more by far of the latter than the former): the dyspectralytes and the panpollyannopticdyscrasites.
DYSPECTRALOSIS. n. A psychiatric fugue state in which the afflicted is unable to remember or accept that his or her own moral and ethical expectations and judgments are irrelevant with respect to the greater concerns, usually profit-driven, of the prevailing corporate behemoth which towers over all. adj. dyspectralytic.
PANPOLLYANNOPTICDYSCRASY. n. A severe adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance in emotion and conduct found to be very prevalent in the early 21st century, its symptomatic hallmark is the near complete imperception that all of one's freedoms have been expropriated by plutocrats and modern day merchant princes who are often themselves less frankly evil than merely weighed down with devalued value systems mimicking a form of universal moral relativism (e.g., if it's good for business, or if it's at least theoretically capable of securing me a Christmas bonus, then by God it's obviously good for every other poor sod inhabiting this depreciated and degenerate planet), their brains so addled with the same disorder that they are incapable of discerning that every word they commit to official memos is sheerest self-congratulating and self-reinforcing propaganda of no syntactical value or meaning or relevance whatsoever, who scatter to the darkest corners like cockroaches from the light of reason or any recourse to humanity and humane ideals. Those who suffer from the disorder imagine, rather, not unlike Voltaire's famous Dr Pangloss, that under the savage tutelage of the economic and political sovereigns and wolves who control our every thought and action, this remains, because it cannot be otherwise, the best of all possible worlds, and so pursue unto death a philosophy perhaps best generalized as: "party till you puke." adj. panpollyannopticdyscraic.
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20110912
Message in a Bottle From Madagascar
Copyright © 2011 Ernest Bloom.
Lost at sea, lost
At sea on the moon, sweet Maria, did you
Delete my email address?
Silver dust falls slowly, slowly scanning
Radio frequencies for another mad lunatic genius
Voices fall dead with broken words
Before they're spoken. You forgot to
Give me a single token. I know
The Jawas sold you a lemon droid
Now my every destination: void
I drove through the licking lightning
Quite close to your house, quite
Close to your house. Driving through bright
Cold rain, I tried to feel you presence
Out there somewhere close by, trying to
Sense my presence from where you stood
Gazing sensing something but unsuspecting on one
Cold electric storming night
Might as well be hung over in Madagascar
Smoking a fat khat-soaked Cuban cigar
Catha edulis. I hit reload
Over and over and over again
I hit reload over and over again
Glassy computer eyes scanning for a message
Hungry for contact. I accidentally
Got off the train in Zanzibar
With no loose change for a return ticket
A dozen new diseases that destiny decided
I really ought to contract
Reel me back in
I've still got your hook in my throat
In case you've forgotten it
And the stinging jellyfish toxin of your
Laser-guided dart still
Flames through my heart
We'll go
Inspect the crop circles from
Unsteady crop dusters while you complain
Of Jawas who sold you a lemon droid
And I swallow more seawater, my every
Destination: void
In the red glow licking beyond
The edge of the Earth
20110822
Every Word
Copyright © 2011 Ernest Bloom.
every word an embrace
every sentence a kiss
every page an hour seeped in another's
interstellar eyes, penetrating, a brave
nosedive into boundlessly ballooning,
infinitely regressing depth, every
conversation a blessed, secret rendezvous
within arm's reach or less of paradise,
occasions of a thousand lovers' passions,
in certain determination, intent concentration,
resolved to rend a humdrum, superficial world
where left and right the sleepers still linger
and malinger, blindly pursuing life's latent voltage
undreamable and undreamt,
and woefully under-tapped
through spinning night to yawning dawn,
day by day, year by year,
you and i in secret met, again,
again and again, while all of those others
so unlucky, never having even exchanged
one carefully selected and constructed
resonant, reverberative, tolling bell-note of
a great and heroic, clarion-voiced love:
a word
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20110605
Microtome Cuts
Copyright © 2011 Ernest Bloom.
destinies subverted, pulls us up short from
valedictorian delusions and dreams; mick said you
get what you need. but a starry gulf divides
living from subsisting. what demons tangle
life strings and wind time's bed sheets, what villains
shave off waxy curls of destiny with diamond-edged
microtomes of self-interest and greed? all those
couldabeens-shouldabeens-wouldabeens
every instant, every day,
slipping further and further
away.
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