Magic
You cannot
hope for happiness
Your thoughts are out of line
You only half accept your heart's desire
And half
suspect your body's fire
Half in love with a martyr's cause
Half hoping to escape your laws
You need
a magician to ease your head
And make your two halves whole.
Not Even
Half distressed
half hoping
You take a long walk
And now you run
Wrinkles
worries fade away
In the bleaching of the sun
Sunlight follows you as soon as
You leave
your pillow --
Not even the sun wants to let you go.
Cold
I am cold
Sick and feverish
I feel my head
I have had
a temperature
All day -- And now midnight
I see visions in my caravan
All the
creatures of the night
Stand around my bed.
The Other Side
The other
side of hope and calm
I know it anywhere
The other side's despair
I feel it
growing thickly
It pats my yellowing locks
Then pulls and tugs away
Until it
lifts me by the hair
And I am uprooted entirely.
Raucous
I have such
a circus in my head
Of never ending jumping jacks
I cannot keep them still
They jostle
for importance
And try to win my attention
They are such a rough lot
Tiny beating
hearts they have
That call to win me back.
A Little Death
A little
death occurred --
Not one to shake the universe
Or disturb the merry stars
A little
death whereby a body
Is put completely out of sight --
Yet kept alive in that fertile oven
Of the head
that keeps the body
Burning gloriously shining bright.
Reserve
Let it all
go
See it drift away -- your worries gone
Look I let the moorings off --
Your yacht
of stately reserve
Is now sailing out the quay
You're rather playful now
Your fleshly
corporeal state is rotting
Let it go let it all go.
Wandering
I found
myself in such a state
That I was lost to any advances
Conversation passed me by
Like birds
in a blue sky
I was silent in and out --
People would now and then shout
At me to
try to get through
But I was following the clouds about.
Celestial
Stars angels
hosts dominations
Your playthings await you
Here on this Earth
We are but
balls of memory
Loose strands of feeling
Unwoven sheets of cloth
We stand
here naked
Awaiting your wrath.
State
Delirium
--
It is a loosening of the eyeballs
A creaking of the joints
A certain
quiver of the lips
A tortured pulling of the hair
Till whole hunks come away
An anxiousness
that has come
Like a dying guest -- to stay.
Dust
I lift the
body high
Here with its frail components
Its faltering blood
Its embittered
weakened sense
Its fragile common sense
Its barely escaping sigh
I leave
it here in the sawdust
Until the pump relents.
The Accident
Make me
perfect
Make me whole
Fill the body -- fill the soul
Take the
fractured bone
Here bloodied by the fall
And remake it into marble --
Hard and
pure and seamless
That sculptor's perfect stone.
The Attraction
I had two
hearts once
But one I put away
Two lips -- one to love
The other
to betray
Two tales -- one the truth
The other I could not say
Double-headed
freak --
I do this for pleasure and for pay.
Pleasure
Pleasure
is a golden thing
Yet I fear it every day --
It has a roguish grin
That takes
me whole away
And drops me on a Pacific isle
Where I laze each sunny day
No thoughts
disturb my vacant smile
No happiness within.
Disappearing
It is like
playing to a
Disappearing audience --
This feeling I have for you
Every trick
proves futile
For this shuffling circus hack
I start to miss my cue
I see everything
I lack
I cannot bring you back.
Wanting
Wanting
does not go away
With the passing of the day
It becomes a finer thing
All dressed
in clothes of stars
Pale moonlit mountains
And elegant headlight-less cars
Wanting
only comes into sight
With the coming of the night.