Devils Old & New

Walking this dark water's edge...

As Dicky Betts sings of somesuch devotion to some another; and to a river where we had both become those near extinct creatures of an imperfect wilderness that do not seek redress, by such grim profanity anymore than a camouflage to hide the scent and every trace of its humanity behind a pretty mask

A beautiful phantom haunts this river...

Faceless as a dream, the great flow of night eddies where those most familiar shadows remind me of who and what I have always been-- a rebel of gravity: to defend against the incursion of any other force of fate or drive other than to breathe the purest inspirations

Nearby has been raised a carnival of salvations...

I have never been sure that they call them revivals; further away are those self-professed priests and ministers rail and rant, farther away from the last truly undiscovered creature I have always known as the Divine... strangers and scholars of an old time religion that do not even know Latin or Greek, Coptic or Aramic. That cannot trace its own histories beyond the latest tangible leather bound volume, a collection of thoughts and reflections-- at times as wicked as any devil their fears could devine of the world's pain

The ghost of Jerry Garcia calms me...

As the Devil may be a friend of mine, for which the only visible form of damnation is the fire I use to light my cigarette-- with every one I recognize my own mortality in those wispy curls of smoke arisen from exhaust of my last addiction that I still feed... I am a leather bound collection of thoughts and reflections-- at times as wicked as any devil my fears could devine of the world's pain

How can any god survive upon a night...

Or even a night for which the truth is lain beyond the small rise of holy hills canvases, muttering in tongues that no one can understand (despite what the Book of Acts had said, that those tongues the apostles spoke were actually known-- and not some ignominous prattle of mono-syllabic baby-talk that makes them feel something more has come to them than the desire to be beloved of the Divine)

My anger piqued, for which I only draw my own poisons in deep, deeper than they may choose to try to save me if they actually knew I was there-- or even truly cared about anything that lied upon the other side of those canvas walls.

It would be only too easy to become their Devil for a night...

To tear away the poles and flimsy walls and leave them expose to the night, to tell them that they cannot see anything when they close their eyes; to everything other than an after-image glowering the painting of the Last Supper than clung to their Grandmother's wall, or the Madonnas they keep in their front yard

There's nothing left to save them from what they believe must be a mystery they cannot understand beyond the latest rendition of a collection of black and/or white

... I have a lingering distrust for Bushes, whether they are burning or not.

"Next voice you hear will be your own"...

Beyond them...

Along this river's rise is an impression that it leads towards civilization and a city with a name and a super-imposed identity of some another old saint. I cannot even consider St. Anthony without the lingering dark images of Hieronymous Bosch. Inside the immense bounds are a collection of peoples, alien and strangers even unto themselves-- save those small clusters that have gathered in the night

I have a certain soft-spot for Dionysius...

Once my favorite devil, perhaps... wine strikes me like rancid kool-aide. In this god's youth, I had imagined perhaps too much of a rascal; and that like with any other version of god that has come down the pipe-- some took it too far.

What temptation have you never succumb, my pilgrim heart?
That what evil may yield of the flesh is a fairly tough sell. Gambling? The ever so ocassional splash of boozey-ola (lest we not forget the devil's greatest epiphany, rock & roll.)

I am afraid that my own version of the devil is not really very scary...

Something of a collector of God's little broken toys. Still something that seems fair easier to find than salvation in a tent, I only have to go where people are. Within the city are quite a hodge-podge, for which I have acquired something of a keener eye for the Devil...

"I came upon a child of God, walking along the road
and I asked him brother where are you going"...

There is a mad-dog in a bottle of a vagabond travelers wine...

Unleashed and possessed by any whim and every wind that stirs within the night a rambling, shamble eye-sore of humanity wrapped in layers of collected cast-off articles of clothing is a man
that is stopped as the music over-spilled from inside the small bar that serves the reheated left-overs of an age before, with a bottle or a glass of the very same spirit that the beggar had imagined was his own personal hell-hound; driving him down into the depths and darkness of despair

"Got to get back to the land, set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden,
we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden"

I smile as he begins to dance, badly...

With no more sense of where he is or how he is supposed to keep himself hidden away for the comfort of any other passer-by traveler; tourist or denizen of a city named after a dead saint,
that refused and turned away from every temptation for fear of a Devil that may have likely never existed beyond his own imagination

I laugh at his mis-steps...

Cut short as I see one of the city guard of what is purportedly right and just heading directly towards this ram-shackle drifter, whom can not see the troubles he has caused in the obeyance
of a spirit he may have thought lost and buried too deep inside of him to ever feel again-- until tonight, it overcame him with such senselessness

... Apparently, there are rules against this sort of human honesty.

"Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning"...

There was no real way to save him...

But to join him there, matching him step for inglorious step in his mad dance sidewalk dance to the old butterfly muszak before the policeman could stop him, he would now have to stop us both. I wasn't drunk, and my simple toss-about clothing apparently a few small grades higher in the social pecking order

A small legend scrawled across my back read, "Purveyor of Freedom"...

Which should have meant something else I guess; but that night, I had thought it might just keep a wino out of the cage where they keep public nuisances; such as this uninhibitted dance of two crazy bastards that made no kind of any logical sense (and I wasn't even drunk, dammit!)

"And I don't know who I am
but I know that life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden,
we are billion year old carbon,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden"...

Apparently, the officer's presence made our lunacy more palatable...

Or safe, as there began to come around us a small crowd of curious, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on-- It was better not to really think of what I was doing, nor how and why we had become the evening's entertainment; so much as to hear the words and the devil's laughter ringing in my ear

..."And everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
riding shotgun in the sky,
turning into butterflies above our nation"...

And I'll be damned if that ole boy in blue didn't jump in alongside, thoguh he might have been a fair better dancer than the old booze-hound and I-- it didn't make any kind of sense, but it really didn't have to; like the three little monkeys, if there was anything evil about what we were doing, none of us knew a damn thing about it. More people were coming by, stopping, staring, pointing, chuckling...

"We are stardust, we are golden,
we are caught up in the devil’s bargain;
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden"

Wasn't much a big finish really, though I have to give ole brother booze-hound an A for effort, the execution was another thing entirely. He leapt up, and I think he was expecting one of us to catch him-- which just didn't happen.

"You alright man?" The cop asked...

And I smiled, before I merged back into life and lost myself in the crowd... time for me to fly, I thought as I moved back to where I had left the river's edge and sat down; and let it wash me away back closer toward a smiling pretty face in a picture that I kept tucked safe in my memory

The soul is a traveler, trying to find its way back home...

It is a fresh sort of smile to think that not only might she have approved of my senseless acts of seeming indifference (though laughter seemed a more likely response)-- it was cool enough to wonder that she might have danced with us too.

Peace,
Po

Timelessness

"I cannot stand to see another creature in pain"...

She sees the thin sheath of glass
between dreams and a tangible mass
a sheer membrane of angel's breath
spent in the course of a life, and death

From touch, a soul slide descent
unto an unknowable abyss wrent
in the palm of the hand, a schism
kept within a fist, an inflamed prison

That bleeds and breeds an unfeeling thickness
of the dormant espiritu-diaboli, a nest
of shades darker than heaven, a deeper scrye
than what devil lurks within the depths of the eye

"Dreaming is never wholly a fiction"...

There is a stairway beneath his feet
which leads out upon a disenchanted street,
end to end and beyond the still city of Bliss
are the greater wilds of other creatures, adrift

amidst the senseless violence, no more dreaming
allowed among the supernatural elements screaming
the heart to sleep-- fed upon a blow by blow
glowering neon trace, along the twisted flow

Plunged into the vein, an aphrodesiac that had
turned the body against the soul-- a myriad
concoction of bitter-sweet addictions
and coarse voices of remedies of affliction

"We hold nothing in silence, for long"...

She lit the match and drew within its hollow entreaty,
before drawing the flame closer to the emerging beauty--
a smile emerging within the halo of light from the darkness
beyond a sheer membrane of angel's breath--the light swallowed in a kiss.

Peace,
po

Wraith d'Sensua

A whisper of presence
a quest for the untouched particle;
a subtle substance divine interplay
sweetly and softly stir the mad dance
of passions driven still

Such enchantments wreak
the imagination of its own
wretchedness, and that
loose the soul free-- unbound
of every other care than to be

Surrounded within the night
and a supernatural cause of
perturbation of the soft membrane
and sympathetic system that
fed the heart its own fresh air

In slight return, and a rush of blood
and a brushed-flaw of the eye,
stricken and blind to every other
sense borne aloft in the fierce intensity
that once had fed gravity into the earth
now fed the air

Such wretchedness wreaks
the imagination of its own
enchantments; and that bind
the soul to such restlessness--
under the weight of such desire

There have been but a sparse
few times for which the human
touch of speak-easy tone
excited the night winds with
such electricity and sorrows

A gluttony of contempt and
the suffocation of rage by a
negative charge of atoms, filling
the lungs with such gross addictions
to malice-- that nothing innocent
can never seem so harmless as death

Its reaction is always taut, and immune;
with no pause beneath
a new and sparkling heaven,
shimmering in black and white

A silent closure-- the eye
stands still peering beyond
the unknown mechanics
of some another tomorrow,
bleeding life

Dressed in some new shadows,
I am content to become your devil tonight--
Open a night window and feel my breath
passing through an evening dress

Such enchantments wreak the
imagination of its own wretchedness,
and that loose the soul free-- unbound
of every other care than to succumb...

to sleep, and those breathless
dreams that may come for you,
taking you beyond what you had
ever known before

Such wretchedness wreaks the
imagination of its own enchantments;
and that bind the soul to such restlessness--
born under the weight of desire.

Shades

Mecurial blooms bend o'er within

a dark country of fiery and wild eyes,

beyond the limit of perceptions, sin's

acquaintence are prey-- passions wide,

wider the sensual breach that hide

little devils in repose, unfiltered over

tongue in cheek the ecstastic swans

borne upwards-down to the cover

shadows ripple underneath a spell

of moonlight, and the taste of sweat

Summer evening, abandoning curl

of the heart to slight scene dreams

and the weakening purr

of her touch-- her breath devoured,

a slight passing through the pleasure

of an intense kiss-- spilling away from

lips and down her throat...

down, down, down...

claws tearing into a melting earth

deeper by every bidden pang

as she feels those unseen hands

deeply on her hip and moving

sensate unto her inner thighs

opening to every warm-hot breath

the spills o'er, and then through her

the devour of a sensitive port

walls crashed against by waves

and then over inundated-- a chaos

of pang-fret tides swept over

and ravage without loss until the

last wave begins to recede

Closing over her, by increase

filled, every extremity wrapped

in and curled up tightly against

the invasion-- pulling, legs spun

around a peverse pulse and one

fierce breath passes back and forth

Intertwine like serpents coiled,

a langunage that only the body

can communicate until everything

is suddenly still and quiet again

Summer night, an abandoning curl

of the heart to slight seen dreams

and the weakening purr

her touch-- one breath devours

another with a slight passing of

pleasure of the night's last kiss--

spillng away from her lips and

down her throat...

Unto the morning calm shade.

Peace,

Po

Yesterday's Day & Night

Beyond the infertile bound...

Whereby songs of whatever devotions
one still has left to ride
along the last imaginary line
that has ever infected
the heart and mind with
those cold divisions

It is often the tremble in beauty's
voice that reaches further inside,
like an irritant that drives
you farther than you might
have ever intended into
a dreamscape looking glass

Over God's worn and calloused palms,
filled with such wars and the lost
which spill between the fingers, ghosts
that were only searching for the
perfect hiding place with a human face,
but the eye is ne'er so willing to
deceive as the throat will expel
every last bit of the poison it has
swallowed-- for fear it becomes
the pus and bile that attacks
the heart with its own weaknesses
for pleasure and happiness

The refugee, stir'n lethargic in
the alleyway, is just another
junkie-vampire that you could feed
for another night; or try to repair
it unto a Heaven
and a God that even you don't
really understand--
does it love or hate...
can it even feel anything at all anymore...

Or has it been wounded too many times
by its own compassionate being,
lost out among the wilds of cold and
fierce creatures that have imaginary
powers over anything, much less over
themselves...

The heart can only seem to envision
another manifestation of itself, which
cries and laughs, that wroughts
and fraughts over its every thought.
How could anything endure
such an undying misery as an
infinite love for every new creature
that will be born of a promise
that may or may not be kept
in such an imperfect place.

The mind, an acuity for that nothing
escapes its grasp-- that there is nothing
so insignificant or that serves no other
purpose than to be; but that all are like
a means towards a perfected end.
Nothing is so lost or forgotten from
the grand design that it was made, even
if endures only for the space of a few days,
hours, minutes... it has some reason to
be

Yet the soul is a traveler, obsessed
with the idea that God must be discovered
or perhaps recovered; following those
clues that only make sense to it,
and driven on through all of these
civilizations, the destination something
unknown, save that it seems to believe
it will know it as soon as it is found; a
recognition or precognition of that
place where it truly belongs

It is often the tremble in beauty's
voice that reaches further inside,
like an unnatural irritant that drives you
farther than you might have ever
intended to travel into the dream-scape
looking glass

Peace,
Po

Unfinished & Untitled Rant

Such as any other imperfect creation
born and flown from the still water reflection,
of Heaven, and by a slight descent flit unto a more widely known
of neon caravans driven and hearts bitten cold


Possessed of somesuch morose devil, would
by intellect and agility outgrew the childhood
passions of being anything, more or less, be
than another subtle shade of humanity

Amidst of what all flutters, a psychopomp
come down from yonder hill, without a prompt
to enlighten beyond our fill-- theories of freewill & roses
and such overly sweetened nonsense superimposed

Open the window and let in some fresh air
perhaps peep your head out from the shell, and fair
the jokers laughter of what could ill-survive
anything less than a magic carpet ride

Alas yet to spare the rod, is to spoil the clown
what great burden must blow the great Willowdown...
to spare the pretty such a wicked thorn
(Though one can never really be sure what trouble such young maids might be looking for)

Aside from the wine (sic), of course-- or the fault is mine
as I would ne'er slight this intercourse with the divine--
as must surely be, for what vision so keen
to peer so far, so vast, and so deep...

That my boots may not tread,
and with every circus comes the new dread
that dark of a self-devouring malignance
(or worser still, to misspell fraudulent)

Or to be shot out of a book (You did say canon
and not cannon), seems another page of the book of Mormon
had once again lost its prophet of the latter day
as he is off, and lost searching for the month of May

Oh could there ever truly be such a beautiful space
where such as are wicked clowns lose their face;
(through the blind-fold-- from whence may come
the sobering wisdom of Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle Dumb)

Bashing bitter-sweet clowns upon the head
until the very last one is dead;
then what a splendid world it all shall be
with plenty of wheels of fire through which to leap

Po

I am Evil and I am Going to Hell... but oh well...

Slavery of the will to lay in
want of some worth beyond
obeyance; and be over-filled
with some unfound devotion

That the heart loathes the
simpler sympathies of the mind,
conjecture is always safe
as it asserts nothing but doubt

Walking along the night-avenue
and passing such subdued creatures,
captured by panache-- that even
they are not sure what they
would want, wish or feel for if they
bore witness to one more star
falling

Sometimes it seems a more noble
cause to suffer all these cravings & addictions
then to be still and passive;
submit to that ennobled lethargy of poets
that sing such sweetened praises
to tree and hill, moon and star;
saccharine odes of memorae...

Remember the first time you fucked?

No-no, not the soft pitter-patter
and sweet pangs of dulled pleasure
of a practiced (special?) orgasm--
but when your heart was hammering
as if it were trying to claw
and tear its way out from your chest;
the body near forgotten beyond
every rich and pure sensation of...

Why does this seem, somehow, more diabolic to you-- dear-heart?

Ah yes, the hookers must be driven out of
heartland, for the body must remain
sacred (nad yet, there still seem to be a few
money-changers at that temple, but oh well-- never mind)

All I am saying is give me something to believe in man...

"Home is heaven and orgies are vile,
but I really don't mind an orgy every once in a while"...
Ah Ogden, thou art a wicked pecker
at those great and illustrious hall of words and sounds
that one should, and should not, say aloud
Most especially in such virgin verse

And oh yes, Mr. Nash, your polemifizing
rant about too much metaphoring going on
in verse? You must recant! Repent! and all that
Say what you mean? Really Mr. Nash,
now how pretty is that?

You have left a stain on the sheets, old Boy
(and had the gall to mention
and draw attention to it, no less)
Say what you really mean?
How... how...

Yeah, I'll catch the next round brother;
for which we can ponder upon yonder
hills from our poets hell
(and not actually tell anyone
we are rambling on about tits;
nudge-nudge, wink-wink)

Oh, that I should ever see
a tree as fucked as Kilmer's (perhaps even down on her knees),
I shall promptly go into my Lizzie Borden act
and give that sucker forty whacks

And when I seen what I have done,
Wordsworth is next...

Yes, I am evil and likely going to poets' hell
(Rimbaud has been there he said,
though I do hope there isn't all that buggery
going about. And just to keep my record
straight, buggery is the polite word for gay
ass sex-- which is not my particular cup
of... skip that over that one too,
as I hate any fricking kind of tea)

But oh well... and fuck you too Tennyson!

Heh-he, yes, I feel better now.

Peace,
Po

Along the Garden Wall

When I pull away,
closer than I appear;
Adrift as any other
stranger's voice--
a masquerade of silences
hold when all these illusions
despise, and have left me too plain

I become reckless, and
spill another glass of wine
upon the unforgiving white,
a new tablecloth
bought for dinner;
and even within
some soft warmth of candle-light

I feel clumsy sometimes,
that the rain seems refreshing
and I disappear within all
the heavy dark clouds
that once appeared so ominous
before the morning sky
let it all go

Just walking, stopping close
by your garden door,
watching the flowers drink
until the daylight returns--
they are still left beautiful as I
light a soggy cigarette

As I pull away,
e'er closer than I appear;
stranger than any other
lover's voice
the sunlight whispering
in my ear, until I'm dry

And I feel ridiculous
in all these rumpled clothes
of what I had believed
the most perfect disguise;
a masquerade of silences
that I leave behind, hold
when all these illusions that
I despise, have left me
feeling too plain

Could it be what has never been,
anything more than some
soft collection of my own faults...
When it seems easier to take the blame
than to take another chance

Restless in the evening,
still closer than I appear;
when I'm too quiet
is when you can really hear me
wondering-- wandering past
all of my silliness, deeper
than the naked eye can follow

Until tomorrow, just walking
and stopping close by your garden door,
watching the flowers opening
their sleepy eyes, as I light
another cigarette and let my
addictions bleed me dry

To turn around and yet still wonder why
I don't stop wondering about you.

Peace,
Po

At the Heart of a Name-less River

Lest, not I rise, would you
follow me still, where
these dreams come upon us.
Lying beside the river's edge
where the current scatters
our reflection,
toward something, near-enough
like a piper's calling, shrill wind melody...

Melting slowly below a lighted disk
for which electricity and neon
leave an ordinary darkness in
such disrepair--
In the absence of true freewill,
I can only become the shadow
dancing around who I really
would like to be

... Someday, maybe

Lest, not I rise, would you
follow me still,
to where those dreams overcame us.
Lying beside the river's edge,
where the current swallowed
our reflection,
towards something near enough
like an old river song, intimate and deep...

Lost somewhere,
beneath the moon's hot rise,
would you shiver me still?
Or let the fever burn
wan passions flare, a
possession of breaths
filling empty air
with ghosts too heavy to bear

These dreams alone
caught up and
spun down upon
such fierce gravity

Down to the earth,
where it wears
a glittering, surface
a heavy littering of stone;
deeper than a river bed.
Turning over,
and over upon gentle-sharp
finger tips that flown,
an erosion of time against
some great unknown

Lest, not I rise, would
you follow me still,
to where those dreams had taken us?
Lying beside the river's side,
where the current swallowed
our reflections,
toward something near-enough
like a harmony that cannot be
pulled or plucked apart...

by any turn, and turned around
along the other bank, a'swirl
eddying to make the waters
dance, at the heart of a nameless river.

Peace,
Po