2001-06-12 - 12:35 a.m. - V. ...And I Feel Fine
well folks...here it is...part 5 (long overdue) to my five part poem entitled "We Freeze Our LAwns in the Spring"...now im gonna send it to some poetry minded friends to have them mark shit up all over it and send it back so i can do revisions...if anyone i don't knwo reads this and whats to make suggestions...my email is under contact info up and to the left...this peace alludes to sources as wide and varied as Lovesick, Nine Inch Nails, nirvana, Paul McCartney, "The Waste Land" and im already toying with adding allusions to the beach boys and/or the white stripes...for those of you new to this...it is my response poem to Elliot's the waste land...any questions drop me a line...the old parts are still up so check em out...here it is...peace.V. �And I feel Fine
Just before dawn, we feel
The pull of the moon's fingers,
Tracing splinters across the ceiling, tighten
Their grip and start slipping, burning
Trenches in the air
Above our heads.
I came to this place
Alone with nothing more
Than two decades of experience
In breathing and a bucket
Of water where my blood should be; my veins
Are garden hoses.
Can someone tell me
What I've learned?
Feel the weight of every star
Burning out, snuffed
Like candles, cold
And gray upon your chest.
This is only the beginning
Can someone tell me what
We have learned?
What lessons were to be
Taught by corpses - filed in cabinets
Alphabetically, their eyes
Dilated - except for which books
We are blind to; which songs
Make too never sing?
"This is our last chance for peace."
"Fuck it."
"Shantih. Shantih. Shantih."
"Fuck you."
I light a cigarette and feel the sting
Down to my veins a similar sensation to:
Swallowing needles; drinking the sun.
Is this supposed to hurt
Or is it to remind me that I'm alive.
"I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel."
Feel:
The earth shaking, always; the wind blowing,
Kicking down the trees
And kissing
The skin from off my bones.
How sweet your kisses. How sweet
The sting of muscle exposed to sand
And bacteria. You're so
Sweet.
Have you ever seen wind dissolve; motion
Slipping between the holes in our atmosphere
Creating a new solution of potential
Energy and peace. This is the new
Equilibrium of wind and we are all stripped
To our bones; skeletons
Drowning in oxygen without
The luxury of lungs or pulses.
Where is the thunder now?
It still rumbles nonsense in the sky
Directly above where we stand.
Where are our ears now?
We sing the songs we knew
Would make us mute, not knowing
That our voices only sound
Is the echo of jazz waltzes from half a century
Ago playing on a transistor radio
In the home of somebody's grandparent.
Is this a dream?
In every dreamed final moment
There was only you and I
Stripped down to bone and beating
Hearts, singing: "When you were young
And your heart
Was an open book."
And in every dreamed final moment
We are the proof of humanity. No photograph
Is as honest as a dream: too honest
To smile; too bold to hide
Behind sheets. This is for us
On the sidewalk, living in boxes, afraid
To eat meat, "But it's okay
To eat fish because they don't have any feelings."
Eat me.
'Don't go out alone.'
�
�
