What's Lost in Translation

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

-don maequis

 1. Get enough food to eat,

and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,

and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise

until you arrive at the silence of yourself,

and listen to it.

4.

-Richard Brautigan

she says i’m not there for her

i picture her walking through a mansion

opening each door expecting to find me

there’s an 8x10 photo of me on the left pane

of each window in every room

i am nowhere to be found

she finally descends into the basement

the furnace is humming

the floor is cold, lifeless concrete

there are spiderwebs and dust heaps

an abandoned science project that smells of vinegar

bags of clothes intended for the salvation army

and a milk crate

whee sits this very journal

in which i am now writing

it catches her eye

like the sighting of a nest

on an aimless stroll

she picks it up

contemplating her audacity

and finds herself

here on this very page

she feels she is being watched

she looks over her left shoulder

a ladybug sits there

she is now caught between these words

and an animal instinct that informs her of a predator

she realizes that i am there

somewhere

she skims through these words

for hints of my whereabouts

i love you

“so what” she thinks

as she reads on

“where are you when i need you?

this is not a nurturing relationship

we’re not here for each other”

then why else are we here?

she closes the book

frustrated

and walks towards the furnace

she slowly opens the door

i am there

lost in a vision

unable to decipher

the fire that burns me

from the page that writes me

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don’t want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don’t want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent’s mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

-Federico Garcia Lorca

a palimpsest of all the times we walked by bearded flemish face and a campy smile headband white pajamas red rag flapping at twilight red sores on ankles of bare feet sticking out from a doorway his gracious hello

talk talk talk the black-lipped street woman said all day I talk my asshole off

he used to be young and attractive but not so long ago the sick boy hustler who goes by wrapped in a blanket that trails behind in the mud his bare feet cracked and indecent past groaning walls and gutters flowing with blood

you on the corner wit the plastic bag tied around your mouth we joke and laugh at the stiff-standing sight of you through the windows of our retail jobs

today the jerking mumbling letters-to-the-police-chief crazy is wearing in his jacket lapel a full-blown rose

summer’s the unmistakable smell of roses in the hall that becomes fried fish behind a neighbor’s door

I never was taught about hell when I was young but love the thought of earth’s body-heat

smell that over loving years is a wide habitation

laying beside him so nice I leaned over and began to stroke his neck a sweet suck of flesh down by the pulse of the throat

I love your loose-skinned body bitch

fuck-body my little suck-body go down after just any old cock

jasmine cocksucker he says that’s what you are

I’ll give you thick and deep

after he yelling comes I kiss a shoulder his shoulder I can’t tell if it’s his or mine my lips are touching

pressing my nose against his heart chakra

a loud guffawing man an entrepreneur has sold the Sphinx and the buyer has taken it away so the salesman’s saying in a hawhaw voice well we’re gonna have to replace it with another and sell that too

boys for sale leaning against the walls of boutiques I pass in the night with aching breasts

a marriage proposal from a guy with a can held out for coins

falling-down-drunk leading feeble-and-old

a man with matted hair stealing a sip of dregs from a cappuccino cup in a rain of yells of get out get out I’ll call the police get out

sometimes when I have a bottle you can stop and have a little

his mother kneeling above three hotplates cooking Thanksgiving dinner

at the end of time when time comes to an end there the faithful will be gathered together to dine on the great ham hocks of Leviathan’s female

back and forth every moment up and down this block

blackened feet first sign of gangrene early in the decade

that they were removing me like an old fixture

thin men on Mission St selling their blood

said Easter-open greasy-spoons

cop strides into the check-cashing joint

everything shoplifted bare as relief

the one arrested with us who cursed and howled for her confiscated bed was down by the curb in my dream singing so sweetly

we were living down in the subway he said we’d go for walks together along the tracks

he said you can’t or don’t want to own anything down here but you can own a cloud

I dreamed that my life was only a short time more and was weeping to lose the simple joys of it

it’s the dead who make us kind

-Sarah Menefee

Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again—-the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world’s greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman.”

-Saul Williams, Introduction to Said the Shotgun to the Head