Sunday, August 12, 2012

Opium Poetry





Opium Poetry

This is the sound of the sun screaming.
Making the Earth bleed at night like
Some mechanical ghost
On the back of a rural road,
Driving at unreasonable speeds.
Whipping back the electrical chords which flow from her head
Where hair might have been
But never was.
And the universe dreams.
There is a breaking point in everything.
Children race like ants
Back into the womb
As if death could not find them
On the threshold of life
And still lead them into sunless lands.
No matter how good you live your life,
No matter all the faded bits of darkness you have gathered,
How much you love or are loved –
With all of the bills unpaid,
The pregnant daughter,
And the thieving son,
All the stories or music you’ve ever heard
Will not matter.
You will die.
My favorite color is headache white.
A gentle pounding rings through our skulls
And all the world smells of sex and cigarettes.
It smells of sound
And of broken nightmares,
That are lined up on the ledge of the window
And if I take them down,
The turn and writhe in my hands
Like fast-moving paint or a prisoner’s cry.
I put them back.
Or throw them in a dark corner with my hopes.
Time is a place.
And as you reach into the back of your mouth,
There is only space and strings
And a living rabbit’s foot.
What did you expect?
Smiles and cotton candy?
Oh, here they are..
Tied up in a trunk,
On the top of a caravan
Being pulled by eleven dead elephants,
Slobbering and crying
As they are whipped about the ears and tail
By scarecrows who wear the faces
Of your ancestors.
It is a clear night on a murky highway.
Coalesce.
But do not show fear,
And never look them in the eye.
Because they hate not being understood,
As if understanding will naturally lead
To some sort of Salvation.
Perhaps the key to salvation is being understood and remembered.
But no,
Salvation is a nine-letter-word that looks terrible
On the back of a jacket,
Unless it is being worn by James Brown,
Because damn, that guy can move.
Like the total weight of heaven and hell
Depends on him cutting a rug and
Maybe it does.
I believe in Fate;
It is a sound equation with no room for paradox.
It says…
If you do not believe in me,
It is because this is your fate.
And then all three sisters laugh
And add another thread.
If ever you should find yourself in that house,
Do not use their make-up
And never leave the toilet seat up.
Because if you do…
You had better watch out.
It is unending-
The fury of the Fates.
They kiss you whisper thin
On the neck and ears,
Cool and sticky,
Like the flesh of a dying city.
Silky is the face of these ancients.
Yellowed and brittle at the edges, yes,
But pallid and firm everywhere else,
Like sunlight
On an orchid’s breast.
A fragile wind on a sea of deaf lives.
The elegant equation.
It comes on in the frigid limits
Where nothing meets
With dying widows
Come to weep
In the lesser wastes of midnight.
From a distance
It appears as a wavy mix
Of radiation shrines and supernovas
Crafted from the silhouettes of bony trees.
And as it draws closer,
It becomes a metal train
Conducted by the fetuses
Of wolves and of birds.
They believe in the promise of a better tomorrow,
And they believe in the words of their fathers.
They dream of spiritual bliss
And of fiery war.
They dream of the soft places
In between the waking world
And the others.
The lights from over our crowns sputter and spill
Into the atmosphere
And then are no more.
Lovers locked in arms march the streets
To speakeasies and to bedrooms.
The old folks dance in the doorways
As clouds open up and clothe them
In the tantrums of rain and pain,
And insane laughter calls through the chill
Of unending delight.
The lord Buddha signs your paycheck.
Pats your back when you vomit,
Shoves you out the door when you’ve had enough.
And you, my friend, have had enough.
Then he helps you into your coat,
Sending you back
Onto the path of disjointed harmonics,
Lurching
From concept to concept
In radical purpose.
The change is subtle like an enemy’s stare.
It becomes a digital showcase
Projected on the great
And grainy backs of dead giants and
On parchment paper made
From the skin of dead gods.
The words written here
Are the efforts of twelve mad, glass fish
Under no guidance
And no restraint.
These are the stories that were never written
About places
That were never visited.
Scrawled here are the prophecies
From the backwaters of the brain.
The foggy marshes that
No one poles to anymore,
Where light and shadow gain mass
And click at you
In the language of angels,
And in the tongue of devils.
This is the sound of the sun screaming.
Much easier to hear now.
A Siren Song gaining momentum
By the millisecond.
All our ships are in thrall
And crashing.
The lyrics of the ages
Are carved into tiny patterns on the floor
And tattooed beneath the flesh.
Meanwhile,
Tomorrow and yesterday eclipse today.
A gentle storm is being born
In the forest of the damned.
Later, it will become a king,
Drunk on the blood of the guilty,
Freshly wrung
By its maiden’s hand.
The mood here is getting dangerous.
Bewildered cries pour
From the forest;
Our river of tears has dried up
And everyone is left thirsting.
The time has come to move on.
We wind our way
Through some dark café
Like a November chill
On a September night.
And snapping at our bare heels
Is the beast
Who guards the gate
At the well of the worlds.
And deep inside its starry gut,
Crashes the wave of a ragtime epiphany,
And uncertain acts
Of ambiguous duality.
True sailing never died.
Instead, it burrowed -
Into the salty crevices of
Our mind and spirits,
Brains and hearts,
Until sweet bloody spring.
And my god, the ice is melting…

Opium Poetry copyright 2011   blue christian winterhawk