wonderfully horny hamburg
sexually strange through the rain
sexy lust
horny lorelei lips
looking at me through the misery
pillars of steel
rectangular water
carved pristinely from the sea
smelling me like exhaust
the sweat from my arms
the laid back hair train journey
you stare
at me
through the years i return to pass
looking each time hungrily
with lust in my mind
knowing the hookers
the sailors
the crazy gay joints of spender's thirties germany
out there out there
still much out there
i can smell it in the poison
of the chimneys smoking
i can see the tears in the rain
dripping down the window's train
i must get out some day
stop passing
looking forward in modern comfort
toward copenhagen
i must get out once
and smell this city on my own
personality
seeing what bravery i can muster
to let the lust lick me up and down
till i smell of stinking happy guilt
in day dreaming freedoms
with never a spot for rest

it is the art of listening
quietly
to where a wall sculpts a shadow
a footstep speaks a secret
your cigarette smoke curls
pulling at the inside of my nose
i hear the laughter echoing
through dinners and drives
feel love in lunch
physical memory at breakfast
after long hard nights
i seek family in strangers
find friends in eyes i never knew
the stories happen if you must know
like voices in my head
as i wander the streets of the soul
searching the corners as i pass
physical - emotional - spiritual - mental
beings
whispering to be heard

words for kay from rosazza after finding the stone which will be his gift from the river

part one

i sit in the river and meditate
i think of you
the conversations i have with myself
are always with you
i cannot get it out of my head
this gentle voice
which answers me
every time i ask my questions
wondering. wandering.
i know you need a stone from this river and i have given this much thought
my first steps here in this gushing torment picked up stones and threw them, dropped them, skipped them and i displaced many years of hard work.
and i hear that perhaps i need to let the river run its course
so i stopped picking on the little ones and tried to become a little one myself. one with the river instead. where i understood that it was my place to watch quietly and learn from the rush of water as it played with my foot
and my ears
i breathed in the rhythm of the slow changing years letting the flow break me carefully
i saw many stones that you might like but felt, suddenly, at odds to taking something away so violently, in such a thoughtless rush of thieving grab and take just because i can. taking being easy and so empty. especially for a gift.
perhaps i thought, in time, the river would give me.
so i asked the river to offer me something for you.

and i waited in patience every day. actively searching the river bed for a gift. turning over rocks and stones. replacing them with care when it was clear they were not to take. i watched huge boulders fade into one background and heard just one roaring sound. once in a while some tiny speck would shine through the current and i would pick it up, study it, ask whether this was the one to take. and replace it always. till i picked up a rock which displaced a rock and another in the stream. which bounced of a boulder into a small bed of gravel. when the dust had settled, washed away, a glistening eye stared down at me like we stare at the moon and the stars. a gift. perhaps more mine than yours. but as my second voice, speaking always, i am glad it is yours to have.

part two

on the last day
before we packed our things to leave
back to large bustling cities
away from the mountain air
i was called back to the river
i stumbled down and then up the river bed
finding at last a pool
where i stripped
and dove down
head under
in the freezing cold
as i warmed my body in the sun
a stone lay out of place
amidst much larger ones
and with its eye it looked at me
it looked at me as all the rocks
the river and the sun would look
staring at me
telling me
this is yours to take

and i dig into my pocket and remove the little stone from before
i wade through the pool to the largest boulder of all
it has a little buddha window in its face
and the sun shimmers from the water
reflections at play in some serious way
i placed the little stone in the window and wade back
receiving the the new stone gratefully
thank you very much
and i lay in the sun a while longer
looking left to see the little shrine
looking into my palm at the gift of the river
and it was all a very nice life
i thought
and felt ready for the next journeys
the journeys away from this place
i had done my time

i dream of chinese opium men
in shiny clothes
floating on kite strings
held by young boys
the road is lined with yellow blossomed trees
where a golden truck cuts off my path
and i escape up a wooded hill
after being at a train station
somewhere in the south
and i remember fleeing with my sister
from unknown assailants
flying up a mountain road
shooting through a tunnel into
other dimensions hoping to stay away
and when we realized that couldn't
we stopped the machine
in between
two dimensions
where the darkness became our hiding place

the turkish bread had been forgotten

the mold's got a hold of the turkish bread
lying in the sun - so cold, still winter out there
and it's been freed from days of micro wave oven entrapment
forgotten when it was needed
forgotten that it was even there
it lies in black crusts of illness
transcending into some new form
black holes never to be ventured
they are dust
look, they are dust.
the road ahead the other day
was covered in big lumps of shit
dog shit to be sure but shit nonetheless
and i slalomed like a bicycle skier
avoiding the menacing turds
and laughed at the analogy of my shitty path
though the warrior next to me saw no humor in it.
i danced the night before in the daylight of a dream
in the outpouring of a monsoon rainstorm
on the roof of a white modern castle
passing the traps and the alarm
i danced in the light of the drops
forming an ankle deep pool
splashing as they do when the fall
water on water
jumping up acrobatic splosh
beads singing anti gravity
wanting
some piece of the sky once more
and the sound was cacophonous
a beat of beautious energy
and the enrgy crept back into my being as i woke
sometimes i feel there is hope
even when minutes later
i find there's nothing to eat
but plenty that should have been eaten some time before.

the japanese man screams in my ears
but it is not to frighten
we sit in his designed terrace pagoda
east meets west in the slick white lines
a lampoon haze softens white light
spreads it through the house
i walk away
suport myself strongly
sliding down the fireman's pole
with a dancer's control
i enter my room where i work
and write a poem
knowing that soemone i love
sleeps next door to me
works there and needs company
and i slumber in my dreams
hear that some others have left
and i may take my place
in conversation and rest
with the blond haired object
of my momentary affection
whose face changes
whose name remains unknown
who mirrors everyone
i have ever loved
in one
the one i will ever love

initiation

i saw an eye closed on a mountain
a dormant volcano sleep
as the blue aura of the earth rises
a sharp stretch of blasting light
i saw the sun at birth
the first flaming photon
as it spins gigantically
and orbits and creates and gives
maria rests her hands on me
as the chanting monks come from the sill
and the winter light
reflects its force onto my back
i can see it clearly
though my closed eyes
see only the yellow smoke breaking
fading beyond my eyelid's film