Demons

Clouds pass over the moon
Like an eye that shows impending doom
Tension in this misty air
Souls pass into the room
Drawn in by a lost memory
You will join them in the moonlight
You are my offering
Your soul transcends
The centuries of pain
Your misery in life
Is your ecstasy in death
Time passes like the wind
As we race to beat days dusky grin
Mornings just a moment away
Your body glistens in candlelight
As we all look on in fiendish delight
The ritual is just beginning
Come fulfill the prophecy
With our demons of debauchery
As virgins and spectress sing

[...] Read more

song performed by Offspring
Added by Lucian Velea
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If I Did Not Believe In Miracles

My fellow Americans...
Latinos, Blacks
Rednecks, bigots
Aztecs, Egyptians
Native Americans.
Those Chinese...
Who chartered these waters before anybody.
Mulattos...
Racists and others,
Who choose to live upon this soil...
In a hyphenated existence.
Let me make this perfectly clear,
We are emersed in tremendous dodo.

And...
Quite frankly,
We are in it to smell...
For years to come.

So...

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Meditations: Dario Fo's discovery that God is the Supreme Head of the Italian State Railway

God, once had a mustache, double breasted jacket
Wollen turtleneck and held me on skis in Abruzzi

God, once was a second grade teacher, signorina Puccessi, teaching
Petrach, Virgil, Ovid, Boccacio, Dante, Grazia Deleddo, , to mules

God, once was whoever had 10,000 lire, the bomba,
dared to show it, to spend the whole amount on drinks

God, once was the captain of an ocean liner, Vesuvius
Crossing the atlantic to ellis island, with one push from Naples

God, once played centerfield in pinstripes, wore number 7
drank a lot, hit home runs, won world series, a good friend

God, once was a girl's eyes, her mouth, her right breast,
then her left and sometimes the void between her legs

God, once was the head of the New York Stock Exchange
and quit over a salary dispute, to save money on taxes

[...] Read more

poem by Liberatore Suffoletta
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Tale Of Violins

The Mongols used the hair of horses’ tails
to make the ancestors of bows of violins
which move across the strings when playing scales
like fish that skim through water with their fins.
Music that’s the food of love has forces
which move men with its airs, all made of Luft,
to love far more than any long-maned horses,
as I do, lucky Luftmensch who's not hoofed.

Edward Rothstein writes about horses in the NYT, May 16,2008 (“Man’s Best Friend, Hoofed Division”) :
Without horses, where would we be? Trousers might never have become fashionable. The violin might never have come into existence. The Aztecs might have thrived another few centuries. The Industrial Revolution might have sputtered out before its time. No one would have to get off his high horse, and no political race would have a dark horse candidate. And the American Museum of Natural History would have had to find another subject for its sprawling, charming and illuminating exhibition that is opening on Saturday: “The Horse.” The opening festivities will include demonstrations of horseshoeing and horse grooming; an appearance by Thumbelina, a creature billed as the world’s smallest horse (17 1/2 inches tall) : and a visit by a vintage horse-drawn ambulance. But the exhibition itself relies far less on country fair spectacle and far more on a provocative history of the ways in which humans and horses became, as the show says, “powerfully linked.” Those links may be as slight as fashions in clothing (trousers, we are told, developed specifically for the riding of horses) and as important as the fate of empires (“Next to God, ” Cortés is supposed to have said about the conquest of Mexico, “we owed our victory to the horses”) . The exhibition is suggestive about the evolution of the arts. (The 13th- and 14th-century Mongols, who held their immense empire together with the aid of the horse, also used hair from its tail to create the ancestor of the modern violin bow.) And it invites speculation about the course of technology. (The Industrial Revolution ultimately displaced horse power with horsepower, but not before horses shared the burden with machines: on display is a horse-drawn, steam-powered firetruck from 19th-century Pennsylvania.)

5/16/08

poem by Gershon Hepner
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The Arsenal at Springfield

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

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poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Arsenal at Springfield, The

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But front their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer,
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song,
And loud, amid the universal clamor,
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

[...] Read more

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Hitchhiker

When I was a hitchhiker on the road
I had to count on you
But you needed me to ease the load
And for conversation too
Or did you just drive on through.
You didnt see me in toronto
When I first tried out some hash
Smoked some then and Ill do it again
If I only had some cash
Only had some cash.
Then I tried amphetamines
And my head was in a glass
Taped underneath the speedometer wires
Of my 48 buicks dash.
But I knew that wouldnt last.
Then came california
Where I first saw open water
In the land of opportunity
I knew I was getting hotter
I knew I was getting hotter.

[...] Read more

song performed by Neil Young
Added by Lucian Velea
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Originated By The Chinese

'We have come together today,
To express the results of our findings.
And to announce,
We have discovered without doubt...
The origin which has produced,
Such devastation!

The massive pain endured and suffered,
Has been pinpointed by the use of our research.
And overflowing facts...
Throughout this thorough investigation.

We suggest you sit back.
And relax.

Ladies and gentlemen...
The origin of this massive pain suffered by so many,
And agitating generations...
To enforce divisions and separations.
Has been caused by the reluctance to accept truth.

[...] Read more

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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I Just Feel So 'Equally' Patriotic

Many movements ago...
When the land seemed active,
With reactive participation.
Weed puffed and flowers worn in the hair,
Upon the heads of people who cared...
And shared their dreams.
Then considered 'hippies'...
Singing 'Up Up and Away'.
And 'Monday Monday' everyday!
As they 'hopped and scotched'
Across the national scene.
How innocent...
Those times once demeaned.
Now gone to accomodate,
The greed that has been going on.

Rejected and dejected,
By those doing undercover shady things.
As today many look back,
Wishing to 'update' those priorities.

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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Francis Parkman

September 16, 1823 — November 8, 1893

HE rests from toil; the portals of the tomb
Close on the last of those unwearying hands
That wove their pictured webs in History's loom,
Rich with the memories of three distant lands.

One wrought the record of the Royal Pair
Who saw the great Discoverer's sail unfurled,
Happy his more than regal prize to share,
The spoils, the wonders, of the sunset world.

There, too, he found his theme; upreared anew,
Our eyes beheld the vanished Aztec shrines,
And all the silver splendors of Peru
That lured the conqueror to her fatal mines.

Nor less remembered he who told the tale
Of empire wrested from the strangling sea;
Of Leyden's woe, that turned his readers pale,

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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Romance In Durango

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Dust on my face and my cape,
Me and magdalena on the run
I think this time we shall escape.
Sold my guitar to the bakers son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide,
But I can get another one
And Ill play for magdalena as we ride.
No llores, mi querida
Dios nos vigila
Soon the horse will take us to durango.
Agarrame, mi vida
Soon the desert will be gone
Soon you will be dancing the fandango.
Past the aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people
Hoofbeats like castanets on stone.
At night I dream of bells in the village steeple
Then I see the bloody face of ramon.
Was it me that shot him down in the cantina
Was it my hand that held the gun?

[...] Read more

song performed by Bob Dylan
Added by Lucian Velea
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Awake At Six A.M.

Awake at six a.m. The clock ticks, nicks,
flintknaps little pieces of my life off,
a French executioner's sword quicker and neater
than the sloppy axe of the moon
naping the strike. I swan on the block
to the drum roll of a panicked palpitant
among kitchen utensils. I'm the crucifix
of Cygnus in the Summer Triangle,
arms outspread. I'm severed like a carrot.
I'm the headless horseman. An acephalic shallot.

Someone yanks me up out of the earth
and holds me up by a gout of hair
like a prize turnip with a characteristic look
of freeze-framed despair on my face
as if it had just been amputated.
I had a snake transplant. Now I'm Medusa.
The star, Algol, in the grip of Perseus.
The ghoul of my own solitude, I can heal
or I can enflame the disease with an unclean needle.

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
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Watching Tv

We were watchin tv...watchintv
We were watchin tv...watchintv
In tiananmen square
Lost my baby there
My yellow rose
And her bloodstained clothes
She was a short order pastry chef
In a dim sum dive on the yangtze tideway
She had shiny hair
She was the daughter of an engineer
Wont you shed a tear
For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
And her bloodstained clothes
She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was a student of philosophy
Wont you grieve with me

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song performed by Don Henley
Added by Lucian Velea
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Slippin' Into Darkness (Feat. The Funky Aztecs)

yeah! ha ha yeah.... thats right!
the F.A's comin striaght from the wild wild west
look at baby girl born in 19-7-deuce
Pop's on his fix, Mom's stuck on that crazy juice
went to school, It's all cool but in Junior Hiiigh
Little hooker in the bathroom getting hiiigh
What she doing and what she smoking, nobody knows
Is she addicted or just slipping into melbose
A bad ass broad running with the girl gang
just got some tat's,Talking all that girl slang.
first one to slap, because La vida dont matter
Wip out a cuete watch your brains get splattered
Selling them doves, hanging with thugs and all that
Beating up fools with a baseball bat
Started having sex at only 15
Imagine O.G. wears his clothes all crisp and clean
Got pregnant had a baby in December
she wont see the daddy till next September
Mom's and Pop's gave her the boot
Kicked her out La Casa, Now what Raza

[...] Read more

song performed by 2 Pac
Added by Lucian Velea
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Never Wanted To Work That Hard To Be Beautiful

Never wanted to work that hard to be beautiful
inside or out, be the rare fossil of a mirror
in the red velvet drawer of a jewellery tower
that slides out like a tiny coffin in a morgue.
Not out to prove that waterlilies have the bones
of astral hummingbirds. Love flowers,
but not in cults. Love the moon enough
not to make a religion of it, life enough
not to resist what it's trying to put me through
whether I'm howling in pain, set afire,
or mystically exalted by vital bliss
or about to scatter my ashes from any of the bridges
that arc like grey rainbows of partially kept truces
with the lies of the lines in between.

Sometimes I'm mining mini black holes
inside the solar system looking for
new motherlodes of metaphor inside
the eye sockets of a skull crawling with Aztecs
like red army ants attending to their gods,

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
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Coming Out Of A Blue Funk

Coming out of a blue funk, this seal,
under a sky thickening like sheet ice all day
has found an airhole it can breathe through for awhile.
Been wondering about my life. What
it's been doing to me for the last fifty years
for the sake of poetry, for the sake
of pursuing an earthly excellence
though it hardly matters why anymore.
I used to have an answer on the tip of my tongue
when I was young and thought more
with my mouth than my heart. Less so now.
Time, death, suffering, love and the devil,
certain intense realms of creative bliss
attuned to the dark harmonies of hidden roots
that flow back like the delta of a river
to the watershed of a single dropp of water
that got it in its head to do something big with its life
and turn something trivial into the sublime.
Did not the sun and the moon, the whole of the sky,
fit it like skin? And that was just the outside.

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poem by Patrick White
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Questions Of Life

A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.

And yet, at times, when over all
A darker mystery seems to fall,
(May God forgive the child of dust,
Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!)
I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
And, speech-confounded, build again
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.

I am: how little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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My Secret Place

My secret place down by the Tay River.
I deer-bed down among the autumn grasses
and last of the New England asters
half-lotus in cowboy boots
with a clear view of the stars
dancing on the water.
The waterlilies have perished.
Jupiter.
And the moon at last crescent.
No one knows I'm here but me.
I've never come here with another.
A place where I talk to the universe alone
as if it existed
more personally
than the mere immensity
of a cosmic intelligence
super-saturating time and space.
Belief's a bad habit of mine
and sometimes I want to be deceived
into believing someone's listening

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poem by Patrick White
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Kahlo-Christ Conjunctions - Sacrificed Flesh, Broken Bread, Emmaus Vision

[The curious or, better, interested reader may view the images alluded to in this essay at this website: http: //falconwarren.blogspot.com/2011/01/kahlo-christ- conjunctions-sacrificed.html]

Kahlo Strophes

As with love, also the bellows.

Calavera*, the Future stands
hand to mouth, fingers to forehead
unfolding before still instatic shapes.
Hold desperately to frames before
these quaking perceptions.

She could not stop there,
had to flare out, dry paint,
and the dryer flesh peel down
to bone, a sexless esqueleto**,
skull no longer mustached,

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poem by Warren Falcon
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The Star-Apple Kingdom

There were still shards of an ancient pastoral
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank
their pools of shadow from an older sky,
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as
'Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye.'
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel
sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees,
and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules
on the treadmill of Monday to Monday, would repeat
in tongues of water and wind and fire, in tongues
of Mission School pickaninnies, like rivers remembering
their source, Parish Trelawny, Parish St David, Parish
St Andrew, the names afflicting the pastures,
the lime groves and fences of marl stone and the cattle
with a docile longing, an epochal content.
And there were, like old wedding lace in an attic,
among the boas and parasols and the tea-colored
daguerreotypes, hints of an epochal happiness
as ordered and infinite to the child
as the great house road to the Great House

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poem by Derek Walcott
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