With a personal logic that perhaps only I will ever understand, I’m posting this in uneasy conjunction with the post on ‘Pain’ that I just made. This is a poem from that period where the ideologies presented in ‘Pain’ where just beginning to become truly grokked by the jester here.

I’ve always wanted to go back to this particular piece and give it the kind of good, poetic scrubbing it needs to work properly for me, but instead, I’ll just call it good. With a wink of the eye, I present…

The Burning Man

I

right up against the walls of the world
pressed flush to the panoramic glass
casting about for fellow spectres
the burning man is dying

tears vaporizing
fists hammering
lungs aboil with sermons in smoke
the burning man is crying

he leaves a trail of ashes
he casts uneven light
he laughs and loves and rages
the burning man is flying

he took a lesson from the trees
the final truth of falling leaves
every season comes, then flees
the burning man is trying

II

when the sun is just a distraction to be fought with blinders when every silence must be filled when the moments loose their meaning and go racing off in search of something better when the rattle of old mufflers becomes a welcome diversion from the long and hostile search for answers when the painted veil of night and the quiet grace of a bar-stagger are most devoutly wished when the air is just obstructing your view, to burn is a blessing

III

he stood removed from everyone
pounding at the darkened glass
burning brightly behind his walls

IV

it’s difficult to walk without tripping
on the chain of idle delusion
it’s difficult to walk with all these
fetters laying about

it’s difficult to think, breathe or be alive here
ablaze in the fields of hollow men
a burning man
emitting life’s own essence
in a phosphor glow that illuminates his eyes
for those moments of life’s own majesty
when everything spins and bounces in erratic,
ecstatic rhythms

V

lost in the concrete tributaries, lost in the television dreams, lost on the sidewalks, shuffling our feet, our shopping bags slowly mangling our spines, a strangers name stitched to our shirts, all our friends look at us with vacant eyes and offer up the trivial nature of it all for our grim appraisal.

lost in the flesh-pressing tempo of the bar, awash in leather elbows and eddie bauer’s excrement awash in designer cologne and spilled liquor, stale beer, horrid leers, laughter- primal fear is all that’s alight in all these eyes.

VI

i try to keep my world full of poets
i try to live for the mad, the raving fringe, the fools
i try to keep my world full of kaleidoscopic light

VII

the problem with having a point
any sort of fundamental theme that you feel compelled to express,
lies in the metaphores

you can’t just say what you mean
any sort of worthwhile message has to come
decorated, deconstructed and reassembled
with a cast of thousands
where just one would suffice

the problem with outlining your motivation
is first you have to explain your world-view
so they won’t lock you up
and even then
who can be sure

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 2:45 pm and is filed under indiscriminate, poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.