The devil was once an angel

Gonna move to a mountain top,
gonna build a cabin in the woods,
gonna turn the soil and grow a garden,
lost among the trees,
open to the stars,
away from the masses,
get my water from the streams,
fall asleep in silence,
in a homemade bed,
next to a pot stove,
embers glowing red,
yet I'll awaken to disappointment,
and the nausea of the day,
amidst the hustle of the city,
and the bustle of the players,
fluid identities,
and the sharp dressed religious saying prayers,
on the bench across the street,
bad luck and a quivering hand,
bad decisions and clothes full of sand,
bloodshot eyes,
coins in a can,
in but a moment,
one can see,
I could be you,
you could be me.



"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it was only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this."

---The Hagakure: Book of the Samurai

A Poem is a City

This one goes out to all my fellow bloggers.

Photo: Dan Neutel, Poem: Charles Bukowski

a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers
filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,
filled with banality and booze,
filled with rain and thunder and periods of
drought, a poem is a city at war,
a poem is a city asking a clock why,
a poem is a city burning,
a poem is a city under guns
its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,
a poem is a city where God rides naked
through the streets like Lady Godiva,
where dogs bark at night, and chase away
the flag; a poem is a city of poets,
most of them quite similar
and envious and bitter...
a poem is this city now,
50 miles from nowhere,
9:09 in the morning,
the taste of liquor and cigarettes,
no police, no lovers, walking the streets,
this poem, this city, closing its doors,
barricaded, almost empty,
mournful without tears, aging without pity,
the hardrock mountains,
the ocean like a lavender flame,
a moon destitute of greatness,
a small music from broken windows...

a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,
a poem is the world...

and now I stick this under glass
for the mad editor's scrutiny,
the night is elsewhere
and faint gray ladies stand in line,
dog follows dog to estuary,
the trumpets bring on gallows
as small men rant at things
they cannot do.