There was enough
air
to drown us
in acts of
complete senseless
sadness
and yet
we prevailed
through the rituals
and the habits
that were already here
– no one knowing why –
we danced
and drank
cups of blankness
receding into
the lightheartedness
of a deep riotous night,
each one of us
thinking
this night
could last
forever.
The night sat on my face
like the smelly old ass
of a rotten moon
just on the day
I’ve been fired from life
wandering off on the cliffs
of who knows what conundrum
and joyfully composing the silly
gooey poetics of a drunken soul
I recall writing something about
the foulness of philosophical systems
or the moans of relic religions;
whatever it was,
the night and its greasy weight
sat on my face
like the spits of moonshine
that drunks burp out
on the face of a
lonesome hour.
I’m tired or writing
the new year
or what’s left
someone said last night
that the academic
circle
of sociology and economics
was shifting
I didn’t know a thing
even after all the books
I read or bought.
All I have is a scotch
and the lazy poems
of an ex-german poet
that lived in Los Angeles
plus the
40% plus
that keeps me awake
through the long nights
of the wasted
unneeded
– such a beautiful word-
the unneeded
whispers
of the drunk
man.
The end
had come
plummeting to the ground
my fingers spread
making one last contact
with the sidewalk
the rough cement
at the base
of this ultimate world
I was dying
my heart had only a few
beats left
before the entire
intoxication of life
would vanish
and I
touching this world
for a last time
on the street side
the hard grey cement
the pain and the beauty
the last sight of sky
the last gust of air
leaving
all the strange
beautiful
perplexing realities
within the earth
that was holding me
for the very last time.
This is the first step
into a wide open world
the toes stepping on frosty ledges
in an abandoned city
with closed eyes everything is ownerless
then the wispy breeze
then the last leaf of the last tree
then your hand in your inside pocket
hopelessly seeking the tobacco pipe
and the curled tobacco tatters
that will accompany you through
the long twisted journey of smoke and ash;
and while this can be a dream
another broken dimension of subjectivity
you can still feel the rubber of the shoe
stepping on the frigid pavement without cars
the shadows of street signs
wrapping around angles and grayness
as the horizon grows dim with sudden silence
the eyes watery, glorious, unbelieving
of the eternity of being lost and free
in an abandoned city
hidden somehow
in a wide open world.
a stream of cars down the slopes of noon
I and the minutes, parts of clouds
the far-away phone rings November
these business suits still smell of rivers
shadows born from high buildings
all is peace in a busy day.
.
This is the quest
ink and blood
searching for the sacred language
a series of words
somewhere buried
Remember
when we met
by that corner of a disguise
talking with the stillness
that is common to oil
it was an early October blizzard
that trapped us before
we’ve identified our inertia
locked in that cold
with a bottle of vodka and
letters from Rilke
we drank the last drop
of our nihilism
ready to die there
or live on perpetually
with no sense at all.
Am I the apparition
between this thought
and you, the thing-
in-itself coming through
the flooded veins of my perceiving
with this thing there
constituting my content
while I compose its name
we are united in the poetic theme
of the present moment –
and that thing
is no other than my fragmented self
losing the virginity of conception
the birth of the concept
allowing life, my life
merge with the myriad voices of yours
closely knitted with the linen of a dreamt world
as closely as two poets speak
from unreachable regions of being
hills of this journey
how to be human
when
Beyond Language 
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