The Book Of Lies

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2003

Starting in the mid 1980's I went through a horrific period of insomnia and strange happenings which included out of body experiences and what were to me, strange coincidences. I am aware that when I say out-of-body experience a few people will immediately turn away in disgust and ask what my drug of choice was at the time. I do not ask for belief. Beginning in about 1983 and continuing until the mid nineties, I experienced a period I call Chapel Perilous or my Insomniac Period. I have since had other insomniac periods and we are, all of us, currently in Chapel Perilous. Do not believe me; look around. The following poems are from that first mass in Chapel Perilous. Ave Eris.



My Room

My room needs reform
To mend the error of its ways
My room is like a Mexican bus
Crowded with people and belongings
None of them seem to be me
None of them seem to have me in them
So I am looking for me
In my blue cold depths
Where breathing stops
Life drops away.



The Mighty Pen

I know I have the wretched thing in my hand again
It keeps making these bug like marks marking
On page after page and telling bottomless stories
Stories that make no sense and making colored lies
Into steel colored real words and it’s just
A pen all right a pen which traps me but I can’t seem to
Control it I can’t I just grab it when it jumps from
My pocket my notebook wherever it’s
Hiding and it clicks and starts to go off like
I threw a match into a Chinese fireworks
Box and I keep hearing these explosions
Like old battles inside my head explosions
Just above the pituitary gland so when I hear it
When I hear it moving around I pretend to sleep
I just pretend to be sleeping and I lay I lie in
My bed queen-sized trying to go back to sleep real sleep
There in my queen-sized bed that folds into a couch
A couch shaped great big origami dragondog so I lie I lay
There and I sweat and I pulse and I try not to think
I try not to think with my eyes closed I try not to think
About my brain-igniting pen I try not to
Think about how close it is to my hand but I do
I think about it and how close it is to my hand so I
Keep reaching for it I keep reaching even in the dark
And finally I make my feet my legs kick and kick
And kick again and my legs and my feet kick my hand
I can see my hand is reaching for that damn pen
So my legs and my feet kick and I use my head
To bat my pen-grabbing traitorous hand
Away but I bang into the wall with my head so
I know at last my hands struggle to find the pen and
The electric black panther light is won and
The electric black panther light goes
On and one of my hands one or the other grab
The damn pen even when I don’t want to
I don’t want to grab the damn pen I don’t
But it’s just jumping and squirming like a fish there
In my hand and finally lands splat splash hard on a
Piece of paper from my notebook a paper towel
A Restaurant napkin anywhere it wants anywhere
Anytime it wants even when my eyes are closed
Especially when my eyes are closed it just jumps
Right in and starts another battle for the
Last word.



Old Folks

Old Mary’s scary
Old Fred’s dead
Old finicky Tom, gone
Old Becky’s peckish
Old folks just passin’ on
One after another
Dads sisters brothers mothers
Old folks just passin’ on
Tellin’ stories to no one
In particular, just talkin’
To kill time before it kills them
Old folks old friends laughin’
Carryin’ on till memory ends
Pleasant old folks
Just keep passin’ on.



Impossible

I take sudden contemplative moments,
Little incidents where I steeple my fingers.

So I can feel, I can sense, even in the dark,
The pads of my fingers balancing.

Leaning against each other, pointing outward,
Into space, away from earth and me, into

The unknown, the divine, the poetic,
Really I’m just sitting here feeling myself.

Fingering my own pulse, a thumping rush
Of heart blood, through a universe of me.

I watch these same lumpy fingers move,
Move at my command, writing some words,

These words, just as I tell them they must,
And it is impossible, it is impossible.



While I Was Out

How do I explore insanity
Except by going there
On my days off?


I have come to pick bone.
Tell me if it’s strange as it seems:
A sign said “Personalize the Unknown”
(Leave a beer can in someone else’s dreams?)


Say it loud, say it clear!
“I do not wish to hear!”
Because then it’s true your fear
Won’t even take you near.



Overheard

How’s by you?

said wall to floor.

Says ceiling, I got a good deal.

I get to see all.

Window breaks in, I see clearly

from my point of view.

It’s just a trick of gravity

that keeps you there at all, said floor.

Says door, do I let in

or do I let out?

Your function is to swing,

agree the others,

between what is us

and what ain’t.



In Time

Under Hecate’s argent shield
Silver Septembers flow like fabled Nile,
Past and Present Future toward history.
This image fades and drowns
Under October’s dying crimson leaves,
Piled like Khephren’s monumental effort
Against the blood red struggles
Of the three million days, dead and gone.
That end of millennium, the gift
Nearest to the heart of man,
Apocalypse, the final onomatopoeia
Will not from any mortal lips issue.
Those hopelessly desiccated yea-sayers hear only
A canted and cacophonous hosanna,
And nay-sayers embarrassed beliefs
Fall away to reveal the core of nothing.

Slowly toppled
By the gravity of gravity,
Clinics of cynics,
By the slime of time
And the attention span of man,

These histories become mysteries,
Forget their creators,
And bury their makers under acres
Of waving green grass,
And birds sweetly singing.



The Device

Red velvet mask of beauty,
Jewel-riveted to the laughing skull.
Each eye, the flame of a million suns
Maw, portaling star-studded void,
Rage of Law, lotus flower
Boon child-friend plaything, awesome benefactor.
To what altar does this gift purchase itself?
How purposed, to shadow
The Mother; the mute Mother?

Whisper, sacrifice.

A child of her womb
Wields the killing blade.
Wherefore have they this tool,
When to them ceremony is unknown?
Who has deeded these devices
To the unschooled?

Gods may demand appeasement thus.
Against such hunger but caution them;
Worship never nurtures from fields of stone.

Read them this epilogue:
Weed wrapped in astral dust,
Of ice these tortured arms enfolding
Herself the sepulcher;
The Mother stands
Tearless, intestate.



The Lover

When do you come from?

Do you know?
I’ve seen you before
And I’ve heard your voice.
I am afraid to touch you,
For fear that you would vanish
Or that I might be never able
To let you go.

When do you come from?

Do you know?
I saw you and I felt a fire
Raging in me from long ago.
Your gaze unsettles my head
I want to fall inside your eyes,
Follow that dark tunnel
Until I lose my name
Inside of you.

When do you come from?
When do you come from?

Do you know?
Do you know?

I see you next to me
In back-to-back mirrors
My chest grows tight
I hardly breathe
My hands shake.



Manhattan Trilogy

They sewed a great dream
into the stone of Manhattan
and now it rusts.


Stroked by silver gloom
I am scarred with its flail
I lay floating in black night
waiting for death that overtakes
us all.
My promise, an endless golden river,
flowed over the street stones
of my paradise
left the infant dying of thirst
I told lies in charity’s name
I opened my arms to the hungry
and devoured them.


Broken glass streets
Litter of high excess
Blood of stars symbolic rapture
Staining minds with old wine smells
Sparkling with taste, merry-hued
Textures still sanguine, warm.



The Generation Of Me

I am ancestored in Greatness.

Part of my Illustrious Me survived
The siege of Bangalore

Part of me was born in Bangalore

Part of me survived the Charge
The Charge of the Light Brigade

Part of me loved through a shipwreck
In the Irish Sea

Part of me found enough to eat
In the Great Potato Famine

Part of me made a dangerous trip
A Trip Around Cape Horn

Part of me fought in icy seas
Fought in icy seas to kill whales

Part of me lived through a migration
A Migration Across North America

Part of me fought and survived
Though wounded in The Boer War

Part of me fought and survived
Though wounded in the First World War

Part of me survived not fighting
Though not wounded in the Second World War

Part of me survived the telling of all
These tales of the Greater Me

I marvel I am here at all.



Conditional Man

If a man,
Made millions
Millions of dollars
Then he gave those million dollars
To all the starving charities

If a man,
To starving charities
Gave all his million dollars away
His life savings all his million dollars then
He’d be a Gave It All Away Philanthropy Hero

If a man,
A Gave It All Away Philanthropy Hero
To fill his empty stomach to eat stole
His next meal a piece of fruit an orange
Then he’d be a thief.



Summertime Love

I wish
Oh I wish
I had moments to spend
Looking for flowers
And time wouldn’t end
Time wouldn’t end.

Summer
Oh Summer
For lovers is best
Laughing in sunshine
But pleasure’s a jest
Pleasure’s a jest.

Oh Summertime
Summertime
Summertime Love
Green grass and tall trees
And moments for kissing
Won’t you come be my
Sum-Summertime Love

Oh Summertime
Summertime
Summertime Love
Old clothes and warm days
And youth we’ll not miss them
When you come be my
Sum-Summertime Love

There’s seasons to tease you
There’s seasons to please you
But Summertime Love
Is the best love I know

Oh Summertime
Summertime
Summertime Love
Our sorrow will start when
The leaves are a’fallin’
So won’t you come be my
Oh will you come be my
Sum-Summertime Love



Migrant

Heavy odors,
Of unwashed clothes
And the sometime sweet, wet broken earth,
Blows me along a dusty farm road
In a hot wind of late summers
Across Florida, Indiana, California
a sandblaster wind grinding me,
To smooth bone, away.

Heavy odors,
Of the bountiful earth, miserly man
tying me with orange blossom ropes
to a burning harvest sun
fading my jeans, fading my hope
suffocating my futures
all in Mother Nature’s love.



Quaking Children

Tigers crouch under the bed
Poison snakes coil in the blanket
Shadows of dread wait in the closet!
Breezes from an open window
Stir cobweb draperies;
Monsters of infinite strength lurking
On bedposts remain unmoved.

Quaking children fear evil
Only sun power can dispel

Routed in daylight, It waits till nightfall
Where, formless, It waits
For tiny groping hands
Reaching for familiar shapes
Find only terrors
In darkness draped.

Shivering child, says Blackness Whispers,
Your mother lies near; will you … go to her?
I, will show you the way
Only infinite miles of my corridors,
Laughs the Dark

Come, small one, your trembling tickles me,
Such a short way, a little to the left,
… A little to the right, a little to the left,
And then straight
For as long as your heart beats …
I only laugh because you tickle me.
Child, leave your cave of blankets
Where sheet caverns outside your ken
Freeze the ends of your tiny toes
I only want to play with you,
Emptiness whispers,
I only want to play …

FLEE! Says Teddybear, and run for your life!
Please, but don’t leave me behind!
Swing the cave open and jump from the bed
FLEE! Says Teddybear, take your friends if you can
Whispers Darkness, if you can … if you can …

Right behind you, says Terror, I’ll stay right behind
I know a game comes the Whisper
We’ll make it a chase!
Isn’t it sad though,
That even my snakes
Slither and crawl faster than you in this race?
Don’t look around Child, don’t look around.
Is your heart beating faster?
Is that sweat on your brow?
Oh, did you notice,
Little one on the run
I’m not laughing now?
My shapes all surround you
They tear at your clothes
You may reach your mother with your friend the bear
But Child, whispers Darkness,
Have you thought what you’ll do
If you find she’s not there?