I have no energy left but for revolt — the revolt of the one
who abandons the climb, turns his back, and goes
back down the hill toward the water.

The pinstriped priests sharpen the horn between their legs,
The better to carve the granite commandments
that drag me to the precipice’s edge with a pill for my mouth,
a hand for my pocket, and a push for my back.

I have fed at the supersized trough, striven to become
a hallmark of standardized measurement.  
But I do not want to be fed by those factory corpses
who sit like workers in cubicles, unmoving and covered
to their hips in excrement and despair.

I do not want to work in a box turning time into regret and obedience into tears.
I do not want to be informed by the chyron streams
that feed the wells of desolation and ignorance.
I do not want to be a cog of an economy that fills the fountains
of palaces with the blood of innocence; where investment  is a tout sheet
that dissolves into electrons as the getaway limousine races toward the mansion.

The sheer and final exhaustion of the rebel is his last and only triumph:
he drops the knife of his cause, gently lowers the stiffening body
of his holy purpose into the receptive dust, clears aside
a few stony pieces of the rubble, and kneels in submission
to the earth and all its ownerless teeming beauty.
For then he knows: it is I, too, like these others, who have walked among the dead.
Then he leaves his climbing body there, and turns again, back toward the water.

Ah, youth! This is from a song I wrote about 30 years ago, perhaps while under the influence of Dylan.


Man is born to tremble, I’ve seen it written in the book
And a lover’s bound to sicken from a cold impassive look;
How an empty glance can promise love between its cold blue lies,
I was searching for a future in two dark and dangerous eyes.

With every journey started it seemed prospects were fair;
Destination is damnation but you never think it’s there.
A heart can spread its wings and drift into the blackest skies –
I was flying into trouble for two dark and dangerous eyes.

God grant me your true wisdom, put my feet back on the ground,
I cannot see the forest ’cause these trees are all around;
Please don’t save me for the Kingdom, I cannot wait to die:
Just give me one more chance to see those dark and dangerous eyes.

Could a man forget his passion, could a lover end his search
For an angel in the tavern and a saint inside the church?
Someday I’ll seek that Inner Peace, be pure and free and wise,
But now I’m just a prisoner to her dark and dangerous eyes.

I know the ways of wicked men, I’ve watched them on TV;
I’ve studied lust and hatred for my bachelor’s degree.
A woman is a nightmare wearing fantasy’s disguise,
And here I am still dreaming of her dark and dangerous eyes.

I have no energy left but for revolt — the revolt of the one who abandons the climb, turns his back, and goes back down the hill toward the water.

**** Cheney ate my flesh and shat upon my skeletal remnants. Obama came after him, unzipped his fly and emptied the pale dilution of his bladder-wine onto me (it was warm and sparkling at first, but soon became cold and fetid).

I do not want to be treated by your white-robed functionaries who take me to the precipice’s edge, deliver a pill to my mouth, a hand in my pocket, and a push on my back. I do not want to be educated by your masters of delusion, your demons of standardized measurement. I do not want to be fed by your factory corpses who sit like workers in cubicles, unmoving and covered to their hips in excrement and despair. I do not want to be employed by your treadmill machines that turn time into regret and obedience into tears. I do not want to be informed by your chyron streams that feed the wells of desolation and ignorance. I do not want to be a part of your economy that fills the fountains of palaces with the blood of innocence, where investment is a tout sheet that dissolves into electrons as the getaway limousine races toward the mansion.

The sheer and final exhaustion of the rebel is his last and only triumph: he drops the knife of his cause, gently lowers the stiffening body of his holy purpose into the receptive dust, clears aside a few stony pieces of the rubble, and kneels in submission to the earth and all the teeming beauty that lies beneath it.

For then he knows: it is I, too, like these others, who have walked among the dead.

I cannot remember the name of that priest who died in agony
with his arms around the tree of ignorance. Under his body
lay the black scattered shards of his sacred vow of denial
to the monument of shadows, and the skin of a fruit uneaten.

Nearly all our words, all our truths, are pretense — or at best strangers
met on a road a thousand years ago, held with the eye in a wordless moment
and then lost to the dusk-lit air of remembrance.
Lord make me chaste, said the Saint, but not yet.

The banana’s skin does not ask why it has been thrown aside
and left undigested beside the path lit by lovers and darkened by gods.
Not every life can be a chalice; not every name can be spoken. All, however,
though they clutch with their last grasp at the tree of ignorance, can teach.

The desert, they say, is better crossed
If the nomad knows his way;
Your mind, I’m told, is easily lost,
But who am I to say?

It’s written that the road is longer now
Than the one that Jesus walked;
I’ve read where Satan’s stronger now,
But who am I to talk?

You can’t believe the things you hear;
To each his private dread:
I’m looking for the Queen of Beers
To take her to my bed.

Queen of Beers
Magic tears
Foaming in your head;
Give me one more sip
And I could slip
Between the living and the dead.

The TV says that folks are worse
Than they ever were before;
And the earth is just a cosmic hearse
Driven by a *****.

The paper’s printing war and fear
Seems soon we’ll all be dead;
I’m searching for the Queen of Beers
To fetch her to my bed.

Queen of Beers
Golden tears
Running through my head;
Just one more sip
And I could slip
Between the living and the dead.

Now the homeless folks are crying
While the politicians steal;
And the animals are dying
And religion isn’t real.

The subfrastructure’s falling here
(Whatever the hell they said);
I’m still waiting for that Queen of Beers
To lie down in my bed.

Queen of Beers
Barley tears
Burning in my head;
I’ll have one more sip
And then I’ll slip
Between the living and the dead.

Sing, O Muse, of greed’s Inferno, fluorescent-fringed and frigid at the core;
of white-haired chiefs with square jaws and stiff-lined lips
whose speech came clipped and hollow like the towers
on whose upper reaches they sat like gods in clouds,
sealed from light by iron-toothed, two-footed dogs.
Sing of dark jagged lines tipping hellward like Abyss-****** souls
whose eternal fall finds no bottom of either rest or termination;
of red numbers glowing like murderous stars in a flat-faced sky
whose blank, demonic edges rotate like knives dropping from heaven,
shifting but never changing; killing and never dying.

Please come in: go all the way back
to the old closet past the kitchen
where the priests left their wine-stained robes.

Where the arms and legs of hallowed toys
that never worked, never played
are buried in the graveyard of lies.

Let the drunken robes sleep on,
undisturbed;
but clear away the empty bottles
of belief.

For every time I touch them,
I bleed onto the edges
of their granite labels.