I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
**** on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the
critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.

We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting

didn't apollo just love daphne
or it was a ****** thing?
didn't zeus cheat on hera?
that's for sure, my deary.
but my love for you is real
like demeter loved her daughter
so the times she left her mother
autumn came along,
and then the winter,
all so cold.


in the deepest land
you'll ever see
where king of death
have lived for many years
where he keeps her as a prisoner
persephone's just,
for good,
his slave.


slaves of gods
that's what humans are
they've got no point
on their decisions
cause in olympus
they're not born.


the most beautiful
goddess couldn't archive
the goals she wanted
with hephaestus,
the ugly one
in the night her husband
saw her lying on a bed
with mars, god of war,
screamed both of their names.


if titans hadn't been so rough
their sons and daughters
wouldn't have done that
keeping them in jails
so they couldn't escape
from the tartarus,
under the hades,
now they are the slaves.


and now let's go back
to the beginning
when the nymphs heard
her screams
trying to escape
from the handsomest god

              turning her into laurel,

      not letting her live anymore.

Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
*******
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, ****** don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.

out of the arm of one love
and into the arms of another
I have been saved from dying on the cross
by a lady who smokes ***
writes songs and stories
and is much kinder than the last,
much much kinder,
and the *** is just as good or better.
it isn't pleasant to be put on the cross and left there,
it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn't
work
as all love
finally
doesn't work ...
it is much more pleasant to make love
along the shore in Del Mar
in room 42, and afterwards
sitting up in bed
drinking good wine, talking and touching
smoking
listening to the waves ...

I have died too many times
believing and waiting, waiting
in a room
staring at a cracked ceiling
wating for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound ...
going wild inside
while she danced with strangers in nightclubs ...
out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another
it's not pleasant to die on the cross,
it is much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in
the dark.