Who has...*
Who has actually been to the center of the universe?
Who has seen what happened in ancient times?
Who has found the nature of why life somehow exists?
Who has seen every last invisible aspect of your life?
Who has proven that aliens actually can not live?
Who has been to every planet and seen what lies beyond?
Who has knowledge of empty void and why it's filled?
Who has the answers to these questions all along?

I have...
I have seen the world from tiny human eyes
I have been there when the earth shook and rolled
I have seen smoke billowing from fires into the sky
I have heard many songs and sang them myself
I have seen every star in Orion's belt in the night
I have felt joyous and alive and free and well
I have had love and lost love and experienced sadness
I have learned to except my weaknesses and even death
These are few things, but until I see more, I should
Know when and where to not "teach" of "things so high."

I have a bone to pick with Fate.
Come here and tell me, girlie,
Do you think my mind is maturing late,
Or simply rotted early?

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And *** leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.

When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does not mean
Just a change of scene,
But also a change of status.
The Frenchman with his fetching beard,
The Scot with his kilt and sporran,
One moment he
May a native be,
And the next may find him foreign.

There’s many a difference quickly found
Between the different races,
But the only essential
Differential
Is living different places.
Yet such is the pride of prideful man,
From Austrians to Australians,
That wherever he is,
He regards as his,
And the natives there, as aliens.

Oh, I’ll be friends if you’ll be friends,
The foreigner tells the native,
And we’ll work together for our common ends
Like a preposition and a dative.
If our common ends seem mostly mine,
Why not, you ignorant foreigner?
And the native replies
Contrariwise;
And hence, my dears, the coroner.

So mind your manners when a native, please,
And doubly when you visit
And between us all
A rapport may fall
Ecstatically exquisite.
One simple thought, if you have it pat,
Will eliminate the coroner:
You may be a native in your habitat,
But to foreigners you’re just a foreigner.

Consider the auk;
Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
Consider man, who may well become extinct
Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

All hail the Lizard King,
whose esoteric words crawl like sirens
over hungry rocks
baring teeth to the hypnotized sailor
steering his ship into the jagged maw.

All hail the Lizard King,
perched upon his Dionysian throne,
ambrosial ecstasies fill his cup
while jongleurs dance to psychedelic chansons.

At his feet
prey the nubile maidens of yore
flower-eyed and pearly-teethed.

His eyes, mighty azure pools of madness
within which Byzantine kings were murdered--
blood darts through the mysterious waters
into the hysterical white void.

Alexander the Great
sits poised like a statue
where his libido crouches like a panther
'til the aural adonis
leaps from his confines
an amorous figure of tantalizing flesh and blood
with supple lips pouting, naked muscles taut,
mad eyes gleaming.

All hail the Lizard King,
from lush lips poetic decrees
sing forth into the endless night
penetrating taverns and bedrooms and radios
and stadiums.

The electric shaman leaps from his throne
to cast his wicked incantation,
a spark from his eyes shoots to the pyre
where a lustful blue flame erupts from
the bones of the prophets.

HIs voice soothing, haunting,
the sonic alchemist
sings his siren song into the cataclysm
where we are cast in abeyance--

We follow him,
but is he only leading us deeper
into the darkness,
or does he truly see the light?

The endless night.

All hail the Lizard King.