To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.
Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.
These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking
you into dreams
that make you wonder
unceasingly
I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander
meaninglessly
so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that fool
willful and mostly please
nobody
don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated
yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill
Repudiate yourself,
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling
Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them
Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to the trash box of inconsequence
My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent
Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,
In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,
In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County
So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?
My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.
Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub
surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate
the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state
please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!
let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records
let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning
***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies
What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:
"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"
Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM
the same mood haunts me, three years on...six months on this site today