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I:  Lyric Line of Flight

Cavern Club / black leather / German rockers /  proto-youth culture groped its way from Liverpool / TV slowly sped up / modernity invented / flown in planes / swallowed in pills / I watch the second Kennedy funeral on the screen in shades of gray rain / warming to mid-60’s hues / into the stratosphere / a lysergic surge / retinal after-images / intensities of nostalgic color / that British courtesy in understatement / Paul’s voice a bassline / George a guru of six-armed confusion / tasteful: now a meaningless word / it was Apollonian-Dionysiac /  my childhood’s soundtrack

II:  Poem

They grooved—as our world became another

up from caverns to psychedelic flight.

They look so young in melancholic light

harmonizing black and white to color.

So distant—yet within our life’s short span

they grow apart as the hair grows longer

(The West’s resolve to expire grew stronger.)

Quadruplex visage:  young god sold to man.

I crack up beholding the mid-Sixties

lost in late-night YouTubes, I start to break.

time past: removed from the complexities

Recalling every song, the beat, the shake…

They sang the primrose path to confusion

nostalgia replacing resolution.

GULA

Castor and Pollux
joined forever at the hip.
I could split myself
into two halves just
so they could each get a taste.
I will etch into
both their ribs and lungs
so when they exhale, it’s my
name that warms their breath.

ACEDIA

I have done nothing
but consult oracles to
find a solution
and like Oedipus
I will sit here on my throne
to repeat fathers'
sins. Dear God, am I
the miasma that reeks here?
Would I change, if so?

LUXURIA

Eros and Psyche
have yet to match us, dear boys.
In confessional,
I speak of the flesh-
bruised like rotting fruit, marks
of desperate youth.
Heads bowed in prayer,
this is Dionysiac
ritual madness.


AVARITIA

Will Hades greet me?
If I spit coins from my mouth,
will the ferryman
take pity on me?
He must know my odyssey.
This is déjà vu,
a fable passed down
by generations. A hymn,
Homeric and worn.

IRA

Adonis river
runs red like veins filled with blood.
The anemones
for my two brothers,
a crown for each of them to  
decorate their heads
before guts are spilled.
I know this will end in war,
no glory for me.

INVIDIA

Heroes never die,
they say. So was Heracles
jealous of Linus?
To know forever,
to escape the throes of death
sounds like Hell to me.
What lives on except
curses and their tragedy?
I am no hero.


SUPERBIA

I will take my fire,
let it blaze until I die.
Prometheus would
have been proud of me.
Maybe from this, I will kindle
something from the heat:
Write poems in ash,
for the ones I have scalded,
or the ones I love.

(Maybe those two things
are not unlike after all.
Maybe so, maybe not.)

Dull Dionysiac, ex-Nihilist,

musing on my poorly-played roles now past,

my acts sincere and earnest—but half-assed,

I raved, an irrelevant dramatist.

Misguided former friends and I the cast;

We took our bow, Life stirred, woke up and hissed.

Such hallucinogenic scenes: not missed;

our play a farce, the curtain came down fast.

Recalling useless states I once achieved,

hampered by those intensities once known,

remembering what was beheld, believed,

the trip came to an end; I woke alone.

Frenzy is unsustainable. One learns

to be wary of realms where vision burns.

there's some beyond any other experience,
as when walking home during
a thunderstorm...
    as a man, the capacity to think:
a god blinking via lightning,
   and then the heavy stomp of thunder
by man's treading feet...
    the tips of my fingers start tingling -
the rain pours down, ever so gently,
a state of euphoria is reached...
    mind you, i've started to think about
this, as spontaneously as a stroke of lightning...
come to think of it, avoiding the obvious
technological advancement between
my generation, and that of my grandfather:
stating the ****** obvious...
    it's not that... the eastern bloc was taught:
the east works just as well as the west,
only the latter doesn't really respect a work
ethos -
            it's always cutting corners,
                   making octagons from squares...
i mean, come on, 0 hour contracts?
              i've been shopping in the same supermarket
for the past year or so...
  you know, graveyards feel more alive...
at least you get graves blossoming,
with fresh flowers & candles...
       and how do supermarkets look like?
even the manager seems to be on a 0 hour
contract...
      to keep morality, he had to craft a solidarity
pact with his "minions" (shelf-stackers) -
and he chips in...
              but bound to the supermarket?
hardly see any men, the security guard is
sometimes a woman,
         women, everywhere, it's like a ***-orientated
genocide...
   oh, there are some guys there,
this one chap, i see, perhaps 1 day in a week...
it looks ****** tragic...
    once again: too much work these days
is content related, rather than context
related... context? people have to do something,
can't just turn into vegetables comatose...
grandfather has a metal-works charge hand,
grandmother worked in a sewing factory...
well, they seemed pretty content...
     the men at this supermarket? crushed;
then at this local co-op mini supermarket:
the cashiers? fear, fear in their eyes,
i've seen braver foxes rummaging in these streets
at night: i actually lied down next to one
and opened a can of beer...
  no kidding, can't be bothered bragging...
outrageous ******* laid next to me
and we were about 2 metres,
he took to scratching himself, i took to drinking
the night away...
  anyway... nietzsche suddenly comes up,
and something else...
you know what a communist party's member
house looks like?
   oh right, you weren't born in a communist
country, and lived for 8 years in
a post-communist transition country either...
(i'm looking around) -
well... it doesn't look that much different
to what i'm sitting in now...
   i'm used to "estate tower blocks" -
   ha ha, in england there's this real shame
in living in towers... over there it was scrambled
eggs for breakfast... i hate those stairs
(in english houses) - i forget something and it's
like: ****! up the stairs i go (again);
but it's not about that, it's what nietzsche
expressed, that: apollonian vs. dionysiac
dynamic...
                  well... it goes like this:
a communist household looks apollonian,
sharpening the mark? spartan.
       apollonian = spartan (excusing technological
advances)...
       and you used to have 3 shifts,
   you ate a lactose infused breakfast,
had dinner at lunch, and finished the day off
with a light nibble...
      ah, the days when you could wait
for milk to sour, and scoop it with a spoon,
like a thick yoghurt with warm tatties and dill...
those days... now everything is pasteurized
or whatever they do to the milk, and it doesn't
turn sour... just plain speak: stinks.
but that's it! communist households had
everything you might imagine,
  i think i'm still competing for the size of a private
library... although he has books for children,
so i discredit their respective addition
to the volume: since i don't have children...
but as i said: communist households
are spartan...
             the basic necessity, you want more?
******* to the forest and pick some wild
mushrooms. capitalist households? lavish...
sure... but they're also houses that
are either (a) not actually lived in with
the restaurant fetish & ready meals,
   or (b) about 19 unnecessary bathrooms later
and the fact: oops... no friends,
let alone neighbours; oops, once again;
this competitive mentality really erodes
certain unspoken values & principles...
     i'll compete with you for a cadillac,
             but a cameo moment in your life
outside buying something? very unlikely.
hence the athenian aspect of capitalism,
the dionysiac... lust & chaos...
           you know, i'm sure you haven't noticed
if you don't live where i live:
but a lot of english households are in
complete disarray! ****, my neighbour's
garden looks like a shelled field at Ypres
(world war i) -
                           just thought i'd point that out:
mind you, that's enough,
   i've got a cinema of a thunderstorm to return
to, and catch god blinking while painting
with a lightning bolt.

I'm fresh off the ward
I packed my bags and left the nasty stuff
I've been locked up
but now it's my time to shine

I hit the door goodbye,
I am not what they said I was.
I am much more. I kick my pills,
I feel I own the world.

But now the shine isn't showing up much
my face glows but my heart drowns,
lately it does

I'm fresh off the ward
the Sun beams in my face
not everything is so grey
still I ache
Be happy to shake and be shaken
in the belly of the world
Be happy in the chaos
Dionysiac throes

I'm fresh off the ward!
A real girl now, with a fleshy heart
that aches...and hurts
I might be away from the ward,
but my fate is to come back some time.
Everyone, every now and then,
needs a shot, and a comfy bed.
To dream, dream, dream away
by talking about your nightmares