Hunger
I will never speak a dozen tongues
and never see a hundred lands.
The mystery of distant stars
lies far beyond my yearnings.
All my skills, lore and talent
make me a stranger to serenity,
confined to dreams.
Alternate Reality
I’m tired of being unstable.
I’d like to say
when I meet people;
I work for an Insurance Company.
Next year I’ll be an adjuster
and buy a Buick.
I don’t want to say
I’m not doing anything right now
and try to change the subject
when conversation grows strained.
Yes, if only I were stable.
I wouldn’t move every four months,
sneaking out late at night
with my shabby belongings
because I couldn’t pay the rent.
It would be nice
to go to work like everyone else,
dream of a home on Long Island,
flatter J.P. at cocktail parties,
so he’ll put me up for the country club.
Yes, and I’ll have a nice wife,
who I’ll love and cherish,
and I won’t look at other women,
at least not often,
and never say nasty things
in front of the neighbors
because she was too tired last night.
What a nice dream.
If only it were true.
What if I didn’t believe
it was important to find myself?
What if I didn’t think life was strange
and mysterious
and required understanding?
Would I be different?
Why can’t I live like everyone else?
Go to my bank every Tuesday after lunch,
saving for the ranch house on Long Island,
where we’ll have cocktails with that nice couple next door,
my wife embarrassing me by mentioning my pot belly.
It sounds so simple,
but could never happen
in my tormented life.
The Flight of the Searing Heart
What stirs a man to leave the comfort of his hearth and wander the vast length of his own land? What pulse is there beating, pounding, throbbing with a rhythmic chant: “Let your feet pass over great rivers; may your eyes behold great mountains; may your ears hear new music on new roads; may your heart discover its brothers on the earth; may your spirit find rest in the endless search for an end to aloneness.” No man has known madness save in the chain-like spell that life casts across each man’s shadow. For man was born of two strange passions. The dark pulsing, beast, forever pounding, pounding at the portals of the heart, which in daylight forever cries for the fury and an end to rest. And then the bog-like spell of night, the gentle lover, who lulls all hope of wandering from the guileful by sweet temptations of woman’s breast. Never! Never! screams the youth defiant, who seeks to cross great oceans, hear the voices of ten million men, see all the faces that the earth can bear, and know the very core of man through the channels of his many tongues.
Dark Song
I wander through the streets of life
at burning noon and lost midnight,
and pass ten thousand faces bleak
that stare at me with pain-filled eyes.
Each burning eye a question asks
of purpose lost in time-torn grief,
of barren roads where sown seed rots
and leads to hungry, gape- mouthed death.
So each man dies with puzzled eyes
that never gaze their fill of light,
and deep in blackness each soul lies
as unremembered grave-stones fall.
Futile Plea
I cry for a moment of vision,
although a mere dust-bound speck
in an entre’acte diversion,
whose tongue alternates fate and time.
I no longer seek the hidden incantation,
as tainted as Niagara Falls,
that will no longer wash away
chemical stains from beggar’s bodies,
whose souls have a tooth ache.
I will never speak a dozen tongues
and never see a hundred lands.
The mystery of distant stars
lies far beyond my yearnings.
All my skills, lore and talent
make me a stranger to serenity,
confined to dreams.
Alternate Reality
I’m tired of being unstable.
I’d like to say
when I meet people;
I work for an Insurance Company.
Next year I’ll be an adjuster
and buy a Buick.
I don’t want to say
I’m not doing anything right now
and try to change the subject
when conversation grows strained.
Yes, if only I were stable.
I wouldn’t move every four months,
sneaking out late at night
with my shabby belongings
because I couldn’t pay the rent.
It would be nice
to go to work like everyone else,
dream of a home on Long Island,
flatter J.P. at cocktail parties,
so he’ll put me up for the country club.
Yes, and I’ll have a nice wife,
who I’ll love and cherish,
and I won’t look at other women,
at least not often,
and never say nasty things
in front of the neighbors
because she was too tired last night.
What a nice dream.
If only it were true.
What if I didn’t believe
it was important to find myself?
What if I didn’t think life was strange
and mysterious
and required understanding?
Would I be different?
Why can’t I live like everyone else?
Go to my bank every Tuesday after lunch,
saving for the ranch house on Long Island,
where we’ll have cocktails with that nice couple next door,
my wife embarrassing me by mentioning my pot belly.
It sounds so simple,
but could never happen
in my tormented life.
The Flight of the Searing Heart
What stirs a man to leave the comfort of his hearth and wander the vast length of his own land? What pulse is there beating, pounding, throbbing with a rhythmic chant: “Let your feet pass over great rivers; may your eyes behold great mountains; may your ears hear new music on new roads; may your heart discover its brothers on the earth; may your spirit find rest in the endless search for an end to aloneness.” No man has known madness save in the chain-like spell that life casts across each man’s shadow. For man was born of two strange passions. The dark pulsing, beast, forever pounding, pounding at the portals of the heart, which in daylight forever cries for the fury and an end to rest. And then the bog-like spell of night, the gentle lover, who lulls all hope of wandering from the guileful by sweet temptations of woman’s breast. Never! Never! screams the youth defiant, who seeks to cross great oceans, hear the voices of ten million men, see all the faces that the earth can bear, and know the very core of man through the channels of his many tongues.
Dark Song
I wander through the streets of life
at burning noon and lost midnight,
and pass ten thousand faces bleak
that stare at me with pain-filled eyes.
Each burning eye a question asks
of purpose lost in time-torn grief,
of barren roads where sown seed rots
and leads to hungry, gape- mouthed death.
So each man dies with puzzled eyes
that never gaze their fill of light,
and deep in blackness each soul lies
as unremembered grave-stones fall.
Futile Plea
I cry for a moment of vision,
although a mere dust-bound speck
in an entre’acte diversion,
whose tongue alternates fate and time.
I no longer seek the hidden incantation,
as tainted as Niagara Falls,
that will no longer wash away
chemical stains from beggar’s bodies,
whose souls have a tooth ache.
