THE AFFLICTED by KJ Gerken The candle flickers in a nonexistent wind.. Not that anyone need notice; Deliverance, as god would say, is not a substitution: 't is death itself. Death's sole positive and terse arrangement, strange with life: a steaming nostril bled with each evolving century of love. The picture's not as I would have it seen torn. Had I not been born...had I not been born! Mere speculation...fate's a non sequitur, a non-selective entity. And I have fled the angle of a birth unshorn... and give or take an ear or two have made the universal saviour scorn... I have been so many things, many personages; many entities, all too many masks. Discussing... after all, these pages damp with blood, carry a reality...imaginary blood, none the less more real than birth is to a child: Birth recalled: discussing, of all things, the price of clay... And why the price of clay is nothing amazes even sometimes god... You are restless...wish to go... My rambling has upset you...? No. Then...Do not leave me...do not go... Have I been in love?...you ask. The time is ripe for oranges...pomegranates...and sand. Yes, sand. A million million million stars upon the nether world of universes in-between this taught of you and your reality (vitality). I can't remember when...is it charm or curse? But what's it matter anyway We sigh the clamour of our lives away. While fighting fighting...the fighting clashes swords so far away. Do you think that war will touch us now, in a century of volatile ignition? Admit it. You are frightened! Let me hold you. Just a little while. Until the warm wind blows the truth away... No, I am not cradled in some mother's arms. Am far from harm. No doctor clones the healing of my charms. I drink dark wine; poison blood from a chalice gods dare not approach. I drink divine. Death. For death will save the universe. Or death the universe will purge. Urge a human entity toward intangibility. I let myself go wrong. Did the wrong things purposefully...felt the force of retribution down at heel...from it. (False alarm?) You say no...I, simple fool do nothing. I sat beneath an ellum tree... I cut into an ancient oak a scrap of poem that I wrote went back there a year ago to find it faded overgrown with scales of life's vitality and not the bleak delusion of humanity... I have become a hermit A hermit not to poison you with shadows of intransigence but some to reach out more by being what I was before not half the man I am nor was to be as each year passes each year masses death... I am poisoned...let us make a deal. Go down to the river near the sparkle of the waterfall early in the morning when the soft birds sing and rest upon the eves of those deserted houses haunted and so little known to what is our ideal... and throw a stone into the splash of water...count the waves upon the quantum waves...eternity upon eternity upon the unrelenting way to god. I walked between St. George's church and gothic university. Spotted sea gulls screamed a storm. Threw away a piece of paper, scrap of poem... scrap of food for some poor fool, deluded as a poet thinking he could write, in poverty, a fable for the innocent, explaining (ultimately nothing) life. Go, idle fancy, prepare this rusted soul to walk a misanthropic mile. The painted desert is not, know it now and weep...the painted desert is not loaded with the curse of copse. Instead the haunted rattle and the scorpion gloat on our defeat. I see the mind, Teresias, knowing death to be of death, spoke death's rattle. Vast we are to fail, and fast we are to sacrifice our voices. Knowing dying is not easy (or perhaps, just knowing that it is) we chose to sacrifice ourselves to other disparate activities. The hospital of life is full and, overflowing, is not kind. And given knowledge, we refuse in kind. And the shadow of the bell tolls louder than the bell itself. Which is not, if ever thicker than the thickest skull. Yorik begs to be the jester, once again, he never was or thought so after all. The dagger dangles. The snowflakes jangle. And the jungle burns. I was privy to an understanding once but forget it was an understanding, and forget it was near anything conclusive... I forget it was...a word or two... a child so deeply troubled...doing nothing wrong...wracked with guilt...defenseless... anger fear and shame. Was I ever free to be alone again?...I was never young again... I shut the poison out. Left alone I wrote my songs. Alone. Lost to time I wrote...Show me how to write... remember...show me how to feel no pain. (Remember.) I tried so hard...so hard the heart bled deeper deeper deeper and I thought I felt no pain... It was a lonely wanderer, who said, 'dead dry tubers in a rotten land.' But knowing they who die alone can never say they forced a helping hand. Beauty is in words, but never words as these, used in retribution, anger, fear... resentment that will cry a child to sleep. There is poison in these words. And there is poison in a shadowed land. The window is a wall and does not understand the world. The curtain rises...is withdrawn... is just the mind asleep. And neither do I mourn the sun in hand. The sun that rots good flesh and love turned ugly, into hate and warms the lover's ultimate refusal to believe. 'This refuses what was once so warm. And now is overwarm... and now, for god's sake! only harms...' There is neither shadow, light nor substitute. On my way to work, rested, hand against rough wall; felt faint: with little sleep, and rested wearily in dreams where strangers do not hesitate, and lovers argue, still denying what was left. Paint rots canvas (this is what the poet said) Eyes of blue We gather you (emotionally I think but am not sure) Distant This oak is poison is Tristram's glory The mirror that reflects No story The killer minotaur Created Those who would Deny him life Lest we glance a shadow of our death This illusion gathers slowly slowly gathers once elusive still elusive truth... (I won't debate what is now aged and still so fresh to gentle youth lost to innocence...lost truth...) O these four rotten walls! These shards of evidence! Torn sheets, splintered pain. So much like the mind created it. Rusty sailor and white albatross. After all was said and done: the wedding guest still denies complicity. It is a murderous wind bodes ill tonight. I am alone, but do not venture forth... speak to walls, Hamlet and Ophelia. I speak to Oedipus, Lazarus, confused, confessed and risen from the living hell to death. I speak: to Yoric living, not as god, but as a shrunken jester's head. Know that once the world was clean. Now is shattered with explosive heat. The id the psyche and the horoscope premeditate defeat. And fear the ultimate solution is a broken confused mind that heals too slowly, and the wound is all that's left to heal the lie. I do not suffer. Do not ever think I suffer. No. The curtain stirs. The breezes tremble autumn leaves murmur...trembling... children sleep with heavy lids a-dream... those who think they run away from life, experience or pain, run away from nothing. Run only from the childhood magic and from poetry, toward a desperation in the heart of darkness. Who is there? Do I hear... I think there's someone at the door...but...well the wind is always much too friendly here... Speaking in soft whispers, as of death, they feel themselves life's madness life's desperation, love's dance, death's death. And witness this, a ridge of cirrus catches just a ridge of sun. The evening places heavy stones upon a heavy wind. I should try to work some more. Perhaps just go away. But frightened I am here to stay. Beneath the blanket in a cave, old, and yes... King Lear was brave. The blind old bugger knew his place. They said, 'he shouldn't be alone' and 'why does he not eat?' and yes I was alone, and yes I didn't eat 'at table' with the others. Like a monk I ate the fragments of a rich debate...and cast off scraps of bone too bare to eat. I have bad teeth. Lasted years. A prisoner, more myself than of the others. They said, 'how strange his eyes! see how he looks upon the world.' They would not walk with me. Sent me home from school. 'He is not like the others'. 'Muss balt zu erholung.' They tried hard to take me, but I would not go. Frightened I just stayed at home. Could not, did not want to know (but knew eternity) the world. The world of murderous activity. The years rolled on, as years would go. There were joys and heartaches and the pangs of love. O once so young! behind the revelry a caution hid. Smoldering beneath the surface diseasing every atom (The breath of its decay!). I studied this geometry, it said the world composed a symmetry. A perfect structure mortals could not emulate. It wasn't so at all. I studied this cosmology, and saw the chaos and the beauty and above it all the loneliness we claim our own. This thinking, I would query others, this and... what is thought? what's it do? how are we the cognizant? why should this sensation be so real? Why should we be we? Why should they be they. Why can't one be of a total? Among others? Why are we alone? Midnight. Cat screams. Dogs bark. The circle is a coded hell. Seven ages dark. And somewhere in the distance...in another land, a monk agitates himself to life. 'Living's such a duty thing, without it...why the lie...?.' I don't know what to say to those who would not clutch the vine and gather to the dregs. After all, are not, how say? 'the living dead'. 'Living's such a duty thing... a duty, duty...lie..'All a pack of lies! Listen. Do you hear it? far beyond the wind, the ocean and the shoal...far beyond the universe no bells toll... Listen... 'Living's such a duty thing...' And Basho wrote this poem: Leaves of autumn silent... scattered... Splash I remember sitting in a restaurant alone one afternoon winter snow on rotted boots too thick hair down to my shoulders Debbie (not a lover but) a friend came by. Talked awhile, like any youthful indiscretion talks. Had an 'empathy' meaning 'we were young'... anyway...she asked about this poetry and how it 'conquered' life... I said: it doesn't 'conquer life' She frowned. She was pretty, but not beautiful tried to be a friend. I just wanted solitude. I guess, a fool alone... She wished me well in my pursuit kissed me on the mouth and left to find another 'friend'. Nothing conquers life, I guess. The end... I guess. Even these solutions are not real. Offer only bandages too temporal... 'My love is fire, and the sun shining bright and beautiful... my love is dark and dangerous no one wants to stay for long..." Too late, I guess, too late... grown tired of the old debate Grown tired... no solutions...I am just too old... my mind too cold... It's hot in here (Herod's bold redress?) I leave the curtains drawn windows closed (There has to be no death). I no longer want to view the world up close. The fear is on me and I shiver at the sound of others in the hall. I burn a candle for the fall of humankind, and all... alarmed I have not slammed this lead upon the page for nothing. Have not smashed these words, stinking in their solitude, for nothing. Have not lost an age to sleep for nothing. Have not scanned the texts of age... and, nothing. Of late have studied this cosmology drawing circles and appending notes to cast a doubt upon the sanctity of all that went before ( and all, of course, that will come after). No doubt we can't know all: are much deluded... think the end is near? The end is no solution. The end is just a...shall I say it? figment? The end, for god's sake, well may well be just another tear! How well we think we know it all! The bitterness and the recall of the offense. The needless killing of a future hope or even just an idle dream! Sometimes I just want to scream! Tell me? Do we the "modern living", not prepare for death? History confirms the lie. We have hidden death away. A lie. Tried to void the realm of life. Dante knew it otherwise. The modern church has much in common with a modern lie, the broken temples; shards of empire, they destroyed. Rome's a Modern Vatican. This modern Vatican is Rome. All regains survival (as it's cause). The splendour and the decadence. Take the all in life, for life's not permanent, eternity is for the soul, pleasure, body. But eternity remains the body (supposition? soul?) It is precisely part of that reality the quantum set denies. The body is reality, and does not yet conflict infinity. Rather it's the mind that holds the shadow by the ear. It's the mind we compromise. The mind we so restrict to this conformity humanity requires for subsistence. The mind, not the body, requires the reality of what is magically denied by those chose to flood conception with a static form. It means... well it means... why do I return no hope to those who would require to explain? Why do I return no hope?...Life requires all that isn't there, but is. From the micro to the macro. From a super string to... Well, I forget the rest. Or maybe I just choose to not remain the same... nor to play the game... I am tired of this thinking...everything tonight tires me...is there no reprieve? There has been no going out tonight. No sense of pleasure. No fine argument. For? Against? No soft persuasion to 'come home'. No night of love. No fairness. No sweet voice to comfort me... It seems that I have been alone so long. I can't remember when I last set foot upon the earth. I have always been an alien; but lately this reclusiveness has made me force a sacrifice too many. Too often I have wanted an 'aloneness', but always found companionship, sweet voice of love and sex, to be a bond available... I have found those bars and friendly warm have catered to my needs. But that can never force the dread despair away. The mind implodes. And this emptiness refuses to reveal a home. No shred of evidence for hope. I chose to live alone. The sequence of my life has been even among friends...alone. Even among lovers (yes there have been many) such a desperate feeling... so alone... O this tires me. And the poem is not finished. (The poem's never finished). It craves an audience, and yet there's none around. I remember: 'T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound Fighting in an captain's tower' or even: 'Einstein playing the electric violin on Desolation Row...'. Years ago I used to listen; years ago I used to know...the truth... Let me tell you how I felt. I was young and searching for the 'truth', never more defined than how I heard that song. The voice was like a mission in a desperate jungle waiting for a god. If the old gods let us down... the new ones fizzled out. They gave us sanction and they let us down. Remember of them fondly. Play them on the radio...a grand nostalgia trip. They say the 'good old days'... But memories are more than good. We are never that again. As youth explores. The elders seek security. It has always been like that. It will always be that way. The large arena of society doesn't read much history that is all. I try cull the classics to familiarity. Their sensibilities and how too few there are comparing disability trough righteousness... Celine commanded eloquence, but only through elastic verbs denied to others. We hold the songs in awe, and precisely won't create. Others own our thoughts and blood. It's easier accepting when committed to a TV screen. Death's not part of life...it seems... Death's out somewhere...there.... This crisis should have made us realize different societies. Some who deem our lives absurd. Some we might call enemies. Some tyrants. They might think of us the same. We who make, like those, commitment to their own. The crusades...mostly turned against our own society...(the child says: mother why can't all us live in peace? Why fight and kill? destroy the world? so, don't we like ourselves? the home we have?)..why turn against ourselves with vengeful insecurities?...perhaps it's only part of Gaia's cycle. Perhaps we can't control the violence Perhaps we're just too clean... part of something that controls the earth, the galaxy the universe, and even god (if she exists) beyond the universe itself... Perhaps. If we exist at all, that is. If we exist at all and Rama does not look too serious. Ah! The light of morning. Second day! And I have not confused myself the more. Have drank of the waters of the Lethe. And forced myself this ruddy air to breathe. Which coats the windows with a foggy film. Obscuring cancerous sun and acid rain. How will we ever th'Elysian fields regain? This is the Borderland. A step across the desert to oblivion. A mirage in the distance. A thirst for knowledge that is never there. We falter and express a deep concern. We stand upon the edge to learn! We blink, and somehow it's another something over there! another path to take, thought to ponder, rage to rage. Another war to preach. Just think of it! Eternity! Forever and forever. Each our soul to keep... Are we the ones to populate the universe? Are we the only ones alive? Sometimes astronomers look at the midnight sky with trembling in their eyes. Sometimes we just have to be inventive with our own philosophy. Come gaze into the crystal ball. She met me in the hall. She said 'I came'. I mumbled 'There is justice after all'. She wondered why my poetry was too much too difficult. She wondered why I read so much. Asked so many questions that I had no answers to. She asked me about the olden songs. And how the sixties were, and how I changed from what I was and then... I said 'We all get older'. She was yet so young. First year university. Studied art. (Or so she said) Made some comment on my canvasses. Said ' Why not have a show...?' My art is private. I said that. My art is private. I don't compromise. 'We all do'. And she pulled me down upon the sofa and was warm and comforting and soothed the savage fever on my brow. She was something of a 'beauty queen'. Knew too much of 'love', I deem It wasn't right for me to be with her. But then...she never came again. And I forgot her just as fast. I said I cannot compromise. But then I live alone. Paint shadows - this imaginary brush says all. I light a candle burning and I gather up my trash. And hum the tunes the radio ignored, ignored too long. Sometimes Sundays are a mess. And sometimes I refuse to divulge my address to those who would become my friends. And sometimes I refuse the mirror image of myself. And sometimes I refuse to see at all. Sometimes I can't see at all. Bright ears in the jungle of my thoughts. I ponder shadows. I ponder sounds I cannot separate. I ponder the expressions of the trees. Motionless, yet bending in the breeze. Waves of the savanna. Waves of sound and waves of light. Waves of everything denied. On the beach a woman waits for the raft of the Medusa. On the telephone another waits for the answer... and somewhere one more poet sings who isn't heard at all and all the women come and go I guess it's not what it might seem The matrix of the universe churns. A forest burns. (The bones rattle but the skeleton is pure). Shackled, shackled, shackled to a wall. (A whore) The poem's dead. The poet sings. I guess he's still alive. Somewhere singling the afflicted out. Dogs bark. Humans shout. Where's the difference...? Blow the candle out. 27/08/90 18/02/91 23/05/94 -- Copyright (c) 1992 KJ Gerken Published by: Ygdrasil Press Web Page: http://users.synapse.net/~kgerken Email: kgerken@synapse.net Newsgroup: alt.centipede