CONDITIONS by Klaus J. Gerken (1968) I read the newspaper out of which you cut little indian princesses I could have used it as a tree only I am no magician and magicians are not lonely for the love they cannot handle I wonder what it is like outside this room Perhaps it is snowing Perhaps it is raining your tears I listen to an opera La Boheme through my earphones The blood runs through my veins pulsating to the rhythm of the voices This cold I caught yesterday will not subside It is very persistent like the baked Eskimo pie I will never eat unless you insist on it's demise But then you are never long enough here to insist on anything I am running through a fog and falter finding only mosquitoes beneath a lamp of many shadows that I thought was you It was an illusion You were never there talking of reality when reality was never what it was when reality was only what we thought we were never what we really where never what we really where.... Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG The chair collapsed today as I was sitting down to play a game of chess I hear You freed yourself once more I wonder what happened to your first lover Was it I I seem to remember that without blinking an eyelid you had burnt your name into my flesh It still hurts whenever I remember you on the bus or in the parked driveway in front of the difficult mentality where you shouted for control However shouting is not for cowards and I shouted more.... Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG I inspected the sunbeams helping themselves to your body I had no part in it They did not want me to participate When I met you you stood behind the counter at the Laundromat I remember the words Now there is only silence Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG This wet notebook wet with the tears of your youth reconstructs for me the lost minutes passionately mixing cremation with desire desire with your voice This torn page is for the wish of your words For the tears with which you swept away the walls of our glass chamber This poem is for the curtain drawn the night of chance and the nightly calm the nightly calm Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG The seventh year inventor invented a way of putting my heart back Not a transplant It will be my own heart The one you wrapped up in old newspapers like a raw piece of meat leaving before I had a chance to take it back The inventor is very kind to me He is a very old man But unlike some bound Egyptian Pharaoh or a carpenter who sailed upon the sea pf Galilee he offered to help me on the condition that I exchange places with him to give him back a semblance of his youth I agreed Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG Take your silver cup I want to be alone Take your static evening and these stars They are too laud Take out the electric light bulb It shows my weaker parts Leave me alone in this room Cracked and torn between the shades Leave me to understand the proposition Of your midnight madness Leave me to the voice of your own darkness Leave me to the voice of my own darkness I want to be alone Alone with you to reconsider my future Alone without you to reconsider my past I want to be alone with snow to keep me warm And when you melt me in your arms... Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG Your little moon the one you have embedded in your heart the same one I lost and wished to find again Your little moon frozen about the cirrus clouds frozen inside the prism of your fear It is the same moon which blinded the doctors when attempting to remove my heart It is the same moon beneath you spoke denials And made me a victim to bright to kiss the stars too dark to haunt the day I lay on my bed rededicating all my poems shattered by a fast torpedo in love's deal I pondered TAO madness on the tears that were not real I searched my mind for what was left a future a word I wanted one clear word to reassure me one word to give me back my confidence one word that was all and I am still straining ears I am still listening for your subtle trouble in the reeds So that is what my poems are ways to rediscover hope ways to rediscover love ways to rediscover you... Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG A twelve string guitar with only six strings left to rehearse the song The main song has not been ended it will remain unfinished I cannot find a beginning for it let alone the end Unlike the alarm clock to which I wake before it rings so this guitar has more emotion than a person can develop in a song I need some wine No - I need some whiskey I need to get drunk and listen for the midnight poet carving innermost criteria on hidden sign posts and beheaded statues to which I dedicate all my songs of parting I will drink a toast to Norman Mailer and the vanished breed I will shed a tear for lovers crushed in a Chicago night I will pray for the ravished world and burn church and government as long as it is something that will make the world more satisfied I will be satisfied But I am blind and I will refuse to speak for the world exists only in the past and all that I have now is a broken guitar string and a picture tube of life... Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG Could you love me if I left my mask at home and came to you a diminutive refrain Could you love me if I Could you love me if I gave you geraniums and flowers from another garden of Eden Could you love me if I Could you love me if I grazed your heart accidentally realizing my mistake Could you love me if I Could you love me if I brought to you the universe and a comet as a lantern for your path home could you love me could you love me if I Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG Tolerate me I am flesh... Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS .PG My little one you are as far away from me as the galaxies which haunt the earthly crust I remember how I singled you out from all the rest through a telescope embedded in the lunar surface The astronomers condemned me Their bodies were of heaven Their bodies were of helium and dust My body is of the heart carved from your design I plotted the course of your arrival and synchronized my watch to receive you with all the pomp and glory that queens and goddesses deserve Only my little one you are so far away I am afraid that you will never arrive before my galaxy decays and this telescope lies rusted and abandoned before the stately advance of your being And yet I am certain that you will not forget the eyes of my inability to ask for love and come to admire the inscription on my tombstone Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG It is an empty carnage which impounded the Emperor of China's inability to dawn the iron cape while dissecting a tape worm It is sabre tooth tigers not Siamese cats who expound the theory of savagery Siamese cats devour only the luxury of their own stature It is the woman who leaves the door open not the man who opens it who is the predator It is the hand that pins your photo to the wall not the image that draws the resolution of the evil It is the coma which makes men search for another dream not the amazement of their drunkenness It is the empty page not the necessity which makes me write this Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from CONDITIONS (1968) .PG to Susan I wanted to die for you but you would not let me You said suicide is not the key and I believed it Now I regret the open wound that cannot be closed a second time I regret the hastily prepared ultimatum Did I disturb you Oh the body has just been warmed and the heat has melted the heart So do not speak Listen to the sighs Forget the pain The regret is always nearer than the denial The drunken bed or the feathered mattress has the male voice of chance Was it I who heard the echo of a merciful remain Come again some other night It is too warm here where the heart is Copyright (c) 1968 Klaus J. Gerken from Conditions (1968) Published by Ygdrasil Press