DARKNESS, DEATH AND LOVE by Klaus J. Gerken (1981) I I am not remember anything Past a flesh and bone and Truth or hope that might or not Find salvation in the giving Searching secret understanding With the world view ignorant Canto like a livery displayed Passion like a tower waver In the wind wild not alone Whist-e-ling thunder rain and Sun beyond the track that will Or not lead anywhere from Athens or to Ottawa and on What history bequeaths to you or I. 10/07/81 II Stop and trusting not Of this translucency This heat blitz sun Racing raging violet in Sweat of downpour argument Sharp shards empires Bleached white or Floated shimmer in Mirage a texture Not believable Holding on to anything That bounds within a Reason treason this A sacrifice sharp as Razor's edge laser Blasting through eternity 10/07/81 III Landfall not that we behold Thirsty dry in wasted insulation Fervent frantic foaming bit Madness fuming Etna's flame Astute in observation Who's insane Life evolved in this it's nakedness Skin burnt brown beneath the sun Edge of shadow solid form Water made a god no less Water wine and vinegar Transmutation forms abound Nature's miracle mirage Set of mirror's blinding light Oven darkness in the night 10/07/81 IV Nowhere closer to the edge Silent aura frantic dream Messianic Satan staff Hollow witness Hell's mask Wind that's soothing in its form Such deception must be born No one notices a nod Sleeper's instinct and Van Goth "Artists suffer It's a must" Walk upon the burning path Mind half crazed an image forms Transformations and angelic forms Desert forces and Don Juan Playing mind games on the run. 10/07/81 (31C) V Pascin at the dome The picture must be remembered Summer sun and heat july Spectacular amazing almost sad T Rex upon the stereo Youthful dreams exuberance Memories that melt through time "What year? How old was I? But 3?" Life begins an odyssey Days that hit you like a drug Head begins to spin Fellini roller coaster ride Ferocious in its certainty Wind that scatters all reality 10/07/81 VI Evening settles on this street Touching even this retreat Where I write upon this sheet Supported on a book of art Modigliani und der Montparnasse Cycads swan-necked models formed Through a vision sulfor stained I mean obsessed with a reality Becomes an only singular Obsessive irresponsibility Modi Pascin Soutine and Utrillo Drunk beneath the stars again Through a mythic wandering Resurrect a timeless dream. 10/07/81 VII Dream of water dream of ice Dereliction so precise When a star explodes we see Deep into obscurity Past the furthers reach of man Dreams are only vulgar then Frozen into one eternity Wonder when it passes in our ken Changing lives and destiny Branching out through history Not confined by anything Not constricted by the blind Human needs but gods they find Pull them through their wanderings. 10/07/81 VIII I saw a falling star tonight Collecting remnants of a light Swan song with brilliant flash Passing just beneath the moon Nothing takes away from that The moon and meteor in compliment Kepler's law and gravity Gathered in fortuity Nature's hold so gently strong That we know not we are chained Nature never lets her children go But then by such illusion as there is Once confined the chains are this We ourselves must forge the key. 10/07/81 IX Martyrs to our innocence Who are they what do they want Everything we see we are Obsessions are our goal our star The only way to truth is that Through which we use experience No one then is innocent Mistakes are yard sticks on our way As clear the sky is there are forms That do not fit the picture well The more we learn of that we know The proof we need lies farther on We reach and reach it's there and gone The reaching is experience 10/07/81 X Brazen bold and mortal man To the moon and back again Dreaming of the stars no less Galaxies and nebulae and then the edge There and then beyond again Quest for time and immortality Set into a holding patters This we know will contradict Every permutated "If" If we do what then and where Will we ever know or care Futures are conjectures after all Reality will not go farther then What we have this moment now. 10/07/81 XI If love be fleeting do not blame Love for any kind of stain Even after like before Scars will heal but what is more Love refuses as it must Any type of rescue there Where the lovers fall apart That is where they hold their hearts Love initiates that's all it does Mutual need and understanding will Carry on from there through life If that's hard to understand It's meant as an extension as Love's domain rules over you. 10/07/81 XII I am broken to what truth is this Sadly and haphazardly Plaster walls and difficult Monotonous inscrutability Upon the balcony the blazing sun Cutting groves into my skin Cracking eyes that witness much Secret charming and obscene Nothing shocks amazes or propounds This situation that attempts A nurtured suicidal force Forgiving prays servitude Foraging the dump of meanings clear And Beethoven deaf we hear. 10/07/81 XIII Melt sun vanish in a blinding flash Beyond the canyons worshipped thus Not untouched by human hand But unscathed not raped by them Like the mountains on the moon Of the valleys on god Mars Storms on Jupiter or Io's clouds Ring-around a ring-a-round Saturn's solar windward whine Tide and elementary time Seasons obdurate return again Cycle of fruition once in awe Now a little science's claw Holds at bay a sublimated star. 11/07/81 XIV Obsessed with something that one cannot have Each and every second minute day Draining one with want and fear Hope and longing trembling tears Sharing something but not enough Holding on with all one's might On to little that one has already got Wanting more and more and o so more Obsessed obsessed obsessively Caught within the clutches of a far Raging fever sweating near O so near and yet so far - often said How true and how lamentable it's now. 11/07/81 XV Like Woyzeck Leonce and Lear Danton Hamlet and queer Ophelia's passion so near Oblivion's anchor love's far Swinburne's obsession so cold Rimbaud's acuteness for gold Gaugan or Artaud future's foretold Poison o poisons centuries old Each of them fed on a fantastic dream Slowly decaying before an obscene Nightly aroma that makes a man scream Frightened and lonely the world holds no course Ones' life is so empty - Death on a white horse Comes charging is captured - Faust at his worst. 11/07/81 XVI Almost living Knowledge poison Like the apple tree of life Faustus trembling in his study Turn the tide o turn the tide Pact with Satan circumspect Sordid plaster cast of hope Drugged acceptance not a way to cope Jet of blood "Verlebt" then cold Dungeon's dragons and green knights Enkidu or Grendel - "Ur Alt" Promiscuous subconscious Dante's hell Enveloped in a deep defiance "Those who falter there must dwell" All things forbidden harbour this reliance. 11/07/81 XVII Tortured torn and so tormented That's how Van Goth's painting ended Black crow in a corn of field Madness harbouring its yield Lingering a profound sadness "Darkness overcomes despair" Such a cloak must drape that fear Incomprehensible and near Much to near to each of us Driven by a tragic mask Through the tunnel to the light Ending suddenly in fright When one knows one know but what When one knows the truth of that? 11/07/81 XVIII Want to do or what or holding on Pleasure pain or what you will Time or tide or valley hill Mountain sky or universe Micro cosmic scope unfilled Not quite realized but separate Splattered with equations comic fine Searching for like arguments Through an arc aflame as yet Casting shadows in a net Rain or wind before the storm Read the signs a child is born And in a silent living dies Near the albatross it cried it cries. 12/07/81 XIX Sesquipedalian the world is round no less Fortified by brandy bright as any star Gravity the force distorting Sol Hades ell-square pit Ulysses' offering below Dancing dandy sugar cane of hope Breaker stillness S.I.N Loving cup and Lenz his bride Hanging on to Elpenor Where is anything that might not be Diabolical flagitious Wasted passion poison in a pulpit God expounded mathematical Nolan all a-dream wakeful and serene Inward out a wake for Finnegan. Scream! 12/07/81 XX Cagliostro all we know's the racket 10 ounce gloves but too much tape Philosophy hawked in the market place Four quarter beat and a badly tuned guitar Emphatic with emotion advance the charge Pennies in a blackened pond serviettes at tea Paroxysms hidden safe behind a TV screen Candles burning neath a cross Light for the sailors lost o lost all lost Guided by heredity forced upon the beach Cautiously and like a panther stalks Favoured win it's all for gain Affected with effrontery Faltering like every mortal in the end. 12/07/81 XXI The house on the hill no one goes there anymore The way's a burnt-out stubble field and memories are lost to us Frightened away by all too much rose upon the thorn None of us this day and age can much be bothered anymore Snug inside our own white castles and our fortresses Prisoners within ourselves bored by what was once so new Now quite rotten in another shattered and obsessive innocence Knowledge that was once the saviors peace and love Scattered with the furies lust is now each futile dream Searching for the meaning emptiness prevails The gables fallen walls with ivy grown No birds' nests there what once called home What was its meaning why was it built Before it was abandoned it never had a chance to change the world... 12/07/81 XXII Four walls around this room again Around this room four walls a Table here a chair a book a- Nother book and then around again A word a silent word a thought A form a noise a feeling thus A shadow just a shade of Understanding yet unknown Mysterious in fog in freight in Boredom boredom meaningless This light we feel we cannot See we know is there around this Room or outside it inside this mind This thought this being what is that? 12/07/81 XXIII Of course one's got to do with what one's got Can't be otherwise I mean it's true One cannot cook a mean upon a stove not hot One's got no money cannot buy the bread and you Laughing all the way to the bank and smiling At the girl who takes your check What do you understand or want to understand of this What's it all to you But that's ok it doesn't matter much to me I don't starve I've got my job and then I've got my poetry My thoughts my intricate imaginings nothing much to you I know it brings no money in I've heard all that enough But still I write I write I breathe and that's my life Without which I would never be I would pine away and die I can be no one but myself I cannot compromise. 12/07/81 XXIV How exhausting is this quest Not the perfect poem nor the Perfect thought (for what it is It cannot be of no illusion) So what then can it be what is This that one's after that's so Evasive exhausting and Obsessive in the fifth degree No one really know and I don't Think it should be known Or even can be known because It is a question mark that Questions every other question Onward to a spiraling effect. 12/07/81 XXV I write these poems no one will ever read: So I read them myself and of critics am freed. 12/07/81 XXVI Each day melts into one day at a time Frozen like a landscape out of reach Against the moving train supine We melt into a mingling of desires Shadow boxing like those lovers Each against their own beneath the covers Unobtrusive unobserved Never frightened never hurt Soothing nerves that strain the tongue One more rush and higher further on (Could be like Icarus unto the sun Beauty so above the gods must run Their anger with a bolt of light) Do all these lovers know that they must die? 13/07/81 XXVII Another monday after trepidation forced Clammy wet and shivering In a night uxorious Freighted animated evil spirit near Danger threatens every turn Flowers at the stake must burn Not for truth or what they saw But for finding little compromise One can only go so near The ledge the flame one's taken in Not frightened any more at all Yet obsessed with such sublimity No amount of torture shifts the truth You saw it then if not the eye - death's the proof. 13/07/81 XXVIII Not then of religious servitude Sprung rhythm broken stream Forest there among the rocks and back Voices whisper sex attacks Rites of secret frantic need Through the tunnel planting seed O what lovely foliage Feather waxen sun drenched wing Melting image Narcissus Like a voyage Finnegan's Salome and head to match Thirst for lusting not a sin Death great sword remembering Blood upon imagining. 13/07/81 XXIX Raging torrent bed undone Firmament above the earth Zeus to Hera giving birth Rites of Attis everyone Drugged amazed and faltering Tragic scene beneath the sun Those who burn upon the hearth Sweet this apple poisoning Fevered brow no sight unseen Twisting in their love making Step by step is this a dream Everything is taken in The mind must reel or so it seems Is this death or an awakening? 13/07/81 XXX She was on her lips to touch Agitation burns so much Deep into the deepest part Strong defiant beats the heart Like a panther just before Eyes illumined to a fate Taunt the body she must wait Darker darker this debate Silence pounds the brain once more The soul is shattered to the core Not a thought but void between A glow but never a regret Forced reality upon this dream Caught forever in this net. 13/07/81 XXXI Darkness death and love Came together well Frozen like a corpse Beside a broken shell Leda and the swan Sirens singing low One more time around Is it all for show To the ends of time Those who falter here Voices in the stone All who enter fear No one sees a thing Mindless in-between Like a sheltered cove Pregnant with a dream Those who murder truth Dwell in that themselves Those who build the monuments Rot beneath dry shelves Suffering and loss That will be their gain Darkness death and love Will always thus remain. 13/07/81 XXXII Rough or neither smooth or Well you know the cut Up the stairs and down again Drowning on a crinkled map Much of London is enflamed Reading Samuel Pepes again Chasing dragons though the night Morning comes it was a fly Strange how things will magnify Nothing's nothing after all Back to bed and back to sleep Images appear so deep Images that make no sense Smooth or rough intemperance. 13/07/81 Copyright (c) 1981/2002 Klaus J. Gerken