Lost in my Soul (Poetic Prose)

Lost in my soul
(Poetic Prose)


On my journey at this point, I was left alone
for a moment, discovered the three parts
of my soul fighting; they seemed to be in a
war with each other, it started to wear on me;
I think it was about power, yes, with control and
immortality—! I sensed I was going down,
down, way down, my stomach lifted, as if
I was in an elevator, deep I was in the guts
of my soul, here I discovered vast rooms,
terminals (I knew I was at some extreme
end), hazy clinics were dotted here and
there, now in the lowest part of the end of
this catacomb like mausoleum, I was pray-
ing for a vast wind to blow all the dust, soot
and fog away, but I think I was too deep for
that, I was in the foulest obscenity room,
lost. I said aloud “How did I get here?”
Not even a window to look through, and
now no doors in sight to return to. Just one
large room now, that is what I stood in.
And up popped a little ugly man, an imp
he stunk, and he reeked with indecency, he
said: “What are you doing here?” then he
added, “do you want an appointment?”
And I thought how dare him, this is my
soul, and he is telling me what to do…
I didn’t know what to say, at that moment,
but I said to myself, he is some kind of
freeloading being (disadvantageous and
demonic). It seemed as if I was to be
arrested by this little imp, he said “Don’t
get any ideas of running off!” I deliberated,
I know that act he’s playing, saw it before,
he’s a cop, then a doctor, whatever it takes,
trying to trash my old dream for his new
one, keep me busy, so I don’t return to my
journey! I said, “You are the tough cop
today,” and he responded, “Believe it, or not,
it still works for many; many a souls react
to my acting.” And then I called Micha’el,
and he brought me back up, said, “Been
waiting for your call!” And we went back
to our journey, around the world, sort of.

#2233 (2-22-208)

Journey of the Soul (a poem)

Journey of the Soul

She said, “I have lots of time to make up my mind
to make peace with God, if indeed I wish to!”
My dear, our souls are butchered from time
(taken out of life). Days or years to Death, is like
plucking feathers out of chicken’s chest…;
thus we must find it quickly, before we lose the
will, the heart, the sound and echoes of our
soul trying to let us know, we belong to God
or the Devil; it’s quite simple, it’s how it is
(we belong to somebody, other than ourselves).
Ah, you want to be anonymous you say, in the
grave? But it doesn’t work that way...
the soul moves on, like the sea, like a restless fire:
it was made, that way, never-ending (unless
it sleeps); and each day we grow older, the odor
of death hangs in the air lower, longer,
like rotten tomatoes, like old rusting nails—
but you are still reaching for tomorrow,
as if you will burst through the dark fog, the
blackened night, just in time to save your soul.
Anonymous you lay, and while in the grave you
discover it’s dry, and the fire under it is high,
and it’s battle season, for Satan and his demon,
they’ve come to fetch your soul…the forever kind:
giant lies, again, and again…! And still you say (at 80):
while even dead, “I have lots of time to make up
my mind, to make peace with God, if indeed I wish to!”

#2332 (3-21-2008)

The Great Inheritance

When I die, bury me far away from my family,
so my kids can’t find me, and jump over the fence;
if they do, they’ll simply sit on my grave and brag,
or get drunk or stoned, chipping away on my
gravestone; tell them to leave me alone, as
they did when I lived. Worthless, worthless kids
caught in a pretense trap, hoping to use me to get out.
If they have any sense tell them to go get drunk,
and start life all over again; that’s their inheritance.

#2331 (3-21-2008)

The HOmeless Centipede (a lovely poem)

I shall dedicate this beautiful poem to two cat lovers, my wife Rosa Penaloza de Siluk, and Williams S. Burroughs.

The Homeless Centipede

Part One
(Unfairness and no sympathy)

Why do you love a cat, more than a centipede?
((My wife said, “They are scary, and have too many legs.”)
(Mr. Burroughs simply thinks they are ugly.)) —
So ugly and scary things get no consideration?
What has happened to your sympathy?

Feed mice to the centipedes, then call human
rights to get your sympathy pal!
It’s all over but the imprisonment!
This is what I think they feel.

Part Two
(All over the world)

All over the world centipedes are crying
to be let in —until they give up finally
and become homeless, hunted by humanity, with
silent ears! Cold and hungry and suffering
centipedes, what dread:
as they race under the kitchen table for safety
waiting, then racing again, to the living room,
hiding under the sofa blankets!
This is just a sinister death (with no hope left).

Part Three
(3-D, centipede)

Now I can see the centipede, he is a 3-D, image
he stops and looks at the master of the house,
old grandpa, looks him in the eye, stomps on him
“Smash!” –this invokes: rows of naked yellowish
muck—legs still moving in the rough…

Still I hear no pity, or sympathy!
What has happened to humanity?

#2330 (3-19-2008)


Note: When I was growing up, my mother was deathly afraid of centipedes, and she’d scream and grandpa would come and ask what was happening, and she’d screech out ‘Centipede’ and he’d stomp on it, and so here is a poem for the poor creature, perhaps I can make up for those bad days back in the 50s when grandpa killed more than his share.

See video of author reading this poem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTKKQWC3AjU

The Homeless Centipede (a lovely poem)

I shall dedicate this beautiful poem to two cat lovers, my wife Rosa Penaloza de Siluk, and Williams S. Burroughs.

The Homeless Centipede

Part One
(Unfairness and no sympathy)

Why do you love a cat, more than a centipede?
((My wife said, “They are scary, and have too many legs.”)
(Mr. Burroughs simply thinks they are ugly.)) —
So ugly and scary things get no consideration?
What has happened to your sympathy?

Feed mice to the centipedes, then call human
rights to get your sympathy pal!
It’s all over but the imprisonment!
This is what I think they feel.

Part Two
(All over the world)

All over the world centipedes are crying
to be let in —until they give up finally
and become homeless, hunted by humanity, with
silent ears! Cold and hungry and suffering
centipedes, what dread:
as they race under the kitchen table for safety
waiting, then racing again, to the living room,
hiding under the sofa blankets!
This is just a sinister death (with no hope left).

Part Three
(3-D, centipede)

Now I can see the centipede, he is a 3-D, image
he stops and looks at the master of the house,
old grandpa, looks him in the eye, stomps on him
“Smash!” –this invokes: rows of naked yellowish
muck—legs still moving in the rough…

Still I hear no pity, or sympathy!
What has happened to humanity?

#2330 (3-19-2008)


Note: When I was growing up, my mother was deathly afraid of centipedes, and she’d scream and grandpa would come and ask what was happening, and she’d screech out ‘Centipede’ and he’d stomp on it, and so here is a poem for the poor creature, perhaps I can make up for those bad days back in the 50s when grandpa killed more than his share.

Madhouse Poems (Part Two)

Madhouse Poems
Part Two


Maybe Children Know

Maybe children know, something grownups forget,
The simple windy days flying kits in the wind,
Walks down a street, holding your mother’s hand
Playing in the backyard, cowboys and Indians;
While we grownups count the days
As the years pass, looking at pictures, saying:
“I remember that…!”


#2322 (3-14-2008)

To Be Remembered

How old is old, to the point of being remembered?
Often our bodies are locked in a coffin, framed in glass
Set on a dinning room mantel…and left!

Perhaps fifty to eight years at best,
If you’re lucky I’d guess.

Then someone cleans the dust off the glass
From the new generation, and throws it in the trash!


#2324 (3-14-2008)

Crippled Poets

In a saloon I’d sit around the round table bar
Drink until I crashed; talk with all the prophets
Of doom, all the PhD’s in the room that knew
Everything old and new; all the politicians
That didn’t vote; all the good and loving folks,
That slept in another’s marriage bed—:
All crippled poets with booze…
Mostly now dead!

#2325 (3-14-2008)
Saturn’s Moon

A spacecraft launched some years ago,
is going to do a flyby of one of Saturn’s moons, soon;
perhaps today, or tomorrow—and signal back, pictures and facts.
There’s a diabolical wind now, near its polar icecap,
filled with gasses and water, and who knows what. And that’s a fact.

#2323 (3-14-2008)

Madhouse Poems (Part One)

Madhouse

We are crazy and noisy magic
People, talking to ourselves
Soon to be forgotten, in shoes
That will not walk; placed onto massive silent
Shelves, like a book never to be read again.
Big children, in a world called
The madhouse


#2320 (3-12-2008) (11:55 PM)



Night Mind


If grapes were pretense
And thorns were self-interest
And eyes were sealed, blind in the woods
I would be the Crow’s Horn crying in the dark
Behind every pine tree, until someone found me
Turn me around; give me a night’s mind
Fly me out like bat; we all get lost so fast
When there are no paths.

#2321 (3-13-2008)


Rat Attack

In Lima, in February (2008), at noon, I’d unlock
And open our side view window—look into the garden,
See the fat rat peeking her head out and up from her
Dirt hole; we poisoned her (my wife and I)
little by little, each and every day, as she became,
braver and braver, seeing me. I knew soon she’d die,
as did her mate, about two weeks before
(hoping the human rights folks didn’t get wind of this);
somehow I think I learned its mother tongue
(I talked to her, off and on, for six days,
I learned her ways, and her face)
And I’d whisper to her in Spanish and English
(Now she learned my mother tongue)
As if we were in some private chapel in
The Vatican, and when she died, I cheered,
And said in a whisper: “…too bad
You were born a rat, not a cat!”

#2321 (3-13-2008)

Tobacco Juice (Four Poems on Aging)

Tobacco Juice

Now but a hideous old soiled pearl
Trapped by old age…;
Once beautiful, and vertical,
Now old, with a slightly tilted body…!


#2317 (3-12-2008)


Snapshot of Death

Death we carry like a purring cat,
Old songs and crumbling memories:
Until everything deserts us,
But death!...


#2379 (3-12-2008)


Obstacles of Aging

Ill with diabetes, diminished stamina,
arthritis—never ebbing; a bypass operation:
Now unable to do, this and that (things that
were easy at one time)—:
Now comes the raft, the heartbreak,
the rotating rats: the kids, family,
relatives, all shopping for what they
can dig up, out, before you split, all
obstacles of old age…and once you
split, it starts all over again,
never ending.

#2318 (3-12-2008)





Windy August
(Aging)


He sits alone inside his house, build sometime in the 30s or 40s, he will die there soon, sitting by the kitchen table, looking out the window, waiting for his electric wheelchair to arrive, or perhaps he will die before he gets it (he’s 82). It’s the windy month, of August (so he calls it), his cats keep him company, and he has a few: round and fat are two. He’s got a few paperbacks on the table, he hasn’t read through (from end to end); he mostly sits around the house (pacing), with his robe on in the mornings, walks on his porch near noon, hears the train coming in the back of his house, checks the bushes and flowers along side the porch, the gable over head, is part of his attic, he forgot it was there; two pillars hold the porch in place, the floor is of wood, and steady it is, yet the house is tilted slightly, perhaps the ground is sinking, he thinks. Sprawled out on the floor, is the dog by the TV in the small living room, the fat cats follow him, out the black front door, a cozy little home, not much more: He was once, once upon a time, a pillar among pillars, but not anymore, now he’s a cat feeder, and a paperback book reader, and trapped in old age, like fish on a hook, in the month of August, his last month, the windy one.

Poetic Prose #2319 (3-12-2008)

Worms, Apes and Worms (a poem with a commentary)

Worms, Apes and Worms



Why on this planet, great world called earth, has man divorced
Himself?
The atomic mind, of man, keeps spinning words, round and round
The planet’s core!
Too many words, cars, rules and doors, we are all dizzy from
Tumbling over rocks and moors.
A million years have passed, populations have interchanged from
Sick to insane!
From worms to apes, and back to worms again—but his time
With legs…
Faces like vases, full of water and dreams, where everyone has a
Plan, a scheme for himself.

(Not too brainy, not too sanely.)


#2314 (3-11-2008) Written at Starbucks, in Circle, Lima, Peru




Commentary on Life ungrateful grown up kids:


I am sad to say but I must, for pretense and truth, lay on top of one another, and sometimes one cannot tell the difference, so I shall lay it on the table for all to see, before we get into this new poem (about the corruption on earth, for in every family it is perhaps the same, it is in my past families, little earthly disasters): I have children (all grown up, in which I paid dearly for, for 27-years of support, money taken out of my checks (from multiple marriages), deals made with county’s to reduce child support at times; money and effort and so forth and on—thrown in the garbage can; and for me to have had children it was a waste of time (they give little back if anything, but somehow expect that you owe them something for giving them life, life in itself is a gift, they’ve yet to learn) they all turned out to be arrogant, thinking the world owes them a hand out, to include me, so when I crock, I hope they are not standing in line again as they did last time to collect what they feel they have coming to them, simply because they got a few blood clots of mine in them) (I am not complaining, I did what I had to do, and held my smirk in the process, even in front of my resentful kids), I’m sorry to have to leave this world worse off than when I arrived—but it will turn out that way I expect, partly because of this. Perhaps my grandchildren will pick up the slack where their parents left off and failed; and me. So I dedicated this to the new arriving generation, of the 21st century—and with this poem I shall bring you up to date:

The H. Poem

The H. Poem


Whoever wrote this poem?

Hills, horses and Heaven
Have much in common
Hell, homes and hay
Have about the same
Hat, and high school rat
A little less…

However, whatever, whoever
Rode the horse home
With his hat, from high school
Wrote this poem
He is the one to blame!...

#2315/ 3-11-2008 (how many H’s)

"Heat" and "Giddy Yap" (Two poems)

Heat

(The :)

Sky is covered with heat
Day is covered with heat
Night is covered with heat
Devils are covered with heat
Unconsciousness covered with heat
Thoughts covered with heat
Life and death covered with heat
Heat is covered with heat
Lovers covered with heat
Murders covered with heat
Hugo Chavez covered with heat
Castro covered with heat
Governments covered with heat
Wars are covered with heat
Starvation is covered with heat
News reports are all covered with heat
Money is covered it heat

Where is the cool air?
Some place underneath all this heat
Screaming to be released
But tyrants on earth
With their words, they cover
Everything with heat
While pulling mankind into
deceit…!

#2314 (3-8-2008)



Giddy yap
(A poem for Allen Ginsberg: a benediction for the human race)

Allen Ginsberg wrote only a few poems before he died, which was perhaps for the better of mankind. Matter of fact, his last poem was on March 30th 1997, a week before his death (he died April 5, of the same year). On March 24th he wrote “Giddy-yap giddy yap giddy yap shut up.” This basically was all he had to say in the six line poem, giddy yap and shut up. Not a very intriguing poem to say the least. But what was he saying? In many of my studies with people dying, in psychology, working with the aging folks, I looked at this odd behavior many times; so what was he really saying? We all interpret things the way we want, yet there is a pattern if you study his last writings, and so here is my interpretation of those almost final words, during his final two weeks of his life:

I think he was running from the devil (during his last days, for he inferred this, he tried to be an agnostic, but he was really an atheist, who was angry at God, and he never gave God an inch, just insults; he even implied he was going to hell, and his lustful desires were contributed to the American way of life, which he grabbed onto, yet ridiculed. But as I was saying he was being chased, he was running from the demon whom came for him (for he was a man of letters, he wrote what he lived); these demon wanted to drag him down to the underworld with them, his hours were few, and his horse he kept saying ‘giddy yap’ with was his running, and when they were side by side, he told the death to shut up, and death said, “I never get tired, I can wait another hour” and the horse and Allen keep going, and going and going, until there was no more giddy yap left, and death was then on top of him, like a vulture to a corpse.

#2313 (3-8-2008)