woke up sneezing

[serge gurkski]

fasten your sweet bells:

 Ich hab' Dein reiches Land betreten, / Dein Lächeln und Dein Traurigsein, / und zärtlich Dich gebeten,/ nie mehr zu zweit zu sein/ und doch allein.
(Entering your land of riches,
your smiles and all your sadness,
I begged so tenderly
to let us be together and alone no more.) (quoting from my first love poem for her in 1993: Dein reiches Land)

[attachment=92]
Baby why? Why did you do such a foolish thing as to kill yourself?
Why did you not ask me to help you, when you knew it would have made me happy and so proud, too. Baby: Why?
FUCK!
HOW ONLY COULD YOU DARE?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Woke up sneezing, body a hurting mess,
no money, no booze, no cigs.
Welcome back to reality! I wonder
if the night was that good.
I recall one of Persius’s satires:


“Nempe hoc assidue?
iam clarum mane fenestras
intrat, et angustas extendit lumine rimas.
Stertimus, indomitum quod despumare Falernum
sufficiat, quinta dum linea tangitur umbra."*

And I remember the years spent in splendid
isolation, my brain buried in Homeric scholia and Horace,
while living next to you, loving you without
making love to you, because we didn’t arouse
each other anymore.

I’m traumatized by our love.
Without a touch, honey, without a touch
I’ll die.
What a couple we make: You, dead, in the graveyard,
me, hungover, getting drunk on the couch.

It’s time to get up to get out to get
nowhere.


"Really, this just can't, can't go on...".. the morning light
Comes through the windows bulging out the shutter slats,
While we shoot out a snore to take the froth
Off last night's undigested drinks that roll inside,
A given angle or the sun at this moment marks,
Telling across the dial, outside, the hour five.“*


As long as the music‘s louder
than my heart beat I’m good,
and your kissing interferes tempestuously with
my coughing, with the cooler blowing
away my sweat of bursting exultation
while me’s down hot red town clubbing,
as long as my world swings deranged
and my thoughts mimicry into sweet
swirls of nervous grey smoke,
cortex succumbing to stem,
I’m good, still.
I’m not the president of my own body, Lawrence°,
and feel best so, as if instead:
infinitely orgasming.
Better than lying slaughtered naked
on cold marble as San Francesco d'Assisi
for the crime of singing to birds,
for the crime of forced eternity,
or am I simply lacking
the martyr gene?
When I’m like this my
only fear is the hideous dawn
attacking me in my most
vulnerable state: sober
and with brains bleak
for a second or two or a syncopated three.

You can sell Johnny Winter packed up in turbulent cans
in freakin' cold Arizonian desert nights,
or better be gone fishin’ while your ladies do the smack
and intercourse casually with the swimming pool boys.
Or the swimming pool boys' toys boyingly drool …
Or you’re a born again night-hawk waking up
a second time a dry day to wet and make slippery
of more all, of more all
all of it more. A Sir Bonobo
drum it all out,
out into daylight, drum
it
out.
On a holiday with a talking drum
being done by Ginger drumming.
Yo Roo Baa
otherwordly drumming it out
aBAbaba DRUM a da DRUM a da DRUM BUM BUM!
Drumming the music into the world,
Give birth to rhythm
What a nice rhythm that’d have been
for another new green world to arise!
And still: Wasn’t already Sumerian Gilgamesh
a drummer in trance, and in pain and
finally
in vain,
to stir up the masses to life?
As long as the music‘s louder
than my heart beat I’m good.
------------
*http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Translations/Persius.html
The English translation starting with "Really ..." is by Harris(see the link).

° Ferlinghetti ("you are the president of your own body")

[Magpie]

Hi Serge,
I like this whirlwind that just rumbled through my mind and I'm still trying to put the pieces together to find out a bit more.
It keeps on changing as well, I was hanging on to my sweet belt first time but was afforded no such luxury when I came back
It's as much of an education than it is a poem, me speak Latin now a bit. "while the fifth line is touched shadow." is how Google translated "Telling across the dial, outside, the hour five." Google is a poet.
I like the line "for the crime of forced eternity" very clever in its entirety.
I thought A Sir Bonobo was a anagram but I found the real identity and more research as regards music for me to find.
Excellent stuff, I shall continue to read.
Thanks for the education and the read.
AR

[serge gurkski]

yw and thank you back!

serge

[billy]

the intro isn't too bad, it makes the poem feel as though it's about something real (to which only the poet knows the answer) the dual language of the poem doesn't really work well for me though i know it will for some. a little wordy in places but it carries a great voice for the most part. the use of italics in certain parts of the poem would make it pop. (stand out) the Gilgamesh line threw me a curve ball the train of though is almost seamless and you move from carriage to carriage with ease, like i said, just an odd and or i that could be removed without losing any of the poems power. though the poem start with a great loss, it feels to me that it's more a statement of lifestyle. that that's just the way it was. I enjoyed the read/ride

[serge gurkski]

the intro isn't too bad, it makes the poem feel as though it's about something real (to which only the poet knows the answer) the dual language of the poem doesn't really work well for me though i know it will for some. a little wordy in places but it carries a great voice for the most part. the use of italics in certain parts of the poem would make it pop. (stand out) the Gilgamesh line threw me a curve ball the train of though is almost seamless and you move from carriage to carriage with ease, like i said, just an odd and or i that could be removed without losing any of the poems power. though the poem start with a great loss, it feels to me that it's more a statement of lifestyle. that that's just the way it was. I enjoyed the read/ride

Thank you, billy! These were originally two poems. The Latin was so fitting my state when I wrote this. That is why it is in and also because of the classical philology line (Homer and Horace)
Indeed it is meant to be an affirmation of life. When someone very close to you decides to not go on anylonger, you have 2 options: to follow that person or not. I obviously did not. So, that behaviour alone is already the affirmation. It happened 8 years ago at Pentecost.