R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 40

America was …

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.

~ Khaled Hosseini

REALITY IS BAD FOR BIZNESS

Before super models

Ruled the earth

There were people.

Before idiots

Controlled

The government

There were wise men.

The future

Is now

The past.

Desolate faces

Ride subway trains & buses without

Hope. Hoping.

And politics

Has become

A children’s

Game.

While going down

On Madison Avenue

The persuaders,

Manipulators & Predators Worship

In churches

Of nothingness.

In churches

Of shit.

The media

Ignoring What is To come

And be.

Because it’s Bad for publicity

And bad

For business.

That these truths

Are self-evident.

That people

Are dying

Over oil reserves

In the Middle East.

That people

Are being denied

Their rights.

That No one has

The balls to

Stop the maniacs

Who’ve taken over

Our lives.

So just accept it.

Relax.

Buy a coke

And a smile.

As the lights

In your child’s

Eyes

Dim.

Fade.

And go out.

_____________

~ R.M. 2005

I AM WAITING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder”

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti – I am Waiting

 

IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHTS : Where Noir Meets Verse

IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHTS

Dark-mirrored hallways

a dim precision march

Here we have tread before

Without fear/Well measured

Pagan desires and objective

Study. Pavlov’s dog is still

Breathing, his cigarette falls

To the floor and he dances like

a manic animal. Lost in the

headlights, accidents shall

occur once more. There are

no excuses left for avatars,

no reasons left for men,

only lights in the doorways

flicker and then they slowly

===F===A===D===E

(to grey)

(to grey)

(to grey)

out.

exit.



_________________________________

N I G H T

 

In the dark we rarely see 

Images from movies appear 

Easy to remain the voyeur 

As Bogart stares at Bacall. 

Here, are your vampires 

your child-like apparitions 

Yet true monsters are by far 

better dressed and elusive 

who, when asked to be truthful 

shall lie as they calculate your 

fate, look into your eyes and say 

“Don’t worry, all is well”. 

There is something strange about 

demons, night holds the key, we 

devoured by these realities which 

someone has named the truth. 

And yet, who if asked would pray 

for a parallel universe? Would you? 

Would God do this after listening 

to choirs? So uninspired 

that he would need to cool off? 

This is an impersonation, he is 

wearing old spice, his shirt open 

down to his navel. Disgusted, we 

turn away from this sight, a decaying 

Casanova hiding in the shadows of his youth.

As night approaches, we, much like 

our old ancestors, still stare into the 

fires and wonder about our lives, dream 

of our own private shambalas, forget, 

pass the bottle and survive. 

But is this all we shall amount to? 

When all we know is nothing, 

Except this

 

____________________________________

A POEM FROM MY DESTRUCTIONS

And now alas yet another poem from my destructions,

You, witness to and here in new flesh and new skin.

The skin of hero, the skin of snake, the skin of monster, the skin of saint all gradually and eventually shedding piece by piece living and dying and reinventing the world. Poems, photographs, enemies and the catastrophes which perish into the void. Paper, undigested words, mute horses and mad nostalgic whores, all reality deficient and nocturnally deaf to the unpure beating heart of man and muse. Reason-religion-idealism-theory….and shit. The perfect and critical butt-flight of monkeys and the cacophony of idle crows who sit upon the fences of eternity passing judgment upon our souls until we give in…to emptiness. But let them all know this;

That Jesus came unabridged with two fish and a loaf of bread, more a poet than a precise carpenter and he fed multitudes….

“With hope”

____________________________________

 

LAST CALL

When stars fall out of the sky and 

all lights fade into silence.

When you grow cold

Eyes grow old

Touch grows cold

Stars fall out of the sky

And lights still fade.

After years

After hours

After moments

That never mattered

You grow cold

Love grows cold

Eyes grow old

And love fails..falls,

Fucked up and silent

Foolish and waiting

In the corner.

When the universe mo longer

Yields to your commands

When the mirror finally breaks

And all you are left with is glass

You grow old

touch grows cold

eyes grow old

And all of the stars still

Fall out of the sky

It’s time for the last call.

_______________________________

 

 

 

R.M. Engelhardt Copyright 2005.

 

Every Day …

Everyday we lose a little part of ourselves to the rest of the world.

The only thing we can do is save that part in our hearts, soul, retrieve it daily from the ashes

And write.

~ R.M. Engelhardt

OF POETRY, WHISKEY AND BUK

 

 

2 shots = happiness

3 shots = love

 

While 4 shots will

make you Bukowski

or at least you think

so at the bar.

 

and 5 shots will

make you a genius

as you stumble

towards the mic,

as you mumble

something incredible

and all the other

drunks applaud

 

(and that none of them will ever remember)

 

and by 6 shots

you are invincible

and by 7 you are god

and by 9 you are just a poet

writing sonnets to the floor

 

“oh floor, beneath thy

porcelain sculpture

beautiful, my love,

 

the world spinning,

swimming around

thy sorry sorry

skull.”

 

fin.

 

__________________

 

~ R.M. ENGELHARDT  2013

 

2 Poems

MICHAEL

Wednesday.

Your keys were stolen by the devil; she used them to open all the doors of

distortion and sound, to turn out all of the lights living in the waking moment when

all of the young gods had grown old. Club Extinction, where life is blood & pain.

Reality, a new dialect of language & seasons, harmonies of invention. A new

industry of human consumption. Where did you leave those keys? You had

everything to gain and nothing to lose. You had the emptiness of an over

agonized poetry and a religion of your own that served the one. And in the dark

you wept cold bitter tears for a god that never cared or even remembered your

name. It was as if all of the life upon earth had just vanished in a moment or had

suddenly developed an expiration date. Hiroshima Mon Amour. Goodnight &

goodbye. Still hiding behind all of your intellectual armor, still fighting all the

infidels of time, the thought Gestapo and the killers of the sacred word. The

emperor of ignorance and all of his angels of destruction still pretending to be the

heroes, like the dead skin flaking off ourselves to become the new. But you

remained timid, docile. Stood back & behind and watched from up on high while

all the rest of the world attended to their dark responsibilities techno-fucked by

the man to become the last piece in a puzzle of intricate nothingness, the

universe. The dead phallic worship of a ghost who can’t find his own way home.

To be mortal, to be human to eat, to sleep, to shit….to fuck….to love. With your

heart, you’re head and your balls. To feel when within the night maybe you will

think of daylight, a longing for some long forgotten stranger or hope. To want

something that means something, or something that just matters. For somewhere

beyond the sea the singer sings about you and me but leaves out the part where

you became a pain in the ass. And I remember the day that the romantic died

and became the angry man. Was it suicide? Or was it murder? I guess we’ll

never know. Because when you fell the sound came down deafening like some

overpowering pop overture upon your knees and you finally came to the

realization that you are nothing but a moth to the flame in the afterlife, another

peacemaker sent gone bad. A transcendental agent of the temporal wake who

can’t remember even who in the hell he is. Wednesday… your keys were stolen

by the devil who sells real estate on the side and who can suck on a soul like

there’s no tomorrow. Make a note; never do shots with the devil, she’ll get

everyone else killed and will make you question your own existence, not to

mention, she’ll break your heart every time, in every time, if you just give her

half a chance.

IN CLEOPATRA’S EYES

“And all the light of the world surrounded her, and in her eyes there was

salvation. As the world and she slowly drifted off to what seemed like a million

miles away. Where all time stopped, streets seemed empty. And the world was

no longer there. And in her eyes there was still beauty, light…salvation”

‘How did you get here?’

I ask.

She smiles politely, and then says,

‘Time”

She had to cross the River Nile & a few other places,

Made a few deals with the Gods, and the Oracles and had to apologize just to

get the night … ‘Off’.

A few past lives & a bottle of wine,

But this time without all the poison.

‘I’m just sick of passing romances’

She cries, then smiles at me like a cat and asks; by the way,

‘You don’t know a guy named Mark Anthony … do you?’

To which I reply ‘No, not at all.’

As she touches my hand and stares into my eyes unwavering.

And then says ‘Thanks’.

Seduces me with all her wiles & and all her false innocence,

Her beauty still there, lasting & full of centuries of lingering pain

And hope.

And then she talks about her job, her life and all of her endless

Responsibilities. Asks me how my day went and wonders if she will ever stop

being so wild, and one day finally settle down

With a couple of kids … and a house.

Tells me about a number of all her failed past relationships.

Not based on love but only on power, appearances & success

That never ever quite work out.

And then we talk about the pyramids, empires and poetry,

Says she likes jewelry and wears a scarab necklace that she tells me that she

bought … at Macy’s.

But all the while I still keep staring in those eyes,

Where all memories and all histories last but all finalize, as they take me off

guard and once more willing to take another chance.

Knowing far better, than I should.

As we walk into the her bedroom, her skin like ivory

A beautiful tattoo above and yet below covering the

Length of her back, and her long black hair that sweeps across my body as all of

my angels watch.

For in Cleopatra’s eyes

I remember all time

Like emeralds

In the darkness

Shining in their light

Where I too tonight

Shall dream of all the mysteries

In this moment that is mine

Stronger than any romance

Or love

Now faded.

____________________________________________________

 ~ R.M. 

 

“you do sometimes look at yourself and think…you know, j...

“you do sometimes look at yourself and think…you know, just sometimes, in between the first cigarette with coffee in the morning to that four hundredth glass of cornershop piss at 3am, you do sometimes look at yourself and think… “this is fantastic. I’m in heaven.”

~ Dylan Moran

The Dishonour of the Poets

 

But his being a poet has made him a revolutionary who must fight on all terrains: on the terrain of poetry by appropriate means and on the terrain of social action, without ever confusing the two fields of action under penalty of re-establishing the confusion that is to be dissipated and consequently ceasing to be a poet, that is to say, a revolutionary.

~ Benjamin Peret 

Excerpt from “The Dishonour of the Poets,” 1945.

Stéphane Mallarmé, born March 18, 1842, Paris.Prose...

Stéphane Mallarmé, born March 18, 1842, Paris.

Prose

Hyperbole! From my memory

Triumphantly can’t you

Rise today, like sorcery

From an iron-bound book or two:

Since, through science, I inscribe

The hymn of hearts so spiritual

In my patient work, inside

Atlas, herbal, ritual.

We walked set our face

(We were two, I maintain)

Toward the many charms of place,

Compared them, Sister, to yours again.

The reign of authority’s troubled

If, without reason, we say

Of this south that our double

Thoughtlessness has in play

That its site, bed of a hundred irises,

(They know if it truly existed),

Bears no name the golden breath

Of the trumpet of summer cited.

Yes, on an isle the air charges

With sight and not with visions

Every flower showed itself larger

Without entering our discussions.

Such flowers, immense, that every one

Usually had as adornment

A clear contour, a lacuna done

To separate it from the garden.

Glories of long-held desire, Ideas

Were all exalted in me, to see

The Iris family appear

Rising to this new duty,

But the sister sensible and fond

Carried her look no further

Than a smile, and as if to understand

I continue my ancient labour.

Oh! Let the contentious spirit know

At this hour when we are silent

The stalks of multiple lilies grow

Far too tall for our reason

And not as the riverbank weeps

When its tedious game tells lies

Claiming abundance should reach

Into my first surprise

On hearing the whole sky and the map

Behind my steps, without end, bear witness

By the ebbing wave itself that

This country never existed.

The child so taught by the paths,

Resigns her ecstasy

Says the word: Anastasius!

Born for scrolls of eternity,

Before a tomb can laugh

Beneath any sky, her ancestor,

At bearing that name: Pulcheria!

Hidden by the too-high lily-flower.