R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 6

Be Visionary

The Visionary … All men should possess a ‘visionary faculty’. Men do not, because they live wrongly. They live too tensely, under too much strain, ‘getting and spending’. But this loss of the visionary faculty is not entirely man’s fault, it is partly the fault of the world he lives in, that demands that men should spend a certain amount of their time ‘getting and spending’ to stay alive. …The visionary faculty comes naturally to all men. When they are relaxed enough, every leaf of every tree in the world, every speck of dust, is a separate world capable of producing infinite pleasure. If these fail to do so, it is man’s own fault for wasting his time and energy on trivialities. The ideal is the contemplative poet, the ‘sage’, who cares about having only enough money and food to keep him alive, and never takes thought for the morrow.”

From The Outsider by Colin Wilson

(Source: rmengelhardt.com)

Why Do We Write?

We write because the blank piece of paper and the pen are there. We write because this is our addiction and we are proud of it. Our habit, our drug, our crutch. Whatever you wish to call it. We write because since an early age we felt it deep in our souls and in our bones. The poem must be written, the story must be told and the new myths and Gods are waiting for you to bring them forth from out of the darkness and to bring them into the light of being. You are a creator, so create. You are the writer. So write.

 

~ R.M. Engelhardt

A Vagabond Song

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—

Touch of manner, hint of mood;

And my heart is like a rhyme,

With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry

Of bugles going by.

And my lonely spirit thrills

To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;

We must rise and follow her,

When from every hill of flame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

~ Bliss Carman. 

“EPITAPH” LUMMOX #3

LUMMOX 3

 

 

Epitaph for

 

 

The lost poem

Which contained

 

Everything

And nothing.

 

Touched everyone, anyone

Who desired

 

The mystery of mysteries

Words of words, which brought forth

 

Language

 

Both blessed & cursed us

Married us, buried us and parted

 

The heavens and the

Deep blue seas

 

 

Made Houdini disappear

And broke the sole of

Khrushchev’s soul

 

Shot Kennedy

And then shot a rocket

 

To the moon

 

 

Sold us, indiscriminate

Commanded us to war and glory

And holocaust – unimagined imagination

The scavengers & architects, history

Fighting for space apocalyptic

Down on Wall Street and in the Silicone Valley

 

 

Stages of poetry and stages

Of time living, breathing & dying

On the battlefields

 

Of life.

 

The Poem,

 

Too early

 

Too late

 

Too bad

 

The lost poem

Which contained

Nothing and everything

Everything and nothing

 

At all.

 

 

You left it home on the

Kitchen table where your children

Drew on it

In crayon

 

It is just as well.

 

~ R.M.

Some Day

 

“Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity,…we shall harness the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” Unless humankind discovers this fire, and uses it to burn away everything that blocks the changes that must come in order to transform the planet into the mirror of divine beauty it is meant to be, it will die out and take most of nature with it.”

~ Teilhard de Chardin

The Dead Crooner

The Dead Crooner.

THE DEAD CROONER

This ain’t the story of Bing Crosby. And sure as shit ain’t the story of Sinatra or Fred Astaire either. This is a story unfit for Bobbie-soxers & the elderly. And this is not the story of some sentimental journey, a very very long-time “ago”.

So let’s all get nostalgic and flashback as they say to the golden days. Where dreams were a dime a dozen and love was still innocent,for a few. At least that’s what they say. This story starts back in the days when some guys named “The Nazi’s” were just starting up the party in a place called Germany, and when some shit-head named Adolph Hitler who they called “DA Fur her” told the world that they were all inferior to his master race. Then one day in the neighborhood he just came along they say. A young man in his early 30’s, not a kid at all but some guy who looked like he had it all together. With his leather jacket flung over his one arm, hair slicked back with pomade and a Lucky-Strike dangling from the corner of his lip. Five feet-10inch’s & all the the girls said “He’s a dish”. That confident smile, the smart ass knowing grin, and a voice they all say that they remembered as sounding like some kind of magic, some kind of bird as he walked from place to place in Albany. He, knowing everybody back then, and everybody knowing him.

“Don’t let your daughters go near that crazy jazz fella!”, All the mothers would say,”He’s trouble!”. As if just by the sight of looking at him all their daughters would instantly become impregnated. But the secret is, the rumor was was that some of those mom’s wanted & got some “singing” lessons on the side themselves.

“Hey!, I’m singing at the club tonight!” He’d tell them. “The New Kenmore Hotel” You should come check me out. the legend being that he had learned to sing from and that his voice was a gift from singing in some negro~black churches when he was younger, and that over the years he had sang with all the creme de’la creme as well. Bull Moose, P. Baby Dodds & The Scranton Singers as well as many others. Rumors that he was into “Voo doo” strange drugs & everything else and that he didn’t worship God, like a good Sunday-morning christian. But night after night his orchestra & his beautiful voice had filled the room as couples danced, swayed and fell in love. Going on forever as if the music would never stop. Gallagher? What was his last name they say these days? The big band historians don’t remember.

Then, one night, as the old-story goes. Upon the dark streets of Albany after all the bars closed. A debt was settled & paid …in full. Y’see the singer, the crooner didn’t know what he had gotten himself into. As if there were some hand of strange fate that had reached out and ended his brief career. What happened was he crossed the wrong man’s, the devil’s path as they say. A man known in the city known as “Legs Diamond”. And a man who wasn’t pleased that some good-looking, handsome singer with his tones of gold, was screwing his girlfriend inside the hotel. And on that dark, cold night one October as the wind brushed by his face, walking down Broadway, the crooner got snared by some of Diamond’s men. And that was the night he paid the devil his due. As still alive, screaming they held him there on that street corner and cut him open deep from chest to throat. Gutted him, still breathing…screaming & gasping for air, like a fish. And then as legend has it took the only thing that that boy had had left. His voice. And dumped the rest his body in the Hudson River but took that one piece of him..that made him unique, and hid it somewhere, possibly in a palace, where no one except Legs would know where to find.And O’Connell and all the police..did nothing.

But many years have passed, long ago since that fateful night. Times change, times swing and time goes by, and they rock n’ roll and have moved onto bigger & better things, where the streets & all the old buildings of that era remain empty and vacant. All of the people from another time, seemingly erased as well as the gangsters who are also remembered vaguely. But the kids? They just keep on dancing, whatever the newest craze, as they should. And yet what happened to Gallagher? they never found his body or anything that was left of him, and remains for the better part of things “A Ghost” in the history of the time of the big bands. Yet every now and then, when the city streets are empty in the early near-morning hours under the streetlights as you are walking you can still hear some strange-sweet beautiful voice singing from out of nowhere, a phantom that lulls you into thinking that someone is walking towards you from around the corner, which you turn. And it has been reported by strangers & college students that if you listen that you may possibly see him there. A good-looking man in his mid-30’s in a pinstripe suit, smoking a cigarette, who then suddenly & mysteriously fades away.And in Albany they refer to him as “The Dead Crooner”. an urban legend, as they say. Appearing..here & there to the ladies as they walk by what’s left of The Kenmore saying

“Hey beautiful? Can I sing you a dream?

And then, just vanishing…into thin air.

___________________

R.M. Engelhardt

Eclipse

 

 

Nothing is there beyond hope

Nothing that can be sworn impossible

Nothing wonderful, since Zeus,

Father of the Olympians

Made night from mid-day

Hiding the bright sunlight

And sore fear came upon men.

[Perhaps written having seen the eclipse of 6 Apr 648 BC.]

SUMMER DEEP : MARC BOLAN

“Summer deep is in the hills again

His lady is a lioness

Winds of birds blow through the fields again

Invaders from the true worlds”

~ Marc Bolan

ANDY KAUFMAN IS ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy Kaufman is Dead

Andy Kaufman is Dead

Andy Kaufman is Dead

Andy Kaufman is Dead

Andy Kaufman is Dead

 

Andy Kaufman is Dead?

 

Andy Kaufman is

Andy Kaufman is

Andy Kaufman is

Andy Kaufman is

Andy Kaufman is

Andy Kaufman is

 

“Alive”

 

And currently working

As an Andy Kaufman-Elvis

Impersonator

In Hollywood

 

 

_______________

 

~ R.M. ENGELHARDT

 

DAMES …

 

All dames are alike: they reach down your throat and they can grab your heart, pull it out and they throw it on the floor, step on it with their high heels, spit on it, shove it in the oven and cook the shit out of it. Then they slice it into little pieces, slam it on a hunk of toast, and serve it to you and then expect you to say, “Thanks, honey, it was delicious.”

~ Steve Martin, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid