FIRST ... many thanks to my dear friends and hosts of: SAN JUAN POETS ... for the opportunity to be part of this Poetry / Art forum ... AND NOW an invective three part dream from the very end of the human psych ... to start - but at the beginning with ...

"THREE A.M. AND AN ACHING TOOTH AND OPIUM"

An opaled flavor ... opium
You are the mother of an oriental pearl ...

China Town. 3:00 A.M.

A sweet ... sweet aching tooth
Pain plus pain times pain ...
Loosing objectivity - loosing chariots
I want to extract the tooth - I want to sleep ...

An afterthought !

Let me tell YOU all ... my sweet audience
The Modus Operendi of a toothache ...

The like of RUSTY nails
Hammered into your SKULL
The like of LIGHTNING bolts
Frying your BRAIN
The like of a SLIVER of hard wood
Inserted into your EYE
The like of a MOLTEN pitchfork
Branding into your GUT

... and most horrifying of all !

The like of a SILVER bullet
That reaches high velocity
And at the MOMENT of TRUTH ... becomes
Conscious of its own NATURE
And like the SADIST ... drops in BETRAYAL
Of its own DESIGN

China Town. 3:15 A.M.

My pipe is full and ready
In perpetual thoughts
I dream of pliers and hammers ...

Like the hardest of all stone
I want to shape it out ... out
Of my mouth ... out of my head

The tooth has become independent
Independent of my thoughts
Independent of my existence

China Town. 3:25 A.M.

This candy pearl has taken flight ...
My entire body ... numb!
Except ... except the tooth
I stop a rebellion ... and the pain is gone

End.



A surrealist's interlude ... in William's play of "Othello" ... he describes sexual intercourse as the beast with two backs.

LEATHER COAT

Your imperfect fingernails never shadow
The shoreline of my back

In a circle of old rooms and wooden beds
I am your guest tonight
You say that we will sing of wild pleasure
In this smoke filled boundary
As I wonder If you have claimed my mind

I learn through your dreams of winter worlds
And avalanches in bleeding moments
Lost ... is this enough to build trust?
And something else ...

The sound of silver coins leaving my hands
You are all art with painted lips and eyes
Who but you ... how you pin me down
Against your hair ... and skin ... and mound

Now with our barter completed
In this secret merchant's room
I leave as I enter my dream
Cold ... your palms on the shoreline

Waves and nightmares of women
Who devour flesh and beside them
I bloodlessly rediscover the waves
The moonlight and the sand under my feet

Over and over and over I see the gold
And the cold distance
I see a naked old woman crying
I see a statue
Grown from the sound of running water

A little wish and a moan ... then I awake
I wonder where I am in your bones and flesh
From this short sleep
And a ghost written love song

I listen for my name in the shifts of your breath
As you smoke an old English cigarette

A simple prayer of simple means
Of hidden words ... of unsaid truths

I fail in remembering a verse
As your fingers point at my name
With an odour of winged enemies

I now hide in your breath
Your shoulders ... your uncovered body
Your art of night all gone and wasted

In your eyes ... the assassins of savage tribes
In your voice ... a furnace burning fragile souls

The ruins of your brief trade cheated
My leather coat on your tarnished mattress
For only a night as you leave my sight

End



And now ... a simple transmutation ... a fusion of organic thought with celluloid ...

FLICKER

Three Masonic Medicos
With chisel shaped incisors
Crushing stone ... shaping life
Into immaculate marble

Three Subterranean Archers
With golden bows
Gently spear themselves
In the neutral darkness

Three Burly Old Pirates
With rusty red cutlasses
Cut and slash ... dirty old canvases
Thirty-five millimeters at a time

Stop frame ...

Beautiful ... overlapping images
At twenty-four frames per second
Flicker behind your eyelids

A sigh ...

Three Generic Copies
Invited to the feast of celluloid
With chisel shaped incisors
Gently spear themselves
Thirty-five millimeters at a time

End