Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

when the black birds fall like omens from above
when they fly out of your chest...like passages
from the book of eternity, and you lay on a cold
stone floor in a basement with a copy of Inferno
when the black and red birds cover the moon

when the bees can no longer be
when the trees can no longer see the forest
when the canary in the coal mine passes out
and the drunk poet passes out on the street

when Dee did see through that shew stone
and Kelly did decipher the angelic words
appearing there, triangle becomes square
the hierorglyphic monad wears half circle

when Bacon brought the Shakespeare home
and the kings at the end of their reign
recite the list of the folly of their mighty brow
and the bloody crown was flung down, down
and the vision of the voice circles the cycle
oh all of them black birds in that pie

in the sky, when Merlin conjured the falcon
and the secret magic book held the true spells
that set that wonder bird on wing and dragons
and things played on the world stage, turn the
gilded purple page...behold the Mage

time for a Kafka high, turn the bug into a butterfly
all agents return to base, ride pan pipes back
or turn the castle into a corporate monstrosity
or turn it all into a amusement park for the insane

when Nostradamus saw down the time lines, in vain
when wars and plagues and time machines churn
star-gates and portals between worlds open between
the dark zones and deep dark alleys where poets roam
as Nietzsche spake...'Twilight of the Idols' out there
on the edge of the abyss...where the poets reminisce

when Crazy Horse spoke..."I will return to you as stone"
a very great vision was needed," as the eagle seeks
the deepest blue sky..." Chief Crazy Horse sought so

when black birds fall out like words and fish cover the shore
blue visions are seen the stone of the wise finally returns
and the black birds fly out of your chest and east is west
and you awake on the cold basement floor, after was before

and Andre' Breton says,at that point all contradictions cease
to exist, and it is useless to resist all the urge of the poetic
marvelous....and at the thresholds of the unconscious waken
to the Idols blinking out one by one, and birds fly into the sun

and Tzu butterflies blossom out of the center heart of the galaxy

all days like any others until that day

that day was any day in the life of a poet
or what I mean to say is it always has been
that day or any other day, a play on words

one day I was reading Rimbaud
and the other it was Kerouac
I was thinkin about Dharma bums
and how to not get drafted

I was reading The Surrealist Manifestos
and then I was with a book about magic
and the days flew by and thou art that
I write words that want to write me

I have written so many, and I don't want
to say this that and the other, but they say
what they say anyway, by way of habit
and way of putting them down, so I
might be let lose from them

and that day to this day I might still play on words
and they will play on me, I am no Rimbaud, no
Kerouac too, I liked Bobby Kaufman, Philip Lamantia
too, and all those unknown poets I met along the way