3:30 AM

[Lightning Rod]

it's 3:30 in the morning and Lightning Rod stares at a blank page
the bed is too cold to occupy
so I must ply my occupation, the blank page

death is a dream compared to poetry
at least it's quiet
just as 3:30 should be
but not tonight, which is really this morning

even the roaches are asleep
lucifer's nightmare is only in the second reel
his Ambien pill isn't working any better than my libido
and it's not the speedos that are cramping my style

It's past closing time but I'm drinking anyway
3:30, just me and the blank page. Set 'em up Joe.
I'm staring into white purity. There's nobody in the place but just you and me.
vagabond desert emptiness. One for my baby.
a promised dawn in the lingering night. And one more for the road.
Every lost love and dashed dream smeared
on the whiteness of that page intact as a virgin
my version of the Mona Lisa would make
Leonardo blush red as blood on a page, a blank page
the page of my occupation.

the dawn is narrow in the Eastern time zone
it's my job to be awake to answer the phone
but the ringing is only in my ears
it's three-thirty, I've lost count of the beers

they told me that poetry was for geeks and for queers
but what they didn't tell me about was the fucking blank page
and you can imagine my rage when the truth started sinking in
at 3:30 in the morning Eastern time staring at a Siberian bed

I know it's all in my head
that was 3:30 in the morning
and now it's well past four
I don't know whether
to jump out the window
or walk out the door

just to escape this page and the coming dawn
with raspy stains of anemic blood
tears distilled
semen clear as a lens
the salt of sweat and tobacco stains
transparent as the ice in my bed
nothing on the page, the empty page
the page of my occupation.

(edited twice--once involuntarily)

[Perdida]

I'll have to come back to this, cause right now i'm speechless.

whadda beaudy!

felt a touch of Buk in this.

great stuff!

[inkedgoddess]

true grit LR
i dig it mucho

[joel]

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks--
too cold and Siberian?
I can't handle the bed
and have to face my pitiful want to write
when I can't what I want
when my bed is too damnably
hot and sweaty
alone and unsexual
unbedded thoughts that hate to be written down.

[judih]

they don't tell ya about the blank page
the sounds that hold out for ransom
how much
no one says
no one tells ya about the silence of the page

[mnaz]

Sometimes,

No pain, no blood.
No poetry.

And empty can be powerful.

[Lightning Rod]

thank you all for reading
perdida, I would still like to hear what you say

[hester_prynne]

plain and simple
plain and simple
plain and simple.
like siberia,
like cold,
a blank page
transformed....

superbia LR
H

[WIREMAN]

damn i'm glad i'm gonna be seeing you tomorrow, i got ya hangin on the wall here at the coffee house...the one i made on that infamous cable show we did in another incarnation....bring that flute and do some ragatronics with me and mike....flute ...violin...and wired words...hey lightnin' i was wid ya the other morn...you facing a blank page....me facing another day in the salt mines.....

[creativesoul]

my father is a writer
he told me that it was the lonliest profesison in the world
that our hours
and an empty movie theater for a brain
watching the images
slither before eyes that see
thru fingertips
representing the finger prints
that make us unique
speaking with the cold
the unidentifed
matrix of reality
and fiction
toying with what is gifted slowly word by paragraph
i am here with you o great blank slate
feather
wieghtless
floating
the biggest grin
loud giggles
midnight oil
good flavor
thank you

[stilltrucking]

Lightning rods lament
libido?
wasn't that a dance craze in the fifties

I awoke from a dream about freud's suicide
I rolled another bugler
smoked a joint
and meant to comment on this one
but the day got a way from me and I never did
interesting thread
I thought i would kick it up
just for the hell of it

Lucifer?
where would we be without the bible
we would not have any got dam poets
I always though lucifer was a woman
the woman in the shadows of my dreams
the temptress
she devil
that makes me want to fuck her brains out
see how far I can reach inside her
she only asks what is in my power to give
always been random lays
for me I see that now
what is the point of complaining about women


Does a poem have to mean anything
I wonder
Interesting thread you started Clay
Bears repeating
ten four

just another GO

Lucifer and me doing the limbo
with our libido
how low can we go
amoeba amoeba
cell to cell
organ to organ
entangled up in our nervous systems
we do the quantum
horizontal
bop

i would jump out the window only if I was on the first floor

it has been years since I looked at a blank page
did you write that out on paper
or did you do it on a computer
minor point I suppose
looking for truth
sometimes metaphors don't work for me
I am crazy that way

but I have stared into many a blank text box here

you ever been caught in a white out on interstate ninety
or a san diego fog on interstate five
kind of the feeling
wanting to stop
but the fear of what may be gaining on me
forcing me on
as I watch row after row of text appear here in this virgin white text box


sorry for the ramble
evocative poem you wrote clay
thanks for the chance to spew forth here about something I know nothing about.

blows my mind that the background color changes from white to gray once a text box is posted.

It is my ambition one day to learn how to type gray fonts against a gray background

then I would call my self a poet

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[Doreen Peri]

Does a poem have to mean anything
I wonder

438 views and now it's kicked up to the top right next to the same poem which he reposted last night.

I donno what it means but he keeps using the "cold bed" image over and over and yet he mentions semen and a blank piece of paper. Maybe he's lying in bed by himself without any covers on masturbating into a blank piece of paper?

lol

well whatever... at least we have the poem 2x now on the same page. That will give people more opportunities to read it and try to figure out what it means.

[stilltrucking]

Zlatko wrote on his myspace profile that he writes with a quill and ink.

I am so lazy clay

Writing on paper with pen

I hardly ever go there

different experience completely

I got tons of mangled paper from when I used to write really write on anythign, truck stop cafe napkins. old notebooks, grocery bags, I lost a lot of it and I hang on to it in the hope that I will type it up or at least scan it.

I used to love the feel of watching the ink flow, as if it was leaking out of my hand.

I wonder if I could hook up a syringe/pen to a vein in my arm, the blood would flow out of the pen point onto the page.

I could bleed myself to death with words

strange morning
so happy I don't
know how to act
first true fall morning this year

Please have these deleted clay
if they are too trashy.

[Lightning Rod]

I can't imagine Lucifer's libido
but I know I'm damned
probably hear him repeat my poem
whispering in my ear to eternity

my libido is in limbo
a cranky purgatory

jack, let's get a truck
just a cab and a sleeper
no cargo, just the road

neat write, padnah

[stilltrucking]