"ARE YOU THE NEW PERSON DRAWN TOWARD ME?"
By Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from
what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d
satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and
tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a
real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya,
illusion?
_________
I am in a dimly lit college dormitory. Occupying a strange
room with my new wife, I await an old acquaintance. I’m being enticed to be a
part of an international marijuana trade. The benefits will by high and the
peer pressure mounts however I turn my back on the offers and listen to the
silent wishes of my new wife, whose dear presence reminds me that trafficking
only leads to indirect violence, and all the filth that follows in the wake of
easy money. We stand in the smoked out room, where dusty, creaking lights sway
as above a reptile’s glass cage. The old life of chronic marijuana use wafts in
my subconscious as a strong, deep inhalation, and I clear the smoke of self-conscious
perception through a mind and body purified by love.
_______
Is there love without music?
And why does music spark love?
Music provides the innocent
backdrop for the play to unfold,
and become sweet
as the spring in a mid-winter sun
fading against the whisky iris of my lover’s cat
scratching the butchered skin of L.A.
deranged toxicity, madness of memory
from beyond the grips of fatigue
and into the failure to be,
true and awake, light with the speed of thought,
a slight wink on the riverside blue,
and what's new from another lazy, sick waiting?
she sits transfixed
and I ignore the heart
that beats quicker inside
with every finger drop
word flatness
I rinse myself blindly in an alcoholic fight
through perfect humanity,
knowing the loveless embrace of non-feeling,
and her lust
and her lust again,
a secretive tear at the loss of an eyelid
dimming in the thick listening
of night fallen
anew
with shared melancholic delight…
March 01. 217am 2010
Butler mansion. (N.W. Calgary). My love sleeps smiling, I sober up, listening to music of nostalgic kisses
