Love Is The War
Love The War
Love Is War
Love War
Love
War

2008- the summer that poetry conquered Portland!

A big Golightly-sized thank you to those of you who came to my reading last Thursday. For those of you who missed the excitement, there will be some secrets that will never be shared, but unlike death and virginity, you get a second chance!

I'll be reading on Monday, July 14th (next Monday!) at the 3 Friends Coffeehouse at 201 SE 12th Ave (SE 12th and Ash) at 7 PM. There's three people on the lineup, not sure when I'll be on, and it'll be 20 minutes of Portland, revolutions, baristas, Europe, the wild west, rock and roll, and whatever else I can conjure up. Bring your friends and enemies. Requests gladly taken.

And I'm still planning to release my as-yet-untitled 3rd book next Thursday, July 17th, in honor of Jesus' arrival in Portland. The Jesus and Mary Chain, that is...

I'll leave you with a summer story of revolution. You can always check out my poetry at http://mikeygolightly.blogspot.com

Happy summer!
-Mikey Golightly


(uncensored version available by emailing Mikey)
-----------------------------
The Pittock Mansion is in flames this morning,
while tea-time ladies run screaming down the
West Hills avenues, gutters filling with blood,
chihuahuas under each arm,
chased by the bicycle revolutionaries,
broomstick lance under each arm.
Someone erected a guillotine on the Burnside Bridge,
and there’s a flotilla of dismembered heads
gathering against the Eastbank Esplanade-
xxxxxxxxkissing xxxxxxxxxx with stone blue lips
while xxxxxx xxxxxx’s gaping lifeless mouth is sucking
the decaying money-rotten brain out of xxxxx xxxx’s skull
through her limp, dangling spinal cord.
xxxxxx xxxxxx is stacking his millions against
Mecca’s front door, trying not to become
a windswept casualty of the class war
hurricane thundering down Burnside,
xxxx xxxxxxxxx’s jet turned back over Iowa,
now he’s exiled from the city he betrayed
and there’s a special blade waiting for him.
CNN says someone’s going to fly a plane
through the windows of Big Pink
but Portland revolutionaries can do better
than copy the fascist ploys of the dying American junta,
Portland’s at war now and I’m just standing
on the east side of the bridge,
counting the heads and calling out names,
only the pure of heart are crossing
the Willamette on this beautiful summer morning.

And so begins the summer of our salvation....

---------------------------------------------------------------

"MOVEMENT! MOVEMENT!"

This is your sign

     HERE

     NOW

Take this exit, coming up fast, your car's worn

  out and your psychic radiator is

  blowing steam all over,

  incinerating the thoughtless children

   licking at the rivulets like icicles,

Step up! Slam down your words, the ones

 you love and hate and hate to love

 and hate to write, have to write,

  like a plague

  scabies, they are

 scratch and scratch and anyone who stands

  too close gets a deadly disease that the

  doctor can't describe

 prescribe a shot and a glass of wine

  but that's the fuel,

  not the antidote

"MOVEMENT! MOVEMENT!"

No need for time travel to tag

  today as the day when the

  psychic train wobbled on its rails

   and exploded in eternity's ecstasy

   as the hobo poets took shotgun

   potshots broadside at the passing express

"MOVEMENT! MOVEMENT!"

  Show me your ticket and I'll kiss you

   so deeply your knees will buckle and break

   and your stomach will dissolve into love's sticky jelly

Unwrap your uncertainties and disintegrate

  your self-hate because

I LOVE YOU! no matter who you are

  or what you write

  as long as you BELIEVE!

BELIEVE until you can't cry

  again, BELIEVE until my love throws

  you down on your hands and knees, lying

  prone facing the redeeming mecca sun,

  your face buried in the soft damp decay of

   a forest regenerating itself from

  the bacteria and the shrinking viruses

   of diseased decades going dark,

"MOVEMENT! MOVEMENT!"

I'll write my own Declaration of

 Independence when I break free

  from the muse's satin shackles,

 the short, orgasmic pleasure of

FUCKING THE FAR BEYOND

 replaced by the post-coital dread

 of becoming nothing

 a sentenced spider who just spent

  his eternal sperm

   on a spontaneous widow not worth

   these webbed words left behind

"MOVEMENT! MOVEMENT!"

   Sign up right here and

    practice your performance-

 The judges are decapitated.

 The priests have all gone to sleep.

----------------------------------------------------------

In the Cascade forest I see through the eyes of God
  brilliant mermaids basking in the hot springs waters
  gazing up the Breitenbush River as the spirits trapped
  in the mountain-top snow unleash their winter-frozen
  voices in the roaring snowmelt torrent,
 the sirens absorb the messages of ancient forests
  in mineral springs brewing before the ages of men,
  bubbling hot from the timeless heart of their Mother Earth,
 and these new mothers of our shared destiny
  become the balancing point between the raging roar
  of the river and the lullaby murmur of the springs.
I hide my eyes from their enchanting beauty, 
  Diana and Helen and Cassiopeia lying naked to
  the rapturous blue-sky gaze of the sun, and to
  the confused wonderings of a dazzled poet
  blinded by the amazing divinity of a woman's body,
 one quick stolen glance can become the mind-destroying
  glimpse into the spiraling origins of the universe,
  an eternal curse that forever freezes my thoughts
 and overwhelms my soul with the undeniable joy
  that springs from deep within each one of us.
I soak quietly in the soothing waters, staring
  back at the Cascade sky, so thankful that
  I'm blesses with the mermaids, with the
   never-ending amazement of the human body,
 thankful to be cursed to take these holy
  snapshots in silence,
 thankful that I've finally found my way
  to see through the eyes of God.
---------------------------------------------

"In the end", she whispered, eyes glazed over staring
  back up at the cliff from which she'd 
  fallen to this last gate, "you have to
 make up your own language for all
  the things that happen, all the days and
  hours and deaths and births and meals and
  friendships and dilemmas and insanities,
 you have to write your own grammar 
  and compose your own history, be it
   a song or a poem, a sculpture or
   a painting, or an eternal gaze 
   captured on film and spread all over
  the walls of museums, and ghettoes, 
 you have to make up your own words
  for the way this life burns into
  your heart and your stomach, your skin
  and your soul, the way it hurts
  and heals, the way the infinite pain of
  death makes you scream with pleasure
  beyond drugs and sex and salvation,
 you have to make up your own language."

-----------------------------------------------

Salvation is indeed coming to Portland, as the Jesus and Mary Chain are performing at the Wonder Ballroom on July 17th, in what could be the best moment in Portland's glittering rock and roll history since the Beatles played Memorial Coliseum in 1965. In honor of band that's been more than just my favorite band, something more like religion, or at least  misguided self-help scriptures,  I'll be releasing my 3rd book of poetry, including several JAMC-related poems from throughout the years, on July 17th. Look for it in the same places where you might have found "Dream Trains Keep On Rolling" or "These Poems Kill Fascists".

Revolutions don't carry advertising budgets. So what are you waiting for- a TV commercial or a banner ad to tell you when it's time to step out of the shackles that hold you down? There's two ways to correct the stratification that threatens each and every one of us. One is the civilized way, through laws and taxes, a Constitution and the American way. The other? Well, go ask Marie Antoinette. 

I'll see you at the ramparts.

-MVK

These Poems Kill Fascists!

It's been a prolific month over here at poetry central. Last month, I published my first booklet, "Dream Trains Keep On Running", and embarked on a sort-of-tour, going to Ashland, Reno, San Francisco, Berkeley, Arcata, and sundry points en route to distribute about 200 copies of the booklet. Then, after going to Coachella and selling my soul once again to the messiahs of rock, and seeing that once-in-a-generation rebirth of the American Dream, I came home and published my second collection, "These Poems Kill Fascists". I distributed another 200 copies around Portland and read the book in its entirety on NW Everett while First Thursday took place around me.

I've got more technology than Thomas Paine could have imagined, and we're many, many years overdue for another revolution. This is my stab at fanning the flames of discontent into an inferno of peace and love and happiness. Let's see how long this fire burns.

Or, if you just can't wait, you can download PDF copies, ready for printing and folding, at http://www.semprian.com/mikeygolightly/. Feel free to print up a few and hand 'em out wherever you think a message of hope might be needed.

And as always, all of my mass emails, be they dispatches or "From the Skylounge" or what have you, are available at http://mikeygolightly.blogspot.com.

Enough of the sales pitch. Here's the first poem from "These Poems Kill Fascists", an ode to Portland, the Coachella Festival, and the rebirth of the American Dream.

--------------------------------------------
O Desert Lord Muse! Under the April Skies
I felt you cry out “What’s My Name?!?” and
danced your Jungle Love across a grassy oasis,
I saw your chosen prophets in open shirts and
preacher robes, floating pigs above the
masses and dropping acid confetti from
a silent circling plane above infernal explosions,
I bathed in bass with your unwashed followers and
became a young lamb in your flock,
my rock and roll savior,
guitar-faced screams melting me into the
sands and the sunlight
where I surf the straight ray beam of hope
to the shooting star sky and shine
that love back down, lightning flashes
of hope, home in once-depressed
Portland, ready to blaze a fiery trail
into our bright future and
The Next American Dream!
In the desert my compatriots from
all the world’s oases gathered together
and cried out “Let’s rescue the
American Dream!”, “Let’s renew
The American Revolution!”
O Desert Sun! Let the seeds of this
New America scatter forth from the desert,
blown fast by trade winds of liberty,
spreading across this vast
New America,
watered with rock and roll, we will
sprout into the fruiting trees
of this, the next Greatest American
Generation,
and we will take back THE LOVE!
THE PEACE!
THE HOPE!
we’ll WIN the war by REFUSING TO FIGHT!
We’ll inherit the earth and you damn well
better believe we’re gonna want it this time,
this oasis of hope spreads with smiles
shared on springtime streets back home
and the smoldering sparks of Little Beirut
will explode into infernos once again
with my little kiss of the hot desert wind.
------------------------------------------


Fighting the best fight of all, with you all by my side, getting my back, or screaming in my face,

Mikey Golightly

"Dream Trains Keep On Rolling- A Mikey Golightly Primer" is now available at Reading Frenzy for $2 or for free in coffee shops and bars all over Portland. Mikey Golightly will soon be embarking on a tour of Oregon, California, and Nevada to spread the dreams. Keep your eyes open.

The devil's knife slits no throat but his own...

Icarus ignored his father's warnings and ventured too near the sun with his wings of wax.

There can never be a phoenix-like rebirth without an incineration to create the ash pile from which a firebird can take flight.

I'm taking the cues the world is giving me and figuring out what to do next. I'm shining with hope and I need to be sure there's no clouds obscuring the glow. Here is the chronicle of a mad, mad week...

And keep your eyes open in your neighborhood coffee shop- soon I will be distributing the first copies of the Mikey Golightly primer, which will be available for free in places that planted the seeds for this literary fruit.

------------------------------

---------------------------------------
You are drawing powerful forces towards you,
as a magnet, or the sun.
Power and greed, romance and lust,
now at your fingers as if strings on a harp,
play the tune gently, with melody,
tune this world to the lyrics of McCartney
and the heart of the Clash
no lessons needed to sing this eternal song.

---------------------

Or was it all in your mind? A mistaken shuttle
you hopped aboard, but it wasn't your route
and you didn't have the clothes or the language
to survive when you disembarked at the end of the line.
You live in a neighborhood now from where
you cannot venture into her forbidden streets,
you wear the policeman's uniform when all you
want is to deliver the mail,
you'll arrive there naturally when it's time
for you to move in, and a passing flick
of her wrist is enough to tell you
you're never going to be welcome to stay long,
you think it might be home, but home's
no longer your refuge and this awkward
game has permanently branded you a refugee,
there's no longer a place for you when
the only place you'd choose to
live is barricaded by mistakes and
magic and mysteries that you'll never resolve.
Make your home on the bus and take
another ride- there must be other stops
beyond the horizon at the end of this road.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This place hasn't changed, and neither have you, you
just slipped into a corporate hole for a bit too
long- you knew what lurked in those places- yet
you're out just before the claws grab you,
take care not to take a stingray barb
on the always-too-rapid rebound,
jump back here where it's safe and you're
just one more silent face in this lonely mess
Portland darkness, a city that never completely
sleeps but seems awfully still in the
middle of the night, when everyone is
either alone with the demons and divas
that sing their seductions all night long,
or joined in a testing waltz to see
if there truly is magic after midnight.
Now is the time to let go and let stasis
dance with serendipity, let go of these games
you didn't want to join, games that caught
you before you knew you were playing-
It's back to glory and sunshine now!
It's back to yellow and orange explosions
and dream stars in late night eyes
and imaginary dreams chased back into
little boy nightmare closets,
You are alive again!
Breathe it all in,
and get ready once more to be the
firebird rising full-blast from the sparks
and ashes of one more lifetime gone to hell.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's toxins leaching into the Portland pond,
our defenses cracking against the onslaught
of machines and money markets, the
poison seeps in slowly,
and my job now is to clean all this water,
my job is to patch those leaks before
the entire city dies, poisoned,
but I'll be of no use if I get too
close and drink the venom myself,
and that's a slow onset killer, creeping
through your veins and thoughts until
just a sliver of sunshine remains
but that modest ray may be just enough
to purify everything around this unclean city,
and to fix those deadly leaks forever,
and to restore us to our rightful Paradise,
this city of saints and sinners Portland,
this promised Garden of Eden.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I can take my gutter seat with the
rest of the streetbound poets who passed
the same initiation, built themselves intricate
wings of wax to carry themselves closer to
some distant mystery fire, but as we approach
the sun, the melting embers of failed
ambition send us straight back into the
spinning soil we first sprouted from, I'll
come to with a bottle in my hand
and dancing the inevitable tango with
the needle that's carried only by the truest
loves, here I stagger back up, seared and
bloodied and trampled by that poppy field vision,
now a long nap calls under the
Burnside Bridge, but I'd be better off
building new improved wings, this time
I'll make sure that they're fireproof,
I'm not ready to stop flying
and sit in those poet-clogged
gutters- not quite yet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No longer fling material, I've turned into a
full-fledged project now, skin wounds infected
and tonight I'm all full of holes and aches
and diseases, no longer the easy
one-nighter, come and go gentleman I once
was, now I'm going to take big work,
the foundations are only getting weaker and
it's going to be pretty expensive,
but the price keeps going up every day
you defer this maintenance of the soul,
it's tough work to do alone but
impossible with the wrong helpers,
build the team immediately and get the
blueprints sketched, simple verses won't
get this big job done, and it goes beyond
a book or a biography-
there's no more opportunities for the
uncomplicated throwaway evening, take
a look at these goods, damaged,
but promising,
and sign up for a project to reshape
the entire unconscious universe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The stars called on their masters to release
the chains that bound the sunlight,
to allow this new hope to run free in
the playgrounds of the masses, to become
part of the shared unconscious once again,
poetry the music of the soul and
your ear's grown out of tune from
the tonedeaf cackling of the soul killer
corporations,
slow down and breathe deep, the chains
released, take a long look around
everything's different now in the new white light
and don't mistake the way that your eyes
ache from temporary blindness for another
bout with doubtful uncertain fear,
everyone gets scared, standing at St. Peter's
gate, thinking we know our own judgement,
but you'll never know for certain until
you take that ultimate step through,
you'll either walk amongst the clouds
and sing with the angels
or scream eternal agony as your feet
blister and peel from the flames of
too many nights pursuing your own pleasures,
you'll never know the verdict
until you finally walk through the gates
and that door has just opened itself wide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Winter's last goodbye pelts Southeast Portland with
hail and sleet and the last throes of
a dark season's dying desires,
no longer can I choose to travel to the desert,
this time it's going to come for me,
the sun bringing a summons along
with the first clear skies of spring.
"You will throw yourself to the ground beside
sagebrush highways that point to infinite horizons,
you will quench your unbeatable thirst with
mirages of teachers and mentors and lovers and friends
washed down with cheap beer at clapboard bars,
before you lay down for fitful sleeps
in lumpy bed motel rooms begging for
remodeling since the road-opening 1950's",
and I don't handle authority well but
I know when an invitation is a thinly-veiled
threat, the sun offers to bring me back
to the gonzo life or to burn down
the last scraps of the conventional
existence I was never meant for, the
life I found because it was easy,
not because it was right,
that life blows apart now like the
fine talc sand of an empty playa
scoured by freight train winds and
savaged by the sun's relentless enthusiasm.
"Take my offer for I only love to
give", he says, offering a beam of
light that burns at the softest touch,
blinds at the quickest glance,
but sparks a worn-out heart to
wild desires and carefree desert journeys
with just the faintest glance to the skin,
to deny his offer is to be a
giant fighting the gods, questioning the
nature of existence and experience,
rejecting the ebb and flow yin and yang
of the charmed seasons and their diverse rewards,
and I know better than to obstruct
the inevitable stasis of the sun's shining subjects,
I'll swallow his fiery gaze whole
and give myself to whatever joyful
road that his blazing heat burns
deep inside my mapless questing soul.

Happy Birthday Boxing Day, Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

The master himself, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, celebrated his 89th birthday yesterday, meaning that today is his 89th Birthday Boxing Day! That his blue eyes still sparkle on the shores of North Beach is a testament to the power of will and vision and poetry over the day-to-day assault of the soul-killing machines. We will win this battle- by not fighting it.

In Lesotho, singing is not an activity of the ego, something to be self-conscious about. It is a standard function of a living human being, like eating, sleeping, or walking.

------------------------------

---------------------------------
Then we broke through glittering like the
angels of Gabriel, pouring over the streets
of Portland and Paris and cities all over the world
laughing at the joke of eternity because
we'd finally figured out the punch line,
we sang about consciousness and howled
about our dreams, laughed about the
riddles of death and the comic relief
of immortality,
we danced among prophets and called
ourselves fools and friends and
flooded the fountains with love and light,
we ran our new hands over the smooth
skin of beauty and cried out our
lust with the passion we'd saved
for our secret lonely dreams,
we rose to the fate we'd been promised
once we'd ascended to our rightful destiny,
we shared God's eternal throne,
drank the delicious potions of love,
and swallowed it all whole
safe in the promise that
this shivering ecstasy would finally release us
from the spiritless chain gang march of time.
-------------------------------------------------

Ferlinghetti changed his focus from poetry to painting as he grew older, occupying a studio at Hunters Point for some time where he would paint portraits and explore the world beyond words. I'm still trapped by language and the muse.
--------------------------------------------------
Now I wish I'd been born a painter,
because greens and violets and exploding oranges
can call a burdened soul up to
new summers and brew hope where
stale cups of despair drown dreaming hearts,
but instead I'm just a poet and I don't
have a white gown to wrap my muse in,
just the labyrinth confusion of trying to
capture beauty in this cryptic language
designed to trap the evidence of
grace in an unsolvable maze of
words, words that doom an eternal
angel to the company of the minotaur
in the torturing lands of narrative imagination,
while lesser milkmaid princesses rest eternally
among canvas lilies or bathed
in light and sensual stares on film,
and even Shakespeare's dark lady endures
in visionary words and enlightened
paths to a post-religious Paradise,
but the coincidence of fate dooms
you to these shallow lifeless words of
temporary ink on brittle paper,
destined to dust, verses that cloak you
in their confusion, their jailbound destiny,
and I can't force you to the heavens,
I'm a reluctant warden cursed to imprison
you eternally in lyrics not worth
the inspiring blue of your Aquarian eyes,
the charming hope of your dimpled smile,
the gaze that startles me to waking
every single morning.
------------------------------------------

But sometimes, you need a little bit of help to rise above the daily fracas, the minutiae of work and politics and bills and all the day-to-day dreariness that technology has imprisoned us with. Computers were sold to us as the great liberators- but instead, technology has become the ultimate jail, run by the wardens of Wall Street, and the original champions of freedom cry for mercy in a jail for which they unwittingly poured the foundations.
------------------------------------------

Let me go suck on that pipe one more time and
see for myself if the stale smoke of
burning bushes can unwind decades of
living inside imagined worlds where "no" is
the only answer to my overeager questions,
let me see if a few more sturdy puffs can
keep me fogged in from a sunny tomorrow
where the missteps that I dwell on
every minute are undone with a simple wave of my hand,
let me see if getting high can lift me
off to a heaven-level view of a
charmed life that flows steady between its banks,
the riverboat captain might dream of what
goes on in streamside cities under
the dancing lights of Friday nights
but his job calls him on, many miles
to go bound to where the water takes him,
and he's happier in the water than he can
ever be gasping for breath in a sober
life where dreams come true, dreams
stand still,
and the river keeps on running,
one quick hit and I'm jumping back in.
----------------------------------------------------------

While I slept last night, my beloved Oakland A's took the field for a premature and distant Opening Day in Japan. The muse, like most of the A's, is, alas, on the disabled list.
------------------------------------------------------------

One muse was a fastball pitcher, a late-inning closer,
ready with a few quick pitches to seal the deal,
she came in with a big lead and thought she could finish,
but a few bad pitches and one too many questions,
a little bit of doubt, and she left the game with a blown save.
Another muse tried to throw the hard high heat, but her specialty
was a soft, surprising curve that she learned from Shakespeare
but didn't throw often enough, she spent too much time
worrying about who was in the bullpen, and
didn't last long enough to take home the win.
Yet another muse was a screwball artist, she came in
looking like a standard middle-rotation starter,
nothing special about her stuff but she looked
like an angel in the right uniform, I thought
she'd log a few solid innings, get through the rough
parts of the game, once she started throwing junk
the batters couldn't hit, but no catcher could handle
the strange motions and the unexpected curves,
so she left the manager with no choice but
to call out another pitcher to get the job done,
and the newest muse, she's an all-star stopper, she's
got pinpoint control on every look in her repertoire,
she can lead her coaches along even through
the heartbreak innings and the scary bases-loaded jams,
romancing the scouts with her seductive gameday gaze,
she always breaks up the threatening middle-of-the-order rallies
by tossing perfect words when the batter lusts for an opening,
she never asks for a break, she just powers on through with
tempting pitch after tempting pitch,
I can never keep track of what she'll throw next, nor
get my ink-filled bat to keep pace with her change-ups,
she leaves me face down and crying in the batter's box
every time I try to step up to the plate.

------------------------------------------------------------------

It's politics season. My main man in the Portland mayoral race, Christopher Rich, attracted this insightful column on the front page of last Wednesday's Metro section.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/renee_mitchell/index.ssf?/base/news/1205893514254400.xml&coll=7

Whatever you might think of Chris' forthright attitude or his controversial stances, there can be no doubt that Portland would be a better place with Christopher Rich as mayor. Chris is the real Portland citizen in the mayor's race- the one who knows the city from the streets as well as from the skies. Chris has always demanded excellence of those around him- and I have no doubt that he would bring out the best in everyone at city hall.

Spring is here. Hope comes easier when the sun is shining. Use its shining rays to illuminate the hidden poetry in your daily lives....

-MVK

"You are the camera, the poet is merely a lens"

Thank you, Hilary Clinton, for re-introducing the word "poetry" to the American vocabulary, recycling Mario Cuomo by asserting that Obama "campaigns in poetry and governs in prose". Sounds like my kind of candidate.

Can 2008 be 1968 done right? Can we re-enact the Prague Spring here and call it the Portland Spring and begin the movement that releases Oregon from the federal chains that bind?

Enough politicking. I traveled to San Francisco two weeks ago, and achieved one of my long-standing personal goals. San Francisco never disappoints, even when it appears it will- before I met Ferlinghetti, I'd conversed at length with a Brazilian cab driver about Fernando Pessoa, the driver quoting Pessoa's poem "The Tobacco Shop" and talking about how Pessoa runs in the veins of all Brazilians and all Portuguese speakers. Chileans feel Neruda. Do Americans have any poetry left in our desiccated vessels?

-------------------------------------------------
I saw the sparkling eyes I’d sought standing
beside me on the chaotic corner of
Columbus and Broadway, North Beach San Francisco,
and I’d forgotten the journey, forgotten why
I’d put up with all-night trucks and
street fights, crowded cafes, and deliciously
heart-stopping cheesesteaks, I’d come here
to see Ferlinghetti, to shake his hand
and say thank you and to maybe
grab hold of the vanishing muse leaving
for its next host, old man Ferlinghetti
still bright and healthy, but he’s not
forming memories anymore, and slowly
this world’s slipping from him, and
Vaclav Havel, and the peacemonger poets of
the last great generation need new troops
to battle in these ongoing wars over hearts,
love must rise over all, above the conflicts
and the cancers and the technologies expanding
out beyond our control, eating the wonder-filled eyes
of youth before our children can absorb
all the glittering lights of hope
and promise, the return to Eden we
bring forth in words and fantasies,
the trail to Nirvana is a steep climb and
generations fade as they carry the
young to unforeseen heights,
Mr. Ferlinghetti, let me take the
sherpa’s guiding hold up this
once unscaleable mountain,
and we’ll dance together in the new sunlight
that will shine the morning’s dawn
from this mortal ledge
where we’ll part ways.
------------------------------------

As it is almost Valentine's Day, I tried to get the muse to sing to me about love.

----------------------------------

I’m not a sorceress though I studied how to corral
the wind for you, I spent my days collecting
the secret clues you left in empty beer glasses
and marijuana smoke, and alone in the
library at night, I drew pictures
and sang nonsense lyrics, chanting the hours away
for the half-second flash that might
tell me what the last step is, what
I need to do to harness the sun for you,
to catch the air I breathe and give it to you,
to clear my eyes of fear’s fog and look at you,
I don’t have the serpent’s powers you forever
see in me, I haven’t spoken to the deities
you feel through me,
and my name is not Diana, or Andromeda, or Helen,
I’m nothing more, nothing less than a girl growing
older, a girl who didn’t find the truth
at home and came here to escape all the
simple stares and loveless sensibility that
trapped me in an eyeless universe, now I’m here
and I want to make magic for you,
I want to enchant this city with you,
I want to laugh at the mad ones
and sneer at the sane,
and dance all day and sing,
and your eyes tell me you’re ready
you’re waiting for the resurrection,
and all I am is a confused woman bound
in love and loathing, and I
can’t possibly become your Messiah.

-------------------------------------
She’ll just vanish one day, unannounced, a new job,
a magic spell, a sudden journey, maybe death,
and like Dante you’ll never get answers from disappeared
lips, nor from conscious eyes waiting for
the stormy waves of words and wonder
to roll away like the seasons and the stars,
Orion aims his bow all winter but never shoots
before the world has spun his targets
to the sunny side of this ever-expanding universe,
she’ll take her place in his cosmos and leave
you revolving through a lifetime of seasons
none warm enough or cold enough, wet enough
or dry enough to force the words cast in
stone out of that disembodied throat,
maybe you’ll find yourself escaping that
death bed to weep on a cold grave
and cry out your desperate pleas to
six feet of soil that will just soak
up your words and tears and
blossom with the same grass, over and over,
but even then you won’t get answers,
you’re trapped in the questions now,
bars on your cell window
you spill page upon page after this
solitary fantasy quest, turn it over
in a tumult of dreams and terrors,
and you can’t call out the commands
that haunt your every step,
she’s just waiting, with the answers, yes
or no, and you’d rather spend your life
alone with the questions unanswered.
--------------------------------------------

I tried something a bit different in San Francisco.
--------------------------------------
I deserve to be fondled by the muse!
I’ve paid her dues
in sleepless nights and prosaic fights
wrestling with messages
uncertain delusions
dribbles of drivel that lead to light
the sorry shade
of simple words obscuring
the fatal following of
footsteps that fade to
frozen stammers and
dread too heavy for
sore arms
I’ve made my way up the side of
her unmountable mountain
screaming in terror like
a Zen buddhist absorbing
the shockwave roll
of an unsteady world
wrapped the wrong way
around the revolutions of
reluctant renegades
I deserve to be fondled by the muse!
Come tonight and
unshackle this shadow
and turn these
uncertain lights
into verse enchantments
that chase away
these shrinking nights.
------------------------------

Back to making a living now... the America poet has to figure out how to make capitalism and the muse coexist if he wants to eat.

This and all past dispatches are now captured online at http://mikeygolightly.blogspot.com

May the Aquarius sun continue to deliver your indescribable dreams.

Is the time yet ripe for Mikey Golightly to re-emerge?
--------------------------------------------------------
Straight to hell, boys, let's jump on that bus
it's leaving soon and there's just a few seats left,
I'm gonna sit up front and make sure the
driver doesn't listen to some ignorant preacher
who screams out Bible verses but doesn't
stop long enough to hear Jesus,
asking myself if I'm the new messiah
because I outlived God's self-declared son.
I've checked off every sin, but my
commandment breaks aren't worth repeating.
I bought my ticket the day they went on sale
and even as the flames start licking the
windows and the rest of the passengers scream
for air while the sulfur and brimstone
guarantee that this bus is going to
get to the promised land long before
the scheduled arrival,
I'm just sitting silently and not wasting
my last breaths on a God that wasn't
there in the first place.
I've always made the most of midnight
heart burns and dead lovers nailed to
the sides of collapsing memory walls,
whatever schedule they followed will
one day drop them into the same
skin-melting pit with me, and I'm
still gentleman enough to give them
my last glass of water.