LittleSiss
Sorceress
I found this tonight and want to share it. The reasons may or may not be obvious.
Enjoy!
(Journal Poem at the Death of Gregory Corso)
Each night on the corner of Hammer & Nails Sts.
the words of the screech owl bleed over the pavements
and echo down airshafts through the Milky Way
The time is right to be brokenhearted
The time is right for going downtown
The time is right for casting long shadows
The time is right to hold back the dawn
The whistling wind
The driving snow
The skidding lights of a me-commerce world
build up our hopes only to dash them
The red eyes behind the newspapers
are dead leaves hanging chagrined
& breathless
The time is right for mistakes & prizes
for movie passes & innocent pleas
for percs & demons in the best of families
The time is right for tire & ice
for passengers, kabbalists, buyers-at-auction...
The time is right for dancing on the frozen edges of space
The time is right for the ecstatic sign languages of radios
coughing & failing at the most tender moments
The time is right for monks, hermits, red sailors & hopheads
to rediscover themselves in the moonlit alleys of a new Lhasa
The open road seems far behind us
still groggy with schemes & rootless scarabs
Old stories regreen in psychotropic gardens
from Kathmandu and Tangiers to Alphabet City
The writing on the wall spells out family intrigues
and the laughter of blood feuds
in characters shaped like apocalyptic ziti
& Disney fish
The velveteen smirk & glowing earlobes that were there
just last night
have fled into the subway as if to forget
all that's behind them
Somewhere out there is the saddest hour
Somewhere out there is a godless blessing
Somewhere out there are sanctified pranksters
Somewhere out there are Calabrian bandits & loco priests
Somewhere out there are pocketfuls of crayolatone pills
Somewhere out there are the sixteen daughters of Ling Ting Tong
Somewhere out there are the spellbound pigeons of the I 6th Century
Somewhere out there the blues don't care who you are
Somewhere out there America is busy being born
over & over & over again
Somewhere out there is state confirmation of oracles & trances
Somewhere out there is the wise & mischievous face of an angel
Somewhere out there is a salty dog
Quick and noble as a Papal contender
wild and nimble as a sleepwalker
making his leaps without the night of a net
in a room where something always lays covered
the poet looks forward to the dead of night
While his pet starfish & nightowls dream in the greasepaint
of lives long-past
he forces eerie sounds from the hands of each
unhaunted house
and fills the battered cups of the tired & ailing
with the last deep purple of the Winterset skies
. . .
his bittersweet voice pouring silk in the wounds
of the lushlipped past and stammering future
His legend grows reinventing itself bit by bit
from songs of gods, songs of demons
from songs still flourishing among the silent blue nets
of the Oasis, the Gilt Edge, the Crystal Bowl
His legend grows under the mark of the Black Hornet
aka Giordano Bruno
alias Savonarola
Joey "The Alchemist" Cagliostro
His legend grows pressed against the glass sniffing the weather
of infamous port towns
His legend grows in video spotlights
His legend grows on the skin of stargazers
His legend grows in the lethal dilemmas of dueling bopmasters
His legend grows in the mysterious majesty of orphan hieroglyphs
chatting up the fires within
His legend grows in the harsh light screaming
at the end of the tunnel
borrowed, dreamt, stolen
demonically scrawled on frosted windows
His legend grows in phantom hush puppies
His legend grows like burns healing on a severed hand
His legend grows like a blue third eye charged with miracles
His legend grows on walls & ceilings
His legend grows in the black milk & white wedding of needy bars
His legend grows from foaming subterranean suns & moons
His legend grows in the dice of squeezed alibis
His legend grows in the atomic eyeblink it takes
For the Eagle & the Serpent to brood over the world again
His legend grows in traces of pain & erotic toxins
sheered from the faces of intercity mesas & cliffs
His legend grows from younger, lazier, more craven days
when churches had eyes and nightcrawlers still found their intrepid way
through pools of falling red light
like children in jeopardy driven to madness
to blindness by the flood of the music
and the peyotal gleam of the far horizon
His legend grows with a flick of the wrist
His legend grows dining on the breath of his own
black sighs
His legend grows on sparkling hands that sweep aside prizes
of metal & meat
His legend grows like umbrellas unfurled in the crushing storm
moving like jungle shadows
pronouncing his name across the length of the Bowery
& Paradise
His legend grows among bruises masking an ageless sky
where the Crucified hangs in all his splendor
waiting for a chance to bite
-2001
A poem by Paul Grillo
Enjoy!
(Journal Poem at the Death of Gregory Corso)
Each night on the corner of Hammer & Nails Sts.
the words of the screech owl bleed over the pavements
and echo down airshafts through the Milky Way
The time is right to be brokenhearted
The time is right for going downtown
The time is right for casting long shadows
The time is right to hold back the dawn
The whistling wind
The driving snow
The skidding lights of a me-commerce world
build up our hopes only to dash them
The red eyes behind the newspapers
are dead leaves hanging chagrined
& breathless
The time is right for mistakes & prizes
for movie passes & innocent pleas
for percs & demons in the best of families
The time is right for tire & ice
for passengers, kabbalists, buyers-at-auction...
The time is right for dancing on the frozen edges of space
The time is right for the ecstatic sign languages of radios
coughing & failing at the most tender moments
The time is right for monks, hermits, red sailors & hopheads
to rediscover themselves in the moonlit alleys of a new Lhasa
The open road seems far behind us
still groggy with schemes & rootless scarabs
Old stories regreen in psychotropic gardens
from Kathmandu and Tangiers to Alphabet City
The writing on the wall spells out family intrigues
and the laughter of blood feuds
in characters shaped like apocalyptic ziti
& Disney fish
The velveteen smirk & glowing earlobes that were there
just last night
have fled into the subway as if to forget
all that's behind them
Somewhere out there is the saddest hour
Somewhere out there is a godless blessing
Somewhere out there are sanctified pranksters
Somewhere out there are Calabrian bandits & loco priests
Somewhere out there are pocketfuls of crayolatone pills
Somewhere out there are the sixteen daughters of Ling Ting Tong
Somewhere out there are the spellbound pigeons of the I 6th Century
Somewhere out there the blues don't care who you are
Somewhere out there America is busy being born
over & over & over again
Somewhere out there is state confirmation of oracles & trances
Somewhere out there is the wise & mischievous face of an angel
Somewhere out there is a salty dog
Quick and noble as a Papal contender
wild and nimble as a sleepwalker
making his leaps without the night of a net
in a room where something always lays covered
the poet looks forward to the dead of night
While his pet starfish & nightowls dream in the greasepaint
of lives long-past
he forces eerie sounds from the hands of each
unhaunted house
and fills the battered cups of the tired & ailing
with the last deep purple of the Winterset skies
. . .
his bittersweet voice pouring silk in the wounds
of the lushlipped past and stammering future
His legend grows reinventing itself bit by bit
from songs of gods, songs of demons
from songs still flourishing among the silent blue nets
of the Oasis, the Gilt Edge, the Crystal Bowl
His legend grows under the mark of the Black Hornet
aka Giordano Bruno
alias Savonarola
Joey "The Alchemist" Cagliostro
His legend grows pressed against the glass sniffing the weather
of infamous port towns
His legend grows in video spotlights
His legend grows on the skin of stargazers
His legend grows in the lethal dilemmas of dueling bopmasters
His legend grows in the mysterious majesty of orphan hieroglyphs
chatting up the fires within
His legend grows in the harsh light screaming
at the end of the tunnel
borrowed, dreamt, stolen
demonically scrawled on frosted windows
His legend grows in phantom hush puppies
His legend grows like burns healing on a severed hand
His legend grows like a blue third eye charged with miracles
His legend grows on walls & ceilings
His legend grows in the black milk & white wedding of needy bars
His legend grows from foaming subterranean suns & moons
His legend grows in the dice of squeezed alibis
His legend grows in the atomic eyeblink it takes
For the Eagle & the Serpent to brood over the world again
His legend grows in traces of pain & erotic toxins
sheered from the faces of intercity mesas & cliffs
His legend grows from younger, lazier, more craven days
when churches had eyes and nightcrawlers still found their intrepid way
through pools of falling red light
like children in jeopardy driven to madness
to blindness by the flood of the music
and the peyotal gleam of the far horizon
His legend grows with a flick of the wrist
His legend grows dining on the breath of his own
black sighs
His legend grows on sparkling hands that sweep aside prizes
of metal & meat
His legend grows like umbrellas unfurled in the crushing storm
moving like jungle shadows
pronouncing his name across the length of the Bowery
& Paradise
His legend grows among bruises masking an ageless sky
where the Crucified hangs in all his splendor
waiting for a chance to bite
-2001
A poem by Paul Grillo
