Notes From A Grounded Witchdoctor

rosy glow
      rosy glow
breaks the light
into silken clouds
of floating pink
      drifting
      drifting
into the expanding
corners of my pulsating room
rooms
    fields
        tiny
           universe
growing
      growing
too big
      too much
falling back falling back
      regrouping
afraid of reaching

give me room

control
    control
        control
        sure
        no longer afraid
jumping for the clouds
riding
      riding
into the ever expanding
corners of my pulsating room
      riding

clouds of taffy
    sticking
        sucking
            pulling me to the floor

phosphorescent walls quake and tilt
throwing off slippery shadows
that pool at the floor
eat at the floor
          and leap at me
      with the deliberate
          slowness
of the unconquerable tide
    then turn golden
      then red
      at my feet
the angry lobster redness
      the infectious angry redness
colors my feet
      and crawls up my leg
chewing
    chewing
        chewing
reaching
       crawling
pulling at my body
pulling me to a high place

i stand atop a hill
      in the shade of a tree
      a wide-spreading tree

birds sing from the tree
      and i understand the song
      and try to sing along
but the birds stop
and leave me singing
      alone
      alone
until a bird lunges from the tree
to stand on the ground
and becomes a shadow figure
      a man in black
      a man with no face

black space where a face should be

the thing
      the shadow faceless thing
begins to cry
      and the birds come from the trees
      and land on his shoulders
           as crows
 great black crows
       evil black crows
the sit on the phantasmal shoulders
      and cry

the ground collapses beneath me
the hill flattens beneath me
and i'm in a valley
and the hill is behind me
      and the figure
      and the crows
stand on the hill and cry
      so far above me
as the hill shimmers
through the heat of the valley
      fades and disappears

i'm alone in the valley
    in the dust of the valley
        in the hot hot dust of the valley

it grows hotter and hotter
      in the valley
and i'm lying naked
    in the boiling mud
        of the valley

people stand around me
men and women without faces
    black spaces where faces
        ought to be
men and women
      in long black skirts
      that drag in the mud

they laugh at me

great ghastly specters
from a tribal past
      they laugh at me

i press my cracked lips
into the mud and try to suck
for water and burn
my face and my lips and tongue
mud
    mud
        not mud
mud
    not mud
        grass
        wet grass
        dew-wet grass
        cool dew-wet grass
i run my tongue over the grass
      bite into the grass
      chew on its coolness
i lie on my back
under the cool fresh sky
      and stretch out my arms
      and pull handfuls of grass
      and throw them at the sun
      and let the grass
      rain back on me
and i catch it with my body

i crawl beneath
the grass and meadow flowers
and roots and working earthworms
       and look up to watch
       the sun in its interminable agony
of circling
    circling
        ever circling

i watch the sun
through the roots
and grass and crawling insects
      from behind the petals
      of meadow flowers
circling
    circling
        circling
falling
    crashing
        diving
            swooping
clawing at my eyes
      burning at my eyes
searing my eyes and cheeks
and lips
and screaming tongue

i close my eyes

and i'm in a room
      a small room
      a dark room
      a black room
a room without light
      but for a small dot
pulsating off and on
off and on
    off and on
        off and on
in one corner of the room

the dot grows
    bigger and bigger
        off and on
    bigger and bigger
    it crashes toward me

washes over me

leaves me in a lonely light

alone

alone now
      lying on my floor
linoleum cold against my cheek

i turn on my back
alone on the floor
      and sleep

Depression
    segment 01

Trying to think your way
out of depression
is like try to dig your way
off a planet
 

Depression
    segment 02

Depression is insidious
I spend most of my life
Digging my way back from the dead
 

Depression
    segment 03

And in the final days
The bowels of the Earth open
Revealing the dammed
 
 
 

Chris I

I will remember that the time
apportioned for Life
is small

And so I suffer this bite
Hold its pain dear
     for the time that it costs
I will spend this time
    for the precious coin
    that it truly is
Hold its pigments
    in the landscape painting of my life

There is nothing quite like a long sad note
Held against the tapestry of life
 
 

Chris II

Knowing my mental illness
has achieved
a perfection
undreamed of
in all the ages of man
And this is to be my contribution
my legacy.

Come let us access the depths
of my depravity
and know
that my greatest sin
was that I wanted
to do something
good for the human race
 

--

The Last Revolutionary Song as Lived by Comrade Tommy Caison

“ the best of them,
are mere crib slaves of the ass which shitted out
the old meanings”
****
Little Alice and Heroin  # 1

It is the moment
that one’s finally sees the shit for what‘s it’s really worth,
for what its worth.

I call it,
the advant of the silhouetted dancing body with upstretched
limbs flaring wildly
about to the heaven depths:
naked, violent, touched, playful and uncaring—
it twirls gayly with the early morning fog
that I have come to love
through a spring’s meadow,
slipperily iced with a invisible and thin
bed of dew.

All of my love, please: she knows
like a wino slapboxing his own shadow, she knows

Defiantly mounting myself upon the caterpillar’s
new wings like “hurrah! hurrah!”:
it is the butterfly’s critical flashpoint when the Wings
spread, and one
actually tries to seize upon the awesome possibilities engendered
by the existential intersection of given events: the complete
and spontaneous exploitation of my sad, obscure, gullible, ironic,
experimental, recklessly optimistic,
and hence,
more beautiful and tragic who I am,
my willing, ultimately suicidal who I have become,
who would rather roll dice
and optimize my now-existence and hold onto it
until the shit plays out, if even for
      a
               passing
hour,
as an Still-Life and perpetually Recurring Surprise.

This is she
and she the moment that I  sense my own open arena and
my own open dance floor overstretched before me, inviting me.
Just now I
noticed the cool, outside air brushing my
cheek as if a wet kiss pre
ceded its temporary haste. In its urgency
I wonder where the breeze is running too. Un
chained, is my
nigga fleeing?
Because in that case the question would be
why?, or does it,
too, now, realize that the only beauty
Shoot Ups in imperfections,
the promise and possibilities of utopia and
all its consequences,
fanatic and  strange,
it is the brief moment defined as
right now,
right here.
I call it,
the moment that one’s  sees the shit for what it’s really worth,
for what that’s worth.

If only for a moment, if only: reeling and gullible, I am
overawed
by the prospect of us growing old along together, elated knowing that when I fall
my real niggas are going try to capture
a piece of beauty and I will too because I am
in their world and I am. If only for a moment, if only. Crystalizing
into focus all around me like “Cling!”, if only for a moment yall,
it becomes my amoral world and my
life’s threshold: it lingers in the air for awhile,
then,
floats away.

So,
seizing violently upon the situation,
it was my baser and less happy bird who I
leaped to grasp upon,
lest it fly  away from a
        nigga once again. . . . .
****

SPIN the BOTTLE

On the train
the two of them are big, wear
denims like animal skins, hair carved freeways
& beards a wilderness. They stink (soil, damp & sweat).

Talking to a woman
Newtown  mid 30s
her language cranked down to a strine
that smooths, dampens, lubricates
the rambling of these men.

Everything they do or say
is like it's grabbed.
Even simple talk about the weather is found
& taken like a ram raid.

No, she doesn't drink
after 15 years of fighting it
"Fucks ma head".
Her face torn
& tense - maybe unfriendly except for the words plus
she's given them her address
(causing the shit-rich shipwrecked
suit-woman across the aisle to become panicky,
a shaky dance at the perimeter).

"Yeah Newtown". They're heading to the Cross
"....for a while".

I realise they're me, bar a few accidents.
I'm her with her habits
in handbags & other people's hallways.

They're a miracle of matching
& so common.

Or rape. Will the guys talk about
"sharing the dog"?

Perhaps she'll tame
& pamper them with hot meals beside eastern curtains.
Give them baths & stories to carry
to the next stop.

Prison, psych hospitals
the bush & the beats.

They're dangerous

& wander uncertain paths with only
a spinning bottle for a compass.
 
 

                                    Les Wicks

                                    3/105 Ebley St
                                    Bondi Junction 2022
NSW, AUSTRALIA

get back I say
devils of my own invention
snake
get back to the future
at your local rental place

Oh yes in a meaningless universe
this poem
any poem
is
m e a n i n g l e s s

m e a n i n g l e s s words
by a m e a n i n g l e s s man
in a m e a n i n g l e s s world
in a
m e a n i n g l e s s
universe

BASIC SWISS ARMY KNIFE

Why jack?
This knife whispering
sibilantly into steel
gutters , chipping
strong nails , needing
teeth or talons
to release blades
reclining redly
in the small zipped
purse pocket , resisting
probing fingers , snuggling
beneath soft leather creases
Always prepared , reluctant
to act , withholding
co-operation until forced
into action , suddenly
becoming the perfect
partner.

Marilyn