Prince Neptune Read online

  I am weighed on by an immense, burning desire for something that I know exists but have not yet found.

  For Rimbaud

  For Baudelaire

  For Kerouac

  For Ginsberg

  For Whitman

  For Thoreau

  For Dylan

  For Morrison

  For Atticus

  For Poindexter

  For my father

  In this hour before dawn kitchen lights in houses speckled around the harbor are starting to twinkle like stars. Boats sway softly anchored undulating in the currents beneath the death black silk cloak of the sea while the soft bed of morning slowly rises like dough in the heat of the new Australian sun. The jeweled dawn passes in ephemeral fashion and big famous God in the sky only paints with his big famous colors for a moment before his boredom sets in and he washes the canvas blue until he feels like becoming an artist again.

  Is language but a means of avoiding silence and one’s own solitude?

  Or are we obligated as humans to use words in an attempt to articulate silence?

  The poetry lies not in the words but in the silence between the words.

  “Good waves at the bottom of Big Sur,” I told him, my wise shaggy-haired Buddha-natured pops, “and there are cheap cabin motels in the woods that we could rent for a couple nights.”

  “Son yes yes yes! Let’s go let’s go! Go see and feel and witness the enormity of everything and the significance of everything! We give life meaning by living! We should get out there and just go. No use sittin’ around!” he proclaimed, in a vehement burst of zest and desire to experience all that is good and fine on this eternal rotating earth.

  A thought is a ripple on the vast ocean of consciousness

  most days the monotony of society bores me to shit

  tomorrow I shall take off my jacket and dance

  with the next

  hundred thousand

  bombs

  & wars

  & years

  the mountains

  & trees

  will sit in silence

  primordial wisdom

  & patience

  waiting for us

  to stop our fussing

  & wake up for sunrises again

  i grew up barefoot

  on the shores

  mind reflection of feet

  balanced

  uninhibited

  free from constraint

  only as we grow up

  we are told

  to leave behind

  our crystal island

  of the mind

  slip into the slipstream

  of conformity

  shirts

  shoes

  coffins for the sole

  soul

  un-learn freedom

  & become

  the caged man

  as your television

  sits upon its throne

  inside

  your president will tell you

  it’s okay

  to burn the forest down

  it’s for the country

  “the sky will part and the sun door will open once more

  and we will pass back from time space into the grand severed realm, perpetual”

  two prophets in a bar discussing eternity

  all the eternities

  myriad eternities

  innumerable

  “Sitting in coffee shop sunglasses on hungover talking with women and reading and then all of a sudden the sun comes out and washes a fabulous ray of light directly over my small wooden table I’m slouched at and I realize somewhere somebody out there knows.”

  Everybody’s waiting

  For the moment to arrive

  I will clear my vision

  See the water on the rise

  The wave is nascent, beginning

  Will we make it out alive?

  Feet are stuck in quicksand

  & we’re running out of time

  Point your guns at people

  Pointing theirs down at the ground

  There is no revelation

  Without the silence of the sound

  All your meditations

  Like a diver heading down

  Down into the kingdom

  Where nobody wears the crown

  Some mornings it’s like the sun rises only for her

  to discover

  purity

  subtle

  almost atrophied

  lying deep within all

  clouded in the realm

  of dualism

  life

  i am but tearing away layers

  to find roots

  melting away superfluities

  and preserving only

  quintessences

  digging beneath the skin

  to touch the crystal skeleton

  in bone-white light illumination

  a man at his root

  is concerned

  with none

  but purity

  There are kings

  who have died

  failing to court her

  O Apollo

  With your ancient lyre & golden hair

  A river of sound carves through the air

  Shed your light upon the town & all the people there

  Apollo

  O Apollo

  Twenty-three years I have sung for you

  Evoking the vision to appear anew

  In a forest of lies I abide by truth

  Apollo

  O Apollo

  Grant me life & grant me reason

  A change of heart and a change in season

  Disaster to master the art of treason

  Apollo

  O Apollo

  A glorious light in the depths of night

  The children all have taken flight

  Free from the shackles of malice & spite

  Apollo

  O Apollo

  You’ve done for us what Christ could not

  there’s a big machine in the sky

  a kind of electric lion with wings

  coming straight at us

  let me tell you about freedom

  it cowers and shivers

  as young women dance

  in dark corners

  to provoke your belt

  suddenly

  amidst lustful salutations

  your eyes see the angel

  with nothing but the senses to guide you

  new life becomes as inevitable

  as the milky coming of dawn

  stone towers arise

  erect in her night sky

  warm and wet with rain

  and as your thousand spirits soar

  life explodes like roman candles

  and she welcomes you

  through the iron gates

  to be born again

  She could breathe peace into hostile earths

  The incandescent experience of awakening to oneself in the morning, eyes stinging, wondering where you’ve just been all this time!

  Ah! The universe! The bright and vibrant universe I’ve been unaware of all throughout this long blind night! Here in the universe! Where realities and dreamscapes blend together like myriad colors on a canvas!

  As dusk approaches it is time to rest once
more, but my mind is all at once concerned with where the original stroke of paint lies, deep within this grand artwork!

  mumbling down the streets of new york i hear jazz

  echoing up from manholes in the ground

  subway musicians hoofing their daily brass ecstasies

  and all is cool and calm and fine

  like always

  topping off the fuel

  filled with azure cool

  to the crystal pool

  the silver engine hums

  pirate’s ship is done

  a million ways to run

  life for most is functional but uncreative

  creativity in your everyday man is atrophied due to the banality of his existence & his concern for money, sex, & drink

  gluttony is america

  america is money

  money is sex

  sex is drink

  drink is hedonism

  hedonism is america

  Artists are those most apt to seduce us to life

  Sunken islands

  Immersed in water

  Teach your gentle ways

  Electric eyes

  Deliver me

  From drowning in my cave

  I, here, a mortal

  Journey more into each passing moment

  Waiting patiently

  For my angel to return from the great wide heavens

  Unlike the water in the deepest ocean

  Or Picasso in 1902

  Unlike the color of a sky so open

  Me, I’m no longer blue

  The tranquil hue of a turquoise gemstone

  The talisman of shamans and kings

  Ain’t worth the treasure you bring me on your own

  Nothing else means a thing

  Some people dance by dangerous seaside

  Some just can’t hold through

  But the Old Guitarist now holds his head high

  All ’cause I have you

  Me, I’m no longer blue

  All my life I’ve possessed an overwhelming sense of my own mortality, therefore an immense desire to be free and to be free right now

  She is a pure drop of water in an oil-ridden sea

  i dig the whole world at once

  going infinitely inward and outward

  all at once every day

  dig the sky

  dig the people

  dig the music

  dig the beer

  dig it all

  i dig the guru

  he’s the end and the beginning man

  lets it all out

  goes every direction

  knows no time

  never hung up

  puts himself where he wants to be

  but got nowhere to be

  go like him and you’ll get it!

  yes!

  Man may only have a chance should he break through all illusion and begin again in the wilderness

  i drift and dance across wide azure seascapes in search of everything

  an attempt to merge back into nature once and for all

  i am here to wrap gnarled reality around my fingertips and clench my fists

  i am here to do the damned thing for real this time

  an entire generation of people searching within screens for God

  look up not down you scattered wild creatures!

  witness the undulations of ultimate spectacular reality!

  hear the birdsong

  let your mind burn burn burn with all the poetry and fire of a thousand summers!

  i sit

  long blonde wet salt hair

  eyes sinking deep in reflection

  sensorium deranged

  in constant pursuit of the unknown

  let us begin a new world

  let us do it all

  we are the fresh young burgeoning wave of everything

  The solitary seed nestled patiently in the ground awaiting the warm sun

  is the seed that becomes the tree

  one night

  on the beach

  vibratory waves pulsing

  lysergic

  behind my eyes

  i saw a woman

  in the shallows

  wading

  denim cut-off jeans

  no shirt

  blue beads around her neck

  next moment

  pointed right at me

  grinned wide

  motioned me over

  i got a hard-on

  and swam

  When the senses are rationally disordered, the poem rises from the depths of the subconscious like a shimmering pearl

  once upon a time in Hollywood

  guitars

  gardens

  chandeliers

  sex

  streetlamps

  music as immense mass seduction

  copulations in the back rows of movie theaters

  houses in the hills

  swimming pools

  fin-tailed Cadillacs

  lime juice

  coffee shops in alleyways

  comely girls with nose freckles smiling at you

  ah Hollywood

  Cinema, by nature, lays rhythmic order upon arrhythmic and disorderly reality.

  Theater and, later, cinema were born from the fear of death and the worship of myth in great societies. Great cultures and civilizations are psychologically inclined toward the enactment of myth and fantasy in order to palliate symptoms of fear and deliver themselves from the tedium or apparent meaninglessness of existence. The actor, in modern culture, plays the role of shaman. If immensely talented, he can place himself anywhere in time or space. The performer assumes the role of medicine man, experiencing levels of consciousness unattainable to the majority of the tribe, allowing witnesses to live vicariously through him and project their otherwise forbidden fantasies upon him. The portrayal of myth on stage or screen is as vital to man as food, water, or sex. There are now more original scripts developed in a Hollywood season than were written in the entire golden age of Greek theatre.

  o boy

  that one

  she’s the doll of the west

  short-cut jacket and cigarette

  she drives something out of a ’50s film

  a dreamer

  with champagne eyes

  just passing through

  and doing so in real style

  in the ancient night she flies once more

  back to her home in the stars

  i try to chase her there but fall short

  for i cannot breathe up that high

  in the radiant heaven where she lingers

  i can only admire her from below

  humble starry-eyed poet with a desire for that which is

  most beautiful

  & she is

  most beautiful

  all other muses sleep in winter forests

  she is the one who swims in the sun & doesn’t burn up

  A gentleman crouches beside a young boy drawing waves on the pavement, 100 years from now

  “Son, if you can possibly begin to imagine, I’ll share with you my photographs of the earth”

  stay loose

  stay on the run

  don’t let you catch yourself

  The theater and the cinema

  Are appropriations of idealized reality

  The actor sees through impenetrable veils

  The camera is the eye of God

  I can transcend death

  In strange astral sleep

  Invi
gorating the senses

  Visions come in droves to me

  In my blue garden

  I wish to be the quiet, undemonstrative artist

  Making waves

  And ways

  For calmer days

  I hear the West calling my name

  Out there, the moon is a woman

  A big illuminated diamond ball

  With turquoise eyes

  She sings to me

  Neptune, Neptune

  Come soon

  And die in swift silence

  Upon my shores

  For I shall not wait forever

  For my young men to undress

  The sun became a tangerine

  And painted for us skies of lavender

  Then drowned slowly in the ocean

  And the moon reclaimed her throne in the sky once more

  We rise

  Tongues wagging, ecstatic

  Dripping with warm life

  Dreaming

  Yet we revel in cool disguise

  We design masks and sport them on balmy nights

  To avoid conversation

  To achieve sublimation

  Then recede back into our caves

  Of comfortable isolation

  When will the all become the one?

  When will we hear the great sound?

  Enter now the eternal summer

  The crystal tropics await

  A tribe of deep electric jungle

  Face paint

  Drum rhythms

  Semen sprawled upon trees

  Marble palaces on canals

  Naked women on great green lawns

  Joyous, sensuous copulations

  At night

  Beneath the incoming rain

  There may come a time we attend “nature theaters” to revive our experience of earthly sensation, showcasing scenery—oceans, forests, et cetera, of ages past. They may provide clean oxygenated air and simulate feelings of rain/sunlight on skin. A kind of four-dimensional cinematic sensory experience as a reminder of our “primitive” harmonious beginnings—to deliver us from our morbid concrete automobile world. A cinema of atavism. Environmentalists dread this concept.