A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis.

– Umberto Eco

drop the shy flicker -

drop!

& lustrous stones

glazed with waste,

hot & depleted -

they tumble on alkaloid currents,

leaking halogenic moonlight
into a broken withered plain -

no night for a cold eye
before the hissing surge

washing the stray life down
& into the remote wave

where the brazen shadow

fell across charred roads

& a foul fate - - -

all mute beneath

the branded flesh

your bones have their haven

where no sky stone fell before

***

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Peter Bies © 2010

***

Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness (…) Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, “This is me and the world be damned!”.

– Dr Rollo May

my nightmares burn

with dissolute flame

& the liver golems feed

on hot depleted waste - - -

breathing in

I phase-shift

into the void

where foul winds carry

airborne germs of fear - - -

life’s heedless couplings

& the rain continue,

blindly

weeding out the fungus

the liver golems shuffle

in couples through the corn - - -

space-time

returns to focus:

it is a grave

***

***

***

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Peter Bies © 2010

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“You see… innocence is the knowledge that you can do something and experience is the knowledge that you can’t.”

– Len Deighton, Billion Dollar Brain

the echoes

of your lies,

Elaine

still

hurt

listen to my gravestone

hatching true time

grain

for grain

just as our

tainted kisses

contaminate

the night

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Peter Bies © 2010

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.

– Salvador Dali

***

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that “remembered” a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

– Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind (1921), p. 159 Full text online

***

Am I looking for a life

in all the wrong places?

In random poetic noises

subserving my death wish?

In flighty words dissolving

my clotted psychic stasis?

Is all of my life eventually but

a sullen and traumatic effort

in one-way space-time traffic?

Am I looking for a life

in all the wrong places?

In mute electric tides

where the dead have their heaven?

In the deep silent shadow

where I have sung myself to sleep?

Where the heat of my flesh may languidly waste

as soothing nightmares shine their light?

And the mad poet cried:

O wayward rays of sunlight among the haloed trees -

I’ll paint my vision across the innocent sky!

O gentle madness!

In your promise are things which torment me -

things which I cannot drop because they are too wry!

Unto Thee I will sing seven songs - and the clouds always come! always come!

Am I looking for life

in all the wrong places,

among soaring lies?

Squinting their eyes,

the clowns toil and toil,

piping ancient moonlight

across my future gravesite

into the

loyal

soil - - -

***

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***

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Peter Bies © 2010

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I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs, or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

– Hunter S. Thompson

***

madness emerges

from dark and shallow pools

teeming in my moonlit brain

with anaerobic life

madness submerges

this swaying ship of fools

afloat on frozen silence

my old unruly soul

on alkaloid currents

my old unruly soul

luminous silent

while

the

snow

fell

forlornly

adrift like

frivolous flotsam

on a tide of images

made to appear prophetic

***

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***

***

Peter Bies © 2010

***

“We are the ghosts of energy, let the tridents strike unsuspecting flesh!”

– Tristan Tzara, 1919

***

O these brittle white squiggles

among flowers of ink

floating so languidly

on sombre silence!

O the sparks that I’ve picked

on the black autumn nights

dusting with fine gold

the quivering windshield!

Ions are dancing

in a grazing frontlight -

wistful eyes towards where

the stars are sleeping!

And in the sacred neon

I was floating down the dark withered plain

among souls too pale-eyed

to know the skies,

as ghosts of energy

with soft little shivers

ooze random patterns of radiowaves

into the tide

of the night.

***

***

***

by Peter Bies & Arthur Rimbaud

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Peter Bies © 2010

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(For E.)

“Sex, desire, longing and solitude.”

– Allen Ginsberg (on the essentials of poetry)

I do not mind what it is about you that disaffects
and hurts, there’s only something in my breathing - - -

a smell of glands

and corruption,

wasting my soul

so gently - - -

And the mad poet cried:

Let rest in your dark almond eyes

the shadows of your wanton rage!

The echoes of those choice torments

kiss me with silence,

absorbing tears and organs

with each hiding - - - !

Heed what I am to whisper

into this auburn night:

the iron of your laughter

is true to more than fire

and rust -

no night has ever heard

such hateful noise - - -

***

***

***

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Peter Bies © 2010

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Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.

– Dr Rollo May

I keep on charging

so wantonly

brave

as

dream captains

call to attention

obsolete memories

cast into molds

of flesh

the pain dump

in the squalid basement

of my modern mind

electric tide

dusting
the plaster

of wayward resolution

a scraping feeling

a grazing pain

dream captains

call to attention

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Peter Bies © 2010

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Not only science, but language, myth, art and religion as well, provide the building stones from which the world of ‘reality’ is constructed for us, as well as that of the human spirit, in sum the World-of-the-I.

Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

common reality

is an endoparasite

hiding in your deepest cortex

making contact

through misunderstanding:

the ultimate objective

the appropriate mode

for any paranoid mind

And the mad poet cried:

Like an organ of iron

grinding the night

splendid new cities

affecting true light

spill intricate whispers

and hateful white noise

upon hateful hearts

and into jealous eyes

of people

oblivious

to their own

impending

demise - - -

beyond the towers

the pleasure gets weird

darkening leering

blurring at the edges

like a broken promise

as you ‘re speeding past

treacherous roadsigns

flickering

at a crossroads

in the late

night

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Peter Bies © 2010

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