Mel Waldman

After dark,
in the metaphysical night
I
rush slowly through Brooklyn
&
enter Café Bizarro
our
secret meeting place in Midwood
&
wearing a celestial crown of electrodes
&
a bestial brain-charger that I plug into a wall socket,
I
melt into invisibility & dissolve & drift & dream
of
Sweet Phantasmagoria my lovely Dream-Lady dancing & descending into non-existence

&
while sipping French Vanilla Delirium
I
taste my Lady Divine
swirling
into the omphalos of the universe
an
oval mirror of irreality
&
I follow her into the deep of nowhere
&
perhaps tonight I shall find Heaven
on
Electrode Highway
or
Hell on earth
if
a hallucinatory stranger a simulacrum or the Chimera-Manager unplugs me

Now,
in the ghetto

no time is sacred,
no time safe.

Death
comes now at 1st light & through the luminescence of day

flowing
into night

after dark
after light.

Death
comes, evil speaks

Brave one; listen to the rhapsody of death.

Pop, pop, pop in bestial hip-hop.

Gunshots shriek
& find the meek

pitch-black darkness
illuminated

&
life obliterated

sentenced
to otherworldly silence & mortal absence in the swirl of ethereal extinction

for
this is the time you taste the music of trauma

&
feast on fear.

This
is the time you bathe in crimson water

&
taste the underbelly of sin.

This
is the time you hear the eerily everlasting music drowning in the key of death.

This
is the time of the shattering

here,
inside the rhapsody & the requiem

&
a stranger sings of non-being

while
gunshots gut the grotesquerie of night & gallop into the deformity of day.

This
is the time to vanish in the music of trauma.

This
is the time to die & fly away.

(on reading Muriel Rukeyser’s poem, Seventh Avenue)

After dark,
the damned bless us with their presence.

The city
opens up like the maw of the fire-breathing Chimera

&
they come forth

frozen freaks thawing in the sizzling night.

They come forth
fallen creatures of obscurity

&
roam freely through our streets, the dazzling dreamy

labyrinths
of New York City,

illuminating
our glittering avenues with their bestial darkness.

After
shedding the skin of invisibility,

they come forth & bless us with their presence.

Yet
we rush away from the damned

until
they dissolve & vanish in the shadows.

On sultry summer nights in the cauldron of the seething city,
I catch a glimpse of the damned in the corner of my left eye

&
in a furious flash, the pariah-beasts of New York force-feed me

apocalyptic news
of sin & suffering

in the city that shrieks the crimson blues

&
gazing into & through their bruised barren eyes,

wounded windows
of Hell-on-earth,

I
see the ominous everlasting wasteland they see

&
ineffable evil

slices
my thick swirl of boyish innocence

&
my everflowing river of faith

with
a chasm of doubt

&
a heavy shroud of anguish covers me crushes my spirit

&
I too vanish in the shadows until a beautiful alchemy transforms me

if it does
&
my trinity of-

knowledge pain & will

becomes
the light buried in the pitch-black abyss

if I accept the Holy 3

&
I grow into a transcendence

if I grow
&

this is the blessing bestowed by the damned
if I receive it

WHO ARE WE
but fugitives from the silent blessings & secret divinity of the damned?

WHO ARE WE
if we don’t face the evil we see?

WHO ARE WE
if we do not receive the blessings of the damned?

WHO ARE WE
if we don’t ask why?

(on reading Gregory Corso’s poem – Hello)

And
I return to Lily Pond again

to
meet myself

inside
the oval mirror of my mind

&
say hello

once more
in

a sweet rendezvous
in

the sacred garden
of

&
say hello

&
say hello

by
the soothing waters

&
say hello

to
the familiar stranger

swirling
in

phantasmagoria
&

rushing slowly

in
the mirror of glittering reflections

at
the center of my chimerical omphalos

&
here

inside
the oval mirror

I
return to Lily Pond

&
sit with the Beat Poets

Corso, Kerouac, & Ginsberg,
phantom companions

of
my inner landscape,
a necessary illusion
within

the flowing opalescence
of

my brainwaves
&

suddenly,
the rebel-ghost Corso

rises
&

leaps toward Lily Pond
&

shrieks hello
&

his raw visionary voice
drills

a hole
in

my dream-mind
&

opens
it

to
metaphysical malaise

&
I say hello

inside
the echo chamber of my dreamscape

I
say hello hello hello

&
meet myself again

&
whisper in sweet susurrations –

Who am I?

&
shriek soundlessly –

Who am I?

inside
a dust devil

&
an unholy silence screams –

Who am I?

within
my swirling nowhere –

my everlasting existential question –

Who am I?
Who am I?
Who am I?

unending shadow of a shadow
of

my phantom
soul

that
follows me to Lily Pond

where
the rebel-ghost Corso

peers
at his fathomless fragile self,

a wounded deer,
&

reveals
his trauma his truth a bestial shattering

here
at Lily Pond

on
the Brooklyn College campus

circa
summer 1965

&
I gaze into the mirror of my mind

&
touch the broken glass of

the merciless shattering
of

the self

&
hear shards of my apocalyptic past

exploding
into my mutilated eyes

&
I mourn all I have lost all that is gone

all who have died
I mourn all the death I carry inside

&
I say hello hello hello

at
a Brooklyn rendezvous with myself

at
Lily Pond
while sitting with the Beat Poets
&

I say hello

I
sit with my puzzles
in
a
womb chair

&
kiss my coconut-scented tome,
a chimerical book of mysticism

&
slow-moving
sweet phantasmagoria – the ethereal Book of Paradoxes,

&
I taste impossibilities
&

swallow a sea of hallucinatory colors falling from the Heavens,
bathed
in lapis lazuli, the deep cobalt blue of the divine that opens the 3rd Eye
&
heals

&
suddenly,

a diamond and pink topaz necklace
sashays
into
my sanctum sanctorum and swirls around me
&
multicolored butterflies follow and encircle me
&

within
the holy ring of whirling butterflies
&

dancing necklace,
I
sit with my puzzles

in
a
womb chair

in
my sacred room
inside
the House of Conundrums
&

watch
the holy flow of butterflies

in
pink and gold and rose, wine red and white

&
the other-worldly sensuous diamond and pink topaz necklace
dancing around my puzzled face
for
eternity

The house is.

An ancient house without a name,
do you know who lives there?

The house is not.

A chimerical vision in someone’s
mind, the old house is invisible.

Inside the stranger’s dream,
the house is,

without words,
beyond our world,

&
buried in the deep snow of his brain,

the house comes into being.

Outside,
the house is not.

Who lives there?

the labyrinth of the night whispers
into the shell of my secret haven,

where I hide from the sphere of sadness.

Not I, a voiceless voice ensconced in my
eerie emptiness shrieks,

not in the House of Non-Existence.

Only the dead live there,
I proclaim defiantly in my private wasteland,

a whirligig whirling around nowhere.

Yet perhaps, I protest too much, in my
Shakespearian monologue,

for I hear the howling coming forth from the

maw of the Chimera,
interminable ululations inside the ancient
mansion.

The House of Non-Existence is vast,
with room enough for the dead

&
other vanishing beings,

enough for a queue of sufferers spanning the

swirling universe,
&

for me too