Ralph Freda

The 8 a.m. zombie brigade files past me for the final time…
Neighbors, who have found too late in life that they have been slighted…
Along halls, riding elevators, and down the stairs…
(Maybe it is their seventh time around, maybe their first, maybe somewhere in the middle… I don’t care)

I have grown greedy for the gold and the fruit of angels such as Mozart and Picasso and Ginsberg and Updike…

(Remember: in this life, the selfless act of love and a woman are singularly and together the most beautiful thing; impossible to ignore)

Once I knew the joy of being alive…
Now I know the happiness of not having to live alongside you…
I say only two prayers – the first is that I don’t awaken in the fires of Hades, should they exist; the other, that should this be my first time around, or my seventh, or somewhere in the middle, I may never awaken to know the face of the Hell within which you live…
…and again see the horrible moon without mystery in the sky…

It has taken me a lifetime to learn
that the Moon – in all its mystery – is simply itself
… and this is the hardest thing to learn

I know for certain, very few things, anymore…

I know for certain the Universe is an empty place,
and the love we provide gives it Meaning…

I know for certain the one I love is somewhere
out there, in this world –
I have been too long without her; and I fear I am insane…

I know for certain that the people who truly love me are fewer than the fingers I have on one hand;
and when they have gone, so too, will have I…

I shall not be left to survive,
beneath the ridiculous, mysterious, eternally condemned Moon…

I am now at a place
I once was…
A long time ago,
and a couple of lifetimes ago…

Now I allow the beautiful
far-out songs
to roll in like the waves
… ending in eternity

Each one irreplaceable
washing over me…
ending in eternity

Rosy pictures of yesterday
I realize
Were not so rosy, then
My whole body breathes you
But how am I to see you
In the wake of other men
So long a time
Looking at lights and sky
Somewhere along the way
Was a good time to die
But I cannot say
Exactly when…

The thought that life
can begin in your tummy
if we’re not careful
freaks me out
All these people ordering
cappucinos
thick and fevered
… am I really interconnected
with them?
… would I really give my body
over to them

Horrified by the thought
that all this conversation
and errands running are only
really in-between times for
rampant lunacy and random
disconnnected thoughts

… takes the wind out of
my sails

… and that till the day I die
I will swear… SWEAR…
that if you look, REALLY LOOK,
you will see that
Hitler’s blue eyes were kind

I hate T. V.
and I hate me
…every bone in
my body hurts,
but not as much
as my mind
The blades of the ceiling
fan
turn so slowly, I
swear that they hate me
…at night, while I sleep
they smile because they know
they will outlive me…
I fear another hot summer –
and a lifetime of writing
depressing shit like this…

…I’m almost sure, now
this particular cloud has passed –
I am no longer in the throes of this mysterious gloom that visits me, calls on me, like some horrible lover I don’t want, but who I know will come again.

…I squint my eyes, and hope for strength
as I hoist the terrible, thousand-pound child that is this life onto my shoulders, and head out
into the light…

(twilight; edge of sleep)
bicycles leaning
against houses
waiting for tomorrow’s school day
(everybody’s inside, dying or dead)
the television set’s blue ghost-light, dancing off walls, of darkened rooms