   The Voice of Hunger
   
   by
   
   Klaus J. Gerken
   
   
   (1998)
   
   I
   
   The Voice of Hunger argues with the moon
   It is an emaciated wolf howling
   Beggars chanting like black shaman's
   Crouched in chiaroscuro
   Begging scraps of putrid meat
   From those who cannot look at them
   Amazing Grace echoes saccharinely
   From an austere corner of a church
   Angelic voices carve another notch for fate
   The fisherman is ravenous
   Enough to trice deny involvement
   But it is all too often 
   That the deniers the liars and the thieves
   Survive to lead the slandered cause
   To a fruition
   Money speaks in droves
   Passed around it is the principle
   Upon the blood of tears
   Religion does not vanish
   It is just festers in the bowels of the mind
   That cannot cope with a world
   That cannot grasp reality
   A black crow cries burnt porridge
   Through the oppressive August smog
   And with it forges links of war hatred
   And oppression 
   
                  Nothing survives
   In this bleak land of dust and shit 
   And garbage
   
               It is that alley where we
   Look for humanity Not the church
   Or Synagogue or Temple or
   Most sacred place of all
   The empty soiled and unmade bed
   War is where the heart has been
   Somewhere in a jar on the alter
   Of our disenchanted service
   To the hollow Lord of Industry
   Born with the smell of money in our nostrils
   Living with the stench of money in our meaning
   Dying with the polished mahogany
   Of  Look What I've Accomplished
   
                                   Nothing
   Worth the crippled child of worthless
   meaningless Ideals
   
                      The monk grew hollow
   Destroyed the parchment and left the room
   The bell rang vespers
   The long knives were concealed
   The silver chalice was brought to chapped lips
   disease with all the ugly history of man
   The muddy battlefield has not been closed
   But turned into a theme park attraction
   Along with extinct stuffed species
   We call animals
   
                   What do they call us?
   The whore with bloody blackened eyes
   Climbs the greasy creaking stairs
   Rusted bedspring and yellow torn 
   soiled mattresses
   Rotting food among the cockroaches
   On the blackened floor
   Welcome her to restless sleep
   And dreams of sometime marriage
   And children she will be allowed
   To keep Perhaps a home and yard
   And a husband who will not abuse her
   With sweet foul language and
   Calloused fists when the money
   Has not been enough to supply
   The drugs he needs to be a kind
   And gentle pimp 
   
                   Down below just
   Outside her broken window and torn curtain
   Rats scurry through the alley scavenging
   For scraps the beggars left behind
   No one notices in pristine houses
   Even tv sets with starving children
   Protect the suburbanite's immunity
   Them Not Us is still the sanction
   We sugarcoat with money and delusions
   As long as They don't bother Us
   We'll throw our pennies to a charity
   And pray for God's forgiveness
   After all He died upon the Cross for Us
   He hasn't got a choice but to comply
   (We who radiate such purity)
   
                                Here
   I'd like to spit but who should spit
   Where pity screams the most?
   So what's the motive for society?
   Survival of the fittest or survival
   Of the poor?  Great God Mammon
   Would dispute discriminate and
   Mow the crowds down with a chariot
   But we are much more civilized
   We at least manipulate Economy
   The dismal god of poverty
   No one who has naught can fly away
   And laugh another day
   No one can oppose the selfish greed
   He breeds with flaming nostrils
   And ravaged disabilities
   His whole life in pursuit of silver
   Gold and opulence and nothing
   Can oppose the greed of this religion
   More powerful even than compassion
   The Tibetan Gods would cringe...
   But Tibetan Gods or no
   The voice of poverty is muted...
   Even violence is subject to negation
   (What will the public think? What
   Does the public want? Ratings Ratings
   Ratings is what it's all about
   Without ratings we won't have a job
   Without ratings we have little credibility...
   The public is the final judge...
   Money is what fills our pockets)
   
   Sometimes we just have to sob...sob
   Not cry...Sometimes we just have to
   Twist the dagger deep into out own gut
   Sometimes we are not deserving of this life
   This earth This Universe This God we
   Compromise....
   
                  I watch these sleeping women
   No conception in their sleep except the high 
   intensity dreams that rob communications...
   
                                              But they are
   Fine and steady...What dreams do small girls have?
   What dreams do big girls have?  What dreams 
   Are all our dreams? And what is the solution?
   What do we want From life? from Death? or 
   maybe just Survival?  One can never know. 
   Existence is a weed upon the
   Planet Earth. (Do I dare remember Nature?)
   
                                             Sometimes
   We forget solution isn't everywhere...
   And the whore refuses everything
   except the cash that's not her own...
   And where do we begin to compensate? 
    Where do we begin acknowleging the split 
   between the rich and poor? And  who deserves 
   The "good life" most?  The american
   Constitution meted it out to everyone 
   Without bias, but bias was a word not a solution.  
   Thoughts cannot be legislated.
   And thoughts more than actions compromise the law.
   A poet not a lawyer..but not as some wd say
   A Messenger...
   
                 A Poet does not compromise a purpose;
   A Poet visualizes a solution.  Hunger does not
   Compromise him; death's reversal's her solution.
   Sometimes we envision meanings where no 
   meanings are; sometime a solution sits upon the
   swollen testicle of LAW.  NOW is where we
   Must be. NOW is the solution. Not the future
   We "precisely" play; not the "present" we
   might wish away; but the moment of our true
   reality...existence...knowledge...truth...
   But a switchblade cuts not only skin;
   It cuts the soul of dissipation...and
   murders its ideal.  History replaces any
   sacrificial mountainous revisionist ideal...
   Know the whore from God; God scrambles
   For a better more efficient computer chip.
   RIP and tat is no solution...Hunger
   Just salutes disease...
   
                           They say
   What we don't know won't kill us.
   It brings a smile to any atom's face.
   Praise be to the devil.
   Praise be to the lord.
   Praise be to the sacrifice
   No one praises for the word...
   
   Death has one solution.  Life has
   an ideal.  How do we reciprocate
   When reason stands for an appeal?
   
   And the human waste in effort
   to appease an unknown god, just because
   a scripture tells us, must we make it so?
   
   II
   
   Have I ever understood this life,
   born into, but hardly mine?  Sometimes
   I just dream to get through it
   without argument and strife...
   But it is a part of me, I can't 
   deny the fact; one life among many,
   and why should this one be the trap
   which closes every other door?  Which
   brings me back to this ideal
   no one cherishes except in faded parchments
   and hope and something that is less
   than what can be the deal that money
   places in out hands and sacrifices
   hearts onto the icy flames of false community?
   It's a difficult and narrow road; many
   hardships clash about it.  Sometimes it feels
   as if a mountain on my shoulders
   pushed even deeper into solid earth.
   Sometimes it must feels like nothing's there.
   Sometimes void is all we have.  Sole
   Limbo This.  
   
              *Moshe Benarroch writes me:
   "I don't know why but I have to tell you 
   "these 2 things i discovered the
   "same day:
   
   "1. a woman in hadera, Israel, 
   "discovers after the death of her parents
   "that she has inherited a land in Poland. 
   "This land happens to be Aushwitz. 
   "It was the place in which her grandfather 
   "lived until the war then he run away 
   "to Russia. After ww2 he came back 
   "and even paid the taxes so that the land 
   "stays in his name. Her mother never told this
   "woman nothing about the holocaust, or this land.
   
   "2. A german foundation named after a nazi 
   "war criminal is going to donate 1 million 
   "mark to Yad Vashem, Yad Vashem is the 
   "most important memorial site for the 
   "holocaust. I forgot the name of this german,
   "anyway he was put in jail after the war for 
   "6 years because he used jewish workers for free, 
   "and they were slaves and worked till death, I
   "guess he thought that money has no odour 
   "and so he took the jewish workers, well now it is 
   "Yad Vashem who thinks that money has no odour,
   "and no history?
   
   "Live and see, reality is always crazier than 
   "you can imagine..."
   
   So life. as strange as it many be,
   still presumes the past to be stranger,
   and never once thinks the past is part of
   the present.  But the past is as much the present
   as the future must become.  Reaction is the
   present, emotion always is the past, and
   of course anticipation is the future, and all
   converges on the matrix of the "now".
   
   But the Voice of Hunger instills delay
   in an insipid way that gnaws upon the soul
   and consumes the heart with flame
   and renders it to ashes in an oven of regret.
   It is difficult to refrain from anger,
   more difficult even to refrain from a reprisal
   that gathers no one to a good; but only
   gather phantoms haunting thrashing dreams
   and rendering a smile to tears.
   
   The prostitute, desperate and empty,
   hollow of regret because the hunger
   for the drugs beg a reality beyond 
   human comprehension,
                        like the children
   of Auschwitz, "Work makes Strong"
   
   Work makes song work makes song
   work makes song from the negroes
   to the slaughtered innocents
   from the not acknowledged broken
   in the slaughter houses of Stalin
   to the labour camps and ovens of
   Nazi Germany...One presumes too much,
   and hate has been too narrow. If I
   mourn for anyone, I must mourn for every 
   Jew, every slaughtered Chinese invaded
   by the Japanese, and I must condemn the
   Nazis for the slaughter of the six million 
   as much, not less, than the russians for the 
   slaughter of its 12, or the Japanese for its
   slaughter of the Chinese...or all the
   innocents slaughtered by the Inquisition...
   ("God knows his own")...or the tribes 
   of South and North America...
   or...on and on and on...
                              *And as Moshe writes:
   "this poem could also be titled 'the 
   "century of murder', I always find it interesting 
   "what people don't write, where are the Japanese 
   "killed by Americans, the two Atomic Bombs, 
   "wonder why you forgot that one? 

   "I made this long list in 'Lament', in which 
   "I had listed who I am and there was, jew, 
   "european, palestinian, moroccan, sepharadei... 
   "etc... a long list... years later I saw one thing 
   "I didn't mention: Israeli. How come I forgot that one 
   "in a 4 lines list?  Well, I learned from that, 
   "maybe you learn more from what you forget than 
   "from what you write. 

   "Have you someway been brainwashed by the victor 
   "who wrote history that the bombs dropped in 
   "Japan were justified bombs?" 
   
                                I reply:
   Perhaps you are right. The victor easily
   forgets.  But I am also German, and see
   things in a more expansive way...
   perhaps more than others...
   perhaps I am still the vanquished
   and therefore, residing in the land
   of the victor, I choose to turn my head
   away...wrong, of course; and hypocritical
   to say the least... but one still does not
   bite the hand of the one who feeds the hunger...
   and sometimes I get very hungry...but
   in spite of everything...
   
                   I cannot condemn
   one without the other.  I must condemn
   all atrocities...not just one above the other.
   Each human life is a precious entity
   unto itself, no matter race religion colour 
   creed...One cell made us all
   and one cell will eventually condemn...
                              
                           Understand I make no
   apology.  I also give no comfort. I who
   as a child was brought to Canada, greatest
   land of freedom, and constantly called
   NAZI, and saluted, and my father falsely
   accused by a jew he rented his apartment from
   of killing his family in Leningrad, even though
   my father was wounded in the side
   long before the slaughter and survived the war
   in an army hospital...
                     
                           A child does not forget.
   
   But the whore is in her comfort
   and the victim is interned in the moment
   of passionate regret.   
   
                           (Sacrifice no meaning
   for the comfort...sacrifice it all...)
   
   The whore and the death camps have
   a meaning not discernible to everyone...
   like who slaughters who...what gives
   "who" the right...what law prepared by man
   conquers laws made by "God"...whatever
   God we may presume is "ours"...
   But like Bob Dylan sings, "With
   "God on their side..."  Whatever side...
   Good or bad it doesn't seem to matter.
   as long as on god seems to "tell the
   truth" through interpretation...
   
                           one 
   has to remember, "god" speaks only through
   imperfect humans...and thus i say
   "how can this god be precise?"
   I have no other question... 
   
                           (polished
   meanings set aside...)
   
                           I wandered
   Through the corridor, and
   offered up my pride...I left them
   wondering... who was left to hide?
   
   Of course the gods had no solution,
   they made mankind the judge;
   and through the harboured effort
   they failed to see the tides
   that brought them no solution
   but sank them deep inside
   the cauldron of their meaning
   (their emptiness and pride)
   
   And nothing sinks the principle,
   and nothing makes one hide
   as imperfect solutions
   to laws that give no pride...
   
   From the oven to the bedroom,
   the soul of pride corrupts absolutely,
   and the devil shares the roller coaster
   with the angel (right hand side of God 
   no less but still perfect in integrity)
   and yet the policy is reprimand...
   but understand no civil right,
   understand no mental fright,
   understand nothing but a mighty
   journey through the infamy
   that clouds our every clawing to 
   survival as the fittest species
   on the shingled crust of planet earth...
   
   Stepping on the ant we step upon ourselves...
   
   No knowledge of the vast infinity
   we have that is the universe...
   little less we have of what must
   constitute a god... even the great god
   we comprehend cannot comprehend 
   the ultimate... little do we know
   it is within ourselves to understand 
   ourselves and those beyond...
   
   Lost we are o lost we are o lost
   like the vast solution crawls beyond
   the holocaust (Caesars murders;
   the expulsion of the jews from europe
   on the eve of christopher's deception;
   Hitler's ovens; Stalin's death camps;
   the Japanese slaughter of the Chinese;)
   and ultimately what conscience 
   we have developed, or perhaps
   have left... That is our survival.
   
   Yet even though life is a disease
   I cannot find any moment that is
   murdered by indifference, at least,
   not by those who care for evolution;
   sometimes there are those who court
   the demon 'retribution' , 'hate", or
   "anger"-- those are lost within themselves
   and cannot escape the hollow desperation
   of their pathetic desperation...
   
                           They  
   have nothing but the hate that they
   themselves inspire... their emptiness
   is not the starving of the world or
   the oppressed but the emptiness
   of their own anger frozen in a timeless
   tide that crests and falls and crests again
   like a timeless rage that kills by instinct
   not by any ideology... murder cannot be
   condoned... and this indiscretion kills
   like murder stalks an alley... war is no
   solution... and revenge is never clean.
   
   But bring me in this closet, a purple 
   robe of hope; a purple robe of royalty
   and I will show you what should never
   have been hope.  You will see, for instance,
   children dying in a street of plenty, and
   abortions where the parents are too rich
   to care for their own money.  I will show you
   hatred in the streets where wine flows freely
   and where food is wasted like dessert;
   where a war rages over triviality, and water,
   stagnant and polluted runs past baby cribs.
   I will show you wasteland, not a mental
   ward where TSE wrote and EP doted,
   but the real ward where men are free
   and play at GOD.  Sadistic mental blinded
   rage.  Where blood runs freely to the
   gutters and no one sweeps the garbage
   under rugs. Where evil in the mouth of babes
   blinds craggy old philosophers; and no one
   cares to open eyes or smell the stench but
   only watch the world on TV screens that
   truly are the prison doors, the aphrodisiac:
   wasted lives and wasted hopes, the Voice of 
   Hunger rages on.
                             
   III
   
               Bountiful shadows.
   Life like death the mask of darkness. One eye
   moon and one eye sun.  Cut in stone
   demands our madness.  No one's lost
   who cannot phone.  
               Desperate disease this
   thrust of madness; penis brain and
   length of rope.   Who, I cannot know
   can understand the situation?  Purposeful
   the vigilance restrains a substitution.
   Sometimes only fright reveals what
   cannot be the situation...mostly its
   the failure to confess.  But make no
   bones about it, pretty women have 
   their dress.  And those who substitutes 
   no meaning sink Titanic in redress.
   
   Madness hungers.  And some would 
   have a madness real beyond what
   life pretends.  And why should we,
   the old, have anger?  The "fraueline"
   always says, 'this gentleman...' as if
   one's aging would demean the shallow
   realm of youth.   
                           "I would teach them
   something..." Maybe yes and maybe no.
   Presume my youth had many conquests;
   why should age know more than youth?
   Passion rages in the mind not blood.
   The mind of youth is simple; like a
   raging untamed river. The mind of age
   is like an ocean...heavy, but it is not lust.
   
   But lust is lust and cannot teach. Age 
   revolves around the common misdemeanor
   of it's age.  But help no poet to consume this.
   Help no sage become a curse.  I crave no
   gentle resolution; I do not dig a quiet earth.
   
   One by one the chasm creeps a victor
   unto earth.  Wider wider the partition.
   No one is immune.  The circles Hell envelops
   are the circles Heaven procreates.  
   Only Purgatory roams the earth like a river
   ever changing but the same and quiet
   as illusion severs heads.   Reality the 
   guillotine.  Reality the laughter in the streets.
   Reality the sport: there's not a lot
   from baseball to Nero's Christian's
   burning.   Rage is rage no matter what.
   Open rage or hidden rage: which
   burns deeper? 
                           The quiet shatters.
   Telephone ears burn. Nerves extract
   their tentacles.  Sweat drops crash
   upon the drum of mad defense...
   Defiance crumples like a burnt potato chip...
   Handle not the acid...but the dip.
   This is not a comedy...but a kind of remedy.
   Listen like your walls had false vaginas...
   listen: you are struggling after death...
   listen listen listen...know that ears are 
   holograms...know that eyes are deaf...
   don't fool the female circumcision...
   listen to the screaming anyway...
   Horror has no justice...but horror
   has our ears...
                           Know once the shadow..
   know the breathing in the ear...know
   the glance across your shoulder...
   know that eyes are everywhere...
   know that Justice is not fair...
   know you know that they are there...
   
   When was the last time you slept
   well at night?
   
   IV
   
   Mira walked across the empty lot,
   noncut weeds and broken 
   red bricked buildings...rusted
   razor wire fence...decaying posts...
   It was a long time before she realized
   she was naked...it was a long time
   she understood that she was free...
   
   80 now she thought the liberators
   were just false illusions...after all
   she had dreamt of them so many years
   without ever knowing they existed
   on her continent...she never had
   the news that others held as hope...
   she only had the ovens daily she saw
   coughing human dust into the blue 
   gray sky..mingling atoms with the
   atoms of the holocaust...gentile, jew
   and arabic...buddhist prayed in far away
   Tibet knowing of their own
   inhalation..."when the dharma's
   taught in the west, the great silver bird
   will come bringing danger to the earth"...
   Does one really only understand
   by hindsight? or is there something more?
   
   I venture April is the cruelest month*
   because it forces us anew to see things
   we have never seen before; to gather flowers
   not the seeds.  Not harvest, but a reckoning.
   Know there is no truth we hide.
   Know there is no truth we hide.
   
   Garlic for the great design...know the wind
   does not affect the ghosts of compromise.
   Sometimes hiding places are just lies
   we gather sow and propagate like seeds
   wondering what the future spring will brings us...
    
   Mira prays her rosary...Mira is not jewish,
   catholic or any religious body... Mira prays
   her rosary counting time...the time she has
   survived...the time that she must die...the 
   time she cannot comprehend is real...her memory
   is like a dream...a flood of broken images
   gentle as a summer's morn...and as violent
   a summer's eve, when black insidious clouds
   ravage what was once a lull...
                           know 
   the poison, know the poison, know the poison
   is so sweet...
                           gentle lullaby how do we meet?
   Crystal night...shattered glass...Oh how blood
   fled down the drains...disdain the past,
   make fast a desperate struggle...Make Hamlet
   regent and perhaps make Shylock God...
   
   History has no solutions, no beginning
   and no end.  And science has hypotheses...
   Let no one lead you by the hand...
   
   V
   
   Janus is the moon
   
   Both sides hold the key...
   
   Do not let them lead...
   Do not let them lead...
   
   
   
   Saturday
   19 September 1998
   5:36 a.m.

 
 
   ADDENDUM 
 
      *The cruelest month
      
       by

       Moshe Benarroch
      
    
       No one knows which is
       the cruelest month anymore
       all months are becoming dinosaurs
       of flood heat freeze and fires
       No one knows if the winter
       will ever come and if it does
       Will it be only rain or floods
       No one knows what to pray for
       rains that don't stop
       or some drops to clean the air,
       and next summer
       will the heat kill us
       or will it snow.

   
 
   
   The Voice of Hunger Copyright (c) 1998 Klaus J. Gerken
   Published by Ygdrasil Press

   *The Cruelest Month and quotations,
   used by permission Copyright (c) 1998 Moshe Benarroch
