          THE AFFLICTED

               by

           KJ Gerken



   The candle flickers in a nonexistent wind..

   Not that anyone need notice;
   Deliverance, as god would say,
   is not a substitution: 't is death itself.
   Death's sole positive and terse arrangement,
   strange with life: a steaming nostril
   bled with each evolving century of love.

   The picture's not as I would have it 
   seen torn. Had I not been born...had I not been born!
   Mere speculation...fate's a non sequitur, a non-selective
   entity.  And I have fled the angle of a birth unshorn... 
   and give or take an ear or two 
   have made the universal saviour
   scorn...

   I have been so many things, many personages;
   many entities, all too many masks. Discussing...
   after all, these pages damp with blood, carry a 
   reality...imaginary blood, none the less
   more real than birth is to a child: Birth recalled:
   discussing, of all things, the price of clay...

   And why the price of clay is nothing
   amazes even sometimes god...

   You are restless...wish to go...
   My rambling has upset you...? 
   No. Then...Do not leave me...do not go...
   Have I been in love?...you ask. The time is ripe
   for oranges...pomegranates...and sand. Yes, sand.
   A million million million stars
   upon the nether world of universes in-between
   this taught of you and your reality (vitality). I can't 
   remember when...is it charm or curse?
   But what's it matter anyway
   We sigh the clamour of our lives away. While fighting
   fighting...the fighting clashes swords so far away.
   Do you think that war will touch us now, in a century
   of volatile ignition?
   Admit it. You are frightened! Let me hold you.
   Just a little while. Until the warm wind
   blows the truth away...

   No, I am not cradled in some mother's arms.
   Am far from harm. No doctor clones the healing 
   of my charms. I drink dark wine; poison blood
   from a chalice gods dare not approach. I drink 
   divine. Death. For death will save the universe.
   Or death the universe will purge. Urge
   a human entity toward intangibility.
   I let myself go wrong. Did the wrong things
   purposefully...felt the force of retribution
   down at heel...from it. (False alarm?)
   You say no...I, simple fool
   do nothing.

   I sat beneath an ellum tree...

   I cut into an ancient oak 
   a scrap of poem that I wrote
   went back there a year ago
   to find it faded overgrown
   with scales of life's vitality
   and not the bleak delusion
   of humanity...

   I have become a hermit
   A hermit not to poison you
   with shadows of intransigence
   but some to reach out more
   by being what I was before
   not half the man I am
   nor was to be as each year passes
   each year masses
   death...

   I am poisoned...let us make a deal.
   Go down to the river near the sparkle of the waterfall
   early in the morning when the soft birds sing
   and rest upon the eves 
   of those deserted houses
   haunted and so little known
   to what is our ideal...
   and throw a stone into the splash
   of water...count the waves
   upon the quantum waves...eternity
   upon eternity
   upon the unrelenting way to god.

   I walked between St. George's church and
   gothic university. Spotted sea gulls
   screamed a storm. Threw away 
   a piece of paper,
   scrap of poem... scrap of food
   for some poor fool, deluded as a poet
   thinking he could write, in poverty,
   a fable for the innocent, explaining (ultimately nothing)
   life. 

   Go, idle fancy, prepare this rusted soul
   to walk a misanthropic mile. The painted desert
   is not, know it now and weep...the painted desert
   is not loaded with the curse of copse. Instead
   the haunted rattle and the scorpion
   gloat on our defeat.

        I see the mind, Teresias, knowing death 
        to be of death, spoke death's rattle.

   Vast we are to fail, and fast we are to sacrifice
   our voices. Knowing dying is not easy (or perhaps,
   just knowing that it is) we chose to sacrifice ourselves
   to other disparate activities. The hospital of life
   is full and, overflowing, is not kind.
   And given knowledge, we refuse in kind.

        And the shadow of the bell tolls louder
        than the bell itself. Which is not, if ever
        thicker than the thickest skull. 

        Yorik begs to be the jester, once again,
        he never was or thought so after all.

   The dagger dangles. The snowflakes jangle. And
   the jungle burns. I was privy to an understanding once
   but forget it was an understanding, and
   forget it was near anything conclusive...

   I forget it was...a word or two...
   a child so deeply troubled...doing
   nothing wrong...wracked with guilt...defenseless...
   anger fear and shame. Was I ever free to be 
   alone again?...I was never young again...
   I shut the poison out. Left alone
   I wrote my songs. Alone. Lost to time 
   I wrote...Show me how to write...
   remember...show me how to feel no pain. (Remember.)
   I tried so hard...so hard the heart bled deeper
   deeper deeper and I thought I felt no pain...

   It was a lonely wanderer, who said, 'dead dry tubers
   in a rotten land.'  But knowing they who die alone
   can never say they forced a helping hand.
   Beauty is in words, but never words
   as these, used in retribution, anger, fear...
   resentment that will cry a child to sleep.

   There is poison in these words. And there is poison
   in a shadowed land. The window is a wall and 
   does not understand
   the world. The curtain rises...is withdrawn... is just the mind
   asleep. 
             And neither do I mourn the sun
   in hand. The sun that rots good flesh and love
   turned ugly, into hate and warms the lover's
   ultimate refusal to believe. 'This
   refuses what was once so warm. And now is overwarm...
   and now, for god's sake! only harms...'

   There is neither shadow, light nor substitute.
   On my way to work, rested, hand against rough wall;
   felt faint: with little sleep, and rested wearily
   in dreams where strangers do not hesitate, and lovers argue,
   still denying what was left.

        Paint rots canvas
        (this is what the poet said)
        Eyes of blue
        We gather you
        (emotionally I think
        but am not sure)
        Distant 

        This oak is poison is
        Tristrams glory
        The mirror that reflects
        No story

        The killer minotaur
        Created
        Those who would
        Deny him life
        Lest we glance 
        a shadow of our death 

        This illusion
        gathers slowly
        slowly gathers
        once elusive
        still elusive
        truth...

        (I won't debate
        what is now aged 
        and still so fresh to
        gentle youth 
        lost to innocence...lost truth...)

   O these four rotten walls! These shards of evidence!
   Torn sheets, splintered pain. So much like
   the mind created it. 
                       Rusty sailor and
   white albatross. 
                  After all was said and done:
   the wedding guest 
   still
   denies complicity. 

                  It is a murderous wind
   bodes ill tonight. I am alone, but do not venture forth...
   speak to walls, Hamlet and Ophelia. 
   I speak to Oedipus, Lazarus, confused, confessed
   and risen from the living hell to death. 
   I speak: to Yoric 
   living, not as god, but as a shrunken jester's head.

   Know that once the world was clean. Now is shattered
   with explosive heat. The id the psyche and the horoscope
   premeditate defeat. And fear the ultimate solution is
   a broken confused mind that heals too slowly, and the wound
   is all that's left to heal the lie.

   I do not suffer. Do not ever think I suffer. No.
   The curtain stirs. The breezes tremble
   autumn leaves murmur...trembling... children sleep
   with heavy lids a-dream...
                            those who think
   they run away from life, experience or pain,
   run away from nothing. Run only from the childhood magic 
   and from poetry, toward a desperation
   in the heart of darkness. Who is there? Do I hear...
   I think there's someone at the door...but...well
   the wind is always much too friendly here...
   Speaking in soft whispers, as of death,
   they feel themselves life's madness
   life's desperation, love's dance,
   death's death.

   And witness this, a ridge of cirrus catches
   just a ridge of sun. The evening places heavy stones
   upon a heavy wind. 
                       I should try to work some more.
   Perhaps just go away. But
   frightened I am here to stay. Beneath the blanket
   in a cave, old, and yes... King Lear was brave.
   The blind old bugger knew his place.

   They said, 'he shouldn't be alone' and
   'why does he not eat?' and yes I was alone, and yes
   I didn't eat 'at table' with the others.
   Like a monk I ate the fragments of a rich
   debate...and cast off scraps of bone too bare to eat.
   I have bad teeth.  
                    Lasted years.
   A prisoner, more myself than of the others.
   They said, 'how strange his eyes! see how he looks
   upon the world.' They would not walk with me.
   Sent me home from school. 'He is not like the
   others'. 'Muss balt zu erholung.' They tried hard
   to take me, but I would not go. Frightened I just
   stayed at home. Could not, did not want to
   know (but knew eternity) the world. 
   The world of murderous activity.        

   The years rolled on, as years would go.
   There were joys and heartaches and the pangs of love.
   O once so young! behind the revelry
   a caution hid. Smoldering beneath the surface
   diseasing every atom (The breath of its decay!).

   I studied this geometry, it said the world
   composed a symmetry. A perfect structure mortals
   could not emulate. It wasn't so at all.
   I studied this cosmology, and saw the chaos
   and the beauty and above it all
   the loneliness we claim our own.

   This thinking, I would query others, this and...
   what is thought? what's it do?
   how are we the cognizant? why should this sensation
   be so real? Why should we be we? Why should they be
   they. Why can't one be of a total? Among others?            
   Why are we alone?  

   Midnight. Cat screams. Dogs bark.
   The circle is a coded hell. Seven ages dark.
   And somewhere in the distance...in another land,
   a monk agitates himself
                           to life. 

        'Living's such a duty thing, 
        without it...why the lie...?.'

   I don't know what to say to those
   who would not clutch the vine
   and gather to the dregs. 
   After all, are not, how say?
   'the living dead'.

        'Living's such a duty thing...
         a duty, duty...lie..'All a pack of lies!

   Listen. Do you hear it? far beyond the wind,
   the ocean and the shoal...far beyond the universe
   no bells toll...

   Listen...

        'Living's such a duty thing...'

   And Basho wrote this poem:

        Leaves of autumn
        silent... 
        scattered...
        Splash

   I remember sitting in a restaurant
   alone one afternoon
   winter snow on rotted boots too thick
   hair down to my shoulders
   Debbie (not a lover but) a friend
   came by. Talked awhile, like any youthful  
   indiscretion talks. Had an 'empathy'
   meaning 'we were young'...
   anyway...she asked about this poetry
   and how it  'conquered' life...
   I said: it doesn't  'conquer life'
   She frowned. She was pretty, but not beautiful
   tried to be a friend. I just wanted solitude.
   I guess, a fool alone...
   She wished me well in my pursuit
   kissed me on the mouth 
   and left to find another 'friend'.
                                     Nothing 
   conquers life, I guess. The end...

   I guess. Even these solutions are not real.
   Offer only bandages too temporal...

   'My love is fire, and the sun
   shining bright and beautiful...
   my love is dark and dangerous
   no one wants to stay for long..."       

   Too late, I guess, too late...
   grown tired of the old debate
   Grown tired...
   no solutions...I am just too old...
   my mind too cold...

   It's hot in here (Herod's bold redress?)
   I leave the curtains drawn
   windows closed (There has to be no death).

   I no longer want 
   to view the world up close.
   The fear is on me and I shiver at the sound
   of others in the hall.
   I burn a candle for the fall 
   of humankind,
   and all... 

   alarmed I have not slammed this lead
   upon the page for nothing. Have not
   smashed these words, stinking in their
   solitude, for nothing. Have not lost
   an age to sleep for nothing. Have not scanned
   the texts of age... and, nothing.

   Of late have studied this cosmology
   drawing circles and appending notes
   to cast a doubt upon the sanctity
   of all that went before ( and
   all, of course, that will come after).
   No doubt we can't know all: are much deluded...
   think the end is near?

   The end is no solution. The end is just a...shall 
   I say it?  figment?  The end, for god's sake, well
   may well be just another tear!     

   How well we think we know it all! The bitterness
   and the recall of the offense.
   The needless killing of a future hope
   or even just an idle dream!
   Sometimes I just want to scream!

   Tell me?  Do we the "modern living",
   not prepare for death?  History confirms the lie.
   We have hidden death away. A lie.

   Tried to void the realm of life.
   Dante knew it otherwise.
   The modern church has much in common
   with a modern lie, the broken temples; shards of empire,
   they destroyed. Rome's a Modern Vatican. This modern 
   Vatican is Rome. All regains survival (as it's cause).
   The splendour and the decadence.
   Take the all in life, for life's not permanent,
   eternity is for the soul, pleasure, body.
   But eternity remains the body (supposition? soul?)
   It is precisely part of that reality
   the quantum set denies. The body is
   reality, and does not yet conflict infinity.
   Rather it's the mind that holds the shadow
   by the ear. It's the mind we compromise.
   The mind we so restrict to this conformity
   humanity requires for subsistence.
   The mind, not the body, requires the reality
   of what is magically denied by those chose to flood
   conception with a static form. It means...   
   well it means...
                why do I return no hope
   to those who would require to explain?

   Why do I return no hope?...Life requires all that
   isn't there, but is. From the micro to the macro.
   From a super string to...
                            Well, 
   I forget the rest. Or maybe I just choose to
   not remain the same... nor to play the game...

   I am tired of this thinking...everything tonight
   tires me...is there no reprieve?

   There has been no going out tonight.
   No sense of pleasure. No fine argument. For?
   Against? No soft persuasion to 'come home'.
   No night of love. No fairness. No sweet voice
   to comfort me...
                   It seems that I have been alone
   so long. I can't remember when
   I last set foot upon the earth. I have always been
   an alien; but lately this reclusiveness
   has made me force a sacrifice too many.
   Too often I have wanted an 'aloneness', but always
   found companionship, sweet voice of love and sex,
   to be a bond available... I have found those bars
   and friendly warm have catered to my needs.
   But that can never force the dread despair away.
   The mind implodes. And this emptiness refuses to
   reveal a home. 
                No shred of evidence for hope.

   I chose to live alone. The sequence of my life has been
   even among friends...alone. Even among lovers
   (yes there have been many) such a desperate feeling...
   so alone...

   O this tires me. And the poem is not finished.
   (The poem's never finished). It craves an audience,
   and yet there's none around. I remember:

        'T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound
        Fighting in an captain's tower'

   or even:

        'Einstein playing the electric violin
        on Desolation Row...'.

   Years ago I used to listen; years ago
   I used to know...the truth...

   Let me tell you how I felt. I was young and searching
   for the 'truth', never more defined than how I
   heard that song. The voice was like a mission
   in a desperate jungle waiting for a god.
   If the old gods let us down... the new ones
   fizzled out. They gave us sanction
   and they let us down. Remember of them fondly.
   Play them on the radio...a grand nostalgia trip.

   They say the 'good old days'...
   But memories are more than good.
   We are never that again. As youth explores.
   The elders seek security.
   It has always been like that.
   It will always be that way.
   The large arena of society
   doesn't read much history
   that is all.

   I try cull the classics to familiarity.
   Their sensibilities and how too few there are
   comparing disability trough righteousness...
   Celine commanded eloquence, but only through elastic verbs
   denied to others.  We hold the songs in awe, and precisely
   won't create. Others own our thoughts and blood.
   It's easier accepting when committed
   to a TV screen. Death's not part of life...it seems...
   Death's out somewhere...there....
   This crisis should have made us realize
   different societies. Some who deem
   our lives absurd. Some we might call enemies.
   Some tyrants. They might think of us the same.
   We who make, like those, commitment
   to their own. 

   The crusades...mostly turned against
   our own society...(the child says: mother
   why can't all us live in peace? Why fight
   and kill? destroy the world? so, don't we like
   ourselves? the home we have?)..why turn against ourselves
   with vengeful insecurities?...perhaps it's only part of
   Gaia's cycle. Perhaps we can't control the violence 
   Perhaps we're just too clean...
   part of something that controls the earth, the galaxy the universe,
   and even god (if she exists) beyond the
   universe itself...

   Perhaps. If we exist at all, that is.
   If we exist at all and Rama does not look too serious.

   Ah! The light of morning. Second day!
   And I have not confused myself the more.
   Have drank of the waters of the Lethe.
   And forced myself this ruddy air to breathe.
   Which coats the windows with a foggy film.
   Obscuring cancerous sun and acid rain.
   How will we ever th'Elysian fields regain?   

   This is the Borderland. A step across the desert
   to oblivion. A mirage in the distance.
   A thirst for knowledge that is never there.
   We falter and express a deep concern. We
   stand upon the edge to learn! We blink,
   and somehow it's another something over there!
   another path to take, thought to ponder,
   rage to rage.  Another war to preach.
   Just think of it! Eternity!
   Forever and forever. Each
   our soul to keep...

   Are we the ones to populate the universe?
   Are we the only ones alive?        
   Sometimes astronomers look at the midnight sky
   with trembling in their eyes.
   Sometimes we just have to be inventive
   with our own philosophy.

   Come gaze into the crystal ball.
   She met me in the hall.
   She said 'I came'. I mumbled
   'There is justice after all'.
   She wondered why my poetry
   was too much too difficult.
   She wondered why I read so much.
   Asked so many questions
   that I had no answers to.
   She asked me about the olden songs.
   And how the sixties were, and how
   I changed from what I was and then...
   I said 'We all get older'. She was yet so
   young. First year university. Studied art.
   (Or so she said) Made some comment on my canvasses.
   Said ' Why not have a show...?'
   My art is private. I said that.
   My art is private. I don't compromise.
   'We all do'. And she pulled me down
   upon the sofa and was warm and comforting 
   and soothed the savage fever on my brow.     
   She was something of a 'beauty queen'.
   Knew too much of 'love', I deem
   It wasn't right for me to be with her.
   But then...she never came again.
   And I forgot her just as fast.

   I said I cannot compromise. But then I live alone.
   Paint shadows - this imaginary brush says all.
   I light a candle burning and I gather up my trash.
   And hum the tunes the radio ignored, ignored too long.
   Sometimes sundays are a mess. And sometimes
   I refuse to divulge my address
   to those who would become my friends.
   And sometimes I refuse the mirror image
   of myself. And sometimes I refuse to see at all.

   Sometimes I can't see at all.

   Bright ears in the jungle of my thoughts.
   I ponder shadows. I ponder sounds I cannot separate.
   I ponder the expressions of the trees.
   Motionless, yet bending in the breeze.
   Waves of the savanna. Waves of sound and
   waves of light. Waves of everything denied.

   On the beach a woman waits 
   for the raft of the Medusa.
   On the telephone another waits
   for the answer...             
   and somewhere one more poet sings
   who isn't heard at all

   and all the women come and go

   I guess it's not what it might seem
   The matrix of the universe
                               churns.
   A forest burns.
   (The bones rattle
   but the skeleton is pure).
   Shackled, shackled, shackled to a wall.
   (A whore)
   The poem's dead.
   The poet sings. I guess
   he's still alive.             
   Somewhere singling the afflicted
   out.  Dogs bark. Humans shout.
   Where's the difference...?
   Blow the candle out.

                           27/08/90
                           18/02/91
                           23/05/94
                                 

                           -- Copyright (c) 1992 KJ Gerken

   Published by:
   Ygdrasil Press
   Web Page: http://www.synapse.net/~kgerken
   Email: kgerken@synapse.net
   Newsgroup: alt.centipede


