

                       THE BLACKED-OUT MIRROR

                                 by

                          Klaus J. Gerken

   Waiting's no fun...neither wanting
   something that perfects itself without you being there...
   anyway...right or wrong...even those eternal happy lovers
   must gather the toys of remembrance from under mouldy bedsheets
   once in awhile.  The music stifles imbecility...
   even the mood can never be all preconceived...
   the shape of her breasts or tuft of hair that matters most
   (but matters really not at all) through perfect grace...that is
   feeling that can rarely be held so much a bay...
   (even wild horses couldn't drag the troops away).
   Insanity never recalls to mention it.
   The hollow dreamboat of desire
   always needs a master at the helm....
   such is the only truth that gives us those emotions...
   and if anger or pain or hate or fear
   creep out of the casket
   those who hold it open are too struck
   by the beauty of this false eternity
   to ever contemplate their own security.

   The scream is always heard
   in fact, that is the only music that does not
   escape us. It is always that tone that we most remember
   from our innocence...

   Even the heaviness of Lear must recall absurdity.
   The old man like a recluse in a cave...
   perhaps the rain would drench the cape of our indifference
   lashed against the trembling of a much refused desire...
   so much is abuse
   that when we stand before that only miracle
   its reasoning escapes our sanity
   locks up the key behind the door of simple fright...
   and then the night...the aloneness of togetherness
   the passionate embrace
   which like a broken razor blade
   one's much too frightened to use right
   because the wound might be just deep enough
   that scars result from nothing there at all.
   But is it nothing? - Is it a refusal to acknowledge the refusal 
   of
   a dream?
   Even madmen dream...but madmen
   also sleep at night.

   If you think you spend the night alone, you are very wrong.
   Each single moment of your past endevours is always at odds
        with the present
   insurgence of a loneliness - something no one wants,
   yet pays to have. And why not?
   It's a table set for two, but still unstained.
   It's a candle burned much to the ground of your desire.
   It's a book with pages uncut, read by xray eyes.
   That is how one's loneliness uses one,
   not like freedom of a cause,
   but like the poison of an asp
   you've let be comforter.
   But really, it's a relationship you've understood,
   mindlessly, perhaps, but still so well,
   that nothing can deter your mourning for a jesters skull.
   Perhaps the meaning's always dear. Perhaps not more
        dear for the fences
   that it springs upon us unawares.
   The few words that no one understands are always those
   that need that understanding - and what of art?
   Why reason for a suffering? a curse that punches through
   without quite the willingness, quite the curiosity to explore
        farther
   And what of love? of, well, Ophelia and Helen? the mindless
        imbecility
   (never clear cut) that shadows each of us
   and all of them?

   Well, so much for suffering...And how about the image?
   What do we see, hear, smell, taste?
   What is the embitterment of the universal agon? God?
   I wouldn't have presumed...(poison's always better than bad
        blood).

   Poet! the image is incertitude!
   How to accept the fact that a relationship
   needs the faltering as a farmer needs
   the fences to mould and crack and fall apart.
   Relationship, poet, that is mending!
   not much good if nothing bends.

   They say a tiger in a cage leads a longer life than those who
        have their
   freedom to themselves...it's trying to escape that matters most
        not incarceration.
   And, poet, this relationship, it's like as if
   you are waiting ripe corn before you've even planted the seed.
   That's the surest way to trample on the root of man.
   That's the certain way virginity remains the virgin,
   that blood will challenge blood
   and afterlife will never be a simple reason
   to forget or to recall the milestone of refusal
   you think you've brought on to yourself.
   It's never that, but it always is
   throughout creation, do you think a chance was never missed?



   Even the unkindest cut of all is less an abrasion of reality,
        even falsified reality,
   in which we tightly sleep like needles in a pin cushion.

   Needless to say, the prisoner escapes, he always does.
   Society is never any better off for the loss of a few religious
        symbols...
   an idyll refrains from itself simply when the rites,
   those rites are never powerful enough
   to overcome even the simplest example
   of existentialism. It may not have been perfect in its conception
   but...

   Rays of freedom proliferate. The fog that gathers
   our eternity, as when with forceps the doctor
   forces the child refusing to be born
   (tied off at two ends - cut between)
   into the primal scream!
   If we were fed by this: passion of
   Ophelia - lilies on a stagnant pond,
   we might smell of want, but walls are still the same,
   shutting out what they proliferate,
   relegate to those fantastic nuisances
   that are never frozen by conception. It's a game
   that children often play amongst their elders.
   It's a universe of accepted definitions, ill defined yet
        very definite...
   Legally there is no voice. The voice one makes
   must be less than what acceptance writes with pointless awe...

   Even now, the critics sanctify the music on the radio.
   It's part of everything. If we hide away all our sacrifices,
   stealing glimpses of what might have been, we will run
   headstrong into a wall put there by ourselves.
   In our dreams we tear them down - perhaps,
   perhaps we still need them in reality,
   like the killing of an ant never matters much to us
   until we are ourselves an ant giving substance
        to obeisance.
   Like god laughs with thunder in his eyes and a dragon in her
        mouth.
   Of this insane laughter, can we ever find a cure?
   Perhaps...well, perhaps everything and nothing all at once, for
   all embraces silence
                       and the void.

   But we can never be sure.
   Must certainty always be such an obscure disease?
   Neither doctor, nor nurse can help with that.
   The poet dreams inviolate amusements...
   and if the bed of truth doesn't creak tonight it's because
        the floor has melted
   to a perfect joke to tell a friend.
   They say that a praying mantis eats it's mate.
   When we return to that can the shadows of love ever be obscene
        again?
   And Hamlet would tell those naughty tales that will make a virgin
        blush red rose...
   But neither, in due course, needs explanation.
   Hamlet wasn't mad, but he was a fool.
   Yorik was the wisest of the lot. Yorik with his skull
   that Holan doesn't dare to mention.
   Well...perhaps he does...after all, it's the thought that counts:
   the simplicity of each emotion.  Even Helen's skull
   was hardly identifiable after so many years in Hades
   (It wasn't even the most beautiful of the lot..
   but they forget to tell us that...they take pity on the myth
        itself).

   Sadness forces us to re-direct our energy into an ecstatic
        pandemonium...
   no less for the mask we wear and take off at a masquerade -
   no less for the inflated raft to escape to a deserted place
   nearer to society than freedom is alone...
   And so Oedipus Rex violated this insane perfection...
   he couldn't have helped it - after all, the blind leading the
       blind
   get somewhere...
   It is only we, the sighted, who are blind...
   but that is nothing new...
   like sex with too sweet cream lost in the afternoon,
   one is always at one's own indiscretion.
   Subordinates always, (in fact, it's their right) snicker...
   but to take notice of the abyss when the dark conceals the fate
   of three white doves...
   that is another story, challenged by the history of
   volatile emotions. In fact, the too few who agree,
   do not so much agree, but vanquish with the whips of hate
   a forceful union based on principle - like the ceremony of a
        suicide,
   who reaches out, not for understanding, but to understand -
   No wonder the heart of the world weighs heavy on the soul of
        chance.
   The castrated do not pull away, but they attack -
   even the rivers laugh at them:
   for what cannot drown must drown in air -
   and it is more or less a photograph that leads the thought
   back to those ideals that never where.

   They wanted to be martyrs but didn't want to go that far...
   It's like old underwear, after a while the body accepts its own
        filth -
   no one cares anymore - and the garbage heap becomes
   another Oxyrhynchus - another archeologist's dream -
   of course the have good noses - they're like bloodhounds on the
        make,
   a piece of ash in the greatest part of a debate -
   a debacle of modest pride priced above the sky -
   and isn't much of any passion just the same? for instance,
   to play at waiting we must masturbate without the
   satisfaction of a scented holocaust - we're not so far removed
   that we cannot see the empty mirror that reflects our sex -
   we recall each single moment in a perfect harmony,
   like bobcats on a picket fence - which brings us back to
   what was won through Helen's rape...
   I doubt that we could ever find the curtain drawn aside,
   and poor old Homer "Blind as a bat", but bats have finer
   sonar than the right of way beneath the stars -
   Bats are hardly blind, they just see a whole lot better...

   When a child cries and the ravagement of death is near
   the open door to empty corridors and sutured calling cards
   isn't then that the game must always be all out for everything
   and even nothing that has so much to give beyond the triple rose  
      is quite the hangman's game...
   Even Robspierre had little to say in the way of sympathy...
   Once the point is made the image of retreat looms near -
   very like the darts of melted time
   across Da Vinci's forehead:
   eagle eyes that penetrate a mole's darkness.
   Again Lear creeps in, sheepskin touching naked flesh -
   It is not much the rain that matters anyway,
   it's who you're with and what you do - Even solitude
   must need its comforted
   just to notice that the execution doesn't always come at dawn -
   Time's pre-eminence doesn't always follow human need.
   The foibles of the innocent are not at all concerned with this...
   their duty is to refusal - their duty is towards a blade of grass,
   an ear of corn, an unturned page, a dream come true.
   They are never prisoners, either of themselves or others -
   How could they be? - Such situations arise for those
   who accept the vision of their duty (which controls all nature)
   with the breath of purity -

   So, Casanova came out of the shadows and spoke very freely that   
      he even
   very much surprised himself:
   "Well, anyway, it filters the air - everything that is not a
   mask must be violated - is that it?
   damn you - if you think that I, I this I,
   this flesh, this feeling, can't also feel disgust and violence...
   well then, tear that mask apart - I'd rather there was violence,
   a show of emotion than falsehood -
   and even when you admire all your 'conquests'
   a sexual inbalence results which places you far below what any
   man should be -
   If you do not feel anything, what's the use of living then?
   If it's a cocoon you want, then jump into the bathtub filled with
      lard -

   Anyway, don't hurt others more emotional than you - a cocoon is
      for those
   who want to be alone - for those who hate themselves
   so much that they force a false reality upon themselves
   and thinks that that could be the only truth - Your falsehood
   is an abomination - shape up, man, or get out of it -"

   In this way Casanova went back to what he was.
   He made no excuses -
   I have never heard anyone talk like that, but it must be said.
   In truth, he was talking to himself, his own mirror image, his
   own shadow (call it conscience, if you will, it doesn't matter what),
   he was forcing himself to feel those emotions
   he could never comprehend before - Even love was never part
   of his vocabulary.
   He became a librarian just to read those pornographic novels
   he once thought he had as life.
   He had come to realize that everything he had
   faded away because of it.
   He always blamed it on others...he didn't see himself...
   the mirror always was deceptive.

   But it didn't last...and I don't think it ever was
   himself that spoke. Perhaps I spoke; perhaps even Silence...

   - - - - - - - - - -

   You see how it is? No one cares about the poison,
   until they themselves are forced to put the cup there for themselves
   to drink from... by that time they have lost those insights
   that they wanted so to fathom -.
   Needless to say, like a roasted pig, they didn't get
   to see their finest hour. Their ideals were far too
   obstinate. And even if they've escaped the butcher's block,
   what have they won? What gained?
   Do they know themselves any better? Well, perhaps...
   But still, it's the walls; especially at night,
   quite alone a night, that each must be
   confronted with - there's no star to guide them anymore,
   and a storm is brewing from the west...

   How does a man stake his claim on another human being?
   Does one ever stake a claim, or does one just manipulate?
   Was the rape of Helen justified, or was Paris mad?
   Love is such a curious emotion; it's like balancing on a
   tight rope with a noose around your neck -
   The slightest intervention, even by the wind...
   the wind that brings the words...that even shakes
      the universe.

   .   .   .   .   .

   To gain a foothold...
   to gain a moment of precise fidelity,
   and for two days now you have brought together
   thunder from above and water from below:
   there is conflict in your life.
   What frozen corpses are there yet to be buried?

   You have learned much, all too fast and all too cruel:
   perhaps it's time to assimilate whatever offerings
   you have brought upon yourself.

   Gain a foothold, poet...

   Even Hamlet had cause to retreat -
   cause to vanquish himself from the influence of her who
   forced his recognition.
   But life is filled with consequences that we set in motion
   and cannot control.
   Thought before action never is that easy:
   to come to grips with yourself is even worse -
   it's easy to crush a blade of grass because we do
   not analyze the situation - but that still
   does not excuse the act.

   Poet, to regain yourself, to have what you want,
   to be certain of your actions...
   "Aye, there's the rub!" Hamlet out from behind the curtains,
   like a bold and overzealous Claudius.
   What else could he say? He had a fine writer of speeches
   to put those words in his mouth...

   You are still alone. There is no sympathy
   from any quarter of the world
   that you have known from insignificance.

   - - - - - - -

   And the wine is not blood. And what we believe is
   not all that really is. And you should know by now
   that "fields of ruin" never vanish with the mystic night
   of would-have-been...

   Alas now, the poet speaks, "A wedding in black
   can never be a mask - like a poet's only salvation
   is the wine he has no need to drink - It is the emptiness
   of an emotion felt too much - It is the emotion of a
   loss that is not yet a loss at all -
   And it is not true that beginnings are the hardest -
   it's the following through - the coming to grips with the
   reality of the situation that poisons all our hopes and even our
       deepest dreams -
   Perforce to say, that there is nothing worse than doubt that will
   metamorphosize to fear before your awe-struck eyes...
   That consumes the whole of everything...What's left? What is
       really left
   without a voice to guide one? without a hunchback for protection?
   without a secret love and the spiciness of an intrigue?
   what is left when fear robs you blind? when madness twists your mind
   and contorts your face with the image of a false religion?
   And what do you notice, here before you, here before this
   audience of empty chairs
   and swinging coat hangers that lovers never have a need to
       use...yes
   and this I, this bleeding poet opening his veins upon the sand of
       innocence...
   shaking hands with lost illusions, with the music of a pride
       castrated long ago...
   and of course this violence, this nether realm of those emotions
   locked away behind a painted door upon the wall...even we can
       enter here
   leaving behind the black mirror of an ancient disposition we hang
       on to
   because we cannot see the other side...

   Yes, and what about that love? what about the way we manipulate
       it
   through hate... yes, and even that is not uncertain in all of us.
       We hold
   just too many ill defined conceptions... and the greatest is the
       misconception
   of that desperate silence... love, so ill expressed, that we lose
       despite
   a feeling of sincerity... Yes, and even I, I cannot be trusted in
       the game of love!
   Do you understand? I will covet my neighbour's wife if given half
       the chance,
   because I am still the minatour...What pride if left? The pride
       of destroying another human being
   for the trust they showed? Is that what all of love should be
       about?
   So see them there, why do I bother? a wall would be a better
       listener...
   And is anyone ever so naive as not to see the battered walls of
       chance
   resound with a furious ingratitude...?

   Perhaps I shouldn't speak at all... Lear may yet have told the
       truth
   by hiding in a cave... But it's the Space Age now and all we care
       about
   is a hollow sexuality. About the truth... I see nothing in
       confession...
   Nothing wrong that is... Why hide yourself away with dour
       incertitude
   when the air has very few poison darts...? And those there are
   we dodge them every day... Yes, and it is also hard to make up
       one's mind...
   very hard indeed, concerning those events that change one's life
   in a very direct and difficult way. One never 'plans' these
       episodes -
   but one does, one might be blind to them at the time of their
      conception
   but that stage is all too real...

   It was a dark day, a day of rain
   she spoke about the acquisition of student loans
   of course I wasn't all that interested in the topic
   I came only because she was alone
   I came only to see her
   She told me later that she was very frightened of me that day
   She got dressed up and wanted me to take her out
   We were just about to go when it began to rain again
   She was incredibly beautiful
   with her newly cut dark hair which she couldn't get to shape the
      way 
   she wanted
   to the nervous energy and
   how she told me that I looked exactly like her husband
   and that oh if I only did not look so much like him
   The restaurant was dark with red table cloths and music which was
   much 
       too loud
   I only drank a beer
   The conversation swayed from all to all
   To how we waste our energies and friends their mental
   capabilities
   I said that as a poet I must nurture all neuroses
   She laughed and repeated the phrase
   Turned it over with her tongue
   I waited for a single sign I had not found it
   until that moment where she said If only you did not
   so much look like him, if only...
   
   Through the rain going back to the apartment
   Will you invite me up again?
   Yes
   I fell in love with her
   And yes, there are lies in love
   and yes, too, there is deception
   and the next time that I saw her
   not too many days from then
   he was there, and she was walking around in her nightgown
   showing off her charms
   and she sent him out to get some milk and told mr how afraid she
      was
   that night alone with me
   and how everything seemed suddenly alright
   and how I took that as a light to follow through the darkness
      of the path that I had cut
   through this the jungle of a poet's dreams
   and that how I was in love with her
   and that, yes, there are those lies in love
   and also deception

   and how we were all later on
   after there no longer were any secrets
   and he acted so childish to her and that I
   jumped on him with It's time now to grow up
   and how shocked he was
   and how he looked at me and then at her
   he left for a moment and she told me how much
   she was in agreement and had wanted to say those things
   to him herself
   and that he treated her so cruelly... not cruelly in a physical
      sense
   but cruelly in a mental abberation of insensitivity
   and how that day I wanted her
   and how I couldn't stand her there with him
   and how I left I had to leave
   I didn't want to leave
   but what was there to do I who loved her so
   I who followed every lie
   I who shook deception's hand

   And then how she phoned me
   and that I told her all the truth
   Is there anything she asked
   What do you think
   Yes there is
   I want to see you
   Me
   Yes you
   Only you
   When
   Make time
   and how deception smiled black eyed in the wilderness
   And how I was there I who held life in such sanctity
   I giver of the word Seeker of the truth
   I was there to murder all for her
   To sacrifice everything for her embrace
   for the sent of her holding me so captivated
   there at the edge of the precipice

   So much dawned on me that night
   so much dawned
   and if we live again
   if we live again
   what chances do we take
   what choices do we hold
   and what throw freely to the wind
   what feelings sacrifice for those we sanctify
   and how I loved her well with lies
   how I promised to do everything for her
   how I was and am the blinded minotaur
   charging at his own image in the black mirror smeared with his
   own blood
   smeared by his own fear and jealousy and hate
   and what image does he see there behind his shoulder
   the image of deception
   and he tried to turn away
   turn his back away
   no matter what he turns toward his destiny...

   - - - - -

   Well, I see the audience is stunned - better to be stunned than
   have no
   reaction at all... that's what I always say. Nicht Wahr?..."

   ...

   The poet, hunched over leaves the stage in sorrow and to an
       almost silent applause
   from his conscience... he doesn't even hear that. It is still
       only
   her he sees. One cannot remain in love forever; nor out of it...
   But
       how much more does he have to
   deny himself to make that one effort that will not be
   fraught with fear? -

   So the poet came back. This time he wore the mask of Paggliacci.
   He wanted tears painted on so real that he couldn't wipe them off
       again.
   He wanted a lot of things that simply were denied him... he
   wanted to go
       after them,
   but somehow held himself back. His melancholy knocked him down
   and the
       difficulty of love
   propped him up again with hasty promises and new found hopes
       bound
   by genetic chains in stagnant cesspools - but the poet like an
   acrobat
       must always
   breathe the air of survival, even if he falters - he must taste
   the
       consequences of every fruit,
   even that which comes from poison vines - otherwise how can he
   call
       himself a poet?
   how indeed describe the world without ever having been a part of
       it?
   the poet always meets his fate head on - not always granted for
       the better,
   but he has a knack of knowing when he must retreat - not give up
       - for retreat
   is only part of harmony - as is waiting - Listen, here the poet
   speaks
       again:

  "I don't like what's happening, these emotions I have never
       wanted to feel.
   I don't want them now - I would rather hide away again, but know
   that
       it's too close -
   one's feet in mud and cannot run away - waiting is the perfect
   opportunity, now that further action would only complicate the
       matter -
   I will wait - what have I to lose? - no matter which way I turn
   I run headlong into fate..."
   . . . . . . .
   Nothing ever comes to an end
   it all melts back into the beginning
   just as a knife sharpened is dependant
   on the blunting of the blade
   to make a living
   we blunt a relationship
   to build it up again
   Whether we do it on purpose
   or it just happens
   that is hard to say
   Nature's laws are very wide
   and difficult and we are like
   her children attempting and integral calculus
   with grade one mathematics
   It just can't be done
   or perhaps it can
   but have just not found the way
   to go about it

   And the poet believed himself to be above it all
   he believed that he could beat the odds
   but the odds are what?
   he's like Icarus, waxen wings and all
   he's like the bull that sees the red cape but doesn't see the
   sword 
       behind it
   he sees the object of his desire
   he doesn't see the wall surrounding her
   and he doesn't scale the wall or even attempt to come through the
   open
       front door
   he attempts to ram it down

   Poet! nurture your discression!
   there are very few who survive this way
   and even if they do one has only frightened the object of desire
       away
   by a show of such blind violence...

   Wait, poet... Wait with feet in mud and the ocean lapping at your
   feet
      if you have to,
   but wait...
   no matter how difficult... It is the path that you have chosen
   and you'll get there
   but sometimes you can only go so far
   and have to wait for the obstacle to clear itself
   sometimes you have to wait for her to come to you
   and waiting that is difficult
   teaches you a lot more things
   than rushing blindly forth can ever do
   If icarus had taken his flight slowly
   his wings would not have melted and at least
   he would again have safely
   come back down to earth
   Have patience poet, with your heart aflame
   and your mind untamed... waiting after all
   might yet be the only truthful way to gain...

 
   Copyright (c) 1979 Klaus J. Gerken
   Published by:
   Ygdrasil Press
   http://www.synapse.net/~kgerken
   kgerken@synapse.net
   alt.centipede
