Prostitutes and other sad angels

Prayer for the Death of a Grandfather

He came from the dysfunctional side of the human family. So…he was dysfunctional. She came from a small tribe. So it was not about the money. She was fed up with him…being fed up…about the war.

Medication and quitting helped him survive the death of fall…and rumors of another ice age. Children, the beast of pray and a 1,000 lovers helped her…go on forgetting medication and quitting…helped him at all…replace her laughter.

Like any coward…he wanted to blame everyone but who was responsible…for his inevitable train wreck. So she offered to translate his poetry…so it would rhyme for the world. Here is a test. You can begin…with this apology to your daughter by the unsavable:

Don’t take the unforgivable so personal. Forgive him as easily or as hard as you would anyone who hungers for life when they felt they were dieing in the beauty of childhood as the smallest of the ugly and unlovable.

Because Despite all his cruelty…between his circumcision and death. Despite all his blood letting…between the diseases of the mind and the cures of his soul. But most of all…because your mother believed his story…I want her more now than ever before…to believe what he knows. For me it will never be an easy prayer to undue pain in the here and now by saying…good-by forever.

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For Sophie

Without her consent he swore to tell her everything, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Therefore he grew as boring and as dangerous …as the Geneva Convention. After all he never meant to imply…he would be easy…to love.

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On the pages of some Holy Book…from long ago is the following inscription: Stolen especially for Maid Marion who never understood Robin who never understood himself ..how the hungry…can steal.

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A Street Called Berlin

I remember a knock once at the door of an old lover…who I lost. It was a dark time I want to forget carrying a child through the streets of Sodom only to arrive late trying to break into the room she had for anyone…but an infant boy.

In those days like today it was a typical Inn. The owner was well protected…by guards. So I tried even the magic of begging…for love which leads me to the question…why do you think by saying my name was Joseph would it have given my family…a place to rest?

Do lies work better than prayer… like years later when it was all in a typical days work to trade stolen goods in Gomorrah…for medicine…for another child.

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Death of an Elder

Some elders have a right to know. Some are not that profound. And for some…even teaching obscenities and profanities to innocence is not one of their charms.

So by the time he returned to the real world…he began to rewrite this story to himself:

Once upon a time he could have been happy with almonds and flowers…and her. But he expected too much because he wanted too little.

So as the funeral party moved on a new lover tried to laugh and dance at the music of these lines: from flesh to flesh from ashes to ashes now she will never find you…hiding here.

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I was there at the scourging and remember the Crown of an Iron Age pressed upon the brow. There…bound in leather in robes…moist with agony they reminded the defeated lover what a slut and good fuck…the virgin is.

I know…I’ve heard the argument before: the world knows nothing of him therefore he knows nothing…of the Earth or the obscenity of crusades.

For that reason I understand this crucifixion: it is Lucifer he wages war with and follows…and leads each fallen angel from the prisons of hell…against the thrown of heaven.

After all let’s not pretend the father…is innocent of evil for it was not born in the garden not that kind…of hatred. And even demons have their plan in protecting martyrs from your un-scarred body.

So do not tell me of blasphemy not when the pure of heart have known mutilation and despair and a deity so unmoved by prayer…it is frightening.

Now, let the ashes of my corpse terrorize you in spite of him…in spite of her in spite of the crimes of a forsaken messiah I have chosen sides and swear I remain forever at war…with your God! ________________________

The Abortion

On the day you kept the rabbi from celebrating the bris and the priest from performing the christening the angels ceased to dance.

Now I give you these truths as evidence of my agony: The womb is not so miraculous as the lost mind…that gave birth to the infants laughter. The tabernacle is not so sacred as the heart…that conceived the fetal yearnings. And nine full moons is not as long as each day…I dream the child into life and forever from my embrace.

My heartache will not heal; your innocence will not return. For I have this scar you left as a memory…of your love.

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I remember as a child the woods and even farther away where the rainbow promised to touch the Earth and the side of a hill and the birds who lived there.

We picked blueberries then and swept a path through the green jungle vowing to never reveal the secrets we’ve now forgotten.

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Death of an Elder

Some elders have a right to know. Some are not that profound. And for some…even teaching obscenities and profanities to innocence is not one of their charms.

So by the time he returned to the real world…he began to rewrite this story to himself:

Once upon a time he could have been happy with almonds and flowers…and her. But he expected too much because he wanted too little.

So as the funeral party moved on a new lover tried to laugh and dance at the music of these lines: From flesh to flesh from ashes to ashes now she will never find you…hiding here.

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It’s easier to talk in the third person to tell you what I know about him.

He was upset…with you with the empty bed and with himself.

That is why he left the phone off the hook to warn you of his anger and his wounded vanity …and his phobia of phones.

And that is the most important thing I can tell you. He is not proud he can not abandon his hatred …even for the wrong reasons.

If you knew him better you’d understand why at 11:00 p.m. he wanted to call to torment you with the love of his tormented heart.

But the man is no fool. He was wise enough to know he did not want to know …it was already too late.

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For Stephen…who doesn’t want to know me

You don’t really know this but had I pressed the matter I could have easily slept with your wife.

It wasn’t easy not to. For me she smelled more of the earth than of raw vegetables. She was well trained in Jewish lore She knew everything about Rodin’s mistresses and she loved Michelangelo.

This is a warning: Don’t let her out of your sight. I can tell you from past experience some wives …are easy to misplace. _______________________

I never saw you in Tina min Square or St. Peters-burg or in the other prisons in Washington D.C.

I never saw you inhaling tear gas in Paris or in flames in Saigon and in a hundred thousand other cities and times I never caught you…stealing because you were hungry or naked or hunted or wanted to share a lost mind.

So do not tell me of love or freedom and how to wage war and especially do not tell me how to protect children.

Halfway between the Pentagon and the clinic my suicide note began far earlier on the road to Dachau or was it Syracuse or Front St. that reminds me…I have no family.

I am only here to warn you the last of the hippies

…is still alive.

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Lucifer, I could have loved you more once when you wore the tiara…at the Cyber Cafe. But now you have the coveted crown…of loneliness to wear so wear it wear it well…it becomes you. Because hell is empty and Satan is gone…leaving you only a thousand dollar phone bill and a wardrobe of chastity belts each one colder than the last.

And where is Satan? Satan is lost…and in a lonelier place still. Satan is in the nakedness of Limbo…and in the terror of wondering…with hopelessness if he is the Messiah…or the Antichrist or only in the agony of knowing he is loosing his mind forever…again. And you want to go there with him…but you can’t because you can’t hear his heart scream: When can I come home…from the war against hate? And can I ever come home…from the war against love?

So how did you think I would cum…and my kisses taste when you took your phone from the hook and changed your address in a night? Did you expect me to rest in peace…on the laurels of yesterdays…dead poems? And where were you…when Nature’s arms opened up and a forsaken man cried out: I have no scars. I can’t walk on water. I can’t change water into wine. I can’t be him.

And I wonder…are you jealous of her now…when she whispered then: That’s the way it’s suppose to be. Because you have long legs and beauty and your breasts and thighs are willing to be touched. But is Venus still in heaven? Because Cupid is gone too leaving her only…the dream of New York and holding hands …in Harlem.

And sometimes I too forget…what ever happened to the beauty of phone sex and the beauty…I never knew in Spokane who no doubt is already in the arms of another trading in golden locks for a more virginal phone number than the one she lured me in with.

After all wasn’t the music of my poetry…as good and angry as Patchable and Marilyn Manson Or didn’t you like the conversations and being welcomed to Limbo, my love, and the War against War where I’m still not sure…you were ever as nude “…as the young and the hopeless.”

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The Pretty Prostitute

Like Magdalene before her and the angels after her she was aging…and on the other side…of expensive. We collided, during a sick age…in a sick place; I, with my delusions of grandeur…and she, with stories of torture. There were wives there then…who argued in favor of damnation for the whores of the day…and the whores of the night. My whore was silent… so I argued…in favor of lovers.

It was useless…so to spite them…we shared cigarettes…and coffee and holding hands…and an embrace but a price was never agreed upon for love…or dinner…or a picnic in the sun…and then she was gone. Afterwords…by way of the streets…I found the address she gave me and was invited…into her asylum. So we talked again and embraced…and then in only moments I too was gone. I heard that day by means of the sick age and the sick place she found my flowers and candy and music…unimpressive so they ceased.

Later on…I came back to our meeting place…as I often do for days or weeks or months or even longer only to discover…she was already there waiting for me. She discovered…I hadn’t changed…but I had by way of money more stories now..of torture and pain. She had the unfortunate type of misery that did not like…that much company.

I remember…by morning this time we were no longer holding hands and by coffee…we were no longer talking and even my coins had stopped impressing her. What I do not remember…was why she did not argue…when I said good-by and made the cruel suggestion…that she have a good life.

It was a long time later…at a new meeting place where my long lost whore discovered I was still waiting for her and when I heard her say, “You’ve changed.” I realized…she hadn’t. She was still beautiful. As for whether she was diseased there are cures for some kinds of crimes but there is no cure for never knowing…if I was only…a one night stand.

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#prostitutes, #sad, #angels