r.m. engelhardt | six poems

THE LAST PUNK ROCKERS

For Kali

She says
That the world
Is changing.


Everything changes,
I say.


But we never
Expected love
Or old age or
All the flowers
Blooming so late.


That happiness
That came later
And not sooner
Or in our younger days
Of punk & whiskey,
Slam dancing & black.


Oh wild nights, wild nights
No longer so wild but
Full of reflection, calm
And quiet reading


And the old memories
Of these defining things


Joy now being
A cup of coffee
And the days
Last cigarette


Old movies
And classical music
On our old radio


Boring?


To some?
Yes perhaps.


But it is these things,
The truths of an
Eternal hope,
An eternal love
That guide us


So let all
The children play


Because the
Old school finally


“Rules”

SILENCE FALLS

Incantations.


Psalms of syntax
Sonnets of dust
Stanzas of the night
Travelers by night,
Nocturnes.
Silence.
“Silence, Words ever-moving into foolishness
Fading. The silence prolonged, so secretive of thought”
The Silence Falls.
Love, most, the most difficult of phrases,
The man of this phrase out of phase ~ fragments left of
What’s lost, out of time & out of place.
Silence Falls.
The spirit
Is the future,
The spirit is the flame
By the sea, by the light and by the storm
Returning, perceiving the great wheel turning
A vortex.
The past an abstract sky
The true song thru speech
As the veil will have it
All beauty dropped out of time, out of loneliness
Thru body and mind, soul.
These casualties all things
Becoming
Vox Verbum
Postremus Cantus.
As The Silence Falls.
Words, Images Fading
Into history, voices~poetry
The song an echo repeating
Into the void.
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick.
Next exit
To the place where
All our worlds meet
And end.

IN THE CHURCH OF 
COFFEE & SMOKES

“And now,
Let us all pray”
Ex-hale.
Does anybody
Have a cigarette?
Let’s all talk about your day,
Light up simultaneously.
Oh Lord, I need more sugar
In my coffee
And not that artificial 
Crap
Confession; 

One on one,
Let’s all talk about
All of your sins,

 Smiling.
No hail Mary’s, no regrets
For our God only demands
More cigarettes.
And that you light up
And get happily caffeinated
So that all, will be “forgiven”
Does anybody have another cigarette?
He hears your prayers
So pray, to Saint Marlboro
And they shall all be answered
More coffee?

 More taxes?
More bullshit from the masses?
This religion, is getting damn expensive
“Amen”

THE MAN IN THE DARK BLUE SUIT

The dream-state is scheduled as follows,
Brought on by a strong depravation of feeling
 and the need for some seduction upon reality.
 Absinthe and cocaine and a great deal of wine add to the ceremony. Beforehand, a dark blue suit and a thin black tie are chosen, the polyester of the pants cuffs scratching &
itching against his skin. After the party the couple goes home late in the evening where they make love, argue and eventually… fuck. And for the first time in a long time he falls asleep blissfully and unaware of the universe closing in on him. And when he awakes the next morning he finds that she has vanished and is no longer there or by his side. And in missing her he suddenly realizes that he is lying down in a garden surrounded by thousands of flowers of every kind, and is no longer wearing any shoes. Confused and barefoot, he walks home alone and without any keys in his pockets he rings the apartment doorbell. But when she answers the door she looks around & right through him, as if he were a ghost.
The dream-state is scheduled … as follows.

HIPSTER

It used to be in the land
Of bland that once upon a time


Hipsters


Were something cool.


The hipster
Was the outsider
The hipster
Was a hitchhiker
& The hipster
Played jazz


All
Night
Long


“Hipster”


The word
Bringing into mind
Cool visions of
Cody, beatnik dreams
And Bad-Ass kats
Dressed in leather jackets
Dressed in black
Standing by themselves
Alone on the street corner
Smoking weeeeeeeeeed.


Yes,
The hipster
Was once the shit,
The hipster
Was once the man, or the woman
And an ultimate disciple
And the purveyor of


“The Cool”


But what happened?
What the fuck?
What did the media fucking


Do?


When they took control &
When they slowly
The cool out of the cool
And gave it, betrayed it &
Handed it over
To a generation
Of whiney, materialistic
Starbucks “Kids”


Who don’t think
For themselves
Don’t know themselves
And don’t even have a concept
Of what cool IS


Except for
The mall.


All sitting around
Smoking weed
That they stole
From their mom
And believing that
The word “Hipster”
Means nothing but
Out of style, out of fashion


And “Dead”


How very “Un~Hip.”
And how very


“Square”


Of you.

EPITAPH

Epitaph for,


The lost poem
Which contained


Everything
And nothing.


Touched everyone, anyone
Who desired


The mystery of mysteries
Words of words, which brought forth


Language


Both blessed & cursed us
Married us, buried us and parted


The heavens and the
Deep blue seas


Made Houdini disappear
And broke the sole of
Khrushchev’s soul


Shot Kennedy
And then shot a rocket


To the moon


Sold us, indiscriminate
Commanded us to war and glory
And holocaust – unimagined imagination
The scavengers & architects, history
Fighting for space apocalyptic
Down on Wall Street and in the Silicone Valley


Stages of poetry and stages
Of time living, breathing & dying
On the battlefields


Of life.

The Poem,

Too early

Too late

Too bad


The lost poem
Which contained
Nothing and everything
Everything and nothing


At all.


You left it home on the
Kitchen table where your children
Drew on it
In crayon


It is just as well.

R.M. Engelhardt

Albany, NY based writer. R.M. Engelhardt has published several books over the last two decades including Nod, Logos, Alchemy, The Last Cigarette: The Collected Poems of R.M. Engelhardt and others. A poet & writer, Engelhardt through his ideas and visions has helped to create a large amount of the Upstate, Albany, NY spoken word poetry scene and is the host of “SAINT POEM READING SERIES” an Open Forum-Mic For All Poets held every 3rd Monday of each month at The Upstate Artists Guild (UAG). His work has also been published by many journals on the net & in print including Retort, Verve, Industrial Nation, Sure! The Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Thunder Sandwich, Fashion For Collapse, 2nd Avenue, The Angry Poet,Danse Macabre, Full of Crow & many others. He is also the editor of the magazine The LITERARY ROGUE.

0 Replies to “r.m. engelhardt | six poems”

  1. You say much that vibrates to the song mind of some of use who’ve been around back there, wherever that there was for some of us.

    Do send us some poems at the email add. above.
    I publish both Backstreet and Clark Street Review.

    Ray

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