second zero edition may / Cleveland / 1976
This Poem Is Dedicated With Curious Love To:
BIG LEONARD – discorporated 1966 – REV. DEWEY FAGERBERG – REV. CLEO MALONE – REV. JOHN SCOTT – JEANNE SONVILLE – Tony & Mary Walsh – Hermon Cook – George Fitzpatrick – Frank “SPIDERMAN” Savage – Sammy Franks – Bob Capelli – Linda – G.T. Chappelear – Catherine Tekakwitha – Tim Hall – Ron Lucas – rjs & sandie – Ron Cornman – John Rose – Ron Green – Frank & Vikki – Rusty & Maria – Ben – Jeff – Jack – Simon Emler – Beverly and the lesbian dwarfs of ed sanders.
They want me to justify myself –
Fuck them
j.s. rutherford
pre-face
you dont understand poetry – poets gamble with life on occasion – but usually they’re just pimps for the system – the total real meaning of this poem is, i dont understand what its all about. Everyone who knows about the light disappears when i ask them, christians murder everyone who gets in their way, the jews havent learned much in 2,000 years, the hindus have ego hang-ups & the moslem are psychopaths. Voodoo (which is the black mans catholicism) is just forgotten. More & More people are getting interested in WITCHCRAFT, which is OK as long as they dont confuse it with Black Magic. White magic is fun & you can learn but Black Magic is dangerous, YOU CANT WIN, & if you’re successful with it, it will catch you in your next lifetime, you’ll probably be reborn a poet in an industrial society.
I once read something about existential boredom & since then, ive been bored – some weird consciousness bend forces me to recognize all my actions as illusionary games designed to fill in the boredom. I cant find the ‘prime cause’….its too easy to say “Its Gods Will” but then everyone tries to explain to me what that means. Does God want us to be bored? Well, Fuck Him. Are we supposed to blow-up the planet & return to energy & spirits ore are we supposed to protect the planet and get liberated thru programmed acts of love? I suspect it is somewhere in the divine mass subconscious that this country is programmed to fall apart – is that God’s will? does that mean all attempts to save this country are against the Will of God? Who are you working for? Almost everytime i commit an act of love, i get an infection!
The only time i am happy is when i am being happy, but that usually brings other people down so they bring me down. Helping people makes my ego feel good but the mystics say get rid of your ego – should i feel bad when i feel good because i did a good thing? (whatever a good thing is?) Helping People for nothing is boring. last year, sex got boring, now if God sez everyone should have lots of children, where are the priests hiding their children? or are the holymen working against the holy mass subconscious – the web – the tantra of God –
So this poem was written because someone asked me to & i was bored & didnt know else to do…
My poem. My poem about DA Levy
I sit in the morning
before the dirty hydrogen balloon erupts
revealing its intentions like a self immolating monk
from behind the steep and ancient upheavals
whose stony peaks unzip the sky as it passes
undressing every blue molecule
only to robe them all in white
as if the appearance of something pure
will make today any different.
I sit in the early morning before the caffeine
before the dogs
before the wife
before the marijuana
before the radio
and I read from a poets black bible
the crimes of better intentions
the fables of shameless confession
the entire written body
of a religion
where every practitioner is
god and devil martyr both.
My even handed destroyers of pretension
bringing order to chaos
aligning non-parallels
soaking charred bones
in baths of their own blood
sacrificing the innocent sheep
of their eyes
to acquire the forked tongue
apples of epiphany.
I see DA Levy spilling ink from his fingers
on Cleveland City Jail letterhead
choking on the nuts and bolts
his digestive rejected
smoking his own body
for lack of any other option
learning who he is not
from the people who surround him
but never seeing in them
any clue as to the person
he will become.
He learned about himself from only himself
hurling chunks of broken concrete at
police cruisers,
scorching suburban lawns
with a tongue of open flame as he passed
his body the breadth of an army
back to the cities inner,
stomaching the cold realizations that
living the bloody existence of a warrior poet
among a population of sleepy
accepting comfort seekers
can only so concisely announce.
I hope that you would find some small
incident of my life to make you proud.
I hope that you can see I did my best
to shoulder the load
that you took the time to gather
and shouldered so well
during your short time.
I still feel the isolation
of 125 dollar a week rust belt hotel rooms
meditating on the death of DA Levy
while roaches
with cameras for eyes
fucked in the walls
spirit possessed by the drunken demonic ghosts
of a 1950’s royal typewriter
that consumed and stored the
madness of every hand that
ever danced across its keys
crossing back into my
body like the Holy Ghost
and then again back into the steel machine
hanging myself nightly from a cross of
empty bottles wearing a crown of cigarette butts
never finding enough sadness to fill me
but still searching all the same.
D.A. Levy murdered at age 26 by neo-McCarthy disciples
a bullet of leaden light buried between his earthly eyes
finally cleansing Cleveland Ohio of all that is obscene
leaving the poets who came after to grow up in the
redundant homogeneity of right winged moralities
the fine white lung collapsing dust of stone quarries
and the heretical polluted spectacle of a river catching fire
and then burning for a week after
no one sure of the correct technique
to extinguish burning water
because that knowledge died with DA
it is a knowledge only a poet could possess
never mind the activist in him murdered as well
who may have found the means to plug the pipes
of the polluting offenders
Stuffing the gaping ends of their corruption with
police blotters and financial reports
bibles soaked in kerosene
and then lighting them like a wick
to burn back and detonate at the source
saving the Cuyahoga from its bewildering ignition.
The self titled toilet lama of Lake Erie, DA Levy
I see him now a boy on Euclid Avenue
moving through the conservative crowds
briefcases bumping his elbows
and necks ties tight and clean as nooses
his body there shuffling in the stream of business executives
intuitively distrusting every cop he passes
though still influenced enough by youths innocence
to be uncertain why
his mind strung above him like a kite
in the steel gray sky
looking down from a perspective
the police or executives could never fathom
their minds tethered to their own spinal cords
pondering the Browns chances this season
thinking of church meetings
doctor’s appointments
republican candidates
thoughts running plain and linear as calendars.
Young DA must have felt perpetually uneasy
as if he was being secretly photographed
as if someone was taking notes behind his back
He must have seen the hammers shadow long before it fell.
He must of have known the dismal early fates
of the brightest burning lights.
He must have felt the hostile return
as he absorbed the vicious reverberations
of police, politicians and judges
even the Cleveland Plain Dealer
whose job he performed with more competence
and no pay.
He must have felt them closing in
guns drawn to murder R Crumb obscenities
save our fair city
Cleveland Ohio
from the growth pains
of internal progression
but let their complacence grow
piggishly obese
spilling over the gross belt of the suburbs
like an overfed stomach.
He must have smelled the smoke of the river before
his death condemned those of us left behind
to ponder
the impossible mystery of its
ironic flowing ash.
He must have felt each missed connection
as if
it were his own lack of vision
that made
the world that murdered him
to dull
to incise
the lead blanket
of its own
living sleep.
When I am there now
walking in that city
I still hear his voice singing
from every building
vibrating the girders
of the Federal building
until the windows shatter
outward
falling like raindrops
but landing like blades.
His song details a folding collapse
and tells of the hulking hollow rubble
that was once a shining city
now left
beside the river
to smoke forever
beneath Ohio’s
tarnished
silver sky
a smoldering heap
of what once was
his “lonely tombstone charm”.
Copyright @ 2007 Jason Wittmer
Thank you for your deep love to Levy! I also miss him a lot and send my love from China~