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The obscure future
First he said he was Romeo
then he said he
was
drunk,
The
Tibetans don't have
a 'culture' of
Love
Between the Sexes Between the Bardos
between
the
streets.
I live in Death if I do not live in Life.
"I am alive. I am alive"
I cried, after
the crash...
Whose will or
abstinence, deleterious
I embraced yr. scent, yr.
innate desire, TANTRIC
after
the
drought
*
All this suffering serves Nothing.
(dream on bus) Merigar (tib. House of Fire) was on fire. But in
the water "I am alive"
Lolita, Tram. No. 9
The endless possibility of
Maria's
good
fortune,
*
CRIME
in
Italy
I borrow
a pen fr. a serious looking Musician:
The next thing I know is
Violinist forgets her violin
I almost make her
pay for the fact that she did not GIVE me her silver
pen, which I had borrowed
(on
the
train)
even tho she must have know I needed it,
but pursue her, crying
'signora, signora, il tuo violino....'
In
tears she thanks me for her violin
& then rewards me w. the silver pen.
The violinist was
very respectable looking & I was fascinated
by the musical notations she
was studying.
She
did not know I was a 'poet', although seemingly disordered, I careful observed her
her & later, after she departed, her violin
abandoned,
in
the
train
*
I'm
definitely weird, just like everyone
says, but is strange not also beautiful? Is my strangeness
NOT
my
ornament
after defending the 'Arabs' you can't speak that way
I say to the Nationalist, I meet 'Mohammed', who
saves me fr. the night, it's 5 below zero,
I'm stranded. Is Mohammed
worried about anything?
Not
at
all.
*
Not at all nervous or shy, just scared to death,
to be fucked in the ass after the guy abandons us in
a narrow building, & I'm only l7 & don't
know these 2 guys/ the
second one notices I'm bleeding & leaves me
alone,
really
alone,
*
Like everyone says, I'm not very social,
but one day, I'll write a poem that will tear out the inside of
your heart & leave you dripping gold blood on the body of your dream, & your dream, your sacred
dream,
will
be
mine
*
Madonna met the Queen & paid for it. I didn't pay
anything for the hotel room but forgot the
'practice' of the night.
As
I looked at you. long & hard, I looked right into your eyes of fire & you remembered your fire, & all the wet dawns & all the silent midnights, fell away fr. your transparent touch as you reached into the infinity
of the mother & found,
No
One
*
The
arc was located, beneath the shrine, carried on the roads,
by elders & gypsies. Disguised, the old women were singing & their voices were sweet as May, their steps were light as death. Their love only made me think one day we wld. meet
& the derelecta would bathe her own, her own
pores.
again.
Even if everyone else had children & I had only you,
my daughters & sons, small books of sacred verse & some that was pure trash, no wonder the trucks on
Avenue Rapp had taken it to the
cremation
ground.
My
mother & father,
had gone into the greater WORLD,
leaving me, w. not a friend or foe who cld. point out to me their dwelling place: in the great
beyond,
beyond
name & form, beyond repetition & non repetition, beyond,
generosity & the heart's inability to be generous, beyond,
the thaw & flow of the river, my old baggage was
gradually dissolving, dissolving on an island
of initiates & thieves, I
can't even remember,
the parting words
you said
to
me.
Amsterdam 2003
Louise Landes Levi is a poet, translator and musician. Her works include translations of Rene Daumal's RASA Essays on Indian Aesthetics, Sweet on My Lips: the Love Poems of Mirabai; and her own poetry books: Guru Punk, Avenue A and Ninth Street, and Don't Fuck with The Airlines. Photograph by Ira Cohen.