WARREN BEATH

It is always three o’clock in the morning
Here in the Never-Never
We are legion
we uncoil and rise
Cutting the cards
Deal us out, we of the Never-Never
We are legion
a rabble of voices.
In the Land of the Blind
the one-eyed are Kings
That is us.
We know everything
and we see all
Through the cracks of a mind
shattering in on itself
our thoughts are eternal
our thoughts are broken glass.
Our feet are bleeding.
And you
We see through you
You really don’t like us
And you don’t know it or won’t admit it
Admit it
The price of admission
We see through you
We know what you really mean
It’s in your voice
It’s in your motions
We see your thoughts.
We whipped ourselves senseless over this,
over the faces we saw in the moon.
And you
We see you surrounded by shadow people
whispering
We see you in rooms and rooms
We see you in soiled sheets
We know because we were there, too
We know what they do
And how they act and how they really
Are
and what they want
We smell the pillows
You are transparent to us
We see the ghouls and you let them eat
You let them batten like flies
You let them
You let them turn over the furniture
in the Temple
You let them write on your walls
You did their nails
Waiting ringside
You were their slave
We know what it really means
We are in the Never-Never
We live in the bottom of a well
We are in the hole in your wall
We are the cockroaches in your cabinet
and the nightbirds scuttling in the eves
We are the rats.
And you
It’s all land mines
We cannot walk without fear
We do not know where to step.
Who can breathe here?
There is no help
in the Land of the Never-Never.
We live in a rusted-out car
Eternally at your curb
watching from across the street
We see the comings
and the goings
the comings
We heard your screams
We heard you moaning
We saw him tightening
coiling inside you
That eruption
We saw the collapse
We smelled the pillow
We never sleep.
We are legion.
We see everything.
Nothing can hurt us
We cut off our own fingers
We thrust our minds into the garbage disposal
Up to the wrists.
We explore the sink trap
Of your past.
There are holes in our head
but we walk
Their are knives in our dreams
But we sleep.
Oh wake me from this dream.
Save me from this dream.
We are sick with love.
And you
Why did you do that?
Why him?
We mean, what was the appeal?
You saw something once we mean what was it?
How did he break your heart
If it was nothing?
Why did you follow him?
Why did you give up
Why surrender to that?
Our noses are pressed against your window
We want to know
We cry to you
but nothing comes out of our mouth
Why don’t you just kill us?
Hey we’re dying in here.
We don’t claim to know all the reasons
We only know all the secrets.
We have night vision
We sense heat
We are infra-red
We have the faceted eyes of insects
We see a hundred different reflections
and versions
we go all the way back to virginity
We are legion
and live on the head of a pin
live in that moment
that special moment
that awkward moment
that orgasmic moment
that moment
When you ruined us
You did not know us but you ruined us.
How does it feel?
The book is always open in our laps
We see the pictures.
We are Berkowitz in the park swing beyond the streetlight
Stacy kissing a boy in the car
We watch
We feel the lips
We taste the tongues
The Bulldog is in our pocket.
In a moment all will be well
We have become Death
The Destroyer of Worlds
We stood on the sidewalk in Honolulu
She spilled from her dress and asked for a light
Her pimp circled in the street
The cell phone to her ear
All of us drowning in a puddle of
flourescent light.
How to stop these pictures
The unrelenting assault of images
of memories
tales told by an idiot
We are lepers
We are not strangers to the unraveling
of a mind
nor the shrinking of a heart
We suck the tears
We drain the minds
We eat the brains.
We know what you are thinking.
We know the truth
We are changing shape constantly.
We of the Never-Never

 

In a society of hardboiled eggs
Tough guys
Dames
Murder for Hire
Murder Incorporated
A company of killers
we go out in the world of a morning
bring back the heads of our enemas.
Glock 9
Or automatic rifle to penetrate an engine block
We kill or be killed
But we only kill each other.
We’re monsters with machine guns
We will red dot your mother
with no conscience.
Nothing can stop us
We are killers and we break hearts.
In our world there is a code
but none can break it
Or even decipher it.
We don’t know why we kill or even when we kill
If we have truly killed or only imagined
Our imaginary kills,
those heads over the mantel look familiar
in the  mirror.
We shot ourselves in the morning
and gutted and cleaned ourselves over the hood of a Jeep.
Hung to dry and the meat wasps buzz.
They get a taste before we do.
We kill what we eat
And we are never full.
Like maggot flies we cover over our own corpses
in a winter coat
stippled with stingers
putrid with poison
swollen with venom.
We lay the eggs of our young
in your dead eyes
And when they are born they make a feast
of your soft insides.
We’re not so vicious or gone
We just dug up the graves
where your relatives lay
in Old Forest Lawn.
It’s not that we’re trying to be bad
All our innocent crimes
Seemed all right at the time
Not necessarily mad.
And at three in the morning when you see
your dead grandmother crawling up your leg
with a knife in her teeth
We would like you to think of us.

 
I never meant to hurt you.  I’m not that way at all.
Please believe the words of a heart
a heart that seems so small.
Why do I do things I never mean to do?
When all I that felt was love for you?
I never meant to hurt you.

I was an aphid
with wings of green gossamer
I met a ladybug
She took me home
my pretty lady bug
And one day she
said Mantis is coming
he was fierce with
serrated claws and a triangular
head
He had had
had
had
and had again
my lady bug
hadding her savagely
and he was coming again
to our town
leaf
And she decided I should meet him.
Later, I threw up.
All is murder in an insect world
Plants have no feeling
but an aphid can hear a rose scream
And knows the torment when you
leave one of your twisting legs in the mouth of a spider.
It hurts,
it really really hurts.
And some where my love—-
my lady bug
I like to think—-
is paste on a grill.
She is compost on a car windshield.
She is a spot of jelly under your shoe.
And why not?
It is that kind of a world where a cicada mates only once in 17 years—-
much like John Bieber
—-and only one sock comes out of the dryer.

A fire ant at a picnic
The cockroach in the steel wool
The most primitive form of life
Leaving toothpick tracks
across the sands of time.
Eternal and perfect
God made me this way
He was drunk and fumbling–
they tried to keep him from
getting in the car.
Now look at him.
In a bed with a view of the Elysian Fields
burbling silly stories of snakes and apples
On life support.
And at night it is television and crafts
Oh look how nice–
she says
This world you’ve constructed
How nice.
And she wheels him back to bed and reconnected
to somnolent flatlines
the monitor snores
And she cleans up the cups
and dumps it all in the waste can.
And so this insect world
Where all is murder
and a fight for crumbs
for the leavings
the scuttling of claws
clicking of mandibles
clacking of exoskeletons
carapaces
Murder in our insect world.

All is murder in the insect world
The mantis the butterfly the roach
The curling caterpillar
The spider is an arachnid spinning a web
on spindly toothpick legs
The beetle curling in your hand
And in a double-wide trailer
father in his T shirt
The Learning Channel
beats her with his belt
Insects Insects Insects

Why does it have to be this way

A vicodin for your thoughts?

We were strangled in Byzantium

The Bedouins stole into our tent

raped you while I watched

And there was poor Hailey our baby

with the umbilical wrapped around her blue neck.

We walked with Jesus to Golgotha

You said you had blisters

I carried you the rest of the way

Just so you could see a God die.

We were on the Thresher

when she imploded a thousand feet down

We held hands as we floated toward the surface

Then the orgasmic explosion

It was the bends, baby.

I was with Kennedy in Dallas

His brains were in my lap

And Jackie’s pillbox full of oxy

struggled with the numbness in my system until—-

It was Gatorade to a terrorist

He thanked me in an Islamic way as he pulled the pin

A beard like Rasputin’s

clutching me down into the ice and the water

And we dove for sunken treasure

but found only the Hunley

and our love had become a submarine full of

skeletal federals.

But we will always have Byzantium—-

and the night of the Premiere at the Pantages

You wore a strapless gown

and I was impotent after the Copa

You said it was the rum

and tried to laugh it off, but I thought you were

laughing at me

And forgave with the speed of the bullet that went through

my brain.

Johnny fell off the harvestor at threshing time

into the wheat but we caught him

with the blades and

the look on his face, terrorized

Reminded me of what it was like in Byzantium.

I sat on Ted Bundy’s lap

and sizzled with the electric zap

of a serial killer with the clap

caught from a busstop girl—-

We had a cure for that in Byzantium.

Mr. President

I was Peter Lawford in Palm Springs

Boy was Sinatra mad, I had not seen such a face

since the Bedouins.

You styled my hair like the wolfman—-

I was a fright, always turning into something

I was not, oh yes I really was you taught me how to be the

monster in all the dreams

of pillbox hats and submarines.

Scale me to one-tenth my size and I will teach you

how to pinch the nerves with a handful of razors.

Petulant, we had never been at this depth before—-

Nor thought you could hit a Presidential head with a Mannlicher-Carcano

from the Twin Towers

We were screaming in the Hindenburg when it came down

in Byzantium, New Jersey

Elvis on the toilet at Graceland—-

the hissing and kerplop of a stool in the still waters of the basin

And then silence.

So welcome to Chernobyl?

Yes, here we have the cooling rods and look at those gauges

Cancerous for sure

but you could read a magazine by his nose.

And Stevie Ray Vaughan—- another soul stringer called home

De-headed by wiper blades God’s windshield

Another gnat in the grill.

The asp was Cleopatra’s

But the attitude was all mine.

The point is:

You don’t want to be in my head, you wouldn’t last FIVE MINUTES>