edgar allan poe coffee

rmailto:rlgreenfieldl@netscape.com



Edgar Allan Poe Coffee



It's sunday morning & wallace stevens
is too tired to lift his arm & butter his toast

walt whitman has joined forces with the blades
of grass i can feel him under my boot soles

& wm carlos williams is done delivering babies
rita coolidge is celebrating the donut man

i think she's invoking the muse
stephen mallarme is still in france

he never left the office & is still editing his first
& only poem the one he began in l857 at age l5

baudelaire is still writing his ma letters
at 3 a.m.from a boudoir-cafe in downtown paris

charlie needs a few thousand francs to buy
a new batch of furniture last set went out of

style two days ago to be alive is to be moderne
WANTED: newer & better hookers wearing

only latest fashions no yesterday women
need apply send freshest furniture in paris

plus all other necessary supplies
tobacco wine & edgar allan poe coffee

extra black---the graveyard blend
ground only in baltimore at The Cemetery Cafe

RLG copyright 2006

The Thrill Is Gone

rlgreenfieldl@netscape.com



l0-2l-06 The Thrill Is Gone



Their eyes are all dead. Nothing is moving. And Elvis Aaron Presley gave up the ghost. He lost his lust for amphetamines. And he had long ago quit looking at the girls. Elvis preferred pills & water & television. He had burned out his primary valves of desire. He still played a mean game of racquetball. And he was worth an academy award as couch potato. But that's all she wrote.

The thrill is gone. I read it in a sacred book. It was lying on the sidewalk next to a clean white pickup truck. The sky was clean as the kitchen floor after wash and wax. And nobody was breathing on the empire of white bread. You might say the musicians were still in bed at lunchtime. Why not? What's there to get up for? There were no beautiful women in the city or state or nation. They all moved to Arabia to protect the constitution.

Sure, just like the manual says. Tear open at the top pour into cup & add hot water. Three easy steps. Impossible to get lost. And there is no cigar smoke in the room to discombobulate the sex appeal. All things work together for good to those that read the paper. Don't forget to douse your head in cold water before you eat your salad. It'll take the dust out of the moonlight.

Now it's time for your afternoon nap. Be sure to close your eyes before you begin the deep-breathe muscle-relax brain pushups under the covers. That can get real tricky & mess up your dreams. And if the wheels come off your dreams you've got a whole turkey field full of trouble. Don't. wait until the love woman appears. She'll put you in super cool position for the hypnosis. Everything is down hill after that. All you need is raw melted butter. And all the popcorn you can eat.

No rocks. Lay off the hard stuff. Keep it warm & flowing. Or even hot & sizzling. Just so the whole proposition is on lower gravitational field with extra magnetic flakes in the glove compartment. You're all set. Don't wear any spectacles or long flannels. They are too conspicuous & may cause electro shock back lash or severe burning. You don't want any weekend contraband or Bible freaks. Lock the door & turn on the fire.


RLG Copyright 2006

Poetry Is Happening

rlgreenfieldl@netscape.com


l0-l9-06 Poetry Is Happening


Poetry is happening. I know because Poetry made me happen. And you cannot get this from a book or a class. You have to wait for The Visitation from The Sacred Muse. And if you are an unbeliever you are s.o.l. Shit out of luck. But you can get other things from workshops and the group and wise teachers. You can learn how to listen. Possibly. Though this is most unusual, a rare experience. Just listen. Find out what you hear. In ten years you may never hear one necessary thing. But you may in the meantime have learned truly how to listen. That is an end in itself. I mean primordial listening. I don't know if you are equipped with the vital requirements. I do know only true unadulterated poetry can make a thing happen. Cars can't make things happen. Guns certainly don't make things happen. Machines are not properly constituted to make a thing happen. Only The Sacred Muse can really get a hold of your solar plexus of creative potency and charge your battery. I've been doing this my entire poetic life. Charging people's batteries. Including a few women. Here is what I wonder: where are the battery-chargers when I need them. Where are they? Nowhere to be seen or heard from. I must believe there is a reason for this absolute absence of encouragement in my life. And thus of course I put my faith in what is Real not what is merely hinted at by certain seductive eyes and lips and facial conditions. The Golden Muse of Poetry is irresistible. People---the grand mob of human flesh that great middle class of money-hungry emotion-starved billions--- don't really want anything to do with Poetry. Nobody in his or her right mind asks their kid to grow up to be a poet. For only God (The Muse) can guarantee that a child become an actual poet. For he and she will hear a different Voice than Everychild. That was The Voice Socrates heard & Jesus heard & Gandhi heard. It is a private voice. And it is the voice of Loneliness. Baudelaire heard it. Albert Camus heard it. In this matter we do not do the choosing. Poetry like love is not voluntary. The Real Poetry. It is a Visitation from The Goddess. The Muse never wastes a syllable. That's why she so often appears in dreams to make us search for her exact meaning.

RLG Copyright 2006

We Live For One Minute

l0-l5-06 We Live For One Minute



We each are granted one minute to live on earth & to enjoy its infinite splendors. That one minute has to cover the entire experience. Though wise Buddha said our life is rather more like a spark that passes through the night & is never seen again. Closer to a second than a minute. That is what one human life is like compared to the eternity of matter & energy. We are a momentary expression of nature. Like a drop of water falling in a shower of rain. We pass suddenly through the air & disappear. In that moment we call our lives we may encounter a beloved face & we may even exchange words, tendernesses with the beloved. We may engage in a moment's unadulterated communion. And in that singular moment we feel everything there is to feel as a member of our species. All the poignancies & ecstasies & agonies of human being---all the glories & nightmares & boredoms are ours.

RLG Copyright 2006

eyes

Eyes



I'll never see eyes
that beautiful again
as I saw walk by
my table 2 hrs ago
in this cafe unless

she parks her eyes in
my room tonight around
midnight they're small
dazzling slightly slightly
tilted: they are the eyes

of a goddess: I suppose
they're some color though
not blue or brown or
green perhaps golden
whirling honey, press the

button: they are slowly
slowly turning beautifully
beautifully tilted to the
inside: I order another
goddammed cup of coffee

& think about her eyes:
when she dies a piece
of the living world
will be forever dead
& me

RLG copyright 2006

The Movies

10-3-06 The Movies


I asked her over the phone to go to the movies. She said we could eat together. Have lunch. I forget now her
exact words. I was thinking of massaging her in the darkness of the cinema which is to me a very erotic place.
The beautiful calm dark of the cinema. Warm in there and the images toss on the screen. A very very sexually
charged room. Always. Movies mean sex. She didn't know any of this I'm thinking now. That I was going to
slowly seduce her in the cinema during the movie. Very discreetly. We would find the perfect angle. And I
needed to give her careful instructions. It is important that she talk to me. Her telephone voice is only average.
There are no promises in her phone voice and no invitations. So that also makes me hesitant. I expect a woman
to come the full distance on this omnipotent subject of sexual intercourse. I do not mean everything has to be
American stupid. It can be very sexual when she uses her own vocabulary of indirect discourse to say yes. In
person she can be surprisingly sexy and unexpectedly warm. Women have stopped hugging me. I haven't been
embraced really hugged by a woman in years. But she can do that---put her arms around my head. And she has
eyes as every woman does that can reveal desire when something deep inside has turned to slow fire. That can
happen with any woman and it only ever happens when I don't expect it. And I haven't been expecting it now for quite a few years. I want her to speak to me when I massage her spine and her neck and her hips. She asked me to put my head in her lap to rest myself once. That is when I told her to speak to me in very concrete but
unsentimental language. It is important for me to hear her speaking in complete sentences of normal prose. That
excites me. She is capable of saying very emotional things. My insides are pretty well frozen over from years of
hearing nothing emotional from the lips of a woman. And I mean nothing erotic or suggestive or affectionate or
hot. Nothing that sets me on fire as in the olden days. When I go down on her I need to hear her specific
paragraph of spoken English on the level of emotion and sexual desire she is registering. She will be telling me
about something else totally but she will be delivering her message in C-Minor. At least to begin with. And this
will give me the vital information that will pour fuel on my flames. She may be telling me about a movie---for
instance, say, the movie "Diary Of A Country priest" by Robert Bresson. This is a most austere movie. But it has
a latent erotic potency underneath the record of this dying priest. There are sexy women in that movie. And sexy
girls. I wanted to have sex with them while I was watching that movie. Even as the priest was small-changing them with priest talk. This was the sexual scene par excellence. To have sexual intercourse with a beautiful woman while she is in a praying guise. While she is about to bow down to God. That is the true erotic moment. That is the from ancient times the very ultimate moment of sexual love & satisfaction. In that quiet mood. And the cinema to me is an exact duplicate of the Roman Catholic Cathedral or the parish. It is the place of ultimate intimacy between you & your god. Or me & my goddess. This is the place to get down on one's hands & knees and discover the central mystery of love. In the darkness of the cinema. The holy place where the deepest work of the unconscious is in full operation. This is where it all begins.

RLG copyright 2006