Reinvigorating The Libido

l2-5-06



I have lost touch with sensual women. This has weakened me. It weakens my very ability to talk to women. I am at an all time low Libido-wise. Have very little desire in my once overflowing quill. Yes, Cupid's arrows have been gathering dust. And Eros has been on a long hibernation. So long that it feels like a coma itself. Without face to face conversations with genuinely erotic women a man begins to die inside. At least this man does. And I have been dying for a long time. Twenty-five years of unregenerated sublimation are in the books. Sisyphus has been pushing that boulder to the top of the mountain every morning & watching it roll back down to the bottom every night. Albert Camus received The Nobel Prize for Literature & then he died like a fly in the desert.


RLG copyright 2006

My Dad

l2-4-06



When Pa died I was living at 209 N. Venice Blvd in Venice, CA, a couple of blocks from the Pacific Ocean. I didn't go to the funeral in Wisconsin because I was too involved in my love life with Wendy Reeves. At the time Wendy & I were not on speaking terms but she lived only 3 blocks away from where I lived & nothing else in my life mattered. The last time I saw Pa he took me to Helen's Kitchen a Dutch restaurant in Waupun, Wis. (pop. 7,500). He told me to try a piece of pie. And when it came time to pay the bill I reached for my wallet but he would have none of it. Nothing had changed. Pa was still Boss of all the estates & though in L.A. I was known as an undissimulating poet here I was still a kid of 38 who couldn't foot the bill for his dad's cup of coffee & his own piece of pie.

RLG copyright 2006

The First Dish

ll-6-06 The First Dish



The Buddha came up to me & said,
what are you doing here, white boy?
This isn't your game. You're football
& basketball wall street promenade.

What brings you to the temple of
yearning & impeccable manners?
You don't look good in white shoes &
that gray shirt & striped tie mark you

an unenlightened man.
Give an account of your tastes.
Enumerate your follies in the world of
haberdashery & sexual license.

We may make a man out of you yet.
Pound a little sense into your dull
cranium with a croquet mallet.
You need grade A discipline in the art

of tomfoolery & cro-magnon Romance.
I can see by your eyelids you can't read
me worth a damn. Boy, step up to the
plate: Here comes the first dish.

RLG copyright 2006

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