Teaching (the little bastards to smoke)

by Raymond Keen

Teaching (the little bastards to smoke)
In the rain
Without parachutes.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

What you see,
What we are,
Painted faces in the animal kingdom.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

More and more people
Walk around in jogging suits.
Is this good for our Democracy?
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

Your old church,
Which is sitting on shit,
Spreads our money all over the floor.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

You stick it in her,
“The old in-out, in-out,”
And we call that love.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

According to science,
Mind is brain,
Eyes are meat.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

Why did we do it?
We did it for the money.
It was the money.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

We must continue
With professional commitments,
While working toward our doctorates.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

You look better in the sun
While riding your silver bicycle.
We can’t even remember your name.
Don’t look down,
Since there is no afterlife.

Where can we go
To be someone else,
If beauty doesn’t matter?
And beauty doesn’t matter,
Since there is no afterlife.

Soul Star

by Raymond Keen

Why would I
not sing to you
in tears of
vermillion fire?
Sing the fires of blue flame,
sing the rage of form.
For these words
no location,
in the blood-red
depths of an apple-green
paradise.
Yes, yes your azure eyes
speak mine.
You breathe Bordeaux.
Your body is a rainbow
in this gunmetal world.
Heather me, feather me
in this gunmetal world.
Your seraphic soul
a star sapphire,
your roots a verdant green.
Awaken me
you do
in this
most pale night.
You cry out in me.

Buddha’s Ghost

by Raymond Keen

Can you
give up the ghost
of a time
and a place
and remember
nothing?
Can you
move freely
unclothed
in and out
in neither direction
not counting?
Can you hold warmth,
forgetting it is
slipping through your fingers
tomorrow
because it really is
not?
Because there is no forgetting,
and there is no holding.

Desire

by Raymond Keen

Desire had opened him
To what he really was.
Once a piece of his soul,
Now a glittering demon
Swirling in furious circles
Around what he was not,
Looping and diving in wild ellipses,
Infects what he could or might become.
Although his desire contains the
Ever-moving demon inside him,
It can offer no resting place.
And he grows afraid of his desire.