Poems by Merritt Waldon: Strange Visitations & more poems for people

Strange Visitations in Pistol City on the birthday of Poe _ for Edgar A. Poe & Ron Whitehead  
(after reading some Poe all night before// & waking to read Ron Whitehead's Learning to talk with crows) _

Quite early this morn
a rapping came
Rapping at my door

 Ignoring it at first, while sipping
Coffee, smoking & remembering 
Dreams

Remembering long ago conversations 
On poetry, philosophy & history, 
Remembering Learning to talk w crows 
By Ron Whitehead &
Tom Waits ‘ Bone Machine echoes
Stars begin to fade from sight

Neck feeling the weight of worlds
Gravity like a mysterious dust
Dead skin collected from long 
Lost stars

An hour later as if by schedule
A rapping early on my door
Longing & soft   yet firm
A sweet midnight breath 
In the madness of musing
I answered the strange moment

There, before me was a raven as big 
As an eagle, a hellhound, whos leash 
Was held by the perfect image of edgar 
Allan poe

A panic chill like some one walked over my
“grave’’
Spontaneously mind recalls a time once telling 
A 7th grade teacher; that like Poe
My pen would be the death of me
During a talk in which he introduced me
To Goethe & Faust

The teacher laughed, I had stayed after class
Cause he loved my essay on Nietzsche for his
English class 

Yet in the present, I wasn’t laughing 
Smiling YES; alas laughing
I was not

Faced with such a visitor on His birthday
Of all days
I let them in & sit back down on my brown 
Barstool bought from the Goodwill

As if by telepathy , He also recalls the conversation
With my teacher
& adds that perhaps it be true

That some day all voices will gather 
Traveling  Lithe 
Singing our ballads, odes & dirges
To the living creative fire
We are

The hellhound snuggles at His feet
& the raven chills next to Him perched 
atop the television like something out of
A Bosch

After an hour or two of dialogue, & poetry
Where we agreed that the only real true 
Freedom is found with in the creative imagination
& that most people never take the blinders
Off long enough to see any thing save their own 
Lives;   many other subjects were spoken 

As daylight began to crawl in to the world
He bidding me fare well handing me a tug 
Out of a transparent flask that appeared to be
Absinthe

I began to realize
That I have always been searching for Edgar Poe & his Raven
& the pen that wrote greatest united states literature

I light a cigarette, look at my dog; Sir Charlie Webfoot;
Now asleep under the bed

Still remembering the tapping, rapping , rapping
At my door    this morn   quite early
While the moon drifts  with its fullness
Over southern Indiana

Rainy 3 a.m. (a spontaneous moan)

Rainy 3a.m. (a spontaneous moan)
Rain drops falling to pavement
Reflected from streetlights
The light shimmers beneath the dark
Sitting, electrified by hands of
Lightning descending from clouds 
Another night of work done
Mind twisted and mangled like sails
In the storm, this body a boat
Churning in the invisible mood water
Of a sleepy Friday 3 a.m.
Southern Indiana breathes a wet
Sigh as the sky feeds the earth
Mind washed and yet still cluttered
I await the ride home to sit reading
Keats, Collins, and Ramey
Maybe even pen some new universe
That has never existed
Bleeding out in to the soggy parking lot
My thoughts flow 
I collect them in to a cauldron to boil
Searching out the pure gold of
Human experience

_______________________

A spontaneous moan__//(just ask Corso)
Without hands strangling reality to fit the way the hands seem to think
it should all fit perfect and precise
the world will not fall apart...
it's a difference between rowing and capsizing...
without hands dragging time through the gutter, it really only
exists in transit as we move
frivolously against ourselves
breaking the tide; here I go again praying to
a god the people made neon
it reads
pain.
without these hands rifling through this soul
i don't think i'd ever get up
no coffee, just pillow
getting head and that's where it all went
down
without hands life is already chaos
it's already a mess
just ask
Gregory Corso.

It stays poop_ (for Rhiannon/Reid)

Trip trap, lost in the forest of relivin'-  can not get past the battle wounds-
Can not get beyond the puss covered laceration down next to the soul.
There are often unremarkable images thrown up and out, that the  pen dries
Up for the moment and there can be no recording.
Voice. Microphone. Tape. Like a conquering worm slithering
In and out             devouring the consciousness, devouring all performed
Moans          leaving only garbled mess of tongue between the ceiling & sky-
Levitational madness grips
the barbaric poet as he falls deeper in to the sky
 
        Away from home
    Away from reality
He was only an experiment
only a nightmare brought through worm shit-
But it stays poop- "it stays poop", you know just like it stays eternal
                             wings of change
                 brings strange transformations- Never does it remain one but many
Many   many-               Deja vu is  i swear-  it is proof of transmigration-
Proof of reincarnation-   Proof of unfinished business chaining a thing to
Its imperfection
 
OMmmmmmmmmmm

Field report from a mountain (dec.62001 - written upon finding out Gregory Corso had died)

Field report from a mountain
 For Gregory.....
 
 I am climbing the roads to Avalon, and the mist
 envelopes me, there are ghosts draining my veins of
 joy
 There are angels rifling my skullcap for thought
 I am tattooed on the devils left hand, riding Cerberus
 into dreams, feeding on the blood of stars,
 
 can somebody tell me where the fuck I am.
 this narrow hole , this pit where i am collecting dust.
 come if you be my friends, talk to me, show me it
 doesn't have to be one big shotgun blast
 
 Now here this, you can not have my bones, those are
 Calliope's, those are the bruised lovers in the cave,
 and here, awe if I survive, is where the word will
 last
 
 so tell me do any of you see the arrow-headed moths
 flapping there wings in the sky, wanton and hungry
 for my white flag
 
 Fuck it. come! here are the veins of sleep,
 come friends feed on these hollow horizons,
 
 I give it you, this dark tide,
 where my silence becomes demons
 where the pain resides
 
 there's no salve for this wound, no patch to hide
 
 thank you lovers for holding me at least for a second
 
 there is no safety Gregory Corso, none; no muse to save
 us from this melting pot dungeon
 
 and where do we take the hymns of Osiris,or the  harp
of the muses?
 
 lol. I am rolling now, and the allies grow gnarled
 tooth walls dreaming of my gluttonous taste
 
 No more Gregory, no more do they weep or praise the
 Frankenstein poet of the blind seraph,
 
 and this is funny
 
 old hollow men sitting on a shanty porch just out of
 reach
 
  out of reach, the hand of gods 



Some poems from Merritt Waldon

Poem by Kushal Poddar  : The Smile Craft (for Merritt Waldon)