LITERARY SHAMANISM'S
Avenue of the Damned
by Damon Matthew Smith
Poem Home:
Monster Sitting at the Local VFW
I
I would like to be
a referential martyr
for the true old religion,
cause eyes to blaze
with the memories
of some yesterdays
in the old huge arms
of the Church, or God's,
or Mother's arms at Midnight
when the pagan gods,
all referential monsters
dressed up for children,
Howled ugly in the night
and we hid in the corner
of our child world howling
Prayer. We were all taught
to fear by learning
what we should hate
in others,
even if those others
may not look like monsters
at all
but just
like
our little selves
juxtaposed on a monster
lie.
I want to be
a martyred
monster
in the night,
When holy claws
pick up
pick up
pick up
Light proof Houses and cars
The lifelong tabs in local bars
The silent names of silent stars
and put them down
nicely
where they have always been,
we will know
then the name of our darkest fear:
We are alone here.
II
Derrida said,
When one encounter’s a monster
one cannot call it
by name,
Or else make them as a pet,
and by monster
he meant
otherman, him with gruesome face
of some othermind.
Ewwww...what a disgrace...
I have tripped
over something on the way
to the john...
this is heart
of old man stripped
of heart
and place
and voice
by a burning liquid fire
like dragon breath created
for B movies about death.
I pick up the nothingness
and open the door
to relief. The light hits from porcelain.
III
We are born from eggs,
some from
dinosaur eggs
that bleed survivor’s guiltandbourbon.
Sardined Vet bars bleed
for lack of love
and lost reason.
"I'm not going to
let her touch the grass--
a line here
a line there.
Horrible!" And all he knows
now, at this moment, is mowing
and lawns,
and the 4th highball
at the bar’s mahogany
and being against
a wife that said in reply,
"Well, he broke
the iron,"
Because she had nothing
else to say
after ten
years
of broken words
but this claim
of breaking.
The old man keeps leaning
to see what I write.
He tells me
I have a way with words
he never had
and that he wants to buy me another round
to kill words like people:
5.675 fullmetaljacketballammo equals
100 proof highball bourbon bought
to silence new logic the old
fashioned way:
bury
it
d
e
e
p.
IV
Monsters come to school
Monsters come to work
monsters play a tune in the night
too quiet for the cities
and so must know the woods
fields
lakes
beaches, islands, and solitary places
of confinement of odd forms,
in quarantine
from the average rest.
I was arrested
for being a monster
by piggy men
in piggy cars
and piggy bracelets
cutting into my monster claws.
I bit
them all into absence
as I breathed water
filtered fire
back into my life
later in the wooded night.
They entered my woods spit-polished,
they entered like kids
playing a prank on a ghost.
“It’s Damiana leaf,” I said,
as if they would know this name,
and they said no, that nothing smelled
like that
but one thing and if I was smart
I would hand it over
with my mind
my rights
my plan
my time
where I got it
who from
“What is your profession?”...
I told them,
“MONSTER.”
V
If it is enough to say we are lost here
far away from some solid eternity
of golden gates and angels wings
where everything is white,
except of course the gate
which is golden,
and the halos
which are blue,
and the angel eyes are black
mirroring the mighty cosmos in that night
(that night back in April when the first warm breeze danced off the bay
back when we knew no parent’s concerns
and no loss of those concerns to silence
and talked of things getting better
when I left the Company
and you drank the champagne
and you said cheers
and i said here’s to change
and I drank to seven years
since taking you out on that first date);
If it is enough to say we have been here trapped in, time
and time again,
the same recycled rhyme
of birthlifedeathbirthlifedeathbirthlifedeath,
Then it is enough to say we are lost:
we understand our place in the world
as refugees from some lost truth
calling through the cosmos’ black
to us in number, equation, symbol--
the secret coded directions back home--
and we understand this golden-blue love
we have found in each other is sacred
over the prescription of canned faith
in a heaven scene bent on constructing
hells for others. I love you;
therefore I am.
VI
TERRORMOUTH, a common monster
in this life
is me in my life
when the ones
I love most
remind me of why
monsters common-
ly
stay alone, away from,
even when they try
hard for love, play
at the wooded word
try at mystic meaning
differed by the logical
want for any single answer:
night that knows no safety from tears
(that roll off my scaly cheek
into a more honest wind)
answers that there is nothing more to say to anyone
but fear
fear
fear...
but, ok, that all was wrong:
TERRORMOUTH has been here looming
all along in the corner
of my adult world at war
watching the syntax and context
saying this must be worthy of its legacy
and I crippled, and falling over parasitic words,
until he comes again to gobble up
all the homes of my past to leave
drooling gibberish in those lost places,
puddles that grow
into poison lost seas
and me and it
alone in
a pit
crying memories for home.
VII
I have been a monster
in
candy stores
shopping malls and
dining halls
when i ate the waiter’s tips
to pick up
later: this was a man-
made
monster, chemical and
wanton.
GRANDMONSTERBIGBROTHERMINDFUCKMTVODCOOLSCENEJUNKY.
Big Monster In June.
Now here is differAnce,
this Derridian
term of loss
of pure signified meaning--
to
constantly be differed,
one
step
away
from that monster word,
that monster meaning
behind the
silent names of silent stars.
I have been a monster
in
The local Absecon Fire station siren that sounds
the streets with
random panic
and the barking of dogs,
singing
THERE IS FIRE IN YOUR TOWN
THERE IS FIRE
There is tragedy,
when mostly
I suspect
they are just calls to pull cats and children from trees,
because it is in that
that I am Home,
in panic, sudden and longwinded,
in the unfolding of rhythms
of insect-like suburban
life, crawling to evolve past
alien gnosis, or at least
this siren’s call for my ear and nonexistance.
I am Home here in this panicplace
When I have lost reason behind reason to fear
and when drunkstonedtrippin heavy
and thinking about my inevitable death
and when lost in the forest of my heart
in paranoid love with my inevitable wife
(a special monster
to gobble up my doubt
in this Homepanicplace,
tear down
the walled words
and wickedness
of the world)
and when too much into my life
and when too much into my life’s wants and appetites
and when I am a nice monster in the night
(when no one sees)
and when I am a mean monster in the day
(when no one sees) when punching inevitable
keys too slow and laaabored
to say what I need to say:
I have been a monster
in this panic
in this Absecon
in this unholy siren
in this middle
inthisholeinthewall
of a crazycalvinistcrutchwalk town,
Me in scaly grotesque forms and colors,
I am green and red and snowy
like a paganchristmastree,
see the real monster me of me:
THE monstermemostmagnificientshininggreenandredandwhiteintheclearingday.