The Lost Traveler Wonders If It's Just the Devastation and other works
by Bill Myers
Bill Myers ... Always at the ready to slay the growing pretentiousness of American poetry, Bill Myers' poetry offers the listener a mind-glow that lasts a lifetime. Regarded by many contemporaries as one of the finest practitioners of his time, Myers' works eschew cultural elitism like bad syntax. In point of fact, I doubt any other literary movement will ever be the same since the universe expiated one of its best examples for the cause of poetry. Similarly, as the late great poet Darrel Gray mentions in one of his poems, like "the comets that only come once", Bill is exactly just that. He's a troubadour of the grandest tradition; a language outlaw whose telepathings flow from the waters of sleeping titans themselves. In 2004 Bill Myers was the recipient of New Orleans' foremost literary prize for poetry, The Golden Railroad Spike Award.
The Lost Traveler Wonders If It's Just the Devastation
the rumors drift in
on a dream of news
part of the primal soup
where language begins to pool
into a paranoid hiss
and the mind moves
in its own primitive harmony
that's almost a music
and the old gods come
speaking lingo
and throwing signs
I have to fight to hearand before it's all over
even the party will die
cause a long-legged rain
windmilled drunk through this ward
mud-armed and blood-fisted
kicking shit over
all the way to christmas
and I'm stone-cold sober
under the twisted aluminum light
of the ultimate smackdown sky
walking
in my plywood sunglasses
with a big red texas X
spray-bombed across 'em
that should say "one dead, zero living (1D, 0L)"
but it says "No Entry (NE)" instead
and it's christmas
underneath the silence
of my desperately personal adventure
as a face leans in
through the back door
of the nightmare
that wakes up all the others
and our thin layer
of civilization
is getting torn open
seam after rotten seam
and whatever humanity is still left
falls screaming out of sight
and the street just keeps filling
with the panorama
of a bad feelinguntil I'm standing
in the middle
of this giant thrift store
without a roof
this apocalyptic wilderness of things
that just keeps going on
to where home feels so far away
it's like I'll never see it again
like something got me so stoned
I don't even recognize
I'm standing
in the middle of my own neighborhoodand then I lift myself
out of that sleep
as an immaculate figure
drunk on universal light
and I think it's mysterious
that my soul
has been stuffed
into its existence
like water
in an ambulance
that's been run up
on a fire hydrant
or a useless journalist
embedded
in an assault vehicle
of meat and blood
and it's almost a feeling
at the end of my fingers
that I don't need
anything real
ever again
it's like something I can touch
but never feel
and I'm sleepwalking
just to be next to you
and listen
as your breath
becomes air
becoming your breath
again
and I'm walking
to the quarter
with my plywood sunglasses on
Why Don't You Dream with Your Own Life
And Let the Monkey Dream with MineI got a monkey on my knee
and it keeps crawling up
it's growing fins and flying rooftops
in a barrel of red velvet
it wants to climb up in my brain cream
In the Name of the Almighty
make it bigger than it should be
while my thoughts pile up like street cars
on a wharf named Dostoyevsky
and the hurricane just sits there
and never leavesand on the bottom of the river
a field of crosses dreams of kings
while they shop for ghosts in Algiers
where the busted windows singso welcome my holy freaks
to be alone with your holy secret
while the only friendly face in Hell
disappears in a courtyardthe clock is spinning dimes
with a special catholic grind
and the moon moves like a stone of frozen noiseit's all down in the quarter
on the edge of an I-Ching mind
and it's been waiting there to meet you
in empty shoes of milk and moonlight
with no shadows in their step
breaking cigarettes and crawfish
and slowly sinking on the corner
of Godhead & St. Peter
and the blood runs from his soul
like a fountain of broken glass
to come and meet youso bend some light
and melt some sound
and obliterate your angels
into tiny bits of night
around a liquid gold crownand uncrucify your dreams
from the vapor trails behind you
and lay down on the ground
that feeds your heart and spinebut when the purple avocado
becomes the spider monkey sky
with a blue silk heart
and a naked lady tie
pour out that eye of darkness
over walls bent into wings
and let your arm-crossed eyelights fall
slowly back into their places
and do their thingbecause it takes a lot to be here
it takes everything we got
and if all we got is nothing
it stillwants
that
Welcome to New Orleans
- because no one leaves the Velvet Gutter
If you got 20 bucks and a car
You're a fat cat in New OrleansWelcome to the premier Scorpio jail town of the South
City of dreams on a return trip from the spine
A city that's right in between a Jones and the Nods
Welcome to the city of a thousand and one Imbeciles
holding their harmonicas in the windCity of old bathtubs, plaster lawn maddonas and mysterioso-belles
The city that will put hair on your chest and lipstick on your ass
Welcome to the city that's been waiting for you
like a pile of old clothes in a cornerWelcome to the city of negative capability
Home of the Dada-Rama and temp resurrection
Where decadence is just one more form of public transportation
City of the Cheap-Ass CBD and the Historical T-shirt quarter
City of Food Stamps, Sausage, Crack, Go-Cups, Wicca, Mudbugs, Merliton,
Damaged Angels, Stolen Bicycles
and the most beer ever spilled in a streetWelcome to the sweaty post-retro paradise of the world
The city that wants to give you a big muddy kiss
when you're stripped down, wet, and shakingWelcome to the city that wants to smell you up
Welcome to the city that will put its magic hand in your hat
Because New Orleans is a just beautiful woman on a lazy day
With her dress blown up to her nipplesSo --
Welcome to New Orleans
-- and lose the watch
Play with Me New Orleans
teach me self defense
when I'm broke down drunk and stumbling
give me that crazy love that belongs to no one
and gives everyone a nervous breakthrough
make me sit for hours with an unlit cigarette
and then light me up
slow and lazy with a flint and wick flame
Play with me New Orleans
and give me this day my mania from heaven
lead me to bars where I can drink for free
teach me to please the spirits inside and out
and to give back to the gods those spirits
which were so rightly theirs
and which I so wrongly drank
lay me down by distilled waters
because I need unlimited water and lots of it
lay me down naked on couches and floors
in front of a box fan
with my right hand on a full deck of smokes
and my left hand on your thigh
Play with me New Orleans
I'm your poet toy
Get me drunk but don't feed me
Take me home when you don't need me
hide my clothes but let me keep my bicycle
kiss me on the lips when I'm unconscious
write something pretty around my nipple with a felt-tip pen
before I wake up and wonder "where the hell am I"
and what direction am I facing
leave me a note I can't read
in your own handwriting
straight from the now
Play with me New Orleans
I don't care what you do with my cock or my ass
Leave me with a big gorgeous bruise on my pubic bone
I'm your bitch I'll do it in the military position
teach me to cumm all the time
and then teach me not to cumm at all
Play with me New Orleans
Heal me over and over again
And then make me crazy all at the same time
Wrap me up in your shabby charms
and give me your garlic morning kisses
Wake me up to fuck me
and then go back to sleep
I promise I'll stay up for years
Just to watch you and think about it
Play with me New Orleans
Make me dance in empty buildings
and set fires in crowded streets
take me through your nosebleed alleys
and your secret gardens
Leave me lovely and shoeless for miles
Until you come looking for me again
Play with me New Orleans
Improve my pool game
and my lovemaking
Improve my drinking
and my drug taking
make me try some really bad combinations
Like Acid Beer and Robotussin
Play with me New Orleans
In the tailgate party of the divine
You left me stoned and staring into nowhere
while Jasmine flowered around me the driveway of the infinite
just give me one more flat-line blackout
and let me rest my cheek in the cool perfect curve of the absolute
-- Absolute Vodka that is
Play with me New Orleans
Because I always need someone to play with
And you're always around
So play with me New Orleans
because I can't call it quits
I can only say I'm going to