The writings of Arturo Leo Coleman IV

In my East
Village grotto
I up
turned any two
I hap
penned to anticipate:
three except a spade.
And rolled dice a
round the drain
the same
number six this
time of six-sided dice.
A message was [Pro]
being communicated;
my mistake was to inter
pret it as directing my
going out the gate to East
Village Books ban
ging on the window closed
avid to purchase Nostradamus
in the original French:
the falcon and the tower
the fountain in the rock
New York everywhere
against the facial stream
they’d drift asking every
one for prophecies
after Nine Eleven.
Scootering through mid
town I resulted
at night in Times Square
where underneath a vacant
marquee pulled
the illustrated Blake
out my found aband
oned ratty bag and
a flute I could not even
blow in correctly
tootled an opening
to tourist passersby
to my impromptu recital:
Albion smitten
by the thunderer’s arrow
and in the ashes of the un
made world
groped for Euthorna
to break her chains
with sex touch
and excise the weap
on out her womb
to avenge him
self on his fat
her Doogar or Oucrator
who deemed him of ano
maly guilty
and punishable by im
mortal death.
Then to close the cere
mony bought a bushel
of incense off a Rasta
and right by Chip
the guitar cowboy
crooning there for tips
lit and wafted torch
in the face of a pol
ice who promp
tly cited me for pub
lic possession of con
flagratory flame
and when I spit in
blunt disgust
next to his shi
ny shoes cited
me again for that too.
Another occasion I marc
hed down Bleaker
in imitation of Che
Guevara the hat star
t-shirt cigar and week
of unshaven beard
and bored soon
bought a big beer
and went int
o the circle at
the center of Washing
ton Square to en
joy my solitude.
A copcar crept which
I with im
patience ig
nored. They came a
round got out de
manded my I
D this for
bidden hour.
Truculent I schwieg
(remained silent).
Both the team got me
on the ground and when
I felt their fat hands
grab the cuffs
I raged
and threw them off
and ran
away yelling too
fast! Can’t Catch
MEEEEEEE!
Near Tomp
kins it felt
safe but still
I sensed that West
had left some piece
yet to discover sur
rendered to the horiz
ontal fall down
town those cliff
like streets back
to Bleaker. Love’s
first sight first time eve
r in my ado(*ation)
lescence to consum
mate my Cora
my virgin four
teen year
old ex
ploring with friends
who I parted her
from hand in hand
to East
Third and Bowery
I took her
fucked her
but held deep
within my cum.
Then to Green
wich Village Halloween
Night I went
as stoned on ludes
I bought at school
up on Sixty Eighth
off a robot with
black legs in
women’s makeup.
The clearest way
I saw through
the crowd was marching in
the parade for the en
tire route then returning
back to Houston
for another run
bored sought in
spiration and found
the most beautiful out
fit of all a man in his birth
day suit at midnight
on November First.
I stripped and danced
a witch in the demon train
and boozed when crowds
dispersed to bars
and drunk as fuc
King Hell off a several
hundred dollar vodka bottle
I roared
literally into the night
of total black out
and awoke awake
into the scene
from Mr Tambourine Man
pissing in the gutter
with bums and preaching them
my burgeoning philosophy.

Pupillary dilation
blurs into focus
hours’ sacred center

Whittle down (to)
(the) zero (the)
bone (the) cap
illary nucleus

The plot line
on the story
board the rob
bers the bar
rons His Hol
Iness the Dope
the Dully Lamb
Da in an

Alpha-bet
A-dominated order

Vigor vulgarized.
Each chime snuffed.
Metal metastasized.

Who hoos?
The avuncular owl
in forests of love trysts.

A son of the sun
has no concern for voices’ words
except for their proximity.
To the shadow in the quiet canyon
every brush rustle and fly buzz is
another transitory companion

An emulation of Christ Who
steadfastly would not enter
the gates of heaven immediately
the right hand of God
at the end when He gazed
up where heaven ought to be
and after ruminating in chagrin
(and now, three days?) uttered
tearfully “My God! My God!”
How cravenly you let
your ministrants be
angels to your peoples!…
Wallowing in ungodly wastes of no perception
of beauty as cold and in front of their faces
as the ocean of the Northern Deep!…
In that tumultuous marl
where nonsensical systema are schematized
you expect these wrecks to float?
They should swim if they could but
distinguish the currents’ differentials!…
Their intestine webs of nerves though
are so convolutedly bloated and wracked
by numb ruptures, throbs and fadings of pain!…

Free water cools
his fevered entrails
the fire sparked core of original magma
and smoke settled dust of a billion carburetors.
An unbridled Spring of floods
stirs in a lunar concavity
late in the dawn of Autumn
to coat the whole terrarium
on up to and out through ethereality.
Its purple stain will linger millenia
post the prophesied apocalypse
graceless human demise which
is every time a murder
and upheaval of a moral
that none can sanely deny.

Up on the hill a stairwell descends
where cars could crash if driven
in the throes of violent mania
determined to destroy
the speeding machine
without contact killing
force may render to scattered
shards the glassy metal
yet register not the faintest quake/wake
in the most proximate undulation
on this shallow cement sea
whose water of rock is no
conduit to transmit such shudders
to and through the actual ground.

Misers hoard the keys of gold
that gondolas need to ferry
from island to mainland forbidden
city Asiatic asylum
complexly walled Shangri LA
in two sided mirrors ninety
degree symmetry worshipful beauty
to the reflective beholder
possessions to be shared
as if copies could not be made
with the real time fac-
simile technology they have
invented themselves stashed inside
of only hearts
gilded blood boxes
cherished more
than their vital contents
*
The upper rims of this bottom cup
dregs imbibed with breath augmented
by sight and sensation of walking through
feet and standing around a dizzy boned skeleton
move over rill and dale
out of supplest brims
through rivers overflowing with
ephemeral glints of gold dust.

Stumble through the intermists
that fill the distances with
ferocious will ruthless ambition
to illuminate the clefts rent
by custom into obscurity and
by time to forgotten mystery
*
Mantric prayer
bead to bead
rosary rust
finger scraped
fervent friction to get to the next
beatific beginning
empty hymn of praise to Za
temporal target in the art of Zen
sunk in every aim of isolation
of any perceived hindrance to
the incessant passage of change
repeated jabs at rapture
which come patiently a round
million mantra later

My prayer/poem will have the stature
of magic spells that work ways
down paths the muses sniff out
like bitches on my leashes
barking through night’s silence
further in the illustrious hunt
and I am whipping lividly
the hide of my harrowed mare
urging her ever more rapidly on
bootheels in her ribs
to climax the suicide ride
of pitch dark past which not even I
can see past ahead to where
the megamouth abyss is screaming
Sirens for me to leap
in ascend and inevitably plunge
breathless the both of us
as we together stare and fall
*
Unending novenas cubed Hail!
the holy queen hot horny lady
bearing witness to our nine
mooned generation’s epoch
a global warming climate rife
with overpopulation and
loomed with the threat of nuclear
obliteration on such a scale
as would disrupt even the equa-
nimity of the benevolent divine
zoned out and stoned on bliss

Change has shifted these surroundings
from out of what they were
when each time a part of
a me of which I am no more
master of airiest depths
and wettest breaths through gills
learned to convey a lesson
on surpassing challenges
and adapting to the breeze of liberation
through the stream of consciousness.
I a dog have sniffed and
shat wherever I squatted
marked my spot and left
legacies to the pure of spirit
of beneficence and good

But to the tortured agitators
who rule now out of fear
ghosts in every corner
stooping beneath some tabletop
or behind a Turkish curtain
mosaic of Vlad the Impaler
at his most bloodthirsty unflattering
shadows to keep out the cold
wafting through stone castle walls
to come alive in the after-
math of the extinguishment
the final flaming candle
dreams of feather-down flight
omens which the soothsayers
are too few to internalize
and attend to every one
of the sovereign’s minions
the ideal happiness in culture
amendment to society
*
While the march of percussion
anthems terror patriotizes ego
I have at the same time heard
flutings in a high-pitched tone
which no matter where I
direct my ears cannot locate
whistles in their inner silences
and succeeding nights dreamed
the consequence of following day
mimetic reaction to wanting
to shine as well as to hide
with self delusive resolve
to withstand the paranoia
inherent in all novelty
untrusted to the death
which only martyrs
samurai and poets in their bloom
have gone like babies
into the arms of loving mother
the sex of fucking lover
and emerged rejuvenated
younger again Amen