© Alan Reade, 1996 and 2020
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      Cynics' Love Song

      With hopeful heart, like a Hallmark wish or a cellophane mint in a crystal dish,
      I sit in bed with the radio on--the station's clear but my mind is gone--
      And think of how it seems absurd, that "love" is a multi-purpose word:
      I've been misled; if you say "love," I won't know the one you're thinking of.

      I know they're clichés
      In these passion plays,
      But the cynical voice inside my head says:


      Love--Where does it get me?
      Words have misled me; they'll tear me
      Away from you.
      Love--my servant or master?
      What a disaster; its red tide
      Leaves me blue.



      But I don't think, not with my brain, as I watch the drizzle swell to rain,
      I now should try and test my luck--put off love's bliss with a primal fuck;
      To sort me out as a human being takes more than a set of bodily means;
      I wonder why I play this game? Players that change but results the same.

      I know they're clichés
      In these passion plays,
      But the cynical voice inside my head says:

      Ooh, love--Where does it get me?
      Words have misled me; they'll tear me
      Away from you.
      Love--my servant or master?
      Oh, what a disaster! Its red tide
      Leaves me blue.

      Love is so blind, as I watch and wait for a signal from you to seal my fate;
      It does not see with judgment's eyes; or else, if it does see, it lies.
      So love remains the mythical word, so often unseen or else unheard--
      A mystery for the brainless ones, those who live pop song to pop song.

      I know they're clichés
      In these passion plays,
      But the cynical voice inside my head says:

      Love--Where does it get me?
      Words have misled me; they'll tear me
      Away from you.
      Love--my servant or master?
      What a disaster; its red tide
      Leaves me blue.

      Love--Where did it get me?!
      One word misled me; it tore me
      Away from you!
      Love--my servant or master?!
      What a disaster! Its red tide left me blue!
      What a disaster!
        Its red tide left me blue.


      Speaking The Unspeakable

      Speaking the unspeakable
      In Arial Bold
      Advertising dares for truth
      Buying what can't be sold

      Coin-op orgasms
      Sex on a page
      Plastic voodoo love dolls
      On whom we vent our rage

      Rage at loneliness, at helplessness
      Rage at tedium and routine
      Rage at rejection--we even the odds
      And drop in on a magazine

      Where women with their legs spread like pulp novels smile
      In pigtails and mock-cheer
      And men with their dicks propped like sock puppets pose
      With their custom-hardened veneer

      No crazies, fats, fems, or drugs
      No uglies, alkies, goons, or thugs
      No biggies, smallies, frilly willies
      No nellies, bellies, calla lilies

      There was fire in the neon's glow
      In the ads, there was resurrection
      And columns and rows of lonely hearts
      All trying to find perfection

      So many ads on this one page
      Cubicles of prescription lust
      Stacked like the apartments they emanate from
      Containing the sum of us

      And the memories of failed fix-ups
      Run through your bedtime mind
      So many people in just this town
      But the right one misses you blind

      No crazies, lazies, Driving Miss Daisies
      No bullshitting tight-fitting stripes with paisleys
      No lay-em-and-leave-em confidence games
      No jaded, X-rated, falsified names

      Speaking the unspeakable
      Like soundbites on the news
      And knowing the unthinkable--
      That there's too much to choose.


      Long-Distance Piéta

      The needles crucify me--higher this time.
      Mama, I'm showing stigmata on the backsides
      of each of my elbows.
      The pulsing in my head, as my doctor/interrogator aims questions
      at my intimacy, at the heart of my fear,
      feels like the slow migration of thorns into my scalp
      and the grayness it shields. The questions, though gentle, pry deeper, and
      so do the sharp points of realization. How does a virus enter?
      My palms are sweating a Tigris of repentance; my voice squeaks
      like a schoolboy's when brought before the headmaster for stealing.
      I swear, mama, the only thing I ever stole was time,
      and then only from those willing to give it up. But I'm not willing
      to give any of it back. This doctor tells me that my life hypothetically
      could disappear in five, maybe eight, maybe ten years. He unknowingly
      eulogizes my uncertainty with his comforting ease. The uncertainty
      will rise in seven days, in a new form: Ink on paper.
      Blood in syringe. Result in folder.
      Forgive me, mama; I am long-distance in your flowing arms;
      I knew not what I was doing, and I know not how to avoid
      rising again and again from needless descents
      into faithless flesh.


      Blue Space

      I've been in a blue space about someone lately...
      Maybe you know him too.
      All day, blue lights flicker on his face
      As his pipe dreams go up in pipe smoke.
      Maybe...maybe I'm talking about my father.
      That's what a shrink might say: That all men are my father,
      And maybe she'd be right.
      But I don't know. Father figures to me are more like icons:
      God The Father, things like that. So when I say
      "I'm blue,"
      You know it's true,
      And not just some sublimation of the truth; not
      Some projected animation of my animus.
      No, I think I know what I'm talking about here:
      It's the feeling of walking around in the city,
      Among the alleyways, the orifices of asphalt and concrete,
      And stepping into a "blue space,"
      A place of color. Blue isn't that commonly used in urban planning;
      You have to go way out to the suburbs to find the kind of blue
      That I'm talking about, en masse.
      It's the color of handicapped parking zones,
      Like somebody squeezed out the color from the cloudless sky and made paint,
      And then spread it all over the parking lot.
      It was dusk, and I was walking along a city street,
      And I stumbled into a parking lot all painted this color.
      And I looked up at the dusky sky and felt that it was reflected below me,
      Felt as though some "blue light of God" had found me in this space,
      And I felt as though I were receiving some message that only I could receive--
      Out from under skyscrapers' shadows,
      Out from under creaking floors above my bed
      Where people walk all night long
      And their feet sound so blue. So blue.
      And I said, "Ah, a blue space," and floated away. I felt magic.
      I know that this feeling is what those people want
      When they flush opiates into their indigo veins. That feeling of escape, release.
      That feeling of "Fuck it. I'm gonna go have some pie!"
      Maybe that's why half of police lights are blue: It's that blue light again.
      That healing flame, hunting you down to calm you
      While the red one lets you know that you're in deep shit.
      Please don't think I'm näive. I know that it's all business.
      That's why cities exist. That's why pipes and needles exist:
      The business of freedom and pleasure.
      The haves and have-nots. Formal dinners and dumpster feasts.
      I heard in some play on TV that
      "Formality is simply anger with its hair combed,"
      And I'm inclined to agree.
      I'm in another sort of blue now, blue like the dark windows
      Of that skyscraper that they just put in. Blue because I see
      The handwriting on the wall that can't spell worth a damn.
      I see the TV flickering on his face. I see smoke signals that say,
      "Dreams Are Dying." Please don't think I'm näive. Most people
      Can see the horror in all of its anguish; and yet the sky comes down sometimes
      And gives them peace, like a healing lake in the city of problems
      That is building itself endlessly inside my head.


      Angel

      Let me in.
      Let me in mother.
      Or I will become
      leather
      Chained to a bike.
      A bloody angel
      ribbed by an engine's
      grind.

      Let me in, mother.
      O god let me in.
      Let me in through your baking,
      In through the turkey you slice.
      In through the Spam casserole.

      Let me in, mother.
      I'm surching fer you.

      Yesterday,
      My heart
      was pounding
      loud inside my breast,
      alone and afraid,
      as I pried my sweaty body
      from the man next to mine.
      He comforted me
      with words grown like flowers,
      Words blooming, exploding,
      marking the hours,
      as he floated past.

      Mama, I needed
      his body for mine;
      This bloody angel
      who lives in this time--
      Within, my body is raped,
      almost torn.
      It was like being reborn.

      Which, I assure you, was no easy feat;
      Wet, heavy, and hungry
      for someone to eat.
      Only knowing the body,
      the first human need,
      as
      the first human need.

      So, mama, I'll tell you:
      You're under my skin.
      I can't pry you out, oh mama,
      I can't;
      You're inside of my brain,
      you have stock in my
      Pain.

      It'll take
      your winged horses
      And all the King's men
      To put mama's Dark Angel,
      Mama's black, bloody angel
      To put mama's dark angel
      Together again.


      My Secret Place

      The test came back from its pilgrimage to the lab,
      My blood having emerged fearfully from my arm,
      As I'm sure Lazarus did from his stone tomb.
      The office spun around my head, as I remembered those I love,
      Dying or
      Dead.
      My angels kept calling to me:
      "There's no room for fear in your heart."
      But I didn't want to listen.

      "Negative,"
      The nurse said, and then, "Boy, you look white as a
      Ghost! Do whatever you have to do, honey."
      Meaning cry.

      But I didn't,
      Until the next night, sitting in your car.
      She's back in town, you said. Your heart couldn't help being
      Warmed.
      I wept quiet tears, my loud mouth silenced by
      Reckless fears.
      "There's no room for you," I kept hearing,
      Deep in my head. My heart beat like some burrowing knife.
      "Please,"
      You said, "Let's not talk. Come on,
      Let's go inside."

      And I thought:
      How I fear you in my blood.
      How I fear you'll infect my soul like some lethal strain;
      I fear that you'll become a part of my spirit
      That I cannot transfuse.

      In my heart,
      Where angels cannot reach me;
      In my heart,
      Where logic cannot teach me;
      Deep inside,
      Where words cannot offer
      Their solace or comfort.

      Deep in my heart.
      Deep in my heart.
      So deep in my secret place,
      Where blood is just a device.










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