The above is a quote that comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem I saw scratched on the door of an elevator. The end of the poem has the devil popping up and saying "Its good, but is it art?" If I had been Kipling I would have answered "Who cares?"
Empty Words Chris Rapier
The Lunacy Cycle Chris Rapier
Autobiography Chris Rapier
Why I Wear a Watch Mandy Kinne
Branded John Q. Public
Ashes and Skin Chris Rapier
Abstract Mandy Kinne
Nice of You to Come to My Funeral
Charles Mingus
Lonliness, a private emotion
Shared with a crowd
Do they listen?
Do they hear?
Do they share?
Turn to the faces and hide the shame
Turn to yourself and hide the pain
A lie, A smile, both the same
Who is it for?
For you?
or me.
Trying to express in words
A feeling that exists only at the limit of knowing
A feeling that pervades a crowd
And turns them, to the last, into strangers
into strangers
Why do I sing about lonliness
To a room full of people?
Sometimes I feel my empty soul
Will devour all those around me
Sometimes I imagine I can feed
This beast that will always hunger
Till I lie down like a broken husk
Like a broken water heater
Discard the day, wrap up the night
And escape to where I'm never alone
The Lunacy Cycle is seven of the poems that I wrote in my brother's
"Stars of the WWF" Dusty Rhodes notebook which he gave
me when I transferred into the Philadelphia Psychiatric Center.
I spent four weeks there. It didn't cure me but it let me know
who sick I really was. Which, I suppose, is an okay start. I don't
think I'll ever write about what brought me to the nuttery. I
don't know if I even could write about it. Just copying these
poems out of that ragged book into this ragged computer sounded
an echo in my ragged mind. No wonder why I had a little knife
dance on my arm.
An Assuming Hell
It was an unassuming Hell
I found myself in.
Soft colors, pleasant faces and
food three times a day.
{Warmth and Shelter}
It was an unassuming Hell
I found myself in.
Plastic sheets, a locked door and
fear all night long.
{Anger and Noise}
It was an unassuming Hell
I found myself in.
Four walls, three floors and
three days gone.
{An eternity to go}
Written three days into my stay at PPC , which now has the much
more appealing name of Belmont.
Laywers and Lightbulbs
"Its good you can express yourself"
she said.
Its not expression
Its survival
Ideas can get stuck in your head
And fester
And grow
And mutate.
If they aren't excised with neat
surgical precision,
They'll all come out at once
And your head will explode.
"Getting crap out of my head
Keeps my brains in my skull"
"Oh. Really?"
--------------------------------------
Tune out
Turn off
Drop dead
This was written in response to some fat stupid crooked lawyer
(who was in the bin with me cause she was upset about being fat,
stupid and crooked) who thought it was great that I sometimes
write poetry.
Brass
Empty shell
brass bright on the rug.
Sunlight, shadow
streams across it in a muddy flow
stobing yellow in slow motion.
An empty shell is just
gunpowder spent and
slug sent.
Its just an empty shell
shining in the last rays of light.
I wrote this in the bin on 12-11-91. Which is what it says in
the top right hand corner of the page. Its the first date in this
note book. I almost forgot when it happened.
Christmas at the Ruocco's
SHUT UP!
BE HAPPY!
DON'T YOU KNOW ITS CHRISTMAS!!
HOW COULD YOU BE SAD?!?!
THE WHOLE FAMILY IS HERE!
I DON'T CARE HOW YOU FEEL!
YOU'LL RUIN CHRISTMAS IF YOU KEEP THIS UP!
I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WANT TO RUIN THIS FOR EVERYONE!
IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!
I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYMORE!
JUST SHUT UP
AND BE HAPPY!!!
GODDAMNIT!!!!!
I wrote this with the caps lock key turned on. I banged on the
keys real hard too. This one was and is for Jan and her happy
christmastimes.
I wrote this one on the 11th as well. Christmas was two weeks
away and looming large in my mind. The thought of having a happy
jolly christmas on three south wasn't making me very chipper.
Bobbie
Bound Leap Run
Zooming around the corners
And carooooming off the walls
of these dignified corridors of TIME
With a boyant energizing chorus of
"Fuck You!" and "Eat Me!"
Whispered grapeshot in the ears
of the more restrained pedestrians of this hall.
The slow restrained methodical walkers
she nimbly screams past with energy born
of despair.
It only makes sense, stands to reason
that she, this female Mercury of Life,
who lived so much more
would hit the
blank
dark
void
evil
dead
zones so much more often than those
stately, stick up the ass, walkers.
It makes perfect sense and is it
that high of a price to pay for this
hyper adrenaline rocket boosted ride of a lifetime?
This I wrote for Bobbie who went to high school with the guy who
plays Riker on Star Trek and tried to kill herself with an overdose
of Tylenol. Its not a pleasant way to kill yourself because it
takes around three days for your liver and kidneys to shut down.
So you have three days to think about if you did the right thing.
If you decided that you made a mistake you were fucked because
there isn't anything that anyone can do to help you. Just check
yourself in and make sure they are waiting with the dialysis machine
even though you'll probably die anyway.
Bobbie just got lucky.
Which is her style.
Christmas Eve 1991
Something's lost, it was right here
I know it was
All day I've been thinking about it.
Now I can't remember what the hell it was.
I just know "SOMETHING" is lost
I almost see it everywhere I look
on the streets
in the rooms
in the trees
on the walls
I almost here it everywhere I listen
on the radio
in the songs
in the outside
on the air
I almost feel it but its a vague "something"
Like a baby's dream
Its around here somewhere.
I'm sure it is.
I just can't find it.
This was written because on of the therapists asked to write about
how we felt about Christmas. For some reason I just couldn't feel
the spirit of the season that year. Of course, when I got my 24
hour supervised pass I knew that miracles really could happen.
Key
Keys coppery silver bright
Clink against the thigh
or hip,
As they walk down the hall.
Pastel, soothing, calm, damning hall.
The keys, harbingers of fate,
Of destiny, of caste [systems]
reborn fresh,
Clank as they come down the hall.
Keys are made, copied
lost, found
Found and lost witha flippancy
That will always devastate
those denied them. Who had the
soft chiming lorded over them.
Those who never imagined that
Those small jagged symbols of man
Could hold such divine power.
Keys in chains rattle
Jangle, clink, clack, spark
and shine.
Much in the same way we cannot.
If you have never been physically locked in someplace that you
cannot get out of you really won't understand this poem. This
poem is written for lunatics, jailbirds and everyone else who
knew someone else had all the keys.
And this is the end of the lunacy cycle.
Demons sceam from carpeted floors
And shadowy men glide on the walls
Of a secret elevator to the fourth floor.
Chant 3-3-3 is half 6-6-6
While waiting out another nic fit.
The rapid vascillation of the shruken mind
Is raped by the blow of expanding violation,
Is crushed by the weight of a stable paradox.
So while crazy jane plays with her razors
The nowhere boys become the blank men.
The SunKing rides the metal gods.
And life has found its merry death
In the smothering embrace of mommy's breast.
She's dipped four times in the acid bath
Until salvation is found in the holy stagnation.
Symbols of defeat are carved in a hollow chest
Cleansed by the rains of burning skies.
I flow into the wounds of the secret river
Where dark rejections lead to life,
Where collapsing walls raise the dead.
You aren't you. You're working. Now your muscles are
knots in a cord, waiting for five o'clock.
We can't help but be to time this way as frogs
are to the seasons. In their world, beneath pond water
and the turning leaves, the short days are a signal
to burrow into the mud, to hide for the winter.
And continents away, Betty White
misses her signal ("You're mine forever," he says) to
leave
a dissolving marriage. "Get me a beer and some chips,"
he says, and "Oh, get some for yourself, too." Once,
she held
her own- had an apartment, went to college,
had a lingering series of younger men who brought flowers
and took her out every night. During
those years the hand of her lovers
would sometimes rest across her torso, after
an hour of sex, and made
her believe that hour meant something. Who
knows? Fortune tellers see the future in the leaves
at the bottom of tea cups, in the lines
intersecting on palms, in true star signs
-all read for the same result. The letters
we find in our mailboxes are like wake-up calls
inscribed in the past but talking about the future. Sentences
neatly lined on the paper. It's only a way to mark time -
the future speaking in the words of others. If a palm reader
really can predict the future, her trained eyes
might find it in the cracked glass of a windshield or in
the pick-up-stix of a child who will one day divorce
her husband and change her name from Betty
to Sandra to hide on a suburban street in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Sandra collects her mail, looks for a way out of her house in
the K-mart fliers advertising blue light specials.
She convinces herself of needing a new garden hose.
The fortune teller's prophecy is unfulfilled.
Sandra collects her things
quickly, the purse, the shopping list, and walks
quickly to the car to beat rush hour traffic
as you ask me why I wear a watch.
Out of the Chaos,
There comes a Pattern
Of a Dark painted passion.
Out of the Forge,
There emerges a Brand
Of deadly Blue steel.
Out of the Dark,
There shines a Shadow
Of insane pounding Desire.
A new born Man
Rises from the Ashes
Of an Old born fear.
Left alone in World
He Knows only too well.
he hungers.
Bending
Turning
Clawing
Eating
Burning the inside
Leave the skin
Grasp the ashes
Fall to sin
Inside
Eating the rot
Living on ash
Growing in hell
Being the bastard
Outside
Failing to look
Seeking to fail
Thrusting away
Try to draw near
NEVER!
Inside
Bastard within
Grab the burning
Healing with hurt
Throw the other out
Outside
Struggle the fool
The other is him
Now inside
The bastard supreme
Inside
nothing
Outside
skin
inside
outside
"I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and
name and count out all the grains that make me what I am."
- Virginia Woolf, The Waves
One
I can't tell where she stops and I begin.
Mother leaves home reluctantly,
a queen bee forced to look for food.
I am sucked into the vortex around her.
Books I loan to her are returned gently,
spines broken. Cats wander aimlessly,
following her footsteps through the house.
Two
My father is in the ravine again,
bouncing his voice off the half dead pine limbs.
It has come back to him: the gun fire, his malaria,
the unseen enemy he still braces against.
Did I ever really know him,
or was he just someone to eat my cereal
next to in the morning? Do as I say, not as I do:
the motto I am expected to live by.
And now he lives with his dental hygienist.
Three
We talk about her problems, her day,
her men. I am automatically disagree
with everything she says.
We have the same conversation over and over, like a favorite candy.
Best friend, as if all others are anything less.
Four
I deserve relief from these strained conversations,
but I am molding myself to him.
We are laying out the ground rules:
he must buy me flowers once a month
and on national holidays. Monogamy is not mentioned.
I can't see an end to our stagnent dates.
Five
I feel like an invader here; begin again
or pick up where I left off?
I am looking to replace myself with a new model.
Searching for the ribbon marking my page.
Creating a face to match their description.
Apocalyptic dreams last night, something is forming in the dark.
"...Oh damn it all blues. Screwed to the melting frozen walk
of dared-to-embrace stone, concrete hard, imagined soft only to
overdue erections of loneliness that turned feminine and speaks
back wet, warm tears, not too far removed from its common denominator,
iced urined melting at dared hot death that clings to life for
love at thought of some response, be it only the clay, dirt or
pavement I behold in my drunken fevered search for a true woman's
groin, wanting me as I want her, to never hate me because we found
refuge of satisfaction as two drunken stones warmed themselves
side by side, in outside our guttered ideas of opposite sides
fucking."
Do you understand that poem Doctor Wallach?
Well, Charles, it certainly is a very personal expression.
Reprinted without permission from Beneath the Underdog by
Wants to run,
But I don't know where.
Wants to hide,
Can't hide I'm here.
Looking for shadows
'Cause theres too much doubt.
Looking for a door,
Gotta find a way out.
Another verse that hides the proof
Another line, only half the truth
Writing short and writing long
The only one singing this nothing song.
Living on passion, living on pain.
Stealing the feelings,
So he can feel again.
Can't stop writing,
Can't keep it in.
Gotta keep writing to exploit the sin.
Another verse that hides the proof
Another line, only half the truth
Writing short and writing long
The only one singing this nothing song.
Looking for the one,
Not a one night stand,
Looking for someone to take by the hand,
Searches the shadows, searching in vain
No one to help him to ease the pain.
So he writes a poem
Just another ryhme
Waiting, watching, spending time.
Another verse that hides the proof
Another line, only half the truth
Writing short and writing long
The only one singing this nothing song.