Klaproth, what made you
also made me, and from the same mud.
Klaproth, your iron blood is mine,
and our twin heartbeats
are the vibrations of the Universe,
slipping the rhythm out between clenched teeth.


Klaproth, you need to relax.
First thing you did
when you woke up today was scream,
and you screamed at breakfast,
and you screamed the morning news
off the teevee, and the dew from the lawn.


You know I love you, Klaproth,
but this erratic behavior has to stop.
You poisoned my wine, I know it,
with your sexy eyes, deep, jawbreaker eyes,
hair entwined with the Tree of Life,
the pillar of mercy, the pillar of severity.


Now you are Odin, and those are two ravens
pearched on your shoulders, and they eat
your dead man's eyes, the one
you lost and the one you want to lose.
Klaproth, I took up the runes,
I took them screaming, and I fell back from there.


In my youth, which I squandered
on hash and alcohol, delivering myself
into my own hands in the august August moonlight,
I dreamed of anonymity and love.
Klaproth, you gave me anonymity.
Klaproth, you make shadow love.


In my dreams, you are a woman,
steel coitus, and in my nightmares,
a brutal man, unsolicited pederasty,
steel and sleek, either, eyes like embers
dependant on my mood--your eyes are Everything:
my mirrored room, my secret life.


A puppet show done in the grays of mediocrity
and electric reds of ambiguity, Klaproth
dances on the ends of strings.
He is the destroyer, she is the paver of ways.
They are Klaproth, their name is Marionette,
Sound and Fury, signifying Everything.


Klaproth, I can smell your sense of humor,
I can feel the cool grease of your tragedy.
The Lysistrata slips from your hands,
Othello lies open on the table, reading itself.
Klaproth, your philosophy is the schizophrenia of legends.
Voltaire, the devil, and Christ ride your conscience.


Klaproth, I know you know many old stories,
for I have heard you tell them, have felt
the whisper of them on my neck
at night when you think I am asleep,
and you ride your half-shell in;
you've been up all night with Mohammed's man.


Klaproth, that swung nine days on a yew.
Klaproth, that was nailed to an imitation tree.
Klaproth, that got eaten, unable to negotiate with lions.
Klaproth, that tempted Semites, and laid them to waste.
Klaproth, who will come again to judge the living and the dead;
Pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death.


Thunderclap, qlippoth, the empty mortars,
the dead rounds of poetry, this pockmarked library,
Battle grounds of Klaproth, sacrifices to Klaproth,
Vision quests, crusades, wars of peace,
cultural revolutions, slave insurrections, fundamentalists,
The garden of Klaproth's soul, chill and pretend.


When I gave up the drugs of my youth
for shots of Kinnell, Eliot ecstacies,
hits of Ginsberg-strung-out, and Poe barbituates,
Pablo Neruda visited me in my dreams, he said,
"Please keep in mind we like good poetry here."
Klaproth, you stood behind him and smiled like a man.


You are not Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Klaproth, you are his shadow, an allusion.
you are not the Laureate of Judgment,
nor Christ come again, the Messiah's Revenge.
You are not the humble shepherd tending his flock.
You are my silver woman, my liege Lady.


Klaproth, you are the homunculus,
Engineered by the Architect of Time,
Crafted by the Alchemist of Words,
Your heart freezes around the alkahest,
Your mind is the Sacred Word,
Your soul is an infinite vial of fractals.


Klaproth, you are Succubus and Bearer of Bad News!
Your thighs glow with the dew of impossible prisms,
Your arms are two pretty cords of disdain,
Your lovers hang like Voodoo charms around your neck,
Silent but for prayers and moans,
Burning their genitals in effigy, in offering.


Klaproth, shall I confess?
I have stolen beauty from those more beautiful,
I have taken wit from those more enlightened,
I have murdered those that are useless to me,
And with their bones, I built your altar,
And their flesh I stretched over your tabernacle.


I have created oily things and antimatter,
I have consorted with reckless thoughts,
I have wept through every aching dream
and I have ached over every weeping nightmare,
I have said I have no sin, and the truth was not in me,
I have taken contradictory oaths, and followed none.


But when I called the wise man blind, and followed him,
and saved his life, and he tried to kill me, I wept.
But when I dated a woman who hated Prufrock
(she was that strong), I loved her nonetheless.
But when the Philistines of Beautiful Lyrics told me
the Beautiful Loser had died, I wailed them away.


And when the angry dogs dug up the body,
when the yellow cat-smoke failed to leap
and the tentacular darkness sank its teeth,
when the evil women, who love me, and their men
forgave me all they could, all my sins,
I fell down on my knees in the humble mud: Hallelujah.


But Klaproth, though you love me in secret,
do not mistake me for someone you know:
I'm not your Gypsy wife, your battered husband,
your young effiminate son, your nymphomaniacal daughter,
your acquiescent pupil, your precious delinquent, your statistic,
Am the god of my sword and shield and everlasting pen.


I have seen the dawn wake with a shudder,
and the regurgitated light stir tired feet and eyes,
I have seen the cracks grow in hidden doorways
and heard the shuffle of whispered steps,
I have seen the singing mandman break the the world,
and I just drank my coffee standing up.


I have seen the sunshine shower over hills
and fall upon the avenues like one lover falls on another,
I have seen smiles open into kisses of waking
and heard sleep turn into sex,
and I remember the croaking poet's happiness
at table with his morning steak and breakfast cake.


Klaproth, I have seen all this, the naked world,
because not even you can hide the naked truth.
But you have sweetened it, your naked teeth,
and your breath of fire, your sleek talons,
the gentle touch of your skin and your naked words--
harsh, but exact; Klaproth, your exact words.


I love to see you naked over there,
Especially from the back.
--Leonard Cohen

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