{"id":16960,"date":"2021-10-18T17:31:15","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T15:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/de\/?post_type=stsp_text&p=16960"},"modified":"2021-10-19T11:08:52","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T09:08:52","slug":"recent-texts","status":"publish","type":"stsp_text","link":"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/de\/text\/recent-texts\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Texts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The living moment<\/strong><\/p>\n

They all come out<\/p>\n

Like precious little darlings<\/p>\n

Before they put their makeup on<\/p>\n

The old highway<\/p>\n

Skirting his imagination now<\/p>\n

For decades<\/p>\n

How it preens itself<\/p>\n

On his ministrations<\/p>\n

How he fauns over it<\/p>\n

Is indulgent to its whims<\/p>\n

Courts it<\/p>\n

Entices it<\/p>\n

This old Great Highway<\/p>\n

Skirting the coast<\/p>\n

But no one has seen<\/p>\n

The mans eyes upon<\/p>\n

The highway gazing<\/p>\n

Off toward the ocean waves<\/p>\n

One of the little darlings<\/p>\n

That refuses his advances<\/p>\n

Even the ocean retreats<\/p>\n

Sucked into the night<\/p>\n

With the sun<\/p>\n

And a mother behind<\/p>\n

The windshield<\/p>\n

In a moment of<\/p>\n

Exultation<\/p>\n

Saying<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that something!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They all come out<\/p>\n

To show off<\/p>\n

What affect<\/p>\n

They have had on the man<\/p>\n

These locations<\/p>\n

That defy his imagination<\/p>\n

Because they exist<\/p>\n

And what exists needs<\/p>\n

No reflection<\/p>\n

To sustain the illusions<\/p>\n

That have held him<\/p>\n

For all these decades<\/p>\n

These tawdry little darlings<\/p>\n

Incitements<\/p>\n

To inflame the senses<\/p>\n

Now left to shudder<\/p>\n

Or better put<\/p>\n

Smolder<\/p>\n

As if<\/p>\n

Fires gone out<\/p>\n

Long ago<\/p>\n

And yet<\/p>\n

Sustained<\/p>\n

For years to come<\/p>\n

Through sheer will<\/p>\n

Loves lost<\/p>\n

Never left alone<\/p>\n

Little darlings<\/p>\n

Culprits<\/p>\n

Flirts of the imagination<\/p>\n

All revisited<\/p>\n

In good time<\/p>\n

Some extended indefinitely<\/p>\n

Hotel rooms<\/p>\n

Still unwilling or unable<\/p>\n

To release its occupants<\/p>\n

To still their desires<\/p>\n

Little darlings<\/p>\n

Fakes<\/p>\n

Visitations awakened<\/p>\n

Twisting roads<\/p>\n

The mind hardly able<\/p>\n

To utter<\/p>\n

The pleasure now the pain<\/p>\n

Little darlings<\/p>\n

Lost continents<\/p>\n

Film sets<\/p>\n

Misunderstandings<\/p>\n

Hair smeared with blood<\/p>\n

On a hotel wall<\/p>\n

Would you weep<\/p>\n

For what inside you<\/p>\n

Has wept itself to death?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Would you long<\/p>\n

For what has longed<\/p>\n

For you<\/p>\n

To end this longing<\/p>\n

And find<\/p>\n

The living moment?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At five in the afternoon<\/strong>
\n(After Lorca)<\/p>\n

When he first read the poem<\/p>\n

He thought it was a bit long<\/p>\n

He got rid of the first three lines<\/p>\n

It was a beginning<\/p>\n

Then he noticed<\/p>\n

That the second page<\/p>\n

Had nothing to do<\/p>\n

With the poem<\/p>\n

And went onto the third page<\/p>\n

Where it picked up<\/p>\n

Where it had left off<\/p>\n

Or to be more accurate<\/p>\n

The man with the knife was<\/p>\n

In the act of placing it at the throat<\/p>\n

Then a missing page<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until he came<\/p>\n

To the fifth page<\/p>\n

Where a body lies stricken<\/p>\n

In the leaking belly<\/p>\n

Of a construction site<\/p>\n

Across the street<\/p>\n

From a train station<\/p>\n

In Atlanta Georgia<\/p>\n

That it became<\/p>\n

Apparent to him<\/p>\n

That the poem<\/p>\n

Was a re-enactment<\/p>\n

Of an incident<\/p>\n

That occurred<\/p>\n

Years before<\/p>\n

When<\/p>\n

It was not possible<\/p>\n

To write the poem<\/p>\n

Not possible<\/p>\n

To face the truth<\/p>\n

Of what had happened<\/p>\n

Not what was written<\/p>\n

But what had happened<\/p>\n

And now even<\/p>\n

If it were written<\/p>\n

He thought to himself<\/p>\n

Edited<\/p>\n

With only the passages<\/p>\n

That mattered<\/p>\n

He would still come<\/p>\n

No closer<\/p>\n

To the violent event<\/p>\n

Across the street<\/p>\n

From the train station<\/p>\n

When the person slipped<\/p>\n

On the ice<\/p>\n

And then<\/p>\n

Was escorted<\/p>\n

By a man<\/p>\n

That lifted her<\/p>\n

To her feet<\/p>\n

Only to throw her<\/p>\n

Into the darkness<\/p>\n

Of the construction site<\/p>\n

And it was not until<\/p>\n

Exactly five<\/p>\n

In the afternoon<\/p>\n

That he realized<\/p>\n

This was the poem<\/p>\n

He would write.<\/p>\n

And that Lorca<\/p>\n

Recorded the death<\/p>\n

Of a matador at five in the afternoon<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?<\/p>\n

Before you write a poem<\/p>\n

You should walk up to the blackboard at school<\/p>\n

Don’t wait to ask the teacher for his or her permission<\/p>\n

You stand up right in the middle of what he or she is saying<\/p>\n

And you walk up to the blackboard<\/p>\n

And you write the first real sentence in your life<\/p>\n

You write a sentence like<\/p>\n

My father is a drunk<\/p>\n

Or my baby sister has someone in her room that does not belong there<\/p>\n

Or<\/p>\n

The man next door has a gun<\/p>\n

Or<\/p>\n

I am hiding under the bed so the world won’t find me<\/p>\n

You stand at the blackboard<\/p>\n

After you have written the first line of your poem<\/p>\n

You stand defiant<\/p>\n

And ask<\/p>\n

Are there any questions!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Horror is back or Living color<\/strong><\/p>\n

Horror is back<\/p>\n

Where it belongs:<\/p>\n

In the imagination<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nothing like imagining<\/p>\n

You are being followed<\/p>\n

Late at night<\/p>\n

You know something<\/p>\n

Is back there<\/p>\n

You feel it<\/p>\n

Before you hear the footsteps behind you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is the light from an open grocery store<\/p>\n

It could be from a distant star<\/p>\n

If you could reach it before…<\/p>\n

Before what?<\/p>\n

You could enter it<\/p>\n

And make a phone call<\/p>\n

But maybe<\/p>\n

You have seen<\/p>\n

Too many horror movies<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There once was a little boy<\/p>\n

He loved going downtown<\/p>\n

To see triple features<\/p>\n

In beat up movie houses<\/p>\n

That had little ticket booths outside<\/p>\n

With ladies that could have been his mother<\/p>\n

Selling tickets<\/p>\n

The lobby… a seedy lounge<\/p>\n

The enticing darkness behind the shroud<\/p>\n

Fell away to a rank stench of beer, sweat and smoke<\/p>\n

From the sailors<\/p>\n

And drunks<\/p>\n

And transients<\/p>\n

Snoring… mumbling… groping<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He would enter with his friend<\/p>\n

With a coke and fries and a hotdog<\/p>\n

And there would be a giant crab<\/p>\n

Eating away an island<\/p>\n

Or a monster in the water<\/p>\n

Grabbing the ankle<\/p>\n

Of the professor\u2019s daughter<\/p>\n

Dragging her down<\/p>\n

Or a body coming back to life<\/p>\n

And someone saying<\/p>\n

That’s not my husband<\/p>\n

I don’t know what that is<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In those days<\/p>\n

Horror was always happening<\/p>\n

To someone else<\/p>\n

Like the spectral figures<\/p>\n

That populated downtown Market St.<\/p>\n

When you came out of the movie<\/p>\n

These same people<\/p>\n

That now enters your nightmares<\/p>\n

You hear a voice in your head<\/p>\n

Don’t leave the movie house<\/p>\n

You sit with a large box of popcorn<\/p>\n

You told the lady at the counter<\/p>\n

You wanted extra butter<\/p>\n

She smiled<\/p>\n

And as she began pressing<\/p>\n

The little silver lever<\/p>\n

That spurted butter onto your popcorn<\/p>\n

It suddenly turned into living color<\/p>\n

Horror is back where it belongs<\/p>\n

In the imagination<\/p>\n

You know something is back there<\/p>\n

You feel it<\/p>\n

Before you hear the footsteps behind you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The living moment They all come out Like precious little darlings Before they put their makeup on The old highway Skirting his imagination now For decades How it preens itself On his ministrations How he fauns over it Is indulgent to its whims Courts it Entices it This old Great Highway Skirting the coast But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":17051,"template":"","categories":[46,11],"class_list":["post-16960","stsp_text","type-stsp_text","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-19","category-lyrik"],"yoast_head":"\nRecent Texts - stadtsprachen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/de\/text\/recent-texts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale:alternate\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Recent Texts - stadtsprachen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The living moment They all come out Like precious little darlings Before they put their makeup on The old highway Skirting his imagination now For decades How it preens itself On his ministrations How he fauns over it Is indulgent to its whims Courts it Entices it This old Great Highway Skirting the coast But […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/de\/text\/recent-texts\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"stadtsprachen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Stadtsprachen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-10-19T09:08:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/stadtsprachen.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/19-scaled-e1634042360485.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1708\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1708\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@stadtsprachen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5\u00a0Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stadtsprachen.de\\\/de\\\/text\\\/recent-texts\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/stadtsprachen.de\\\/de\\\/text\\\/recent-texts\\\/\",\"name\":\"Recent Texts - 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