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chad william lowther is a poet/writer from medina, ohio. he is a channel for all energies of the universe, seen and unseen; he holds the key to his own salvation; he is here for discovery; he is here to mine the vein of consciousness for color and light to cast away the shadows of misconception; he is here to see if there is in fact a bottom to the mindshaft; he is here to challenge the commonly provided "Diet Rite" existence; he is here, because George W. Bush is an asshole; he is here to collect fleeting moments in a jar, and to put them on display where people will neglect to fully appreciate them; as long as he is here; he might as well make himself useful. he has just published his first book of poetry, "farewell healthy society."
1.
I long to know those passion filled lunatics
whose words,
spoken in the breath of a moment,
resound with an eternity of destinies charted by celestial maps,
all laws and principals of the universe,
the birth and death of civilizations,
the rise and fall of kingdoms,
with deep oppressive sorrow and liberating joy.
I long to know those with spirits so immense that infinity cannot contain them.
I long to know those passion filled lunatics who cease to move only on rare occasions, and do so that they may kneel beside the cool waters of the collecting pool into which
all consciousness flows.
They rest calmly,
and with gratitude drink in suffering and desolation in immense gulps.
As droplets of water trace the creases and crevices carved patiently
by time
about the mouth and chin
they pause in meditation,
reflecting intently upon the rippled image of themselves.
They are the great magic men
who, by the light of the moon,
pull trampled spirits from beneath dead-weight mountains of ego,
who suck vanity,
dominance,
and lust
from bite wounds in souls punctured by venomous fangs of deception,
who breathe power back into crushed wings.
Their rest is for but a moment then, with a quick mounting and snapping of reins,
they cast forth, into immediate darkness, the light of the ages
restoring vibrancy and color to vast fields of flowers wilted by salted drops of bitter grief, and tearing through these fields at a great gallop,
like madmen,
they drive their horses harder onward into the night!
2.
I long to know those passion filled lunatics who paint colors of emotion
upon the blank canvass faces of commoners
who stand safely by the shores of their comfortable existences
as waves of life crash against the walls of detachment they've built around themselves, commoners who gaze with eyes of longing out onto a horizon
drawn by endless gray sky and blue storming seas
littered with the distant scattered specs of ships
navigated by the reincarnations of prophets and apostles,
ships that cut through foamy crests like manic prose
on journeys destined to be halted at the death of mortal flesh,
and picked up again by the flaming poets of future generations
on and on until the end of time.
These are the passion filled lunatics I long to know.
Their sails are full of the winds of progression,
their faces cooled by those same breezes,
faces made hot by blood of fire,
blood so hot one may think their hearts giant pumping furnaces,
blood boiled by souls that burn with all the sun's intensity.
From sea to shore their condemnation resounds:
Woe unto you commoners
who have allowed the cries of humanity
to be drowned out by your own wanton narcissism!
Woe unto you commoners
who sit upon plastic lawn furniture
allowing your souls to flicker and die away
like smoldering timber!
Who's got a tan?
She's got a tan.
He's got a tan.
She doesn't have a tan. She'd be pail if humiliation hadn't burned her.
He was born dark- doesn't need a tan.
But those with tans will fear him, then hate their fear, then hate him,
while they tan, becoming more like him,
thinking they're making themselves different,
thinking they're eternally different.
Everyone fears loss of same familiar comfortable coat,
fears onslaught that's not coming.
That's why they tan.
I have no tan.
I don't need a tan.
I don't need an impermeable shield to wear as skin.
I love people too much.
One who strives for limelight seeks safety of solitude and adorns a shadow- a tan.
A tan!
Got to get a tan!
A tan and some perfume. You'll be everything but self, and then they can't get to you. Rape a bum a sandwich, give a man a tan!
A tan!
A tan!
Got to get a tan!
Drunk at the Dead Saloon.
The sizzle of the grill renders me mindful of dreams and ambitions gone up in smoke. How many? What’s the population here?
The want for luster has infiltrated even the biological ritual of breaking bread.
Dead baby taxidermy, your own quiet child sits hushed in the corner
of your diamond spangled living room. High Art!
It seems a silly idea, but give it time,
it will become commonplace,
will sneak in on you like every cultural absurdity, masquerading as chic until we
desensitize, and accept it.
Golden liquor no longer Rimbaud’s poetic phrase,
but a standard item of wealthy vain drunkards.
We find beauty/quality in the pelts of soft exotic animals. Indeed!
God made them such!
No respect for personal order, for the individual functions of the Great Scheme, bigger
than ourselves.
We pose ourselves greater than all else. Ego Belligerence!
A natural assembly of order begets peace,
yet we cast stones at those skeptical of a system founded upon righteousness' antithesis, and we laugh at the man who wears his shirt inside out. Ha!
I laugh! And I cry! What flower grows from the soil of dead rotting souls! MADNESS
this emotional matrimony!
Bitter the walls of this reality! The cold in hospitability of steel,
and yet we have built them with our own God Given Hands!
My walls are painted crimson with the suffering of man, and I wear them like a heavy
garment!
I long to break free of form in chase of an eternally fleeting spiritual infinity.
There can be no rape in structures void,
yet mortal lips dissolve by infinity's hazing magic potion.
Thus I am bound to this earth, the mule affixed to plow,
beast of burden born into this duty,
knowing no more and no less,
fastened in the murk of cool waters, the humble wind blown reed,
roots soaking in the salvation that burns.
ONE
We the sheep hail the hand painted pink plastic prom queen
who shuffles through a door marked PUBLIC EDUCATION
into a gold trimmed crystal palace
purchased with the stolen formula of ghetto-babies
forced to nurse upon aggression in a wasteland of desperation,
while daddy's little girl paces marble floors
learning to lead oppressors with her tits.
Her chirping rally cry echoes throughout the hallways,
shimmering glitter bouncing off of dead walls:
Let's get drunk on Rum and Lies!
Let's go to the hop!
We the sheep hail a generation of youth
conditioned by egosmutconciousvoidshallowmindpuke,
We HAIL the Great American DreamSham!
We hail football stadium grandstands
brimming with impressionable patriot folk beaming white smiles
feasting on ice cream and hotdogs as they spill into the aisles wrapped in Old Glory.
We hail soot-smeared buzzing drones busy machining
souldeath glittertrinkets
(tools of distraction),
tools of war,
and the gigantic steel and granite skeletons of our civic graves,while the massive smokestacks of sweltering houses of industry
billow gritty brown clouds of soulchoke into the atmosphere.
We hail big business churches where the religiously active/spiritually dead
worship the false god of self whom they unrighteously call upon in the name of JEEZUS!
We the sheep who forge hell upon earth
HAIL the Great American DreamSham!
We hail doctors who lay healing hands long into the pockets of sick and dying prey suspended in the burning patience of helplessness.
We hail police, soldiers of the Wealthy's Iron Fist Militia,
who rise in arms
against their own people
in the name of FREEDOM!
We hail judges who pardon money while punishing the victims of subjugation, circulating power back to those who pull the levers and push the buttons.
We the sheep who coast upon flaming checkbooks down a lazy river of blood
HAIL the Great American DreamSham!
TWO
We the sheep behold her face contorting
as technology massages the erogenous zones hidden beneath her robes,
technology that rolled in, gusting in crazy jolted patterns
while our forefathers slept the deep drunken sleep of prosperity.
We look to her as she poses with her torch outstretched
in a vain attempt to repel the impending night of unremitting madness and depravity, while the sun sets upon this floundering misguided nation.
We the sheep HAIL Lady Liberty! the manipulated whore,
we the sheep lulled by an empty life experience buffered by comfort and convenience, cowed by threat of legitimate impulse piercing our soft lazy individual nonrealities.
We the sheep hail our Amulet
standing high upon her crumbling pedestal at the pinnacle of our value system,
we the sheep who ignore our poor and homeless brethren
whose starvation and addiction
are an infringement upon our right to the GUILT FREE PURSUIT of
orthopedic
leather sofas,
flat screen
plasma televisions,
fast cars with
fantastic spoilers,
kelly green
garden trowels,
matching bedsheets,
and designer LambOfGod skin
egoprophylacatics.
We the sheep hail our right to pursuits that have raped the earth
and robbed a people of their virtue to one another!
We HAIL the Great American DreamSham!
Oh Almighty Being deliver me from this loathsome world of fiction!
Send me to the ghetto where addicts, thugs, and thieves
scour dust and broken glass for the festering scraps of a remorseless society!
Send me to the ghetto to wallow in bullet riddled bodies and massacred childhoods!
Send me to the ghetto where the consequence of luxury is whitewashed with stereotype, pushed out of sight and out of mind!
Deliver me from the sheep I feign to call my countrymen!
Deliver me from this Great American DreamSham!
Submerge me in the TRUTH
the TRUTH
that I may never forget it!
While I was at the park the other day
I noticed a young woman,
a fine Puerto Rican specimen,
out walking her fetus.
Her fetus was very well behaved.
It sat in the womb quietly.
It did not climb out of her vagina wanting to toss the old pig skin around,
or put on a tantrum
when mommy refused to get an ice cream cone from the concession stand.
By all appearances her fetus was into jazz or maybe bebop,
something that cooks.
I hold great respect for a fetus that likes jazz, because
in all of my years wandering this vast chunk of rock
I have found bebopping, jazz loving fetuses to be a very rare commodity.
I have heard some people refer to jazz as "the music of sinners".
Take for instance this fetus I knew back in Arkansas-
great fetus, loved the blues.
Now the mother of this fetus used to say,
"Oh dread, my fetus is into the blues!
It always starts with a love for bleeding strings,
and a wailing harp,
and then it’s onto the whiskey and wild women.
What my fetus needs is church,
not the way of the demon."
But this was just not so.
Her fetus went on to pursue its love of blues music,
and upon birth,
rather than leaping from mommy's vagina, shaking off the placenta,
and tearing out of the maternity ward off onto a skirt chasing, alcoholic binge,
it headed to the nearest record store to thumb through old Elvin Bishop records.
In fact, upon inspection of the bedpan the acting obstetrician,
expecting to find the standard waste/nutrient after-birth sludge,
was shocked to discover a rare and valuable collection of imported vinyls
dating back to the early 1950's.
Mommy was mortified, and began sobbing.
The doctor on the other hand was quite pleased,
and could be heard shouting, “HotDamn!"
as he skipped down the west hallway of the maternity ward
wiping his new found treasures with his lab coat.
Low on fuel,
car may overheat at any moment.
How far might we be walking?
Will we make it off of this cosmic sundrenched highway?
Why are we doing this when we could just exist,
when we EXIST,
but in this car,
to tell ourselves we’re going somewhere,
doing something?
To score cash for booze,
money for fuel?
But we’re spending fuel.
We did this before, spent eight bucks gas getting out to that music store in Cleveland
to pawn that trumpet,
which wasn’t even mine,
for fifty bucks.
Turned it (the offer) down the day before,
not enough $$, but that next day I wanted it,
needed to get drunk!
So we ran the tank to empty getting there, but the same clerk wasn’t there,
and the new guy didn’t want all that used dented brass.
So we had to give it away so he’d give us five bucks charity,
and we could get home to stew over crushed dreams that we’d compromised in the first
place. And we didn’t get drunk.
And some kid somewhere’s blowing that ugly tarnished horn,
and doesn’t know the real pain that resonates from those forced mangled notes,
he’s oblivious.
And here we are doing this again.
Going to hit my mom up for some loot,
to steal it from her,
again,
to get drunk.
God I hate doing this.
Needles are nearing their red marks.
It doesn’t matter the gage,
it’s all bad.
Are we going to make it?
Were we doomed from the start?
How did we end up cruising this big empty forsaken highway?
Is this what its like to be alone and in love, passed over by the rest of the world?
To live by the sword-ON FILM - is to die by the sword - ON FILM.
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