poetry

Poetry

from BLEEDING PARADISE the Poetry Album from Ray Manzarek & Darryl Read

out now BEATKAT RECORDS 001

all music composed by Ray Manzarek of The Doors published by International Aten Music ASCAP 2007

YOU CAN'T STOP THE WORDS

©Darryl Read 2004-10-18

The words are coming, coming all the time

You can't stop them because they breathe in vapour coded mist, and their ours man!

Words are power and the power has been misused, by the generals of mistrust, shank, sank and confused.

Words lead to the action! Sometimes rough and decried

Some come in magic mists to be sung and hung with pride

Colourful and mystic from the poet's truth

Others yelled in anger from despised youth

The words can hit you! Deep down inside your soul

Change the way you think and take you out of the cold

Illuminate the darkest spot of all that heaves in unsung rhyme

Ringing down the centuries for all mankind to find

You can't stop the words that sooth your last breath

That journey on with you to other lands, enfolding round your spirit, like a warming overcoat of sure caress

Living on with you always inside deaths un-earthly mesh

To be re-born again in mouths of strengthened tenderness ---- whose words will never stop!

Words once said, cannot be stopped ---- some rise like smoke from sacred mountain tops ---- never ceasing!

..... They! ..... Can't kill ..... Your words .....

SAM CHA CHA

©Darryl Read 2004-10-13

In stealth of night, with shadow-black and ice wind

Comes Ach Ach Mas, elegant and wise, in power.

He is Sam, Sam Cha Cha ..... and lithe like silk ---- sometimes known as Bongo Sam of the espresso variety.

I'd acquainted him awhile ---- we'd become friends ---- diggin deep into Soul-Beat-Jazz-Mambo-electric!

Music ---- fussed ---- brain-massed ---- eclectic

And Sam knew other stuff ---- big ---- like magic.

He had showed me some moves ---- balancing ---- black and white ---- mountain-cave-ritual ---- stone ---- bones ---- like primitive science – diamond-minded, sometimes dark, like black shattered glass ---- that lay's hidden within the pavement cracks of my path.

We hung times ---- close and sharp at the café D'Murcia, checking the new empresses of the underground belly, who were sleek, no-jive, and silent like wolves cavorting ---- only with the main giants.

Sam vanished one day ---- at first I thought it was more of his conjuring, and inside the glove compartment of my street wagon elite ---- I found his Master Ring, unlike Sam I thought to leave his thing!

The note ---- spread and read: Seven suns ---- seven magic cannons, seven centuries revenge of the Hexagon.

Maracas shook quick at the rear window ---- the figure moved in lightning ---- aqua lights, his mauve feathered Borsalino quivered, teeth flashing smiles ---- from the Latinos fast apparition, and he was gone again out into the slippery ether.

Whilst talking, one drizzly afternoon with a visiting stranger; who sat in Sam's old seat at the usual café ---- tapping out rhythms – like the mans, she stared with violet eyes, and threw nimble moves, speaking Porto Rican tongues of riddled metro-grams, and told me to keep the ring as it was Sam's.

He will return in night-shade to rout-out the zeros and freedom blockers ---- to help release ---- majestically ---- the new artisans of pure power.

She left me with a message to give to those critics who crawl to gossiped hallows, and run-down the magic of man

Beware the wrath of Mister Sam ---- Sam Cha Cha ---- that is!

THE BEAT DEFENDERS

©Darryl Read December 2004

They are the Beat Defenders walking in shadows ---- fast ---- low

Jump starting ----- the hollow on-lookers of moderate conformity

Up-turning citizens of prey with weakened minds: that dwindle their savings on a down-payment for a corrupt ticket to heaven.

Heaven! Should it not be here? Golden with silver cords that enchant the deeper fit, and we could have had it – but you need a licence and an accountant to justify your expenses for heaven ….. is the mind tax-free?

Where are the overtures? That open up the curtains to the violet stage? And dawn follows breathing asthmatically to decaying tramps.

The Beat Defenders are shinning un-seen in the groove parlour of Augustine's backyard motel

Suavely deep ---- smelling of pure ---- top ---- poetical fragrances ---- lifted from a mystic midnight dealer of love.

Chicks hung from their arms like trinkets of new found treasure ---- and mine too is the pleasure.

The Beat Defenders have created their own haven ---- free from spy-warred-data indexes ---- free from hidden-text jangled taxes, and jive from the governments harm.

Soul Justites ---- the faces of moving-time ---- eloquently succinct ---- in rhythm-prose-crime.

B - SIDE NIGHT

©Darryl Read 2005-01-23 NYC

Sparkling lights and flat street signs

Pale faced women who deal in sex-texed – clocked-watched-sessions-timed .....

The incubus of New York City

The rats run ---- dank and human with coated minds

Cars hoot ---- loaded ---- vast with stems of the urgent

Who are the meeker ---- trying to seize a grip of power ---- from a fat city of growing flesh .….

The joke, the big one! Lives are sprung on un-delicate seasoning

Streets littered with discarded love letters that belonged to a recent suicide, flashes of fast talking ---- edge-susser's – ahead of every game

Only to miss the real thing ---- like a diamond in a sewer.

"Seven dollars to read your poem!" The bread-run fat black cat spat

I split! Perusing everyone, smug, snug and tight within their own frame – somehow honing an insincere comfort ---- that I will call hexed ---- possessed!

All is ok with this kind ---- for now! Wait till the night comes down and hit's them ---- as they sink into the rivers of waste

Some kind of class, tacit ---- used, just as bodies trashed, are collected by the dustcarts, from the scrap yards of pointed death.

The Apocalypse Bar, was a just salvation ---- heaving with old Beat ghosts ---- rising from the cellar

I was home there ---- whilst chairs were up! Amongst the glowing expectancies of Art.

… It was foremost the old touch ---- renewed and shining in The Village.

THE BUTCHERS SHOP DAY

©Darryl Read 2005-08-07

The meat hung ---- dead ---- as flesh; that had transpired its route and validation

Flies crowd ---- with expectation ---- skipping-over the new food and feast!

Chump! The butcher's blade cleaver smashed into the boned carcass piece ---- he smiled as his burly body language spoke good of the result.

It had been a clean-cut, as he wiped his bloody ---- hands onto his soiled, but fresh ---- white drill coat: reminding me of some hospital surgeons smock ---- who worked for the police's murder squad mortuary.

It became over-cast as I pre-longed my stay ---- at the high street window.

Flowery scent passed me from an elderly lady ---- once beautiful ---- walking with a bunch ---- but well on her way to the Death-Meat-Wagon. The fragrance; cleared my nostrils ---- momentarily ---- from the stench of sawdust ---- and the slow decaying animals dead used frames ---- that once housed souls! I acquiesce; that seeing the flesh smashed-up ---- brought on a vision of human carnage, just like I had viewed on the Bad-News-Caster, earlier that morn, with the bombs exploding ---- live!

What differentiates ---- one kind of flesh ---- to another? As all flesh ---- when rawly dissembled ---- seems to have no race, and still we prejudice the animals ---- just like the black over-tanned skins ---- that once lived free in the jungles of Amazonian paradise.

I dragged long on my cancer stick ---- like a natural vampire of unnatural consumption.

The mild wind took the smoke billowing up to the man-polluted-clouds, and I too was contributing to the skies soiled demeanour.

Chump! Another cleaver blow ---- as the stark grey-eyes of the butcher Meister ----- caught mine! As if his look said: "You'll be likely swine!" He cackled to himself, whilst serving a young woman ---- of officed-beauty-wisdom, her elegance of wealth-bred subtle delusion.

I previewed again ---- fifty years into the future ---- to see her body on some stainless-steel-tray, and like the butchers wares of used meat ---- going the same way.

And I was part of it all ---- rolling-down ---- life's flesh spiral, I could only let my mind imagine ---- that the soul's spirit-body was more beautiful.

'0L SHANGHAI

©Darryl Read 2005-08-22

What realm was I in? Finding myself lonely in the lucid, colourful mystic-lit shanty street ---- even the dog shit glistened.

I walked on further wondering how far a thousand UK pounds would take me? And what had taken me here ---- then I remembered ---- through a rice wine glow, that they were after me! And who were they?

They were the soul eaters and vanguards of slow death.

They ---- the blockers! Had succeeded somewhat in stunting my Artistic growth ---- and spiritual one ---- but I had become the gradual victor, as the scene, and underground of course ---- had made sure, that my stuff had surfaced – whether they liked it or not!

Ingo had once said in old Berlin "They will not be able to stop it!" Perceptively correct and very German.

I clocked a bar full of hookers – with nice lighting – lights were always important to me: because somehow; the colours ---- if they were right: infused past and future visions; that pleased the chakras of my inward eyes.

The bar chief nodded a semi-toothed smile and wink ---- bringing me a demon drink, my shaded plant-shrine-table ----- suited me well, and somehow the scent from a Lotus bloom ----- took away the bad odours.

Eventually an inevitable petite but well framed night-lady – knew that I was hers, for the progression of this darkened day in amber twilight. And we drank those demon blues out and away! Like our own festival of pushing the bad to drift outward and sink in a lonely sea.

Strangely her eyes were pure, and the pastel turquoise eye shadow ---- set her face into one of a goddess.

Two years on, I lay still with her, in the old bar chinks boss ---- layme quarters ---- only now I had become part of their un-certain family; and though I coughed a lot and sometimes projectile vomited into a pink plastic bowl – beside the rickety old bamboo bed, I knew that when it was time to fade-out slow ---- that I would be alright! ---- They would make sure ---- in all the ways …

Because, there were several ways to die

in O'l Shanghai .….

THE LOVE PARASITES

©Darryl Read 2004-10-18

You! You fuckers! You parasites of love!

You hard men who know only violence ---- and kamma will deal with that!

You weak conformists who only know how to bow and scrape, and fall in line with tamed conditioning.

You stark followers of non-engagement and lookers-on of negative misfortune of others, condescending, smirking ---- inward judging, convincing yourselves to be righteous and homely in your shallow hollows of emptiness – personified in meaningless.

Crush the shadows that waste your soul ---- get away to the fast electric meadows – that forever grow.

Tune-up your heart that motors slow, shut down the past with its lazy melancholic drift, shift the gears into overdrive – slick and hip – don't let a second slip.

Fill your minds with beautiful Art manuscripts, and love ---- like the saviours of time

Spirit-rich – smooth-souled, ignited luminously .…. fervently divine.

You! You fuckers! You parasites of love!

THE EARTHS REVENGE

©Darryl Read 2005-09-28

Over earths death soil

Flushed in the seas drowning swirl

Comes the earths revenge

To laden down and retrieve her balked-under crown

Smashed and flung into compost dung

By the monied – passioned creed-of-greed

The virgin mother comes to claim us

Taking back from our mouths what she once gave ---- in love

To regurgitate the wrecks and spit it forth down ---- back and anew

Her fiery tempest heart pumps blood from the veins of oceans

Outputting awkward motions swelling wraths and fears

Spread out wide for aeons of years

Till the motion stops and all is calm ---- like her reasoning

Then the earth will be satisfied ---- for a new inner ---- explosive beginning.

GALETAMAR

November 2005 © Darryl Read

Hearts run by batteries

The soothing sounds from the reception disc repeater

A shuffle of soft worn shoes ---- worn by worn-out feet

A lilac sweater ---- flashes heartily by to a beach Rock spot

The woman matured ---- delicate, tall and blue eyed of splendour ---- she soars high with religion and belief ---- she is the faith maker of Death Row ---- arms akimbo ---- waiting for the word

A sweet soul of a young woman Latino ---- courteously erotic ---- takes me to the edge of wonderstruck boundaries ---- as the stars look down at us ---- bright with new anger.

Jealous hooves of the Pensonistas ---- walking ---- and to where? To a cheap deal diner ---- prepared by a coked-up chef ----- sniffling and snorting with belching bad breath.

'Ol John went last week ---- his crouch betrayed him and he wandered un-knowingly into the abyss of the after-world ---- secure without a hump.

Jan is in joy and her Monroe ensemble is fresh and fruity ---- why after all it's her duty ---- to tease with medium sleaze ---- the old jokers ---- the ones that did a chick or two ----- in all the merriment of the good war.

Sylvie is the giant of the meek ---- drinking days done ---- except for one a week ---- she whispered me the gossip jive and I can see – this keeps the old alive.

My solo bird perches upward in the tree ---- she always whistles verse to me ---- my dawn dusk companion ---- her songs are hip and sharp as lemons.

The night beach ripples of shimmering sea-angel threads ---- drawing my eyes into the moons deepened reflection ---- Acker Bilk should have been here, in place – his melody waves from a transistor – still running through the winds of incognizant time.

And the green neon Galetamar sign is candescent ---- amongst the star spread ---- solo night.

Was the object just a light or a mystic sphere flying through a pitch black sky – leaving the hotels view and shooting up into heavens miles?

To leave me here, awe-struck ---- dumbstruck like a lost child

Sheltering in this soulless abode, where the limbo spirits rest, waiting to de-levitate and infiltrate; our brittle shaken minds ….

STEEL WINGED PHOENIX

©Darryl Read 2006-01-11

Paradise is bleeding with the desire for peace!

Show me the beauty ---- that is what I came here for

I wanton not for uneasy death and emptiness

But to harness the favoured energy from kindred souls --- who wander pathways barbed with wire ---- put up by the trench makers of cramped slavedom.

Ernest I am ---- to replenish the wealth of the under-soil

That lays dry and stony.

Show me the beauty ---- so I can lie in fields of the Emerald Night.

If we are there ---- we can weave dreams into falling mists of pleasure.

Aphrodite's wheel of love will spin again ---- and the route to the kingdoms ---- then hence will blossom full with the foods from the seventh gods of light.

Hastily I rise ---- like a phoenix with wings of steel

– To find the lost and damaged beauty.

ETHER WOMAN

©Darryl Read 2004-10-18

To look and wander this earthly shape, and wonder will I find my sun-stirred-woman before the road ---- presumed ---- to heavens gate.

My expectations are high, and she knows my secret reasons why

To muse and slankly play Teutonic games, in villas rich and velvet lofts, to bind and fuse the existential-mountain-tops.

Her look ---- as she likes it ---- is white ochre ---- smelling of spirit ether, stepping delicately prim as a quiet ghost, the dress flowed hazily – the same as ectoplasm.

Such a mind is hers, shining like a beam to eternity, flying over centuries of obscurity, to laugh and settle in lover's luxury.

It's in the seethes of time, before I will be hers and she will be adjoined with me ---- soul entwined ---- elegantly at home in spiritus, brillianti – inconceivable states of mind.

THE NIGHT BUS

©Darryl Read 1999

Damaged souls ride this night bus ---- at the next stop more join us

The nodded-out, fat and stout ---- dribbling with accurate dedication

Grubby ladies smudged ---- discoed flaked

Drunken men mouthed ---- discordinate

We're all riding the devils race – in the red sprayed double-decker'd advocate.

I swear we have no driver ---- just a shell of a man ---- recently mechanised ---- deep black routed non-stop eyes.

Camden glared through the condensation of our bleak windows

Misty apprehensions flared here and there ---- as the cold waited to pay its fares.

Another would eject soon from the old devils carriage ---- as two get off newly married.

The new smart one and sober

Sits unknowingly into the tramps urined reserved seat ---- oh and now he's up again on his feat ---- just glancing the vomit

And cheers from all our lost souls ears.

End of the line time

We filtered out slow ---- almost on tip-toe

The damned souls

Of the N-Five night ride.

HIP MISFIT DANCE

Straight on the streets ---- cool as an iceberg,

Beat hat rolling ----- on past Heidelberg.

Sharp mouthed Johnny no time to jive,

Watch him fly, watch him fly.

Quarter to zero, head on the heel – smooth energised poetry, greasing the wheels.

I'm taking you down; I'm taking you down to the hip misfit trance.

Creeps like a leopard and creeps that need shepherds

You sort an advance ---- no chance ---- no chance!

Mirror'd reflector, blocked interjectured, they can't seem to grasp the silver-lipped tongue of the white cat rolling ---- making a stance ---- blowing.

I'm taking you down; I'm taking you down ----- to the hip misfit dance.

Lucille in the shower ----- only one hour ----- head dried the spin

Rich looking thin ---- pass me that gin.

As the white cat peruses slowly the automatic legends .….

Smash! ---- There's a rumble inside the door as the ignorant and weak lay on the floor ---- like broken tiles. I'm miles ---- I'm miles away .….

I'm taking you down; I'm taking you down to the hip misfit dance.

Sonny Boy Williamson ---- sang cool ---- and through

Paint – galvanised Art structure, mo-hair suited bodies

Stood reticent amidst the glaring sculptured canvases.

The white cat stood alone behind his easel, occasionally his eyes exchanging deep, momentary looks to a wild Beat girl, hunched over some slow decaying specimen of wealthdom type ---- male orientation.

He told her first ---- and then slid in

I'm taking you down; I'm taking you down, to the hip misfit dance

Dance!

FAR FROM SLUMBER

Far, far, from the hearth of slumber and a bosom of love

Pale creatures glow in angered silos ---- hooping with joy

To see the underidden snake down and tumble ---- joyless with a long life to serve

From the shallowly pits of hardness and pathetic misery ----- we climb to an eventual finality

This stark life twisting on a pittance of Geld

"Is there a way out?" Cried a comrade in the shadows of Art

You can see why we chose the Vodka

And the cold ripples on like a shark bite to your brain

The street entertainer cheered us ---- until he fled in his tattered checked chuckle outfit

The horns of wrath bestowed us again 'til the hardy grey shades of daylight

Slit our eyes open

Born to a no-good-end .….

A DRIFT AMONGST THE FREE FORMS

I would like to allow myself to drift, drift into ---- un-solid state ---- to find security and depth in the new void

My body weighs me down ---- fractionalising my approach

Have you ever lay on a bed in a room and slipped out of your flesh? Light and featherless

Have you ever had the guts to go?

Into an up-ward flow

To force your mind ---- extending knowledge ---- magic mystic ---- growth

I would like to allow myself to drift

To drift amongst the free-forms – wander embraced with the Gentle Vendetta …

The people with whom I ride ---- are in sacred skies ---- to hear no lies or fall from grace

They beckon me now!

I have to go ----- and ease out gently ….

for Bernard

Terrapin Man

His eyes sharp – blue – they could spot a diamond in the grooves of a vinyl single – the head structured of heavy bone and full of innovations favouring future time.

Deals within deals – the master of collections – and one in for free, as a sweetener – bagged and wrapped – the Cheeky Chappie's perfection.

The window gaze sad – looking for some lost paradise amongst the steeple tops and trees – that old black dog – made far too many visits.

My Rock Svengali – the Terrapin man – One day he told me that we would all wake up dead in fluffy candy clouds, and wonder what our lives had been all about.

Mr White pulled the metal shutter of the Groove Shack down – quickly, and told the last customer – "Closing now – thank you!"

It is a fast tragedy and of great loss, that my friend has paid such a high price, in search of love.

The Elegant Heteronyms Master

The café wore his vibe, though it was not of happiness, as Pessoa's shadow echoed me.

Lisbon and the emerald night told me his tale, from a bar counter blue like ice.

As I knew already without speech – that his fate had been not so comfortable, as suggested by the homage statuette.

I saw like film the café's owner say, "Not this time Fernando, your rations done! You must find some gold to have another one."

Was it Pessoa or Caeiro who left the Brasileira into the hardened night, and slumbered in a lonely bed, to leave his body and the words inside his head, to be patronized now that his flesh is dead.

Photo by Rui Silva Portugal December 2003.

Two poems taken from the CD Album: Darryl Read - Ray Manzarek 'Freshly Dug'.

These are also featured in the book 'SET' selected poems by Darryl Read illustrated by George Underwood.

'SET' POETRY BOOK

A collection of works well ahead of the present day scene.
Out now!

Hardback (limited edition 2 left): £ 20

New paperback Edition 2001: £ 9,99

Cheques made out to Darryl Read or can be purchased through Pay Pal in Merchandise.

All enquires: info@darrylread.com