Ron Kozloff
Writer and Director
A PIG LAMENTS
Your dainty pig’s feet
They’re oh so sweet
Old pig’s feet
Down in the mud
We’re doing the piggy hug
We come up for air
After we’re done
We breathe it in
The stink the slag
The genuine drag
The dank limp thing
Offering nothing
Not a grain of dirt
Not a piece of meat
Not a snort of juice
Amidst the grim refuse
We roll around
To scratch our needs
And stretch our legs
To cool our heads
We look up high
We paint the sky
An everlasting lie
And turn about
And try to sleep
We would have a laugh
if we were you
Not just us
A cheap flesh stew
For you to ingest
With your favorite brew
For you to throw your money to
In this pig’s heaven
There isn’t much to do
But fart and fret
To sidestep the net
That will land one day
On me
And
On you.
MEAT
Meat is gravity
a dreamless state
pieces of death
there already in the beginning
and in all things
their essence.
Meat allows nothing to escape
and is empty of all but itself.
Meat consumes meat
becoming more meat
fleshier carcasses
duller slices of heads and legs
some younger
some more red.
The butcher is our friend.
And if we pretend
to aspire to other ends
with our many meat brains
meat guards meet us
at the door to the station
to disconnect the trains.
Fresh meat sizzles with notions,
take sides.
Lies slide from its bloodied hides.
Shapes abound.
Meat like meat likes to fry
in meat patties and on delegations
and in pairings that result in
baby meat who cry.
The meat parade began in time,
its womb the mirror, before
which we walked on air
part of the atmosphere
or flew
or were never there.
TIME GOES
Where does the time go?
Into the mouth of a Beast
and out the other side.
Time is a toilet
that flushes out our lives.
(Don’t waste it!)
A WINTER’S DAY
Sketch the sky
Describe a winter sadness
Your body has fallen to loneliness
The air is not your friend.
Bitterness, your companion,
Exhales its iron wind.
You bring her squarely to your eye
You count a thousand reasons why
Whatever wasn’t should have been
What fell between the cracks and
Never rose again.
Wheels of doubt roll thru
What you were and what you did
The pain that came and came again
That is
And lives
In a furnished room,
A vicious whip of
The people you knew or
Cast away
Who visit you in dreams
Whose blame you deflect.
You were young, you say.
But on this winter’s day
There is no escape at hand
From the chill of regret
For things you know you haven’t
quite paid for yet,
The prison sentence you serve insufficient
For what your crimes were said to be,
You didn’t love
You didn’t love enough
You didn’t love for free,
All these counts
Deeply etched
On the paper of your
Memory.
But that was then,
You’ve shed your skin
You’re a new man
You don’t carry the same DNA.
And what can you really say
About what was?
It may not even have been.
It may be just a dream
You’re having today.
INDIFFERENCE
Cut down all the green trees
Cut out all the green thoughts
Push all the green money to the top
And you are left with a hole
That once was a heart
A man made of vinegar and rags
Laying hunched up on the sidewalk
Shivering in his thin individual shell
BEAUTY’S DEMISE
How I love that prettiness
Not too much inside the vest
Just a little piquant twist
And then she runs for cover
The smile she brings to all in turn
Makes all the blushing angels burn
There is so much she has to learn
From a foreign member
And her little offhand crush
Thrown about to make a fuss
Makes the boys turn to mush
Before the given hour
It is studied not left to chance
Like dappled horses on a prance
Not unlike a demon’s dance
Sourced from a far corner
And all the world’s weariness
Disappears by her mist
There is not an eye not fixed
On her terrible power
In time her charms will become dust
Like gleaming metals turn to rust
The golden mirror she used to trust
Turn into a gradual horror
She will change her fanciful ways
The glory past the showy plays
The night now obscuring days
Until the final curtain lowers
But though it was so short lived
The time she gave and she did give
Her beauty from the shadows in
A rare particular manner
YOU
You know that you are more than
A part of me.
We are inseparable,
a cliché joined at the hand.
Worlds without you
don’t even exist,
words only rot for how
I know you
inside
and out.
I study you like an x-ray.
Comely gentle creature
social manager
bright morning star.
Dear friend,
dear friend.
THE WHOLE WORLD’S A PIMP
I wrote a poem.
How much money dja make?
I made a speech.
How much money dja make?
I burned down a house.
How much money dja make?
I assassinated a senator.
You musta made something on that.
I phoned my mother.
Good. How much?
Money:
Yer only as good as yer last pay check.
Remember that:
The bottom line never lies.
NOVEMBER’S CHILDREN
The way November falls on you like a bleak vision
The way November rolls over you like a bone crushing incident
The way November empties you like a vampiric spirit.
November dances toward the precipice with gloom.
I love all her dead children blowing away in the wind,
such loveliness waving goodbye, opening the door
to the frozen heart of winter.
Blanket me in white,
Let me sleep a thousand years in your vault.
​
WHAT HAPPENS AT NIGHT
What comes up from the depths is not invited.
The cold hard facts from the ocean’s floor arrive
as a host of information,
like gate-crashers at a wedding
to remind the bride and groom
that sores fester beneath their fine clothes,
and secrets linger in dusty hallways,
bones decomposed in some forgotten room
undisturbed by sunlight.
This pale hand of guilt operates to tweak the
functioning machinery of day,
so that
we are laid bare and picked apart,
subjected to voices speaking in bewildering tongues.
The faces of night reflect in mirrors manipulated by
an insane projectionist, a sort of god of randomness
and,
If there once was a whole man he has been splintered into shards,
swirling in flux under our lids.
We have slipped from brave front to the helplessness
of the dead.
The night examines wounds,
packages of grief pulled from corners and dragged to centre stage,
that hearts may be set to thudding and terror to spring.
There is no armour strong enough to protect us
from ourselves.
SURVIVAL AND SOME
He huffs and he puffs and he blows
The house down
He sings for his supper
He’s a rare clown
He has a girlfriend who hates him
She has good reason to
She calls him a transparent fake
And a certified Jew
Not a juggler or philosopher
He ever was
Not a lover of the lofty life
That was just buzz
He always salts his beans
and peppers his hair
He comes on time
And pretends to care
But he doesn’t really want
To save the world
That’s just a line
If the truth were told
He has a crush on Satan
Not a thing for Christ
He calls himself an agnostic
Unless it’s a bad night
He’s been a con-man forever
Never held down any job
He’s done time for nearly everything
And has no connection with the mob
Though you’d never suspect it
He has a tender side as well
He blows kisses to the moon
From his apartment in hell
His childhood was rather lazy
Though it’s gotten sort of hazy
His family was middle-rung
His mother was slightly crazy
His father was a barber
Who liked his steaks rare
His mother was a janitor
With a big pile of hair
As a boy he always played
On the wrong side of the track
As a girl he always played
With the leader of the pack
Then came the crash
In his late teenaged years
The suicidal mission
The solitude and fears
That landed him in the middle
Of a psychological ward
With old people who slobbered
While they played cards
This was just the place for him
To chill out and think
This was just the place for him
To get fat and pink
The doctors had the cure
For the illness in his head
Stringy food and pills
Yellow green and red
Which cheered him so much
He slowly exploded
Into the next century
All arsenic coated
He eventually straightened out
His curves and his kink
Went straight for the bottle
And started to drink
The years have not always been kind
to this boy
The poisons that he swallowed
The means he had to employ
To keep right on going
The measures he took
Were not easily come by
Were not found in a book
If it all works out in the end
It’s too soon to tell
He’s not dead yet
And he’s close to being well
What is true for certain is
That he’s paid his dues and some
What is less sure is why
He didn’t turn around and run
There isn’t much to gain
By beating a dead horse
There isn’t much left
Besides dying of course
Whoever may want to take a lesson
From this saga and this man
Might just as well forget about it
As fast as they can
​
I NOTICE
I notice how you sidestep your gloom
The spaces that empty an afternoon
The breath of frost around your cups
The steps you take are not enough
I notice you never pronounce the names
Of her or him who never came
Through all those bleeding days and nights
All those years that weren’t right
I notice that the gift received was lost
To grand illusions that had cost
Sleeplessness and scattered hearts
The end to what did never start
I notice how all your silly talk
To almost everyone who walks
Within the range of your despair
Is just a pose you never care
And I notice most of all the waste
Abandoned hours leave an aftertaste
Will I ever come to forgive you
For being me and none too true
THE PACKAGE
The package wears a bow-tie. He smiles at the clock. He can’t go anywhere or do anything because packages don’t move on their own and there is nothing that moves him. Being self-aware, he observes himself as weight. Gravity is the rule that owns him. Repetition is the game that plays him in a slow, evenly paced drip that marks time. More accurately, it is the clock that changes position, and the smile indicates nothing because it has been pasted on; it signifies no particular emotion. It remains perhaps because it relaxes his face and has become a habit and habit is what keeps him. He notices his chest, a block heaving, and sometimes gets lost in its momentum. In moments like this, he goes away. And then returns. He returns to the same place, to his body, to the repetition, to the arena of pain. Everything is old, solid, unchanged. He listens to his body, to the noises that wash over it in a functional, predictable sequence - the passages, the objections, the causes and effects, the tedium. He tries to listen for something different, and then concludes that it has all been done just the same as it always has, in eternal, concentric stasis. He remembers - he still can remember - the sun, the moon, their dance in light and darkness. The clock moves once again and the past spins out as well with all the unreality of soap bubbles. It could be another mind that invented it. The mind means nothing, can’t be trusted to produce anything reliable. He is his body: Limited. Immobile. Circumscribed, as if spirit has been extricated, leaving a corpse that is watching itself, a stone watching a stone, watching the clock move over frozen time.
THE WAITING GAME
The days relax in a summer haze
Everyone is so far from home
The way we drift away our days
Till night comes rushing like a stone
When darkness opens up a vault
To show out a necklace of stars
You want to join but then you halt
You can’t manage to remove the bars
And you are thrown back into yourself
To the maze and the old bloody habits
To the question that repeats itself
Then multiplies like rabbits
The one the many strings fail to attach
The reason for this is left to chance
Hope is found and then is snatched
The resolution is only happenstance
So the body is left to its own devices
To fight off the cold and the knives
At whatever costs at whatever prices
The ape still stands mystified
HATE THE SIN
You killed a little girl
you slit her throat with a steak knife.
And now you wonder how it all came about.
You were a thief
You loved Princess Di for her heart.
You had never had any thought about killing anyone,
Especially a child
Until that day
at that time
under those circumstances.
It came over you like a blanket,
Covered you in darkness,
The you of the kernel
The you you knew.
You became an unknown to yourself,
whom you hated
whom you loved
for a brief instant.
It made the killing easy,
until it kicked in
And then it was too late.
The black dog of vile
won the fight.
The white dog of radiance
fell asleep.
I don’t know who I became
but he has left me.
ANOTHER AUTUMN
Another autumn
and the leaves are waving goodbye
to an empty mansion.
What do you cling to on
the way out, you with your blind gaze upward?
There is so little justice in the world that
when it gets cold I put on a second coat of skin,
I paint my teeth white
and try to leave footprints in the snow.
MISERY
Misery,
you are pretty
but
I can see you
more clearly now:
the gold in your teeth
the wall in your body
the stain in your breath.
You
encourage me
to ignore you.
Your earth- weary weight
and iron gate
are not a prison
after all,
Just an assumption,
and
I call you out as a mistake,
a fake,
paint over pure wood.
You are a bully
who stands
against the infant’s gaze
like a border agent
demanding passport for first
flight.
Who are you?
What made you come?
Why did we ever allow
you into our homes?
I wonder.
Is it because you
appeared to be
so
pretty?
Misery is so
pretty,
you see.
You seduced us with
your sound
and later we found
you comfortable,
until we hated you
and ourselves.
And by then you had moved in.
We want you out now.
We know your ways
we’re sorry for the craze.
We created it.
And, you,
you can be unmade,
really.
INCARNATION
Where is the dead time buried, the savage bird that eats my days? I have no clear memory of anything that has passed, though I do remember that I lived once as a man, then as a prisoner. It was in a cave that I spent all my energy trying to sleep. I had a shadow that kept me company and I fed on the bitterness of others. Occasionally the wind sent me a message, which I disdained. I had no use for wind or for messages. I only wanted to know what I had become, the nature of the beast, so that I could live with it more closely and not be tempted to seek outside myself. I contemplated a great deal, and I came eventually to realize that I was a blackness that swallows the world and that time was buried in me. I felt better and free and I left the cave to roam the streets at night.
WHAT HAPPENS AT NIGHT
What comes up from the depths is not invited.
The cold hard facts from the ocean’s floor arrive
as a host of information,
like gate-crashers at a wedding
to remind the bride and groom
that sores fester beneath their fine clothes,
and secrets linger in dusty hallways,
bones decomposed in some forgotten room
undisturbed by sunlight.
This pale hand of guilt operates to tweak the
functioning machinery of day,
so that
we are laid bare and picked apart,
subjected to voices speaking in bewildering tongues.
The faces of night reflect in mirrors manipulated by
an insane projectionist, a sort of god of randomness
and,
If there once was a whole man he has been splintered into shards,
swirling in flux under our lids.
We have slipped from brave front to the helplessness
of the dead.
The night examines wounds,
packages of grief pulled from corners and dragged to centre stage,
that hearts may be set to thudding and terror to spring.
There is no armour strong enough to protect us
from ourselves.
