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from
THE
TRANSCENDENTAL HOTEL
by
Anthony Weir
published 1996
GAULEITER ALIGHERI
Peter of Morrone
who wanted only to spend his life in a cell
became Pope Celestine V
elected because of his saintliness.
He was so true and incorruptible
that, perceiving his incompetence,
he resigned forthwith:
the only resigning pope.
His successor put him in gaol
so that he could not be exploited by Dissidents.
And Dante consigned him to Hell.
A LA RECHERCHE DE PAUL VERLAINE
Miserable wars
if love is not the reason
Miserable wars
Miserable weapons
if they are not kisses
Miserable
Pitiable men
if they don't die of love
Pitiable
Men have killed
more women than men
The most miserable love
is fought for
The most pitiable kisses are weapons
and the most pathetic men
refuse to live for love without motive.
A COLD EYE
Wisdom is awareness
of the futility of communication
and the prodigality of the
communication of futility:
Wisdom is bareness.
Books are dead trees
and marketing and choked drains,
and poems are dead cells
from dying brains,
through whose intent, intention,
intentionality
the vivid randomness of life and nature
has been turned to death
by planned inequity and inequality.
IADURILOR: THE HELLS
In memoriam Ion Caraion
The terror
Of error…
The error
Of terror…
The terror of seeing
The error of being.
LYCANDROPHILY
Like most werewolves I find very few
humans that I actually like.
Like most werewolves
I find only large quadrupeds and other
werewolves sexually attractive.
In front of the fire or out in the byre
we hug and caress and make slow,
impenetrative werewolfish love
And voluptuously ease into the even-
better, slower, many-times-releasing
ceasing.
CONSUMER
I went out to buy contentment
and came home with bulls' testicles.
I went out to buy transcendence
and came back with a mobile phone.
The vileness of money
is that it turns stupidity of desire
into virtue.
I listen to time coughing and watch
the wolf in the Institute being
flayed to the bone.
NO PITY FOR THE YOUNG
My foreskin is a
cap upon a pen that writes
unbridgeable sighs.
Most texts are greater than the writer.
BEING AND ITS EMBRYOS
for Malcolm
I have come here through the
continuing hug-famine of Ireland with
my portfolio of pleasures
to discover that so many people
are colourless attempt at living,
for we are bred for rapacity,
everyone criminal.
But when the fashionable
sun excludes you, I shall administer
my bony cuddles through the
breathless, fleshy night
knowing the unsensual, senseless
cruelty of light.
A DUBLIN POEM
At the Conference of
Poetry Police
An observer who claimed
That a tree was worth
A thousand poets
Was declared mentally ill
And unfit to work at
The paper-mill.
BEAUTY AND DESPAIR
The forest's lovely, dark and deep,
But I, unlovely human, have pale and
shallow promises to keep
to well-kept humans.
There is no gain but hurt
as we turn the planet called
Earth
to the planet called
Dirt
,
the planet of pain.
And we are vanity & all in vain.
Every girl and every boy
is born with and robbed of
the secret of joy.
And not a thing will satisfy
Because we all are cut away
from our innate capacity
to be appropriate, attuned.
Poems
are pus from that terrible wound,
wound of wanting, dark and deep.
The woods are lovely…We explain
and turn experience to pain,
turn pain to planetary experience,
and we are vanity, and all in vain.
BETWEEN THE CANDLE AND THE WALL
I walk among ghosts
for whom cleverness,
the lies of history
and education
are worth a whole world
more than wilderness
or mystery
or revelation.
FLAMES UPON THE NIGHT
Christians destroyed the Oracles
not because the Sibyls lied
but because the uncouth
New Testamenters
wanted The Good News
and couldn't bear the truth.
THE WHOLE WORLD IS A
HOSPITAL
In memoriam Osho
Connection is the door
to the perfectly gentle sore.
Religion is a luxury and not a leap:
"You need a Master when you are
asleep."
A PAGE FROM THE HANDBOOK OF HEARTBREAK
"Men have lovely bums,"
you said.
Yes indeed, lovely bums,
hairy bums…
and their hearts aren't far past
the diaper stage -
which is why I gave up
lust and rage.
SINGING THE MYRRH OF TRANSCENDENCE
a poem on St Valentine's Day
Let every erection
in the sleepy morning or at night
or in the quiet afternoon
celebrate a resurrection
from the dreaming that is
a panoply of pain
into the dreaming that is
soft connection.
Let armpits be sniffed for their glory
and feet licked for
their sympathy.
Let brother nibble the nipple of brother.
Let grey beards tangle in
kisses and nuzzle grey groins
and let the sparkling wine of becoming
pass from one set of lips to another.
And let sweet ejaculations
express the picture now free from the frame, and not flush
through the plumbing
of drab consolations.
BEING IS REDUCED TO WORDS
AS SPLENDID MEALS ARE
TURNED TO TURDS
We are too arrogant to learn
and what we must re-learn
Is beyond speech.
The stupid don't know how stupid
they are, and the wise
try to cope with constant surprise.
LIFE
is profound shit.
The famous are
into it
Deeper than others.
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