Hoodie

I hide myself under hood

Waiting inside

Praying for rain

Hoping my flanks are covered

Taught early that the world was ugly

Let me hide in plain sight

Get from A point to B

Then from B back to A

Let it take one day

Hidden seen

If I could wear a mask

Form a field of force

Absolutely disconnected

But interactive

---Eugene Argent

Aimless

Aimless

Without direction

Floating nowhere

In to nothingness

---Eugene Argent

The Greatest Crime

If suicide

Is a river

I am treading water

If life

Is some sort of game

I have lost

Procreation

The most terrible crime of all

---Eugene Argent

Stevie Wonder

Driving blind

Out of my mind

Running on E

But sober

Eyes are X

But clean

Moving through smoke

From eighteen-wheeler exhaust

Needles prick my skin

From the bitter biter cold

White cracked rock

Lines the gravel road

I pull over

Waiting to catch up with myself

---Eugene Argent

The Ticking Continues

I am a nervous wreck

My face keeps twitching with fear

My limbs are feeble

Don’t look for eloquence here

For I have lost it

---Eugene Argent

The Ticking Continues

The ticking continues

The forward clock tumble-stumble

Laying the path for me

Because I choose it

Getting my foot out the door

Because I believe it so

This pain shall pass as I leave

Absolutely on my own terms

---Eugene Argent

World Weary

Weaker than the world

Foundation won’t hold

Three steps

And then the fall

Can’t shake hands with buckled knees

Crumbling in mid-stride

Every wall

Is a leg

Every solid

Fastened object

Provides a course-correction

Couldn’t keep the head up

Without adrenaline

Couldn’t keep an open eye

But for the tears

Blessed atrophy!

How you coax in to catastrophe

Cursed sleep!

How you lure them to recline

---Eugene Argent

Sound Solid State

Lookin’ for a solid state

My mind is movin’ every place

My body’s like a bowl of jelly

Dead dogs lappin’ at my belly

If there’s a time and space

For everything

Then I have left this world

A time and place

For everything

We broke the physical laws

Lookin’ for a solid state

I just can’t sleep when I’m awake

My bones have lost the spinal jelly

Dead dogs lappin’ at my belly

I wanna find a form

And fix myself

I wanna feel a certain way

I wanna find a wall

Affix myself

Twenty-four hours to the day

---Eugene Argent

Memorex Burn

There’s me

At one end

My back against the wall

Then there’s the hall

There’s the baby

At my left

Oblivious to all

Then there’s the hall

At the other end

A pyramid

Sending out the call

But then there’s the hall

The hall

A length

At length

With blood in the air

I stall

For I feel the oppression there

---Eugene Argent

Thom Yorke

Singing in another’s voice

Reaching in another head

Pulling out the phrases

Making his mint on misery

I’ve got crushed crackers in my blood

They’re salting up my seed

Making the claret colder

Poisoning the antibodies

Soaking up the soul

A foul odor is emanating

Rising from the wound

Disconcert my decision-making

Make it harder to see

The Devil made me do it

Hiding inside

Messing up the metrics

Crossing the wires

Singing songs with Thommy’s voice

Singing in the elevator

Climbing up the stares

No evidence of logic

Words don’t have to rhyme

No lyricist is living here

I hold tight to the musical blanket

---Eugene Argent

Rat King

Little Tails Wagging

Tied before the tip

Pulling in all directions

Getting nowhere fast

Little tails snapping

Petrified tree limbs

Mutually assured destruction

He is the King of Rats

He’ll find his way up your leg

The King of Rats

Will find his way to your heart

Eating everything in his face

Eating anyone in his way

---Eugene Argent

Houdini

How do you get out the hood?

Become Houdini, my friend

Learn to pick locks from an early age

Learn to undo straitjackets

Recognize the falseness of Mesmerism

As smoke and mirror parlor tricks

Become synonymous with your profession

But listen for the quieter moments

For in the silence between applauses

May come vengeance

Disguised as tragic accident

---Eugene Argent

Doors

They’ve got some nerve being born

Born in to poverty

There’s normally no way out

For the escape artists

Must all become

One by one

A hundred Houdinis

Picking the locks

Opening doors

That shouldn’t be closed

That shouldn’t exist

---Eugene Argent

Whistler’s Children

While at West Point

Under military eye

Whistler took architecture

And a stand

The class was told to draw a bridge

To measure their skills

Whistler did

A beautiful bridge of stone

Two children fishing from the summit

“Remove those children from the bridge!”

The instructor spoke

“This is a military exercise!”

So, reluctantly

Whistler returned to his board

And moved his children

To the river below

“I said remove those children!”

The instructor was aflame

“These figures have no place in this class!”

Whistler left and returned

And the children were gone

Replaced

With two tiny headstones

For the artist knew

That dead children

Would fit in any military design

---Eugene Argent

Where I Am Right Now

A toddler

Tied to a tether

Hanging from a cliff’s edge

The flames

Rising from the serrated maw

Of the dragon below

The system

Taking a knife to the tether

The look

On the face of the child

---Eugene Argent

Tell Me

How does it feel to live?

What is it like to be pre-mortem?

To exist fully in your space?

To hold some mastery of your little portion of nature?

Do you look down upon your servants?

Ever consider their origins?

Were they born in your service?

Do the living ever care for the dead?

I can tell you of death, child

I am the dead

Haven’t any weight in your mortal world

I feel no element, save the fire

I burn in miserable hatred

In the ashes of men

The place of my birth

As a child

I thought of myself as you

I held my head high

The head that was beaten down with age

It was a dream, after all

A sad thing

A corpse under delusion of life

---Eugene Argent

Dark Center

Dig a little deeper

Under-in the skin

Shed off the husk

Digging deeper now

Facing the darkest center

Old soul

Under soot

Dust the bastard off

Black heart

Failure in the longest line

It’s mine

It’s mine

There

In the lung

There is a blight

Entire worlds devoid of light

Suns have shed their surface

Binary systems

Without one star

Dead worlds

---Eugene Argent

The Devil is God

The Devil is God

He holds the spinning Earth

In his hand

The Devil is God

Are dead men dead for speaking?

Are we all condemned to cruelty?

Victims of violence?

Licensed to die?

Then call a spade a spade

And bow before your Devil

For he is your God

---Eugene Argent

BURY ME

Bury me beneath your world

Forget that I was here

Nothing under scattered soil

No heartbeat under-foot

I wasn’t here to begin with

I wasn’t ever born

The breath you hear isn’t breathing

The words are in your head

This flesh you feel is not rotting

These drowning eyes do not see

The gaping maw is not choking

The scream is but a song

Compact this soil with your hatred

Drive this nothing straight through

The centrifugal hell

And out the other side

Perhaps there to be born

To be loved

And to return love

So great as to be reflexive of the hatred received

---Eugene Argent

THIS IS NOT A POEM

This is not a poem
And I am not a poet
I will not rhyme
Every other line
I will not speak
In the measured cadence
To which you
And your slam-fan friends
Are accustomed
In fact, Iwillspeakinalongunobstructedstreamofwordsjarringyoufromyour

-DefPoetexpectations
And this is my Def Poem
Meant to reach Def Ears
Def Ears that cannot hea--
I will not rhyme
Every other line
I am not a poet
And this is not a poem
I am not angry
I am not indignant
At the plight of One
In lieu of All
I will not posture
And pretend to care
For one moment under light
Then discard my intentions
Like shed snake skin
I will not use similes!
Neither they, nor metaphors
Offer direct lines to intention

I will not over-intellectualize!
Bend myself to pretzel
Ignoring the call of the ignorant
To let go
That true truth
Goes no deeper
Than the heart

---Eugene Argent

Another Band of Great Interest ...

Watchmen Wrap-Up

Well, as I expected, this movie is brilliant. Very true to the comic. I waited ten plus years for this (I read the book in '98), and I can say it:
The dream has been fulfilled.