The
Frozen Man
There’s only one problem with man: the fact
that he keeps going on.
Somehow I am not sure if it will matter. In fact
it won’t. Because I’ll still have to pay rent
tomorrow, right? Whether it’s a republican or
democrat, whether it’s Sunday or Monday —
whether I’m what you’d call dark or light — I’ll
still have to pay rent? So that says it all
right there. And if it doesn’t matter, why play
the game?
I’ve been a frozen man a long time, at least
since my last suicide attempt.
I changed when I got out of the coma, somehow
I felt the things around me differently…like a
strip of flesh with the flu. Some call it a
religious experience-peak flow-runner’s high. I
don’t know. I don’t care anymore. But I do know
that all my collected dreams, all my wishes, all
the bets I placed — did not come through. I
never played with my money, the gamble was with
my life. And I enticed others to invest in me.
And when I let them down, I couldn’t get back
up. Only I wasn’t lame so I couldn’t be shot. I
was frozen. Stuck inside myself. I had reached
the end of imagination and there was nothing
left for me to see or say. I was like a dangling
spoon.
I knew a record collector who was hooked on
heroin and every time he’d cook up, he’d bend
his spoon into a question mark. When I asked him
why, he said exactly. He was shooting
the answer into his veins.
*
KITTY
GENOVESE
Anger is just rage with an ‘N’ to soften the
blow.
Always look out for someone who cherishes books
& then burns them.
Looking back over my shoulder, through the
pinched elbow of time,
I can see it was merely a habit I had
noticed,
A conscious “putting-down”
A fear of “letting loose”
Elements of souls not saved.
We have no anger, We have Facebook.
Call me when the guilty decide to bleed.
We have sowed the seeds of Kitty Genovese.
*
THE
BEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION
Ginsberg wrote: “I saw the best minds
of my generation destroyed by
madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging
themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix..”
But not me.
No,
I saw the best minds of my generation
resist their true insanity
and give up their imagination to Dead Steam.
The best minds of my generation are writing
poems, but not sharing them
The best minds of my generation are not on the
picket line, they’re being trampled by them
The best minds of my generation do not want to
occupy
The best minds of my generation have a hard
time ordering a cup of coffee
The best minds of my generation have no desire
to follow idols
The best minds of my generation stay indoors or
inside, off-the-grid, or out of bounds
The best minds of my generation are not being
supported by grants or parents
The best minds of my generation create unheard
symphonies and daydreams that would put a
long-gone Maestro to shame
The best minds of my generation can’t seek some
spiritual fix cause they are too busy
remembering pin codes
The best minds of my generation aren’t
interested in owning anything but their own
lives
The best minds of my generation are caught
between beepers and iPhones
The best minds of my generation mourn for all we
already could not accomplish
The best minds of my generation no longer ask
Why, but How?
The best minds of my generation realize that a
man not offended by anything will stand for
nothing
The best minds of my generation know that the
pen is mightier than the sword
The best minds of my generation are not lost,
they are simply…not found
The best minds of my generation don’t see their
own potential & therefore they cease to
imagine
The best minds of my generation don’t understand
their times because they are not creating them
Instead, we’re willing to become like every
other part of the universe and give up our
identity –
desperate
to join the parade
The best minds of my generation could be
beautiful –
If they could only see themselves
If they could only pause
& accept the failed status quo –
Infinitely being hurled at them
With the terror
& grace of a runaway train
& the tremor of the other poet’s great
maxim: “The best lack all conviction.”
*
ASSASSINATION
OF A FLOWERBED
He begged her to help her daughter. She’d
consent if he’d never show his face again;
she’d
explain his death/disappearance &
pay for the mock funeral. They shook hands,
but he never
signed the contract. Withered now like a
tattered leaf caught in between the rice paper
of a well
kept poorly read bible. We don’t all
have skeletons in the closet it’s the mystery
of the matter
that lurks beneath our pillows or
pockets that scares me. Some forgotten deleted
promise in the
inbox of…Boredom once scared me: to be
forgotten was a fear but what comes close to
the assassination of a flowerbed that never
had the chance to be trampled by hooves wild
& untamed
& unaware of the bondage they beat
upon?
*
A Broken
Message Memory
And I remember once when we owned the
night, once upon a time,
there was this band of crooks.
And we were aristocrats of crime – con
artists and thieves.
Plagued by this past
There’s no adjusting to the
Stolen wooden digitized zeitgeist.
Before, We never hurt nobody, anybody, not
even some
body.
physically.
We pulled pens but never knives or
guns.
We faked lives and signatures but never lied
to ourselves.
No, that came later.
Fast forward through the VHS tape of your
mind and then rewind and let it play over and
over again.
“You gotta let the snow go. Cause a
stair is just a stair whether you put ice or
leaves on it – it’s
all gonna fade away and you still gonna
have that hunky chuck o’ brick left. the
new hustle is in
pop culture, media – it’s in FOR
SALE. instead of picking a bloody
pocket I can sell you a
pocket and make you willingly give me your
cash. Getting locked up was one half of
it – maybe
you read in there, but so did I. But
not no law books or history. Hell, I
know why we was in this
situation. It’s obvious. But
you can’t undo the past, you can only go
forward. Unless we all
forget about the past, there will always be
problems. Live for now, for the
day. Concentrate on
that moment. give people what they
want. And if they don’t tell you what
they want you give
them something they’ll think they want –
and need – and all you gotta do is keep your
promise.
Anyone can do that. We could have
been doing this at 12 years old. I am
just giving people
what they want.”
What about standards?
“standards. are you kidding me?”
No, I mean – quality. Visigoths and
Athenians remember?
“No. But if any part of me does – I’m
sure I’m on the right side now.”
and so I continue to go back and check my
mind, ask myself: can you be on the wrong side
of
ice?
*
SANDPAPER
TONGUE
“It’s not that I dislike children – it’s what
they might become. If I had to bear witness to
my child’s lack of success I’m not sure I’d be
able to handle it. I barely handle my own.”
She laughed, she thought he was being cute. But
there was nothing cute about his situation.
There was nothing cute about being caught, once
again, in the rut trying to keep up, stay sane.
He was beyond trying to be witty and he saw
nothing admirable or clever about his choice of
words or how coolly detached she thought he was.
He was not cool and not detached
and there was no pose he could stand.
All the armor, all the powder from his make-up
had been removed, the streaks of paint had left
his soul just slightly bare as if a cotton round
dipped in witch hazel had wiped across the face
of his soul leaving him cleanly exposed but less
raw and agitated. All he could feel now was
great remorse for everything he had not
accomplished, a peculiar sadness – but not one
that could erupt in tears, but rather a frozen
gloom that clung to his face like a hockey mask,
weighing his temples, the bridge of his nose,
and the folds of his chin where all the despair
had curled up like a cat preparing to die.
He felt nothing except for the dry sandpaper
of his tongue.
*
©
2015 Dennis Leroy Kangalee
Dennis Leroy Kangalee
dennisleroykangalee.wordpress.com
Poet,
dramatist, filmmaker currently in
production with Nina
Fleck on Octavia:
Elegy for a Vampire
(or
Endless Shards of Jazz for a Brutal
World). Interview about the
film on
bossip.com.
from
IMDb:
Known
as "The Nomad Junkie" due to his
peripatetic lifestyle and artistic
restlessness, Dennis Leroy Kangalee is a
NYC-based poet and dramatist who sees the
world's injustice in an everyday
observation.
Kangalee's early theater work was a
ferocious cocktail of American tragedy and
revolutionary polemic. Between 1997 and
2002, he directed plays throughout NYC -
from Soho to Harlem. Urged by the Last
Poets to continue writing prose during the
creation of his 2001 NYC-based movie about
racism and its consequences, As an Act
of Protest, (written & directed
under his stage name, Dennis Leroy Moore)
a powerful Avant-garde drama that has now
earned status as a cult film, Dennis Leroy
Kangalee's writing is both political and
personal. Inspired by the Black Arts
Movement, punk, and Theater of the Absurd,
Kangalee draws inspiration from his own
life as opposed to Literary History or
knowledge of the classics. He writes for
the little man caught in the snow and
beneath the corporate avalanche, those who
draw lines in the sand--the losers, the
rebels, the tormented, and the romantic
rovers hovering on the margins of the
mainstream who dare to try to make sense
of "life in society" and the doorway of
21st Century-Brave New World-ethos.
His poems are published in the Outlaw
Poetry Network, CounterPunch
magazine, and small independent presses
like the Nerve
Lantern.
In 2011, he returned from a self-imposed
exile to appear on stage for the first
time in over a decade in his
performance-piece "Gentrified
Minds", a spoken word poem about
gentrification, globalization, and the
suburbanization of NYC. It was directed by
Nina Fleck and premiered in the NY
Downtown Urban Theater Festival.
-
IMDb Mini Biography by: Savage Paw Press
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