Stay In The Hot Magma Core

STAY IN THE HOT MAGMA CORE

Born on the edge of a millennium

living through our own dark ages

are we the Middle Children?

The Second Son?

Go down South to

that grassy knoll

and see where our country fell.

Is it living up in that

glass eye

so high

the secret to it all?

I blow my horn to the heavens

to herald a message. An invitation.

A challenge. A dare.

Why is it that when we die

we do not go on,

like the snail and the worm.

The bird with a nest of

brambly twigs, thin grass, and saliva.

The peak was reached by an earlier generation.

And now there is no room left to wonder.

We are a distant star

Tucked behind a back-door in the sky

scrambling to keep the pieces together

as they fall apart.

Our greatest leaders are dead.

Our mothers are too old,

Our teachers can’t remember.

Why write these lines

in a language no longer read,

for eyes of binary glue,

for hearts torn-up by the

heartbreak of others.

Our voices lost in the chaos,

in the diffidence.

A clarion call

to the breath of a circle,

to ears still pricked.

Pick off the magic from

the dust in your lives

and eat the hearts of

heaven and hell.

Passion is mute

without your

focused hands

and glinting eyes.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2010

From Blue Licks To The Perfume River

From Blue Licks To The Perfume River

The problem with our Generation

is that we have had no menacing,

all-engrossing War,

where everyone knows someone out

on the front-lines,

where win or lose

directly affects your life,

no looming conscription,

with daily lotteries and

midnight flees to Canada,

no dark period or national strife

where a loaf of bread cost more than

your non-existent paycheck,

nothing to purify us,

cleanse us of our

own selfish concerns,

and teach us a true lesson about life.

We have gone on far too long,

sucked in by the flickering tube,

by talk in text instead of

real human contact,

and allowed to ramble on about

the trivial, while those in power

shield us from the

growing tears

in our national fabric, and the

frightening reality of daily life,

turmoil, and poverty

in foreign (or neighboring) lands.

So, while it must seem

in some ways

perverse (and I agree),

I am somehow jealous of previous

Generations of Americans

for the hurdles they had to overcome

and the lessons they learned individually

and collectively.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009

FALLING STARS LAND IN HOLLYWOOD

Two free foreskins.

The dead bread bred shoes to shoo any deed did or done.

A woodchuck can’t chuck wood, and why would he want to?

The sands of time are slipping through her hourglass figure

and this rollercoaster ride of a whirlwind tour

has made me lose my marbles in the mess of things.

I tried to wash my hands clean of this

after being caught red-handed green with envy –

I was feeling blue that day,

but looked white as a ghost.

The two of you stuffed in like a can of sardines is a barrel of laughs.

If the Count can count the chairs in their chairs with one hand he deserves a hand.

God is calling me – he’s on the other line.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009

WHAT DREAMS OF YOU, WALT WHITMAN, BEFORE MY OLD JUKEBOX SOUL

It’s on nights I’m too tired to sleep

that I think with the jazz radio on

and attempt to collect dust

from the nebula of my mind.

What usually surfaces is how much I miss you,

or how hard it is to go on during

certain nights of the week –

usually Friday and Saturday –

with this lonely pitiful feeling,

making the case for worthlessness

and the inability to touch a finger to my nose

even if shown a diagram.

Sometimes it is death that clouds my mind,

but I still don’t know what that is.

I’ve only had vague encounters

with a cloaked baron

who poses as a shadow.

Tonight I think of this:

The longer I spend alone

and the more distant

past relationships become

the more I feel incapable

of loving or being loved,

of maintain mature

Relationships.

My quirks have multiplied

from grains on a stalk

to grains on the beach.

My body has grown soft

and I have begun to notice deformities in my face.

Never before have I been so self-conscious about

so much,

and my confidence has suffered severely,

consequently.

I feel awkward at best in social settings,

retired to a shell of withered leaves

in a field of blossoming buds,

unable to conduct simple conversations

with the closest of friends,

let alone charm the pants off

the girl one table over.

How is it that I’ve become this?

How is it that You ever loved me?

That You ever found anything of interest

in this old shoebox from the attic?

If love is unexpected

It must be blind too.

And yet

I reserve hope:

I know one day

the ship will reach harbor,

and her tired crew will again

touch warm solid earth,

eat fresh ripened fruits

and live

peaceful and happy

upon a trove of once-buried treasure.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009

Cigarettes Sleep On The Floor And The Moon Is Afraid To Stay Out Late

CIGARETTES SLEEP ON THE FLOOR AND THE MOON IS AFRAID TO STAY OUT LATE

A cigarette

lay on the floor next to the bed.

It was a memory of

the previous night’s revelry –

so was the vomit in the toilet,

and my splitting headache.

It was a hard night of drinking.

We met up with some friends

and strangers.

Sparks flew between some people,

and anger between others.

We were on the roof,

at a bar,

at a club,

an apartment,

a hot dog stand,

the streets,

and then back to an apartment.

We sent text messages to

people we should not have.

We talked about our problems,

our relationships,

each other.

No one talked quietly

or minced words.

We drank imports,

domestics,

hard liquor,

cider,

beer,

and water.

We peed in bathrooms,

on street corners,

off buildings.

When it was all

said-and-done,

the Sun had joined us –

the night had gone to sleep –

and soon,

we would too.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009

Actors Are Divers

ACTORS ARE DIVERS

What is a Great Actor?

A great actor is a diver

who sinks far enough

below the water’s surface

that he is no longer visible.

A Celebrity

is a diver who stays along

the surface

and makes sure he is seen.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009

SHADOWS PASSING THROUGH

The slow painful process of death

beginning at conception

Eternal life found in the idea

not in its realization

Like the drainage of love

seeping from the lips,

bleeding from every touch

The idea and longing for love

more precious

than the act itself

For whom among us

has never felt like a shadow

passing through:

Empty steps on a sideways path never-ending

Death is all around,

the death of the light bulb above my desk

the death of object through consumption

the death of consumption through completion

And, although we fear our own death,

we fear more that our life was never consumed

that our love never consummated

that our dreams were never exhausted.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009

Remembering Paris

REMEMBERING PARIS

New calendar at the local bookshop:

Remembering Paris –

As if we had lost it,

As if it had disappeared,

As if the 150-year-old fingerprints

of Haussmann did not still cover the

Streets, Walls, and Parks.

Remembering Paris,

as if there was some uniform memory

12 black-and-white photos of the Eiffel Tower

were asking us to recall,

some magical moment

in the 2000 year history of the city

we all default to

when asked to remember.

Meanwhile,

the in-store radio was playing

a song popular when

I was in high school –

one that reminded me

of my first girlfriend before we were together,

of the garage band I played guitar for,

the days we skipped school to go to the beach.

Where is the calendar to Remember that?

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009