A collection of five mind travels through three entirely different worlds in just thirty years.
Mind Travels
B. B. Riefner
Birthing Instructions
When I'm dead
Put me in an old oil drum.
Invite all my enemies to come.
Everyone should have
A crowd at their last rites.
Hold mine at night,
Behind the shopping center,
Where only junkies gather.
Back where the footing is slippery grease,
And only Jacobs sleep in vacant phone booths.
Lay out a feast of every junk food
I refused to eat. And let everyone
Beat on the drum.
Ask them all to be a pal,
And piss on it once it's cheery hot.
Let them speak the truth about my life.
The one they collided with.
Remind them tomorrow will always be worse
than me and yesterdays.
Tell them how the sky was stars at night.
And the sun came up white hot, just like my coffin.
Have them all sing a song.
Something that isn't too long,
And not too new.
When they're done, tell 'em
It didn't sound too bad.
Most of all remind everyone
Must obey one rule. . . .
I promised God
No eye would be wet.
Coffee Hours
B. B. Riefner
Hot . . .rich . . .Sweet and dark Dutch coffee
Falls into my body like love.
And like love, it is a drug
Through which all drugs are possible.
But not hopes, or rages nor fits.
Through constantly steamy windows
Impaired by fluttering lace curtains
I see seagulls soaring and scouting seaward
Following brackish unreflecting canals.
Hungry homeless gulls and I
Have chased ships forever
Calling for only a crust of soggy bread.
Today, shadowy gulls gulp
Common communions
As Dutch mornings
Leak over the edges of my coffee cups,
Spilling into thoughts of distant coffees.
In Bolivia
Coffee comes in cracked cups,
Served by warriors under a sun
Which refuses to warm the flesh
But will not allow you to freeze.
In Equador ,coffee comes concentrated
Tumbling like syrup from old vinegar crocks.
For a scant instant, it beats back memories
Of exhausted peons, sagging Andes
And lingering Inca claims.
In Rome coffee is taken erect
As hopeful Martyrs brace bare feet
Against brass rails,
ImmersedGod's instructions,
But their fingers push hot rolls aside.
My Father was morning coffees.
Lightened by canned Carnation Cream.
When the steam rose,
His glasses became opaque windows
Through which his flesh slowly transformed
Into aged lace curtains, darker than last week's snows.
When my best friend died
The blood racing across his chin
Looked just like coffee . . . .
Of course it wasn't.
But sometimes life is polluted coffee.
Now on occasions,
My coffees come as pus disguised as cream.
Or as soaked bread,
Or yesterday's dissolving nations.
More often lately ,dripping lace curtains.
Coffee, like my poet=s mornings
Pours over the earth's crust.
My coffee mornings erase
The beckoning, smiling Saints
Caught in the dripping, aging lace
Sometimes my coffee mornings
Blot out the daily streams
Of painfully personal enlightenments
Or their damp haloes form the obituaries
Of nationalities, relatives and old girl friends
But never completely.
Clicks
B. B. Riefner
At a cheap Mexican hotel
In a high ceilinged room,
A stranger lies on a bed
Counting dead flies. . . . . .
Remembering dead friends.
It's six o'clock.
The bursting sky rockets
May drive off the dreaded sky spirits
But the strange in me thinks
they do not revive dead flies or dead friends.
As the day begins or ends.
Below the shuttered window
A wheel of chance
Or revolver cylinder
Spins and clicks.
And the stranger knows
Both God and luck
Have deserted him.
Because of the sky rockets.
Because The Virgin Mary
Was really an Indian.
And because I am still an anarchist.
The wheel or gun clicks again.
The stairs groan but hold.
The mice and floor boards squeak.
The hotel is far off the tourist trade
But I am no longer alone.
Whispered Vespers
B. B. Riefner
Europe=s cathedrals
Like great hot flames
Attract insects and the insane
Where I wait for God to call my names.
To strike me dead
Or make me blind . . .
And lead me away to dry places
Completely intolerant of my pleas.
Then as always, the bum enters
Moving with such surety
in unmatched tennis shoes.
Reviling a priest's piety
He straightens hymnals
As he genuflects
To dead candle sticks.
He combs the dust from his beard,
Stares into empty windows
Seeking visions,
Clutching his filthy sleeping bag.
First he hums a bit,
Then joins in with the choir.
Tapping the rhythms neatly
With both his fingers and feet.
There can be no doubt.
Ancient churches attract
Saints and bums.
Saints haunt the walls,
Wooing the Bride of Christ.
While bums walk the floor
Directing Evening Song.
And I think
Both come seeking God . . . . . But,
Seeking much more than His blessing.
Father and Son
B. B. Riefner, Mark Riefner
JUST A PAWN JUST A PAWN
You and I
Have been through this for years
We've cried a sea of tears
For what?
I don't know.I don't know.
You and I
Have always missed our trains
We stood above the pains
For what?
I don't know.I don't know.
Life to us is just a road
Moving on, moving on
For a cause but its own sake
We will make it I am told.
Just a pawn.Just a pawn.
At the end of every journey
Is a bridge to better places.
Once you cross those flowing spaces
You will see their smiling faces.
Moving on.Moving on.
Just a pawn.Just a pawn.
Mark Riefner . . . 1984. Ecuador
SUSPICIOUS DOGS
Hold up a mirror
Sing out a verse
Write down a lyric
To subtract the best from the worst
Raged is we had to.
Laughed when we could.
Thanked those we gave to
A decade which closed like a fan
And decades fold into themselves
As cake dough that goes unbaked
The decade dries and dies
For any cause but its own
Be it pensive or flighty
Be it brave, stand alone
Be it weak or be mighty
It=s all the same!
We are all suspicious dogs
Gnawing collected bones.
B.B. Riefner ...Mexico 1968
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