Five Poems: Mind Travels One (poem) by B. B. Riefner on AuthorsDen

Five Poems: Mind Travels One
by B. B. Riefner → (All Poetry by B. B. Riefner)
Rated "PG" by the Author.

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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,

Immersed God'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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