It can't be
real.
This must be all re-imagined.
Re-imagined”.
As the wind in
the blasted sails wails sail on, sailor.
Main wing, primary
staircase off of the street
Check out of here
Before there’s no more
nightmare left to pay for this, not even
A bad dream to lay the
account to, nothing
To absorb the loss of all
occurred
Within the wake of this
exhausted ship of a life,`
Blasted sails, barely a
shred of timbre left to scale
The waves of stairs
mounting toward a corner room.
Sail on, sailor.
Steps of foam rising up from the furor
Of moon-drawn streets
folding and unfolding
Into the Protean,
Leading to nowhere.
Leading to where Proteus
can’t be found
But the dread gods help him
when…
The chorus of stairs
Repeat their tragic
iteration,
An old goat song …
“This must all be
imagined
It can't be real.
This all must be all re-imagined
Re-imagined”
As the wind in the
blasted sails moans sail on,
sailor.
Salty carpets a pattern of
bubbling sea
Pour nauseatingly through
the halls,
Rising past my knees,
inundating hip then
Beyond my head, compelling
me back into the flood
Of streets, awash in a multiplicity
of currents of dreams
But I swim on toward my
bedroom
Through halls with mirrors
at each end that reveal
All the classical beasts
A Charybdis in each
Sucking and expelling waves
in violent storms
Of phosphorescent light.
The entire catalogue of
monsters behind them
That all who dwell here
know too well;
A Scylla of crushing
bedrooms and hallways,
Innumerable Manticores of hostility
possessed of
Missile stings of massive
scorpions
With rows and rows of lion
teeth,
Yet the face of man inside
those mirrors.
And countless Sphinxes
Carrying the head and
breasts of women ,
Their lion bodies so fine,
dining on riddles.
Three-headed Chimeras
erupting down the halls
In volcanoes of silver,
Cyclopes with one eye mirroring
the delusions
Of all whom enter here,
Everywhere Basilisks of humiliation, only a
foot long,
Able to destroy with just one mere look
Into their inescapable reflection
And the Minotaur of
addiction who roams these halls
As they stretch into the
devouring labyrinth
Of streets that feast on
youths and maidens
A list of monsters too long
to mention,
The Erinyes not to be forgotten,
The worst of all in this
place
But sometimes is seen
A passing trace of the Old
Man of the Sea
For which I come looking for
in search of my father
And I came to a vision of
the announced and unrevealed, there
A Hero’s son wandering in
search of a Royal House
In search of
Answers
A virtual beggar offered hospitality
by a king
To whom his paternity he
well concealed
Like Telemachus before
Menelaus
The Reception Desk
“This must all be imagined.
It can't be
real.
This must be all re-imagined.
Re-imagined”.
Sail on, sailor.
I, a modern-day Telemechus
In search of the shape-shifter god, the god of illusions and prophecy,
The ancient sea god who would tell me where my Father is
I, awash in a complete loss of
Will
And to this briny entrance
deposited
Espy a lonely island so
long upon the horizon, yet one
So very deep within my mind
A vision ever daily viewed,
The seal covered island of Proteus
And the cave of this seedy
hotel
It’s dim light entangled
inside a phantasm as I enter
An overlap of weed and
wrack endlessly splashed
By the waves of my own
madness,
Yet not a mistake as my
body drifts listlessly inward on its own
Toward this tiny sea shore
As tiny purple fishes run
laughing through my fingers…
Toward the sea cave of a
vacant room.
A place dirty and uncouth, a place I can't bear anymore
As I plunge suddenly down
upon the melting strand
Of the reception desk
Pecuniary homage, a full
day’s sacrifice that will never suffice
And this not the last time
to place in golden fire
My day’s wages in exchange
for a god forsaken room
A costly steer as incense
to this god,
A flaming wallet as proffer
to my need for words of prophecy
Come from the Hotel Proteus,
a place to write poetry
For that is what I come to
this desolate island for.
Words that no earthly
ransom will afford, words
I know must be wrestled for
Yet slowly from behind the
glimmering desk
A stupid seadog-face
towards me swims once more
To accept this hecatomb
perforce of his god
To look into its flames and
smell that it is good,
Allowing me entrance for
one more week to wander in pursuit of Him.
And with an idiot bark and
thrash of arm-like fin
He mocks me within my own
mock-epic
Pointing in the vague
direction of a cove
I have already combed
That I might find Him.
Floor A, 1st
wing
“This must all be imagined.
It can't be real.
This must be all
re-imagined.
Re-imagined”.
Sail on, sailor.
Struggling for place in
treacherous waves of sorrow I see
There’s a bizarre fellow
down the hall who looks like Edgar Allan Poe.
In the connecting wing
there’s a guy I think who resembles Bukosky.
There’s a handsome young
fellow around reminiscent of Rimbaud.
While on another floor
there’s an intellectual
Who bears something in his visage of
Zukovsky
And just above there is
woman who greatly reminds me of Plath
Had she lived past fifty.
I spoke to her one day, just briefly,
As she was headed for her
bath, a mere hello, but her gentleness
Impressed me greatly.
I felt a very magnificent
spirit there.
Those who live in this
hotel may have never really wanted
To achieve anything
Nor could they for the
Morae didn’t stitch it so
They just feverishly
dreamed they did, day after day,
And as they became madder
and madder in disrepute
They still pretend
They might achieve
something in this world somehow
In their own madness
Could you enter the rooms of
everyone here
There would be the
smell of burnt food off their hot-plates
And the scent and scene of
dirty clothes piled into a corner
Along with all the rest of
the shit of their life
In one tiny, miserable room.
And only death could bring
relief
From the tawdry mundaneness
of it all.
And yet not the humanly
cure
Sought for.. Only money can solve this problem as best it can
And money is worlds away
Everyone here knows the
smell of death.
A sweet aroma of
sickeningly rotting peaches.
I smelled it here twice
wash through the door
As the body of an old
seaman was fished from his room
His decaying carcass
flavoring the depths of everything
As the coroner's wagon came for him
Floor A, 2nd
wing
The thought of dying
someday in this place makes
Me sick
As I swim toward my room,
Watching other sailors who
have come to Hotel Proteus
Knock on doors in a psychotic haze in
search of
The god of many shapes
Begging for spare change.
But not me
Not begging
For anything that anyone
could ever give me.
And as I hear the seals
bark from the docks of the Embarcadero,
The answer is forever No.
And you’d have to find me
and grab me
By the throat
To get another Answer.
Because I still think,
inside the beginnings of this maze,
Mounting a tragic choir of steps
That I am someone decent
and sensible
And as yet, a still very
presentable human being
Who, notwithstanding the
sordidness surrounding him
Driving him insane, strives
carefully
To cultivate healthy daily routines
As the wind lifts the seals’
bark to my door.
Packs of hundreds of seals
I light my torch of poetry and enter further this cave
Because
I know
That it was prophecy that I
came to explore,
That I would find the god among his seals.
In a place like this
Floor A, 3rd wing
“This must all be imagined.
It can't be real.
This must be all
re-imagined.
Re-imagined”.
Sail on, sailor.
But perhaps I should knock
on strangers doors.
I'd fit in better
around here.
But in all sincerity, I'm not keen to find out
Who'd be on the
other side
Because the odds are
stacked like a boomtown casino
That in this place
They wouldn't be a decent,
clear and sensible person.
The eccentrics here aren’t
charming.
What would I ask myself
what I wanted to know?
Not to mention what I would
ask them.
I'm too sweet for this
place
Yet I have the couth, the
self-possession not
To wander the halls or yell out the window at all hours
Like some here.
Outside my door are found
the shattered lives
Of the truly downtrodden,
The city dwellers chronically
unemployed or underemployed
And I the same who also has
just happened to end up
In the living hell of skid row
Days pass and now over year
I've been here searching for
The god, Proteus.
(Lost cause has reason for
despair)
Because I stand upright and
with sincerity and correctness
When I walk into this
degenerate fleapit of a room
But perhaps I shouldn't.
Perhaps I shouldn't pretend
I'm not a failure anymore
Shouldn't pretend I have
answers
To very meaningful
questions or the courage
To improve the answers I already have
To find better ones that
would alleviate my circumstances,
To find ones that would
alter the horrible fact that I am here.
Because all these doubts
deserve to be pounded on
Like the doors of a prison
Because they deserve to be
answered and solved
I am afraid I won't be
receiving any answers soon because
I am afraid of who would
answer
If I knocked on all of
these questions.
I need to talk to the shape-shifter god
Because my life has become
a lost cause.
And when I get hold of him…
Fear in other's isn't
suffered well
And for someone like myself
who lacks the common touch,
Who can't even sell himself
to himself
I'm afraid that the results
of my importunate inquiry
Would be quite dismal and embarrassing
The lame, well intended
question would fall
As humiliatingly flat as
this question I weekly ask myself,
"What are you going to do? Rent's due
tomorrow".
I struggle to raise the
paltry amount it takes to live even here.
Floor B, 1st wing
Everything is otherwise
than I would like
This mandala of my life to
be
Lost cause has reason to
despair
Otherwise
Perfection is happening all
the time
Clearly, it's not worked
out
Or I wouldn't call this
place my address
Otherwise everything is
otherwise
Than the way I'd like it to
be.
I definitely feel trapped
and broken
The Wolf is at the door
again.
Otherwise, "perfection
is always happening".
This is what my dear friend,
Rick Wolf, sheepishly tells me
When I confess my angst at
being here.
He stays in this hovel,
too. On the top floor above,
Along the
same edge
Of it as me, with a better
overlooking view of
The Insanity
Of the bustle of North Beach/China town/S.F Financial district
An ironic admixture of
wealth and poverty,
The good life and destitution,
Social adjustment and
maladjustment
He’s been here much longer
than me,
Down and out much longer than me.
He seems to deal better
with the fact
That this really isn't a place to live.
A Wolf really does come to
my door, he is my only visitor
In this place in which I've
succumbed to
And as he surveys our
furnishings he says the only thing
That a mendicant on the
path (as he is) could say.
"perfection is always
happening"
We are members of the same
caste, the pariahs of art and spirit
Because I live near the
edge
Of downtown
And with this key to the
this door
I live nearer to the edge
of insanity,
Of mental and moral destitution and dissolution,
Mine and others.
Living in poverty is
already an accomplished fact
Only my poetry saves me.
Only my poetry keeps me
here.
It is the key to the door of the prison of my life.
With the power to set me
free, it is inescapably a fact
That it is part of the
reason that I am here.
This must all be imagined. this must all be re-imagined
Floor B, 2nd
wing
Poetry is the addiction
that brought me here
To be with the rest of
these junkies and losers
Poetry is, as I warned when I was younger,
A way to madness
and failure
I don't want to be a judas
and be the one
Who betrays myself to a
life of respectability
I want to be a Barabbas and
die beside Christ
Because in all honesty
I see some similarities
between Christ and I
They killed him, and now
they're trying to kill me
A modern day Sanhedrin
wants to hand me over to the Consul,
The corporate governers
who oversee the moral laws
I think the only reason I'm
maybe still alive
Is because I swing upside
down from a rope like St. Paul
With a knot I learned to
tie and attach to myself
Without anyone's help
The rope I abhor
The rope on which I depend
for all of my inspiration,
I swing on the rope that
sways between ecstasy and dejection,
Rebellion and abjection,
I look in the thesaurus and
find a list synonyms for this last word,
Abjection,
That combined express perfectly my situation:
Wretchedness, misery, desolation, despair, despondence, distress,
Gloom, unhappiness, abjectness, hopelessness
Antonym: cheerfulness
from this rope of ancient
romance
I won't apologize and I
can't be corrupted
Therefore, I will be
sacrificed by the corporate governers
And die in infamy like a
true poet
O' lady in ecstasy, goddess
of liberty
Cumming on the parapet
walls of the revolution
I pray to thee
All I want is to abide in
an elegant suite
And partake of a fine glass
of wine
Over the gilded table of
polished nature
With my subconscious
And discuss the methods of
how to get she and I
Out of Hotel Proteus,
I want to float in taverns
brimming with
Profoundly enlightened philosophers
And languorous women
And with one just for me
All night- all life
All day - all death
All pain- all ecstasy
Please, o' laday, I pray
thee
Floor B, 3rd
wing.
In my mind I see a woman
When I walk into this room
Who is not there, one I
have always to imagine
If I want her company
In a cheap, seedy room
ghosted
By desperation, loneliness,
confusion and pain
The foul scent of perspiration
filling the halls
The scent of fearful,
fleeting strangers in this world
Still lodged cheaply for
one more week
Before the possibility of
living on the street
But no woman, no woman to
erotically greet me
From the bed, the only
place to sit in this room
In this room, safely,
degenerately
A home
For me and my dreams and demons,
Whom I am in complicity with
All of this must be
imagined, or it must be re-imagined.
Because this room
Is as close to the edge of
hell
As I want to come
Which I;m afraid might
dwell only next door, or on the next floor.
Therefore, I stay put
Because I don't kid
myself about
The wholesomeness of my neighbors.
They're fine
Just as long as they
Take their medicine.
This must be... this all
must be...
Sail on, sailor.
But I guess this is the way
its been done before
The way in which poets live
and are born into "legend"
And often die
Amidst the derelicts, the
hookers, the boozers and the losers
And the question arises:
Who's room is this anyway?
Is this room like
Kerouac's in the Mission,
Like Bukowsky's
room in L.A?
Or is it older and farther
away,
Like something that
Verlaine and Rimbaud once shared in Paris,
Or closer to something that
Baudelaire might have known,
Or perhaps even similar to
one that Villon wrote in.
The places that the poets call home
Have bottles on
the floor and the smell of absinthe to them.
Didn’t they stay in this
same room? I think they did, very much
so,
Or at least one just like
it somewhere in Paris, New York,
San
Francisco,
Or the City of Lost Angels.
Cities of Death, cities of
the fall of human civilization
Yes, they all stayed in
this universal room somewhere
For a season in hell
In this City of Death
In this hotel of ruin,
their ghosts still drink and write here,
Guiding my pen.
The St. Paul is the name of
this place.
Jesus Christ, no
wonder it's so fucked up. What a con man he was!
It's no wonder, no wonder
at all.
Yet I wonder, I wonder a
lot.
Because I heard that
sometimes people take cockroaches as pets
And give them names in places like
this.
"This is Ralph. He's special to me"
I wonder what it all means
and if
There is an end to this
someday
If it gets any less
depraved, debased and defiled
This place without grace,
enlightenment or salvation
This urban pit of decaying
aura.
I wonder why it is all so
ugly,
As if someone purposely went out of their way
To fashion these hideous
living arrangements
And I realize that life is
too short
To be ugly. Mine is.
I, a modern day Odysseus,
an American poet, in pursuit of home
Yet, who has never given up
on finding words to give to Penelope
Who pictured himself a hero
on the level with the prince of Thebes
Who, when mature as a poet,
would throw the Sphinx into the abyss.
Now it takes what substance of
dignity and integrity I have not to throw
Myself into the abyss, but
I don't
Because at least one
neighbor on this floor did
And missed
Now I go into this room
And
tie myself to the mast of my madness to hear the sirens wail
Tomorrow
From the docks just a
couple blocks away
From this sordid hotel entrance
I am going to set sail for the isle of Proteus,
The sixth moon of Neptune would not be too far to roam
And find the elusive,
silent prophet god.
Lounging beside his pack of
seals along his sequestered beach
On his own private island
Living in untold splendor
and shameless luxury
In his far corner of
paradise
And I'm going to track him
down, corner him,
And wrestle him to the ground
I'm going to squeeze him
dry of the reflections and ruses
He uses to shape shift
through the halls of this place,
He and his pack of mirrors
And withstand all the
permutations of signs and seals
In the mirrors of my mind
And endure all his
impostures there
That may arise even if I
have to
Stare into the horror of my own
death mask,
Even if I have to look into
my own eyes
And see my personally most
terrifyingly embarrassing face
I am going to wrestle him
down to his last face,
My own
And ask it a question:
"WHY!!!???
