The Gateless Gate

"All my loyal and much loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road"

Bob Dylan

Trinity of Monkeys
**********************
I have no choice
but to believe
in this asylum.
Its easy windows
and benevolent doors
opening and closing
as if by grace
to shelter love
and repudiate discord.
How many martyrs
have tried and failed
to die for love?
It comes as no surprise to me
that evil does as evil sees
so I have drawn the curtains
and I have pulled the shades.

What's that I hear?
An angel choir
singing high above desire
"come to me sweet slave of life."
Or is it fear
numb and weak
of souls on ice
who blindly seek
the fires of hell?
An endless shriek
to one with ears
but to me
only the hum of eternity.

I could speak
of this and that thing.
Of hell on earth.
What good would that bring?
Of evil deeds and evil doers
of minds gone mad
of hearts on skewers.
I could breathe
the stench of sewers
onto this pure white page.
I prefer
to keep my mouth shut.

© Ms Cosmiccat

It was late July in 1963 and my 21st birthday. I lived in an apartment on the second floor with my husband and our three little daughters , ages four, three and one. I can still see my dad and mom coming up the steep old wooden stairs. He was carrying a “high fi,” - that’s what they were called in those days - and she was carrying Bob Dylan. I had never heard of Dylan, and to this day I don’t know how my mom heard of him. She wasn’t into music at all. But she got it right. It was the first record album I ever owned, and the best gift my mother ever gave me, second only to my life. Bob’s just a little bit older than me and I feel like I grew up with him. His music was always playing in our house.

In 1968 I bought an old piano for fifty dollars from a lady down the street who was tired of dusting it. It was made by Ludwig & Company, New York. The case was hand carved in Italy. It took five guys to get it into the house. The first song I learned to play was “Just Like A Woman”, (Yes, I did) and I played it over and over (Yes , I did) and I’m still playing it (Yes I am). I’m not the world’s best piano player, but I get by, and have managed to expand my repertoire a bit over the years to include, Subterranean Homesick Blues ; Maggie’s Farm; It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue; Stuck Inside of Mobile; In The Summertime; Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands; To Ramona; I Want You. These are my staples, the tunes I play most often and best. I’m always adding and teaching myself to play more.

My kids have so many great memories of their childhood with Dylan’s music running through it like a soundtrack. When they were in grammar school they loved it when I let them play hooky and stay at home with me to play Dylan. One played the violin (by ear), and the other two played tambourines very enthusiastically. And of course, we all sang, them beautifully, me not so well. And then there was the time, when they were teenagers and had a party while I was out of town, that my entire Dylan album collection was stolen. I was grieving badly for a week or two, and word got out how pissed I was. The thief, God bless his soul, returned the loot, left it on the front porch in the middle of the night.

Excuuuuuuuuuuse Me

More sympathetic than actual
my love for you exists
proceeding from procedure
unaccomplished and dismissed
by tight articulate maneuvers.
I relish all those socially
acceptable advances
keenly recommended by your style
and worn so unforgettably
on your new face
each time I try not to see you.

Architecturally speaking
the bridge of your nose seems perfect
a place to rest my case
if it could be wrestled from me.
A construction uncontrived
(but how could that be?)
Ah, so many things are unexplainable.
An apparition perhaps.
A monument symbolic of democracy.
Come come now.
That’s far out.
Oh well.
A mind will wander.

Let me talk instead about
your twenty-four hour mouth.
A recreational facility (for the damned)
open all night for convenience.
Coffee to go and that sort of thing.
Nothing fabulous.
A wholesome hangout for drifters.
An incubator for the development of
Good God I’ve done it again.
Demonstrating I suppose
how deprivation leads to depravity
Etcetera sweet etcetera.

Kindly forgive please
my recent relapse
and let me speak of your eyes.
Who knows what color they are.
They pretend at least to be blue.
At any rate they repeat on me
like cucumbers you might say
long after they’ve been ingested.

The empty space above is reserved for a smirk.
How cool we can get when pressed!
I find it hard to believe (burp)
how this fabled taste (burp)
remains so unregrettable.

 Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisma Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

Why does a man need so many names? "You can call me Pablo or you can call me Diego or you can call me José or you can call me Francisco or you can call me Juan or you can call me, ah, never mind, just call me Picasso." In the case of Picasso he was given a series of names honouring various saints and relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish custom.

Why does a man need so many women? Allow me to venture a guess. Because he's afraid of them and want's to conquer his fear. It's Immersion Therapy: a psychological technique which allows a patient to overcome fears (phobias) by not only facing them, but by immersing in them . The greater the fear the more women he will need. It could take an entire lifetime, or maybe even several lifetimes, for some men. It all depends on the size of their EGO. Smaller egos entertain smaller and less threatening fears. They can mate for life with one woman. Novel idea, huh?

Immersion Therapy for Dummies:
First a fear-hierarchy is created:to determine the level of fear induced discomfort the patient can endure under various conditions. Can Pablo talk about the object of his fear? Can he tolerate a picture of it? Can he watch a movie that contains images of his fear? Can he be in the same room with the object of his fear? Can he be in physical contact with it?

Once these questions have been put into order beginning with the least horrifying to the most horrifying, Pablo is taught a relaxation exercise. He will tense up all the muscles in his body and then he will relax them, saying "relax Pablo, relax." He will then repeat this process again and again, several hundred times a day with an ever-increasing quantity of the fear inducing object, until finally, in a state of exhaustion, he embraces his fear and is calm at last. He can then go out to the terrace, have a cold beer, and blissfully smoke a cigar, cigarette, or cigarillo.

As per Wiki:
Chicks-from-Avignon

or, if you prefer, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) is a large oil painting of 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The work portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Avinyó Street in Barcelona. Each is depicted in a disorienting confrontational manner and none is conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two are shown with African mask-like faces and three more with faces in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, giving them a savage aura. In this adaption of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. The work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and modern art. Demoiselles was revolutionary and controversial, and led to wide anger and disagreement, even amongst his closest associates and friends.

Not in the pantry. Not on the porch. Not in the basement or the mezzanine. Not coming or going on any of the 131 stairways, 19 escalators or 13 elevators. I searched each of the 284 rest rooms to no avail. I know how silly this seems, nonetheless, I even looked in each and every one of the 672 fire hose cabinets. I agree, all of this seems desperate if not downright insane. Hey, what can I say? That’s what love does to people. “This is the brain on love.” Fried like an egg. Love can make fools of people easier than rabbits can make babies.

I went to the garden for a smoke, sat down on a bench next to an old bewhiskered man in a ratty black trench coat and asked him if there were any secret corridors that the average visitor like me wasn’t aware of. He looked kind of official. There was some sort of insignia on his red beret and he was wearing a badge of some sort, mostly hidden by the lapel of his coat, making it impossible for me to read what it said. He definitely had a strange demeanor; a presence that was not ordinary. Stately, I would say. Yes, stately is an apt way to describe him.

He appeared to be thinking. His eyes seemed to be riveted on something far away. I wondered for a moment if he was a Knight Templar who somehow got lost in time. Me and my imagination. Watching the History channel too often. It was more like a Monty Python skit. He was eating a bologna sandwich. There was mayonnaise on his bottom lip and some more of it dribbling down his chin. It was nasty. I felt a bit bad for the old fellow, and yet, at the same time, I didn’t want to embarrass him and bring it to his attention by offering him a napkin. I never know what to do in cases like that.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to let anything sidetrack me. I was on a mission. I showed him the photograph I always carry. The one where we are sitting together on a park bench feeding pigeons right next to the “Do Not Feed the Pigeons” sign. He looked at it, took it from my hand, moved it closer to his eyes and looked at it as if he was examining evidence. Forensic love evidence. I was afraid he’d get mayonnaise on it so I took it from him quickly and slipped it back into my pocket. I persisted. “I’ve looked everywhere. I can’t find hide nor hair of him. He can’t have disappeared into thin air.”

He cocked his head to one side, smiled cynically, and looked to the sky as if searching for an answer, then he raised one bushy eyebrow and said, “Who knows. Maybe he did.” He reached into his pocket. “Oh good,” I said to myself, “he’s finally going to wipe that mayonnaise off his face.” I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Instead of a napkin, he retrieved a harmonica. Yeah. That’s right. A harmonica. I handed him a napkin. He wiped his face. And then he started to play; “It ain’t me, babe, no, no, no, it ain’t me, babe, it ain’t me …………….

(PS: If anyone finds a "U" in this, please notify me via comment, private message, or carrier pigeon. Ms. Cosmiccat)

Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight (Bob Dylan)
Forbidden Dreams (Ms Cosmiccat)

Just a minute before you leave, girl
Just a minute before you touch the door

I don’t know what I want
so I don’t know what to ask for.

What is it that you’re trying to achieve, girl?
Do you think we can talk about it some more?

I think it might be everything so I ask for nothing.

You know, the streets are filled with vipers
Who’ve lost all ray of hope

It scares me to want so much and so little at the same time.

You know, it ain’t even safe no more
In the palace of the Pope

It scares me to think

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think that I could handle it

I am a worthless person

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s just a memory

living a worthless life.

Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be
And I need you, yeah

I’ve fabricated an image to please other people

Come over here from over there, girl
Sit down here. You can have my chair

and now I am stuck here pleasing no one.

I can’t see us goin’ anywhere, girl
The only place open is a thousand miles away
and I can’t take you there

I will bite your hand if you come too close.

Wish I’d have been a doctor
Maybe I’d have saved some life that had been lost

My own hands have been chewed off long ago

Maybe I’d have done some good in the world
’Stead of burning every bridge I crossed

and I am hungry.

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think that I could handle it

I want to take root somewhere

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s just a memory
Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be

and be fed by unconditional love.

And I need you, oh, yeah

But that sounds like a dream

I ain’t too good at conversation, girl
So you might not know exactly how I feel

and dreams have been forbidden.

But if I could, I’d bring you to the mountaintop, girl
And build you a house made out of stainless steel

Everyone says, “Get real” but I don’t know how.

But it’s like I’m stuck inside a painting
That’s hanging in the Louvre

I’m homesick but continue to wander

My throat starts to tickle and my nose itches
But I know that I can’t move

because there are no signposts anymore.

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think that I could handle it

I’m locked in orbit, a path enforced by habit.

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s gone but the past lives on
Tomorrow’s just one step beyond

I think and speak and feel in a never-ending ritual

And I need you, oh, yeah

of maybe and perhaps

Who are these people who are walking towards you?
Do you know them or will there be a fight?

but never certainly or for sure.

With their humorless smiles so easy to see through
Can they tell you what’s wrong from what’s right?

I’m here and then I’m there

Do you remember St. James Street
Where you blew Jackie P.’s mind?

I am everywhere and nowhere.

You were so fine, Clark Gable would have fell at your feet
And laid his life on the line

A revolution within a revolution.

Let’s try to get beneath the surface waste, girl
No more booby traps and bombs

A sorrowful sorrow.

No more decadence and charm
No more affection that’s misplaced, girl

I’m the rug and the stuff swept under the rug.

No more mudcake creatures lying in your arms
What about that millionaire with the drumsticks in his pants?

The leper and the leprosy.

He looked so baffled and so bewildered
When he played and we didn’t dance

I would like to be the healer and the healed

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think that I could handle it

but that is dreaming

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s just a memory
Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be

and dreaming has been forbidden.

And I need you, yeah