Outlaw Poetry From Kangalee

Dennis Leroy Kangalee is an Outsider artist, Outlaw Poet, and guerrilla filmmaker from NYC. I dug these when they came across the transom and I hope you will, too.


No More

I am in between shining shoes and pulling a trigger.
·
Sarah & Cecil Stole Romeo & Juliet’s Getaway Car:
Tramps for Life episode 3

 (Or: Even Rebels Get Sad When They Have to Be  Bad but all in all there's nothing worse than having Jungle Fever on the road, broke and homeless, and trying to up the ante)

--heard.
Outside,
the cold rain
pours down
and beats
relentlessly
upon the roof of the car.
The car that is not yours.

And your homeless heart flinches in that way only a newly-dispossessed person’s heart flutters and aches and cold-lip-dry-mouth-cracked-chapped hands open the passenger door, but you notice – on the floor, under those worn out boots barely covering your feet which you are nervous has caught an infection – a text, a crumpled magazine...and the printed word on that filth, the alignment and the rhythms, calm you...Because they were written by someone even more destitute than you and you no longer have to dread and shudder your way three stops on the N train amidst Hipsters who come from some place no real New Yorker has ever heard of, and yet your ignorance bounds you...But you read the text and you realize it is just the thing to read when you are in someone else’s bathroom and the floor is cold and you cannot complain because it is not your home, and you wonder where your home went and how it came to...
                                                                         *
You tried.
You did everything possible without breaking any laws, yet every moral code that you ever tried to live by has been left shattered and torn.
Your reputation – skids marks under Cassio’s heel; your name has been warped and twisted like the heart of a Judge who refuses to resign.
You ask yourself why? And you see fleeting images of who you could have been and phantasmagoric duplicates of you and your lady and yet you wonder...what was the sin?
Like the disabled and the forsaken, you, too, cast an eye up to the sky in hopes of an answer...There is no answer. The answer was known, was given – long ago.
And it is not his or her or their fault.
It is some
perverted
joke.

·

So Much Beauty to Offer, But too Ugly to Move

Just remember to write, tuck the face, face the soul
Until the foul
Erodes
Like the million splintered tiny silver angels that floated on that morning when everything changed.
Receive the vision so you may heal the tribe
Write the stories only if you feel the vibe
But don’t outsource your soul
Not everyone
Can have
An Elephant Man
so stay down in the trench and come up just once when night appears
or the day the sun has decided to make you his ally.


                                                            ·


For a Second I thought I Was Mahler

Stepping back in the room, I caught myself 
Frozen
Like a cat burglar who had lost his cool
And for a second I thought I was Mahler --
Perhaps it was my high forehead
And my reversed sloped hair
As if my roots were growing out of the crown of my head and up backwards
Towards the sun (or the Aliens who had neglected me)
I was disappointed to not have looked like Prince
But maybe that's the price you pay
For living past the age you wanted to die at
I thought I knew that profile anywhere, having seen it stretched across the banner of an old friend's door 
He was a classical musician
and loved all things sad

He would play Elgar on a piano
and insist that it sounded better without an orchestra,
We traded stories of madness and caught each other once again
years later when we both did our stint at Paine Whitney
Our vitals were low, we were anemic, we were angry, we were young

And once when I stepped into the sun, my wife cried
And when I asked her why
She said I reminded her of something she had forgotten about in her heart
And while I was hoping it might have been Prince or some rock 'n roll revolt 
That jarred her memory --
It was the moving shadow around my head, landing into the new apartment we
had just rented --

And I cursed myself as I heard our new neighbor jerking off his new leaf blower 
in a coarse Sunset Park afternoon up on the highest hill of Brooklyn where some 
Rich and poor are now living closer and closer --

I heard the faint notes of a symphony spilling out of a broken heart. 

                                                                        ·

I Want to Hear the Sound of Capitalism…

I want to hear the sound of Capitalism
Dying
As it takes its last breath
I want to hear Angels – not singing
But flapping their wings
As they commemorate the end of a
Wicked carnival
A station-agent’s sunrise
As he tip-toes into a new orange glow
Of possibilities

I want to hear the death rattle
Of the Unconscious
And the shimmer
Of their warped souls
Taking leave of their lovely
But contorted bodies
Hands that could not help
Legs that could not jump
Mouths that could not
Utter words of love
Eyes that could not see
No matter where they looked

I want to hear
The beating
Of hearts
Instead of the vulgar
Clichés
And expected yarns
Of Self-Hatred
And all that makes
The Ghettoes
Glow
With ripe ideas
For a Television series
That will cash in
As it pushes out
All that I’ve sworn to fight against

I want to hear the shovel
Kiss and hug the dirt
Before malevolent coffins
Are lowered in
Just barely deep enough
To be covered
But close enough that the wild dogs
Will have something still
To find
When we have vacated this
Awful experiment
Called the 21st century

I want to hear my lover’s morning stretch
Her smooth sigh
That sends the only real vibrations
I am still able to feel
Straight up my spine
Between the yawling drone of
Ambulances at 1AM
And young women
Who should know better
Cursing
Not like drunken sailors
But the way a 17 year old boy
Might
Convinced
That his mother won’t hear him

I want to hear my darling’s wishes
Not her fears
But the gentle breathe of her desires
Still healthy and fertile
But beginning to show
Just a tiny bit of dust
I want to hear them released
And fulfilled
Instead of a motorcycle
That thinks
My city block
Is a suburban
Parking garage
Or Caribbean Island

I want to hear the sound of Hollywood
Dwindling
Not crashing down
But receding
Slipping into the earth
Like quicksand
Incurring the politicians
To realize that
Their days, too,
Are numbered

I want to hear my thoughts
In a language
Only I can claim
As my own
As the rage in my head
Calms down
And 
Numbered like a lithograph
Takes stock of itself

I want to hear the sweet sound of demolition
So I can pray
That the next city
Built
Is one we can
Be proud of
Or one
We gladly
Wait
To rot