Beyond Redemption

By Al Ferber

I have been described as being Beyond Redemption.
I have been described as the devil incarnate. I have been defying all the rules of modern and classical poetry for over forty years. In terms of success the only difference between me and Charles Bukowski is my lack of an angel such as Black Sparrow Press to devote all their resources to publishing exclusively my work. This is damn good shit.
If you read it, I guarantee youll like it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503530256

Al Ferber

Al Ferber a septuagenerian going on 13. Born. Regrettably… A North Philly kid. Survived education at Temple U., Penn State, Villanova U. Alcoholic 30 years. Sober 23 years. Indenture servant to Catherine the Great 34 years. Learned to love and appreciate cats and one dog. Authored 30 books of poems, 2 novels, 3 chap books. Poems in Magazines in U.S., England, Scotland, France. Still alive, on the downward path of the sliding board, as of this writing. An undocumented alien in the world. Resides Ocean City, NJ surrounded by water with Cathi, Luna, Mitzi, and Opal. So there.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Al Ferber.

Cover Painting by Al Ferber

Author Photo by Cathi Ferber

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5035-3026-3

                eBook           978-1-5035-3025-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/27/2014

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CONTENTS

Doorways

Black Ink

State of Grace

Subway Life

Shooting Up

Phasing

Madness

Highways From Before

Concrete And Steel

Crack Maidens

Again Today

Artful Dodger

As Long As They Can Hurt Me

Bumps In The Road

Brick City

Caldron

Be Patient In An Emergency

Bad Company

Cloaking Of The Moon

Carpe Diem

City Light Lights

Baby Boomers

At The Knees

Back Door Man

Black Magic

Blivits

Conga Drums

Exploring The Background

Dirty Mary

She’s Playin’ Me

Corn Fields

Constitutional Amendment

Crank Up The Volume

Crumbling Down

Dance With Death

Dark Seas

Dead Man’s Land

Derelict

Dirty Mary

Discourse by a Nymphomaniac

Down For The Count

Down In The Alley

Exploring The Background

Fine Art

For Granted

Forgetmenot

Funeral Arrangements

Ghost Whisperer

Fine Art

Guardian Angels

Highways From Before

Home Invasion

Horse Carriage

I Am

Just Another Holiday

Madness

Maybe He’s Dead

Never Stops

Night Engulfs The Day

Nights & Days

Off The Windowsills

One Night

Out of Focus

Painted Angels

Pale Moon

Park Avenue

Phasing

Suicide

Pinball

Pooh Bear

Posing For You

Potato Box

Raging In A Cage

Recurring Hallway

Requiem For A Dream

Sand Storm

Shooting Up

Smooth

Snapshots Through The Fences

Soldier

Some Musicians

Street Fighting Dancer

Subway Life

Succubus

Suitable

Surrealistic China Town

Tattooed

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Call of Isis

The City of Commerce

The Cock

The Dance Is Always Over

The Great Anticipation

The Great Wall

The Impossible Game

The Papers

The Prize

The Real

The Smell of The Rain

The Way You Look At It

The Weight

Time

Tough Guy

Tree Of Life

Turnstile

Twisted Spine

Wait A Minute

What’s Going On

What’s In A Name

Where Did It Come From

Where I Once Dreamed

Wild Card

Zinc Mill

Spin Cycle

The Road

The Snow Is Coming

Now & Forever

Once Again

One Room, So Many Things

Opiate

Passion

Poets & Painters

Proposal

Raccoon Eyes

Rapid Strobe Motion

Reading Room

Red Lion

Scrapper

Shit Happens

Shitting On The Sidewalk

Insomnia

Invisible

Just As

Knock Me Silly

Life

Lust

Madness

Mid City Mood

Minority Of One

Miss America

Neon Trees

No End/No Beginning

Nocturnal Wind

*911

50th Reunion

Against Age

Anomaly

Just Another Brick In The Wall

Backyard Ritual

Beyond Redemption

Bukowski

Cat & Mouse

Indescribable Change

Changes

Cheating The Devil

Coulda Been

Crashing Clouds

Crazy Talk

Crow

Cult

Crow

Cyclops

Dancing In The Vapor

Dancing Through The Light

Daylight

Demon

Dirty Blond Hair

Dream Mutations In Series

Driftwood

Dusty Cities

Early On

Eclipse Of The Sun

Euphoria

Expanding Diagnoses

Forest Fire

French Canadian War

Full Throttle Hell

Getting Ready

Golden Gate Bridge

Captured Heart/ Broken Heart

Highlights/Lowlights

Hot Cross Buns

How Strange

I Got A Love Who

Identity

Improv

Snow Flakes

Spanish Moss

Solitary Pursuits

Sometimes

Spots

Steppin’ Through The Badlands

Still

Temples

Thanksgiving

The Books

The Burden of Me

The Devil

The Establishment

The Golden Sentence

The Streets

The Walls Of Jericho

The Witches

They Call It The Blues

Time Of Year

Too Many

Too Much

Under The Eclectic Sky

Underneath It All

Walk In The Cloud Storm

We Played

White

Winter Pall

World

Dedication

This book is dedicated

to the memory

of Jack Apsche

who left us far too soon

Doorways

You’ll find me lurking

in shadowed doorways

don’t know what to do

with the light

don’t know what to do

with the sun

am drawn to homeless

people

remind me of abandoned

houses

mysterious histories locked

somewhere

deep inside

similar to finding great

moments in history

at the bottom

of a discarded paper cup

my friends all said

I was crazy

and I had no argument

with that

whatsoever at all

even in the slightest bit

but still hung out

in the doorways anyway

told them I’d get

some therapy at a later date

Black Ink

The black ink bleeds

across the paper

forming magical shapes

and images that

glide into the night sky


silhouetted by the
gentle

light of the moon
into

the immeasurable
depths

of
hallucinogenic heavens


dragons horses


women crows


celestial breasts


for stars to suckle
all

circling
 a lachrymose moon


amidst a storm


of truth and lies


the bodies of mortals


impaled on cosmic shafts

State of Grace

On the back of our

currency reads

In God We Trust

the original motto

going all the way

back to 1776 for

our economic system

was Let the Buyer

Beware not exactly

an endorsement for

a consumer protection

agency well the buyers

have been wary but

outsmarted and the

sellers have amassed

wealth beyond King

Solomon’s Mines and left

the buyers left squirming

penniless and in squalor

Subway Life

I entered the subway life

the subterranean life

the life where the weight

of the world weighs

heavy on the soul

sucks the life right out

the life where light

is all artificial

and hard to come by

at that

the life where air

has been recycled

and fresh air nonexistent

the life where there are

not parties or conversations

except with the dead

the food

scraps left by commuters

the gods of the subterranean

the legions of the dark

Shooting Up

They’re shooting him up

with morphine

and he likes it

and it’s legal

and he’s having

thousands

of celestial

hallucinations

he’s having star

showers

of surrealistic

dreams

he’s having crystal

clear

visions of eternity

and those steps

formed

from white clouds

he’s having meteor

storms

of all the best rock

concerts

he’d ever attended

he’s coming back

from Viet Nam

whole just like

before he left home

he’s having the time

of his life

just in time

to escape the chaos

Phasing

She gets caught in slivers

of time and history

in pages and chapters

of time and history

at their most fevered pitch

flaming and raging

and rolling in grime

she gets stuck dancing

barefoot on hot coals

dancing barefoot on flames

she gets stuck molested

by her grandfather

at four years old

she gets stuck