4501. AH, THE FRAMEWORK OF MY DENSITOMETER WORKING!

AH, THE FRAMEWORK OF MY

DENSITOMETER WORKING!

At the village square the church-clock struck two,

ringing some lethargic pre-recorded belltone that only

ended with two bongs. So quaint, yet artificial in that

faux medieval way  -  I began immediately to be looking

for the corpses of black death falling down in the center

square; all those frank and ruinous flagellants pounding

themselves with beads and chains : 'Oh! To be alive like

this! Let me live and list this on! Oh God, my warrior!'

Crap like this breaks mirrors, no?

-

The soundings all ended. I ate my parsley and a purloined

mushroom and bread in secret. I held no glasses for my

eyes and the spectacle before, anyway, receded. Some

parsimonious pious padre, tripping over himself with

words of glee and glory, sent the cavalier nearby setting

straight for a sabre and horse.

-

This is comic-book stuff; a Kavalier and Clay moment of

my very own  -  and all those wizened Jewish heroes, now

transformed into superheroes and supermen, sit about to

worry for nothing. Who can I offend by this new drivel?

Anyone who washes. Anyone who cleans a scab with their

prickly-heat mantle of masturbation and gum. Anyone who

has never been anywhere twice. Mark the glee, and mark the

warrior. I do have pennies to put on the dead-man's eyes.

4500. AND NOW WHEN IT'S HAPPENED

AND NOW WHEN IT'S HAPPENED

Why isn't there just a keyboard key for everything?

Happiness, light, love and glory? One for changing

that line you just wrote lower-case as a title wrongly

into the upper-case you wanted. One for changing

bad dreams into the real loves of your life? One

for when the person at the end of your trip, to where

you were going, isn't there when you arrive? I don't

know anything much for sure, but I'd like this to be.

-

One time I said to the clown, the carnival clown in the

meadow, 'You may well be, but you can't fool me.' I'd

seen them pull up, the entire sick bunch  -  all those old

run-down cars and trucks from Alabama  -  and dump all 

their  stuff in the middle of the great big field; for their 

two-week stay as Reiman's Carnival folk. Tents and

lean-to's, everything up in three hours. The grass had

been cut close, small trees cut down, and the old land

scoured before they'd even arrived. Every one I saw

was some sort of strange character. If the guy signed

his name as 'D. Generate', I wouldn't have been at all

surprised nor taken a'back : like firesticks and candles

-

Three days later, I saw them all again  -  the girls had

gone wild  -  perhaps they were wives, I didn't know  -

but I think they traveled with this troupe and hardly

wore clothes. Performed in an 'adults only' tent of their

own, at ten bucks a pop. 'Exotic dance', I heard some

yokel call it  -  'Salome' he even said, as if pretending

to be some Biblical scholar would make a difference to

his Soul on Fire fury. I wanted to say 'Onanism' right

back to him, but didn't. Damn, I love all this stuff!

-

Right now I'm less a critic of anything than a liver of

Life  -  all its rotten foibles, failed stories, miserable

attempts at fames and glories. I just want to say 'Sorry'

and be along my way  -  maybe back to that field, where

that fucking, fake clown was taking his Mary Jane down.

4499. LOTS OF RED, LIKE A LUSCIOUS HEART

LOTS OF RED, LIKE

A LUSCIOUS HEART
So. When I think of you it's like that. I can't
dismember what I try to remember, and I
wouldn't want to anyway. This morning, the
thrush were running through the cemetery
stones - all that trimmed grass and perfectly-
placed flowers. It's always enough to tear me
up. Then the sun arose, and it began to light
up names. Vacant and vapid, void and valid.
Stuff like that. I swear I saw ghosts rising as
well, and I swear one came over to me and
kissed me. And I swear it was you.

4498. APPLECORE

APPLECORE

The fat lady says 'This is Perth Amboy.' (I wished

she had sung it instead  -  then I could leave). As it

is, the old ferry slip, which I remembered from when 

I was a kid, had been repainted but was then wrecked 

anew by the storm. The nearby marina had been torn 

upside down. Every boat on its side, wreckage and

ruin down the line  -  the old brick facade of a building

or two was just peeled and fallen down to the water.

One or two fancy ladies  -  however that happened  -  

were still coming into the yacht club. Diners must dine

and be seen  and apparently their money already had

fixed up the place. Not much else could be said :

the magical lantern of device and desire, 

working, as always, together again.

4497. THE GREAT GONE GOD

THE GREAT GONE GOD

Not less than zero, not more than forever  -  

just a perpendicular idle, standing at the forked

corner of Wasting Time and Deliverance , right

where you make the turn for Salvation : all these

crazy alleys and lanes of the nighttime soul of time.

I want to try reading the guest book, here in the

lobby  -  but the desk-clerk's long gone, there's no

ink in the inkwell, and anyway no one's signed the

log-book in what must be ages. Even the ashtrays

are clean and all the glasses are empty and dry.

4496. AMALGAMATION THEORY

AMALGAMATION THEORY

I have tended to sink in the water, fall face down

through a morass of puddle and slime, and only

now you call me a creep? Listen up, oh people

of the Cyclotron, I do not share your world. I am 

distant and far-off, and I cannot understand your 

words or views. The cat on the floor, she is licking

her feet to then rub on her head  -  a simple means

of washing I should have learned long ago.

-

By ten in the morning, for sure, we'll have that newest

story straight  -  they'll all be spouting whichever chosen

platitude they've selected or been told to say. Meanwhile,

from high above, the spaceship is coming to take them away.

And they do not even know it. They scoff instead and accept

the words of others. Calling it a happy, gay life doesn't 

make it so  -  the responsibility for self is all on you.

4495. BLACKIE COME HOME

BLACKIE COME HOME

Threnody, or something like that. The low

lights were on in the loft, where we sat for

six hours contemplating brooms and the

elevator's rise and fall. A soft, too-shuffle'd,

jazz played in the background; paint cans

were lidless, lined up along the wall, and

some fat brushes were drying in the glop.

'The man's gone now, gone, and no more

to go, just gone.' A few people softly tipped

in making for the gloom like a fly and sugar.

-

'It won't never be like this again, and it ain't

ever was before anyways.' I couldn't figure

what that meant, yet the spectral figure who

spoke it did have something on his mind. We

all had kept to a certain sadness, and now it

just wouldn't go away. On the rear wall, in the

half-light, the big painting showed a majesty

I'd always sensed; like it was doing right.

-

'Right by me jes' gotta' be right by Jayne too;

and even if he's gone now, someone of us is

gotta' pick up these ruinous pieces.' So we

pledged, right then, by booze and by fire, by

coffee and beer. 'Everything stays,

we ain't going nowhere.'

4494. CARPENTER'S TRICK GOTHIC

CARPENTER'S TRICK GOTHIC

Now that I've appealed to every sense there is,

I have to notice someone lapping up the overflow,

the forceful guile of this rich, dark soup. The man

in the yellow convertible just winks as he sits at

the light, awaiting his Miata dreams to come true.

So sad that late-life crises have to wait for late-life

days. A lone cigarette dangles from lips beneath

a natty driver's cap  -  so perfectly British in his

Japanese car. I love these sorts of conundrums;

everyone gets so riled up, just using names and

dropping suggestions of things as they are. This

fellow is so out of place, he may as well make

a left at the next right. That's some real driving.

4493. THE WHITE CLOUD OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

THE WHITE CLOUD OF

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

Like crimson yellow, or alizarin blue,

certain things just don't exist : where

this is so, other things do. It's just like

that, that's all. Something akin to a

translation  -  so many dead ends, so

very much malfeasance and skirmish.

When one face blushes, another

face must turn an ashen gray.

-

I know right where I am standing. Ten

years of stories had gathered for my

collecting  -  and yet I am betrayed again

by someone looking downward at my field

of squash and squalor. I feel ashamed anew. 
- 
Yet, this Thor-hammer hand that I still wield
shall not change its way. I will slumber nor bend.
Let the dead bury the dead.

4492. FOR ALL OF THIS AND I DON'T CARE

FOR ALL OF THIS

AND I DON'T CARE

Watching the guy put up wall posters, his bucket

of glue and his long-handled brush, I see he just

swabs it on in great big swaths. The papers stay

up -  proclaiming anything they wish, advertising

anything at all : that big, hot, new fashion girl,

the barbecue fire at Randall's Southern Grille,

the stock-quote guy with his inane smiley patter.

It's all just lies, of little consequence to anything

but those great liars who contract this crud. I

could sell cripples shoes with more good-will

than this stuff has. How long, I wonder, is the

line for passage at the big maw of Death?

-

And now, as evening approaches, everything grays

out and slows down. A big, fanciful, fat full moon

slowly rises in the huggable sky. Mosquitoes fly

about, still bothering me, at least. My mother

used to say they only bite the sweet ones : what

a crock that too turned out to be. By now, oh

so many years on, I should know for sure.

-

If anyone else ever stumbled in my steps, he'd

know of what I speak  -  all these fabricated geeks,

making their time. Three-story homes and eighteen

rooms, three cars in a yellow garage with a wide

driveway they have to re-tar and seal every other

year  -  a few grinning Mexicans always at the

ready  -  they otherwise know nothing at all

and just cut everything they see. 'Let it be

dry and flat,' they say, 'like the town where

I came from, Chihuahua!'  -  and then they laugh.

Have you ever noticed, that's all they do?

-

Why do we wonder we've gone down the tubes?

Look at this mess we've allowed.

-

And I can't communicate with anyone at all.

4491. LIVE AND FORGIVEN

LIVE AND FORGIVEN
Walking while seeking, hands clutched,
two souls touching, no words spoken.
Here, the Magnolia Tree, long done
blossoming, now seeks to flee like a
skeptic. Near the weird corner of 1st
and 1st (only in New York?) can all
things come together : two guys
pealing away on their bongos, a
very tall girl with nearly no shirt at all.

4490. SAVENDER

SAVENDER

I took my crucible to its sickness bay  -  one of its
very own. Driving my Studebaker sideways through

the storm, it finally brought me home. Waiting for

me there, a magpie of some sort,  singing with string

and an apple. The cruet of wine atop the table, in a

dark-deep red hue, was enough for me. In my mind's

eye, unhindered, I was able to imagine : a myriad of

pyramids to dazzle that eye, to swizzle that stick, and

 to let me listen to the mourns and the moans of the

workers. 'Now no more straw for these bricks! And

Pharoah says we must gather our own! Mud, clay

and straw, water, block, labor and  tackle  -  all these

things for the work of a slave and the wages of but a

freeman on his straight way to Hell. Savender,

save us! Oh Messiah come now!

4489. LET'S GET COMPLICATED AND ODD

LET'S GET COMPLICATED AND ODD

Down below there, that's the Hudson River, running past

Garrison, and across the way, well that's something else. I

don't know. We're by West Point, I know that much. I'm in

the middle of something strange  -  all rock and hard dirt,

a pathway through the woods and a New York State Park

too.  All that means is that you can't take anything home  - 

like not even a rock or a flower; well, supposedly. It's so

preciously lame  -  they can do whatever they want to the

land and the place around you, anywhere, but God forbid

you take a leaf or a twig. Hell, I think that needs re-examining,

for, really, what's it tell you about this place? Out on the water

(do you say in, or on?) some moron is running a jet ski or

however by what name they go by now. Stupid shit  -  he's

liking his noise, but we have to deal with it too. Little does

he care for that at all  -  he's having his fun no matter. In

fact, point of order here, the Park Ranger would have to

protect him, not me, if I started throwing stones at him.

It's like when your neighbor's outside with his screaming

hedge trimmer or edger or something  -  wailing away when

you're trying to think  -  and he's the one wearing ear-cover

headsets. Well, hell, that's so very nice.

-

It seems like the world's thrown itself ass-backwards into

some easy sort of Hell. Now, I ain't no Huck Finn, no

Holden Caulfield with a kid's story to tell, but what is the 

point of all this complicated fuss about complicated living? 

I want things simple, and that's the way I live 'em. But no 

one else seems ever to understand. A cop, dumb-ass cop, 

he's got to protect the status quo and question for himself 

nothing at all. That's why I could never be a cop  -  that  and

all the bad donuts and the late-night shifts with girls hanging 

all over your car, trying to talk with you, get on your topmost 

people list, throw a few favors her way. Well, hell, that's 

so very nice too. All the breaks one can order.
-
But for the rest of it all, you can take it and tank the load  - 
all those crazy enforcers and generals in cars, each of them
thinking they're somehow above the fray, higher than the
rest when really they're not anything at all. If you were to ask
any of them what they were up to, they couldn't tell you  -  they'd
try, oh yeah, let's get that sure  -  but all those tumbling words
they'd let loose would just be some other person's language, like
spoken in code, just so you wouldn't ask any more. That's how all
these people get by  -  they babble on, going on about things of
no concern or importance at all, and they operate safely within
the knowledge that no one ever will call them out on it. Tell
them they're all just a bunch of stupid shits. It's like a game,
first everyone plays they're deaf, then they play they're mute,
and then  -  best part  -  they all play they're dumb and stupid too.

4488. PARABOLIC ARC

PARABOLIC ARC

There's a time to come forth and rally.

Stepping forward, to bring the right forms

out  -  I know these shadows are strangers,

like names on a train, faces in a crowd, things 

so easily forgotten. We mark these as the marks

of love? Here, I am trapped in a lounging of my

own time's making  -  a certain composure I cannot

see, just feel. My heart, never wounded, runs out its 

clock : finding here and there something special for which

to stop but going on no matter, never mind, unmindful of

any of that. For to live is but to continue; even when the

picking is right, the flowers, oh never, somehow, cannot

be touched at all, and distance is the parabolic arc so tall.

4487. I WAS STANDING

I WAS STANDING

I was standing amidst water and dreck, watching to see
what floated by - paragons of virtue, not; girls with
their guys, trudging towards 13th, Webster Hall was
calling. The thin sky, leering back at fifteen thousand
people, seemed to have something on its mind.
-
I had to decide, if the world were to end right now, would
I be happy? Would any form of sadness count? And then
how, and why? Everything would be, in a way, indivisible,
or divisible by nothing, or indivisible by anything.
It seemed an endless and stupidly mathematical quest,
one that would have a symbol, a formula, some Kurt Godel
manipulation. As it was, really, all this gauze was but
reality's own lame cloak, and I was overdressed for that.
-
How can someone say what's on their mind? A million
soda-pop ways of trying, and what we're left with is
but the prize-legend underneath the bottle cap, in
the place we never really see at all.

4486. STAG'S LEAP

STAG'S LEAP

(a sexual complaint about 'poetry')

I'm reading the shit of Sharon Olds and 

it's really making me puke. Just another

whining form of altercation with all those

vast regrets of self : lost husband, sex

and marriage. As if anyone would care.

Page after page, the same marvelous crud;

a sanitest of artifical tile, a linoleum to cover

bare floors. I am not forced to stay here, so

I won't; but I wonder how does this all go?

She's got some women's reputation as a go-getter

for the fairer bunch, a newer Plath of these

saving days  -  a something reaching something

by ultra-modern means we need. Yes, well, I

guess that all may be  -  those small-minds 

come together nicely; like a Sharon Olds

husband and wifey. Those small minds

come together nicely.

4485. A MILLION KINDS OF SERVICE

A MILLION KINDS OF SERVICE

A million kinds of service and I get you :

the SST that will never land, the scripture

book that will never be read. The apartment

seeker's budget only calls for music in one

key  -  A-flat  -  let's call it. That's me.

Nothing you'd go seeking out, yet

something you'd easily settle for.

-

Now here I am, drinking tap water again;

it tastes like the gruel of a witch's own

soup  -  all that frog's head and leper's heel

stuff of legend. Whatever gobbledy-gook those

witches in Hamlet were sputtering, 'toil and trouble'

and the rest, be assured I can hear it now. Ringing

like a cancer bell, clanging like the mortuary door in

a hospital's alley. Where the decrepit ambulances

come, pulled by donkeys. But that's no matter; when

I die my friends will come looking and say 'yes,

yes, that was him for sure.'

-

I love it when others laugh  -  I see their charmed faces,

adorable in glee, spacious in their happiness. I really

do want to love everyone. How stupid is that, I wonder.

4484. MR. ZOROASTER

MR. ZOROASTER

I commingle both blood and fury, juggling my cosmic

words with the lightness of fire and heat. I am the torch

that carries the flame  -  do you like me this way?

All across those fabulous ages I've remain steady; a

name used on occasion, a secret presence, a force

behind a force. And now, but only now, it is dawning

morning on some North American beach, a place I've

known nor even sought to see. My visions are larger

than broadcast, and I easily encompass this space.

A few boats are swaying in time to the ripples, as the

soft water runs on  -  sails and a schooner, some rich

man's yacht holding bay. A few folks are having their

breakfast at a table nearby  -  wharfside coffee and the

odor of eggs and big pastries. Things I've never seen.

-

I am wrapped in the robes of too long ago, my language

is stilted and broken, I cannot articulate the exactness

of what I need to say. On the arms of my cloak, stitched

in a velvet, are stars and shooting pinions of form and

elation  -  my body screams joy, my heart yells 'Duty!'

All that, and yet why am I here, I must ask?

-

Like the God would say to the writer  -  'I am here

because you placed me here, you silly, foolish one;

why do you ask, it's so obvious.' Thousands of years

of Mankind have thought that question should have gone

the other way  -  with the writer asking God instead  -

but, take it from me, I truly have the sequence right.

4483. CAMBRICKSHIRE

CAMBRICKSHIRE

(I can't take anything from that)

Wasn't nothing and mattered less, only

a moment, a pawn, a trickle. I can remember

when you first came here  -  parasol like a

rich girl, riding that deep brown horse.

Everything else about you looked blue.

I couldn't take my eyes off what I'd seen -

the half-bricking of a girl I just had to meet.

Infatuation, like jelly on a bread, had smitten

already my wayward sweet tooth.

-

There was so little to say, and we needed to say

nothing at all. I pretended you were a sharpshooter's

girl, and I asked to be your target. You smiled, and

said 'that can be arranged, if you will but listen.'

-

Everything after that has been a blur; I can recall

that sandy castle that blew away, and those things

you baked in your mother's old oven. Everything

was good : as it all should be, as it all still is.

I can't take anything from that.

4482. JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE SLEEPING WITH WYATT EARP, DOESN'T MEAN THE LAW'S ON YOUR SIDE

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE

SLEEPING WITH WYATT EARP, DOESN'T MEAN THE LAW

IS ON YOUR SIDE

(Pottsville, PA)

I crossed the doleful jail where they held the

Molly McGuires in Pottsville, Pennsylvania  - 

it was a sad and sorry site, that place of execution :

where the wind still howled and the lawn-streets

had repercussions . When the dead men blinked

twice, that was the miners' signal.

The place was in an uproar.

-

Why would a man be forced to dig the earth for

pennies and then die beneath the ground? Black lung

and Irish puke, the hacking and the spitting  -  all of

that so as to make someone else's fortune while they

laugh in your tired, lined face. Everywhere I look is

unseen injustice. The piles of the dead, without words,

 just rotting in a heap. If sorrow had a flag,

 it would be flying here.

-

Yet now that's all in the past; people scrounge

and work for pennies still. I watch them at the

luncheonette and the five and ten cent store.

There's nothing there anymore  -  the busiest

place I see today is a soiled, doughty old storefront now

now selling used clothes  - and it was once the A&P.

Shows how things go, and how they used to be.

4481. I AM DONE WITH A SMATTERING

I AM DONE WITH A SMATTERING
At the corner now of Carlisle and Roache,
in a distant, strange town, a place so few know,
I am huddled by grace with a cigarette and a bottle.
I've not spoken to anyone for days - thankfully
these short, June nights can bring me some justice
beneath the bridges nearby. It passes, and by morning
I awaken and find something to eat and to do. The
money I gather is enough sometimes for coffee; I
can't believe the price of even that now. Everything
these days seems a scam - is it not hot water?
-
Had I an account, I'd hold up that bank - Chemung
Savings and Loan, or whatever they call it now. A
richer-man's building than I'd ever see, it stands with
a guard at the door worth more than me. Oh God,
how'd I ever reach this pass?
-
Nothing's ever left when nothing's ever left.
I can die of exposure, but it's no longer December.
I guess then I'll make it through these finest of days.

4480. PHASE ME NOT THE MOUNTAINS OF MIND

PHASE ME NOT
THE MOUNTAINS OF MIND
If this then becomes the night, I wish for day.
Never before have I stood in such a solid place
wishing for it to be gone : I harbor no fears, just
an odd bliss of certitude. On high, the sunlight is
glistening off dormers of steel - some girdered
management of an engineer's time and an architect's
place. Somehow, all such things come to fruition.
Santiago Calatrava - were he here to say - would
add a word or two to this, I'm sure. Yet, now, I am
the one speaking beneath the vaulted ceiling of a
whimsical arc soaring high like a dream. Look, look
at me looking up! Never before has this been
seen or done. I feel free and elated.

4479.MINDFUL

MINDFUL
I shall not be riled up, for I shall not care.
There are so many things beyond my control -
that man there, he says I am free, yet I live in
a land where criminals rule. I cannot understand
his words nor stupidity at all. Those who rule are
criminals, and this government is an occupation
army - yet I am free to say this; I ask him to observe.
He bows and does his varied duties - all that saluting
and respect for the dead. Believe me, they've all died
now in vain, and we are ruled by clowns and geeks.
-
Were I to call upon arms and insurrection, I'd be fingered
tomorrow. Nonetheless I call : let us take to the rafters
and bolster the barricades and, yes, let us slay the
false Gods where they stand. This is not America.
I want back my land.

4478. FAYETTEVILLE

FAYETTEVLLE
I went home through Arkansas, where the
boys were still playing baseball in the field.
I knew right away I was there : butterflies
and blossoms, lemonade and girls. And
damn it all if I wasn't correct : they'd
raised all the taxes, but they hadn't
changed a god-damned thing at all.

4477. OH SO THEN I RAISE HACKLES

OH SO THEN I RAISE HACKLES
This little finger of river seems touching; at
loose in the bowels of a very sticky city, it runs
along a corridor of pipe and concrete. As if the
engineers had long ago said 'we want it here,
yes, but not really.' And oh, don't I know those
feelings. Sometimes I am ashen gray with fear.
-
If they took this all away from me, I'd have
nothing here : a barricaded dream, a place with
no names or exits or evasions, a language without
any useful verbs at all. In order to maintain my
own standing - even here, along 57th - I only
try looking straight ahead; avoiding the stares of
those ladies, out of reach of the loading dock guys.
-
My spirit vaults - it is larger than the tallest thing
around me, above and beside me. I am angelic in the
way I can bust the frieze and say nothing back to any
accusers : and my every pant is a prayer, my every
move is a plea back to some Lord on high.

4476. THE COUNT CONTESSA MARLOWE (watching)

THE COUNT CONTESSA MARLOWE

(watching)

It's no fun with a storybook ending. I watch through

the glass three barbers cutting hair : one of those

quite stylized places, where the guys are all gay.

It's Chelsea so what anyway. They sit in a stupefied

luster, these beautiful guys, and stare back at me

as if to say 'wild man, crazy one, please go away.'

-

To them, I am a magazine maggot, an incidental

refutation of all their fine array. Back when I lived

on Broadway, a long, long time ago, when they were

still gay starlings only dreamed about by mother

and dad in a sexual lust  -  that fiery frieze of

fury and cum that made them  -  no one imagined

how they breach that trust. A father mollycoddling

vengeance, a new kind of son brought into this world.

-

Now everyone is looking at me, and they all

know each other. Gropers and figments in

another category  -  my arms are filled

with brute strength; they'll have

none of it at all.