347. THE CHEVROLET AT LAHIERE'S

THE CHEVROLET

AT LAHIERE'S
Now what's that doing here? It's parked along the
street, right across from the coffee shop, with no
real reason to be there. No one drives that stuff
anymore, especially not here. No entitlement baby,
this; it sits there instead both leaning and rusting.
Bad paint, bad tires. A broken antenna, and the
outside mirror dangles. If I didn't know better,
I'd say it sagged on its suspension too.
-
People try not to look - they'd rather just
walk by. Even those two Alumni-type
codgers, snickering as they pass.
'That is not a BMW, and I
bet it goes through gas.'
-
On the other hand, for myself,
I was able to see the connection:
French food at Lahiere's, and an
old French name in Chevrolet.
Everything else should
be so simple.

346. THE ADVENTURE OF MR. HATTERA

THE ADVENTURE
OF MR. HATTERA
I went to sea a nine-year old boy,
I came back a wizened old man;
too stiff to totter, too bent to
stand straight. All that I missed
I may have been told, but none of
it sticks any longer. I don't know the
meaning of half the words they use, and
I really can't imagine what they're
saying when told. Have I just
grown too old?
-
My life was one big adventure,
from the bloody start to this
bloodied end. I killed a man
in Port Au Prince and kept
running ever since then.
Now, apprehended but as a
scold, I know no one wants me,
I know no one knows me, and
I'm too old (I'm told).
-
A firing squad wouldn't be so bad.
When the final shot hit, it wouldn't
make me sad. I might even feel glad.

345. A DEVIL'S FINE SALIVA

A DEVIL'S FINE SALIVA
They say there is snow on the peak - always.
That high up one cannot but expect it,
can't wish for anything else. It could be
90 degrees this far down, here below,
yet all that's needed is a glance at the top
to see snow. Like the Devil's fine saliva -
a strange mist which enters the brew.
-
We've all lived good lives; decent at least.
Here - down here - in the village, where what
persists to entice us is a respite, some set of
beliefs to keep us going: God in the Heavens,
and a fair star at night setting forth the way.
But a Devil's fine saliva, right back up there
by day, throws us, ruefully, back from
whence we've come. At least our doubts,
at least some. It can't be avoided; any
Kingdom soon due us is a
Kingdom to come.

344. A BAGGAGE OF MEMORIES

A BAGGAGE OF MEMORIES
All this rushing in, all at once -
I've been here before, I know it. I've
seen this scenario, played this role -
in fact, somehow I know exactly what's
coming, it having all come once before.
Just like this? In every exact detail?
Well, that I cannot say - and yet,
I remember the colors were deeper,
warmer, more red. And I remember,
just as much, the spaces as larger,
deeper again too, with more dimension
to everything I saw. Deeper and dense,
brighter and hence - I know I've been
here before.

343. I DON'T UNDERSTAND

I DON'T UNDERSTAND
I had a dream, wherein I gave you an
ultimatum - something at once both bold
and forbidding, as well as 'too good to be true.'
Which was your quote exactly, as it turned out.
You took me up on this curious offer. I was
to outlast you, but whichever one of us was to
die first was supposed to contact the other.
-
In even the most simple of ways - flicking a
light switch on and off, flipping a book or two
down from the shelves, turning a radio off
or on, as it may be.
-
But this ? this I never expected -
dirty socks in the cold refrigerator in
which (I am now certain) the light stays
always on (is that you too?), a milky bowl
of corn flakes, wilted, atop the warm TV,
a salt shaker filled with...sand? What's going
on here, (I don't understand)?

342. BEETHOVEN'S SEEING EYE DOG

BEETHOVEN'S

SEEING EYE DOG
Unable to believe in the evidence, there was nothing
more to do : become a silent cynic, ramble about as
if mad, pick up traces of whatever was seen.
It was, in a way, a chance for the most
unbelievable colloquialism. I knew
the rest of the world to be one
vast lie. Even the wisest men,
shitheads at heart, never
spoke a true word
in their entire
lives.

341. ABSTRACT 3

ABSTRACT 3
One beat-up old pest, the likes of which
not before shorn of all heart and matter
kept itself between I and thou, was all I
had to show for living. Now that was that.
-
This end had been achieved and,
with little to show for it, I shambled
on. Egregiously wilful, shamed and
hurt together. 'Let us go skimming,'
I uttered to no one in particular 'let
us take off from here, and speed through
the remnants of what life is left : before
us, behind us and with us right here.'
-
My left hand was on the wheel.
My other hand, just beneath your
heart, was ready to rip it - in one
motion - out from your chest.

340. MESA

MESA

On the tabled plane, five trucks.
Passing light, the shine comes off
their sides. Repeat offenders,
wearing sunlight crowns.

339. KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM AND GRACE

KNOWLEDGE AND
WISDOM AND GRACE
And so a crazy professor in a well-worn suit
comes up and says 'it's all about over now. I do
nothing, and I do it for love.' He sits down on the
one chair empty and orders another round. Coffee.
-
She looks over - this wonderful woman I know -
and says, over her shoulder, 'the only oxymoron
is you.' He turns about and smiles. They had been

high-school sweethearts, but had parted in pain.
-
That was all years before, I'd been told.
He now did nothing but play checkers or
dice for money, and lecture on Elizabethan art.
She stayed home in her own place, sending out
manuscripts one after the other, to sources I'd
never really heard of. The Magnificent Bolster
Review. The Pequod Inquest Poetry Journal.
The Quarterly Chapbook of Masterful Art.
-
Eventually, it always seems, everything changes
and we all go our separate ways --
like some crazy professor
in a well-worn suit.

338. JEANETTE

JEANETTE
It was Jeanette. A simple ruffled shirt,
and something quite mussed. We spent three
hours huddled, as it were, over stacks of very
old books staggered with care deep in the library's
inner-sanctum. Only low-lit lights, and those in
green shades. Couldn't touch; just look.
-
Great Universities are made for this, I guess.
Or made by this too - the veiled smartness of
a three-hundred year old collection of five-hundred
year old books. The meager face of dust and paper -
little things flaking off. Browned corners and edgings.
Gold gilt which leaves traces on one's fingers.
Couldn't touch (they said); just look.

334. ALL WHILST READING WALTER BAGEHOT

ALL WHILST READING
WALTER BAGEHOT
My mind wouldst wander.
Seeking other climes; a stalwart
mind envisioning another land - someplace
quite quiet. Like an island of the deaf. Leadeth
me to pastures, restoreth my soul, and all the rest.
A very quiet cemetery, filled with the deaf dead,
deceased Caesars, someplace where the rest rest.

336. WELL THEN, WHAT TO DO WITH THESE HANDS

WELL THEN, WHAT TO DO
WITH THESE HANDS
I am always alone, in the most savage way:
an articulated sadness, a glorified gloom, something
that can bend with the moment. Good times, bad times,
who can even tell the difference? Watching people talk,
waving their arms, or putting their heads close together,
merely leads me to boredom while gauging their strengths.
-
In the end - all it is - I really don't care.
I met my factored doom - that which
was brought in for me on a very-personalized
cart - on the day I was born. I've been with it now for
years - dragging it or pushing it, depending on which
way I was headed. In my day, I inspected carefully each
item laid out on that cart. Non-plussed, like a deviant,
I merely continued on my way...intent on something else.
-
Or so it would seem, have seemed, did seem.
Now - filled with weariness, and worn - I just
wish it would roll away, be over, exit the premises
on some fiery, prancing, steed. But, alas, I
cannot seem to put this horse before this cart.
It is all this effort merely to break my heart.

335. WORLD HAS FLOWERS - a Panegyric

WORLD HAS FLOWERS
They come at you incessantly - these things.
You've been characterized as 'Nature Man' -
that guy who haunts the parklands; hiding
Springtime muffins in the warm bouquet of
hands. The Sun-God itself, going out of its
way to see you, trespasses between trees and
shadows to enter places which weren't there
before. It's magic and splendor, everywhere.

334. JUST AS I WALKED WITH THE VIKINGS

JUST AS I WALKED
WITH THE VIKINGS
Along the slag heap, they put the ships.
Tied with poles to rocks and timber,
nothing so much as short to go. And
the lengths of chain, it seemed, went
on forever. A few men, horrid and
very sick, were simply put to death -
a mallet, a hammer, a hatchet.
-
Each time we entered some newly-found
place it was as if never before. Of course,
or off-course for that matter. We ended
up where we ended up. The scallions
of the north, places of today's maps -
Maine, Newfoundland - were for us
but empty expanses of discovered
land. We knew nothing, caring less.
-
Bone meal and chatter, raw meat, the cloven
hoof, the highland cat. A naturalist's ledger
would have all these things listed - we did
none of that. We just went on; wordless
and without a history of our own.
Or of what we were doing either.
Nothing and neither known.

333. MILITIA MAN

MILITIA MAN
Once I was sent by the army to break heads
and crack people's hands with hammers. It
was supposed, of course, to be a simple task,
the very sort that warfare is made for. Soldiers,
made to take orders and nothing else, are - in
that respect - a truly stupid bunch. I myself,
to speak frankly, thought really nothing of it.
Blood, the crunch of breaking bones, the
shrieks of panic and pain - who cared?
-
Only much later, when I saw the crippled boys
left behind - that one without an eye, the other
an arm AND a leg both missing - did I attempt
second thoughts; but they too passed. After all,
what did I care of results, and who would listen
to me? I'd been paid my measly Roman salt,
this fucking root of salary's word, and I never
left a body behind to rot. Whenever I could, I
buried my lot, under at least a FEW feet of solid
dirt. A few feet of solid dirt; even that was
more than I ever got. But I was okay with
that, I did my job and took the flak.
Service in wartime is brutal.
There ought to be better
than that.
-
'It's songs like this
that never have an end.
I'm sick of it all, and don't
want to hear it again.'
Militia Man

332. HARD TRUTH/SOFT DREAMING

HARD TRUTH/

SOFT DREAMING
In the morning, when the whitewashed light
of a new sun still paints the dewy trees - this
early in Spring - the bare branches seem crying
out for something. 'Something to accompany us,
please, kind sir.' A sort of cloak, a dress of leaves.

331. ON THE DAY I MET FRITZ FANON

ON THE DAY I
MET FRITZ FANON
The wretched of the Earth were all about,
hands-out, beseeching. Every cry of every
ban, every infant's cry of fear - you know the
drill. To make matters worse, it wasn't just
him. Somehow in attendance too were

Catherine Blake and her husband Bill.
-
I reeled about once or twice,
seeking a comfort or a solace
in the things I couldn't do - no
practical human connection made,
no genuine human friendship would do.
It all had to be perfect, in Heaven made.
-
That's the problem with seeking
a perfect Divine and a perfect Earth.
Neither of them are to be what they say,
and if you still keep trying, you just get hurt.

330. RIDING THE HERD

AND JUST LIKE

RIDING THE HERD
You marvel at what you marvel -
magnificent light at the cylindrical oasis
in the eyes of that winsome cat's meow,
the pattern on that funny fellow's apron.
It's never anything more than this:
passing time, getting by, laughing at
something someone said, making sure
to put a stamp on that letter you mail.
-
I see London, I see France.
I see someone in a trance...
in a trance...in a trance.

329. CUDGELING AT MAREMOUNT

CUDGELING AT MAREMOUNT
It wasn't far off, that overwhelming feeling again :
the coal mines just outside of Scranton, the decided
features of those digging deep into the Earth, fragging
poster-boys of toil and hurt. The steam-locomotive on
adjoining tracks, sweating and bulging with all its fire
and heat, on hold. Finally, no place to go! Staying put
as the rest of the world moved. Overhead, the thick
overcast of storm-cloud and steam together.
Not too distantly removed, once-again, the
old crooked houses hugged the hillside barely.

328. BEING AN AMAZING TRAIT

BEING AN AMAZING TRAIT
Truculence, being an amazing trait, suits
you rather well. In the morning, when you
arise, I hear-tell that you rip the darkness from
the sky and force the sun to rise.
-
The luminous and the numerous;
in both cases you carry them well.
'I hardly have time to read anymore.'
I heard you say that, quite sincerely,
just before you broke your glasses
in two, stepped on the lenses,
and defiantly walked off.

327. CRIMESTOPPER'S NOTEBOOK

CRIMESTOPPER'S NOTEBOOK
Dick Tracy, driving through town,
threw his girlfriend down. She
lingered a week in a coma,
and died. He was apprehended,
and later was fried.
-
Legends and myths have no
real basis in reality - as I know it.
My guardian angels would just as
well sue for defamation then
lend a helping hand.

326. THE PERILS OF PAULINE

THE PERILS OF PAULINE
I am metastasizing time : it is spilling
out of my gourd, over-running to the
floor, and pooling in huge puddles.
Memory serves to only contort.
The wisest lily, I notice now, is
the one placed over the dead.
-
Incredulous moans are
spreading from the chorus
to the loge. The lights stay
dimmed; the half-darkness
suits all things well.

325. YOUR YELLOW SARONG

YOUR YELLOW SARONG
Beneath your yellow sarong, I saw the outline
of your body. The sunlight was brazenly pouring
through with its own glory - only adding to yours.
Translucence is a momentary thing, like the glories
of which mad monks sing.
-
Outside, on the lawn, some birds were pecking
joyously at the seeds you'd just left them.
Up and down, darting to and fro, these birds,
these 'things' which Blake said were just
momentary worlds of delight, reveled
in something of that same natural glory.

324. LANDSCAPE AT BRAVURA

LANDSCAPE AT BRAVURA
I'm leaving an etching behind; something anyone
can see. No special invitation needed, for this,
my gallery. It's of a place I've always loved, or
at least wanted to be. Rolling hills. The rustic
clock tower on the municipal lawn. An old
carriage in the workshed by the wooden bandshell.
Elm trees soaring, their spreading arms the
size of high caverns - making a cove I can
walk beneath. I was 10. I was 20. Everyday a
different parade. The carpenter-gothic housefronts,
and the old wooden church. An owl on the 7th eave.
In the stellar evening, the bats each night, and
the lightning bugs at Summer dusks.
Walking the shrouded streets, with his black bag
in hand, Doctor Madison, again, leaving from
a house. The wagon, at dawn, sliding by with
its clink-cargo of bottled milk. The clop-clop
of that dull old horse. 'Maizy', each day again,
'Maizy'. The regularity of something good;
the distant, far better, once-off, life.

323. EASTER BLUE

EASTER BLUE
This God-like harrowing has worn me out.
I watch the people come and go - past the
old stone steps and up the newer stairs.
A plasticine church, newly built, more easily
elevates them to their new kind of Heaven.
Someone roll this rock away. These days
it's made of plastic anyway. A movie-rock,
which the slightest breeze can sway.

322. SATURDAY'S TRELLIS

SATURDAY'S TRELLIS
Like the trellis of some other day - wild,
fearsome, windy and blown - these blossoms
have tried gamely to grab on to something
stable. In every which way they can, they stay.
Determinately clinging. Rapacious vines.
Anchored in a certain sort of May vanity
to both blossom and display. Those who
come strolling by stop and stroll no more.
Instead, they stay. A very particular Kingdom
of Beauty, from which no one wants to leave.

321. NEAR APPROACHING

NEAR APPROACHING
So much I wanted to do.
The cat got out of the bag.
Sleaze is what you make it -
ease mixed with tomfoolery.
Never bedevil a camel; they spit.
So many things I meant to do,
but I've done so little of it.

320. RAT

RAT
Dead rat dirty rat,
rat rat
rat tat tat.

319. THE EVER-LIVING DEMON OF SPEED

THE EVER-LIVING
DEMON OF SPEED
As if wanting warmth atop an iceberg of glass
or setting fires with matches eternally lit, every act
of my life has somehow presaged itself with omens
of an absolute degree - either dire forebodings or
mindless glee. I mustn't understate this elegance,
you see. Distance and nearness, the same in their
exactitudes, are never what they seem to be.
-
I race with blinding speed through a deluge of air.
No hands on any wheel, nothing between me and the
wind in my face. Glass all gone, airstream foiled.
Resistance distracting my aerodynamic toil.

318. URITURBI

URITURBI
I was on the Mount of Olives with you-know-who.
Withered like meat on some cross of wood, the spoken
intentions went far afield - enclosing every emotion of the
future world in a droning brown of doubt and death.
Standing alone, with the Devil at my side too.
'Regard all this before you as yours to rule.
I offer you the world' - those words, spoken with
a lethal smirk, for a moment took my breath away.
I gazed out with narrowed eyes - all I could see
was a Heaven; nothing at all of this world
of which he boasted. He always was a fool
and a coward. A real craphead, smothered
in smarmy intent. In reality, he could
offer me nothing at all.

317. ON RUINATION DAY

ON RUINATION DAY
I saw the crazy man again dancing his quick-step
along the same silly street. He seemed heading sideways
while pulling his cart. His arms are always out for
something; wishing a broom, looking for dimes,
seeking alms from the passing minions.
I want to say 'cohorts'? I wish to say 'suckers'?
No, neither - though I'll never really know what goes on.
I noticed him again, even though I'd tried pretending
not to see : he was in the midst of traffic, now haranguing
the cars and the drivers. 'You'll not get much if you curse
them out - and to their faces, no less.' Well, that's what I
wanted to say. But who am I to give advice - to the lonely,
to the broken, to the stalwarts of sadness and mystic gloom?
Not my place at all. At some sad level, I come from the
same beginnings, I come from the same raw source.
-
They should have a holiday for the losers.
Called 'Ruination Day', of course.

316. LEAVING CHELMSFORD

LEAVING CHELMSFORD
Please don't have me leave Chelmsford without you.
It would be as if, having entered a great Tunnel of Love
in the dark and the chill, I were to turn to see, next to me
in the empty cart, nothing but a vacant seat. Bare trees
all over again. A trim, despotic pond iced and frozen over.
The same sort of cold which would coat my heart.
-
Entreating you for this again, one last time,
I simply ask - please let me stay, have me
remain, or, for pity's sake, come away with me.

315. A THEORY OF COLOR

A THEORY OF COLOR
See the hand so nicely settled.
The eye, wishing for solace, will follow
the line easily. What matters most are the
blocks of colors - shaded and bold, stark
and washed. Vivid and strong, these forceful
hues and areas enclosed are what will bring the
focus to attention. And - all of that - is what Art is.

314. AT CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE

AT CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE
So they dragged this up from the Alexandrian sand
and mud: obelisk and markings together -

bragging rights about exploits in battle.

How purely mundane.

-
Now it sits before setting suns, atop

what's called a knoll. The Metropolitan Museum

of Art crowds it from one side, while the endless

streams of Sunday's pride - runners, bicyclists,

and walkers - stroll.

-

Attesting no longer to anything, this measured
feat, this awesome relic, stands silent - trying
only to dip before the passing sun.
Heliopolis this is not.

313. SHORELINE AT RILE'S POINT

THE SHORELINE AT

RILE'S POINT
Had the watery dip of the roiling sea not
moistened my face already, I would not have
looked out to see the vague ships passing
in a fog of light with no edges. Some fifteen terns
along the sand ran and screeched, while seawater
foamed and the sea-grass blanched. Bent by the
wind, thrown about, as some oasis of fury, the
broad beach seemed screaming and angry.
I couldn't help notice the lack of a horizon.
Foreground and distance, in a merging of
Nature's way, had married - as if to say:
'We are here as one, together today.'

312. A DUE RECOMPENSE

A DUE RECOMPENSE
Bearing forth with little, the judge's
robes sat down - pronouncing sentence.
From the small riser, a sentence of time;
'six months for this, and probation is thine.'
It sounded so regal, serious or biblical.
Yet I couldn't help but smile, realizing the
mistake had cost this man his time.
I wasn't him at all, for I had done the crime.

311. CARNIVAL EYES / THE RECOGNITIONS

CARNIVAL EYES /

THE RECOGNITIONS
Enormous cities of the past - groveling,
misshapen hulks of human shape scratched
out of harbors and hills - spitting forth humors
from rot. Entire cities of the past whose voices
echo still, in space. Huge comminglings of
noise and voice, searching for one finished
message in a spread layer of sound.
Enormous cities of the past.
-
The anguish of Humankind, seeking joy,
debates with itself what that joy should be.
As such debates go on, the waste amounts
to so much retro nothing - with no one
recognizing the stakes at hand.
-
Carnival eyes, red-painted lips, heads
which go in all directions: the faith of
people connecting souls, all to one another
in their farcical tranche of deliverance and
salvation. Kinships of Gods: governments of
ideas, great moments of the past, pyramids of
dialectic. Everything living on, in eyes and
motions still roving through this day.
-
'I've wanted to tell this story for a really long time:
how I entered Philadelphia covered in grime and with
a mystique I'd forgotten about, but left just as quickly,
thinking of you. It was an enormous cavalcade of funny
things - the hustlers along Walnut Street, and all those
young kids drinking beer.'
-
In 1964, when I was 14, I played Walsingham
in a Shakespeare play. I skittered on stage, said
my few lines, and went off, on my way. It was just
a moment for me, back then, to surmise what
public presence should be. I was not impressed.
The curtains, in fact, took all my attention -
their fabric, the way they separated to present the stage,
and all those grotesque faces, barely lit, looking up
in some strange and awkward Edvard Munch-like way.
High above me, the wires and cables and brackets of lights.
-
Enormous cities of the past; yes, yes.

310. UPON CLIMBING MOUNT EXCELSIOR

UPON CLIMBING

MOUNT EXCELSIOR
The winds at the top, I have noticed, are
never a problem at the bottom - all those women
in their balloon crepe hats, slanting sideways just
pretend. The five gents nearby, with their carved
walking sticks and leather chaps, have something
else on their mind - perhaps a jaunt through some
deep, dark jungle canopied with vines.
Oh let all wild beasts beware such
civilized men are arriving!
-
It's often like this. We sort our thorns amidst the
ideas and places we first conjure, and only then
prepare well to walk straight into battle. Most
often, a battle of our very own making.
-
As the high winds frolic - themselves too above
our very heads - we can see how all things
twist and turn. All that we see loses its
point - outlines and definitions changing
before our standing eyes.
-
On 33rd street, the man with corduroy
briefcase has real trouble with
just closing the taxi door.

309. THE HOWS AND WHY OF THE WERTHEIMER FACTION

THE HOWS AND WHYS
OF THE
WERTHEIMER FACTION
Truly then something was wanted.
They had made their motion and voted
their calls - and then, of course, guns were
taken down from the walls. Enamored of nothing
so much as themselves, collegially they took to the
streets. The chanted phrase, the bombast, the
inevitable beautiful broken glass; each of these
things came together - for the cameras, for the joy,
for the idea of communitarian bliss.
-
At one time, Marx and Engels. By the time
the camera crews arrived, it was 'marks and angles'.
'God damn, at least we do know how to shoot!'
Bullets, guns and cameras - shooting all together;
the off-livery of the broken stable, the fractured
hand of the landless man. 'Rentier Politics' across
the land of France.
-
I hadn't been home but an hour when the doorbell rang.
A man from the Morning Herald, seeking an interview
at the door. 'What did you think of the mob's behavior
this morning? Have you any feelings towards the issues of
war?' I smiled my famous smile. 'Nothing worth saying
has ever been said, and, to paraphrase Wittgenstein,
what cannot be said we cannot say, and we can't whistle it either.'

308. OF FLAXSEED AND ROSES I AM SURE

OF FLAXSEED AND ROSES

I AM SURE
The critics who floored me were cleaning up their mess -
whatever they'd said had already fallen away. They
re-sharpened their knives to try once again.
An elderly maid brought fresh flowers
into the room : Windjammer flaxseed
and Lilywhite roses.
-
This long vacation (as I understood it) was now
over. On the face of my new watch was
reflected Philadelphia. A man along Walnut
leaned over and said to me 'how are you?'
The girl I was with gave me her mirror.
I peered at it and said 'still here, at the least!'
-
William Penn and all those things;
the studied subterfuge of the
Penn City Hall.

307. ON THE KLONDIKE VERGING

ON THE KLONDIKE VERGING
A twisting verdigris; the sudden impetus
thwarted exit. The old veneer itself
was now sodden - air and moisture
having done their work. A joy in
the making, the expunged designs
of old webs and patterns were yet
barely to be seen. We entered that
library singing, and glad to be alive.
-
Floor to ceiling, patterned books, arcades
of shelving and storage bins. Higher than
hope, the eye ran. Along that fresco'd ceiling,
what charmed us most was the distant day:
markings of the past being reflected
in today's fair heap.

306. AS I PARADED

AS I PARADED
While I paraded my thinking past the minds of
old, what came to the fore was simplicity. As if
injurious to mind and matter, the round sound of
logic (coming back upon itself) ran its circles -
un-coiffing the sureness of illusion. My world
was a loser, being factored in the win. How could
this be? I wondered. Metaphysics under such
a tree is shaded by great limbs of doubt.