402. THE MAIDENHEAD AT HER OASIS

THE MAIDENHEAD

AT HER OASIS
She wore her slivered presence like an ancient,
beautiful cloak - under the sunlight, around the trees,
and through every sort of alcove and alley there was.
Nowhere could any other be found to outdo her in
grace and intention. Starry light under golden sky.
I once took a moment more than was due, to peer
back at her, passing, and watch what she left.
That golden light and starry sky, however it was
just said and mentioned, tries its best to describe
what I mean. I cannot speak or say what it is -
glory and fire, echo, and the roar of sound.
All these things were trailing her, all things
such as these seemed to abound, and her
wake was filled with sizzling presence.

401. THE WAY I TALK TODAY

THE WAY I TALK TODAY
This is the part of my life I love,
the Mercantile Exchange of my mind and
heart - those with whom I hold hands. The
forest dumbbell, I say to myself:
'If truth is beauty, and beauty is truth,
then why have I grown so long in the tooth?'
Some ageless old horse, if ever were found,
could never answer that, never make a sound.
-
Without recourse to the legend or the key,
I nod an assent gratuitously - for I am
not reserved enough for truth nor wild
enough for beauty - and either way, for me,
they'd be both nothing but trouble and duty.
-
I hear the century-old radiator slapping;
and the heat isn't even on.

400. SCALING

SCALING
On the bottom of this wind is the top of
the light - a separate place, fragrant and live.
The firemaster, atop the sky, still expects
his edicts heeded. 'This will never do!', some
new Nero cries. We genuflect in admiration
when fleckled gold, like stars, drifts from
the heavens above. Reading words with no
lips moving. It is a truly remarkable thing.

399. TABLEAU VIVANT

TABLEAU VIVANT
I am not dead memory, your
once-for-wishful-thinking
heart and mind. And that
distant light - the one you
claim to see - is but a lamplight
far down a boring hallway.
-
Something is ticking - there - on
the mantle. They say that it is
Time - a fickle essence, moving
away. I say, I say 'NO!' - a sound
and a fury, perhaps, signifying
something grand, something
awesome, something.
-
I have not placed these items
on the table. No, it was not me,
for I am not here. The tableau
vivant is all you see.

398. RAIN DRENCHED METROPOLIS

RAIN DRENCHED METROPOLIS
(outside the cathedral)
The entire idea was his : jackhammer, awning,
temporary fencing and steel plates over the
sidewalk. 'That's just the way construction is done
here', he said. And no one disagreed or objected.
Obstructions notwithstanding, even the Pope's
own legation could get through if they really
wished. Under the tutelage of a new
rainbow, they all could soldier on.
-
Swiss Guard, like a nightingale, could hover.
The rain in torrents could make its presence
known. The upside down umbrellas in
someone's dream could be seen as
small ponds each, lakes of
collected water that no one
would touch.
-
I watched the beads of water on the
windshield of someone's car as it waited
at the light. By somehow waxing the window,

he'd inadvertently made me this sight:

Diamonds on glass,

glistening in the night.

397. MICHAEL MICHAEL

MICHAEL MICHAEL
The neighbor wore a scarf; and no one
ever knew what sex he was. Called Michael by
some, I'd heard him also called Michelle.
He wove sweaters at the mill.
A mother once, let's assume it
was his, was heard to say : 'My God,
Michael, whatever will you grow up
to be? A fine an old man with a shortage
of age, or a wond'rous old woman
to whom nobody will pay heed?'
As if there was an answer to any
of that, others kept asking the same
sort of thing. He finally said 'If I listen
to you all, I'd do nothing else, all my days,
but try to figure things out. Just let me
be, and what I am you will see.
It will make wonderful sense to me.'

396. RIVERS OF MOUNTAINS AND MOONS OF THE NIGHT

RIVERS OF MOUNTAINS AND
MOONS OF THE NIGHT
They stood fifteen hands high these
mighty men. They arched their silver
torsos over any land they chose.
Fiery filament engaging the night -
light's fearsome torch in some old
harbor-born exercise of toil and pain.
-
We stepped forward, high on that one.
It was 1957 all over again - before things
had changed for the worse. Elvis sheets
and convertible nights, chewing gum cards
and baubles hanging from mirrors and lamps.
Nothing meant much, and everything meant
nothing. What do I get for that now?
-
Criticism and slander and an itch and a scratch.

395. LIKE MY FRIEND ALECK AT THE PROVING GROUND

LIKE MY FRIEND ALECK

AT THE PROVING GROUND

Somehow there was never any mystery

to the mystery of time. I'd walked the

same streets, in the same manner, and

done the same things. We'd shared, thereby,

space and time - though never actually

'dined' together. It's funny like that - how one

barometer of where you are with someone

is whether or not you've ever eaten together.

I suppose it's tribal - that old community

fire thing, the shaman around the hearth,

the stories shared thereby and the ease that

comes, expectedly, with knowing that - while

eating - you're off your guard but nothing bad

will come of it.

394. AT GYRY BRIDGE

AT GYRY BRIDGE
Catamaran and altitude together nearing Byrnehym Gaol.
Small and angled, the rocky cliffs descend harshly
into the gently weaving grasses running loose along
the nearby shore. An errant barrel, someone's old bicycle,
the most-usual crap of a most-usual age. The old men
of the Burnham family - as we know it today - once
ran their sickly jail right here - a cinderblock hut large
enough for maybe four. Men who'd lost their way;
crazy guys with no home or history.
-
Single events of no time and place, the sort of
story-lines from which come ghost tales and
horror legends. The axe-man who killed fourteen
people at the Jameson wedding. Millie Floray who
butchered her children and torched her cabin
before burning her husband alive. It's this
level of memory keeps tourism alive.
-
Now we're in the level graveyard, where
only happenstance has put people away.
Granite and sandstone and slate,
varied sorts of markers each with
a tale to tell. 'Beware ye who cometh
here - to not lose this life for it is
too dear' this thin marker reads...
It's like that everywhere, one
fabled thing after another.

393. RUNNING FOR DEATH

RUNNING FOR DEATH
I run this final marathon backwards if I can,
holding my head in my hand and watching out
for neighbors on the lam. I haven't seen them before,
and I'm not sure where they're at. It's an awesome sight to
see, these thousands of people shaking the bridge ever
so slightly ajar. Death, having undone so many, now just
lets them pass. We state it sincerely - this vapid cycle -
running for the inner circle where the over-25 crowd hangs.
A new beer in each hand, the young girls with their fellows
hang demurely from the sidelines, letting glimpses of
breast and buttock pass us by. Enchanted to say the least,
those forty-thousand year old ruins called Man and Beast
are last seen rummaging through darkened corners of
memory by the old Ben Franklin church - squealing kids
and silent adults alike in a reverie never seen before or since.

392. HAVE YOU HEARD?

HAVE YOU HEARD?
Have you heard how heads will roll,
oil will boil, water will wash? The sandman,
alert to his things, will reminisce at late night
soirees about the days of yore - when he passed
over the nomads in the sand, dropped Manna from
heaven in some foreign land, and scorched the heated
deserts for a 'chosen' few. At the loudspeakers just
outside the window, the hollow-voiced fellows will
stop just short of microphoned shouting, pushing bad
images into the faces of those who stroll by. They shout:
'We are singing the long song of those chosen by God!
You may listen or you may pass - it makes no never-mind
to us. We are no longer of this earth!' Nobody minds that and,
upon hearing it, they glide away, knowingly avoiding that
they just witnessed the Truth being spoken aloud. No God like
that has ever spoken to them before. They are, then, delighted
just for the memory of being present at the start of something big.

391. WEARING A CAPSIZED FISSURE

WEARING A

CAPSIZED FISSURE
Falstaff and Mata Hari
Tenth of May twelfth of June together.
One man's army, another man's good weather.
As equal as partners distressed in good sin, the
weather wore the clothing and threw it all in - while,
on the floor, two naked bodies beating bleating - begin
setting off into the essential essence and interdenominational
frenzied worship of lust. One kid grasped the heartbeat, the
other felt for a breast. It was all so easy as to be ill-fitting.
-
They marched together that November outside London Center.
Ban the Bomb, or Bomb the Bans, or whatever the banners
said - no one seemed really to care or even notice. The entire
Greek Navy stopped by one night, into the Armoured Hire
Pub/Queen Anne's Lane. They too sat amongst the
naked ladies and not a one complained. (One kid
grasped the heartbeat, the other felt for a breast.
You heard it right, yes, yes.) - It's always the
same under the tweaking umbrella.
Freaking umbrella. Twining's
English Tea. Fella?

390. APPARENT MISCHIEF

APPARENT MISCHIEF
At one time - say in the cold frost
of a Winter's morning - I had no
inclination to do a thing. I stood back,
under a shield of ice, and watched the
fir trees shudder, the bare limbs of the
oaks take their coatings of ice, and the
branching elms, creaking, strain against
the cold. I stayed in one place until
I was too cold myself to move. I wished,
just then, to feel what a tree feels :
bare and barren, cold and glazed.
It wouldn't have been that difficult -
after all, my heart itself was already
wishing for a Spring and a Sun.
Something spectacular to brush off
this wearisome world. The old man's
shovel was propped against the ice-glazed
barn. Frozen drips, in turn, had covered the
shovel solid. Everything was under something :
cold, pain, ice, longing. The entire natural world,
I figured, was never complete without its own
incompleteness being present as well.

389. AT DR. BERNARDO'S

AT DR. BERNARDO'S
By a wayward stream, by a break in my life
by a chance encounter, by any of those means
could I have been saved. I was as lonely as
could be, and as broken as a twig; trampled,
crushed. It all came to no meaning.
-
I'd been abandoned by everyone and left alone:
everyday, a total quiet. The brocade of ill intention
and the silk of misapprehension - couch fabrics
in my less-than-comfortable mind. With a
twitch of my very own, I set the land to scowling.
-
'Well Doctor, you've asked me to tell you everything,
to tell you how I feel. I'd rather be walking these streets
than stuck in here with you. One crazed soul on the
sidewalk is worth ten in a place like this.'
-
No one either agreed or disagreed with me.
It'd been that way for so long I'd lost memory
of any other way. Why bother for anything more?
I'd grown used to living on little. My secular
vow of poverty was as real as anything else.

388. AN OBESE VARIETY OF INTENTION

AN OBESE VARIETY

OF INTENTION

Numbers never lie.

You've lived too long to believe that.

But: they were made to lie, misrepresent,

be twisted and jiggered with. Anything else

you may be told is pure and wishful thinking.

Consider this: one is never one, and two is never two.

The heart is a single tomb for one, forced to hold two.

The more you stuff into it, the less more space will do.

387. SECRETS FOR ALGERNON

SECRETS FOR ALGERNON

They flew in under the radar - these tiny,

nascent humanoid creatures - and as soon

as they grew eyes and lungs, they manipulated

a certain form of consciousness to see reality

their way alone. We became their clouds and

their shadows, as they became our dream-comforts

and ideas. It's been said that more than one reality

inhabits the human mind - divided attentions, levels

of energy, palatial moments squeezed into small

spaces. I can believe all that - well, let me re-phrase -

I'd 'like' to believe all that, if only I had some proof...

of things which might have been, of monsters walking

on land, of the great gyrating forms of Gods at work

perfecting things. That's never to be, so I'll then never see.

Nonetheless, I'll be your friend, some guide-companion,

pal or buddy. We can meet as often as can be - exchange

words, have a drink, understand each other in ways only

insiders can. It can all be unsaid. Remain in darkness,

while seeking the light.

386. STACCATO

STACCATO

Ezra Pound in 1910. Older medicine,

different men. The curious threshold

of believing the things one says, and

then: of living vicariously through one's

own stories. I thought it was going to

be some sort of crypto-pen. But, alas,

it was not to be; well short of that again.

385. A SCIENCE OF WISHFUL THINKING

A SCIENCE OF

WISHFUL THINKING
You have made a science of wishful thinking - the
task you've never yet interrupted. The woeful things,
all disappeared, shall never come again: the Sun
will always shine and the rain will be warm and gentle.
The bluest of skies will prevail. The jailmaster shall
have no keys, and doors will never lock.
-
And I shall never forget your face, nor you mine.
Any misdeed will leave no trace. The joyful minions,
a hundred deep, shall passively wait in line - for only
'goodness and mercy shall follow me for the rest of
my days.' You'd made that up one day, saying it was
your very own. I watched your hair and your hands
as you talked. Yes, truly, you'd made a science of
wishful thinking; an aspiration I could never meet
(and a trail I could never walk).

384. THE GLITTERATI OF A LOVER'S EYES

THE GLITTERATI OF
A LOVER'S EYES
All over the great lawn the sparrows were singing.
Like the terms of some Russian novel, very
complicated handshakes and banners now
covered the field. Outside of the circle,
just then, I saw her approaching : bold blue eyes
and a shawl of mirth and humor. Cantilevered
shoes with the strap that wrapped the calf.
It should have all been photographed discreetly.
She was carrying coffee, the little red
container held gently in her hands.
Nothing else stirred as I watched.
-
Her situation was most intense :
three guys wanting her attentions,
plus a lover and a boyfriend both in tow.
I could only imagine how she managed all this.
Her magic hands? Her hugs? Her kiss?
Not that it mattered a whit to me. I was
still lost on that Sunday field from long
ago, watching this as it all transpired,
once before; another time, another
place, and me.

383. ONE DAY HE JUST DROPPED

ONE DAY HE JUST DROPPED
...It may be that he fell from the face of the Earth,
dropped off, disappeared, forever. Or it may have
been just the appearance of same - some ephemeral
magic is like that, after all. The only thing we know is
that what once was there is gone. 'If there's nothing in it,
it's empty', the burly fellow said that. I answered back,
'Are we so sure of that? Is it always so?' - questioning
his mark, and myself as well. He then turned his words
around, and said 'It's empty if there's nothing in it.' Ready
neither to agree or disagree, I left him standing there.
-
There always a declension among men - Mankind, I mean -
that limits the sapient from the sane. And there are those,
on either side of that line, who often act the same. How
can that be? Shouldn't we say 'if it's 'this', then it's not 'that.''
-
Illusion is a dapper trick. The light lines lie, posing as they
do on either side of some cosmic camera lens. 'I want what
is not there', that fellow's tattoo had read - shamelessly,
and right across his forehead. He disappeared from the
world. One moment he just was no longer there.

382. I'D LOVE A RICHTER NUDE

I'D LOVE A RICHTER NUDE
(Painting of a Dead Squirrel, 1962)
Gerhard Richter never trembled so.
Stone cold hard, emaciated relish, with
an awkward reliance on a subdued heart.
No, wait! That cannot be!
It never happens that way.
-
The woman told me the one-eyed
squirrel had disappeared. She saw
a massive hawk just lift it up
and go. Talon transportation,
beak-bound transformation.
Life running into Death.

381. EVOLUTIOIN

EVOLUTION
I have been frozen in ice for what seems
like thousands of years - yet I have no
way of telling. This is a very seamless
dream. I sway and weave, though I
should not. In this condition all things are
supposed to be solid and hard. No one
has yet invented books, though here I
am, seemingly, reading something hard
and stone-cold. And, yes, somehow my
eyes have remained viscous - a liquid
magic containing other worlds. If this
eternity, I'll have none of it. If this is
Evolution, I am waiting for it to begin.

380. MY WATERLOO OVERLOAD

MY WATERLOO OVERLOAD
I threw the cards down and they broke
all over me : aces and ivory, kings and queens,
jokers and jacks alike. I was {fucking} nowhere
man. Nowhere, man. Nowhere.

379. INTESTINAL FORTITUDE

INTESTINAL FORTITUDE
They did it twice : cutting the cat's eyes
wide open over blazing coals. And then
stripping the flesh from the bones, tearing
slowly, pulling it back. Like witches or
shamans seeking omens and portents, they
approached the task in the utmost manner.
Secret words and things only muttered.
By morning, the flames had all died down -
there was nothing left but embers and dust, ash
and bones, the gruesome pain and all those moans.

378. AT SWEETWATER

AT SWEETWATER
There are sixteen huge homes along the shoreline bluff,
right where they ever were - when this was a resort, a
jaunt, a pleasure cruise away for the city's crowded masses.
Ah, but that was long ago. Now, there is nothing but the land
and the soiled sea and the soiled water and the great tanks
of oil and fuel. Storage, they call it. 'A tank farm', they say.
A plundering abyss of fire and flame and fuel so rabid
as to bite. The huge old houses still stand - in fact, now,
as I watch, there is one with thirty people in its porch;
having a party, singing aloud, talking ahead with
laughter and excitement. I am staring out to sea.
Someone else is strumming a guitar, singing
'Bye, Bye Love'. I hear: 'There goes my baby,
with someone new. She sure looks happy,
I sure am blue. She was my baby, that
much is true. There goes my baby,
with someone new.'
-
Cars are parked all along the fenceway.
Elderly people, mostly, are staring out
to the distance or walking along as if
they were tending a life-garden of their
very own - which of course they are.
-
Everything is growing around them, as
the fearsome grip of both anguish and
love holds them steady. The marshland
and reeds along here are their companions.
The slow and quiet lap of the water and
the boats soothes the tired mind. Soon
the sun will be setting around us all.
The music is playing on....'there goes
my baby, with someone new.'

377. READING THE NEWSPAPER IN SWAHILI

READING THE
NEWSPAPER
IN SWAHILI
There's nothing to it really - a few
extra words, a few extra pages.
Things I don't often know about -
names of odd cars, other cuts of meat
from animals I'm not sure of. They play
some sort of checkerboard-pencil game
too, instead of crosswords and kengo.
The ink still rubs off on one's hands.
While I read, these little girls bring me
tea. Like working girls, already; but they're
only 11 or 12. Very off-putting. The young
boys too, if they're not scratching for money
swatting at flies (for a dime), they're looking
wistfully at something others are eating.
I don't often know what to do.
-
So many things are strange to
them here : leather shoes, make-up,
mirrors, erasable pens, antacids.
Not the stuff you'd expect - a million
stupid IPODS and five hundred
thousand Blackberrys. They think the
world is strangely distant, yet they
treat it, I see, as if it was as close
as any other. Everyman and
everyplace, growing
so close together.

376. REVEREND DWILLY

REVEREND DWILLY
I can only say this once : Your charismatic
church is a self-help school and you are in
thrall to nothing but Ego. The gerrymandering
of your district has now constricted your mind -
channels and sections and Leviticus too.
In one sense of many, only this will do.

375. ATOP MT. DISMAL

ATOP MT. DISMAL
Upon reaching the summit, I realized
I was alone - that little shack I'd always
wanted had room but for one. Wind-breeze,
floggings of the elements, slant-rain and wicked
furies, everything conspired to keep me in place.
I couldn't even light the match I'd meant to light.
So many places I'd already been - all those crazy
Mounts : Pisgah, Ararat, McKinley, when it was
still called that. (My denial of Denali, which they call
it now, stems from nothing more than native envy).
You can call me a self-reliant Emersonian geek, a jerk
or a Thoreau-like geezer. Whatever you choose to say,
nothing's any easier. I harbor the grudge yet I forgive all too.
This shack has but room for one; no room for you.

374. DRUNKENNESS

DRUNKENNESS
The tankards that night were all
filled with beer - a heavy new beer
brought fresh and live from somewhere.
It had the dark, audacious ghost of both
a coffee and a wine - the sort of thing drunk -
one would think - only under duress.
-
It didn't stop us. Nothing stopped us.
We didn't let anything stop us.
We stayed and sat - hours prolonged
with waiting and wanting and, yes,
eventually weaving.
-
And oh that we dissembled :
slurred fragmented conversations
brought to doilies and stump deliberations.
Words, felled and trapped, spread over
ideas half-baked through mouths washed-out
with ales sold as soap to the barren barter.
Drunkenness : oh what the hell.

373. IDIOT I AM

IDIOT I AM
Nothing characterizes a sodden character like
the mud on the face of a chimp - one throwing
mud, in fact. Just like any of those crazy guys
on TV, mouthing their doctrinal opinions while
touching themselves. The camera never lies.
Dan Rather said 'the camera never blinks' - all
the same, together. One idiot admitting to the other
the same conclusion : idiot I am.

372. LEGLESS RAM

LEGLESS RAM
They made mine run off.
Five rivers later, I was still chasing
it. The horizon seemed never to
cease, just expand - farther and more.
I was legless but fleet; so was this ram.
In pursuit - like Bunyon's very Hound of Hell,
I sought something soft - forgiveness, passage,
understanding, peace. Whatever it was, it eluded
capture too. We both set off together after that.
In tandem, trading moves, we finally found that horizon.

371. MY LAND FOR YOUR SALLY

MY LAND FOR YOUR SALLY
The wind like a wild man whistled -
high and shrill - shaking trees twisted
and routing them round from their roots.
There was, truly, nothing anyone could do
but count the seconds, minutes, hours
until all of this fury passed. What would be
left - ruination and rubble - would perhaps
be one day rebuilt. We were entering a
land of no return.
-
I offered to harbor your family, take
your Sally even for my own. Anything
to help. Whatever I could do - expand my
largess, embrace your family members,
be wedded - if that's what it took - to your
very own daughter.
-
If only anything had survived.
When the sky cleared it was myself
alone, still single and rare, who was left.

370. NOTHING! VOILA! ICI! IMMOBILE! ANON!

NOTHING! VOILA! ICI!

IMMOBILE! ANON!

Light has painted light with the children of the hour.

We are all marked men marked by time and circumstance

and wishes and want. There is no forgetting that which

is gone - for the endless story lines all just go on.

There is no parking of the car between the lines - nor

within the lines. There is simply nowhere to go : everything

has been superseded by everything else. 'Reciprocal!

Use a Rembrandt as an ironing board! Let Art do for you what

you have done for Art! Nothing! Voila! Ici! Immobile! Anon!'

369. LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION

LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION

(Movie Prelude Trailer Tease)

I always get a kick out of how they refer to coffee as

a 'beverage' - as in 'careful, your beverage is hot', or

'beverage lids here'. I'd guess - if it isn't a solid - they

pretty safely call everything a beverage whenever they

wish. It's in the nature of their game : category and

signification, emplacement and name. Man gave names

to all the animals, and all the rest - Holocaust. Nuclear

weapons. Chemical warfare. Disease and Death.

Duty to country. Yeah, I really get a kick.
-

Have you seen the one where the father

kills the kid? It's a robot movie of some sort,

all fearsome gore and crazy movement.

That's what they like, these days. Rabid

fetish product placement half-naked

women playing their destitute roles.

Lights. Camera. Action.

(But have they lost their souls?).

367. ONE ROTTEN BIOGRAPHY

ONE ROTTEN BIOGRAPHY
I was always attracted to absurdity.
I was born in a manger, next to the
five and dime store - my mother worked
there for a while, in the Needles and Fabric
section. I was walking steadily by age 11 -
had left home by then, and even seen Kansas.
Went once to Notre Dame too - brought there
by accident and left in the zoo - local wildlife
and some house pets too. It's all different there.
You have to see it for what it is. No
secrets in the alley, no secrets in the pew.
(Not even Father Dominic would I let do
what he wanted to do). It all went OK.
I've survived. (Phew!)...

367. YOU'RE A WIT THE WAY I KNEW IT TO BE

YOU'RE A WIT THE WAY
I KNEW IT TO BE
The car was zooming by, almost as if on
wings. Wings of grade A dental floss,
marshmallow swaggers, indentured lungs.
The songbird perched above your head, I
was noticing, tried like Hell to keep up, but
mostly failed - leaving nothing but a feathered
trail instead of a tail. You seemed to be smoking a
cigarette from the wrong end, but it could merely
have been Relativity interacting with your spacious
speed that tricked me up. Windows went up,
windows went down. 'Don't the fuzzy bastards
know anything?' the last cop said - he was the
one wearing blue and standing tallest. I wasn't sure
what he meant but I nodded assent. 'Yes, yes,' I
replied, 'you can say that again.' Which he then did.
All in all, this racket bored me to tears; so I folded
my cot, parked it against the wall, and went away.

366. MAN HAS NEVER

'MAN HAS NEVER'
Man has never built a city like this - an
unsettled settlement, a grand place above
the ice. Towering, the heights only re-engage
what we can see with whatever we may have
imagined. Oh soaring eagle! Oh grand magnificent
one! What arms, to places as high as this, are long
enough to reach? To stretch? To fathom that
artful membrane of grace and imagine and flow!
Oh, I shall be there forever 'fore long. It is
only for now that I must wait a little more.
It is only some time before I will show!

365. LIGHT LIKE AN IVORY GLIMMER

LIGHT LIKE AN
IVORY GLIMMER
These elephants were slim - slim as any
dapper ivory statue. Placed upon a million-
dollar mantle, they reposed each evening,
bright. As the sun, bright. Bright, as the
Heavens, bright. We lose for nothing
with our want of an equal glow. We
are but men, and these are - truly -
angels of Heaven marked in glass.

364. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FLIGHT IN THE WORLD

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL
FLIGHT IN THE WORLD
...is the one taken the first time you set
out to dream and make something real
from your mind : a holistic universe of
outward love and dimension, one teeming
as if with fish of the heart. The ample sunshine
above your head - the heavenly orb, the bright
yellow light - will illumine your soul as well as
your world. Fear not, for nothing brings it back
once it has been unfurled. Its presence is too intense.

363. FIREPOST

FIREPOST
Five men were waiting for coffee at the
counter by the corner. Some riposte of glee,
the same old punchlines, the stories, the
repartee. It all went down as the usual spree.
-
The girl walked by, looking ravishing, with the
scarf of silk curled once about her neck, and
Portuguese sandals laced at the ankle. Everyone
(it was excusable) at once stopped talking.
Even the bum on the curb, peddling his empty
cup for quarters and dimes, gave up his search
for heavenly bounty, exclaiming - 'the Hell
for money, I'll take that!' Somehow no one
laughed. The barking dog barked, the fire truck,
blaring, went along its way, seeking again and
again its holes through the tangled traffic.

362. IN THE COUNTRY

IN THE COUNTRY
Why am I sitting here as a guardian of Hell,
when all around me your light shines bright?
I should have climbed your Heaven long ago,
but now so much of it is too late. I lost
my nerve initially, when the first constabulary
note arrived - penned in automatic ink,
misspelling my name and getting the numbers
wrong. For which I did penance - well, the
best I knew how. I ran to your arms for that
armed embrace.We fell from the wagon as one.
-
Haystacks and raiment, strong-armed farmers
and the kinds of kitchen-cooks who make
pies all day long. You'd mentioned we'd
'find peace in the country, living like that,
with good water and milk.' I never believed a
word of it, but went along for the ride. The
dumplings were good and, frankly, you fucked
like a she-wolf in heat. I bought an old Buick,
and we gleefully drove off.

361. I SAW THE WITCH : UNDER ARREST

I SAW THE WITCH :

UNDER ARREST

The witch was ambidextrous - stirring fire

with either arm. Nothing harmed her, neither

the fire nor the heat. Above her head, in a swelling

drone, a feathery presence, the blackbird stayed,

staring in place. Their thoughts seems merged

together. Each of her fingertips, I then noticed,

bore a tiny flame - protruding out from it, some point

ignited by her mind. The fine settled fir trees behind

her, rippled by the warm wind, shimmied as they

shook - the same motion, the same gait. There

was an obvious oneness to her rhythm with the

world. A gargoyle like a goat, or a wart-faced hag;

either description would have fit the scene well.

360. ONE-WAY TRIP TO THE BLIND-MAN'S TUNNEL

ONE-WAY TRIP TO THE
BLIND-MAN'S TUNNEL
Where the blind man lived there was
always smoke - it came pouring out the
rooftop chimney at all times of year,
and once or twice too was to be
seen creeping sadly like fog from
underneath the doors. We figured
what he couldn't see couldn't hurt him.
Certainly - anyway - there wasn't really
anything we could do about it.
He lived with himself as well
as anyone else would have.
-
What made this all the more disconcerting
was that no one knew if he kept making
new fires or if this was always from the
same old smoldering mess in his old
stone fireplace. It was all so very
confusing - and those who went
over there to check seemed
somehow never to return.

359. IN SILENCE

IN SILENCE
I pretended Fear,
just as I pretended
Love and all the rest.
Justice. Understanding.
Sympathy. Interest.
To be perfectly frank,
I couldn't have cared less.
I was so far removed that
even entering the same space
as all that was foreign to me.
I haven't really spoken to anyone
in years. And I like it that way.

358. MORNING IN MAY

MORNING IN MAY
Incredibly shrunken heads in incredibly
shrunken places : no room to move, no
place to turn. Much like the vestibule
of a broken-down country church,
there's only room to stand while
waiting. The marchers will
soon go by.
-
It is early morning again, and
I am watching the slow sunlight
crawl up the side of a nearby
building. All Summer it will
do this, as I watch. Then, slowly
waning, the inching crawl will
turn its way again - back, closer to
darkness and death.
-
That room I once thought expanding -
so open and newly wide, will
have transformed again,
into something else :
another small and
dark, cramped
space called
Winter.

357. ALL THE HORSES GONE

ALL THE HORSES GONE
In the ancient days of Mankind -
when salvation was a horse, and
History was all written on ice -
there was no alternative to the
repeated cadences of effect and
after-effect, as one thing after
the other. All rational deliberations,
as of one's brother's shank or
a neighbor's breast, meant nothing
to nomadic tenting tribes and wild
shamans in the bush. Even before
there were borders, the borderlands
had become frenetic.
-
If water is to be walked upon,
Mankind walks a rippling lake.
The Renaissance ended with the
sack of Rome. All the horses, gone.

356. GOD OF THE RIVER

GOD OF THE RIVER
Just as a firm frost-hand would heave
the cold, so I throw my veins open
to you - oh God of the river.
Run through me with your fiery
gold elixir - wisdom, love, happiness
and joy, all together. Elevate me,
to some new and happy place.
I am in love with seeing.
And, to those seeking only good
sense and reason, I would have
to say : 'there is none!'

355. CALENDAR GIRL

CALENDAR GIRL
The calendar girl said
'once you were mine' -
a strangely indicative way
of pointing a finger and
staking a claim. I'd only
known her by then for twenty
days. Like chocolate licked
off one's fingers, the taste was
good, but who knew what
was underneath?

354. THE ROAD TO HOME

THE ROAD TO HOME
Wide and narrow strangely coexist, both
redefining themselves at will - like serious
and laughable together. It is said we are
smarter than the sum of our parts; let's
hope there's something to that.
-
Otherwise, what should I say about
your shouldered markings, your house
of shame, or your wounded dog?
That primrose path we traveled - as I
recall - did all it could to forget us
once we were gone. You closed the
gate on that little white fence, but
in spite of that the dog - once
healed and ready - escaped.
-
An escarpment of possibilities -
we saw it, we jumped. I got out
of that place and never looked back.

353. COUNTING

COUNTING
How I saw the single man in his little
single roadside shed - watching traffic
with a clicker in his hand...it was all
beyond me. What was he doing, and why?
And, for Heaven's sake, counting what?
A mere passage of people? Better to
count the wind and all its motion, or

the stars, so pleasant, above.

352. LINES THROUGH MY HEART

LINES THROUGH

MY HEART
Wires overhead and lines through
my heart, the railroad steel covers
this land. I've got nowhere to go
but where it leads.
-
A wild turkey, single and lone,
walks the field alongside me.
The slowly passing train, as voyeur,
fondles what it sees; a slight violation
of fact. The turkey, on the other
hand, knows nothing
of any of that.

351. FLUENCY

FLUENCY
The rabid dogs are fetching bones,
and all over us things are running out.
The liars have their bowls, and having
already sent away their souls, are living now
by biding time (and that alone) on the threadbare
edges along the fabric of everything else -
the poor man's chattel, the rich man's rolling lawn.

350. FRAGMENTS

FRAGMENTS
How many times have I hidden things
away from the world, secreted, apart from
everything else? Like a list, found
much later, crumpled in a pocket of
some pants once worn. Always a surprise,
like seeing tents set up upon a lawn, where
they never were before.
-
I am listening to Billy Holiday, with one ear
lashed to a tree. 'Strange Fruit', and all it can
be - to hear again, and over again. I saw that
stringbean fellow, and his huddled Lady Day,
on some old Philadelphia doorstep of a house
where she used to stay. (Those days were
oh so long ago and, by now, even we have
managed to stray). Lady Day. Lady Day.
-
'Southern trees bear a strange fruit. Blood
on the leaves, and blood at the root.'

349. PARADOX

PARADOX
An evanescent moment such as this
precludes me from writing things down.
Instead, I just have to watch.
Two jet planes in the jagged sky, with a
gray rain falling down through the trees.
Between varied shades of sad color,
bleak tones of doubt and sorrow, I
can understand the plight of such
a lethargic word as this. One I'll
never share except in my own moments
of matching emotional states.
-
I said I would just watch, and
not write things down. Yet, here
you are, reading what I wrote.
I said I'd never share this world,
yet here I am sharing it
with you.

348. CANARSIE

CANARSIE
From beyond the Brooklyn meadows comes the sound of
something roaring. A surfeit of consolation, this enormous
content rises - from the land, from all its tombs, and
from the edges of the very sea itself. We are at
the end of this land now and, lacking new room to
move, must stay in place and take what comes.
A raging water, a field of spite.
-
There are still those ragged Indians to circumscribe;
they have been left about, bedraggled and
forgotten. We've let them mend their
tents and their roundhouses - after
the fires had burned down there
wasn't much left of anything anyway.
They can leave or seek now their own
foul salvation, as we are done with them
and all their chilling ways. Canarsie Indians
indeed! We should have marked them from the start.
-
Being nice to someone only has its drawbacks
after you win - they are conquered and you
are stuck with them. Feed me! Tender me
whatever you can! I can do nothing
without you! Soon enough, the master
becomes the slave. A lesson to
be learned only now, after
it's far too late.