518. LARIMOOR

LARIMOOR
The shrouded oasis on those
sudden shoulders rose - up to
heights not seen before. The
thin air of a mountain ascent,
the struggling forced breath
of an expiring man.
-
As bad as it all was, the startling
light of the next morning's glare
brought all such feelings crashing
to a halt. Life and love, never
better than in this rarefied place,
seemed just to go on and on.

517. MY MR. SAWTOOTH

MY MR. SAWTOOTH
One seemingly forthright Sawtooth Titus, a grand
old man I knew from 17th Street, wore a heritage
like a halo for me. He was from the 'Revolutionary
Titus's - of Grand Falls, Maine' and claimed his
family had settled there in the 1600's. He never
ate meat and yet took the cake, as far as I
was ever concerned, at never batting an eyelash
if something was free. 'Meat, fish or fowl, I'll
go by the price, thank ye.' That's all he'd say.
like you were supposed to understand.
-
He'd walk the street and - seeming to know everyone -
never come home empty handed. Pastry, pudding,
soup or gruel, he'd manage to get something.
Introducing me often as his 'Nephew Aurelius',
he'd never flinch at adding me in for his take.
'I figg'er, the more they'd see us together, they
more they'd think our needs.' I gleefully
acted as 'Aurelius' for near one year.
-
The Baxters of Merian, and the Sawtooths
of Grand Falls. Some durable duo betting
on a lifelong feud or an anxiety over something.
They never met, that I knew of, but he
sure talked of them a lot. I'd say 'but this
is New York, now who cares and why?'
He'd laugh and rear back his head, and
just say 'someday you'll see, my boy,
someday you'll see for sure.'
-
Mr. Sawtooth Titus sure could endure.

516. MY FULL-TILT BOOGIE

MY FULL-TILT BOOGIE
(Philadelphia, 8/29)
'I may have mis-represented something unlikely and
that shouldn't concern you anyway because shit such
as that doesn't always fly and anyway you said the
guy was drunk and as it was I was more interested in
the girl he was with. I'd known her from Pendelton and
was hoping she wouldn't blab.'
-
Well, wouldn't that have to do?
The waterfront had been turned into
a carnival anyway, and now all these
freshened people were boozing about -
I faced nothing but crap-talk like that I'd
just heard. What I wanted to say was, precisely,
impolite: 'The hands on this clock have turned ugly.'
-
I wasn't sure anyone would get the message, and what
it meant wasn't really positive anyway. I was drowning in
negativity, and this real estate was ranch enough for my bile.
-
'I remember one day, she took off her robe and there
was nothing underneath! And there we were, on the front porch
where she lived. What was I supposed to do? Scatter off and
run home? After that, we hardly talked - and that afternoon was
never brought up again. Hand me another beer, will you.'
-
McKracken gauge-face butterball ice.
Torrid myopic meander portion.
Nascent pneumatic fist-pummel tunic.
Anything like that would be better
than firing a gun...
-
The hands on this clock have turned ugly.
This real estate was ranch enough for my bile.

515. DAGLESH AND HENDORAN

DAGLESH AND HENDORAN
'Down by the water, there you can lump
things together' - Daglesh said that, talking
like a stringbean, river-shavers for teeth and
the oily carp were biting. 'I'd rather bring back
nothing than something' - Hendoran tried a response,
failing miserably. Together (thought I) these two
couldn't tie string. It was always a struggle to stay put.
-
Serene like disease, wild like a badger, overdone and
to a fault : they'd each together arrived, playing games,
filtering silt, and trying to get by. Stealing boxcars
in the night. Waxing apples with a carbide cloth.
These two got everything twice, but never what
they sought. Vaudeville paid their wages, and the
silly crowd yelled out their lame support.
-
By four the next afternoon it was all over.
The entryway was down, the tent was closed.
'I had to take care of my mother's cat and bring
her some tea' - Daglesh said that, making me ill.
'See that guy in the corner? Before he was the
coroner he was a crooner' - Hendoran said that,
and I was suddenly sorry I hadn't left sooner.

514. ECTOPLASM

ECTOPLASM
Sweltering heat made my blood run cold.
The contradiction and error of the format I
inhabited took its toll : forehead sweat, heavy,
ponderous weight, trouble breathing Earth air.
I'd never been this bogged down.
-
It was only my other place
which kept me going.

513. MISTRAL

MISTRAL
Yes, yes I have often touched the sky:
when the cool winds were blowing,
when the geese were in flight. When
the dark sky was falling and the distant
breezes rolled. Something there is
of the night in the day, and each lunar
phase, like a heart wanes and waxes.
We grow as bright, in the same way,
as that light which we reflect.

512. THE DAY MY FATHER

THE DAY MY FATHER...
The day my father came back from the
Navy, he was white as a ghost. I'd already
known him before I was born : he was out
at sea, in the South Pacific, and fighting WWII.
Sewing body bags, with his big, curved needles,
for burial at sea. Over the side, with a little
ceremony. Dead guys. Dead buddies. Dead
sailors on that selfsame ship.
-
He never got over the places he'd been.
Rocking slowly for days on a sickening
ocean - rising and falling with a salt-berth
and a fan; some crazy white hat for his head.
-
He was smoking endless cigarettes too.
It was nothing then, those Camels, inhaled
like the very stark freedom of home.
Old Bayonne. He was exhausted,
and seeing me, froze. I said,
in my way, 'Dad, relax; it's
just the way it goes.'
-
I knew my father before he knew me.
Sewing dead bodies for their
burial at sea.

511. WILFERIZE THAT PUSILEER

WILFERIZE THAT PUSILEER
I chant. They sing. The snug nettles
bring back memories of other things.
The day I met James Baldwin, at
Fordham. We were carrying on, like
kids, about Sartre and degrees of
alienation - nothing ever so insipid
has ever occurred again. He had big, fat
eyes. You can go look at his picture.

510. GRESHAM'S LAW II

GRESHAM'S LAW II
(Music Again)
It's a certain sadness that breaks the heart -
all that motion and nothing more.
We too are broken - like the modal
tenant when the metronome's click
breaks the silence of his urban night.
All that feeling and sadness and sorrow.
All the world's poor and all the world's
hungry, huddled together in a great
big room. 'To shatter the silence,' it's
been said, 'music can't come too soon.'

509. GRESHAM'S LAW (the 'Music' Industry)

GRESHAM'S LAW
(the 'Music' industry)
"Gresham's Law set to music makes me wince.
Just what we need - another whiny Jewish singer
with no real life experience strumming away on a
lame guitar about all his wants and feelings. Isn't it about
time we upturned those tables and did away with
the noise? The undertone of need and the squirming
array of guilt and desire? Jeez (I can say that)
I'm so tired of all that. If Bad drives out Good,
as it most certainly does, (and forget the money)
then we're all in line for a doozy.
-
It's those with the blinders on who claim to
see the most : 'my heart, my love, my
aching feelings and needs.' Oh, stuff it
and alter the simple chords. Or at
least learn to play music first that you
can read - a mathematical premise,
a march towards a solvable pattern,
a progression of notes on a
colorful scale. We all can't be
let's say, Scriabin."

508. THESE FLAGRANT WORDS

THESE FLAGRANT WORDS
For some sort of ragtag protest they
brought you home - tattered, and in chains,
and in rags. They stapled your face to the
posters all along the town - each way in and
out. Majestic as you were you were still 'depicted'
as a common scold, the criminal of the month, and
the 'one who wouldn't get away.' Chief Carmine
DesPais himself had said it.
-
In retrospect, out riot made little sense.
Or none. Three dead - one a child,
killed obviously by accident.
For that now we all
must burn.
-
'I'd rather raise Cain than be Abel.'
I heard someone from the other
end of the jail shouting that just
yesterday. Of course, from
where I was, I didn't really know
what he said - phonetics being
what they are. Being locked up,
perhaps all he said was 'I'd rather
raise cane than be able'. Meaning,
I think, he'd rather be proud of
being in jail for rioting than to
be out 'there', free.
-
For myself, I'm still really not sure.

507. HOMO HABILIS

HOMO HABILIS
(‘man the maker’)
There’s something changed in the manner of the wheel,
things once turned which now remain. A fixed maneuver
of ever-broken time, like the lime-box or the bucket,
running over. We thwart our manner by refusing to
budge: Man the Maker, with his carnival hat and
swagger-stick, imagery of the fantastic, and the
awesome light-brigade of what was gone before.
No cantilevered rainbow, this midtown slut
stares back, as certain of her giving as
of the taking she’s already done.
We’ve had it with all that.

506. CRUSADER

CRUSADER
We manned the barricades with fortunate guile,
having spent four months at least in preparing
the grounds for this stupid defense. Everyone
was already in pain : an old, grueling pain
of the sort that stops all other action.
The crippled monk, with his withered
leg, came around with the parchment
he’d scrawled for our oaths.
We had – yet again – to swear
allegiance to some crazed Man-God,
somehow stuck between two worlds.
None of it made any sense to us;
we wanted our pay, and some food.
Forced to dig still more holes for our
shit, we basked in the horrid stink
of ourselves no matter what we did.
It was a horrible situation – one so
delicately ‘human’ as to be inhumane.
(I wondered of this Man-God
again and again).

505. AND SO THEY TOLD ME

AND SO THEY TOLD ME
(At the Bowery Beer Garden, 1968)
Richly attired, like gentlemen in rags would be,
regency and chivalry and royalty all mixed together
(in a mad-man's idle dream), they stepped forward
and - as one - together all fell down the steps.
Yes, yes, a laughing roar ensued. The crowd was
wild with itself - engorging sacred beers and
clapping in a trance : something horrid and as
horse-whipped as a dance by some leprous
dope. Candles flickered from the so-active
air. All the idiot voices and hands a'fire.
-
Someone stepped forward to calm down
the crowd: 'And now ladies and germs,
the moment you've not been waiting
for! Matilda Malloy and her Far-East
Snakedance' (His words, exact). She
stepped out - some not-so-glamorous
specimen of lust. A few rags, a sheer
garment, and the rest taken on trust.
-
Oh how the selfsame hammer blew!
Oh how the skinny dance happened!
Un-clothed in as an instant and as
un-apprehensive as could be.
'She is naked, my friends!!
For you and for me!'
-
And the stupid crowd
roared, all over again.

504. THE TREMOR DOCTOR

THE TREMOR DOCTOR
They will take you, learned hand,
into their legal soup. Boiled with
the rest, you will indistinguishable
be. If that's okay for you, it's
not okay for me.

503. AT THE PLANT:IN THE PLANT

AT THE PLANT:IN THE PLANT
It was nothing said it was nothing
ventured and the same game remained.
We stood like dead lions propped up,
leaning just a bit, to merely pretend at
a continued existence. I never knew you,
you never knew me. Reading Uncle Wiggly
down by the sea. Ten Father Guidos and a
gilded church : Most Holy Mother of the
Reckoning Sea. Bells tolled for sailors.
Bells tolled for Thee.

502. AUDIOTONE

AUDIOTONE
Here it was the rueful ending :
We sourced the sound and found the rumor.
What it was, a glistening morning, meant more
to the squirrels than me. At every turn something
like light burst out from behind the trees, limbs,
branches, leaves. As one, and everything once,
together sang. I flew to that far oasis. A gentler
mind, on top of thinking, soaring upward in
fabulous forms of love and honor.

501. KOSTELANZ AT 4

KOSTELANZ AT 4
(Road Crew, 1972)
'I have been leaning on this life for so long even my
cane is bent. All the fructation of time has seasoned
me well. I am, to be sure, bested no longer by anything.'
-
Of course, no one know the meaning of his words
and we merely stared back without engaging.
Off to the side, tree limbs bore apples and peaches,
as they should. It was bestride this orchard his
house climbed - a wide, old white board farm;
left here from 1872, it was exactly stated.
-
Here together, five of us there were.
We'd come to mark the lanes for paving.
Working for the state, road-men, adept at tar and
pavement were we, and his story seemed like all the
others. We'd done this a hundred times or more.
-
The old Pennsylvania countryside, now just
dying to die, was still to be paved. And everywhere
we went, the markings for that we brought and left.
No more mud and ooze, no more cars and trucks
bogged down in mire. We said the same things
everywhere: 'State improvements' or 'Government
mandate.' Didn't matter. No one knew what we
were talking about. And we certainly didn't care.

500. THE SEMINOLE CAMPFIRE

THE SEMINOLE CAMPFIRE
A thousand pieces of matter, flitting away -
all sparks and ash and soot today.
That ladle with the spoonfit ending, it
too is made of wood and it will burn,
(if they feel it should). 'All creation
trembles at the thought of burning.'
Only the vile race, of seditious mind,
would think up flames like this and determine
its Hell to be within the nature of the Man.
It simply cannot be, oh lucky one, of
Stallion Dawn Speeding Spitfire Brother clan.
We will all howl beneath this fat and rising moon.
(Another life will come, but not too soon).

499. LOVE LOVE LOVE WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?

LOVE LOVE LOVE
WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?
It's all travail and effort, some sturdy
work where the tall beams stand. It wasn't
easy to construct this edifice, and now I
dare you to say it's not real. Authentic are the
accolades in my attic - high and high-strung
together. It was never easy becoming what I am
- the two-fisted hammock master, the painter of
ridiculed edges, the counter-snark with this
twisted, soiled dictionary. On that ledge nearby,
see that man about to jump? His name is Henry Coates,
and you've really led him on. Like Billy Pepper (my
rural mailman once) you drive the same sad route
each day...entice, pull back, entice again. And Laugh.
My God, it's the laugh that kills them. It's the
laugh that gets them every time.

498. DORIMAR THE DOMINION

DORIMAR THE DOMINIAN
I covered your housepaint in pimples,
wrote notes all over your jars, and then
left that night (Tuesday last) to have
dinner with that fellow, as you said,
'from Mars'. Not really an abject gent,
he showered the table with favors - some
fifty-dollar tip and money for a bet, took an
extra drink for his 'steadfast constitution' and
then left me there while he ran out to 'rob a bank'.
These are all the things he said : he spoke funny,
in awkward ways, and blurted things out you'd
never expect. 'That peacock has a belly like an
antelope', for instance. Now what is anyone, I ask
you, supposed to make of that? I don't think he's
ever read a book. Another curious quirk of character.
Now look, I don't begrudge a man anything: the creep
with the loud awful music ruining my space, the girl
with the skirt too tight for her waist, the tall, lanky
lady wearing nothing beneath her blouse. It's
all the same to me, if that's what someone
wishes to do. I can catch what I catch
and, sometimes, enjoy the view.
Life has, after all, its very
simple pleasures,
does it not?

497. DOUBLE THEME SONG

DOUBLE THEME SONG
(Someone Downstairs Was Calling)
He'd put his feet up on your 116th Street
footstool like it was a mushroom and he was
a fly. Outside the window, some mad gymnast
was contorting with a sign - 'Amin's Flint Elixir -
Gone For Good! What Ails You!' - such a sign
I'd never seen before. You had tried the classical
music channel, but all the radio was doing was barfing
ads and news; everything of a captive nation soiled
and stinking foul. On the chipped wooden shelf,
anyway, nothing could look good, let alone work;
not even your bare, naked ass, powdered and petal'd.
I'd seen your breasts in a book before, so I knew
the game you played. Patsy's Pizza, let me say,
never had such toppings. Just then, the buzzer
rang - someone downstairs was calling.

496. DEAD OTIS

DEAD OTIS
They spilled blood in the wagoner's cabin;
just as he was entering the shed. Two errant
bullets ricocheted from somewhere and entered
his chest. No Civil War malfeasance this - since
the borders had been cleared and hostilities
(we'd thought) were over. Never put it past
some drunken Arkansan shithead to spoil
the pot with bad vengeance. Hillbillies from the
distant mountain still reckoning with a grudge.
A dying man's blood can drown him in his
own lungs. We never figured for that,
and there was nothing we could do.

495. CARRINA MONTEFIORE

CARRINA MONTEFIORE
I shed olympic pounds after I first
met you. You were the darling of
my spring, the rigor in my mortis,
and - in a never-ending fashion -
the erotic dough of my bread-loaf
frolics. In all, it was as magical as
a monsoon in the desert, or of a
Heaven found deep within some
Hell. We wore our military cloaks
like Nazi footsoldiers : hemming
and hawing, bowing to salute,
sniping with a rapier, kissing the
concrete ledges. Ships, unfurled
at sea, never teemed with more
wild turbulence as you - and me.
I remember all this, and so much
much more, oh my darling,
Carrina Montefiore.

494. ALONZO, THIS AIN'T NO MAGNA CARTA

ALONZO, THIS AIN'T
NO MAGNA CARTA
'You can take your papers and put them
where you want - I'm not signing nothing.
This magnificent shoreline most certainly
doesn't need you around.'
-
A dulcimer baffle arose with the sun.
Big grey clouds, loud and fluffy and
broad, sequestered themselves all
along the horizon. No orange morning
was ever anything like this before.
-
Two hundred peasants let out a roar.
They wanted food and lodging.
They wanted no more war.
-
That's when I saw you and
our eye-sights met. From
that day forward, all I
wanted I could never get.
'Alonzo, this ain't no
Magna Carta.'

493. IT IS ALL BEYOND ME

IT IS ALL BEYOND ME
As each night I fall by the wayside and
only you are there, so too I awake distant
and starry-eyed from places I'd only dare
imagine : the farthest rim of stars and planets,
the place where the Heavens touch; a grand and
circular profusion of wonderment and possibility.
Sometimes, I swear, I awake only to say 'it is all
too much.' Earth has its moments and places
and things - the hard boiled-ridges of both
dirt and doubt, with rock and water and
fire and heat. Everything mixed, some
crazed elixir to stir, some ribald
concoction to eat.
-
I look at the distant skies and
notice the motion and curve :
a planet of possibilities at
each starry turn. Beneath all
of that, assured of only
myself, I know I have
so much to learn.
-
But still it is all beyond me.
It is all yet so far away.

492. ON GUNNISON BEACH

ON GUNNISON BEACH
I can't begrudge the frog its lily pad.
Sandy Hook to Sea Bright walking -
everything I saw was bad : token
remnants of old-years ago, sentinel
ships along the coast, dead Revolutionary
War soldiers marked and buried in the
sands. All this behind us, and now
the future - out of hand. 19-year olds
naked as they came, and ashen old
women looking the same.

491. OLD MEN

OLD MEN
'Dirigibles were flying low and cutting
the aproned sky - some light blue oasis
of nothing bantering within space to
fly - all words of their own, these new
things were, without a recourse to
meanings of old. We watched,
squinting our eyes, trying to discern
the lightning, the fire, the reasons for
these new things in the skies.
What was that above us, anyway,
some vague new future flying?'

490. YOU YOURSELF HAVE SAID IT (I AM?)

YOU YOURSELF

HAVE SAID IT

(I AM?)
The worst question ever asked, I figure,
was : 'I adjure you by the living God,
are You the Messiah?' Either way, whatever
answer, the responder is bound for trouble.
Pilate never had the nerve to question,
yet the High Priest directly asked!
(Just think, if that story is true,
how much he set to task).

489. THE TECHNIQUE OF ZEN

THE TECHNIQUE OF ZEN
'He's got some habits I frown upon.
The warrior class comes home early
and stays late - or leaves home early
and stays out late - something I now
forget. It's a winsome world truly, all
this toil and strife (and nothing I'd want
to repeat). With everyone so sold on the
good, I too wonder how evil gets done.
-
Graffiti with white paint covers the delinquent
fence - 'bury my heart on the lone prairie' -
and then the names, perversely, make
the handles : 'Solinquen' and 'Olyminiade';
whatever God-awful meanings they have.
Two wild horsemen, drunk on success?
Two frothy madmen, riding towards death?
-
We needn't agree on everything.
The pencil has lost its edge, and
we've mostly got nothing to say.
All things are won. All things
are one.'

488. THE GIRL WHO NAMED PLUTO IS DEAD

THE GIRL WHO
NAMED PLUTO IS DEAD
(Venetia Burney, 1919)
Eleven years old, nineteen, thirty-one,
forty-seven, fifty-six, seventy, seventy-seven,
eighty-four, eighty-eight, eighty-nine,
ninety - like the sun in the sky, the
black -globe-darkness distant-flash
planet passing; named after the
Roman God of the Underworld:
Pluto. The old woman who named
Pluto is dead.

487. ABSTRACT #7

ABSTRACT #7
Smutter the cling of that sour oasis
for there is nothing there but dire want.
The shoes are brown, seemingly forever.
Having walked an entire globe, they
hunger for more, with their tongues
hanging out. Surcease of violent
commitment, the awkward man
nearby is shadow boxing with
his own Hell - another epitome
outfoxed by marvel, a new
set of boxing gloves, all
glossy and laced, set to
pounce once more on
enigma and doubt. A
twenty-second century
hearse rolls by.Yellow,
like a taxi, it is now
filled with passengers,
yet driven by a
rat.

486. UNFREEZING THE MALLEABLE MAN

UNFREEZING THE
MALLEABLE MAN
He walks with a chisel in his
head, that old man bearing down on
death. Nothing can stop him now - those
ruins, those ruins you see were all his factories.
Piles of beautiful red brick, ringed by walls
with entrances for both trucks and employees.
The guardhouse, furrowed and lovely like
a brow, where each man checked in and
did his obsequious bows. Bossman. Owner.
Ruler. King. It's all a riddled rhyme, something
twisted around the circular tongue. Now at
his hole in the ground - we grasp together a
wrinkled bible, something with thin pages
and a gold-edged binding. Muttering prayers
that no one hears, muttering prayers
that no one hears.

485. THE HESITANT BURDEN

THE HESITANT BURDEN
Burned like fire which fused the glass,
we carry that fragile heart to breaking.
Pieces of things and fragments and shards,
broken items littering yards - such as they
are, these patterns have cluttered our
lives. That old green car is still running,
but it's been left like that for years.
Soft tires and a wide, thin wheel.
A thousand looks but too few cares.
Simply shrugging seems the way to go :
carry the force that carries the garden.
Let it take its own, sweet time.

484. PARADISE

PARADISE
Pottery and silverware; claimants to
a poor man's throne. Steps running
slightly a'tilt, yet leading to something
someone called Heaven once : an
enraptured fever, a hut where the
stevedore lives, a footstool
for your forgotten oasis.
We deem 'rest' as no
movement at all.
Somehow, it's
Paradise
we call.

483. FALSTAFF

FALSTAFF
Falstaff wanted things and got
very little back for his efforts.
If you want speed, hook up
to the swiftest horse you
can find and hang on:
for dear life, but forget
the dear. 'Ain't nothing but
jangling nerves,' in fact, is
what the horseman said,
lighting a fire beneath the
panting beast's belly.