553. I HAVE A CADENCE I DO WANT TO KEEP

I HAVE A CADENCE
I DO WANT TO KEEP
I am stuck with James Joyce in Trieste
and we are awaiting a train - one that
runs the waterfront slowly. And Nora
Barnacle who too has been waiting
has just now heard of the arrest.
We'd been brawling in a canal-side
bar - nothing very close to nothing
quite far - a few punches thrown
among others (thankfully) held back.
We were apprehended and taken to
jail, released after a hearing, and all
that. She is apoplectic at all the
time lost. We laugh it off as
a moment past its prime, at no
real cost. A water-taxi passes,
headed for Miramar, as we
decide (only so reluctantly now)
to dart up towards the summit of
San Giusto's hillock on the
Karst - the old city center
on the summit atop the hill.
Carlo Morpurgo and Lloyd
Trestino await us up there;
already quite drunk, we figure,
they are biding their time as
the birds do the air : a wavering
flight, a sway of the hands,
a certain cadence they
do want to keep.

552. TRAINMAN

TRAINMAN
The African conductor,
who was standing tall,
I'd seen before at Limerick
or Bordeaux; somewhere.
One of those dumb and
paleful places where tourists
flock to eat. He stood straight
as a tree and - as I watched -
hardly moved a muscle
but to blink. I imagined
him at some Sahara stand,
idly watching the wind and
the weather blow.

551. RIDGEMONT

RIDGEMONT
Egalitarian humanity takes turns
hugging other people - one by one,
filled with love and cookies. Children
stare up at the prison on the hill.
Its granite and stone walls, ever-foreboding,
try speaking to them in code. Like lollipops
of cherry-flavored goo, they melt away,
smiling to hide their fear.
-
Near the top, where the guard still stands
sentry with an afternoon rifle and scope,
some wily hawk swoops down, and plucks
up a screaming squirrel. It's over in a flash -
a pluck of air, some noisy crunch, and,
falling back to the ground, a severed
leg or a broken-off claw. The
poor grey-squirrel never
had a chance.

550. SKIP TO MY LOU

SKIP TO MY LOU
I wanted to press you till I broke you,
bend back your back, crack your neck,
twist you until you were twisted. These
were all my secrets. And still are.
The new word, for something that both
'was' and 'is', is 'wais' - which I shall
use, from this point on.
-
It always wais that I could love
you like a sergeant-at-arms, pledging
fealty at the meeting to maintaining all
order at whatever possible cost.
-
I wanted to succor you breathless
leaning leaving frolic at your
minions of frappled desire.
-
Be that as it may,
I must now retire.

549. THE SEPTEMBRISTS

THE SEPTEMBRISTS
(the gallery plot)
Art and speed, speed and art, somehow put
together at Lothario's pace : the gliding slime
that comes from oil, the running colors, the
certainly-not-frugal drip of a cow-painter's
wild brush. We make for images like these,
while broiling in flaming heats, under broad
shades and wide-brimmed hats. Hipsters,
flying low so as to dip to the tips of trees.
-
A crippled reporter enters, dragging a leg.
Trying to speak, she talks instead with a
pencil piercing her forehead. 'Concept
Art I had no conception of,' she writes
as the red blood slowly trickles, forming
a crimson lick around her lips. 'I'm not
famous yet, y'see, but I soon will be.'
-
That was the young artist speaking.
He wants to buy the gallery, if he can.
'Easier that way to sell my work -
just that and nothing more.'
-
Here's the baker. Here's the
maid. Here's the clarion
clapper. Here's the late
artist, so recently
deceased.

548. THE UPPER ROOM

THE UPPER ROOM
At my entertaining entrance - all the things to
be made sure of for certain - they do go on.
The parties of endless people and their
effusive old songs, the sour smell of an
old dog's breath. Someone playing Mama
Cass on an old thirty-three and a third - some
rotating black disk of trouble wailing away -
and God I can hardly listen. Both sense and
sensibility, in its Jamesian way, all gone.
The threadbare attic waits for a dance.

547. MY DISMAL PORTRAYAL

MY DISMAL PORTRAYAL
I sometimes feel like I'm in prison, serving
a life or two, with the people doing infantile
things : a sister buying a cake, a padre with
a fedora, a Clem Henley drawing a doodle.
I can do nothing but witness, as pain rips
through my gut - the wrench of a stiletto,
or the grace of a perfect cut.

546. COMMINGLED MUSCLEMEN

COMMINGLED MUSCLEMEN
The haven of the elixir went south for the
season reading with the light off and reaching for
the stars while here and there the two old train guys
frolicked with some lithesome badger carrying a torch:
'I salved my regina on Saturday last. What about you?'
The entire place erupted in laughter, the kind the doorbell
sells - madman cat-crawler Buddy Brittanica himself steps
up just the to say 'Ah, hey, before we over-reach, let's have a
minute of silence for the men in blue' and nobody understands
a word - 'guys with the blues?, fishermen with their catch?,
whaddya' think he means?' they said, parodying Carlton
Faraday the old bootlegger of Kensington Road. A round
of lame applause ensues. 'I'm warning you, don't do that
again!' is heard once or twice from the carbine tower
wherein the switchhaggler lived. 'All is calm in Littleville,
all is calm here indeed.' That was the last thing I heard.

545. POCKET CHANGE FOR COLONEL MINGLER

POCKET CHANGE FOR
COLONEL MINGLER
Eggshell bullfight horsehair majorette.
Carmen paralegal doorman omelette.
Never luscious cape-coat flathead,
roving garment handheld hatchet.
(How I wish the charming reed
forever formed the circle -
aqueduct, azalea, alpaca).
We remove at our own
peril every hazard
in the way....
Landing strip
ozone,
low-zone,
tray.

544. MORNING

MORNING
There is (to be told) no glare in the
sky this morning. The gray man's
own dulcimer light shines, with only the
most faint and distant reddish tinge to the
clouds in the heavens above - which
aren't really that, you see, for it's always
been thought that 'Heaven' (and even
then at that) was always far above the sky.
But anyway, I give this sallow grayness
credit. The leaves of the paper birch -
still quite green, an upland tree - are heavy
before the morning sky and massive (it
seems)...right here, where someone is
dragging a broom. The new light tries
to come forth, with birds now
just beginning to sing.

543. SHED THE CHARADE

SHED THE CHARADE
The horses, two of them, have stayed
near the gate - far too long for the afternoon
it seems. Harry the Haymaster, or whatever
the name of that little Mexican guy with a bale is,
comes over to see what's occurred. He doesn't
speak much, English anyway, so I don't even bother
to talk. Another guy, Eduard, I know, walks from the
barn with two mesh pails filled carefully with new
brown eggs. Forty or so per pail, I guess, makes eighty;
sold by the dozen in the farm-store nearby. Sorted
and packed in the usual egg-crate, they don't stay
that very long. Pricey but good. Free-range chickens, or
somesuch crap. In the yard here are three of the
noisiest, meowiest, cats I've ever heard or saw.
They've waltzed around in little cat circles, meowling
and bumping into one another - it's absolutely crazy
to watch. What they want beats me. To my left - two
precious goats with the softest ears and noses, and some
ridiculous Shetland pony with too much mane bumps up
against his corral, almost in annoyance. 'Too bad pal,' I
say underneath my breath. Maple Ridge Farm, Colllier's
Orchard, Pierce Hill Dairy : whatever they call themselves
here works for what they sell. Poultry. Milk. Eggs. Meat.
The gravel parking lot, bare except for maybe two cars,
seems slim but steady all afternoon long. One customer, then
another. Down along the side, the old farmhouse beckons.
　

542. FLANEUR

FLANEUR
Reading Christopher Isherwood along the
city sidewalk - a cantilevered street, with
people overhead. The wide crowd pulses
around me. Highline. Lowline. The same
perverse junk. That man in the fedora,
thinking he's Henry Gold, walks by as a regal
scold. His woman, with him, scowls down from
some nagging height. Fifteen legions dense,
the people are watched by the ranger with
the clicker in her hand - carefully counting
heads. I walk up to her, smiling, and say -
'can you count me twice?' She smiles back,
and says, 'no problem, good as done.'
I swoop my hand over her neck, and plant
a kiss on her bureaucratic face.
'Please remember me, just this
way, forever,' I ask of her.
'I am a camera, looking
at you.'

541. ELEGY IN A CONCRETE GRAVEYARD

ELEGY IN A
CONCRETE GRAVEYARD
My name isn't written in the past -
neither is it written in the future.
I am enmeshed you see in a present
of sorts : one amazing tranquility, of
prospects and dreams quickly going
down the drain. Trying to sketch a
perfect bluebird, I end up with a
terrifying hawk. Water, flowing softly
beneath the petals, rushes suddenly to
a new torrent and buckles the pavement
upon which I stand. It is all so incongruously
true that it must be taken as fact. It
gets (simply) no simpler then that.
-
If you pass my grave in your wandering,
please think, perhaps, to tip your hat.

540. IN THE SAME SPELLBINDING BOX

IN THE SAME
SPELLBINDING BOX
'If you looked at the really big picture
you'd see you couldn't blame us.'

539. FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY

FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY
I dog the coastline, seeking whatever
arises - things sticking out of the mud,
broken wheels where once a carriage ran.
Silhouettes and noon-time shadows, both
indifferent to each other, spend each their
moments in the sun. Alike. Apart.
A wailing cat in a similitude of grief.
-
They say once a great liner foundered here.
Burned and tipped; dropped its bastard
cargo a mile from the shore. The blaze - seen
for miles around - scorched everything. Its people,
their bags, their pets and all cargo too.
Only the Captain and crew, walking somehow
on fiery water, managed to survive,
arriving onshore to tell their insane tale.
-
No one for a moment believed a word :
virgins with balls of fire on their hands,
starting fires with their eyes; timid
travelers, singing of Trieste and of
the Hapsburgs, tying things down with
strings; mountains of red mud,
falling down, straight, from the sky.
All fantastic, and all thought a lie.
-
The Captain died, a lonely man, some
twenty-five years later still huddled in
his grief. Fear was his only daughter,
and sorrow was her cloak. They'd
let him live, if only to suffer more.
-
A public story of such great import
gets told over and anew. We read it
in history's reports, as arrow-like, it
pierces our dreams - part of our
unconscious noise, still, a
hundred years on.

538. HAM-FISTED

HAM-FISTED
Arrested development of the sort they talk about
in journals and quarterlies : the man with the
infantile projection, the woman who thinks she's
three. Operative personalities which, usually
grown out of by nine years old, linger.
A fellow who pops his eyes, the lady who
whistles through her skin.
-
We let them live, it seems through our
own form of genuine kindness - just
as they, seemingly, allow us our own
time too. Time to go on and prosper,
time to make what we do.
-
Some heavy- handed, ham-fisted God
named Fred or Harvey, I'd suppose,
very busy with tedious work,
just let some things slip
through those elusive
faint-line cracks.

537. NEGATIVITY

NEGATIVITY
Yes, well, we hired a mourner for use,
but he didn't know what to mourn and
couldn't find any reason to search.
Yes, well, we hired a flower-cart for
blossoms and blooms, but when she
arrived with an empty cart, she explained
'That's just the way it always is.'
Yes, well, we hired moonlight for some
moon, but when it showed up 'twas but a
sliver to what we'd expected to see; a
slim crescent moon to our full degree.
We all shrugged and figured 'it had
to be better than the dark.'
Yes, well, we hired a gravedigger
to dig out a tomb, but he arrived with
a rubber mallet and a simple teaspoon.
'Well, there's nothing more to dig,' he said,
'or we'll all be expired soon.'
Yes, well, we wanted to hear something
special, the best, so we hired an orator

grand from the envied halls of Congress.
He wouldn't speak a word, and
was a dumb mute no less.

536. STEEL

STEEL
I walked past the old mill, the old palace, and
the old bowling alley - where everything now
had fallen in. A roof turned into a floor and seagulls
roaming freely, the less-than-distant splash
of the ocean frothing in. As if, in some demented
vacation scenario, the sea had moved ashore,
the cowboy hats on the horsemen, the horses
within the carousel, even the broken bulbs
once lighting the roof line, had corroded and
died in a sea-salt reverie. Doom dripped like
salt water from every metallic surface.
Was someone screaming, or just
the gulls along the shore?

535. ARCHIPELAGO

ARCHIPELAGO
I broke my ten fingers on an over-arching
rock, shimmying up the mountain from bottom
to top. I never looked back - since I was
unable to - or had I not mentioned, my
eyes were gone too. I later lost my hearing
when I realized there was no noise - nothing to
listen for, little to avoid. It seems, somehow
now, as I stop and think back, it was an
Evolution in reverse - I gave it all back.

534. INVESTITURE

INVESTITURE

(pour 'A')
'How my high-toned repertoire takes in
so many lying friends baffles even me.
They've made stories up - under-handed
and stupid - about lives they've never led,
sequestered as they are instead in squalid
little rooms of no real conversation. And with,
then, no one to talk to, they have to make things up.'
-
I'd known all that before, but thought to
go with the joke to be in at the punchline.
'Denouement.' You'd see, I'd see.
-
A dirigible, scaling the sky.
Nothing floats like that, nothing,
except a big, floating lie.

533. THE HANDS OF MICHAEL FRIDLY

THE HANDS OF
MICHAEL FRIDLY
I saw the hands of Michael Fridly as they
were digging dirt with a spoon. A few feet deep,
he thought, would do the trick; 'I have these
memories to bury.' He said that, looking back,
to where the monstrous elm tree, still deep in life,
spreads its spangly branches overhead. A few
gracious squirrels cavorted for space, and they
tripped both up and down that giant trunk.
Michael was nonplussed by all - 'there's only one
thing I need to do and I'm doing it.' Dedicated to
devotion, managing to get it done.
-
As if an angel had descended, a new strange
light was present - casting bright powers on
leaf and on limb. Michael kept digging, with his
silly spoon. The more his head was down, the more
his face would frown. 'But Michael,' I said, 'look
up now and then. A wonderful light is around.'

532. WHITSUNDAY

WHITSUNDAY
They are amassing at the border,
all those puddle-jumpers and disenfranchised
slackers refusing to budge. The lights are
down in the canyon, and (they've suddenly
realized that) not a one among them can
read. Papers fly about and a few laggard
mothers scream. 'My child will be paying
for this forever!' The fat Russian lady
holding the tupperware cake falls
over in a swoon.
-
A man from the Central Bureau stops by
to see how (any) progress is going.
'Aleck', he asks, 'has anyone
here seen Aleck?'...of course,
no one answers him back.
-
The tar is still soft 'neath the feet.
That odd guy from Pennsylvania
is singing alone. 'Has anybody
seen my gal, has anybody
seen my gal?'
-
He gets it all right,
then he gets it
all wrong.
(A curious partaker of melody, he).

531. WHAT DID HE MEAN?

WHAT DID HE MEAN?
When the river was Scotch was the river
in Scotland? I couldn't figure what he meant:
'Him, with his foot in his mouth'...remember
that one? Riverrun. Remember that?
Escarpment over the fox terrier, the full moon
over the glade. I was watching them dance, all
those weird country people. Banjos and fiddles
and guitars, gaps between teeth, and other teeth
missing. The little kid in the 'foyer' (they called it)
standing there in his pajamas watching two people
kiss. Someone flicked the lights on and off, on and
off. Everyone laughed...for no real reason at all.

530. DELIVERENCE

DELIVERENCE
What hands have grabbed the sky tonight?
I walk in the dark where it used to be light.
-
Xavier and Quentin, whatever the names,
they each bequeath me something -
starry and bright, glowing and round.
High overhead, swirling millions of stars
and planets, as testaments to what should
be. Dark, deep sky. Heavens open high.
-
There was a time I entered Paradise alone -
walking hunched, heavily burdened and
sad. I sat down where I could and watched -
endless, squirming people realizing, suddenly
they were free - every assumption and attribution
they'd once given to the world was now gone.
-
It didn't last; it couldn't.
Now, I looked forward to
seeing a morning light I'm
rather more familiar with -
a man with a rake, seeding
old grass, putting down sod
where only brown dirt used to be.
-
What hands have grabbed the sky tonight?
I walk in the dark where it used to be light.

529. WITH ALL MY DREAMS IN FLIGHT

WITH ALL MY DREAMS
IN FLIGHT
In the confessional mode I'm at my best -
rushing home to check out the mail,
examining the sky for its passing fleece of
shapes in clouds, or just worrying about the
weather - casting all that as the fading
movie-background of the thing I call a
life. All the items I live to tell about.
I lose nothing in this matter-of-fact deal,
you see - let me tell you that.
Like shredding the fabric of wheat
or like some of my father's old faded
upholstery cuttings - items left over after
death has come and gone...all these
transformed things, yes, they may suffice
but can they make it sensible? All these chance
encounters and the meetings of beings and souls?
Our automatic bodies bob and weave, nod and
function and bend - we are the sum, here, of oh
so many parts. Everything, within a mystery without
a plot, within a puzzle without a solution. In the
confessional mode I'm most comfortable with,
the mystery stays, but it lessens a bit.

528. BRING ME SOMETHING NICE

BRING ME SOMETHING NICE
The high plains are interesting -
a place where birds seem to swim in the
air and only the most reverential moments
survive. We remember only what we want.
I shan't bother to relate again all those stories
and tales : that sharpshooter who lost his
lunch and got sick on the balcony roof,
the country squire dandy with some regal
but local whore wrapped around his arm.
Ah, but, lest I go on and do exactly what
I said I wouldn't do, I'll stop.
I must forget you too.

527. DO YOU KNOW WHAT? "!!"

DO YOU KNOW WHAT?
"

(It was Marcel Duchamp who said
'Art is the forgetting of the hand.'
I'd like to believe that Art, instead, is
the Word - and not much else.
Put all that mannered bullshit aside
and listen : !! : I can iconically say
the image is crass and representation
sucks. Don't you see? Can't you?
-
[The Helen Keller School For the Blind
had an Art Show in kind. No one arrived,
but then again no one stayed late. And
the art to be seen was so out of date.]
-
I am enamored of you Jillian Weaver.
I watch your trembly eyes in the movie
of my mind. I paint you secretly in
the dark while my dreams take flight.
In a (very true) painterly fashion
your cloak and your colors shine.)
"

526. INTENSIFY THE PROPOSITION

INTENSIFY THE PROPOSITION
This morbid semblance of life and death has
got me scratching heads : yours, mine and
ours, as we're all about this in together. No man
whistle-stops this treasure-train, and no
whistle-stop does it pass. We're all
in this about together.
-
I sat by the window, almost to cry.
I rolled back my eyes, to treasure the sky.
Moonlight becomes me and so does the
effort, the push, the effrontery.
I wonder, why?
-
Can I find not a language to squeeze
out the truth? In the words of Nepali,
perhaps : 'sas pherna sakdina' means
'I'm having trouble breathing' - and
'malai chahina' still simply means
'I don't need it.'

525. THERE IS NO THADDEUS MEDIVARKIS

THERE IS NO
THADDEUS MEDIVARKIS
I have come here humbly; bearing
rags and a pail filled with water. For two
days I have kept vigil with the Sun in
its risings and settings. If it can be
that you believe in something, it must
only be to believe in the Sun. We are,
in that respect, all primitives seeking
solace in light. Every mythology since
that beginning ends up at the same point:
whatever God you would call it,
it is the reborn Sun each day you seek.
-
Without that, this Life would be as water.
A passing flush, a useless flow.
-
I have heard the many words before.
I have seen the tall ones and the short
bow down or genuflect before their lucre
or power or wisdom or strength.
Everything fades, my foolish cherry,
everything passes away.

524. HEAVEN

HEAVEN
Align a dutiful heart to a
heavy hand and the result is
a profusion of chains and trouble:
the list of 'cannots' is awesome -
and one wonders 'why live at all?'
It's was always like that, the sparse
story goes : 'don't touch, don't look,
especially, damn, don't eat of this!'
-
Adam's first wife was named Lilith.
I wonder what she had in mind, to
disappear just like that. Go ahead,
precocious one, you can look it up.

523. ON SICKMAN'S MILL ROAD

ON SICKMAN'S MILL ROAD
That time in Lancaster County was spent wisely;
a little engaging of the locals and a run at the
Constabulary. The tobacco barn shuddered to
think, rolling onto its side with a ear-splitting
shriek. Two doctors and cow, nearby.
From over the top of the hill, another fellow
with an old Dutch name slowly sauntered over:
'What's gone on to here?' he said - and we
laughed and answered back, 'Not much yet,
but we're sure this will right itself soon.'
By three pm the sunlight was already angled -
set to the pitch and as good as movie-lights
themselves would be. 'Start shooting, let's go,
roll it now!' The miasmic Director himself
was speaking, 'I want no noise except for
that cow!' Slim the Slender he soon came by.
'That'll be enough; sun's goin' down,
we'll cut for the day.'

522. ALL OUR WINDSPENT LABORS

ALL OUR ABSURD
WINDSPENT LABORS
You cannot reach me, willpower baffle,
overspent crusader, darling fluorescent.
My absurdity has (long ago) been acquitted
of any crime. Letter-writing, that ancient craft,
itself seems over for now. Ten times ten the
years must change - and only then will things
return...to what they, as they, were, whenever.
Outside, the high clock tower rings its tone,
Trying to tell me something. We all turn deaf.

521. HANK THE BUCKLE

HANK THE BUCKLE
(at the Hudson Street pier, 1968)
And then there was all that:
folderol, the bridge at the river,
the lamp on the corner, the strange
door on the shed overlooking the harbor.
Inside lived one Henry Hyde, know as
'Hank the Buckle' to those who knew.
It had something to do with his
stripped-down manner, that name did.
Not a rifle, but a pistol, often near his
waist - belt and buckle together. All that
made for a mysterious name.
-
No one ever really knew what he did.
Card-shark, looter, car-thief, shooter.
It hardly ever mattered, for where Henry
went, there Henry was. Good for the
goose and good for the gander.
All that crap you hear.
-
He left one afternoon about 4pm,
and was simply just never
heard from again.

520. LEONARD THOR

LEONARD THOR
'I will make your moments glisten with
the sweats of your doom and death. No
Hammer of the Witches this is - instead
a pale shadow on a paisley wall. It's enough
to make one sick. An electric bridge in
Idaho, and someone bestial - like Kim
Carnes - locked in a freezing cellar.
That's what I call the comforts
of home.'
-
He was clearly crazy; sending me
pictures of re-touched women
from magazines or cut-outs pasted
like kidnap and ransom notes.
I just couldn't find time to
find time to care.
-
When a liar lies, he lies forever.
When a dead man dies he's
dead forever. Either way,
there's really nothing to
redeem - whether time
or spirit or soul or
mind.

519. TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

TWO SIDES OF
THE SAME COIN
You came to the tree of my
crucifixion and gently let me
down. I took you to the place
of my resurrection but - alas -
I clearly saw you frown.