635. KESTREL

KESTREL
"[Evian Axelrod Bardmouth both snickering
and skittering too - ice on the hardhat, and a
strong dose of kennel WHAT! haven't you
heard ? This master is Pelagius and what else
you didn't know. The cowpoke at the compost
heap, the omnivore Castillian, all of them (together)
are keeping sensible while the rest fall apart.
One cannot eat the bait IF ONE expects yet
to fish. It's just that way always.]"

634. BENEFITS OF THE BEEHIVE

BENEFITS OF
THE BEEHIVE
We've nothing against marketing the
edge of the calm : where the secure
moments of time sequester the mind.
Name in lights, high praise for very
little, those mind-numbing insecurities
made great and worthy. 'It's a life' the
madmen say. Oh, oh yes, I heard the
one in the cape say to another player,
'Look at me, I am loquacious to a fault.'

633. MARLEYBONES

MARLEYBONES
At sea. One thing or another -
the wild shoot of a sperm whale spouting,
the peg-legged domain of one Peg-Leg Pete.
We entered through a barrel-keg ramp,
slimed and steamed as it was with matter -
things unknown in the wily way of oceans
and travel. Crates with markings that frightened:
grease-pencil scrawls on wood, diagrammed
instructions in Arabic and Hindi or some such
slashing swirl. Each morning, at sickness and
dawn alike, a sprawl of liquid, a broth of eggs.
We finally rounded some Cape or other,
a pigeon-grace of escape and space.
Back on land, even if only for a day
or two, it felt like Creation had
stared anew. Ah! Creation
had started anew!

632....FROM EVERYTHING I SEE

...FROM EVERYTHING I SEE
Like a further devil, I wish to carry you
past the black forests where the smoke
smoulders the peat-covered ground. I want
to hear your drummer sing, your vocalist cry,
and see all your psychic policemen get
taken away. I want the final pole of the
driver's art taken down with him having
bullets in his boots. 'Who pours himself
forth as a spring, him Cognizance knows.
What shuts itself into remaining already
is starkness.' Something to that pattern
of Rilke and all his malodorous odes that
never quite set right with me. Instead of a joy,
some final, fuzzy weirdness of a boy who
should have been a girl, or vice-versa.
I can hardly either look or listen.
My feverish weight, instead,
just wants to run away
from everything I see.

631. THE MIGHTY MARINONI

THE MIGHTY MARINONI
He was a wan and useless gentleman, sitting
in cars with his telescope in focus, gazing at
the Heavens and any other locus. It never mattered
to him at all whether a moon was out or the stars
would fall. He'd probably want an autograph.
Serene and myopic, the self-determined act
of a circle closing remained his most
bracing achievement. 'Were I to return
once more to Tel Aviv, they'd probably
throw me a parade.' All vanity should
be so simple. All such fame
should be so self-made.

630. SET UP FOR MYSELF AND WANTING

SET UP FOR MYSELF
AND WANTING
(An aimless moon or once a lunar landscape where
I loved you : broadly, without malice, and caught
in an aimless air). No air at all. A stark and silver
light, brilliantly crisp, from within an atmosphere of
nothing cast off a distant sun. (The most brilliant
light I've ever seen). A dazzling background noise.
If this was ever outer space I would be told to
be prepared. As it was, all this was was a white and
wild, wide-open Dreamland of my own alone.
(Set up for myself, and wanting).

629. HERE I AM

HERE I AM
And the once and the very
and the magnificent scrawling
of Averroes too. People,
leaving home together often
come back alone. (Henry Beck,
Henry Beck, I put down that
coffee pot and you still
want it back).
-
Some great yellow ship sailing
upon the long and silent sea; I've
watched it leave Lisbon, more than
once. And it always returns, loaded and
gleaming - somehow beaded with salt
water and heavy with bales and crated cargo.
-
My mistake, way back when, 1548 perhaps,
was in blending the silver with the cadmium.
They ran together and ruined the mix, blending
colors which no one could recognize.
It had something (they said) to
do with God and the Devil, and I was
tried, found guilty, and later fried.

628. SOMETIMES HAVING A DIFFERENT PATH...

SOMETIMES HAVING A
DIFFERENT PATH IS
HAVING NO PATH
AT ALL
Coherent saplings and the luscious
face of Spring. The locutions of
Nature - once correctly transcribed - can
be read as the language of the Gods.
Peace inscribed on stone.
A lens on the very
light of light.

627. ENDEAVOR

ENDEAVOR
I wrangled a walk in the woods with Whitman,
that old dowager guy with the beard of white.
He claimed to know nothing about the modern day.
I believed him and said it was all right - the not knowing,
not the day. We traipsed along, past the old Friends Meeting
House on Suydenham Lane. He said he'd stayed there once,
in '58, just to see if they'd take him in. They did. He stayed
four days. Porridge, gruel and oatmeal too. I thought they
were all the same, but he said no, they were pretty different.
It's hard for me to fathom all that. The meaning of '58, for
instance. That's 1858, not 19 or 20 (obviously). But
he rolled it off his tongue as if it were today. That's
a disconcerting possibility. Talking with spirits over a
hundred-year's gap is a very tough endeavor.
-
He said he was me, and I was him, and what
I envisioned he envisioned too and he said
he had the length of my loins and the great
gap of my humanity in his tender vision.
Whew! All that stuff worried me too.
-
It was long before the vision wore out.
I saw him dispersing, falling away,
as we walked - the walk was almost
done, and we really had covered a lot of
ground, both verbally and by geography
too. I recommend it to anyone,
even to you; this walking
with spirits will do.

626. NEW AND USEFUL COMBINATION

NEW AND USEFUL
COMBINATION
We haven't the utensil for
real speed yet. The harrowing
rows of the harrow leave merely
slow trails. (Yes, yes, like snails).
My marrow can co-indict your head.
Out of that man's hat - as I watched -
stepped another man quite like him
yet different too. Reddish in a different
complexion, something combined of russet
or rust. Things like that absorb me greatly.
-
I'd never found a combination any
serious carnival would like, yet here
was, clearly, some variation of
a two-headed man.
Thought I,
anyway.

625. DEAD MAN, DEAD MAN

DEAD MAN, DEAD MAN
Some sort of venture this is : malformed like
a tweak-hammer, crippled like a broken bird.
The fiery wind, I notice now, is ripping the
roof shingles apart; no wonder all that noise.
How many times has one wished for silence and
a peacefulness that never comes? The low sky
is a simple tremor. It skims the land and tires
of tearing never - like thorns in the side of a
steed, the sting only momentarily slows us down.
Insufferable as we are, we barrel past each obstacle
in our way. Bellowing loudly 'Straight is the way of
God!' - even as we hear the little voice within saying:
'But there is a tree ahead of us!' or then 'There
is a wall in front of us!' and finally 'We can go
no farther! The way is blocked!' Only again does
that voice say - 'Straight is the way of the Lord!
Let us forge on to where no obstacle blocks!'
Blind faith. A stupid nullity. The true belief of
the dolt. Perhaps we are just too stupid to
realize the inundation of the nothing
under which we are drowning.

624. OUTSIDE THE PALE TREE

OUTSIDE THE PALE TREE
Outside the pale tree that is Life,
sojourner, exists so much more.
You should enter that long hallway
with me. We can go forward, prancing
and playful or sour and dire, exactly as
you may wish. To me, it would not matter.
I have been both before, and know this
passage well, by heart. For me, there
would be no Dark.
-
I am an errant eraser, to you.
I could negate or detract or
diminish or subtract everything
from you of what you are. With
me, it is all that quick and sudden.
Life could end in an instant, but,
you must believe me, it would
be my instant for sure. There
would be no more.
-
Contradiction? You may say,
but it does not matter. First
I say there is so much more,
and then I cancel that, to say
there would be no more.
Take it either way, my friend.
One or both, you will endure.

623. THE PAINFUL GARDEN WHERE ADAM MET EVE

THE PAINFUL GARDEN
WHERE ADAM MET EVE
('Talismans From Forever')
It was not just a lonely thing,
it was a BIG thing. Justin Mimeo,
Andrews Dolkert, Roger King. They
each will live forever. Once, (here I
am dreaming now at the end of the
Industrial Revolution), there really was
a rosy-fingered dawn, beneath the
new moon - hymnal songs, choir music,
some off-key ritual of sermon and chant.
Aligned as we are to nothing at all, I listen
for new words : 'raise high those roofbeams,
oh carpenters, for here the Groom comes in,
taller than a very tall man.' That was Sappho or
someone ages back - I bet - declaiming a new
pact with a featured old Lord. Tired. Alone.
-
I am asleep at the side of a roadway marked
'Innovative Way'. Beside me roar trucks filled
with cargo. They were not passing like this
last night, and now they have awakened me -
to something, I cannot say. Another world?
A different one, at least. I find it impossible
to situate myself in this world. Odd...
like a mosquito, trying to find the itch
it left behind on someone's skin.

622. RAPUNZEL'S DRAWN KISS

RAPUNZEL'S DRAWN KISS
Rapunzel's drawn kiss, some smattering of the
Matterhorn...we are watching a skit on an
old TV show : a Swiss maiden high on some
mountain, yodeling while she bends over as
blossoms fall from her cleavage in a tightly
sewn top. No sense to anything at all, yet
the point is gotten across - these fantasy
Swiss maids are all about sex. Some Jewish
TV madman's idea of it all anyway. You
can tell, even from far back now, how
near this all was to old Vaudeville. You
can take the boy from the city, but
you can't take the city from the boy.
Or something. The old lower eastside
ghetto - beckoning like a Gershwin keen
on a shiny success. What were they thinking?
The backdrop and the scrim, both poorly
drawn and executed, attempting to show some
pathetic Alps scene. Nothing works right.
The maiden has lipstick all over her face.
She looks more like a Gerty Mandelbaum
than anything else. The cow in the pasture
wears a bell two sizes too big.
-
Exaggeration, I guess, to get the point across.
Exaggeration to get the point across.

621. SLEEP

SLEEP
When it gets this late, I just want to
go home and sleep in the rafters.
Somewhere the sun doesn't shine.
Tomorrow is morning, and I'll
have nowhere to go. I'll sit back and
remember distant places - like sins I've
never experienced - the black hides of
old Utah, a miner's sketch on a black
piece of slate. My eyelids, I can sense,
are trying to close. It's not a new sensation,
mind you, something the species has endured
for ages and more. I watch the bird nearby, on
its perch, undergoing the same treatment I'm
giving myself. Aware, but at the same time, drifting.
Eyes closing up, head nodding a bit. Only it tucks
one foot up while it sleeps - whereas I stretch out,
flat on my back, and collapse and drift away.
It's all the same in the end - in both our way.
Tomorrow is another day.

620. AT THE MANOR, THOUGH NOT BORN THERE

AT THE MANOR, THOUGH

NOT BORN THERE

No fault with the imagining, though I may
have been here before. Nonetheless - this
yew bush needs mercury, the lamplighter's
drinking Scotch, and Marigold Madfearn, she of

the stove duties, has taken up with Gardner in
'doing the wren' behind the leaning shed. It's
all so simple, what people want: companionship,
sexuality and the forthright doings of a good turn
(no pun intended). I've been here since four in the
morning and am convinced, really, that I may have
seen it all by now - and it's only 10am. By late
in the afternoon, I'll be floating away with a fawn
myself. Yet, as they say, this is no country for
an old man and....here I go again I guess.

619. CERTITUDE

CERTITUDE
A semblance of the correct, and the flags
blowing harshly in the wind. Winter, like a
force-field intent upon entering its resistance,
approaches without hesitation or doubt.
Step aside lightly, and let it enter.
-
No current or storm can fight back,
so relentless is the striving - over our
shadows and our shoulders, dark clouds
and white snow. Everything together - all
separate yet jumbled. Remaining composed
is only a hope; to deliver nasty news
without speaking a word at all.
-
Pile high the drivers, snowmen.
Light brightly the massive drifts.

618. BROTHER LEO

BROTHER LEO
I am tooling around with nothing to do,
with time on my hands, and I have
nothing to say. Brother Leo, you were
always so calm - none of this would
have phased you. I can hear it now:
"What is it you would have you say?
Something important coming your way?
Pray tell, let me know." Then we'd
both laugh it off - you'd go back to
your pipe and ledger, I'd return to
my book.
-
Today, instead, I visit your grave.
You are gone now seven years
and I've not (to be honest) changed
a whit. I still have nothing to do.
I'm still tooling around, this time
driving some stupid little tan car.
I pass the corners we used to know:
that crazy grocer where you set me up,
the small coffee shop with the wizened
maid. It was all so fun, but now it's done.
-
I whiz the light, barely yellow, and some
fetid little cop pulls me over. He asks -"what'd
you do that for?"... I thought that was supposed
to be my question, and laugh. Of course, he
doesn't get the joke. So I said "I did it for
Leo, my friend who's dying in 15L". A
total fabrication, but what the hell.
-
He OK'd my paperwork, said
to not do it again, and let me
go. 'Go see Leo, and
good luck.'

617. THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION, 1956

THE HUNGARIAN

REVOLUTION, 1956
1. Living in Budapest
Dismal waterwork fanatics, the ones
who watch the meters and the pressures
and the flow; they linger like dead men having
just missed the action at a group resurrection.
Twelve tiny soldiers standing in a row - Slavic
intention, Russian names, a few mangy dogs
trotting alongside the men in a line.
-
The revolution (I noticed) ran to that Wednesday
afternoon - one lined in fur and of a questionable
weather. Then the guys with the real guns (those
wayfaring counter-revolutionaries of small-town
signatures), came out. They'd decided to
'perforate the populace' for easy, tear-out removal
of those trickster, dissident, 'anarchic/tyrannical
bastards'. Yes, yes, we did walk over the bodies.
They seemed to be everywhere, draped on
curbing and fallen in the streets and gutters.
-
With that, the new wind came, blowing the
old wind away. Nothing but eagles of despair
and the swarming of the despondent.
We were forced to play along.
The two rivers, the Buda and
the Pest, still ran on together
in their separate ways.

616. IT

IT
It wasn't you. Alone.
That pear tree, which had stretched
and then withered in your yard, was once
a magnet for bees. Of every stripe. They'd
linger and buzz and alight, dripping the nectar
of a sweet pear juice. The sticky stuff fell
to the ground. It glistened in the sun -
that same sun which had somehow
ruined Icarus. Crashing wax wings,
wildly infused, and suffering.
Witnessing the crash, like
an old Bruegel painting;
a scene no one notices.

615. HE WAS A NICE GUY

HE WAS A NICE GUY
The shot hit his gut and he rang out -
a loud, resounding grunt. I knew
he was dead. His fandango was done, that
last dance was over. Flowers of the doomed.
-
No stallion like that had ever run this
ranch before : perfectly coiled,
ruminatively black, a thick, lush
coat. I shuddered just to see.
That horse, I swear, had bangs
over its eyes; a mane like
an angel should only wear.
-
Brazos, Abilene, St. Pete.
The word went out and
they all went somewhere.
Nothing rivals a dream
like the dream that follows.

614. MEDIC

MEDIC
Well, apart from all that, everything went
well enough. The liver transplant somehow
ended up on the floor, and the kidney was
also dropped, though we managed to retrieve
at least that. Not finding that stupid sponge,
once more we did have to cut; but, no loss,
and all was salvaged. Then, remember, that
Dr. Truncater guy, he was present and did
oversee the operation…and all the liquor bottles,
and two of the nurses also. When everything
was finished, we had a very nice dinner.
He’d forgotten to bring the corkscrew,
but it didn’t matter. By that time we ALL
were tired of manipulating such instruments.
He broke the top of the bottle on the table-edge,
and we all drank it off willingly, and
with glee.

613. SONYA

SONYA
When I had nothing to do
I had nothing to do. They
were yelling for a recount
in the local Ward election -
a few towns over some idiots
were still fighting the brand.
Milk was running over the
carapace like beer on a
college bar-top. It was
all enough to be disgusting.
Sonya (a friend from the nearby
hostel) was whistling a tune
through her Rubbermaid
gloves. I reached out my
hand to touch her hair.
She was not afraid,
just lost in some
other thought.
　

612. ENTRAPMENT

ENTRAPMENT
Oh they broke this mold,
intensified the moment,
eradicated the siding - and reengaged the
big warriors - coming over the hill.
'You cannot make the dead walk or right wrong.'
It was the ending of the salad days : Armageddon
lurked. Seamus Heaney, I can recall, said back:
'the English language belongs to us; you are
talking at raking fires, rehearsing the old
whinges at your age. That 'subject people'
stuff is a cod's game, infantile, like this
peasant pilgrimage. You lose more of yourself
than you redeem doing the decent thing.'
I sat back and smoked another cigarette
while the waitress brought a tray. I faintly
recall the sense of it being a Tuesday,
and - out on the street - the Irish flares
were burning yet. Two girls, wrapped
in scarves like fish for the banquet,
strolled by, silently laughing
among themselves. I really
wished, right then,
I knew them.

611. FIRE AT THE ENTRANCE

FIRE AT THE ENTRANCE
My heart blazed for aching.
Stern four-wheelers of fire
and steam, like a chugging
train my beat kept beating.
I could have set my watch
by the set I watched.
-
It was all merely a
pencil line, once erased,
ghosted now, on a long-ago
dried and yellowed piece of paper.

610. LANDMARK LEGISLATION

LANDMARK LEGISLATION
There should be a mark where the sniper lives,
a discus thrower at the ready, a marksman with
the scent of the arrow and the bow. Some
quiver'd Robin Hood malarkey, dressed in
tights and sequined dresses. Sheriff what's
his name would understand. Hark.
-
Father, I am at your arched bridge now.
I am stepping in the seams you left
behind. I am twisting things, like you
did, to fit. Once, as a small boy, I clogged
around in your big shoes, my little feet loose
and sloppy in your thunderously large-size
shoes - for me. And hat. And coat.
In fact, it seems I dressed up as
you, back then and early on.
-
There was no reason for the frenzy. No
dollars taken from your enormous pockets
where small bills lived.

609. HEARSAY

HEARSAY
Gentle old men with gravelly voices.
'He's saved our skin many a time;
he's a great old cat, a womanly
cow but a great old cat.' Old guy,
bowed down and bent, twisted like
a cripple but with plenty of voice.
'I never had any disinclination to help,
saw a lot of people in my day - and they
wasn't all good, no way, but I never
shied from anyone, good, bad, or
whatever. Who was I to say. It's just all
wooden work. Wouldn't you?'
-
One hundred years from now
I'd still say 'that's just the
way I heard it. I got
a sister in Dallas.'

608. THE COSSACK PEOPLE

THE COSSACK PEOPLE
Now they can tell you in the geography
books where the Enmit enters the Don or
the Splietz drops into the Oder - and it's
all for nothing but to take up space. These
idiots get paid by the word. Illustrating that
word gets them paid even more. Maps.
Diagrams. Drawings of farm wagons in
leftover fields, children playing sticks
in ostracized tents askew on a meadow.
Oxen and chattel, climate and dogs.
All that tendentious stuff goes to make
up a world; not mine mind you but a
world nonetheless. Something that saddles
with shoulders, wears truth and murder as
an ideology, brooms through the system
of man like a plague. There's nothing we
can do about it. Too vague. We're
entitled to a certain amount of time,
and then...we're gone.

607. MEDITATING UPON THE DIVINE

MEDITATING UPON

THE DIVINE
Your grand semblance of irony disrupts.
Now we skim with nothing, now we are
mired in mud. Not in knowing which way
to turn am I spent - time lost is time not
returned. A grand and sporting mind such
as yours needs make sure that nothing gets
lost - your fungoes with the fielder, your
incessant yo-yo of the inner heart. If I saw
you standing outside, alone, or even wrapped
in flames, wherefrom would I know you?
Your semblance of irony would distract me,
right from the start. Yet, as you say, 'no
hope goes forgotten' before you slip away,
I watch and listen and nod. Or was it
'no help goes forgotten' ? either way,
you say, being like a God.

606. A HOSPITAL BASKET SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE

A HOSPITAL BASKET
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
Just as I am happy to be so broken, so
I am wise to be so dumb. Let the
little things mean a lot - all that ice
on the shiny driveway, all those plants
now withered and dead. This semblance
of 'Life' - like some leftover scum on the
black-lace iron of a third-story balcony
nearby - reads me well. I am speechless,
indubitably silent, and bereft - as if
some parent had died, or a baby
brother, found injured, was
now dead in a hospital
basket somewhere
in France.

605. CAPTIVA

CAPTIVA
In this morning light I
met a troglodyte. His
name was Henry, and
he'd been up all night.
Seized (certainly) not
of silence - no, not at all
- he sensed his moment,
dawning, call; and he
wouldn't shut up.
I listened listless, forced
as I was to endure - those
famished words, those
wild enclosures, remarkable
for their less, not their more.
So little then was there that
I saw no pretense in being.
I'd met a troglodyte hardly
worth the seeing.

604. I WENT HOME CRYING

I WENT HOME CRYING
You would have me then;
I went home crying.
Holding hands with Death
in its Kingdom of the Lyre.
Mussel-brine, the tinge of
sea-salt, the white air of
sand and breath and light.
-
I gazed distant towards the
open sea : huge bulks of
metal floating, as if still, afar
along the distance of horizon and
limit and all the edge of the world.
-
Everything, in its way, rounds out
a circumference befitting itself.
This one round orb, watery,
with, everywhere, things floating
upon it. The ship's bells rang
my memory. I went home crying.

603. LEAGUES

LEAGUES
The west wind, indecipherable
how it blows; a circuitous revelry
harboring sides and ridges. The
high corn itself, bending, does so
in homage. Blue sky high, brilliant
cape of sunshine, one routing finish
to day and light and being. All
those things, the very selves of
our existence, hold out their hands
to shake, in this very wearying wind.

602. SIMULACRUM

SIMULACRUM
Only the holy one knows the repeat
answers to the same questions :
said over and over, those catchwords to
the distant stars. We are wearing the
pants of a thousand ages.

601. FIERY EPILOGUE TO CONTAINER #5

FIERY EPILOGUE TO
CONTAINER #5
I can't remember everything.
My fate is my task.
The jets beneath my
dreaming are but the
memories of my past.
I was born to nothing,
from nothing. Now
I find, even that is
fading fast.
-
My room it is in flames;
calumny lit the fire.
It may be a lovely light,
but oh! the way it burns.
-
I'll see you in some morning, Stephen.
I'll see you as night turns.

600. SAINT DISMAS AND THE CRUMMY NICKLE

SAINT DISMAS AND THE
CRUMMY NICKLE
So tender is the night that it's not the
ache but the pain that hurts the most.
All things are meant to be : the fun,
the tragic, the sorry, the sad.
I never believed a word of it, but
the usual words are always said
at the most usual situations. A
tall dark priest in a tall dark hat.
He houses nothing but the holy.
Ministering to the prattle that
sprinkles water on a grave.
-
The woman who read palms
was standing at the side of the
funeral cortege. She was awaiting
a Cadillac of her very own.

599. HERE I AM IT WAS ME AGAIN

HERE I AM
IT WAS ME AGAIN
I am watching an unsettled sunrise
break through the sky. Otherwise,
bleak and idle am I. Wrestling with
mottled clouds, the source of this
equation. Thrusting forth its silent
rays, this sun seems both to glow
and seems to cut - both things
pliant yet harsh against the middle.
But it's always me; I've always
taken the middle way myself.
There is no ground here I'd wish
to travel. Oh people! You can have
all your 'other' places, going here
and going there. I'd rather take an
endless celestial path. You can have
all your mansions, museums and
huts. All those towering things of
a small-town sky, reflected even
now, and bright in a new-morning
way, just distract my intentions,
and take them away. But it's only
just me, again.

598. CALDERSON THE MAGNIFICENT

CALDERSON THE MAGNIFICENT
Don't give me grief. Give me Nothing. Nothing!
Advance the perpendicular, straighten the picture,
overwhelm the manciples with the gripings of
elected rabble. Rapscallions with medallions.
I'd want nothing from charity except the chance to
donate back to the liquid-bastard club what
brought me here. Dad's sperm-shaft and
Mama's twat - together in tandem it
brought me a lot - free acreage on
the Plaines Des Jarres. Dead
guerrillas holding angelic
guns, my overnight
suite on the
Zuider Zee.

597. SWANSONG AND MY VALEDICTORY TEAM

SWANSONG AND MY
VALEDICTORY TEAM
Fourteen people plodding along,
trudging up watery hills where the
flagons overflow, the wayfarers call,
and the awful cavalier still shucks at his
hornblowing partner. Maison DuPres,
in the manner of glee - all that sharkfish
and tuna, but nothing for free. Fourteen
people plodding along. Thirteen wishes and
a fountain of dread, lights on the patio, a guy
in blackface, playing his banjo for quarters and dimes.
I set the torch aside, lit the one adjoining, and sat
back, just hoping to watch the evening unfold.
My balloon'd feet settled hard on your lovely oasis.
Twelve times I thought of you, eleven wishing for
your company and ten seeking to stay, nine for the
wishing and eight for the world to go away.
I could go on forever, right on down to zero.
But. This wine is clouding my focus, Martel says
they're running out of fish, seven bottles of wine
are all that's left. I've told him six times to leave that
guy who changes water to wine a five, get the job done,
or go buy four more but leave me three minutes with you,
so I could kiss your two lips, or we could become
as one, together.

596. SOMETHING CAME THROUGH

SOMETHING CAME THROUGH
That high-powered oasis, darling.
Selever and Broadflint, where the
sunlight plays over the water. Horizon?
It can wait. The dark sky teases with
Cassiopia, Ursa Major and Andromeda too.
I've seen bats flying, past midnight, under
streetlamp and household lighting. One
hundred different ways to fool the cosmos.
Even now, my foot is in the water, and I calmly
suggest - to you - that we should stay ashore
for the night is far too dark and far too long.
Your jacket glows, purple, or a combination of
blue and red beneath the lights. I've always

wanted this, and figured it would be this way.

595. REVOLUTIONARY DESIRE

REVOLUTIONARY DESIRE
I've got to do something because I refuse to
go blind. I've got to do something because
I refuse to go deaf. I am not the one alone,
but I am many together as one. I can research
the spinner spinning the tale, the liar of words,
the one who twists. I refuse to not touch, because
I must remain tactile. I refuse to not feel , because
I must remain hurting. Others in pain are the
pains that I feel.

594. IT'S BEEN SAID

IT'S BEEN SAID
(A Spiritual Vendetta on Some
All Soul's Night)
It's been said (I have heard,
I've been told) that Spirits arise
this night from the dead (kindred,
morphic, ceased to be) and try to
speak with 'WE' (communicate, send
messages, evoke themselves in place and
deed). As if the DEAD have such any need?
-
In some language I have known, there
must be words which have been shown
to mean : 'balderdash bullshit crock of shit
trash cannot be don't lie to me'. I think I
remember such words to be. I DO NOT sit up
beseeching the dead. It is THEM must come to me.
-
My figuring is (while I'm alive, existent, busy here),
that I've much more to do than they could care :
small tasks, insincere things, stuff they've left behind,
in arrears (non-caring, useless, needing NOT any
longer to be done or mentioned). Fires on a hearth,
perhaps in such a way, themselves burn out and dwindle.
-
So it comes to me that WE should hear LESS of them,
not more. And that's the way I'd like it SURE. What can
I share with them anyway - some stupid old re-run,
TO THEM, to me is a brand new play. Really...
what could it matter and WHAT could they say?
-
Of less import to them is
their lack of importance to me.
I, you see, must continue to be,
must struggle, must play, to live on.
As for THEM, I say, 'BE GONE!!'
-
[This 'Halloween' is a bullshit mess-up,
a Dance of Sources for sure].