2111. INSTRUCTION

INSTRUCTION

You can't push, you can't prod.

You can't pull. Like snow, you

must just let it fall, let it come

to you. It's the only way

anything ever happens.

2110. PASSANTINO

PASSANTINO

The blur is what I most imagined, I remembered it

well, as if it had just occurred. Flowers on a shady

mantle, Grandma in the kitchen, and - outside -

my father holding the hose while, in his other hand,

he also held a can of beer. Life was funny then.

-

Like curdled milk, or something left out on a table,

things slowly discolored and curled as dryness set in.

It wasn't as if I really minded; everything seemed

always OK by me. I guess I'm easy that way.

-

I never really had words with anyone.

I did hear people yell, or erupt, as my

father often did, into loud, strange quarrels

over things of, really, little substance. Now

and then, neighbors, cousins, mothers and

fathers, fathers and sons. Living like that,

it all seemed a ghetto to me. Most like

any other : Italian, Spanish, Jewish, Irish,

whatever. Every form has its thug-form,

made from the very same matter as the best,

but just different. Sometimes I really wished

I was gone early on.

2109. THE WORLD IS CHAOS

THE WORLD IS CHAOS

The world is a chaos and it will not end.

The simple whirl of matter and the complex

swirl of mind : brushed together with a

seeming abandon, the forms we take are

seen as forms we make. Everything else,

reflected around us, stands still as it climbs.

-

Starry matter precipitates, our dreams and

even our doubts come together in the haze

produced : commingled matter and mind,

a growling universe, one displaced and then

duplicated, over and again, by the hand of

mind and the tyranny of - yes - a thought.

-

The world is chaos and neither will end -

the world or the chaos, neither will bend.

2108. GLASS FEVER

GLASS FEVER

That which stretches the moment can lead

to another ideal : crumbs at the table, where

you'd just been sitting. Your coffee cup, slightly

off the edge. A mention of smoke from someone's

last light. We'd already left by then.

-

Through the glass, slanted, the light from

outside's morning throws back the ghosts

we've been. 'I feel so insubstantial,' I

heard you say. And 'yes,' and 'correct,' and

'right you are' I wanted to reply. Over in that

instant was everything essential to living.

Our patterned lives, like shadows, were

somehow left there, to remain on the wall;

a forever space where something else had been.

2107. MY OWN UPDATE

MY OWN UPDATE

The surface of the sky is black tonight.

Perpendicular to me somehow - north

by northwest, was it I remembered?

Something about being young, a little

boy in fact, and looking up. Black sky,

ever so high and, out back, in the darkness,

that giant old oak tree I used to climb.

I knew it was there, and all that above it.

I'd look, creamy like an Oreo filling,

something to remember, gazing high

at Little Dipper, Ursa Minor, Big Dipper,

Ursa Major - and such logic these crazy

names had, as if Science could think! If the

smaller was Minor, I'd bet clearly the

larger was Major. Before I started, I'd

already won. Yet, now, so far along and

down the line myself, the cold sky is black

but still above me. A minor difference,

perhaps, that, but a major one for me.

2106. WE CANNIBALIZE THE CONSTITUENTS

WE CANNIBILIZE

THE CONSTITUENTS

('no, Zorro, that's a 'Z')

Whatever that meant, they said it twice. I love

politicians - walking high, suit and tie. They have

a head in the clouds and a head full of shit; all

the same. The ball they were given is the one

they run with. We 'think' we think but we

all think of nothing at all.

-

'Can you make any conceptual grasp from what the

trending motivations show from the varied levels

of income and education of folks in the fifth ward?

And if I decide run again, how should I play it? Are

they fed up, or pretty happy with the way things

locally are going? As for me, of course, you understand

I am NOT to have an opinion, until later. First I must

get the vote and let them understand my opinions are

theirs, entirely.' Yeah, right. Which makes no sense

at all, but what a way to govern. Just mark 'X'.

2105. THE JUICE MADE THE NEW GIRL WINCE

THE JUICE MADE
THE NEW GIRL WINCE
'It's been twelve centuries now since anyone's
walked over the Asian mountains.' She mentioned
that twice and I was no longer sure even of what it
referred to. Hannibal? Himalayas? Alps? Urals?
Carpathians? All those mountain ranges like names
of strangers. I knew, I think I know, I heard, well,
maybe. I think, therefore I...climb? Rode horses?
Carry my own baggage over to Kilimanjaro?
Whew! Beats me, all of this does. I want,
much more instead, to be inverted like a comma,
twisted like a frank, salted like a peanut and,
for secular-vast God's sake, be taken away
in chains. I thought I knew history well.
Now she's broken it all to Hell.

2104. IMBROGLIO AT MCFADDEN'S

IMBROGLIO AT MCFADDENS
The fat-waisted middle-man held me down for the
count while the champ went on pounding my head.
I screamed for his mercy. He laughed louder than
that: 'you old fart!' I thought he said; something
like that. Why I had come here? I'd already
forgotten. The blood tasted better than the
chilly food, and the drinks were no better than
the rotten girls who served them. I thought, for
just merely a moment, I'd rather be down for the
cunt, but figured not to say for it wouldn't work
and he'd probably pound my head all the harder.
I was not, decidedly, here, any champ of my own,
nor material to be one now. A few missing teeth.
A swell where my nose might have been. That arm,
now twisted and pinned like wire behind an old TV's
back, would - I was certain - never hammer a nail
again. Were I to roll over, he'd probably just kick my
butt anew. Pound my kidney down, browbeat the
back of my - already well-beaten - brow. Do you
see the conundrum this causes? I'm in trouble at
McFaddens, for no ostensible reason at all.

2103. PRELIMINARIES OF JILL

PRELIMINARIES OF JILL
I sense I'll get through January OK,
for anyway what it's worth : crenelated
icetops, roofs and gutters, icicle hangings
and that decrepit drugstore awning which
finally collapsed under its load of snow.
Your big box of oranges, some special kind,
flown in from a distant place - Timbuktu or
Samarkand. Delicious you claim to taste and
oh so sweet on the tongue. I'd bet. You yet.
-
Disappear me from this absence, make me one
with joy. I life out my hand from the sticky matter
it's been caught in, and realize I'm hindered
by its ooze and weight. Nothing slows down,
except, s0 it's been said - that which slows down.
Make it past the shackles, brother, and you're
free. Free. Free again like that Allman bird
or whatever from way back when - when the rafters
rang with laughter, when the Beacon wasn't peakin'.
-
Now like litter after a catfight, dogfight, ticker-tape
parade for vandals and sportsmen and astronauts
both dead and weightless and alive and floating,
I can't figure a thing. Why you're here, and I'm not.
Or vice-versa. For the crowd, swelling and frolicking
all along the sidelines, we are nothing but some geeks
in a car on parade. Go ahead then, convertible girl,
you do your royal wave, and I'll do the gaze.

2102(a). I HYMN THE PALAVER

I HYMN THE PALAVER

Left my jacket in the furnace where the cold was

finally overtaken by flames, as was the jacket. Now

is not never, nor ever was. Flames and smoke, take

all things away. I went to the Sermon on the Mount

on purpose, to be sure of what I heard. The crowd,

unblemished by any success at all, stayed in place

and listened well. Well enough, anyway. We walked

around, just to see. Was that marmalade I saw those

few kids eating on stony loves of bread?

-

Never underestimate understanding, or what the

vast herd hears. They get it all wrong anyway,

after so many years. Someone just today said to

me: 'Air Power could have won the Civil War, if

only the South was wise.' I laughed it off, thinking

it was nothing to what the kid eating the jelly-bread

at the Sermon said: 'Is this a film by Cecil B. DeMille?'

2102. FREEDOM

FREEDOM

We have parachuted into thin air and found

there is no air there. We free fall tendentiously,

looking all around us. Things seem rising up

so swiftly. And, oh dear, where shall we land?

And what lessons will be learned by the landing?

2101. WHAT'S ON TAP?

WHAT'S ON TAP?
Sitting still lonely, trying to
remain pleasant - as sure of
myself as nothing. Merely counting
things doesn't always work, isn't enough.
Taking all that New Age personal inventory
schlock for what it is. An always-on-tap
Propaganda message. Well, maybe sometimes
there are exceptions : the jury-rigged phone
call in the middle of the night that brings
nothing forth but more mystery. The
unrecognized voice. The strange yet dull
urgency. What does that mean?
-
Alone, it stands for nothing; like a
speed-bump stands for speed. Or
a 'slow-down' demand? I can't think
of anything anyway, now that you're gone.

2100. THIS AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT CAKE

THIS AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT CAKE

(buttonwood manor, elizabeth, NJ, 1995)

Buttonwood Manor nutcase incense

the way the morsels carry weight the

way the Mayor walks along the boulevard,

carrying a swagger, parading through

open yards and streets. I should so staccato

be and talk like a machine gun. Me!

-

Instead, in the bare, dark green room where

once the Jays and Hamiltons fought, I am

sitting down amidst fat ladies and two black

girls with transparent shirts. Not very comfortable,

any of this, for me - let alone to think of the

ghosts of old Elizabethtown past. If they

every got a load of this, they'd die all over

again. The Hell with the Revolution.

This would be it.

-

There weren't no swank hills coming up

from the swampy rivers. The rafts couldn't

make it through the reeds. Right here, right

here, Washington and his boys stayed for

a while. Now, nothing. Oil tanks, grease

in the fronds, rainbow stains on soiled

waters. Rainbow stains on water.

2099. ONE ROBERT GALEN

ONE ROBERT GALEN

A dredging of ice and a particle of steel;

just but one moment, one place to anneal.

The dim stretch of leavings, the want of

a place - to go is but nothing, the trick is

to stay. I raise my arms skyward

and all I feel are chains.

2098. ABSTRACT 22 : HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN?

ABSTRACT 22 :

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN?

How can we light the gargoyle, how can we fire up the flames?

And the mad monk shall rile the crowd, throwing those flames

right back, shouting with joy the scenes of his manger and the

heavenly fire of crack-addled nuns and angels from high.

Every building made from blocks shall disassemble itself

in play, and the joy from the highlands will take root in the

swamps - all those clouds scudding away.

-

I am low in self-esteem and sick as well with grief.

There is really nothing I can hold, as the sands of

time have slipped from me, and the only course left

to take is learning and labor. My personal Revolution?

It left the town on Saturday, bearing scars from a

little skirmish. The stagecoach went limping away

- one wheel already in the gutter and the other

already crooked and loose. I want for nothing.

I cooked the goose. How long can you stay?

The postman's in the attic. He is reading

stories of starlings and the pentangles

of rhyme that Ovid left behind.

2097. THE INTANGIBLE EFFECTS OF A DAYLIGHT DREAMING

THE INTANGIBLE EFFECTS

OF A DAYLIGHT DREAMING

(3 prayers)

To begin: we simply put ash into the code and reverse it all -

Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Maryland, Pennsylvania, together

as one. A big place of intense ideas. A plowman's paradise

of open space and careworn soils. All the same, ever.

Smoke of factories toils and creeps, low and thick

where it should not be. All the men, smoking their

cigarettes in the dark November gloom, punch

their cards and go home. The low sky smolders

gray above their tired heads and hands.

Those rivers which still remain undam'd

now run turgid and filthy and thick with

the dead. Tires and metal in mud, where

rags stiffen and cling to dry out.

-

I have not come for nothing.

I have come for anything and

all - each item in a day of new

sun and yellow light. I want

to be strong, and run silent,

as a deep-sky eagle or a hawk,

making haste to drop and catch

a land-locked prey stuck still

harsh to the tired ground.

Life, as it is, or was, is so

often over in an instant.

-

My third prayer for you is

that you will live for a very,

very long time and see

all things.

2096. SHADOWS ON ICE

SHADOWS ON ICE

I'm tenuous in what I hold. The brown branches

are broken off the tree, and they lie upon

the ground like the arms and legs of some

furious manikin or a doll perhaps losing

limbs. A cold, bright sunlight overhead

shines without heat, leaving but

shadows on ice.

2095. WHEN BROWN TURNS TO BLACK

WHEN BROWN
TURNS TO BLACK
Fickle moments that arrive entire,
at once, as altogether. I stand back -
vaguely, and just for the moment - to
look at a Pollock. Number 1, 1950, to be
precise, later re-named as 'Lavender Mist'.
It's the one Vogue magazine ran with in
March '51 for their trendy fashion shoot.
What a different world it must have been.
Lightning streaks, and grease marks, new
jet planes enticing the sky, fears of great
Red Commies everywhere, and why?

-
And now, the red dawn says it's too late

to just sit back and draw lightning and

mushrooms high in the sky. Jets pierce

the distance, radar drones level the field.

I hide behind cameras that are hiding from

me. What a dishevelled mess we've become.

-

Small words and small talk, liars and geeks,

fat muscles and steamy malcontents, coast

to coast exchanging notes. Look at that old

picture, the photo right there. I'd trade it

for one peek of what you really are.

2094. GREAT HARBINGER

GREAT HARBINGER

Having been done up by degrees into the

monster now present - image, chimera, isolated

demon, the one with all eyes - I seek nothing

but to be brought back to a more normal

state of earthly decay. I will sag and droop.

I will walk thus, hunchbacked and broken,

through a hundred bedraggled city streets

while the harp man plays a Bolero or something

akin. A circus tune, a riff from West Side Story.

Oh, anything really, just to pierce the gloom.

-

It shouldn't matter whether I hold a broom or

a shovel, for that matter, of gold or straw or

fire or power. I shall walk with my raiment

those thin walkways atop roofs and buildings

which link things to each other. One bare bath

after the next - right past windows of a naked

fury wherein people are deaf or screaming at

each other. I can balance on a beam of string.

-

Like lies and deceit and no candor, all the evasions

I've ever witnessed will gather to haunt me. I will

truly have nowhere to go. But watch me, I ask you,

watch. I can be a great harbinger to things to come.

2093. IN A NEW REALM OF TIME

IN A NEW REALM OF TIME

Wheedle me the sinecure if you can. I will

sit here waiting, as I once more read 'The

Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.'

-

I have broken this book into 60 separate

sections by my pen - titleing and naming

each so I can more easily find what I

wish to review. Death, lace, girls, women,

finery, lancers, song, ghosts, Avignon, Paris,

family, wealth, tapestries...and all the rest.

It just goes on, perhaps a bit too 'sensitive'

and feeling for my own taste, but magical

nonetheless, in its own way.

-

I do not like, really, the manner in which

the eye is seen seeing, the piner to pine

forevermore without his satisfaction

ever be secured. It's almost sad and

psychotic, the way it runs on and about.

And then to end, first with all the Avignon

material and then - at conculsion - the

Prodigal Son seen through drooping eyes

and a very sad hand, a very sad hand indeed.

2092. MY RUN-ON DISTEMPER

MY RUN-ON DISTEMPER

In using words like private carriages, I ride on

every one. My Oldsmobile of a mind traipses

jauntily over ice and snow, gets delirious in

mud and rain, and skims sunningly over tropical

heat and the sweat and the juices produced. I

clamor for doctors where no doctors exist, for

illnesses imagined that nonetheless persist.

Is there any help for such a wanton soul?

-

I've sought madness in the flowers of a hillside

while others were chasing dreams on the same

hillside surface. One way travel in a two-way

moment : watch the magnificent wren and listen

to the woodpecker sour on the wood. Higher

than the balcony, but no higher than the roof,

that's where I saw the man saluting. Life.

Perplexity. Power. Violence. Madness again.

-

Let us close now, children, with a prayer.

Give thanks to something for something,

or - if you'd prefer - give thanks to

anything for everything, something for

anything, however you'd prefer. The oasis

is as yet unpopulated and bare, and we

are still making our way to there.

2091. AUTOMATIC INFILTRATION

AUTOMATIC INFILTRATION

Only once your automatic infiltration took my heart

by storm. I broke my arms trying to get them around

you; like love letters of steam to water, everything had

changed in an instant. Clear had turned to fog.

The enemy of lust, I'd found, was love.

-

If I had a million more chances to change the world,

I'd still pick the one that involved you. Moving the

very equator itself would be no more difficult than

breaking this bond. Outside, as I write, people

are looking up to realize time, and the dark, and

the limitless sky - or so they think. But, alas,

everything ends, everything. Do you understand

that automatic infiltration which took my heart?

-

Pain is like the fire that consumes the good -

forests and worlds within, pygmies and rainforest

creatures, all of them, running hard to escape the

flames. Yet, they do overtake us, those flames,

eventually. It is all we can do to keep running, let

alone outrun, the flames - as impossible as all that is.

Your automatic infiltration took my heart.

2090. OH SO GARISHLY GRACEFUL

OH SO GARISHLY GRACEFUL

Gotta' go, gotta' go now. Watch the mask

re-cover my face. These are not cartoons,

but instead the real semblances of reality

and strife. Listen to the man from the

distant past as he tries to tell us something

that never was. Padding and the paddock,

portmanteau and the magic hide.

-

I awake ready for the day.

I look outside and it's still dark,

which I already knew, but getting

lighter as I watch. All this Winter

idleness, soon to be over soon? No,

no, don't think so. Gotta' go, gotta' go.

2089. NEXT DOOR TO HELL

NEXT DOOR TO HELL

(23rd street, 1972)

Next door to Hell at the Chelsea Hotel,

I was standing with my foot at the curb.

Just behind me, McMaster and Jermine, the

two jerks with the Beatleboard, kept yelling

out songs. The Quixote, alongside them, had

drunks going in and out. It seemed always like

this - a whiteout of shame and a blackout of sense.

-

I never entered without my Mabou Mines elixir:

gasoline in a jug and two donuts to boot. People

looked around, but without even of modicum of

good sense, no one was ever able to connect the

dots. Ogden Nash and his turltedove, James

McNeil and his sister Pearl. My hands were

dotted with fever. Blisters on the soles of

my feet. Outside the paint store, by the fish-bait

and tackle, a dark green police car, it seemed,

was always posted with 1972 eyes. The two guys

inside seemed always, just always, staring out.

2088. SESQUICENTENNIAL

SESQUICENTENNIAL

I was a small boy never knowing what that meant ;

'sesquicentennial.' It seemed to be the same year

my town was named 'Tree City' as well. Something

about all that faux history, "Small Town USA' stuff.

Led me to believe mostly in nothing at all. Accolades,

after all, can be bought; accolades sure can be bought.

2087. JOHNNY'S SO LONG AT THE FAIR

JOHNNY'S SO LONG
AT THE FAIR
(Tycho Brahe)
Bring in the capstans and all the happenstance of
random occurrence; the universe is spinning madly
as we fall. We are suspended - seemingly - in a
space of no space, in a liquid all our own, hanging
tenuously in a dark-matter space (listen to me) of
our own dire imagining. All your Science now, Tycho
Brahe has gone to naught. The wonder is that
we are yet here.
-
I look at the shapes of things and I see a jar. The shape
of matter varies, but my certainties abound. They each
keep their shape, and remain the same. So then, I have
no doubts, I am not a doubting man. Should you but
need to imagine, know that I was fixed by nose-in-place
Johnson - some quack from the broad Venus plains.
I suggest nothing and nothing is thereby suggested
back. So I need not even listen : except to the Spring
and the air and the sunlight and all the mottled lands
and waters of this world. Nature is my cuff link, worn
boldly in my broadly-patterned shirt.
-
I want to find the world right where it is.
I want to find a Nature - as well - in place.
My lead pencils and exercise books, (remember
them?), are kept yet under lock and key in the
library closet, beneath the stairway at the third-floor
landing. Hardly anyone goes and no one sees.
Only a rich man, carrying candle and light in the
deepest of night, would even know this all existed.
-
I am kept like silk in a madman's harem.
I am Johnny, so long at the fair.

2086. 'GIVE ME BACK MY OLD 'MERIKA'

GIVE ME BACK MY

OLD 'MERIKA'

('put another star on the flag, for

the state of Stupidity')

You can have your old spittoon and the circle jerk

with it. You can feast your eyes on lions and bears

and thinking of it here. Woodsheds and corrals, hot

liquor and varmints with guns. The acreage the

surveyor forgot to leave behind. Lewis and Clark

and the Smith Brothers too. Mormons with sidereal

trumpets and all the bruised hieroglyphics of Louis

Armstrong's marijuana coronet bliss. None of it

matters. It's another day and another age, and I fell

asleep awakened on Philadelphia's solid streets: black

men on Walnut screaming of the Lord behind pistachio'd

microphones of condor and eagle and armed guards who

brush people back. The stupid squad car idles across

the opposite curb, listening for nothing but watching

the herd. On the bench, as I was, with my feet up

and two girls making me laugh, it took more years

than sumac and Sears together to get me up. I

roused myself by thinking silent darlings and

gold rings of blemish and pearl. A businessman

walked by, slowly; turning his head to look around,

I noticed his grimace and his sound. Alarms on the

cellphone, and a hesitance to the face. Good lord

the gracious and watch the open space. He's running

for his life right now, he's running. Lemur. Coastguard.

Yellow cigar. Give me back what's long gone.

Give it all back to me.

Huzzah!

2085. CHIAROSCURO

CHIAROSCURO

At the settlement house, in range of all the sounds

and smells of the harbor, the large trees squeeze

their peculiar rhythms from the wind : dark against

the sky, they bend and twist, as if lengthy lessons

had now, finally, led to this dark dance. Music by

coconuts, with violins and tambourines somehow

mixed in. It's a maddening night for all.

-

And now they come around the corner - those crazy,

oily men who claim they want to make pictures :

'We can invest in skyrocketing returns over again, we

can fund movies with merely the return on what we've

put down, once, as initial investment. It's all like gravy

in a pan - girls, and the rest, and did I mention girls?"

I listen to guys like this until I'm sick. The anti-Semite

Semite who does nothing all day, never lifts with his

hands but gets returns on other peoples' work instead.

-

I wish the girls would kill them, actually - beat them

on their heads with their gigantic tits, as they'd say, I

guess. What sort of return would that be? They'd sputter

and laugh perhaps, until their very last moments -

when it would dawn on them they've gambled wrongly

all along. Who's your Pappa, who's your Messiah now,

you vainglorious twerps. Look for the label on the

edge of the collar. See what it is : 'someone actually

did the work.' You can't make pornography in

black and white.

2084. AT THE RAINBOW HILTON

AT THE RAINBOW HILTON
No dreams, no dreams like this one.

You make me savage and dense, have already.

I take out the spoon, and the sharpened knife,

which I then plunge (effortlessly) into my

still self-sustaining chest. I fall to the ground,

dying. But before that ends, everything is over
and I wake up again standing straight. The ladle
has fallen off the counter, and your blood-red
soup is dripping onto the floor. The ceiling
lamp seeps forth its errant light, illuminating
all and nothing just the same. I glance at the
calendar page on the door. It reads '1954'.

2083. THESE MISERABLE MOMENTS

THESE MISERABLE MOMENTS

(how a clown would stand, if a clown could stand)

I hate the fact of silence when it beseeches me

to shut up; I hate the fact of no one talking back.

My arms are tied with the string of guts, and the

disc-rows plowed down my farmer's back are

yet bleeding. Stories are in that blood - trickling

down in my angry silence when I want so much

to talk and be listened to. Outcast forever? Looser

with a millions bucks? Why oh why is that?

-

I bought a mansion on a rock-strewn hill.

I live there when I may, and may be there

still. Each room is a reflection of something

other than what it is. Emmett Kelly and me,

alone. Emmett Grogan and me, at home.

2082. CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE

CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE
Such largess keeps me waiting, keeps me
wanting, keeps me wily and willful as well
and about all things. Seventh and Pine or
Spruce or whatever - all these places scatty
abound, whether lost or found, all those
antiques and family stories and food in
the City of Brotherly Love.
-
I broke your harness the day the Moon
was eclipsed. We came back running, both
of us out of breath. Long, long after midnight.
The blue rush, the black rush, and all that
orangey tint. Largess and love - all pleasures
too - in the City of Brotherly Love.

2081. TO ACHIEVE ARTICULATION

TO ACHIEVE ARTICULATION

Difficult this is; scene one, act the first.

Isaiah 14. Everything has been put aside

for the waiting - sunlight, snowstorm,

death and the maiden too. It is heavy

going down the corridors of time. I

move while my skullcap stays in place,

and these thoughts matter little.

-

Oh my Williamsburg rabbi, listen to

me as I talk, and then talk back. Talk

to me as I listen. You may wish to

understand what I never can. The

robin did come home to roost. The

wind, it really did rustle the willows.

No matter, no matter;

all is gone, all is gone.

2080. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I am making One, and already One, a wholeness -

seeking a compassion with war as a means of

bringing harmony forth, bringing to harmony

those things which are incompatible. Killing and

and War are thus necessary, or seen as such.

That flower in the end of your guns then, how

useless! Listen to those who runs the things

all around us - the monsters and the devils

who make our ways. Fiends! Evil beings!

-

And then arises the gulf : Goodness and

all its gold compassion. The beauty of time

is that it passes - and only that redeems it.

2079. WHAT A BLIND, CRAZY MESS THIS IS

WHAT A BLIND,
CRAZY MESS THIS IS
First off, we're going to bite the apple; yes, yes bite.
Like that mysterious Adam in the garden far off,
walking deliriously in a circular motion, we'll shamble
a juba past each obstacle in our path. We'll erect an
edifice and a hurdle in any location we choose.
Fences will not stop us, nor walls, nor doorways.
-
Loft lifts and elevator entries. Piles of rags and
blankets, things with which to cover cargo and
freight. Everything is cast about as if - without
thought - the craven dream has come to life.
I watch the lights from the wall across; their thin
yellow shafts flow from bulbs long past tired worth
and usefulness. So drab, so beat, the shallow
force of the lightbeam itself seems to hesitate
before touching its place.
-
Outside the entryway, where music blares,
someone else has lit a torch. Oddly in place,
its light splays from a barrel and is tended by
men - watchful and sure, they harbor their
feelings about flame and fire jealously, keeping
it close. They want - apparently - both the
warmth and the light it can afford them.
Like misers, they grab every bit of what
they can keep.
-
It's a sad world, seen this way. No one owns
a thing, and what they do have someone else
has already cast off. Everything is in movement,
passing and fading, first being and then disappearing.
We maybe watch shadows and think them so real.
Everywhere is light, illusionary light, showing us
things and then taking them away.

2078. CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

CHRISTAIN SOLDIERS

(a take on William Burroughs)

You're going to join in that legation and march your

way to Hell, captured with Turks and Moguls who

will never give up nor lend their name to fame. Needles

in the forearm or high up on the thighs. Words that

slant like mysterious Chinese eyes. William Burroughs

and Charlie Chan, bundled together for steerage in

the filthy package hold of some piratized freighter.

Ocean water turning to steam and blood as the journey

nears its way to Hell - the wails and cry of sirens

were nothing at all compared to the screams of the

dead and dying. Odysseus, and all the rest of those

famous crapheads telling their tales; wine-dark sea,

nothing at all. So many others have tried twists on

this story. Sea-change, sex-change, red lips, hoary

hips, the pistol freak with the golden teeth. I know

the resurrected story as it was told from atop

the mount : 'You've got to believe in something,

God-damn it, and it doesn't matter what it is.'

Now, only now, years later, the gentle lamb

has snuggled in for a long eternity's sleep.

2077. MY RODEO DAYS

MY RODEO DAYS

The horse had a cantilevered saunter, all running

down into mirth : chickenscratch crosshairs and

compass contagion for all it was worth. And then the

Governor came by to tell me (yet again) how gay he

was. We walked along the Scrounge Canal looking for

pickerel and pike. 'I wasn't born yesterday, you know.'

He said that three times, at least. The whole afternoon

was ruined by his outburst. Bubblegum balloons and

Fels Naptha cocktails; a maidenhair fern had a

maidenhair turn down her blouse. We all ended

up together with the abbess, having tea.

-

I can't make this up : the storybook ending

you delivered was delivered by you, on cue,

overdue too. The high trees made noise in

the wind - things from the mountains,

and deep water from the plains. I never

did tell, and I could never explain.

-

As it was, I wanted to flee, get away,

make my escape in a shrouded cloud

of silence and secret. I'd forgotten

where you lived, but ended up

there anyway. Likely that, too.

My rodeo days were a mess.

2076. FIVE BULLETS OUT

FIVE BULLETS OUT

Where I live in my mind I am not yet home.

The sequestered fore-waters yet harbor native

folk, and they are still living in the trees - in them,

I mean literally, not on them. Gods of huge oaks,

hollowed out trunks lodged in bark and timber to

deep chambers below, sit serenely within their

magical chambers : changing and forming worlds,

realigning everything which already is, altering

futures without our knowing. We are eternal,

even amidst these truncated bouts of time.

-

I'd like nothing better than to show you, take you,

let you see my world. Come within with me. I can

introduce you to this flock : wizards, angels, demons,

charlatans, voices and spirits, whatever. Here is, in

fact, still the root of all natural religions. All those

forces are still in place.

-

I am not yet at home, as I said, in this

world - still silently learning as I watch.

Noting what to observe as I observe

what to note. I am fed from a source

outside of me, yet within as well, which

fills me with the goodness and light, or

the equivalents of, by which I steer

through all of this world. As much

imagined, I now know, as real.

2075. OH ONION ONE

OH ONION ONE

Here I am again, reading Saul Bellow in the snow -

early morning, 6am, just when the snowflakes

begin. Dangling Man Seizes the Day? The windy

brush of flake and drift pushes long across the

estate-sized porch. The unused white rocking

chair makes its moves in isolation - no one sits,

no cigar smoke lingers, nothing in fact happens at

all. Just the snow and the wind as I pass, right

where the lawn, once green, stretched out before

it all. Now it too is white in pallor and white in

snow. A living memory of time and silence, a marker

for all things before it. I no longer know exactly who

it is I myself am : Henderson, Mr. Sammler, Herzog,

or even Delmore Schwartz. Too early to tell;

6am, just when the snowflakes begin.

2074. DRACO

DRACO

My foolish harrow, my ruddy row.

Lines of corn like paper rustling

in the end. Just below the barn,

the last idle cow, mooing.

2073. NOMENCLATURE:MELANCHOLY

NOMENCLATURE:

MELANCHOLY

Over the top with wanting less, watching twisted

trees bend in a psycho wind, a new moon rising,

with a signature face - some thin sliver in light.

A painting by some medieval DeMarco could never

do this justice : angels on wings, time standing

still, the brush-wind hovering like the breath

of God. On my table-top is a cup and a bottle,

some ashes from an old tray of smoke. The

crushed pack of French cigarettes is almost

off the edge. By degrees myself, I am edging

to darkness - a darkness where things linger,

where memory is scribed with silver markings,

where the engraved fashion of dream has

taken over. My shadow-play has its finish

in the watery mark of time, running in circles

down a a curlicue drain. The nomenclature

is melancholy, and that is its name.

2072. THE MAN WITH FOUR HANDS

THE MAN WITH FOUR HANDS

Lifting Buicks off the ground, writing paychecks

at 30 miles per hour, heaving stones through

plate glass, wiring the poles and lanterns for

steady light, dealing cards three decks at a time.

He never ran from anything that I ever understood.

The man with four hands made me believe

that I could. He was like a father to me in so

many ways - vain and glorious and rude and

mean. I painted his house on stilts and he tried

to use the stairs I portrayed. What a scene!

2071. A MAN DIED IN HARLEM

A MAN DIED IN HARLEM

I thought I knew it all. Knew nothing, all of

nothing. My Matterhorn was a broken shoulder

and a hen-pot to boot; soup like rancid eels stewing

on a ghetto stove. The five Puerto Rican guys had

been fishing in the Hudson; brought back slime

and rope and a gun. Not much more for a day's

worth of local fishing; feet up on a flattened pier,

a concrete abutment spitting rust. Men get happy

like that, seldom - unless it's lust. These guys

couldn't have cared for anything. Drunk to their

skivvies, they whistled like whores and threw down

their tackle and laughed. I was weeding the doctor's

garden by then - sixteen fifty a day, for nothing;

grass grows like shit in a dog's ear. I thought I

knew it all. Knew nothing; all of nothing.

2070. AT THE CLOYING HIPPODROME

AT THE CLOYING HIPPODROME

When we were intimate, way back then. You

held your five feet six girl's height quite nicely,

Blondie. I laughed at all your charades; hand-

puppet movements half in the dark and half

in light. We made contact beneath deep, broad

covers. Covering warmth, and mirth, and love.

I pretended at sleep, you came again and again.

It was like that - even in parting. I don't ever

know where all the time went but, if I'd been

able to, I surely would have gathered it up, all

as one, and kept it in a bowl - with a lid to keep

it in - and played it over and over and over again.

I looked for you in the lobby; yes, yes, that was

you again, knitting something, cross-hatched and

weird, with needles and your back to the wall. It

wasn't a pure salvation, yet I knew and loved it all.

2069. ILLOGIC AND RULES

ILLOGIC AND RULES

As in a private sphere, we wash our dreams

only with more dreams and clean up the

mess with the resultant disbelief.

In reality, I am nothing next to the

gun beside me; in fantasy I rule

the crumbling world. America

disappears in my brain like

yesterday's cumfest nightmare,

with its little toy robots

yet still running on.

2068. ANOTHER MOMENT IN THE SUN

ANOTHER MOMENT

IN THE SUN

Management stains the portals, and the ice-lemon

sunlight flavors all things. Far off, along the grasses,

a mist covers the trees right down to the lake. A

few tall-legged birds run off and fly, taking with a

grace to the sky, an easy life, the kind they were

born for, obviously. Two huge earth-moving

machines, stained in yellow and tar, sit unmoving.

They've been turned off now for weeks, as if no

one any longer remembers what to do.

2067. COUNTING THE CONTRABAND

COUNTING THE CONTRABAND

Camels and cobras alike, the horizon is never

easy. We carried so many things from Algiers

that it gave me a headache just recounting. Those

filigreed boxes, inlaid with gold, and the satchels

filled with (we were told to say) 'oranges'. Two

boys, without fingers, who were kept as slaves

and had to drag the bushels on ropes. We tied

the broad leather bands around their waists,

and each iron hoop on them was connected

by rope to one of the bushels. Slow going, but

a going nonetheless. For them, and for us.

-

The yellow sun blistered my face before long,

and I was wishing for a mountainside in

Pennsylvania once more. Not to be. For me,

all this painful abduction was an adventure

more real than perception. Everything hurt,

but they said we'd be rich. Or dead. One way

or the other, something to report back home.

-

I was born on a hardwood board, something that

held my mother and some crazy local mountain

nurse who raised nine kids on the side. Together,

they managed my birth, and they said I came

out strong - like a blood-addled demon ready to

strike. It's always been like that ever since. My

name was Brian, but they called me Fire.

-

I got into this mess by missing a bet. Or I nodded

when I should have looked down, or something

like that. I could have been killed with a six-inch

knife, they said, or go on this journey and live.

Yes, yes, I chose this great and random bet.

And here I am, alive still, and yet...

2066. VIGNETTE (1879)

VIGNETTE (1879)

Some once-great man was hiding out - iron links

on his fence posts, two rifles on his horse. There, where

the last of today was passing, someone else had hung

a warrant and a dream. The Winter blanket of snow

kept them from falling back. He turned to the rider

with him and said 'Over there, behind those huge

boulders, I will take my turn at outlasting fate.'

-

Night is a vicious thing when it slumbers too long.

We know - it is said - the wages of Sin but throw

its caution to the wind nonetheless. The fire had

embers of memory, still smoldering ideas and a

kettle of black dreams. He sat back, lazily now,

and said 'Perhaps I am ready to die. No matter

all this.' His rider stood up straight and howled.

-

Like magic, like chance, like something frenetic that

drops from the sky, we stand in line and in awe watch

what fire descends and, before it was over, some Gods

had dipped their mantles into this human affair - and

rescued only the meek and the good. For what difference

it made it all mattered little what transpired that night.

An old man was dead, the sky was ablaze and - as it

seemed - one lone rider slow-trotted away.

2065(a). STRANGE DAYS INDEED

STRANGE DAYS INDEED

Oh Mr. Waldron, I saw you

but once. It was at the

Mummer's Parade, on
New Year's day. I left with

your daughter, if you wish

I admit, and we never
returned, for days.

All was like Heaven

and a simpler time.

I'm returning now, to
tell you this : we both wish

to thank you for living.