Monday, January 31, 2011

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.


Saturday, January 29, 2011

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.

Friday, January 28, 2011

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.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

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.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

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.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

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.

Friday, January 21, 2011

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.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

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.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

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.

Monday, January 17, 2011

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.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

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.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

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.

Friday, January 14, 2011

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.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

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.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

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.

Monday, January 10, 2011

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.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

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.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

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.

Friday, January 7, 2011

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.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

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!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

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.

Monday, January 3, 2011

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.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

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.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

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.