3019. PASSAGE

PASSAGE

I am listening to night voices, and the dwindling
moon settles in on my left, over the water, beyond
the lake, past where the oar-crew practices.
Even this early, splitting the daybreak with a
megaphone, nothing seems to make sense. The
moon falls over the daylight cliff, and the world
rises, light with its new-day's energy and heat.
-
Solar-powered luminescence, like a fire from the heart.

-

I am seeing the girls with the backpacks dissemble.
They count their eyes and arms as I watch. I sense
their feelings completely : an odd mix of self-awareness,
curiosity, and a certain, happy form of human lust.
All things to love; all things, every. Warmer than Sun.

-

Fifteen or twenty geese traverse the dirt-path
corridor; their crazy academic catalogue seems rigid
even here, on the ground. They look askance, and
cackle that cackle - whatever it is geese do. No
understanding can surpass their instinct to graze.
-
Winged flower, empty nightmare creature, broad
stroke of all that is; dim dawn of another day,
dim dawn of another day.

3018. ROPE

ROPE
The rope was wide, the rope was narrow,
the rope was greased, the rope was tied
to a tree, the horse was holding back, the
horse ran forward, I stayed in place.
At one instant, I was there, and I was
here. Two parts to displace the whole.
The rope was wide, the rope was narrow.

3017. TO APRIL

TO APRIL
All the things we seem to have found
are somehow still here, yet time passing
now better defines them. The sky like a
soup covers deeply the most particular
edgings; shapes and forms together avoid
both reasons and names, but such avoidance
can no more advance than can dead landscape
and dormant flower stop from transforming.
Everything has possibilities now; we will
all start out all over again.

3016. POINTILISM

POINTILISM
A certain light intrudes,
in spite of the touch.
No lines, but no definition either.
All things, wavering, merge.

3015. REGARDING THE FITZGIBBONS

REGARDING THE
FITZGIBBONS

Outside in the wind, right where the pigeons were,
the dirt and debris was kicking up in funnels.

Through all this the birds stayed put - steadfast
in a posed resistance, feathers upturned, heads

unsettled. It appeared to be war, of a sort.
-

Never before had I aced the moment so well.
I felt for them as I decided for myself where

not to be. Life leaves little choice, yes, but even
less for the creatures of gutter and wall.

-
This was the gate of a simple hotel; citified

blindness, urban maladroitness, a doorman
with only an evil, small smirk. Even he,

I realized, was better able to withstand the
shiver and wind. Just past my eyes, well

beyond him, a few girls loitered within.
If a cash register were upon each of their

backs, their presence for business would
be no clearer. Outside, the pigeons

yet hunkered down for another blast.

3014. NARROWOOD

NARROWOOD
I live in a half-world of shadow and
feint, where false messages of an
inherent trait keep breaking through.
My horizon thus - though suffering -
has little to give back to other men.
-
I know all about their lamp-lit harbors
and day-light cruises, but I do not care.
My out-of-control craft by contrast careens.
-
Most of the time, I don't know where
it is that I am. I sleep and then awake and
- only then for an instant - the two get
interesting : the lamplight and the darkness,
the cowboy meshing with his horse and hat;
while, at the other end of that spectrum,
the indigenous native respects his world,
'every little bit of it', as the spirit guide says.
-
Perhaps, in between them, living
in a dream then, am I.

3013. PRACTICING ON THE TARGET

PRACTICING ON THE TARGET
To be forgotten, per se, as it is, exactly,

isn't so bad. Liking pilasters of gold
hasn't much good to be said for it.
That old Springsteen bungalow down
at West Long Branch, Number Seven
and a half, I think it is, it just sits there
lanky and dull now; and the people
living within, they 'ain't got a care.'
-
'I go to work on Tuesdays and come
back for Saturday nights. Wish I had
his money though. Wann'a see the old
old toilet?' Reluctantly, I passed.
-
There's always a hankering from
something of glory - all that crap
from other days, and now the franchise
people and the local fiscal hoodlums
want in too. The man from the magazine
says 'there's too much to be lost by
waiting; too much now to be lost.'
-
Anyway, it's most all bullshit from there;
you can't see the surf, the screen door
never slams, and Mary's long gone.
Like a vision she dances? I think not.

3012. SEMBLANCE OF THE REAL

SEMBLANCE OF THE REAL
(still-life to vendors to vegetables)
I remembered right then what it was I had
said to you : your cigarette ash like an artist's
brush dangling so low over the coffee, I had
looked you over and uttered 'God! You have
such a semblance of the real!' Startled, you
laughed and then gagged, right then almost
coughing yourself to death. Then we got
over that and finally embraced.
-
It was a November moon, Judy, way back
then and long before you'd changed your
name. Tenenbaum to Rifka to, Jesus, Smith!
I could never believe you were there, in
any of them : pallet-faced artist-hounded,
always running forager that you were.
Success, as I saw it, should always
elude the best of us. And then, just
like that, it hit you. There was more.
-
Some other guy, named Reed, draft-evasion,
prison time, wasn't it all of that? I still forget
and it really doesn't matter. Now, I'm looking
at your painted flowers on some broken down
matte of a wall. The piece itself still looks good
enough, but I can't recall it at all. I remember
something else instead : our bicycles, and
how you were always stealing the vendors'
vegetables along the way as we passed.
Funny how these things stay
planted in the mind.

3011. MY LEGERDEMAIN

LEGERDEMAIN
The cat turns into a cheetah; the fly
an eagle becomes. I am awash in wonder
and awe. My dream becomes a person.
-
Outside on the grimy sidewalk, the opposition
arrives. The ugliest oilman I've ever seen -
dense, voracious and vile I sense. He
sticks his awkward hose into the ground
as fuel oil spills - a sickening black slag
running over concrete and wood.
-
There is no magic there. Where
every dreary moment demands that
it is real and of substance, and dragging
everything else down with it. I will
flee. I will transform : the curtain
now becomes an angel, as this
exception becomes my norm.

3010. FREEDOM

FREEDOM
On the painter's wall was a still life of
Freedom - all static and steady, replete
with dead colors; more frame than picture,
I felt. Trompe l'oeil is what I thought of as
well - all those hanging dead rabbits and
powderhorns and feathers and caps. I'd
seen them once, on a museum wall, trying
of course to fool the viewer as to what
was real and what was not. Present and
real, or just the illusion you've got.
-
Maybe apples and oranges together,
in some polished silver bowl, would
represent better whatever meaning
was meant to be imparted - though
I think not. Good grief, what have I
started? On the painter's wall
was a still life of Freedom.

3009. ALHAMBRA

ALHAMBRA

Fifteen men at the castle door,
seeking what they could,
and not one thing more.
The yellow sun,
unmanageable as ever,
beat down mercilessly
upon their heads.

3008. MOVES WITH THE TIDE

MOVES WITH THE TIDE
(flagellants and mendicants)
Goes where it will go, goes where it
wishes to go, does what it is told,
disappears upon command. All those
things at once. A killer unemployed.
-
She is at the stove, now I see, cooking
eggs. Standing by the burner, little
in a robe, staring out the window while
things simmer. It must be morning again.
Nothing new, that. They do seem to recur.
-
There is not much, really, we can salvage from
our own lives, at the ends of our days. It all
has just already happened, seemingly vague,
yet real - and that is, simply, that. We may
remember a few things; or may not. Old
memory falters; that's all they say now.
-
Ages ago Flagellants used to roam the
land. In Europe, anyway; from place to place
they'd walk, berating themselves and, everywhere,
seeking Penance. Weirdly enough, not for any
specific things they'd done, more just for being
alive. Or having been. Such an obfuscating presence,
this crazy, stupid trait - beseeching God's forgiveness
for things you had nothing, really, to do with. An odd
and concrete perversion of all Creation. Many men
died, of their own lonely intentions. Leaving children
and wives, and all the rest. Yet leaving , it was
understood as well, one happy and satisfied God.

3007. RAPIDFIRE CARLOS FIORE

RAPIDFIRE CARLOS FIORE

Books on the shelf, my own books :

Roth, Bellow, Pessoa, Updike, a few,

what the hell. Isiah Berlin, Hart Crane,

Bret Harte, Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti

too. I won't divulge the excess because

this is only a few. My life in idle pages

driving nothing home at all. Purloined

clockwork dickweed verbiage, and

poisoned papers too. I undertook

it all. Killed a King; made him fall.

-

St. Marks Place, 1967. A few dead

kids, a few raw stories, and me.

Cycling the cytronic, fishing

off the pier. Watching the

Normandie sink. Recalling

the Slocum Disaster from

Tompkins Square Park.

That bench where the

queer men all sat.

-

I never was really myself

at all. My life was a fictive

adventure, a story of

dearth, a tale to recall.

I am not from this

Earth. I am yours,

that is all.

3006. LET ME TELL YOU A FEW THINGS

LET ME TELL YOU

A FEW THINGS

Planting trees along an oasis does not ever work:

dry heaves, Dry Tortugas, any of that misplaced,

misreckoned, swank geography of the journeyer's

mind. It's so far and apart different from anything

else; like shaving with Capatain Elster's sabre.

-

Afternoons never linger; they disappear like

have-nots, and girls who die in one's arms.

Put the toast in the broiler. Watch it burn

and curl. If you object, oh Sainted Theresa,

then simply don't do it. Bless first the

God-damned bread and call it holy.

-

I left you a fifty dollar bill for your

services rendered. All was done in

kindness and remembered.

3005. SALACIOUS

SALACIOUS

Once, when Neanderthal Man was

Meandering Man, the globe was a

stepfoot oasis. And this Man didn't

know a thing. He went to kicking
and crying for what could be results.

The sequence was always unclear.

-

Now, in a much different daylight, I

see reflected the Sunlight preening

down on naked pictures on some guy's

screen. He sits perpendicular to me,

and the glare from window B only

obscures the vision from me. Why is

that, I wonder. Some Godless hand

in the wide open sky finally took

an interest in something?

-

Some Reverend Minister Mister something

lackadaisically calls me in. His proud seat

on a humble altar? No, for sure, no.

He's suffering from Pride, the kind I've

never seen before : bring forth remaindered

glory on clouds of same. I'm bored, already.

-

Hi-Hat, Trinity, beautiful bumpkin babies,

non-judgmental rectifiers of all God's

dreary dread. I'm so tired of these

things. I wish I was dead, or at least

in some somnolent way like a

baby in a nursery window.

3004. MADDENING PATTERNS OF ILLUSTRIOUS LORE

MADDENING PATTERNS
OF ILLUSTRIOUS LORE
Never mind; I rode the horse until it tired.
Of me, or the ride, I never could tell.
The flat-iron steamer from the Scranton
Museum, I was looking straight at it, just
watching it plume. All these stupid
Pennsylvania people, riding an old train
like some Lionel wafer at a Christian
celebration. The tracks, they were laid
down right through the wood and vale;
no one ever cared a whit what they were
doing. 'This was Commerce, buddy, the
kind with the capital 'C'. It had to be.'
Something different from what Ezra Pound
had said : 'Kommerz, damned Kommerz!'.
Or something. If there wasn't a that there
couldn't be a this. I know such was the
landlord's thinking every month on the 28th.
I may have had it backward, or I may
have had it straight. Never mind.

3003. I HAVE MADE IT PAST THE POST

I HAVE MADE IT
PAST THE POST
New South Wales, and me. In a tri-corner hat,
plumed with a feather. I stood starboard on a
big, flattering ship, heading west somehow
until we got to 'it'. The remainder of my days.
Where I would go to die and stay.
-
There was never anything past a medical malfeasance
that I wasn't able to handle : that guy with five guns,
that day in Borstal, even the time, at the end of the
Thames, when I ravaged your sister for hours - who
by the way went quite willingly into that dark, dark
night. The only resistance she ever knew was in
the snaps and the stays. So many things are
so forever funny. New South Wales? Now?
-
How far afield am I dreaming? How many miles
does a man's mind travel? 'Simplicity patterns,' I
remember my Mama muttering, were the 'easiest
ones to follow.' She tried to make all my sisters'
dresses, but everything ended up as a pillowcase
instead. Now, the hardtack is on the table and
I'm sitting here alone. I sometimes think of
you but mostly think of, really, nothing at all.

3002. AT CHASEN'S

AT CHASEN'S

Like debutante air at a lightning ball, everyone

here was decked out for murder. Enthralled with

emotion - lights, candles, flares and stars. Motion

picture photographs and long, black cars.

Twenty men to a woman, with each a cigar.

What fragrant and flagrant emotion.

3001. O'HANLON'S GROVE (Andrew Marvell)

O'HANLON'S GROVE

(Andrew Marvell)

'More standard lap of luxury shit.

Isobar, and a real nice car - call him

Joe at any hour. Magisterial front porches

and a large porte cochere. Dinner by bells,

announced at the hour. 'I've got a big car;

they can all fit in.' I hear them talk about

the swimming trophies and new trunks

for the season. 'This one is really hard

to stir; I might add more sugar.'

-

When the light comes in to these walls, it's

all and always so very nice. False idols.

Saints at their grottos. All those imperfections

of man. I really just want to stay.'

3000. YET ONLY THE NORTH STAR STAYS

YET ONLY THE

NORTH STAR STAYS

True faces, and you have no source.

I write white paper. The single manner

of your scarf, it rises like a sign to me.

At end, all things rest; even the

Tenth Street light.

-

I once viewed a movie from behind

the screen. Yes, watching all things in

a backward reflection of one projection.

Not much sense. I couldn't tell. To the

action, no real story; like a shale fossil

found in a stream, etchings and markings,

though not as they seem.

-

Gretchen Virginia Valerie White.

She was watching me from across the

room. I saw, I saw, I saw. (True faces,

and you have no source).

2099. MY PENULTIMATE EMBRACE

MY PENULTIMATE EMBRACE

No, really; the roadway seems determined to

ease my way to Nothingness. Bending and

twisting around obstacles and trees, it will,

soon enough lead me to that revered small

place I left so long ago. The town square,

centered with its Civil War Memorial and

the list of places and names. Atop it all, some

poor-boy soldier, like a squire, staring out

and holding a rifle and a sword.

-

The center of town is rimmed with an old

filling station; two glass bays on a concrete

isle of steel and light. Oil cans and a hose.

Battery water in a spouted pail. Here and

there still stand a few hitching posts, with

iron rings, from one hundred years ago.

Can't get any more lazy than that.

-

I was born nearby, and raised, it seems,

in a well; the town well - everyone came

to draw from me, to take away, and no

no one ever left a thing, 'cept

words and idle chatter.

2098. THE CANTILEVERED RAINBOW

CANTILEVERED RAINBOW

You have no time and all the boundaries are gone;

troops are massed at the border. The skirmish you

last read of, it has already happened, a long time

ago. The posters are up and your name - though

quaintly misspelled - features prominently in

this morning's mission. No one really knows a

thing - but that's never stopped fervor before.

-

All the things that never were, have already

happened; and all the things happening now

never were before. It's that simple game of

fetch and truth - making things up under great

silver moons and skies of many suns. Look about

you, even the ripples on the water and the leaves

on the trees - some stupid prophet has said - are

numbered with the loves of all the Gods. I count

my fingers again, just to be sure. So many things

change so quickly that one should never be

complacent about anything at all.

2097. CAHIERS DU CINEMA

CAHIERS DU CINEMA

Android tabloid headline fixation.

Marquee overhead, blinking lights

like a crazy man singing dirges to

entreat a full moon. Nothing later than

this comes soon. 'Don't 'cha unnerstan,

Chuckie, don'tcha?' Then, the yellow

man put down his paper. It was

something from two weeks back.

What a difference already! I suspected

he knew that. The clock-tower struck

twenty-three. A few lush girls walked by,

staring at me. If I only had hands where

my sockets should be. In the background,

some twerp in his Chevy was loudly playing

'Full Moon Fever' on his cheap-shit radio.

Oh Tom Petty better get ready, the goon

squads are shaking their sticks.

-

Like a dope trying to learn his lines, I

read the same script over and over again:

Desert sands, the cowboy comes over the

ridge, shouting and hollering about something.

The love intererest, whom he's left behind in

Calico Falls, was just found out to be fucking

his brother all this time. She never let on, and

he never knew. The horse goes lame, falls and

drops the crazed rider. He passes out in the raw

desert heat - reciting Keats, absurdly enough.

A flying saucer is shown landing swiftly. Out come

android-geek-hairless aliens. They gather him up

and the take him away. No lines to learn. Nothing

to say. Everything else should be just like that too.

(Cahiers du Cinema for me and for you).

2096. ON SOLACE FIELD

ON SOLACE FIELD

The red barn, in the middle of that field,

it's leaning a bit too precariously for my taste.

I went out there, just to see. A stinging of stars,

the cry of cattle, the whiz-bang of hungry

birds. All that, and evening coming on.

2095. RADIO WAVES

RADIO WAVES

There's a riot in time going on in my mind,

with no ways to placate the things that I see :

the last bastion of the type that grows. Large

letter A, small letter b; things I just don't know.

-

I went to the doctor and he took a look at me.

'It's wise to be unsure.' He wrote that down

on my chart as well. No more than that would

he ever tell. He gave me a prescription for a

swollen lumber yard. That, and two

guys driving a bright green truck.

-

I went home early, but got there late.

Thinking about all that, like statements

of relativity, or something equally harsh,

I took my chances at the Pink Flamingo.

I won the entire chart.

2094. I AM THE OTHER

I AM THE OTHER
'I am the other but I wasn't always the other
some days I was just me and great at that too
though it never was worth much and amounted
to less and I was talking to Evan this guy I know
about his new hat I called it a fedora and then
we realized we weren't sure what it was called -
felt finish with a little feather thing or something
attached at the strip of shiny cloth which wrapped
around the brim and we decided together we'd
both need to look that up for later and what do
you call a hat by style anyway ? tophat fedora
borsalino porkpie all that stuff I never know and
men don't much wear those formal sorts of hats
anymore except like hipsters and the urban hip
and young and chic and all those trying for that
but that isn't Evan's effect at all - more like just
pleasant formality and a certain gravitas or the
likes of that and he said anyway he'd 'gotten it
for trips to New York' so I guess it's pretty much
all the same and a'propos and all that but I sat
down anyway and couldn't get much past just
thinking about all that and - yes yes to get back
to the point : I am the other but sometimes I'm
just me and never really very good at that either.'

2093. DOCILE

DOCILE

(Princeton University campus)

Limitless adventure - I am leaning back into the

sunlight and thinking only thoughts of light and

air. Why this is, I do not know. To my left, two

squirrels scurry, tending to duplicate, it seems,

each other's movement. What a strange and cheery

way to play. The yellow house behind me, with its

history and benches marked, still adheres to its

wily tradition : that of never changing and always

only being what it ever was. A place that had

another time, and now refuses to leave it.

The privet behind me, also with the house,

was started with cuttings from Mt. Vernon.

It is here labeled 'George Washington Privet.'

Purloined cuttings at the dawn of some

revolutionary era. How strange that all

here sounds. There is no revolution here

at all. We are used, and suffer things

lightly. We are cordial to all, docile

to an American fault. Almost a

waste, all this past glory.

2092. REVERIE

REVERIE

The stretch of new section, right there, along the

graveyard I pass each day. Footloose me, walking

by, watching the dawn cut the sky. Stone

after stone, enscribed, names and dates, places,

references. Everything one needs but doors.

Wasn't it Sartre who wrote 'Hui Clos' - No Exit?

There but for the grave of God go I; there but

for fortune...and all the rest. I (really) just can't

stop to care. Life is going, Life is here.

-

I heard an owl once, perched and single.

It looked down and spat mice bones at

me. Nothing good about that. I figured

for nothing at all. By then the shadows

were gone, the lamp-lit sky was over

by sun-up, and so was I.

2091. MAINSTREAM LOCKOUT

MAINSTREAM LOCKOUT

I have challenged the force of balance to

keel over; listening to no voices, hearing

nothing. I found Evil in its place, sitting

straight and steady. The decrepitude of

sky and water mixed - some form of

clay, a human-blend, came forth.

Amazed, I relived this Genesis.

-

Witness none. Crowds all gone. Old taped

voices running on. There is a candle

burning in the other room : a vigil light

for something other, a marker for

the scent of death and offal, all

those things coming soon.

-

'Are you writing in code?' - an

outside voice has asked me this.

I answer with a nod, 'as long as

you wear it, this shoe fits.'

2090. WHY WOULD YOU DO IT?

WHY WOULD YOU DO IT?

Arthur Rimbaud, it was - lugging armaments and

ammo over African hills and distant Mideast places.

One leg rotted, on its way to gone, complaining of the

ragged one left living. What was it, all, I wonder :

camels, elephants, tigers, leopards, cheetahs,

and all that? Or something else instead :

the calm of palm-frond evenings,

the shimmering, silent sound of night

over desert, savanna and plain? I

find I have so very much to wonder

about. I have so very much for sure.

2089. ON POINT

ON POINT

I am on point with my dirge, with my memory, with

my all-too-many-witnessed things. I am (and, yes)

already an old man. And these are distant, dallianced

days : my fights with men, the sad surpluses of Alecks

and Mirandas, the severe routs of magisterial decorum

making up mind and manners. All gone, and all, as well

insipid as Hell. The page I turn is already torn from

a Book of Life long tarnished and re-bound by

amateur craftsmen; to be sure, not mine.

-

I walk away on desert sands and shifting packs

of wind-blown soils. No foundation 'neath the

castle, no moat to embroil. I look straight

ahead, and only see - on point, on point

again, the farther goal I've sought for,

now suddenly so near, still dear.

2088. OBLIVION

OBLIVION

My forces of night are sullen and solemn,

like the black locomotive that wisely leaves

the tracks - frightfully meandering, at

one with only itself, striking where it may

go. The edges of reason, sanity, gloom -

they are but selected way stations on new

stops along the way. This mountain

tunnel has cuts, already set, for oblivion.

2087. OUTSIDE OF ENDINGS

OUTSIDE OF ENDINGS

Someone just told me I looked like Archimedes.

Yeah, right. Outside of endings, I like that one

best. I also like beginnings; but you know where

they can lead. Gustatory overindulgence - I

think that probably means over-eating. And

not only humans alone are so prone :

I've seen aliens too get sick on the road.

Well, their road - space, darkness, cold,

and all the rest. Outside of endings,

I like beginnings best.

-

They fill me with happiness, centeredness, and joy.

They bring forth all good intentions and expectations.

They live up to (I always hope) my own potential -

to be where the action is, to have gravitas and

influence, to be present when the best things occur.

-

Today on Sansome Street, I saw a very old man

take out his teeth. He rinsed them in a fountain

nearby. It was blowing water, at the same time,

into his face, wind-driven. He didn't seem to mind.

I wondered if I could ever be like him. I too am now

an 'old enough' man to be considered either ancient or

a pest and, though I still have all my teeth, well, anything

can happen. Decay sets in, and then neglect. Next you

know I'm spitting out teeth like phlegm. And - though

I don't want to be there when any of this occurs, I

actually do. I don't yet want to die.

-

Yet, I wondered still if - when alive - I could ever

be like that: hitching up my pants by tugging with

my hands, washing out my teeth in a fountain,

wearing wrinkled clothes, seemingly slept in, for

any extended period of time. But it's only good

fortune that keeps me this way, and not that.

It all could fall apart at any moment. And then

well, then I'd be happy to be anywhere at all.

I guess. Anywhere at all. Outside of

endings, I like beginnings best.

2086. STAFFORDSHIRE CONFESSIONS

STAFFORDSHIRE CONFESSIONS

Celebrity rate sheets and corporate dog chews?

The hammerhead of cereals, the underwriter of

all these memorial things? Whenever I think

back on Grandma, all I see are steamed-up

windows from another Winter's night of

cooking tomorrow's food. Food. Food.

(All I ever heard about).

-

Fifty years back, I was an orphan, at the

ready in a stultified city orphanage, just

waiting to be farmed out. Grandma did come

to get me, and I got out - but oh all those

long days in her measly hovel on Avenue

this or that. I really don't remember much.

Next door, a basketball court and a parking lot,

even way back then, when I was ten. Then,

they came again and took me away.

-

I escaped on a dark, rainy night, and was never

heard from again. Grandma died in 1980. I did

attend, surreptitiously, her service at graveside.

One of my crazy cousins, I remember her raving

and fainting. No one recognized me. I came in a

rented military uniform and feigned a wicked

war-wound limp. It allowed me to stay in the

background, and no one really caught on.

-

That too was long ago. Then I found a family,

yes, but only to make it with their daughter.

It all lasted a while and then it too faded away.

My life, awkward, wasted, wicked and vile,

has pretty much always been like that,

pretty much been the same.

2085. AND BEFORE I GO

AND BEFORE I GO

Will you oscilloscope my radar-finder and send

the jackal into May? Can you obfuscate this

endive and bring forth healthy motion? Seas

and swings, party planks and outdoor grills?

Anything to this you wish to add you may append.

-

At that point, even I myself - watching the screen

in rapt attention - looked away; for right here

they were killing a chicken. Twisting sternly the

ringing neck - a squawk ungodly, a shriek, and

death. Even at that, unsightly still.

-

I am always enamored of waiters in tails and

hostesses in tiny dresses. It simply makes my day.

Of course, if you had noticed, you would have seen

how I winked first, and crossed my fingers as I

spoke, and did any of those ironic things to

show I really meant nothing

of what I said at all.

-

The poor boy rubs his shoulders with the rich.

The rich girl sits down with the poor wretch.

All in all, things have a way of working out -

and all manner of lively living goes on.

2084. SO NO I STUTTERED AT THE END

SO NO I STUTTERED
AT THE END
(Speedship)
'A wife, a two-year old, a one-year old' -
the guy was saying that as he walked
away - two construction workers in
Carharts, headed out to their jobsite.
Setting up for a game of 'Family'; I thought
perhaps he meant it all for real. Didn't know.
Can't cover the contingency here; constabulary
re-constriction, life's a prison and all the rest.
Anyway, not my problem, raw-deal boy-man.
-
When Franklin Roosevelt died, he was kept
standing up, strapped to an ice-board for three
days. Why? Who knows? In case he came back to life?
When Joseph Stalin died, he was pasted to the
Kremlin Wall and bolstered there with darts and
brackets. They kept two armed-guards there
every hour of the day. That lasted two years,
and then they gave it up. They wanted to see
how the ideology developed, and what sort.
-
There are always ghosts resting on mantelpieces
and spirits in the parlor air. It just goes without
saying - we shouldn't talk so fast, and we should
first learn what we really wish to say. It's very
dangerous for a person to waste all those years.

2083. THE MINISTRY OF ARCHENEMIES

THE MINISTRY

OF ARCHENEMIES

Why would anyone do something that would just make them

uncomfortable? I really don't know. Yes, true, birds fly into

skyscraper glass and die, but they have really no clue what's

up - broken neck, crushed chest, and all that. Those are

our concepts, to be fair. Race car drivers going 220 miles

per hour around hairpin curves are sure to die eventually

...and they know that and accept it, but, still, why?

The addict piercing skin with needles day after day,

merely to stay alive and high so as to need more?

What's with that anyway? That's all discomfort.

When it's easier to stare into the Sun, walk straight

into the waves, or simply stop moving at all. Those

things, by their realization, are more apt to have

true consequences. It's the love of a life that

really matters; that, and the things one can

hold in one's hands. Objects we can understand.

Not water or powder, no, I mean real things

in the hand, stuff we can touch. That's

the comfort of knowing that Life's

being shared with others in the

same form of habit. Misery. Joy.

Integrity. Relief. Or all those

things anyway the same?

2082. AT MECKLENBERG

AT MECKLENBERG
It seemed this one time the water-wheel was turning,
throwing great gushes of water over some municipal
lawn where a police driver just sat staring from an
overly shiny car. I watched him. He steadily smoked
some awkwardly bent cigar, as if detailing to himself
the varied reasons for doing or not doing something
else. No way of knowing, just what I felt.
-
The door did finally open, and out he stepped.
Walking away, towards the plaza and some
big doorway, he waltzed right in - as if
uniform did bring privilege, as if badge meant
free entry. He was, I guess and after all, Police.
The little town of Mecklenberg likes things like that.
-
Maintaining order, even on a shoestring, gets
progressively easier each day, I would think.
These towns run out of money, no one can do
a thing, services run down, and eventually the
locals just give up on everything and stay distant
and removed all the time. It takes energy to do
crime. You can see it in the kids' eyes - they
stand around with skateboards or phones, just
continuing the idle matter that's stuffed up their
brains already. Just no room to move, or not.
-
The modern world, in itself, becomes the killer.
Cigar-smoking police guys can do nothing for
that. Sit in the shiny car. Smoke that strange
cigar. Wear that funny hat, and let it go at that.

2081. OBSERVATORY

OBSERVATORY

I have decided I want to be at the observatory

with you; settled on the hillside, standing as one,

looking through that strange lens at the far and

open sky before us. You wanted, as I recall, to

guess a number for the stars you could see -

'70, 303', was the number you said, while I laughed.

'They all look the same to me', I said, questioning

instead if they were really there at all. 'I truly

think you've imagined just what you wish to see.'

No better gesture than shrugging could there have

been. You took your hand and put it on my arm.

We stayed like that together, for a few moments,

as you looked high to the forward sky. 'I've never,

I've never really imagined anything like this at all',

you said. 'Funny, I guess neither have I', I replied.

2080. JUST OUTSIDE OF EL DORADO

JUST OUTSIDE OF EL DORADO

The Moon is at my level side, best in the sky,

and partnered in the dawn today with a planet

I really do not know. Morning star, one of those

things. They ride the sky together, in tandem.

-

The morning light breaks, across the water, and

geese are standing at idle, looking so much at

nothing as anything at all. Still too dark or dim

to really see anything; shadows and the weaving

glimmer of light on a rippling surface.

-

It's like this when I want to stay in place.

This summation of the best of times could

only be right now and right here. I try

to listen, but there's nothing to hear.

Goodness is always silent.

2079. MEGA BOYS

MEGA BOYS

Oh yeah, they're all over the place now - those

big, sweaty guys with pumpernickle faces and

hand-held gout. Swinging bootstrap boots and

boxing gloves while they whistle the Marine Hymn

on a motorcycle-guitar drumkit. I don't know where

it all came from, but it started long ago : they drip like

shellac down an old, dried-out wallboard. They change

their oil on kit-cars from the lower domain. Weasel

and Wetzel, names like that; charmed in paint on the

flat sides of open doors. Eating plain bread from large,

open wrappers, discussing Cuban cigars while

hoping their dread will end by the morning

whilst running for home. Oh yeah,

those Mega-Boys do roam.

2078. THIS HEAP (a Dalliance)

THIS HEAP

Does anyone know where the ramps are kept,

the rages, the ridges, the foils of this life? Man juggling

fenceposts on the opposite corner from me; watch him

move, struggling free. Behind him, two cats on a ledge,

tails curled like lions, just staring. Outside of that, nothing.

-

Outside of that, nothing? The mailbox, where the two

Chinese guys just dropped their notes. They are both

walking, with maps, referring. One dangles a small

camera from a small neck. He wears an ill-fitting

carcoat I've never seen before. Talk is cheap. He talks.

-

He talks? Says something about something.

Call that talk? Talk is cheap. Outside of that, nothing.

2077. MY SHINE THIS NEVER TOOK GOING

MY SHINE THIS

NEVER TOOK GOING

Your maple syrup on the shinguard, the shaft

dripping from the tree, the silver buckets hanging.

My very high Vermont watershed inkling, dripping

honey like money like syrup; and all this before the

boiling fire. We never took down our guards, and

the late Winter snows kept falling anyway.

-

Those cows in the lower pasture, all sixteen of them,

busied themselves around the water trough, iced with

the bristles of frost and cold water. They never wanted

coming in, and never wanted going out. That lop-sided

John Deere we kept for special occasions led them

around. They followed it like stupid geese.

-

The one time that Ascor fellow, the Amish one

from the other valley, came over painting barns,

that too was a cold and funny occasion. He slid his

ladder into the chain-drop by mistake, and came

up stinking of shit, 'like a God-awful cow in

every inch' was his exact phrase.

-

And now it's syrup time again : the high mountain

air of a cold Vermont in middle March, believe me

George Eliot, already speaks for itself, and first.

Soon again it will be time to hay. Ah, again

the pleasures of May!

2076. THIS IMAGINATION

THIS IMAGINATION

I broke through the tree line, I entered the realm:

diamonds, jewels, stones, gems, starlight, all those

things in one place, mine. Satisfied to a fault,

I found no more reason than that to remain.

-

My own life had long ago amassed enough.

Around me, precarious and bold, things

balanced on the faintest holds of reason

and belief. Mute people, like broken

chests of treasure spilling their

contents, aimlessly forced their

ways. Manner and custom,

the flag that waves.

-

This was all juice for jerks, I'd

decided long ago. A seventeen-story

building can mean only one thing -

seventeen stories of the flat and

the feeble; Gumby people bent

on a weird survival. Facts and

figures, dollars and cents.

2075. ON MANDOLIN MOUNTAIN

ON MANDOLIN MOUNTAIN

In the time of high manners, on Mandolin Mountain,

I was walking the path through the woods. Above me,

a crazy hawk; alongside me, the running river.

Everywhere, something akin with Nature,

and a language I could understand clearly.

This high up from nowhere, the trapper had

a cabin in the woods; he'd settled in long years

before and I'd met him cutting brush. Just out

from Waverly, along the routing river where

we'd find fossils by the tens. Bristles of sunlight,

coned and filtered, swarmed with light like the

tiny bugs in our Summer faces. We'd pole a

shelter and light a fire by nightfall, three, four,

five of us - each a wanderer seeking place or

a mission. It was 1974, and nothing was everywhere,

everywhere was nothing. The man on the magazine

face said Nixon had resigned. Late August by then.

Who cared? Atop this line of trees, it seemed here

everything had turned to evergreen and conifer.

Nothing left, were October to ever come, for

leaves to fall from. No incentive to bring

a natural death to a place so filled with life.

By September tenth we were all, each,

already gone ourselves; and the trapper

was alone again and on his own.

2074. LINKAGE ABC

LINKAGE ABC

Cannot this be? The watch and the wonder,

the saddle and the strife. A million ways for

a million things - what makes up a life.

And only then do I see the tremendous

yellow orb, running scat along the edge

of an ever-widening sky. Down here,

below, I feel entrapped. Up there,

this feeble mind can wander - better to

tell the shapes and the hidden meanings

of things. I know the littoral tracks which

cross the bridge, meandering and

wandering, can only be mine alone.

This life, like water, falls

from my hands.

2073. HOW IS IT I WAS FEELING YOUR ABUSE?

HOW IS IT I WAS
FEELING YOUR ABUSE?
There are certain varied things at every water's edge
that change and alter with the wind. The way the wide
tides rotate sideways before they shift, the swift and
reverse flow of water running out. Even the windmills,
catching the force of something unseen, now turn with
a frenzy. Perhaps, if all my friends were helicopter pilots,
helicopters and rotors and wind would be all I ever thought
about. But, as it is, none of them are, and I go on my singular
way without that thought. By the same token, though I
cannot walk on water, I am at least watching the sea.

2072. THE MODERN FACE OF DANCE

THE MODERN FACE OF DANCE

To make the entablature fit we need three things:

pliability, willingness and, of course, energy. You must

bend the very bones which hold you back. Use a

countervailing weight to impel the structure forward,

back, and sideways too. The muscle-power used

can only show the flex and the artistry of all those

sinews stretched and displayed. A decorous human

sculpture, in motion, lithe and dynamic. We can bend

the arch, we can twist the waist. It all comes together

as beauty and sense. And - haven't you ever noticed -

there never are any words involved. Speech here is

only a vice, too tight, which holds things down.

2071. (TO SLIP AWAY)

(TO SLIP AWAY)

-Sandy Hook, NJ-

Mabel Trench and all the rest.

Blue Bonnet barbell breeders

with all those horses at Sandy Hook.

Egad, we rode those steeds right into

the sea, and oh how well I remember.

The rip tide in your face, the open ocean

current pulling at your arm. Three old

seafaring scows, piled high with trash in

heaps, heading out from Brooklyn waters.

Beneath the billowy sky, the terns and seagulls,

flipping about, sought food and fish and whatever

let them eat. I fell asleep, for but a minute it seemed,

on some old gun battery placement, looking stupidly

out to sea, looking stupidly towards the open waters.

2070. THIS PICASSO SPEAKS TWICE

THIS PICASSO

SPEAKS TWICE

How I hold onto nothing at all;

this wizened and demonic figurehead,

all glum and serious, this wasted

federation of all consideration and

sense. I see she sits, hard-backed,

against a pea-green wall. The man

next to her seems better than I seem,

for sure, and he's hers. That's to the

good. More power to him too. Both

figures manage a sensibility I lack.

Double-faced in their cubist domain,

I watch profiles and noses and eyes.

I've grown against all that and am, by

now, well-hurt by what it brings : I

try simply to get over it and then,

by chance, I can't. Those dual faces

facing out, that lightly patterned

shading, that pea-green wall.

This Picasso, I realize,

speaks twice.

2069. MEPHISTOPHELES COMES HOME

MEPHISTOPHELES

COMES HOME

I dragged Him from the fetid swampland by

the hairs on the back of His hand. Fat cat

alley rat slime bastard that He was. Shot

Him down with one fell swoop - or whatever

they call that crap in the theater. Houselights

dimming, dip-crack of thunder too, lights

back up bright the sky. Any kind of Murder

will do. He was Mephistopholes, that 's why.

-

He said, from many years back, He'd never seen

a milkman, a glazier, an artist, a carpenter nor

anyone who ever drove a truck. He was quite

medieval in his cantankerous ways - drinking

raw milk from a cow's very teat, killing His own

food and game. Starting fires with His eyes - yes,

yes, that's the one that got me the most. Enflamed

me, in fact. Starting fires with His eyes, and then

taking incendiary pleasure in everything in ruins,

all those people hurt, all those lives destroyed.

-

Not by any modern logic would this fly.

I told it to Him, right before He died.

He had to go - the wind was breaking

the treetops, and the whistling sound of

its fearsome speed could only mean danger

and doom; a trifling damsel this was not.

-

And then for myself, I saw the speeding train

approach. I spread my arms out wide and

suddenly sprouted wings. Able to fly and soar

the Heavens, I went where any urge led me.

'Ain't no mountain high enough to keep me

from getting to you...' You all know the rest,

or I hope you do. Mephisopholes comes home.

2068. PROFESSOR NUCLEUS

PROFESSOR NUCLEUS
He religiously watches his coffee brew.
He's worshiping smoke, and aroma. Two
hands 'round a very small cup. I religiously
watch the windows steam up. Unaware.
Unregarded. Uncorrected. I am such a
neutral moment. A sleeve prepares the
enemy down : ten new bullets on a
field of war. We know how it will
always be. The man needs his
moments prepared to precision -
and buttons are pressed to achieve
what we send. Think not there's a
reason for Reason, for all is ideal in the
end. (And this is but a picture frame).

2067. KEEPSAKE GOODBYE HEART

KEEPSAKE GOODBYE HEART
Don't ruin a thing don't you don't.
Carry that bag like a two-armed
stevedore today. Board on board,
away (oh well, Caravelle) and
may you travel like this forever.
-
Exponentially entrenched, are you?
Bring forth my missive forward
and straight on through. Dividing
the horizon line in an infinite
perplexity will then
just have to do.