3063. VAGARIES OF AWESOME

VAGARIES OF AWESOME

This is as if nothing as this should be this is.
I walk the vague abstract - the line where
the line should not be, the mark where there
is no mark at all. I negate the negation of things
that are absent : the curve of the curvature,
the mathematics of simple numbers. I am,
after all, all that ever was and all that never
will be. My dark-line profile only shades the
shadows and takes light from distant corners.

3062. WATCH THEM DIE

WATCH THEM DIE

I went home holding the palms from my heavy heart
open like leaves of green lettuce spread out for a feast.
It was another Sunday in May - one coming through
with a message. The castle at the edge of the forest,
right near where the three-ring king had settled in,
was lit by fires and circling domes. Small men were
coming out of the sky, crawling about backwards
where they'd land. I felt somehow out of place.
-
Without any meaning, all this withers.
The cacophony you hear is like some music
of the spheres gone quite maddeningly crazy -
all tympani and gong and racket.
Yes, planets yet hang in a wide,
distended sky, but they long
ago have lost all meaning,
and now we watch
them die.

3062. POST-EXALT THE EXALTED ONE

POST-EXALT THE

EXALTED ONE
I see the CaMeRa was left running; your
lights were on, sex-goddess working late,
with all those reflections on the silver-glass
wall behind you. Oh how you must tire!
-
The little guy, the one with the weasel face
and broken thumb (I saw you writing curses
on that little cast), he looked about 15 and I
wondered what he did. Or what he'd done
already to get this job of glory with you.
-
Pale blue paint on a large room wall.
A mirror above the counter. Three
people sitting around to talk. Really,
what sort of philosophy is that?

3061. HOME LIFE

HOME LIFE
Sweetheart I'm not finding much except
your death behind this curtain. 'I love
my house,' I hear you say. Gedding and
Bagger sit like two brand names on the
shelf of malarkey you keep. Even the
dog makes a soiled motion towards
both finish and ending - an otherwise
dull commotion towards a finish we
all face and each can see. There is a
lethal dose in the cabinet - 'always,'
you tell me, 'always and always kept
at the ready.' Odd, how, like some
cold-war spy of a LeCarre novel, you
live your life secret and sly. Occam's
Razor, however, (you must remember),
isn't something you shave with or use
to cut your wrists. Oh well, I digress, and
- I need here to admit - you are otherwise
quite sweet. What faces your wall is a
mirror, turned wrong way over, sweet
one, for sure. There's nothing to reflect;
just an otherwise dull commotion.

3060. PERHAPS IN BETWEEN THEM, LIVING IN A DREAM THEN.

PERHAPS IN BETWEEN THEM,
LIVING IN A DREAM THEN
(April)
All the things we seem to have found
are somehow still here, yet time better
defines them passing. The sky, like a
soup, covers deeply the most defining
edges. Shapes and forms together
avoid reason and names. Avoidance
can no more advance then can dead
landscape and dormant flower.
Everything has possibilities now,
and we will start out again.

3059. THE HARBOR AT SONG

THE HARBOR AT SONG
Don't say unfortunately unless you
mean it... and only then shall they
ask me what I want - a dew drop
glistening on each blade of grass, a
morning's new light and awakening.
No, no, I want for nothing more.
-
And oh thus forever I structured
my time near where only the lyre
bird would sing : high buildings are
all gone where nothing left exists.
I am thy humble wand.
-
Look out, as desperate eyes encircle
the view, and see all things, variant,
fixtured and vast. It is the very heart
of one, of me, of you, that shall possibly
last. And here we are then looking, alas,
at our own and only peril. I want for
nothing more. I am thy humble wand.

3058. NOT MY ETHER WINGS

NOT MY ETHER WINGS

You've brought me no satisfaction like the
lilting toil of struggle and work. Just outside
my face this morning, perceiving a hundred
new things, I perfectly picked out your visage
among the monk-flowers and new rose bushes.
The tall sky loomed, breaking off only where two
perpendicular jets made their smooth and
effective ascents; passing each other, it seemed,
so close but really miles apart; and all those
comfortable people, just sitting. But where
can you stare in the sky, and why?
-
Therefore I list my things : a paucity of
rainbows and ice, an amassed predilection
for duty self-chosen, a nightmare trickle that
won't go away. I close my eyes and try dreaming
once more. It works. I am soon far away.

3057. WHAT DOES MAN WANT

WHAT DOES MAN WANT?

Daylight prelude skytop premonition.
What does man want? Wist-gray,
blue-sky, early morning break to blue.
All the birdies springtime sing. What does
man want? Taut blossom, leaf and water,
all things together, brought as one to new
fruition. We speak the same words.
What does man want?

3056. ASPECTS

ASPECTS
Only in my other aspects were there great things to
move : the crumbling train stop, the broken rails,
the powdered and cast-off red bricks of another
industrial day. My backdrop was a broad, fat
mountain, more like a hillock than an alpine
shaft. Below my feet, just realizing itself,
roared a meager, yet thrusting and swollen,
small river. Any sexual doubt in this world
was taken over by a terrestrial and vital lust.

3055. CHELSEA ART

Chelsea Art -
with Felicity Goins:
I was the odd man out. I was
the man in the postdated middle
of turmoil and time, the one
spinning in his grave, the onerous
marker of all this percussion.
-
He watches as they all line up to see.
'It's all for you, and it's all for me. There's
nothing to be had from being here, and
nothing to be gained by going : your
bullet to the brain, in fact, having
been quite inconsequential, leaves
you nothing but a standing potted
plant, a stupid lamp, a shade
above your fading head.'
-
And still I've got the magic for you :
the one who peels, the singer who kneels,
the perfidious actor in charge of all those lines,
with his keening and his cries. Really, I want
to hear nothing more at all. Nothing.
-
High above the street, atop heads
of those who speak, the raining
lament falls down to its own and
a silent fate.

3054. JONGLEUR

JONGLEUR
I once shared a space with a man
who thought he was God. We shuffled
and shoved each other mercilessly.
He eventually did win out - I ceded
the space he claimed,
and moved away.

3053. FAR TOO HARMONIOUS FOR THAT

FAR TOO HARMONIOUS
FOR THAT
As if seeing misplaced things,
there would be an understanding -
of place, and time, of location and
space. After all, we do move about
yet keep our bearings - learning
our own coordinates before we
finish the race. I am not of the
opinion that we 'wander' this
Earth. It seems far too
harmonious for that.

3052. AND FURTHERMORE (ABSTRACT)

AND FURTHERMORE
(ABSTRACT)

Not the pleasant value of the dumb oasis,
nor the leaving lane of some wide thrush
highway; safeway to the stars? I don't know.
Winkle-green, the mordant verity of morning.
Just today : the spangled meadowlark swooped in
from somewhere south, sat on a limb, and proceeded
to pace. T'weren't nothin' no better than that!
-
All the signs say 'Spring!' In the same morning :
two fellows within one briefcase, and the lovely
lady with the bag of silk. The little guy with the
audience jumps in his Audi TT and takes off,
not even looking up or down. How can one
live with neither smile not frown?
Well, again, I wouldn't know.
T'weren't nothin' no better
than that!

3051. THE BELLS OF ST. GENEVIEVE

THE BELLS OF ST. GENEVIEVE

It's five a.m. somewhere again.
Nothing sounds but dark birdcalls
and the failing moon - sunk low
now on a crooked dawn horizon.
Soon to be - light, and another
brand new day. An hour or so off,
I know the bells will ring as I am
walking by. I'll try to listen smartly,
but, as usual, I'll be captured by the
attention of something else - a new
bird on the wing, some seam of light
forking over the arch where the
cemetery bends, or the lowly roar
of some slowly departing truck.
It always seems I am so alone :
no one listens, no one talks.
I live in a brazen solitude of
the sad with the quiet.
Everyday, almost
the same.

3050. BUT FREDDY, THE LEAVING IS DRY

BUT FREDDY,
THE LEAVING IS DRY

Barnyard, cardyard, shovel shed.
The place where the suffering
animals frothed and shimmered.
I always stayed aware of the gleam,
even as a boy, watching the calf waste
away, eating the gloam from the ribbons
of whey. My Coleman Lantern, as I
remember it, I kept it lit for what seemed
like endless hours of days, as the animals
groaned, the Spring birthings went on, and
those who wouldn't make it prepared themselves
for death. It was like that then, even two hundred
miles away, at my Bradford County home. Dry as a
hat, Warren's barn, burning, just toppled and fell
with a fiery crash - everything streaming out
at once. Flames and animals, the women and men,
all those Pennsylvania people with pails and buckets.
They looked in wide-eyed awe, as everything around
them, everything they'd ever known, burned away
before them, finally, to an absolute nothing at all.

3049. THE SELVAGE EDGE

THE SELVAGE EDGE

What have I managed to save, in my mannered
way of means and wishes, shredding imposition
as the impulses waned? I stood so idly by as
this numbered world passed by.
-
The yellow lights at midnight, seemingly
alive, standing pat in darkness and shadow;
the leftover parts and pieces of everything once
said or spoken of. Nothing matters now. It's all

over and long gone. I was once impressed by
the spectacle, now I can only marvel at the
indifference the absence brings.

3048. AT THE GRAVE OF HERMAN MELVILLE

AT THE GRAVE OF
HERMAN MELVILLE
They have fractured the time I am living through;
though I came with nothing, I am leaving with a
million memories of time and life and objects.
In solace, like a broken dog at the end of a leash,
I stand soaking wet, looking down. At my feet,
in the marsh, lies a space. Something I myself
should fill? Never knowing, never sure, I take
instead one hard step back. Solid ground
still holds me. I am part of another race.
-
Yes, I felt a void and I felt a space.
The fierce, wet wind was blowing
rain across my face.

3047. 'SENTIMENTAL HATTER, BROKEN HOURGLASS IN HIS HAND'

SENTIMENTAL HATTER,
BROKEN HOURGLASS
IN HIS HAND
I am hearing things that make no sound.
I am seeing things that do not exist.
The dark and spectral, that ghost
in town, is making me nervous with being.
I should have left here long ago.
A curlicue of cigarette smoke wrangles
its way past my face. I want for nothing,
I settle for less.
-
There are old pictures on the wall -
some crummy, stub of building and bricks,
which used to be the post office, an old
hardware store, shown here on a dirt-
covered road with square, dainty cars.
It's all labeled as 'used to be here' -
whatever such a foolish phrase would
mean. Like God, Uncle Charley, or me.
I should have left here long ago.

3046. LOVE, DISTANCE, NONCHALANCE

LOVE, DISTANCE, NONCHALANCE
Of all the noble young women I've seen, this
was the finery's best : a Mogen-David doubter,
a chickadee of the highest array. She'd only
sat down once, I saw. Bare-feet cresting on the

wooden railing, near where the white porch
crossed the stairway; some crazy magazine in
her hand. No slouch, more a crouch of an overtly
determined stance - love, distance, nonchalance.
-
I quickly remembered a Christmas Eve, long
ago, when three at-lunch postal workers, off
their routes, had sat together for a pizza lunch
at their local Italian counter. They talked of
nothing, really, two guys and a girl; squiring
back and their jovial talk, surmising meanings
from nothing and mirth, joke and froth, back
and forth. Yes, yes, it was their noonday Christmas
Eve, but so what and 'yeah, glad now that it's over.'
All that Christmas rush and traffic,
I guess; cards and mail, one real mess.
-
I would have thought they'd have all given it up.
But (back to today) this presence astounded.
Blue eyes like tarnished gold, set back and
distant, small and sharp. A birdlike wren,
stabbing at my heart.

3045. A GARBLED LOCATION MESSAGE

A GARBLED
LOCATION MESSAGE

Intending nothing but entering all:
the wave of high grass already grown,
the templed sunlight of a midday sun.
Ancient messages on a frieze of stone.
Two forms, like shadows fit together,
are bending now over the new landscape.
There is nothing to be gained from watching,
nor anything to be gained from the sight.
Words fail where the picture enters.
-
This small place, this hieroglyph - an
ingrown message from a deadening heart.
Winsome, heavy, and embroiled in all,
this location but sanctified by its part.

3044. MY ELEVEN CAVENDISH MUSCLES

MY ELEVEN
CAVENDISH MUSCLES

I strengthened my hand with the play of
erasure: Shoshone ribaldry and captains
by a campfire of gold. Dry and tawdry,
even the tent flaps cracked and split.

3043. THE FIVE DOYLES OF CRENSHAW

THE FIVE DOYLES OF CRENSHAW

(my abstract loom)
The paint was sequestered where the pail
was held. Five story buildings, painted a
midwestern green, showed only numbers
and glass. Traffic ran by like a nozzle-nosed
faucet with a running stream. Those eating
cakes ate their cakes. Fighter-planes screamed.
-
Battleship gray and tarnished with walloping
steel, a pale midshipman - I was watching - held
his ears while his heart plugged away. Two
banjo guys played something on the fo'castle.
-
I was quizzical. It meant nothing. Across the
portal, the sandcastle held the roadway's daunting
edge in check, and someone had (already)
put up some new monument to the dead, or
those who had died at that scene, or someone
alone at that particular intersection. Sheila
or Krysta, like, on the ground. Bunnies and
bears, and some crude hand-written sign.
-
No one knew from nothing, whatever had
really gone on. The sweet-faced cop garbled
his talk with a lemonade ice. Just near the
bicycle store, where two girls stood giggling,
two boys were stood up. Springtime turning
their minds to fancy and their fancies to love,
both their lush purple pants bulged.
-
I meandered the creek at the bottom.
In this rural land, the cities loomed large -
while, in this city place, all that country stuff
as well seemed so huge and so daunting.

3042. AND UPWARDS THEY FALL

AND UPWARDS THEY FALL
I am reading Robert Lowell before the lamp goes out;
this is, after all, our rather astringent age and he was
of it still. He saw the cars - 'ten thousand Fords are
idle here in search of a tradition' - with echoes
girdling this imperfect globe. It is, I say without
my usual circumspection, the luckless world we
both inhabit and run from, together. These are
not simple clothes hung out on our line - no shirts
and jackets or pants and skirts - but rather the
thin glimmerings of the textures of our lives and
all their days, the things we talk of and the words
we save; all the items, left limp in the trav'ling
wind, by which we manner our simple ways.
Philosophies and edicts take a second seat to
that. All those deadly Popes and Kings, long
now gone away, never meaning a thing.
-
We've scooted our royalty long away, and - even -
no longer understand the things they once were
wont to say : all those fearsome, land-locked
medieval minds, their concepts of God and Duty,
the kingships once fought for, the dark, narrowing
minions of their dreary and secular ways.
A din of dark-world duties done in the
names of their feckless God.
-
Even, as well, now Lowell lives on far past this
point. His death may have been mannered, but his
grave bespeaks a revolving door, one which never closes,
and one which never - in the same way - opens. He
long before us bought some words with blood and owns
them still. I am reading Lowell; leaning back on a
pale-green wall, window behind me, my feet up on the
sill. There is nothing much more to be said. The past
is the past, and prologue as well.

3041. FLAWLESS

FLAWLESS

My words are edging towards your own fruition;
so many things go into the making of this fuse.
Myself, and you, the little red wagon at the
side of the house, the tall glass with the cold
iced tea - small items of the sort which
make this life connected to something
with strength. The lineaments of vision
and the sight of a hundred moments,
all together, as one. If you can't
take the small, you'll never
get the large. Men have
died for less.

3040. YOU'RE PRETTY MAGICAL SWEETHEART

YOU'RE PRETTY

MAGICAL SWEETHEART
If I had the planar motion of the stars, I'd
tell you how I really feel. As it is, you're
pretty magical sweetheart. Leonine eyes,
pursed lips, a shanty face like a lover's
own warrant. Everything I'd want in food
or spice - all in one place, and
wrapped up nice.

3039. I'M TAKING A BEATING BY TAKING THIS RISK

I'M TAKING A BEATING

BY TALKING THIS RISK
Your long, supple Hedgemont looks good underfoot.
I soil the shally for the times to come : in outlandish
scenes where the bed-whacker lies. Two red birdhouses,
and a cage for whatever comes by. I've taken these
interests into consideration, and also I've understood
the procedures : the names and the colors, the bricks
and the mortar - both, you see, of some equal
importance. And now, as the raw day arises, a sunlight
of yellow-blue awakens my hope. Fervid desires for you,
ideas to kindle in full view of whichever crowd will
amble by. And, just now, some silly guy in his red
Mustang convertible pulls into the lot at too much of
a speed and then runs out for his donut and drink.
Yes, I could have stolen that car twice in the time
it took him to pay for his stuff. No more than that,
'stuff', was it worth; junk words for junky food.
How's that, Mr. red low-boy mid-life crisis
Mustang dude? I'm so over you. I'm so settled
and rude. He backs out, looking straight ahead.

3038. THIS DAY OF THE LOCUST

THIS DAY OF THE LOCUST

The wind was wailing. I interviewed the vampire; he looked
down my shirt gripping tight my wrists. I knew not what
was coming nor what to do. Just like that, in the essential
moment of a tyrannical dream, I escaped from myself -
for that moment - in lieu of a scream.
-
Escarpment and all those treacherous rocks.
We fell together, it seemed in one momentous
leap, dashing ourselves on the rocks below;
but never, in reality, hitting the bottom.
-
Life. This life. It twinkles like a starlet,
and is over in an instant - like a bad
movie role in a film that should never
have been started, by a girl who really
should just have stayed at home.

3037. INQUIRY STREET

INQUIRY STREET

Amended to nothing at all, deleted and taken away,
that junkyard along the hill always looked special
to me; now it's gone and I'm still here. Water-barrel
rain-spout dripping rooftop mind. Over-covered
rusty metal, paint and peel, glass and steel.
Everything from so long before,
disappeared like an open door.
-
You can scribble in your open book, write
notes to the very environment itself. It
won't matter, here now on Inquiry Street.
Where the trailer park is, the junk yard was,
and the old poison mill (we called it) that
made bug spray and insecticide gel. Their
lake of cobalt blue water? Who really ever
knew. Water that color, too blue to be true.
-
Yet, no matter, Wednesdays to death, I lived
my life athwart those tracks. Train whistle
locomotion black smoke turned electric
whiz-kid fastball gopher trains heading south
to nowhere and north to Hell. Nothing really
made sense. I lived there nonetheless.

3036. ADVERTISEMENTS FOR CONDITIONS

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR

THESE CONDITIONS
In a manner of speaking, silence is better.
A grueling smokestack of blinding grime will
never blot the landscape or cover with smoke
this valley of hope. With magical keys and
miraculous cards I have climbed this mountain,
lived and remembered, so as to tell about all
I have seen. Sit, my friend, sit. The waitress
is soon bringing a tray.

3035. TRUCKLOADS OF STUPID GRIEF

TRUCKLOADS OF

STUPID GRIEF
Constable, police chief, master rabbi,
teacher, leader, dupe or clown : each of
these are mere conditions of Man. Some
without a meaning and others with nothing
to do. See the foolish one over there, singing
before guitar and heater, mouth on a harmonica
like a stupid, lethal greeter, or a canary in some
closed-down coal mine no one ever cared about
anyway. Watch the truck go by; look at that,
it's rolled right off the cliff. And, up there, in
the sky, I swear that plane just blew apart.
-
My mid-air vanishing act, my roadway wreck;
these are the same as all of your illicit dreams
and lies. Fellow, man, friend, pal - once a
something or other to me, a kiddie's pal, a
nothing now. So filled with bile and puke as
to make me sick myself. These are roles,
of the sort that men play. Harmless
tomorrow, but lethal today.
-
By those standards it doesn't matter,
for there is no tomorrow anyway.

3034. I YET DON'T SEE

I YET DON'T SEE

I don't want to make a rude remark or leave a
posting in the dark but all this really should
come as no surprise, why not? It isn't as if
I've killed an eagle or speared a native or
anything like that. Instead, with a particular
ease, I've painted meadows with my dreams
and tinted skies with shades of lighter blue.
It's just my way - seeing things lightly, with
a different hue. I just can't walk off angry.
-
Is that, or can it be, ever enough for you?
A wise man runs and hides ahead of the
danger he sees - I think I've read that
right - and, by contrast, someone like me,
apparently, just walks in from behind on a
broadly covered field of trouble and danger
and angst. A dandelion field, so heavily
populated as it might be.
-
With all these eyes, I still cannot see.
With all these eyes, I yet don't see.

3033. YOU ARE DOWSING THE BONES

YOU ARE DOWSING THE BONES
Charlemagne or Albertus Magnus,
take your pick, neither would do it better.
There's a magic seam running through
the spine of this world, and it's
always trying to run things out,
exhaust us, make us flee, end it all.

3032. MILLIONS OF DREAMS

MILLIONS OF DREAMS

I caught the image running a horizon of
gold : spaced and swift, forging ahead,
a vast alliance of angular thought.
This, this is was. All in one place, the
light-blinded rabble in a hundred
different tongues, all speaking, all
seeking, the very same things.

3031. WHO IS THE MAN

WHO IS THE MAN

The one who chisels,
the one who sings. Plays
cats and cards, divines all
things. We do not know,
and never will. I rest
assured, by goodness,
nonetheless of his
presence. Who is
the man?

3030.TOO MUCH AT THE GLEN

TOO MUCH AT THE GLEN

Well we may have stayed too much at the
glen; shades of falling waters, distaff sides
of wooded lands and all those fertile trees.
Things grew to abandon, all while we
tried to live. No one ever said 'stop'.
We gained nothing from the forcefield
but a mind's eye acre of ideas.
-
Some delicate artist, crowing and crowned
like a rooster, came by to stay. His stupid
open-air paintings and all those ideas of
goodness and right did nothing for me.
I tried talking him away, but more than
that he stayed. Libidinous, fruitless and
faithless as well, he painted all day
by the old brick well.
-
I wanted to run him aground with ice and
a pick, saying 'too much at the glen, too
much at the glen.' But, as it always goes,
I simply had not nerve enough.
-
'Open wide your eager eyes! Look about
you, all the things you see!'. I shouted that
from a nearby rooftop, both to keep him
annoyed and awake. If he was not tired,
he'd sure tired me. 'Open wide your eager
eyes. Look about you, all the things you see;
too much at the glen, too much.'

3029. TRISTE

TRISTE

Yo no me senti triste.
Ella se habia ido definitivamente.
Por muchas diasnp puse nada en mi boca,
solo unas sorbos de aqua.
-
I was not sad now.
She was gone.
For many days I took nothing in
my mouth except a few sips of water.

3028. WEAVERS AND COAXERS

WEAVERS AND COAXERS
(In Progress : 'Stouver's Gold')
I awoke already walking the ridge,
called, somehow, 'Firefly Casement'
by the locals. I never have known at
all what that means. Yet, I knew
(always) what I didn't wish to hear :
'You have mistaken me for something
that once was. My sleight of hand, let's
say, is your Reality. It's fairly simple,
when you think of time just folding in
over itself, mixing idea and image, then,
with consciousness - always changing.
I am that which you guard.'
-
Now, by contrast, this soft Meadowlark
bows, the fleet Robin, seen running, escapes.
Their trapped reality, the very same as mine,
gently enfolds whatever they are. As for me, the
same holds. Blue, speechless skies, the sinews
of grasp and construction, the place of new matter
on a world made of Gold. All true, this, and would
that it could last forever and more.
I really want to be with you.

3027. TO HEATHER THE MOTHBALLS

TO HEATHER
THE MOTHBALLS
(Spring)
This Spring is arriving like marbles on a glossy
slab. The low hand of the horizon rests, and upon
it sets a new Sun and Moon and the planets.
The stars commingle at dawn; watch them,
brother, to tell me what you see. Before I
speak, the birds of daybreak have already met.

3026. I AM VERY SIMPLE

I AM VERY SIMPLE

Not much there, I've heard it said.
My father, not a boaster, was born an
orphan and sent away - just that quickly -
foster home and orphanage and healthcamps
he abhorred. At 16, running off to join the Navy,
he enlisted with a very false given age. No
one seemed to care. Next stop : Solomon Islands,
but not before, as he always put it, a few trips
to 'the biggest whorehouse in the east' - that
would be, according to him, Scranton, Pennsylvania;
from sea to shining sea. 'A real navy town, that
was, inland as hell, but the ladies was swell.'
Anyway, that's all I really remember of what
he said. Later, he learned a trade, upholstery,
after sewing up body bags for three years on
board a battleship-tender; that's a ship that
brings supplies to the larger ships at sea.
Battleships, which needed 'tending'. So
much fun I could hardly remain.
-
There's a lot more to tell, but, suffice
it to say he was simple as Hell,
and, then, so am I.

3025. SOME MEN

SOME MEN
Some men are fond of their cigars :
here, at evening, I watch them sitting
out at cafe and restaurant tables -
eating while they smoke, it just seems
ill-kempt. Or distasteful anyway. Who
would want that? Portraying a drink
as a mistress to a fat cigar? Where
are they going with all this anyway?
Or should I ask about?

3024. THE HOW AND WHY

THE HOW AND WHY

I never made it to the galley-post, I never
walked along the plank. The shoestring,
bushel-bale sailboys never even looked my
way. The men with the hammers, they just
kept busy as I passed; young construction
guys boringly infatuated with their work.
-
I brought my crayons to the match-play;
coloring on paper, writing black lines
over posterboard and tarp. Everyone
seemed happy, and so much got done :
a regular finished Archimede's wedge of
form and shape and color. But, has
anyone really heard me? My shallow
roots try hard to cling to something,
yet everyone seems a gardener with
their ever-clipping shears.

3023. ARMED TO THE HILT

ARMED TO THE HILT

Someone was telling me something vague:
'Air power could have won the Civil War',
or words to that end. The effect was of
wind on reeds, or a fire over marshland.
Steady, but unsure nonetheless. I sat down,
to feature the listen. He was now talking to
his companion, a wonderful girl whose lips
seemed to glisten. I thought of my own
Shakespearean bliss at witnessing drama,
at witnessing this. Sensation like the
unfolding of a deep-written script.
-
She said: 'But then, why would they want
to win if that's all they'd needed to do? And,
anyway, they hadn't those airplanes yet
back then. You're just being foolish again.'
-
I laughed uproariously to myself, behind
my gilded pillar. The sign nearby said that
these hedges had been planted first in 1881.
They had prospered well. It was late Winter
now, early Spring, whatever, and they really
were raring to grow - all buds at the ready.
-
Such strength pushes even the most
beleaguered among us into new life. Ideas,
moments, actions, regrets. All the same
when the hammer comes down. Air power
could have won the Civil War? Oh
but with what a fearsome sound.

3022. AND THEN THE ARYAN MAN

AND THEN THE ARYAN MAN

And then the Aryan man, the strict one, the

white one, the original one, he came through
on a yellow steed, holding nothing in
his hands but a rigid form of death -
all passive and forlorn. 'I used to
own all this,' he said, 'then I
gave it all up.'

3121. POTENTATE

POTENTATE

The one who zooms in
on a cloud, stealing the scene,
thundering loud. And, really,
who cares for that?

3020. ELECTRICITY BREAKTHROUGH

ELECTRICITY BREAKTHROUGH

You have broken my hand with your coiled
force and torn at my heart with your fury.
Oh wild and electric one, how I could love
you best! Wired to emotions, flamed and
fiery with the force of current fusing.
Bond and binding, all things together.