3337. AS WE KNOW IT NOW AGAIN

AS WE KNOW 

IT NOW AGAIN

I haven't ever understood the nodding relationship

between this end and that place : the small girl

in the black robe holds her arm out, with a camera

at the hand, the light flashes as she snaps away.

Gentlemen, in their old skin, walk stiffly off, one of

them archly smoking a pipe. The razorhat brigade,

all over 70, it seems, comes snappily by, being

driven in carts. Old pros, professionals anyway,

limping along though too limp to limp. The blue

sky above festers in its own moment; a new

presence in a very old and tired drama. Life!

Life as old as sin, as we know it now again.

3336. NANCY MCGUIRE ALONG RIDGE ROAD

 NANCY MCGUIRE 

ALONG RIDGE ROAD

McNamara Meetinghouse along the iron edge

of old Ridge Road. I took Nancy McGuire to a

dance there once, a very long time ago. She was

simple and sweet, and we kissed for an hour,

it seemed. The deadlights were flashing at the

end of the lane, where lovers, I think, kept

traipsing in and traipsing out. None of that

mattered to Nancy; she wouldn't budge an

inch. All that I learned, I learned in that

cinch - just wishing I knew more.

3335. SAME SHADY MATTER

SAME SHADY MATTER

My life is a saddle for a horse never ridden;

the straight line runs to the horizon, east or

west, up or down, it never mattered, I've 

always forgotten, and there's no difference

anyway there. Same light. Same slant.

Same shady matter. I've put down

my stirrups, and long ago

left the barn.

3334. DO NOTHING 'TIL YOU HEAR FROM ME'

DO NOTHING 'TIL 

YOU HEAR FROM ME

('her voice lutes brokenly like a heart lost')

Whilemena!  Inanities!   Gershwin!

Ruling Dead Triumverate Magnificent!

(and here comes Billie Holiday!).

-

Now to look around: over there, over there,

that's Eugenides scratching away - yellow pad

and papers and flipper over scarf. (Yet it's

not enough to find that tantalizing touch!).

-

And here's the scoop: the white line moves

and tingles. There seems to be soup in

every window, as American as ladeling

pies from the old farmer-lady's porch.

(Oh the backyard is brackish).

-

'I thought I could do something to ease

the contradiction between immanent and

universal ethics which I thought was my

problem and was what I hoped to gain

thru therapy like any evolution presupposes

an involution and all tha kind of thinking.'

-

(Whilemena! Why am I reading Kerouac again)!

3333. I HUNG MY HAT

I HUNG MY HAT

(Part One)

Penny-whistle anteater ceramic form:

'Call it what you want', the strange sculptor

said. Hi-hat with a tribe, a nail-gun throbbing

loudly - 'Why do you operate this way?', said

I, 'almost annoying, don't you know? So much

force and noise.' He was throwing things down 

now, from a scaffold. Everything stayed still.

-

'Watch, watch, the new light on the hedges out

there' - we were looking at morning coming over

the hill  -  'then try duplicating that in your mind;

perfectly defined light, living its own place, shading

green hedges doubtlessly.' I looked and saw  -  a

nice light, with well-defined angles dripping down

over the white-metal lamp-post and hitting the hedge.

He was right; it was beautifully bright.

-

He'd written me once before  -  'No barfy teen-age'd

snot writing snarky lyrics to his mother. Why then did

Rimbaud stop writing? He damn-well better have,

that useless piece of crap, teen-age angst and all

of that.' I'd guessed he didn't like Rimbaud, though

I never asked and he never told. A few lines later,

he wrote 'youth is wasted on the callow, fucking

young.' I wrote him back, 'So, you only seek

maturity? And now you work in wood and stone?'

'Yes', he'd replied, 'it changes less.'

-

 Now I was drinking coffee at his table, while he was

downing scotch and probably drunk as well. He slammed

his glass down hard  -  'To tell, to tell, I'm tired of all this

shit now. I just want to get along. I'm too fucking old and

nasty to care. Hell, if I could make thunder now instead, 

I would.' I had to stay strong, trying to tell this backwards

nicely  -  a tale as rugged as rock but spacey as stars. I can't

really define the moments, but in these ways this is pretty

much how they occurred. He was wearing a hat he called

'Pomona Ray'. He was throwing things down, where they stayed.

3332. SALVATION HAS REACHED SERBIA ONCE MORE (Demon Devil)

SALVATION HAS REACHED 

SERBIA ONCE MORE

(Demon Devil)

Traumatic times make for an ace in the hole:

bring out the flagellants, the fires, and all those

guns. Look at the flames along the roadway, and

think who made them. (We've never managed

motivation well). And was that you, out there

singing at the drain? (I was at the hospital just

yesterday morn. Yes, they were all dying in droves).

-

The youngest of the five, the small artist, he wants

to come home but there is no place left. We haven't

yet told him, and no one really wants to : his sister

was raped and mangled, and his father is dead.

Salvation has reached Serbia once more.

-

I remember (I think it was) Mostar or Srebenica Bridge,

one of those  -  all the killings, and the bricks came down.

Now the water runs placid, along the shore and the grime.

The old men are sitting in chairs and having their time.

Salvation has reached Serbia once more.

3331. WHILE THE GILDED PROFESSORS RULE

WHILE THE GILDED 

PROFESSORS RULE

Actually, I'd prefer the million broad provisions of

another grounded life to the wan material I'm now

presented  -  I read the Contingent Gospels, I read

the Fall of Rome, I've read Tristram Shandy, Moll

Flanders, Harvest Home. I'd much prefer instead,

these days, to come around the winding road, to espy

old Beacon Mountain, or think of Wind Gap; passages

through Nature in the gloam. These are, to me, newer

things  -  small places I've been, things I've seen. The

wind upon the buttercup, the hummingbird stuck flapping

in the air; all honey, all nectar, all blood and all good.

-

(Why do you go on so, parrying your words with this

soulful lament)? I do not have to answer! Gilded professors

and General Pomp, each have made me (just as well)

somehow sick with a certain, pointed hatred. Your

soldiers, like your ideas, have died already. Your

horrid, arms-bearing ideologues merely make me laugh.

I hope you die, in fact, each and every soldier you produce,

each motor-tronic moron you enact. Live by the sword,

die by the sword  -  yet for all of you, I hope it happens

twice; I hope you die anew, and you never come

home to enter my land again.

-

I've made the adjustments, corrected my ways  -

now all I need do is live out my days.

3330. REVIEW

REVIEW

Mail the picnic card on time, and

slurp your broth with shuttered lips.

Never do two things at once and  -  

just as well  -  don't talk while you're

doing the one. Most things will simply

recur, and the girls will each come home.

3329. I HAVE A BRIGHT BLUE DRAGON, RIDING HERE IN MY LIBELOUS EYES

I HAVE A BRIGHT BLUE 
DRAGON, RIDING HERE

 IN MY LIBELOUS EYES

From Newark they took the medallion.

The ruinous locals would steal everything

here, where Dutch Schultz and Lewie Lesko's

final soliloquies were written on blood on

the chophouse walls. Miranda died, and the

ghost tavern still has the drunks on the side;

they wait every morning for nothing, at a

tavern that is no more. The lastly God-damned

hookers stand outside and hawk with pride.

The tiny Italian, I heard him say - 'I'm ok now.

I've had my fix for the day.' Plucking olives

from the rosebush bed, reading secrets at

the gorge  -  Newark to Clifton to Paterson

and back. Such makes a day, and that is that.

(And oh, this all works beautifully. I have a

bright blue dragon riding here in my libelous eyes).

3228. CEMETERY

CEMETERY

We found ourselves somehow walking

beneath the monstrous oaks and elms

still standing. At my feet was the grave

of a grandmother I never knew. The

crazy one, the one put away, the one

who died in the the asylum far off. What

little I remembered right then beckoned:

The expansive hillside lawn, the bright, 

white sun, and all those ghost people

just walking about. (Leave the

mystery, don't take it out).

3327. BOTHERED BEN BARRY

BOTHERED BEN BARRY

I may have bothered Ben Barry, but I

wouldn't know. The morning, the day, was

close as a vest, and I was thinking of Ukraine -

some crazy Russian war a year or so ago.

Nothing added up. Nothing mattered. And

then Ben Barry came waltzing by. All his smiles

wanted to sing the same way a child's eyes want

to mesmerize. He sat on a bench on some guy's

boat, and just began singing  -  'won't you

let me take you on  a sea cruise...'

-

Mist was thick like fog, and it hung on

everything. Crickets too tried singing,

but they got stuck; stuck in a trill, stuck

in a drone, stuck in a lull. Visibility, as if

they said it, was cut to five feet. Bothered

Ben Barry was still on that seat.

-

 Never mind all that : I speak to you direct

instead; no things, no objects in the way.

Open up your heart and spirit, and take

it all in. It is the only way. And such

Love is the only growth. Even if

bothered Ben Barry be.

3326. SPADE TO SHOVEL

SPADE TO SHOVEL

'Dear child, you are awake and given each

possible thing to savor : the shovel on the

land, the spade on that small patch of ground.

Now understand nothing more than this  - 

you must go on.'

-

When people tell their tales and stories,

I must listen. Need not genuflect, of course,

but listen. Yet now, yet now it seems this

heart will burst. I will miss you evermore.

The needle-jet circumference upon open

waters circles out; spreading its waves,

its open form, upon the sea. Coffee

from Wales? No such thing.

-

Do you understand this waking mystery

I present you? The gum wrapper on the

pavement, the little cracks in the pane of

glass  -  each of these in their ways too

bring me forth to tell to you. Pain. Fusion.

Want. Longing. Pain. Fusion. Want. Longing.

-

(The Sun has really no value now. It

oozes a useless light on varied things).

3325. THE PERIODIC TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS

THE PERIODIC TABLE

OF THE ELEMENTS

('we drove 9 hours up to Planet Vermont')

Somehow ideas that work seem never

problematical. Mendelev himself arrayed a

certain world with a standing, scheming logic

we live with yet today. How smug are the

assumptions still in use to make this world's

array. Words scatter like gas from the conclusions.

There  -  in a stream where never maple water

stops flowing, this deep in old Vermont. Sitting there,

a man as well who talks with a voice like honey (I

can only call it that). And such a one is talking still.

His small wife listens, as the people pause. Blood

brothers, to the bone grafted, exchanging spittle

and harm and grime. In the hotel room, I heard

Helen on the radio and  -  with a Gideon's Bible

in his ancient hands, the man from the Bennington

Hotel  -  a huge, cranial skull depression where his

forehead should have been  -  stood standing,

quietly, on the third floor landing.

3324. REFLECTIONS ON

REFLECTIONS ON

Time was Man could see : light of

the Moon shining down through

the trees, strange shadows along a

wolfpath at night. The forest was

folded and ribbed, saddled to ride

with dimension and flourish. By the

light of the silvery Moon. Today's

standards, so much dimmer, we

lick two stamps, not even, and send

things on their way. Oh marvelous

Earth, I have married you for your

change and dimension. Or then

again have I not?

3323. 'NOT LONG ENOUGH', THE MINER SAID

'NOT LONG ENOUGH', 

THE MINER SAID

'Air grows short in a pocket; we do not know,

by the new flow, if the water will reach you, nor

if you'll stay dry. Twelve feet of solid rock

we've got to drill  -  harsh  -  and that's once

we get down there. We can't wire you for light.

We can't wire you for air. Whatever you do,

be careful down there and - I guess - just

wait. No sacrificial landing this is, and there

are a hundred faces up here crying.'

-

Then the loud dogs barked the tripwire

while those men with lanterns held their

lights. Insipid, invalued humans; there

was nothing left to do.

3322. DO YOU WISH? (the Gardener's Lament)

DO YOU WISH?

(the Gardener's Lament)

Do you wish to force the clover past the brick?

Place the newly painted planter by the portmanteau

or portecochere  -  whatever those sounds like

fussy words declare? Do you wish your hat, even

your gown, your very clothes, now to be withheld

within my gardener's hands (for I would strip you

like a stem)? And, oh yes, I can grow things, I can

press you 'til your heart upends. I can love you

easy or love you hard; your choice to sing, my 

oh-so-lovely thing. Let us mark these notes,

instead, to muse on  -  how the singular light

of daytime marks your lonesome face; how the

small bird, singing, watches wary, and - lastly - 

how this regal breeze the fir tree brushes. Now,

do you wish to force the clover past the brick?

3321. I DREAM OF THINGS

I DREAM OF THINGS

I am not that very good at running - 

hacking breath with blood, keeping

snide evasions to the side of me, watching

others pass me on the fly. And yes, yes,

correct, I dream of things  -  the day my

wings shall fly, the morn' my ship comes

in, the night my eyes shall cry and the

race that I shall win!

3320. THE PHILIP GUSTON BRIDGE

THE PHILIP GUSTON BRIDGE

nyc, (1967)

I called back once, and he was gone.

All that color and content, patiently 

waiting for him, or myself, to come.

The ceaselessly stupid old phone rang

crankily off its hook  -  no one ever

answered; just as no one ever sang or

warbled, or hummed. A hangman in a 

hood, that fat cigar, and the cracked 

and mottled shoe : loathsome intimations

of how rank this single humanity can be.

-

I shook his hand and tapped his back,

numerous times and long ago, on Eighth

Street and on Tenth. We hung together

like compadres  -  the crazy Rover 2000,

the car he drove to and fro, and his wry

smile  -  over and over  -  about something

quaint or another. Back and forth to talk.

-

Morty Feldman. The Woodstock studio,

Milton Resnick and David Hare. Jesus

Christ, I'd give an arm to have it all again.

3319. AS THOUGH THE WAITING

AS THOUGH 

THE WAITING

We take the weave, the warp, the very

natural injury of time and thread it over

substance : 'little lamb, who made thee?',

'shall I wear my trousers rolled?', 'I wander

through these charter'd streets', and all the rest

of that. Idleness bemoans itself, as a claptrap

of little minds. And, nonetheless, as though

the waiting meant something  -  as though the

very waiting in and of itself held value  -  we,

stutteringly, travel on. Unlocking morning doors,

writing that note, brewing coffee on a lacquered

ledge. Sitting back. Swerving a yellow car through

some black and muddy traffic of valueless virtue.

-

Every time to go means getting where one's going.

-

Instead, I wallow. I watch the frozen Autumn

flower droop and crack its timely Death. Yes, 

yes, the season has held its court and you are

guilty! Found to be culpable, now even you,

oh Beauty, oh Life, oh all this thrust of Goodness,

must  -  by this decree  -  go! Take leave! Die off!

3318. WHAT THEY TOO HAVE LIT

  WHAT THEY TOO HAVE LIT

To there; to fabricated men, to fractured women,

to lost moments, to meanings without thought.

I light the light and it illumines, while all my

thoughts, well-lit as well, reflect

what they too have lit.

3317. GOING TO TEXAS WITH SAM SHEPHERD

GOING TO TEXAS 

WITH SAM SHEPHERD

'Oh damn, we're already fucked up!' The little sun

was shining flat out, baking the ground and killing

all lesions. The noise behind us wasn't noise, just

sound. The cooking of beetles. The grilling of hides.

Along the horizon, only the ridiculous look of 

Mexico sheds, Alamo sides, Amarillo antics.

In a little, squat, suburban town, we pulled into

a grease-stained driveway, broken and slanted.

Somehow (and why?) a '68 Super Sport, some

ghost of an old Chevrolet, sank and rotted. We 

turned once to look, and you muttered - 'Jesus

and shit both; there she is'. Her name was Nanta

Maris Escovara, and for two hundred miles I'd

heard nothing but her story  -  a life-blood of

sex and devilment (hell, wanting even me to

jump in!), the brother who died on Yucatan 

Road, the three kids left behind. Did I

mention the sex? I really forget. We 

got out of our own limping car, and

she came over, just like that, like 

we'd just seen her yesterday and

had more to say.

3316. DICE (1099)

DICE (1099)

Shadow into seeming; dark night into Death.

The staggering leap of fire and heat, the jump

across the divide, the lime beneath the feet.

All, all, all for nothing at all. I watch the crusaders,

boot-blacks and lancers, wriggle their way past truth

and consequences. The pole that pierces someone's

heart holds not mine but another. I waltz across

the history zone, in silent, secret reverie, too tired,

as it is, to scream or flinch. Shadow into seeming;

dark night into this. The blackbird yelling, the jackdaw

dense, the Jesus of the image on the banner, now

afire, burns to dust and ashes on a brittle field of want.

(All, all, all for nothing at all).

3315. A SINGLENESS OF TIME

A SINGLENESS 

OF TIME

We are growing our bodies outside of ourselves,

relegating the present to a circumstance, and

moving on. And then - I hear a door slap shut

and realize nothing yet remember :  once too

when I was somehow a child, open and 

unshuttered, insisting on making loud noises.

Now, all things have changed. There are

voices parting ways, dissembling in a haste

of 'harvest fairs' and 'Thanksgiving plans'.

All things I never wish to see.  The chrome 

sun shines off the Buick's blue face, and

somewhere, near above, the terminal clock

chimes off another railroad hour.

3314. COMES TO THINKING

COMES TO THINKING

I have not blinked. I am still here.

Drinking wine from an ashtray, something

akin to reading Anne Sexton by the

double-dose - such it is that makes me

bleary. Dead-eyed Jack, all is black,

with two marvelous bandits on the corner.

No, I have not blinked and I am still here.

3313. OUR MEEK ADJUSTMENTS

OUR MEEK ADJUSTMENTS

By all my mutilated edges I have wholesome come to this :

my most magnificent crenelations, rudders in the brain,

ripples on the head, slow folds on the cranium of all my

time. All the wind, in turn, undulates these things like

willows blowing slow rhythms of the riverside's edging.

Squirrels and chipmunks, in the hills above, stop short

and take their notice, while filthy geese and placid ducks

don their usual pacings for whatever it is may come below.

(We make our meek adjustments to what the world may bring).

3312. HEAVEN AND HELL, JUMBLED

HEAVEN AND 

HELL, JUMBLED

I read the light coming through buildings and

doorways, coating streets and people. All the

light told me was gracious and gold. In each

entry, something huddled : once, a dun-gray

man, shivered from cold, and - in another -

a tired woman holding a cat in her arms.

Farther off, three fellows, close together,

seemed never to stop talking, in a near-rout,

jostling as they went. This was the open book,

 the street, the light-van, pooling and vibrant.

Twenty years ago, I'd never have looked

and never understood. Now, I knew the

reach of Heaven's presence, here, where

I stood. There is no greater place than

all this is; this Heaven and Hell jumbled.

3311. TREES

TREES

There wasn't a blanket for the forest,

nor a forest for the trees. Everything

was white, like a solid wall, bright. We

jangled the commingled action, screaming

all the while about things unseen. You

partied with your face off. I was the jester

to your mourning cloth. New Orleans and

then Mount Arlens  -  two such different

places and neither made a difference to

each. I called, but they all were calling back.

-

When the reivers hit the river, everything

went down. We were caught in the flood,

down in the flood, lost in the flood. We

were lost in the flood, down in the flood,

caught in the flood. My Arlington master

said I'd 'finally made the grade, in spite

of all else.' I really thanked him, and left.

-

With all of that, I was alone with...the trees.

A spangled whitewash, a jeddermaster fope

of mis-matched words, a harlequin of night's 

own fusion. I spoke to my dark shadow, and

it spoke right back, by the light of a now

gorgeous moon. I'd 'finally made the 

grade, in spite of all else.'

3310. MICHELMAS (Candy Factory)

MICHELMAS

(Candy Factory)

This Michelmas has a factor in my being.

Heralding change, the mad doctor brings

his curtain down. The sledgehammer eyes

of the weaver are doing their little job to

assess and size up the totality of limits:

those lights set twinkling in the harbor,

the two men obscurely, and yet somehow

mysteriously too, lighting each other's

cigarettes in a darkened wharfside alley.

A heartfelt Hart Crane manuever

if ever one there was.

3309. SENATOR TOWN

SENATOR TOWN

The best thing he ever did was die;

like dining on poison fish, he swallowed

and gagged and fell over. Taking all

that filthy money with him? Well, no,

not really  -  the stinking cod left it

all behind. All those corrupt lines

of payoffs and deals. All those

hands out, to Senator Ellis Town,

and not a dollar clean left to spare.

He's dead, and gone from here.

3308. OLD CHALK

OLD CHALK

The wind left bloodlines on the beachfront sand,

places where people had been dragged and

pummeled. The Inn at Old Chalk  -  or the

ruins of what once was there seventy years ago  -

were still up on the cliff. About a mile off,

to the left of there, the once-village graveyard

slumbered. The dead had played their dice

and plied their strife, long before, and, now,

it was all over and finished. The wind had

left bloodlines on the beachfront sand.

-

The people in the village, the tired ones,

the near-dead-but-not, still exclaimed

to one another about the ways things

were : 'The Bowdy boy, I watched; 

he died, there, on the beach.' Extending

a wiry, crooked finger, they flail at

pointing to something afar. 'The

lugger-boat, as I recall, had

quite nearly cut him in two.'

-

The wind grew fiery and messy;

the yellowing storm lashed and

tore. Like fire-rockets coming

from dirge and destruction,

broken pieces of another

world  -  now mangled and

torn  -  left only shreds of

a place that once was

Old Chalk Inn.

3307. TWIN-SPECIES

 TWIN-SPECIES

As if separated at birth, we are twins from a land

where no borders exist, where air is the essence

of everything and where  -  solids be damned  -

there is nothing to grasp or to handle. The

blue sky, we later realize, goes on within us.

-

If comedy could be termed a factor in what this

world is, I'd be laughing still. As it is, the only

blanket that keeps me warm is the sad blanket 

of sorrow; and we are twins, from a land

where no borders exist.

3306. EXPERIMENT

EXPERIMENT

I did all that your experiment asked of me :

I learned your art, I drank your wine, I textured

each of your long durations  -  night, day, and

whatever was in between. Each smile you sent

my way, I decorated just as you showed.

Like some eerie pumpkin's juicy mash, this

time-soaked derivative of living came my way.

I realize only now, we really should

have talked it over first.

-

That ghost from your gazebo, yes, it still

comes around seeking handouts and love;

throws its caution to the wind, prances

so like an idiot, shows itself off to

most anyone at all. My view now?

Hardly worth a bastard's effort.

-

In the last flood, all that mud washed

the evidences away  -  but I had

been there, hiding out, just to

see what a ghost does when

it's bored. Not much differently

than you and I do, it claims to

fall in love, seeks life, runs

crazy-rampant from edge

too edge. Then it tires,

and disappears.