Saturday, December 31, 2011

3382. MAGIC CAR

MAGIC CAR 
Yes, yes, arrive, come on, aboard, enter. 
This is all of the magnificence we have. 
Why is it all so specific? How do 
we learn the moment? Along the 
roadway, the landscape moves.
I see the passing of hundreds 
of shapes. I stand alone, 
face to the wind. No
one pulls me back in.

Friday, December 30, 2011

3381. IN PASSING

IN PASSING
I don't want to talk about Morreale. I'm here
to live and die, nothing more. I don't wish to
preserve the lines of that fence, make sure the
gate-latch closes, whitewash the pale, check
the shed door. I'm here to live and die, and 
nothing more; and that I shall surely do.
And that, I shall surely do.

3380. ETERNAL RECURRENCE AGAIN

ETERNAL RECURRENCE AGAIN
Everything around me is dark. I am seeing
things through a broken still-camera in my
heart. All things are dark and gloomy...
this darkness is looking good.
-
This big painting, by Velazquez, is
looming over my head : 'The Surrender
of the Dutch at Breda', or something like
that. Fires and pyres, the big, brown rump
of a horse, lances and spears, and then
that soldier, staring out at me. Brown
and blue, my heart again.
-
There is nothing more difficult to hide
than Fear  -  it makes us shake and
shudder, just with memories of our
days. I wouldn't know why, nor what
it's possibly worth. To be or not,
that question comes back, and the
fires seem still burning on Breda's
wharves  -  eternal recurrence again.
-
Instead. Instead, I want to be thinking
about 'Las Meninas'  -  'The Spinners',
also by Velazquez  -  the other picture
in my mind : the reflection of a King and
Queen in a stupid, awful mirror - who cares,
of that? - the painting within a painting - 'oh,
what is that?'' - the little, red jug held by
the maid, the little boy who kicks the dog,
and, the little girl, being handed that jug.
All this, like words; so much at once.
-
And who am I, that this matters? Traveling
time, five centuries near, to bespeak some
ancient and doddering painting : dumb Dutch,
bold Spaniard, doped Italian, all! Time stops,
and it happens again and again. Everything
around me is dark. I am seeing through a
broken still-camera in my heart. 
Eternal recurrence again.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

3379. IT'S TOO LATE TO STOP IT NOW

IT'S TOO LATE 
TO STOP IT NOW
Nothing moves forward, all things stop.
Even the Jewish Islamicist nearby, by his own
definition I hear, wants new settlement stopped.
Yes, but 'no one knows how the women
feel about this (for instance, ask Jodie).'
-
'We've a need to find common ground, I
think, instead. My friend moved there, he
met someone from South Africa, as they
rented a house together  -  met, married,
and carried on. Later, she was killed by
a terrorist bomb in a market square. But,
hey, who's to say about anything?'
-
Phoenicians at one time ruled the nearby
sea  -  they traveled the waters at will,
transporting great cedars by limb and
by trunk and all cuttings. It has been
like that forever  -  even a long time
ago. Too late to stop it now.
-
'Oh, by the way, you can tell my father
that I finally caught that medieval lungfish
he was so long chasing after. With all
the bother and fuss he put forth, it was
really not too much of a matter.'

3378. LOTS OF CIGARETTE MONEY

LOTS OF CIGARETTE MONEY
I do not smoke, and Man does not
lightly alight from plane, boat or ship
thinking of continuance or pleasure
and pomp. Certain things lead to
certain things, while others just go
on. To tell you the truth, I do not
care and it does not matter. By chance,
there is a 'Quik-Chek' on the corner -
cars are parked and people mingle.
-
You are near enough, while others
are far away : Bakersfield, California
(is that the Central Valley?) and 
El Paso, Texas  -  both those places
hold folk eternal and people I know.
Those hinterland, well-topped hills
of Hollywood and Vine : crap-happy
scene stars, the dead and all the rest,
with their sad and droopy faces, watch.
-
I came through darkened woods  -  
where the paved road had long ago
ended. A few houses, scattered about,
with streams and ponds, led me to see
I was traveling on dirt, with nothing that
was paved or surfaced, and that I was,
really was, just living in a dream.
Really, just living in a dream.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

3377. THE ART OF SECRECY

THE ART OF SECRECY
And all that Fargo noise : it goes 
nowhere, all this blarney and froth.
It keeps making sound nonetheless.
I can look forward to so many things.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

3376. WELL, ALL THAT'S GOOD

WELL, ALL THAT'S GOOD
(for helene grimaud)
And the sun will shine forever and your
lips will always glisten while your eyes
shall always smile, and I will be at your
side forever. Of such feelings is my felicity
made. I clamor for things of you. I harp
at your musical well. Let me listen anew.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

3375. UNTIL IT IS THAT I AM LOST

UNTIL IT IS THAT I AM LOST
A little does not mean a lot, nor does a lot
mean anything much. Until it is that I am
lost I will be without avail : nothing to go to,
no rudder to grasp. Others tell me all that
is really the opposite of being lost. Having
a rudder to grasp does not mean not having
one  -  and the use of 'until' breaks the code.
Nonetheless, whatever they say, I am lost until...

3374. AVERAGE TITLE

AVERAGE TITLE
The average title comes and goes; we are nothing
without it, and it is nothing but for us. These are simple
items : disparage one, and the other is gone. Like at the
woods which line the old field, the farmer's trespass
and the wild of deer and turkey overlap. One day the
juncture works  -  water and corn and barley  -  and
the next day everything is barren and dry. We wait for
an average  -  the normal season to come which will
balance all things out. Until it arrives, we just go on.

Friday, December 23, 2011

3373. POLITENESS AND WAGER

POLITENESS AND WAGER
There are two flowers on the stairway, each in
a separate vase, on the landing shelf. People pass
and notice : the blue water  -   it seems, though it's
only blue because of colored glass  -  and the sunlight
throwing varied shadows of these items on the pale,
white-painted walls. Different dimensions all through
the day. Light passes and light changes, all that we see.
-
In dresses and gowns, some women pass. In cassocks
and beads, two priests go by, oddly. They are holding
a chalice, one, and a lit candle, the other. Liturgical
folk, for some reason here, going about their funereal
task. In the other room, as I see through, the deep
crimson back wall is crowded with more flowers,
funeral sprays and bouquets. Yes, yes, there is
someone's old body displayed, I see the open
casket in a strange half-light. Am I myself in
death or dying? Between two places I neither
really know or care of? Nay, I am well alive,
proven just by all these observations, no?
-
I wouldn't want this half-life ending to be blemished
nor  -  for that matter  -  abbreviated or cut short.
So, by those means, I am - I do suppose - placated
and made happy still. I see. I touch. I feel.
This is somehow living, and I will be
as nice as I can be.

3372. JONAH SAL

JONAH SAL
There won't be an ending and there won't be a
meaning : I promise you both of those. At the
wharfside, there shall still be ladies eating 
crackers with their soup, maidenhair ferns,
and daughters with rings.  As you know,
none of that ever changes. Way out, on
the far-side sky, if you were to look, there
would still be seagulls, moon and sun and  -
floating so flat and ephemeral on the ocean's
odd horizon  -  the one or two distant tankers
at sea. None of that changes either. And then,
of a sudden, in an instant, the fierce, fiery monster
will rise up its head, great noise will ensue, and  -  
stepping but like a figment over flaming seas  -  
the figure of all time and all fear will step out,
reach, and consume us, all and every.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

3371. A COMIC TRIANGLE

A COMIC TRIANGLE
Two roads converged in a woods:
I took the middle one. Yogi Berra
was it said 'when you come to a fork
in the road, take it.' And additionally
it has been said 'nine-tenths of life is
just showing up' -  you see, you see,
I had no choice and I did not know
what else to do. It is grave
(though, no, not mine)
-
The circumstantial evidence now  -  
leading to a new land, bringing me to
newer places; my mind with my body
aches, even my crying-out teeth are
in terror. And so, just as it is, all
these same people are swarming
again : towards the middle, towards
the formative clay, towards their muddle.
-
I will not lead you on, I will not carry
anyone forth. Bring me your favor, 
carried on a tray, and I will give you,
back, yes, the head of a John the
Baptist. This comedy troupe beckons.
I can be, I really am, all things to all men.

3370. THIS EARTHLY BREAD

THIS EARTHLY BREAD
The bread is baking in this oven  -  
this uncut loaf, the still unsullied
thing, this marker for the morning
task. We watch the smoked and
colored glass turning  -  its small
window glaring back within  -  
something deep and
mysterious rises.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

3369. WAITING FOR THE LIGHT (To Hit the Water)

WAITING FOR THE LIGHT
(To Hit the Water)
I am waiting for the light to hit
the water  -  all those torrid ripples
riding on the surface. This is the
'moment' I await, though it is ruined
by the noise and the presence of others.
Be ruined? Why should it not : prattle is
prattle, and what is not (what we've got)?
-
I notice the little oar bobbing; how it
looks like an arm or a leg on the water  -
who has lost what must first be determined,
and - do we not - anyway all lose ourselves,
apart, piece by piece? Thus is time, and thus
is Life determined.
-
I think of you, in memory, though not
that often : things bleed and merge, meld
and mix  -  the sleeping, tired face, the
joy of lips and trace, the hand upon your
breast, I place  -  and all that crazy pleasure
which it brings. As the Roman God Priapus
asserted : 'Grant me a flowering youth! To
please with my naughty prick, that I may
chase away the worries that harm the soul
and that I may not fear too much the growing
old!' Anyway, why a God would say that,
I'll never know. And I am waiting for
the light to hit the water.

3368. EVERY DAY IS SOMETHING MISSED

EVERY DAY IS 
SOMETHING MISSED
Alabaster Nefertiti morning glory wine.
And all this memory has a tree. Along
the winding ridge at Waverly we are
picking riverbed fossils while, along
our back, Route 17 buzzes away
like a wild child  :  75 frantic miles
back to Binghamton grows. John
Gardner and Joe David Weil.
-
How easy need it be to judge others,
to choose and select and grade? It
would never be my place, the lording
over of what is seen. I've pre-supposed
my own reticence long ago, and put it
to the fore: like movie idols resting 
their rest, it all seems just to go on.
-
Blind man in a tub. Doctor on a limb.
Parson with a skate. All these bugs
and mollusks, all frozen in their
muddied time : picking fossils
in Waverly, seeking the rhyme.
When everything else fails, and
fails again, why not just give it up?

3367. ORIGINAL THEOLOGY

ORIGINAL THEOLOGY
The world is alive, and our great space
has its consciousness  -  the one which
holds us and embroils us and swaddles
and watches us  -  and hurts us too.
We call it many names, we have called 
it names. We call it many names.
-
Machine pellets and machine-gun wars,
broken friezes and shattered dreams, and
all the things that make the war of words.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

3366. ONLY MY EMENDATION

ONLY MY EMENDATION
Particular matter is sometimes abhorrent :
(to'eba) let us call it. When the radiated sky
turns to red, when the green grass frizzles.
Rivers run as blood and men dress as women.
-
I walked proudly on, even as Judah and Tamar
wrestled of old. We know (now) Tamar won.
That battle was good as gold. 'I am just a
dry tree. I am just a dry tree.'

Monday, December 19, 2011

3365. MY FREE ITERATION

MY FREE ITERATION
I will make my associations as I
may and where I wish  -  the abstract
fault of a precipice. I will know no
man but those I stress, and leave me
alone with your angles.

3364. LIGHTS

LIGHTS
The wind is whipping bare the
trees  -  early morning light struggles
in, the street-signs stress and turn and
twist. Odd metallic noises make 
announcements - a garbage truck,
the street-sweeper, slide by. It is
the week before Christmas, or the
week after, again  -  it never really
matters, these chafing things. Someone
has put colored lights up along the window
glass. They dangle on their strings.
-
 We soon will have to move to another
year  -  the announcer says  -  begin
another circle, start another tear; while
those amongst me, taking their leave, run
to Ireland or Washington D.C. or their
own Buenos Aires. Circumnavigating
globes like idiot-savants in outer-space,
going out, coming back, returning safe.
-
It is the cold England or Norway of 
another year  -  and some newly meager
Christmas to return will re-appear, while
within my head still burns the heat of
Summer and all of its light.

Friday, December 16, 2011

3363. 'I AM A WHIRLWIND'

'I AM A WHIRLWIND'
Once entertained by desert winds
the high, fierce God comes down.
He walks upon the ground, 'midst
pines and willows, looking for more
to do : maniacal understanding,
insatiable force for energy and
growth. With that idea, everything
else is false and shallow. 'The Devil's
Kingdom, I'm willing to bet,' says this
strange, unfathomable force. 'I am a
whirlwind. I will boast to myself.' 
All at once, again, the fierce wind
comes through, and all
things disappear.

3362. DOUBLE JEOPARDY

DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Schooner sail-force sail-on windfest
harbinger hauler; five brave men on
the big, bad sea. 'If it was done once
already, we can do it again.' And with
that we make aces and faces, with
the high-hand salute. 'Around the world,
boys, we're going around the world again.'

Thursday, December 15, 2011

3361. HOW CAN I SAY THIS : HOW CAN I NOT?

HOW CAN I SAY THIS : 
HOW CAN I NOT?
(this still-life holds a table)
I am supposed to have kept you -  
catalogued and noted and punched -
to remain in my notebook. This will never
be. Expansive to a fault, remnants and ideas, 
parts and places, they burst their bounds and
announce me out. Had I but the notion to
remain, (so off-putting, this being in place),
I would have done so. As it is, alas, without
you I go; but you are free, and - yes - that
is all we can be and, yes, all this can remain 
and you can go, or stay, as your whim will
dictate. (We then are all free beings to 
choose who or what to engage. By this
measure, so many engagements are enacted).
-
This still-life holds a table : 'It's anyway, like,
away from New York, you know, and we
have to pull all this together for her by
Saturday morning.' How can I say this:
how can I not?

3360. ALL AT ONE TIME

ALL AT ONE TIME
At the ellipse one stood out above all
the others : but who was it? A vagrant
personality, to be sure, alive and asleep
on the sewer grate and fencepost together.
Ron Kovic John Cheever Chevy Chase John
Ashbery all rolled into one. 'My dear, this is
such a key city, I must address its regression,
must I not? And oh, so many things just do
not work!' I am tired yet I am sleeping,
together, all at one time.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

3359. 'THE BODY OF AN ANGEL, THE HEAD OF A GOD'

'THE BODY OF AN ANGEL, 
THE HEAD OF A GOD'
Many of the things I remember the most
have really no meaning at all. Anterior podes,
these things as arranged, they ring twice, they
ring steady. Between ('Thusly') the forces of
Nature, I stand unopposed. ('outside that
small town, we stopped, so beleaguered on
a cold, wintry night. All the shop-lights were
glistening upon the snow  -  yellowed reflections
on an iced-blazing white'). Where the bridge
crossed the shallow river, an old ruined warehouse
stood  -  it seemed a shambles and a wreck;
one thing alone, but many all together.
-
'For the body of an angel, the head of a
God'  -  the old parson was telling me that,
in Rutland, Vermont. I never knew what he
meant, yet now, I do suppose, I should have.
All that brazen church lust, so many these years
later, so makes sense : my thumbs were broken,
but always at the ready. ('The streetlight changed its
color  -  a yellow to a red  -  and what few cars there
were rolled to a stop. Everything seemed so ordered.')
-
In the frozen midnight air, the Proctor Marble Works
stood out : all the strange and awesome white stone,
cut into glazed blocks and ('now') slumbering like a
weird ice itself beneath a strangely straggling moon.
Off the fenceline, even in this midnight cold, I did
notice a few deer still grazed  -  how they had not 
bedded down instead, deep in a nearby woods, I'll
never know. ('And then from Proctor to Florence, to
the old Hubbardton Battlefield, I squandered on.').

3358. MAN THE MAKER

MAN THE MAKER
I remember reading 'Homo Faber' in 1974, Max Frisch,
I believe, 'Man the Maker' in translation. It was all OK
with me  -  that guy on the jet plane  - as it taxied down
the runway  -  the gleaming of the glass, the metal all
below, and, far off, the vision of that crazy field. Looking
back on it all now, I don't really know why I bothered.
Christina Rosner, the girl from Berlin - we visited regularly,
often and between classes. I asked what language they
spoke in Bonn, that 'temporary' capital, as she called
 it, that backwater, disgusting southern town. She
answered, 'Why, they speak Bonn!', in some disgust, as
if southern yokels would know no better and speak 
the same. It made me realize, and then wonder 
some more  -  for just like us, all those regional
differences rose to the surface - Alabama to
 Boston and Berlin to Bonn. We knew no difference,
 we spoke the same. (And what was this civilization
 then built upon anyway?). Now, long these far
years later, so right she was -  Bonn is long
over, all those yokels are finished, and some
redefined Berlin now rules the land once more,
and I am finished and she is gone and what
relapse remains is a memory lone, something
forgotten yet  -  here and there still  -  vaguely
recalled and remembered and thought of.
Where she is now, I do not know.
 

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

3357. LOCARNO

LOCARNO
Waters, and skies. The one or
the many  -  no difference. Like
papal hills made of a papier mache, 
standing but for a moment, 
this moment, today.

Monday, December 12, 2011

3356. MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH

MANY WATERS 
CANNOT QUENCH
Rhapsody in Blue is playing over my head.
East Street love affairs are never this easy; 
unsound and unfounded, they are never like
this. I think of Naomi and Ruth. 'Seduce me 
Boaz, uncover his feet'  - a Hebrew euphemism,
that, for exposing a man's genitals  -  and then
I think (there, there, that music again, almost
biblical itself, in its scrunching, eastside larch):
The Song of Songs and Solomon, together:
'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth',
as the lover proclaims, 'I come to my garden. I
eat my honeycomb with my honey. Open to me,
my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one.'
-
But no  -  and more; nothing is ever perfect.
Not that scent of her juices nor that pant of
her breast. All the heave and fever makes me -
as well - shudder. (And, anyway, this world 
is so filled with ugly people). And fright is
its recompense as I gather, in this corner
of Spring, the snows of the Winter.

3355. THE IDEA OF MIND

THE IDEA OF MIND
The idea of Mind is to circumnavigate this globe in a
wordless fashion while yet still being able to retell
the tale of the journey  -  that voyage burned in like
a tattoo on a broad, wide forehead. Words mince
no meaning in their silence. The eye scans the
page for something to grab onto.
-
I once read that Russians  -  the ordinary, the
ones in the street  -  in 1957, after Sputnik went
up, wondered fretfully if it would discover Heaven;
even to them, I suppose, an ever-present wonder,
or something to wonder about, at least. Nothing
like that ever happens now. Jaded and bored,
we sleep, or, fretful and scared, we weep.
-
In the end, all of this is the one same thing :
an osmosis and wearing of the fabric of time.

3354. THAT GADGET, AGAIN

THAT GADGET, AGAIN
Oh Ariel, I love you so! Not for once or
not for twice but  -  just like this - forever.
My friend, spirit, fire-maker, mate, walker
of the great ground 'round, seeker of the
same and ever oneness world-like world.

3353. THESE ARE MOMENTS (Newark)

THESE ARE MOMENTS
(Newark)
Inside the Salvation Army Store, poor people were
buying glassware. Outside the doorway, just above, 
on the brown-stone rock trestle, a train slid slowly by.
Above that, and near, a take-off jet pierced the sky
while, above that, still, the daylight moon somewhat
stupidly stood watch. In jackets and gloves, someone
nearby stared; seeing nothing at all he hunched
away, thinking the same, small thoughts as ever
here before : that single, shingled roof in need of
more repair, the lamplight at the curb, broken
open and dangling on high. I tried to tell him
something, answer to his hunch, but he was
long already gone. A finished moment,
wordless before and now, wordless
after, all again, and gone.

Friday, December 9, 2011

3352. YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO SAY WHAT YOU FEEL

YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO
SAY WHAT YOU FEEL
I have stood firm. I have run out of time and
life, both beckoning their ends to me as would
some drug-addled minstrel on the other shore:
the rock-star kind, the asshole with the guitar
strap wedged in his thigh, harmonica-frame
bent 'round his head, noodling some stupid
electric trill in a fading e-string lead. And, to
speak truthfully here, the fact of the matter is,
sensation-wise, I'm bored to tears by it all and
not even sure of what I speak. The insects
are flying the air; their Summer days have
waned as well, and now they slow and die.
-
I me a girl once, deep in the underground
bowels of a Paris hotel. I'll never forget the
moment  -  we rode that little crested wave
in place, right there, until it crashed and
burned around us. I've never experienced
such momentary passion like that again.
The fiery burn of quite truthful lust both
staining and soiling our lives and clothes.
With goodness. With cheer. With all of
that there. We gathered things up, and
simply left. I've never seen her again.
-
Sometimes, it seems, Life runs its own
days, and courses its little river wherever
it wishes to go. The only obstacle is
you, yourself : watching the warp and
weave, thinking you somehow have
every right to say what you feel.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

3351. HARD RIDING GENTLEMEN

HARD RIDING GENTLEMEN
Ten hundred moustaches wagging, with
fifteen walruses singing away, and the priest
from St. Anselm's dwarfs by. He is singing
a Kyrie with a bottle in his hand. Bent over
from cosmic fatigue, he says he finds
Jesus still carries intrigue. The last
coach just left the driveway ramp.
-
I channeled Nelson Eddy from some
Eden in the hay. I bungled Joe DiMaggio
with a heater. These are not the things I
would confess to, mind you, but just
the things I say. How many sunrises,
really, am I supposed to withstand?
-
My father was from a captive nation.
He died with freedom in his hand.
My mother was a house-nurse,
carrying forth a torch for the
homeless and infirm  -  all that
slick valuation, and not a
thing to show for it now.
 

3350. SERGEANT BIMINOFF

SERGEANT BIMINOFF
(my blue Pennington model)
'I can't find nothing to write home about
and don't have a thing to say : bluebird
redbird robin chirping from the tree. Can
I look around you, to see what you do see?
That cultural oasis you inhabit, it's blinding.
-
The funny guy with the trumpet is blowing
a taps  -  he wants the girl in red to go
upstairs with him, but she won't. We all
laugh, lugubriously slowly and loud. It's
almost a truly sad scene  -  these military
guys, always so horny, get really 
hard-up for sex.
-
I wished once for always more than
I got. She was bashful and baleful and
a beauty. Long ago, anyway -  that
was all disappeared, and now I remember
nothing but her name. Amy. Amanda.
Or something.'

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

3349. WHAT A LASTING CROCK

WHAT A LASTING CROCK
The red light was blinking numbers
at me through the morning rain. 
The old men were talking a history
of war  -  and then I realized I was
probably older than them. '29, Cold
Spring, I heard  -  battles of war
over and over again. What's all
the use of this anyway? 'Move
on' the white man said. The 
gray hair was nodding off.
-
Eisenhower never took a vacation.
Truman was holding his cards.
The best years ever were the ones
when Lon Cheney impersonated
Lyndon Johnson  -  and no one 
knew. Six years in the White House
and we all didn't know. What a
lasting crock of everything
this soiled life is.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

3348. JOHN BUNYAN WON'T YOU PLEASE COME HOME

JOHN BUNYAN WON'T 
YOU PLEASE COME HOME
All the pace of this is like running through mud;
things dangling from trees, birds hitting your
face. There's no logic to the magician's moment.
Slough of despond, Pilgrim's Progress, John
Bunyan won't you please come home!

3347. THE PICTURE

 THE PICTURE
Hounded by the maelstrom of time still snapping
harsh at my heels, I can only wince and try to
stay ahead. Motorcars and constables, men
with blue eyes and their slithery umbrellas, they
tend to keep me tense. Yet, no  -  that is not the
real reason for this moment. The wind rakes the
East River harbor with something else instead:
the seagull cries of ten thousand losses, the young
men never back from the sea, and the lines of
immigrant masses, their cries and laments.
-
I take but a moment - if that, it would seem  -
from the ever-long face eternity wears. Stretched
without limit, endless and roaring, its own line of
time only has doors that open, while mine, about 
to snap back, has a harsh spring that closes. 'My
friend, my friend,' I hear someone say (a dark
man in a shadowy coat) 'my friend fear this not!
All pictures have frames, and all framings have 
have edges. Arrive where you're going, 
and you'll know you are there.'

Monday, December 5, 2011

3346. I AM DEAD : YOU ARE LIVING YOUR TIMES

I AM DEAD : YOU ARE 
LIVING YOUR TIMES
In talking to a captive audience of
one but one then words stay long
and linger on. I am leaning on a
bookcase in some dead-draft room
made of wood. In my hand is a
bio of Anne Sexton  -  of which
I am paging and read, I page and
read. Ah yes, aimless as anything
else can be. I am dwelling beneath 
a roof with a surfeit of sorrows. The
clock on the lacquered wall, I am
beginning to think, stops running, 
should not run at all.

3345. JUPITER'S COMIC INFIDELITY

JUPITER'S COMIC 
INFIDELITY
I (yawn) so much enjoy you.
Here then, just let me touch
this, and this, and  - oh well  -
that. This morn is so splendid,
no? Is it not? Oh, listen up!
I forgot. What? That then, a 
kiss? How do we handle this?
No dear, do not let me go  -
you see, dear love, I truly
love you so; and must hold
you this way forever.

3344. BLOOD STONES BROTHERS

BLOOD STONES BROTHERS
And beforehand the lethal weapon toning, ringing its
loudness ring from kettle to drum  -  fade bullets
resounding off echo'd walls, small alley, dark cave,
The two fine fellows running, black boots and a
craven dark jacket, wide-upon at the waist, fat
handgun toting. Down upon the ground one
mantle's other bleeding, lies twisted upon the
hard cold ground. Soon Death come for to
claim another  -  no paperwork needed, just
come on down. This, this is some old
country of the pillaged and the pillagers;
a fast-talk nether world of sauce and
gander, destruction and doom. Walk
slowly only and with care those
darkened puddles near. That is
not water, my friend, but blood
your feet are splasing.
 

3343. OCCUPY PRINCETON

OCCUPY PRINCETON
I have landed two feet away from something
I cannot recognize. My own fair Heaven now
has fallen from outside my hands. This is
a town I recognize, and a place I've come
to know : the white of the daylight forces
me on, where people are lined in the square.
A few catcalls, no more. The new motif
is gather and protest and noise. I don't
know. I don't really hear the roar  -  but
for the closing, incendiary and wild, of
those great, iron bank doors slamming
hard, slamming shut. Everything that
is claimed is stolen, and everything
that is stolen is claimed.

3342. I HAVE FOUND GOLD

I HAVE FOUND GOLD
'Midst the silence and the solace alone, I have found gold.
What it is, and why, I cannot say  -  and the where of it
is now far within. Were the language found, I would make
effort by grimace, the attempt to retell. As for now, I s
sense to leave well enough alone and just go on my way.
-
 Yet. Yet, I sense : this thing is bigger than it ought to be;
a monstrous redwood in some tiny grove, a whale where
that fishtank should be. Attend to my manner, you watchers,
for beneath the changing skies I ever-present be. The same,
unchanging, mindful of each moment as they pass. After
all, recall, this Time is but a fiction you invented.
-
Shapes meld and change, all reality drips like a
really bad faucet, a torrent of madness, a stream
running wild. You may take your pick on that
crazy notion. Words fail...as do all your own
preventative measures. You find your
hopelessness then forlorn? Take heart,
for you are not nor ever have been, alone.
-
In this, I give you my word, 'midst
the silence and silence alone.

Friday, December 2, 2011

3341. THE CONTENT SEEMS PRETTY THEMELESS

THE CONTENT SEEMS 
PRETTY THEMELESS
My idea for the illicit contact extends outward - 
like distant things, touching of hands, intermingled
hearts and minds. No Cambodia, no Ankor Wat
ever had such wings. Under a million locks with
a million keys, I would still open the door for you.
The ancient tongue you are speaking, I speak it
as well : lost in the fragrant spices of a universe
of memory. A thousand years old, these temples
stood, yet now, by the works of Man, they
are crumbled and fallen to ruin.

3340. DECEMBER

DECEMBER
Among the midcoats of a Connecticut day,
light lighting, bad boulevards, and a shopping
strip covered in false snow, I wandered roughly.
Espying names, price tags beyond recall, and
all the pretty ladies with their Henry Bendel stars
and bags and medallions as well. They would
smile as their lipstick would flake. This sullen
season of the swollen shopper only made me 
sad  - some children dreaming dreams,
nothing but bad.

3339. LEXICON OF DEMOLAY

LEXICON OF DEMOLAY
Fifteen thousand immigrants passed through here,
seeking a solace in their Southern European
overlapping dreams  -  of Jesus and his whitewash,
of Ephesus, St. Paul, that Virgin Mary, and all the
rest of the old Thanksgiving Parade. Steampipes 
yet coughing with tubercular blood, faint ladies
passing their fluids over sewer and drain. A few
clerks and guards with keys would scan the
passing jumble and note the needs : nothing
like a steadfast world existed. All nerves
and fear; a perfect place for God to appear.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

3338. CAST OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS

CAST OF COLORFUL 
CHARACTERS
Like the Oakland A's of '72, handlebar moustaches,
Rollie Fingers, and all the rest of that perturbed
malarkey running on, I too stood on a mound
and threw: fastballs to the face, and a broken head
from where the bat hit me square. There were
people in the stands, screaming, I swear,
obscenities at me. What could I
do? It all had to be.
-
I was borne by my mother's hand, thrown out
to this foreign land  -  and now, only the same
various uglies yelling, with all their various
vanities vain.  The wedge-shaped writing
at the edge of the cave, it read : 'Abandon
all hope, ye who enter here. No one is saved!'
-
The sacred harp and the river tree, the holy
grove, and all that which places a goodly light
on all the world  -  I note that it remembers
even me, betokens a holy smile, brings forth
a redemption tree (of wood, of branch, by 
which the Son of Man is brought to Death is
brought to Life, that Death should never be).
There should never be such a salubrious
nature as this, and I should be, nodding
 by acquaintance, on great and holy
terms with all things. (for hark! this
Herald Angel sings!).
-
We dance on, living, in
spite of all the fears.