Tuesday, January 31, 2012

3429. HONORE, TAKE ME BACK

HONORE, TAKE ME BACK
Strangely mechanical walks have
brought these two Mexican men
to this porch, where they are sitting
to smoke at 6am. I sense what I
hear : that strangely rattling cough
they each possess, that rangy slimy
tongue they spit and spatter, and those
white construction clothes they wear.
Yet, sadly, this is all. At the other
end of the same, soiled spectrum,
there are others who (I see) do the
same from their own separate vantage:
all those twisting Gods of money and
form, advantage and song, the egregious
dispensing of all manner and rule. Fix me,
oh one, your Dionysian smokes exhausted.
-
Let me explain things for a minute : I am
vague by design, for each time I deign to
define, some brusque, vain Aleck of mind
shoots me down; sharpshooter in a diction
spattered from a balcony on high. And I am
lost, of course, in a fog of my own creation.
-
All those books and papers and reasons
and motives and movies and facts. Honore,
take me back. Even at the bakery, I have
told your cornstarch off and turned and left.
Now listen to these things I newly speak :
air power could have won the Civil War; 
bad always drives out good; Evil exists, and
its vast and cunning reach enthralls us and
enslaves us; all things pass; beneath everything
you have been told is a lie of the telling; 
language is a divine infraction completely
affecting our world; and  -  lastly, yes  -  
the world itself does not exist, nor its
tellings or effects (and again I
stand as William Blake).

3428. UP TWO DAYS STRAIGHT

UP TWO DAYS STRAIGHT
Up two days straight, this rope is
stretched tight  -  spanning the gorge
and the garden alike. A wide and
crumbling pile of old bricks bearing
names is just across the way  -  dated
kilns and brick-baking companies still
seeking memorials in powdered red dust.
Oh quaint all things are, and we trust
those old ways will be. Up two
days straight, I'll have to see.
-
The water flows its way along,
filling those rental gaps of flash
and void in whatever fashion it
chooses or may. I decided to
stand aside and let it go; have 
it play its operation in the light
of natural time and day. Up
two days straight, I'll have
to see.

3427. INDIAN PATCH

INDIAN PATCH
America grabs fast the gargoyle
puking its pale blood down in
streams upon those over-valued
hearts and minds lined up. 
Numblessness, let's call it,
looking up, still wears its
stupid face while the 
hangman's haughty
hold never loosens
its urgent grip.

Monday, January 30, 2012

3426. ALL THE WONDERS OF YEKATERINBERG

ALL THE WONDERS OF
YEKATERINBERG
Mechanics. Welders. Operators of
the most heavy machinery. We have
come together to visit the Urals, and
I say hello. From one thousand miles
away, is Moscow watching? I will train
my whistle on elixir and magic, those
two, trained dancing-bears we all delight
in. Watch the dance and the jump. Learn.
-
Let us mingle the new tongue with the old.
You may speak of Revolution while others
will scold. In fact, so long distant now, the
others (all behind you) have entered the past.
All the forgotten members of Death, and all
its squads, are now gone. Sverdlovsk, I call
upon you not to run, in fact, Sverdlovsk polish
the gun  -  clean well the barrel and mark the
rounds, buff up the bullets and pick the one.
-
Beauty there is, in silver-singing rivers, high hills
and peaks, mountains of old and on-high. None of
this will go away, even as we may die. I dreamed
I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me.
Now we too must fight and try, or die.

3425. PYROGRAPHIC ART

PYROGRAPHIC ART
You're only kidding yourself : standing there,
peering over the ledge, looking down, far down,
to where the river long before has cut the gorge.
Those tenuous bushes you use for support  - 
I want to whisper 'be careful.'
-
You are not the natural type, and I can
so easily imagine you falling down.

3424. AMERIKA

AMERIKA
Have we wallowed in self-pity this so long ago?
Chopped down trees and cleared the plains in
pain, preferring that to living in the emptied woods?
Garnished the pay of native-dwellers, the indigenous
type who knew the forests and the skies? Have we
killed enough the sparrows and the hawks, and where
the eagle flies? Tell me, is this land emptied yet?

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

3423. NECESSARY TEASE

NECESSARY TEASE
The stars tease the sky, and Death
teases Life  -  or is that, perhaps, the
other way around? Water teases ice and
it goes the other way as well, as logic
teases farce and Heaven teases Hell.
These are all the factors of hearts and
minds  -  which tease each other just
as well, the grown man finds.
-
There are other kinds of tease and other
kinds of chase as well (and, no, we are
not just all projections in a very simple 
movie)  -  the sad tree jutting sideways
and trying to grow on the bar-room side
of 17th where, across the curb, the tar-side
oasis of some old and glimmered cab sits.
Yet, there is really nowhere to go at all.
Free or not, we remain in fetters.
-
 Freedom teases bonds, as bonds
tease all those fetters.

3422. EUCLID

EUCLID
(crazy to Hell, 1964)
That parallel postulate we sang of
in 9th grade  -  it is still going on. Joe
Vouglas and all the rest of the Michael
Simonet crowd with their gestures in
the air : 'infinite to infinite, these lines 
will never meet.' Both negation and its
non-Euclidean armor  -  all that roomy
notion in one fell swoop. 'You can't be
sure of anything, you know.' I always
assumed there was too much doubt
and dark matter for that. Your parallel
postulate is positive prattle. Oh then
how proud I was as a long 
sorry table grew silent.
-
In this elevated corner, alone and
nowhere at all, all the voices and
noises seem to converge. It is all
so maddening to me  -  enough
to drive me just crazy to Hell.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

3421. THE PONTIUS PILATE GENE

THE PONTIUS PILATE GENE
The Pontius Pilot gene inviolate still
rules the roost where tales are told.
Why not, anyway, why not? Over 
and over those truthtellers and 
supposed fine burghers who've
brought us so much  -  what good
are they when balanced against
the light? (No good at all, but
that's alright).

3420. SOME SAY IT'S BETTER THAT WAY

SOME SAY IT'S
BETTER THAT WAY
'And ain't that anyway what it is all about?
Makes me happy, wears my smile, brings me forth,
has a meaning, makes me come.' I heard the two of
them muttering, whatever it was they'd meant to be
saying : two sputtering girls taking about making out.
'Making out?' No one does that anymore  -  there's
no more lead-up to any of that. Clothes come off,
and you just go at it; ramshackle and vague,
and any old style will do. Some say it's
better that way.

3419. UNDERWATER TOWN

UNDERWATER TOWN
I went deep : denizen diver down.
How come everything I saw was wet?
There, where the refrigerator should have been,
was a wild, twisting octopus, trying to float
away. I said something stupid. It turned
around, seemed to smile, and went off.
Davey Jones locker this surely is not.
 

Monday, January 23, 2012

3418. WALT WHITMAN AND THE CRAZY WORLD AND I BET YU CAN'T SAY THIS ALOUD

WALT WHITMAN AND THE 
CRAZY WORLD AND I
BET YOU CAN'T SAY 
THIS ALOUD
(the poet starts to sing)
Thanks for taking the crazy man away. He's been looking in, sitting 
at the window crazy as a loon. At first I thought I knew him, then I
wasn't sure. The next thing I knew, he was gone. It's all OK with me;
there's no nature at these bridges, and the sky has overflown its
limits and left town long ago. Now, there are others who speak the
same of me : 'He's getting stranger and more odd with each passing
month, little things I notice, they all add up. He had a birthday,
and didn't come. He held a seance, and no one saw a thing. Even
the ghosts, so meager underneath the tablecloth, were tired and
too withered to show. He said nothing, just stared ahead.'
-
'And it was then, back at Joralamyn Street, when he held that
battered loaf of bread in his grimy hands  -  sniffing like a
puppy, he was cursing artisan loaves. He pointed at fishes,
and said 'I will make these rise.' For even God's sake, the
use of a such a mixed metaphor was foul and useless."
-
"I am so tired of all this uselessness. Walt Whitman, was it,
who bequeathed to America the launching of piers and the
piracy of masculine ships; lauding men and boys for
dying with courage on the sad and savage field? Was that
him  -  I forget  -  squeezing fruit in the supermarket aisle,
swaggering like a lynched Nigger just before dying, pausing
for a moment at Lincoln's stupid bier, donning funeral-rags
for two long years, and then crying in vain to boot? Was it?"
-
"How awesome was that? Edgar Allen Poe sitting down
in Val Allen Park watching the fireworks overhead; July,
at night, 1889, something like that, near Baltimore's
inner harbour, way before a theme park or a seaport
raised its brazen head to mar the place. Wherever he
died, New York or Baltimore or here, no one ever
settled the really rambling question : what is mind
and what is body? The gay man's pliant plea, again
takes me right back to Walt  -  do I like the ass or
lick the prick, and why won't I ever know?"
-
"What is mind and what is body. Good Jesus,
what a crazy question! We are all the each
and every of each and every thing. Listen
to that crazy man; the poet 
starts to sing."

3417. RUN YOUR BREAK

RUN YOUR BREAK
Come in at the edgings, go fast to the
ends. Never leave a marker behind.
Yes, that's how it's done.

Friday, January 20, 2012

3416. YOU CANNOT HAVE THE CLEAVER, MAY NOT TAKE THE TABLE

YOU CANNOT HAVE 
THE CLEAVER, MAY
NOT TAKE THE TABLE
...and you are not the butcher's son. Now get that straight. 
I do not care how many legs of lamb are holding up 
the table, (you facetious idiot), nor do I care, or would 
I if they were. It's always the same with you : a non-conditional
response to things that really aren't, as if you're willing to
live your entire life in a nether world of things that cannot be.
That might work in the forest, where in darkness, it is said,
the wolfs and leopards still can see. But not here in this
world of bleak things, this mantelpiece of blackness,
this kingdom of the long-lost and utterly dead.

3415. SO WHAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH ME?

SO WHAT'S THE 
TROUBLE WITH ME?
Edwardo Santiago Bulimay  -  he was a cowboy
fellow I met long ago, the sort with the wide leather
chaps flapping around walking the pampas. All that
stuff was very funny to me. He came from somewhere
in Mexico and, apparently, never went back, instead
ended it in San Jose. Took cyanide, the note said,
right before he shot himself  -  just to see which
worked quicker (or better). Umm, apparently he
never found out. Once he told me about his
woman  -  he called her 'Miranda' as if I cared.
He said she was so spiteful and yet so very
 powerful as well, that one day (for example)
after he'd really pissed her off about something,
when he came home she had made garter snakes
come out of all the faucets in the small, two-room
house. Exaggeration on his part? Probably  -  how
many faucets in a two-room house can there be?
Anything to inflate the story, I guess. He was like
that, claiming to once having ridden Santa Anna's
horse, another time his woman. All bullshit, and
I knew it. It's like that in poverty places  -  the stories
get bigger and more outlandish as resources fall away.
Another time, he did his William Tell (with a twist),
though he didn't know it. He'd stood his twelve year
old boy up against the monastery wall and placed
two small apples side-by-side atop the boy's head,
saying he'd whizz a bullet right through the middle
of them. The only way anyone would know, he said,
was by the bullet hole left in the monastery wall.
Trouble was, there was already a hundred bullet
holes just like that in the wall. Anyway, he shot
his son right through the head, the son who - right
before he fell - said 'So what's the trouble with me.'
It was always like that in the Bulimay family, and
then Edwardo fled, never to be found again.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

3414. OH SO MUCH ON FIRE

OH SO MUCH ON FIRE
Being prone in Princeton all this
time has brought me very little  -
a harvester at a glum oasis perhaps,
or a single, sorrowful man splitting
hours in a room. I have ransomed
my emotions for a dollar. Outside,
in the trash cans in the early morning
air, overflowing milk cartons, shirt boxes
and ribbons tumble down.
-
The glass-cutter's shop, even at this
early hour, is always busy  -  the Silica
Brothers themselves dicing sand with
all their early musics  -  and oh, we
are all so much on fire.

3413. A'TALKIN

A'TALKIN
I was slighted and looked aside, and all the
angels from Heaven descended. 'From men'
they denied. I scant looked back but walked
away  -  two Magnolia trees blooming, some
songbird singing. I opened my old white book
to John Brown pages : 'John Brown's body
lies a'moulding' was all I read. Freight train
just then rolled by  -  like an old blues man's
grave on some open grassy plain. All I heard
was the sad refrain, some slave man's plaint,
some gypsy train. So sad, so tired, I walked.

3412. OH THOSE TALLAHASSEE BLUES

OH THOSE 
TALLAHASSEE BLUES
Poor tired Charley and then poor tired Charley :
robbed his bank and shot his Rosie down.
Don't know why; didn't know then and he don't
know now. Look at that boys, look'a.
-
Poor tired Charley and then poor, tired Charley :
went away and never came back. Had to keep
running, police on his track. Poor tired Charley ain't
never coming back. (Oh those Tallahassee blues).

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

3411. TRUTH BEAUTY BEAUTY TRUTH

TRUTH BEAUTY 
BEAUTY TRUTH
The same coin having two sides holds 
within its reference two coins to coincide
each with the other side. There is simply
no alternative, it is the way things are  -  
reality is self-referential alone and, amidst
all other things, it brings forth its presence,
into which we roam. Our grip? Our baggage? 
What we take? Assumptions, reactions, opinions
and ideas  -  all the shingles of a poor man's house.
-
I can't exactly make love to the moment, for
when I reach to embrace it, it is already gone.
And, once gone, it ambles its way through the
dense parlor of moment, which is exactly - and
really - what Reality is anyway. We are stuck
and fraught with our own peril.
-
To my left, tall buildings resound  -  the steel
might and riveted strength of matter imagined
holds them up, upon a bedrock of common
assumptions. All those things that, yes, will
stand wherever it is they may  -  and if it is
all done right it is automatic. Truth to beauty,
and to beauty, truth.


3410. TAKE MOONBEAMS HOME IN A JAR

TAKE MOONBEAMS 
HOME IN A JAR
Yellow things to which I need tend : I have to listen
to all these voices of men on their missions. The
cacophony of cars and planes and boats falling over.
Those people who seek their own ends, failing in
wisdom but feeling intense. Their endings? 'Let us
dine in Jerusalem. This is all a commentary on the 
Kaballah - and it was over already, and incredibly 
so - by the time that Moses was gone.' No, no I
cannot listen any longer and it is all one world,
the now and the then and all those ancient Jews
with their primitive stories and their God: today's
modern Shylocks making one more insider's deal.

Monday, January 16, 2012

3409. SPEED FILLED WITH NOTHING

SPEED FILLED 
WITH NOTHING
I am going to say that you must arrive, heading
downward, your face in a filter, your hands in
the grave. Already all this is surmised by anyone
truly in the know. The capsule within which you 
are riding has long ago capsized and is rolling
over, pitch and yaw, over and upon itself. There's
no choir in the loft : above your head only an old
and raging highway roars; cars filled with speed,
speed filled with nothing.

3408. LASH OUT AT THE GENERALS

LASH OUT AT THE GENERALS
(Satori, the end of desire)
When it seems like nothing wants to work, like nothing
wants to go, I walk away and start backwards my rambly
trek. Along Tillary Street, buildings tarry and seem to wait -
great, arched legworks of bridge and cable, high in the air,
to be seen but only between other buildings  -  like some
sneaky, secret eye, ever-watchful and present. A distant
water vista beckons, but  -  it seems  -  only diners scurry
to and fro, Rive Cafe this, River Cafe that, and I am oh so
tired of all that I see. What use, this awesome life?
-
Beneath a sidewalk tree, I see a wine bottle, broken off
at the bottom, blunted, like a glass-weapon ready to throw
its shards aloft. It was not there yesterday, this I know  -  so
only to assume some drunken midnight reveler has thrown it
down, like so many other things. The one, black leather glove,
the woman's panties somehow hanging from a tree. What goes
on these drunken nights? Things I never see? It really does seem
that nothing wants to work, or, at the least, work as it should.
-
Brooklyn, all night, beneath those crazy awnings and the
barrel-fisted buildings beneath the two sublimes : bridges
on ahead, over-top, soaring and gorging where once the
ferries stopped and all their Whitman dotage ambled.
I know now I'll have nothing of it  -  this stupid, bloated,
modern day, the couch store with its leathers, the book
store soiled with its sex, the clothing that only fey watchmen
would ever wear. I pass on everything. I pass, and wonder
why I'm here: not for the momentary drizzle of this cold
and so disgusting rain. Not to seek some Hart Crane
blunder chasing men and all their gain. Remember,
as I've told you, I want for nothing, and never will.

3407. FIND BUT A WAY TO KEEP ME GOING

FIND BUT A WAY
TO KEEP ME GOING
I have never really learned how to love, though
I'm pretty good at hate. I do love you though.
I'd have to say: 'without compunction, sunk to
my knees, down in the hollow, lost in the swamp
of my heart.' It seems like all that is true (enough).
-
Do you remember, that one time in the dark of night,
when we stumbled onto that carousel in darkness  - 
all closed, no lights, and all those happy horses
seeming frozen in their jump? I laughed for ten
minutes as you lifted up your dress to pee at the
horses' feet. Don't know why, to this day. But it
was ever so funny, and led to our great romp in
the summer grass. Girls still crouch? I guess.
-
My magazine slumber, my days against your arch,
my open hands for your love and magic, my open
eyes, oh, just to watch. So long ago and all so over
now. My love, I've grown so old, even my decibels
of sound are feeble. Help me, help me please.
Find but a way to keep me going.

Friday, January 13, 2012

3406. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
If you had to give it a name, you would. The name
would come to you  -  as whether gloomy or with glee
I do not know. Nothing of that nature ever surfaces.
Great and enormous eyelashes, put on with such an
excellent care, do well their appointed task. They
elicit response, make someone like me look twice.
-
As my friend Joseph used to say - before he
painted the windshield red with his blood and 
brains - 'What are people thinking? All you
need is a little when a little is a lot.' It never
bottomed out, this idea. From that point,
we just sailed on.
-
('Pleasure invites me, and I wear love's crown').

3405. J'MAINTENANT

J'MAINTENANT
This guy was speaking some Creole French I couldn't ever
understand  -  even here in the French quarter, of brazen
hippos and over-the-hill whores. He wouldn't shut up and some
Molly Bloom type, I swear, was puking on his shoes. I reached
over to tuck at his lapel  -  'I maintain your feet are wet.' I actually
did try to say that in French, but it came out a slobbering mess.
-
Third floor balconies held sunshine hookers. Two fiends from
Missouri were drinking in the street, sitting on the curb, settling
accounts with Monsieur Constabulent, who'd just flown in from
St. Petersburg, filming a documentary on biological variations.
Everywhere above us, the pale sky was shimmering with its
elixir of doubt and wonder soon to pour down upon our heads.
-
Thursday, the Virgin Mary arrives; done up in robes and
ermine, she stays in place along the edge of a singular wall.
The locals come to visit, scrounging for change to throw
in her cup. 'She looks more like Lady Bagatelle than anything
I'd ever do. I love the way her nose dribbles a holy drip.'
Creole religion, masterful mysteries and bayou suicides,
all wrapped up in one big, swirling enigma, j'maintenant.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

3404. DIAMONDS

DIAMONDS
She is viewing a weather map over the land; watching
as that green blob of rain moves over the Alleghenies  -  
watching, for no reason at all, what I can sense to be
anti-climactic for sure. Her delicate diamond hands
trace a line along across the screen. To show me a
something or other. I want to mention, as her hand
passes over, that I once lived here, I once lived there;
curiously, beneath that green blob signifying rain.
Now, I don't know how I live in this world at all.
-
Once, a long time ago, I lived beneath a bridge.
The bridge ran over the Kill Van Kull; across
the way, at all hours in those dark, drear' days
ran river traffic of tankers and tugs, steamers and
scows. Everyday, there were things being towed or
salvaged, old ferries being taken to rest, bent tankers
to be washed out to sea. Above my head ran the lines
of the bridge, as everything, through the Narrows
was silently dragged out to sea.
-
I don't know how I live in this world now at all.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

3403. TWO GUYS

TWO GUYS
Two guys like a Jack Kerouac and his
buddy Dean are huddled under the hood 
of their car  -  yes, it's a Hudson from a 
long time ago, a Hornet or a Wasp (they
made them both in the  early 1950's), 
and what a stupid joke was that. These
two are changing a generator; the one
guy has a simple black belt in his hand,
the small and simple kind, like they used to
make, not the serpentine fan belts of today.
They've also, I see, dropped the oil-pan
and will be replacing the gasket. Yes, yes,
I realize in my travels, there are some men 
who do nothing but talk like ladies, on and 
on  -  I see them everyday  -  while others,
with their hands, will work things to the bone.
-
Out along Fifth Avenue, by the church at
Twelfth Street, in 1967 there was a Hudson
Hornet I remember  -  big and heavy and black  -
that sat at the curb, abandoned it seemed, for
nearly an entire year, right through the four
changing seasons  -  snow and grime and leafs
and slime  -  just waiting for something at
the Church of the Transfiguration.

3402. I'M WORRIED ABOUT SYMBOLS

I'M WORRIED 
ABOUT SYMBOLS
(Ianthe)
Closing the book, I look up to
see lights  -  they are broad and
yellow, as if enforcing sunlight and
warmth. Golden Gate Park comes
to mind  -  all that crystal and silver
light, like water, dripping down 
from Geary Street. What are
things anyway, but ideas?

3401. THE GIVENS

THE GIVENS
(2012)
Everyone wants to live forever, or at least not die -
though there are probably a few they wish dead.
Everyone wants traffic to flow their way, as and
when needed, and then scoffs at jams when traffic
for others is stopped. Each wants the roadway
running right to their door. Everyone wants a
certain light when darkness comes, and some
darkness as well when it seems way too light.
The limelight when it's quiet, and the quiet when
life gets too much. And all that stuff about money
being evil, the love of, the pursuit of, everyone seems
to have a thirst that's never quenched until they get
it, then they start bawling about how crummy it is.
Park that large car right where the gas station ends.
Leave it to others, and then make amends  -  and
everyone's got a gimmick they're trying to sell,
 even if first they need sell to themselves.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

3400. HOW NICE IS ALL THAT?

HOW NICE IS ALL THAT?
Somehow, the overnight full moon is on my left at
5am; I am swimming around in memories : my napkin
exfoliates, there is a perfect stillness in the darkened
trees, the air holds secrets and Time itself is leaving
new messages and running on. I stand alone, here,
to entreat an entry into some newer life. How akin 
to nothing at all, how different really, is any of
that...How nice is it actually at all?
-
I shouldn't know, and I never will : carparks and
carports, garages and lots, everything all jumbled
together. This wild world sleeps, silent and stable,
in its slumber, while I take these messages back.
I once walked the stars in my own cosmic twinkle.
Now, new lines bring me back and keep me on
this Earth. And how nice is all that?

Monday, January 9, 2012

3399. CANTILEVERED CAVALRY

CANTILEVERED CAVALRY
How can I make lightness from your damned and heavy
presence; crossing out words on paper, eliciting no response
at all from crowds of hundreds with ears and eyes. I look around
me, sometimes just to check that there's not some hateful yet
marvelous bird of prey about to swoop down onto my head.
I miss the heat and the warmth of early summer mornings.
I have nowhere any longer to sit in the cold  -  pre-dawn and
all its pretty lights are nothing against the frigid air. And the
brightness I'm waiting for takes way too long to arrive.
The rightness I'm waiting for takes way too long to come.
-
I'm walking the planks of an old railroad bridge.
Abandoned now, and forgotten, it goes nowhere at all.
There hasn't been a train here for decades. All the old
sheds are hollow and zero and fallen and crumbled.
High, high above my head, and high above this soft
and marshy ground as well, the New Jersey Turnpike
roars. It roars with all its stupid people passing, going
as swift as their shit will take them, past the old rocks
of Laurel Hill, now mostly gone as well, blown apart
by dynamite and road-builders intent upon destruction.
-
A long, long time ago, atop that pile of rock, there was an
asylum, a crazy house, a sanitarium  -  whatever cheating
words they use to describe such places. Nothing was left,
for years, except a very tall and skinny, brick chimney.
The old graves were moved, and the charnel house too
became merely myth  -  some nasty old Hackensack
Meadow punchline, pig-farm joke, marshland metaphor:
'The crazy dead died crazy, until they were not any more.'
-
We moved them all, and took them away,
we moved them all away. (How could we
make likeness from their damned and
heavy presence? The rightness I'm
waiting for takes way too long to come).
 

3398. OK THEN, YES

OK THEN, YES
Once I lived in far hills and distant climes,
playing the piano to cows and horses at dawn,
watching the run of sunlight on the face of two
ponds, with geese and ducks lining the weeded
banks while turtles and bullfrogs squabbed and
tittered  -  whatever it is those things do in idle
time. I've never had a crayon like that in my life
again. Now everything's changed, the clouds
darken and lower, the wind brings itself up to 
speeds unknown, and even the whippoorwill
once fond of me enough to sing, now
does, by contrast, nothing.

3397. STEEL GIRDERS

STEEL GIRDERS
I have been trounced by steel girders; there are
steel girders in my mind, squeezing my loins,
they run through my eyes and they have now,
already, broken both my hands. I am trussed
on steel girders, onto which have been stenciled,
(by someone), 'logic,' 'rationality,' 'presumption,'
'good sense,' and hundreds more. These are
small, little words somehow extending out past
the girders' ends as they, in turn, go on to
describe concepts, very large concepts, broad,
and vastly bigger than themselves.
-
Today I passed a Lotus dealer once again.
Out front, and inside, piles of expensive cars -
Ferrari, Porsche Carrera, a vintage '56 Lincoln,
numerous new Lotus cars, and a few old
sports cars as well, all in perfect shape. It
seemed the only people walking around there
were wealthy folk : especially some older,
capsized hippie type leftover from '71, in
perfect 'worn' jeans, a nice pair of boots and
a weatheredly haggard hippie face anyone
of that era could be proud to have. Yet now
he shopped for expensive cars, and what's
that tell you, you tell me. We agree?
-
I have steel girders pinching all my nerves,
extending out my crotch, piercing my innards
with pain, and bursting my spleen. I don't even
know what that is, actually. Baudelaire? or Verlaine?

3396. NOW AIN'T THAT SO VERY SWEET

NOW AIN'T THAT 
SO VERY SWEET
Eagerly awaited anticipated advance breaking
all barriers  -  all those background voices
chumming : eagles and angels and ladies
and lords. And oh so little I ever really knew.
They painted the old building a light shade
now of blue. It looks like Heaven in its own
pale manner. Oh, damn, just another place
I never have been. Now ain't that
so very sweet?

3395. PROBABLY NO ONE NOTICES


PROBABLY NO ONE NOTICES
I'd like a good, stirred woman, naked to the waist, 
stretched out on velvet, just waiting for me. 
Someone to love, someone to touch. I'd like
 jello on her chocolate, ivy on her vines, 
water on her pasture, and all the rest  - 
those sinewy, soft, lentil-like legations of
all those crazy l's  - love, lust, licking, landing. 
Hats off t0 Larry, and all that magical matter 
that transforms a life of death to a life that matters, 
or, at the least, figures for better, for something at all.

Friday, January 6, 2012

3394. RUTH CARRADINE

RUTH CARRADINE
...As biblical as they come, your righteous form
will drop me dead, you and your picnic lunch on 
an oceanfront rock, some ancient boulder-stone 
from aeons past you never recognize. Sitting there 
like some half-reserved yet deadly stupid diva 
gazing out to sea : the dividing line drawn between 
you and me. I'll never have the courage to lose 
this last reserve I'm keeping. Absence makes the
heart grow longer; fat muscle, doomed-pulser
to the sun and stars above.

3393. THREE KINGS DAY

THREE KINGS DAY
I don't care what today is. You say it is 'Three Kings
Day' - as if some worn and tired religious convention
would make any difference to me. Orthodox, Greek,
Catholic, Armenian  -  any rite you'd choose  -  they
are each as equally stupid as putting shoes on a goose.
High-stepping through shit, avoiding rubble along the 
way, arguing  -  with the guilt of some sick medievalist  -
about the number of angels on the head of a pin.

3392. GATES OF ALTOONA

GATES OF ALTOONA
Marvelous hings, like benefactors, arise out
of nowhere to carry you home : the small noise
in the yellowed harbor, pale in moon and dark in 
sun, is nothing but the slap of water on an old,
tired wharf. Everyone has left. You are once
again alone. That solo lets you see.
-
You remember other times : the girl by the
wavering pine, with her glitter and chafe, all 
that silk of scarf around her neck. She
let herself become yours, and then, over
time, it all disappeared. Now, back to
that persuading gulf again, you sit up,
late nights, staring out to the harbor boats.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

3391. LANDSLIDE

LANDSLIDE
Rocks and rubble, all this beneath
which we lie  -  don't disturb the
lay of this land, even as we search
it : a fossil tone that reminds us of
something else. I could have warned
you of fifty things, and even if ten
had come true my chances of
being right were probably valid.
Beware then the rub  -  the
mountain now sits on you.

3390. CHOIRS OF WORMLETS

CHOIRS OF WORMLETS
I have chastised all to the fore
and beaten them down and made
chase of shadow and rivulet and
runner and run. It is nothing very
populous, this popular delusion.
I will harbor your heart in my
hands, and hold all of your
hesitant hopes within these
moments of my making -
all of your dreams in my
drama. My blood shall 
pulse your heart, and I
will spill new seed on
your lily-white belly.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

3389. SOLDIERS

SOLDIERS
If murder is the measure, that leaves
off soldiers and military men  -  they
can go on and live their stupid lives
forever; without a thought of guilt or
the troubles it has caused. After
all, one must say, in their view,
'we just did what we were told.'

3388. RECOLLECTION

RECOLLECTION
In this first cold of Winter  - nine degrees  -
the ice is hanging from the loom, and a mother
who died in the kitchen now sings in the other
room.  A tea-cozy, hand-knitted, it seems, 
of one shape or another, is at rest next to
a toaster on the pale-green counter-top.
'Anyway, Death be not proud' the
embroider reads. A thin light crosses
from another vantage the view across
the yard. My eyes wander and,
 again it seems, I can't keep them
down, or at least it's hard.

3387. WISE AND GENTLE WISDOM FOR LIVING A KIND AND GENEROUS LIFE

WISE AND GENTLE WISDOM 
FOR LIVING A KIND AND
GENEROUS LIFE
(deeply spiritual life)
The man is reading Henry Nouwen in a very
considered manner  -  he is blessing his bread
and coffee, holding his book in a caress and
(I sense) feeling forth for a meaningful life  -  
while, just next to him, some retired professor
in a straight-man's smock is railing about
Venezuela's nationalized oilfields. 
Pipelines and revolutions, to the
heart or through the soul. 
The first man, I notice 
now, is leaving with his
butter-pad knife.