3540. FROM BROADWAY AND TWELFTH

FROM BROADWAY 

AND TWELFTH (1910)

I shade the city with these broken arms and eyes,

seeing small buildings, red brick, and windows and

casements tiny and light. Three-story walkups or four,

the anxious stairways bring the radicals forth - all

those pacifists and socialists and communists and

sorts - as one they are gathered together. This

unbrokered meeting, I sense will run on for hours,

into the wee of the night, for they have no jobs to go

to and their interest anyway is not in service, but fight.

They narrow the streets just by gazing down them: all

signboards and placards and marches and plight.

-

I live in a storied age, one of missions and causes.

Having never left oblivion, I remain quite familiar with

the steps of the downtrodden, the disenfranchised and

those enmeshed in fright from might. The little boy within

me still seems to want to dream, but the token hope

of an everlasting life just now seems stupid and dull.

All the real colors have vanished, with everything now

but a pallid and ghostly reminder of what it once may

have been, and all I know is that which I've seen.

-

Frost-wrapped, bundle-jacket, greatcoat keeping out the cold.

Just as new electric lights bring fewer doubts and dark'nings

so too does the open mind hold less of recess and paranoia;

fantasies of old, bereft, things of myth and magical belief,

alas, thy all now have to go. The only God here is movement.

Movement. The Movement. The Gift  -  and ideology beckons.

-

I cannot be encumbered by the heavy weave of circumstance.

I am striving for light and air, places to exude from, was of

reaching out. Driving off the demons, evil things that sing.

I shade the city with these broken arms and eyes.

3539. MY PHYSICS (charmed by the woodpile)

MY PHYSICS

(charmed by the woodpile)

The cat got the gorge kindly

and finally and then someone

mentioned my name. Alone,

that all was nothing  -  like

the luthier suddenly making

electric guitars, all things

had lost all meaning, and

I have nowhere left to go.

-

Nine lives nine time ninety-nine,

the worlds pile up old and tired.

The woodpile sags and falls -

imploded in the facts of its own

tired volition  -  all rot and moisture

and crumble. All it took, my friend,

was the weight of that one cat, and

he went down with the mess.

-

What's the little weight of that

in grams or pounds or ounces? In

some oddly major way of physics  -

the harshest stuff we live by  -  the

weight is added to by the settling impact

of moment, and only that one landing

moment, and then has momentum has

its draw as well  -  all enough to bring

it down ; the cat got the gorge kindly.

3538. MODERN MOROCCO (45 Days On)

MODERN MOROCCO

(45 Days On)

Waking up in a strange place each day

not knowing where you are or at first

at least. The brave woman standing by

while her husband is dying, or the priestly

stranger about in a foreign land, how same

or different are they? Need I really ask?

Everything left that wasn't stolen from

that place in the hills, do I have to ask

about that, or is that too gone?

-

In Morocco, 45 days on, Jesus Christ

I need to hold you once more. Let me

feel the young juice of your jowls, let

me take you to market with your

nice brown skin  -  making 

pronouncements of your 

love and your glory.

3537. DOUBLE ROOMY

DOUBLE-ROOMY

(Small World Cafe, Witherspoon St., Princeton)

You have wired me for small change : the intrepid adventurer

always. Yes, I guess I can send you money for shoes; yet,

right here where I live, I am sensitive even to the coffee people,

as I pay, watching to see what I give  -  god-forsaken tip bucket

always gaping. It's difficult, and when I do it seems the wrong

people are watching. I cannot shake those heebie-jeebies when

all I want is a java-joe. What can you send me then, for that?

So many names, so many positions and sizes for coffee; like

some weird sex game of nomenclatural twist, and I didn't even

want to play, double-roomy Joe, or Jane, let's say.

-

Outside, along Witherspoon Street, the dark side of nighttime

is leaving as I wrestle with a curb : cars passing within their

own headlights, garbage trucks and food loaders, splattered

like sauce on a bib. Oh everywhere the day is opening up;

all that voracious sound and fury. Along with me, the morning

people do their drudgery  -  waltzing in like lolly-gags and

wise old metronomes, keeping time to their times, talking

the words they might have used already. I just don't know.

-

The guy with the Washington Post again, the New Holland

broker now holding his pen, the lady with the retired 
father-husband, the guy with the smiling eyes, and
 - over there - that one reading his Bible once more; 
or perhaps the story changes each new time

or what is religion for?

-

Salvation steps in and orders again : the Chemistry guy,

savoring his little espresso, with those so-expressive eyes

I know he's ready to go when he leaves. I too mentally

genuflect at each new groove. My Excalibur is pointed to

the hundreds more to come : the morning line, the brighter

time, the ringing sound of traffic, everywhere, waking up

again to kids and all those ladies back in line.

3536. WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT?

WHAT WILL THEY 

THINK OF NEXT?

Just like the old-timers used to say, 'what will

they think of next?'  -  give me your sustaining

melody, take me to your twinkle-toes, lift the

graft with your Casandra. More then that,

I do not know.

-

It was only chance that brought me a

fleeting glory; ending up on your front

steps, begging food, you took me in.

I washed your mighty dishes for an hour.

We talked, and then the wildman within 

me took a session as we both laughed.

-

Graft and corruption and invincible seed;

something like that  -  I really forget all

the rest. I'd not escape your atmosphere

no matter, wherever I went, and it all

comes together in the end. We are human

in only one respect : not eternal, just human

in both the flesh and the needs. Disturb

nothing as you prepare to leave, for this

is now my house, my house alone.

-

More than that, I do not know.

3535. PORTRAIT-FUELED PEOPLE

PORTRAIT-FUELED PEOPLE

Yes, all the mannerisms of gold and glory 

can pass for fame and beauty, at least for a while. 

And then December's descent begins rolling in : 

subtle breakdown, the frame and carcass erode, 

the suppleness disappears, and those new shoes 

you beheld become rotten and sour with wear. 

The Great Wheel is coming back. Surely it will 

pick you up anew, as another go-round awaits.

 Enjoy the smile before it too fades.

-

I look about, only to find out you are in

some Egypt again : as ancient as one of those

old tombs as well. I suppose, all this could

do you good. There is never any mistaking

of solace for cure, or grace for solitude.

The camel glides surreptitiously slow

over both the sand and the pavement.

Some little man holds the rein.

-

At the card, on the back, in the corner,

you have written something I cannot

decipher. A scrawl, a secret message,

something as old and small as time itself.

3534. MAKE THIS OPTIONAL

MAKE THIS OPTIONAL

I am a teacher of many means. My open

hands, outstreched, seem to hold the sun. 

What little I give, really, comes back tenfold,

like someone's parable says. Maybe not.

This morning, long after there now should

be, ice forms on the window-sill near where

the idle cat has flopped. The cat, to no outward

mind, seems not to notice, yet I do. The lamplight,

once centered on the ceiling, has now somehow

moved on over the corner's edge. I do not know

how or what happened to make it so. Slow,

all things change  -  and the ice will soon be

water again, the ice will soon be water.

3533. INSTRUCTIONAL

INSTRUCTIONAL

I want to be a swift healer  -  scar and blood and tissue,

all together, in the instant of perhaps an hour. Never knowing

whether or not that is true, I walk warily over glass and

stone. I am an erring marksman with many wounds to

my credit. Yet, as it is, no sooner than the wound is

imparted than does the itch of the healing begin.

All which is fine by me.

-

Take heed to be swift and careful too.

Be careful to take heed and watch what you do

3532. LOOKING BACK

LOOKING BACK

I am in a cage where the north is the sidelight and the

light before me is ultra-real. It leads me to other places.

I ask you to listen : the candy mart at the edge of the

street where kids playing stickball still listen for the

screech of a policeman's tires; the two girls in jumpsuits

from after-school, sitting to watch the boys at play; the

loudmouth boy, the one with the cross, continually up and

down retrieving the balls from the nearby library's low roof.

Each hit a homer; each homer lost on the library roof.

-

Nothing has any meaning. The girls in the jumpsuits as

yet have no breasts; everything is small and growing,

everywhere like Spring. This is a season of youth, to be

squandered, a simple thing wasted  -  as is said  -  on

the young. All is joy and flirt, and Easter is just around

the corner. Just now, the bats and gloves have come out.

-

A month ago, still living in deep-freeze, these same kids

were smashing icy snowballs off each other's head.

 

3531. 'AND TO THE WIFE OF BATH'

'AND TO THE WIFE OF BATH' 

(Translated from 'The Canterbury Tales :

the Programmer's Story')
(part 1)
This battalion loves you, this entire army of subterfuge    

is here at your feet. The fir trees are waving in the wind,
for you. Let's not pretend (any more) that you do not see.
All this love amasses at the silliest of borders : where the
rivers twist and the men decide who owns what, or shall.
We may decamp for the night, our little entourage. But I
cannot, by myself, think of other than you. I cannot see
without you. I want to suck your toes, caress your limbs.
Oh God above us, how has it come to this?
-
I am not alone, mind you. There are fourteen men right now,
just like me, under darkness and night, thinking of just you.
Granted, all this is crazy, but so what. Listen! Listen, as I
spoof to be a contender in some future, modern age. How
different all things will be: I shall see you (naked) on the
back of decks of cards. Somehow, this occurs, as men hold
the cards, sitting around strange tables. Others, it seems,
are viewing you in pictures that really do seem to be moving.
How time elapses whatever may have occurred, I'm afraid
I simply do not know - nor the time or place I find myself.
-
We had no schooling, remember; everything we did we did
ourselves, lance and hammer. Sword and driver. Whatever
did not die, we bludgeoned until it did. Oh, Wife of Bath, now
please can you here help me? I am rigid, and alone.

3530. AS LOST AS THE HAPPY

AS LOST AS THE HAPPY

All those archaeologists and bone hunters

and paleontologists, they all chatter as one:

wearing scarves and eating French toast, singing

on phones and marrying the weather. Yet, (oh

modern day and land of this), there is nothing

for what we are serving, and we are as lost

as the happy. Why, today, will the needle's

point set on the sun's perfect pivot?

-

Yet not for me, and I will write of the killing floor;

the flow of a million slaves trudging, the blood

sacrifices and all those virgins with blood on

their faces and hands. 'The land lashes off

to Egypt again as we tumble : roiling back into

the Nile's past and the Nile's future;

Temple of Dendur, indeed.

-

Now it is morning again, and another day

has dawned. My own spirit is fifteen thousand

years old and a day, by your reckoning, and

today is that day and those above were my

very own words and I am splitting my seams

to be gone. I am as lost as the happy can be.

3529. SEDLAK

SEDLAK (1967)

(Restaurant Onion Batter)

I knew him as Sedge and so did the

rest. Long face of 10th Street, constable

of Dog Horace, roomer in Elvery's brownstone.

All of this very nice. Times for a job were few.

That old boat, back then, was still in the harbor,

perched at the pier near the end of Canal, or close;

slightly listing and ever leaking oil, it stayed in place.

-

'High School of Maritime Arts' or some such

ridiculous nomenclature it wore. Perhaps in its

way it was meant to signify by symbol a larger and

much broader world (of which) Sedlak never knew.

-

Nor I, for that matter. We somehow both thrived on the

incidental manner of all this meaning. We sometimes

had a breakfast together, there, in some leaky

stateroom of our own imagining  -  coffee in cups,

some stinking roll of a restaurant onion batter.

-

Yes, well, that restaurant was quite nearby  -  a

truckman's dinner really, for coffee and slop, for

truckers and dockhands, haulers and stevedores,

vagrants and bums and hookers too. We'd gotten

to know them all, altogether in that steamy pall,

restaurant onion batter. We sometimes went there,

but found more fun on the listing boat, before and

after hours, when, by stealth, it was ours alone.

 

3528. MOMENTS OF MATTER

MOMENTS OF MATTER

(Your Deciphered Distortion)

Your time on the hill is over and

mine has just begun. I bring to this

grassy plain some guiding lights and

an angel's happy star. To paraphrase

Isaiah: 'Come let us twinkle together.'

-

It was 1964 when Lyndon Johnson said that

to his fighting adversaries. No, maybe 1966 -

all those Asian years together now jumble,

they just keep me running on. I never figured

what he meant. Isaiah and Asian, though they

closely run together as sounds perhaps,

never really worked nor mated.

-

I was just a young boy then, young enough

anyway no have no long memory of ever

having been there : no sensate experiences

to speak of singly. I was just open and ready

to learn. It was all a lark-fink's already Paradise,

still faraway, in a landscape green and wet, where

boys were killing boys and men slew men. All

too little to move me, and I went on. No one, no

father nor any, had really prepared me for life.

-

It is important that he drove his Lincoln at 95

through the dust of dirt and the Pedernales fields

in Texas  -  all those years ago. Now, since, we've

had too much Texas, too much Texas everywhere.

-

So I've decided, Isaiah -  not Johnson  -  and

words really rule the world; no one or no thing else.

 This deciphered distortion I've now given to you,

and all I remember of my time on Earth.

 'Come, let us reason together.'

3527. TO ONLY OBLIGE

TO ONLY OBLIGE

I am once more crossing Muranto Bridge;

the awkward Silesian Fields beneath me

resemble something from a picture book of

my youth. 'Around the World in 1,000 Pictures'

was the title, so chosen - I'd now suppose -

because of the picture count and not much more.

That was so very long ago, and now I am a walking

veteran of all this life has brought. Not as much

the good and only what it ought, but, still, no mind.

-

Beneath me, I see yellow things  -  floating by, they

resemble what we'd call 'Ugli Fruit', which is a real thing.

Debris or excess, a farmer's field plight's letting loose.

They are not, for sure, cannon balls or grapefruits, nor

are they pumpkins or skulls. In a land like this,

I suppose, who would ever really know. Any

of these things in a moment could show.

-

A languorous cow here decorates the landscape  - 

to my right, a farmhouse sits low and white, on a

decorous landscape of green. A water pump, I see,

sticks out of the ground, red. Its vertical presence

a stigmata on the field, a distant dot of red, the

same color as blood on a savior's hand. The death

knell of a local bell resounds obliquely from the

church tower on the village square. I amble on,

only to think 'why am I here?'

-

A sainted character - not me - would walk these

grounds with a walking stick perhaps topped by a

cross - a top carved and colored with faith. By

contrast, I wear a sackcloth of modern day

envy and doubt, a philosophical hatred of sorts,

of all things that no longer make any

sense on this Earth at all.

3526. ENFEEBLED MY BRAIN

ENFEEBLED MY BRAIN

I wash my hands with my hands, but how can this be?

There is nothing so inchoate as this varying wordlessness

I never undertake. Oh, you have gotten through to me surely,

broken my lead-wrapped heart, opened my gushers of vast

and emotive blood. I want to look ahead, past all this moment.

-

The city, that pile of no good corruption, has taken down the

public pool : wasted its walls, crushed its pedestals and diving

boards, torn back the fencing  -  now all the LaGuardia Projects

remain, all those embattled WPA housing built long ago for the

poor and needy, without this watering hole of public largess.

-

The blacks and Puerto Ricans who once played there, replacing,

before them the war-torn ghetto Jews who just sat there, stunned,

they too now have all gone. There is no one left, really to even

support. And why bother? Everything now is warfare and ammo-cake.

-

The whole world is angry. Settlements and red-lines, occupiers 
and the occupied. It's a long-torn world forlorn, a fairy-tale 
place now of just ogres and goons. They've taken down 
the public pool. Who would have thought it would have 
happened this soon?

3525. ADAM

ADAM

The beauty that is all gone is

leaving us traces of where it's been.

The laughter comes off the tongue

fittingly  -  expert choreography

such as this is never forgotten.

-

The man in his Washington house

is talking his 30 years there and all

its doors. I can get no meaning at

all from the words he speaks. He

evidently owns his own domicile

and feels everyone else should know.

His history is of wandering, his lineage

is tribal batter. Under a Springtime

moon, he waits to rise again.

-

I have no plans to stay here,

though I would if it was by plan

allowed. I like the plains and meadows.

I like the seas and clouds. The beauty

that is all gone has left us traces of

where it has been, yet we cannot

live in Eden anymore.

3524. IN THE DARK CURTAIN

IN THE DARK CURTAIN

I am playing a bleak card with a

 cat named  Death. He is a phallic face

smoking a quite redundant cigarette.

Like Samuel Beckett he intones :

 'Throw up and go. Where. Neither.

Till sick of there. Throw up and

back. The body again. Where none.

The place again. Where none. Try again.

Fail again. Westward ho! Fail better.'

All this until I realize, like myself, this

man is crazy. The world is crazy.

The dream is insane.

-

I take the black cloth from the

tabletop and I cough to spit up

phlegm. Bile. Is there a difference?

I am surprised to notice, beneath

the black cloth, as I lifted it, he had

placed a pistol. Now it was  -  as I 

looked up  -  staring me in the face.

Oh God, I hope he fails again. Not

try again. Where. Here.

3523. SHOWTIME (Nature is all eyes)

SHOWTIME

(Nature is all eyes)
Nefertiti stole the gown. Carrying twenty

items in a ten item sack, Hiram Omair

did the lickety-split. None if this can be helped.

Low-cost, freezer-quality education doesn't

come cheaply, nor to those who wait. Just

beyond the privacy fence, Nancy Tangert

bathes herself in gruesome sunlight.

Nature is all eyes.

-

I am of the tendency to let things fester,

taking as much time as possible before

lancing the boil. So to speak. Have you

ever watched a dentist drilling? Or a mason

throwing mortar? It's a skillful and deliberate

undertaking, each  -  little done by those not

in the know, not up to par, not trained in the

skills so obviously needed. I agree, there's

plenty of time for everything. Plenty of

time for it all, (and Nature is all eyes).

3522. AT CARNEVALE HALL

AT CARNEVALE HALL

In two-time fast-feet motion, let me

state the obvious: the tree is falling down.

Now the odious: Hey! you are standing

too near it for comfort. Everywhere else

around here, the air smells like soap.

-

And I don't know what to do. The bivouacking

cast and crew of some meatball circus due

in town is just now beginning to arrive. Alabama

license plates, and Mississippi, and an old

Mercury Cougar and Dodge truck or two.

What a strange array of cast-off junk, just

now parking in a million dollar parking lot.

-

The lady by the front door, still young

enough by my standards to torture, me

anyway, is looking straight out. The sunlight

beneath her arms seems to make her blouse

transparent. Oh boy on that one! This circus

already brings its wicked charms to town.

-

A little cider-mill side-stop like this one

seems to get its share of passing shows -

the sideshow, the carnival, the circus romp,

the peep. You wouldn't figure there'd be

enough money around to make it pay  - 

but, hey, these farmer types get bored

as Hell and get there way as well.

Makes for a happy day.

3521. ALL SO UNREAL

ALL SO UNREAL

Only the mirror puts you next

to me, and this is all so unreal.

Refracted from all angles and made

up from reflections, those things you

move have no bearing, really no

direction at all. I am in the funhouse

of my mind? I am lost amidst a

whirling fog of image? I cannot

really live in this world, all chimera,

all token, all strife, and all so unreal.

3520. BUT NOW ALL THOSE OLD MEN ARE ALL GONE

BUT NOW THOSE OLD

MEN ARE ALL GONE

'I suppose I made the explosion, turning

things so around  -  a very meticulous idea

of nothing really at all, like Springtime, of 

14th Street, in 1967. Believe this, we still

walked horses along the western edge of

14th and out to 10th Ave.; whatever's 

there now bears no relation to this at all.

We did a dairy-truck-barn-wagon-rack

feeding station, 3 times a day. A long day,

handling carts and milk cans  -  Hell's Kitchen

and Chelsea and back, London Mews,

Peter McManus's, all the rest. Those

younger boys, like killers, with their

hay-ricks and horseshit, walking out

to the Hudson's edge. Weird Puerto 

Rican families and over-weight witchcraft

fortune-telling ladies, vigil lamps and candles

all together, saints be praised!  Lebanese

seers and women who spoke (she had

eyes so black at the center hope died).

-

And now, today, someone's telling me

it's the first day of Spring  -  something new

and different in this, another, time. All their

blather and nothing at all, everywhere, 

everything the same as I dwell from the 

past and make others unsettled; but I live 

in my other time, and can only look out.

-

Like Columbus Vasco de Gama Magellan

and me, set out on the wrong open sea and

now lost to the ages - but for a name I'd be

nothing at all, (and from the horses at the

edge of 14th, we kept fires in a hundred

streetside barrels but now all those

old men are gone).'

3519. SPACETALK

SPACETALK

We marveled all the way to Wiemar,

gabbing at the circuit, pointing to the

ruins. There were so many of the

old names looming that we'd forgotten

to notice the company we kept. You said

'this all reminds me of three years ago, when

I had to enter that paper in the contest for

Snell.' I laughed, remembering the fraud

you'd gotten involved with  -  no worse for

wear, Snell was never found out. Now, like

some Goethe sniveling his way past the

guards, we walked lightly on through the

arcade. A carousel rounded its turn.

-

I sometimes wonder why I was ever born :

wonder not for those deep and philosophical

reasons you'd think, but rather to make some

sense of all this wasted time. I orient my face

towards the east in the hopes of catching

the rising sun, and then I understand that

being oriented towards the orient is a stupid

and redundant ploy. Like my own life, the

light and the rays of the sun cover over

everything, all the same and mostly

without impact. We are inured to

that which passes as Life by us.

-

Perhaps someday I can write in your book

as you have written in mine. Until then.

purely out of boredom at best, I sit back,

trying to invent a magic stylus with a

magic message, something new

I could tell to you.

3518. RUNNING THROUGH THE ZOO

RUNNING THROUGH 
THE ZOO

I get to hold this inattention in my hands. I mark off

nothing but the ropes and the barriers. The ever-cute

mark of the orangutan daisy, the splendid pea-shot

of the panda. Everywhere I look, the scene is of something

else, something I'd forgotten from long-ago. The Central

Park Zoo of 1966  -  when the piss smell shot through

the animal smell and mixed its mingle with an African swell.

Lions sweating in tiny concrete cages, and the seal-fellows,

swimming in slop on the rim of steel. All those pathetic

light bulbs and the grizzled guys with the feeder carts,

throwing hunks of red meat to the tigers and leopards,

panthers and cats. I wanted to swim in the tide, back

then, of what I thought was the greater-than-big great

big world. Savannah, marsh and mountaintop; all of

it together in one easy loop. Back then Asia was

only a place where strange animals dwelt, and a

Puma was a name with a very exciting flavor.

3517. MATURATION PERIOD, SEASONED WINE

MATURATION PERIOD, 

SEASONED WINE

They are slogging through the mash like pigs

through offal - like lunatics without their

moonlight, old sailors, broken down and

maimed, dreaming of their maiden voyages.

It should (then) come as no surprise, these

things : the cyclotron draws power from

its own heat, the shooter's forehead is

red from the recoil of the rifle gone

out of control. I am but a bystander

now  -  all I can do is wince.

3516. DR. GRAVESMAN

DEAR DR. GRAVESMAN

He marks off the sheet with his awesome

colored pencil; a reed in a stylus of blood, or

or a dripping tangible in a universe of ether.

Either way, he is the one with the power.

No man taller than the man who reaches high.

'Dear Dr. Gravesman, was it I who did this to

myself, or has it come from someplace else?'

-

I noticed he did not answer, just scrawled some

more. 'I do not like thee, Doctor, I do not like

thee well. You take my joys and tie them up,

and diagnose them Hell!' Those were my

words, not his. I never did find out what

he'd written on those yellow sheets.

3515. ALL THE RAIMENT MATTER

ALL THE 

RAIMENT MATTER

CINDY SHERMAN

I can't dissemble, seeing silent matter.

Art wears its feeble cloak in the face of

everything else : the owl strikes death at

midnight, the key to the tomb is lost at sea.

Alongside the busy highway, high above

Tonnelle, the great graveyard robs time of

its means and material. Egyptian graves,

styled so anyway, strange heads and shapes

and forms, the look of a Sphinx, the wings of

a dragon; all the twisted, broken tree, things

downed in any recent wind. This is truly some

land of the distant dead. And then there is she :

and there she is, wearing whatever she chooses 

to portray, a face-riding chimera, got to be close,

a movie-maven wearing but panties and a bra, a

dowager swimming in a steel moat, nothing at all,

but always something. 'I can fly out, unlike anything

you think you've seen before.' No, no, please now, save

me that catalyst, and let me escape. This land rolls down

the watery hill, draining deep death to the highway below.

 

3514. CERTAINTIES OF GEORGIAN COURT

CERTAINTIES OF

GEORGIAN COURT

He, by her side, walking the branded lover,

clutching the unmatched hat, silent while

saying things over and over. She, at his

side, curling a lover's eye, tight as a fist

to his heart, secure as a locket and chain.

They together walk unbroken in a circle of

festive love. All the arrivals together, come as

one, and behind them the red brick buildings

stand tall. Only this human moment, beneath

a sky of blue, makes anything like this seem real.

3513. ELMIRA

ELMIRA

Smoked meat contains carcinogens, and I want

to be in another place : shrubbery, something hidden,

a shortfall amidst hundreds of options. The soldiers

seem to stand erect, though really for no reason

at all  -  as if cartoon characters, elected to grace

a cover of some tourist magazine, are forced into

a graceless and immobile pose. And now, I see

that you have brought a general through the ranks:

your cheery, red thighs always did make me happy,

and - gosh - what else is a straight shooter for?

I've lived a long and solid life. Passing inchoate,

rimming the high sides, standing for a while just

to meditate at Sullivan's Monument. Yes, lots of

things in Elmira made me happy, let alone the

great joys, back in the 1970's, of that abandoned

mansion in Strathmont Park. I tore your shirt, I

kissed your broken lips, wordlessly, up against

the wall of stone, I entered you at last.

3512. GLORY ROAD

GLORY ROAD

Rilke raiment, I found it again :

the great turnover in the almost

sky. You must change your life.

The shadows of the colored glass

are now shading the mist across the

room; a declining sunlight, a graying

yellow, everything together conspires

to lift a spirit and break a heart. If

some God is in these details, this is

one huge detail  -  spinning forth, in

endless supply. Morals. Mountebanks.

Missions, mentions and mercy, all in

due supply. We each are washing our

hands in this lave of love together.

 

'The work of the eyes is done. Go 

now and do the heart-work on the

images imprisoned within you.'

3511. IN THE ROOM

IN THE ROOM

The women are touching their buttons; it's

enough for me. Those cloaks, the jackets

they wear, everything about them riles. Halos

and auras, like a rim around each, present to

me the fetching sights. Outside the doorway,

just there, the dark-night lights of the little

street beckon  -  people come and go as

the glass door's hinges squeak. No matter,

as no one looks up to notice. This is a

curious time for most anything, and I

am duly engrossed. Labels and beer,

coffees, teas and soda. Ashtrays and

magazines. A crazed array of sound

and sight and movement and light.

-

It's exactly fourteen after one, and

two little people have come in.

Literally little people. She barely

reaches the table's heights, and

he - by her side - seems as well

no bigger than a flea. As a pair

they are a duo of one. I love

their place and presence:

-

As if another world had suddenly

entered into mine  -  different view,

different source, different journey.

So that, then, to bring you comfort,

I lean back a bit as we begin to talk.

It is a wonderful occasion, whenever

we can be together: mountains fall

and hillocks dwindle. All things

become a smooth as glass.