Friday, March 30, 2012

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.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

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.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

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.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

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.

Monday, March 26, 2012

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?

Friday, March 23, 2012

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.


Thursday, March 22, 2012

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.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

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.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

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.

Monday, March 19, 2012

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.