3681. HERE

HERE

Now the air is troubled by...

Mites? Bats? Spiders? Rats?

No, no, that cannot be, none of

that flies, you see? Well, maybe

mites might. I don't even know.

-

Once I lived far out in the country.

On the first warm days of Spring,

the grass in the back would heat

up and, believe you me, ten 

thousand flies and more would

awake. The air was abuzz.

I guess they all came out

in the warmth; but you

couldn't avoid them.

This place was theirs.

-

A week or two later, it was

all over and they were all gone.

Beats me what subservience

any form of life demands.

3680. TENANCY ARRIVES

TENANCY ARRIVES

Tenancy arrives boring and trite, quaint

and expensive, worried of nothing at all.

The windows need washing, the paint is

a mess. I don't care and neither do you.

Evidently this is how the good-life once

was lived. Ballentine Ale on a window

ledge rotting and dried. The moment 

that something crawls you know

it's too late. Out front, I think 

the yard's a sinkhole now.

-

We raise a toast, we lift a flag:

'Don't Tread On Me', or one

of those old bluster ones : 

a sectioned snake, a raft

of firepower and glory.

Oh Hell, there's nothing

left to hide, really

nothing at all.

3679. PATENTED AND COPYRIGHTED

PATENTED AND 

COPYRIGHTED

This is mine. You touch it and

you're dead. I'll kill you myself.

Hunting you down like scab meat

on a dog; wiry seats like a Cyclops

watching  -  bar stools and cannibal

fools, all gone down together.

-

Her name is Nancy Shame; she's

got none of it. The fissure between 

her rental legs, it's pulsing.  All this

production and nowhere to go.

3678. MANHATTAN

MANHATTAN

All those Rothschild bank men,

swooping down with their patterned

gold and disbursal papers, let's shoot

them all at dawn. You know, the

Belgian leftover royals, the dumb

Dutch burghers, the crappy English

fops, the pepper men with their

Germanic shouts, the fat and oiled

Americans, all sizzled and foul. I

may have seen them in a dream 

but, yes, at least I knew their

names. Yet, now, in the new 

and tyrannical light of day,

their silver clinks dead at 

the money table, and there

is really so little left. We lift

our lamp at Freedom's door?

How's that go? Brokers and

entitled ones, we've made our

own Manhattan on this new

and tasteless shore!

3677. JUNE

JUNE

See the rose growing in the

doorway  -  no one other cares, and

it grows alone. Not afar, as if lost

and cast out on the open sea, adrift

in some salty boat, but here, on this

ground, amidst both you and me.

We, we are now the scavengers

of these hearts, these visions, this

place. Let us look this over.

-

I extend my hand to your little

face. The door nearby has a 

slight sag where it hangs at the

hinge, and nothing fits quite

right  -  when closed, it lets

in light, in Winter, all that air.

-

Yet, now on the promise of

June, we put that all aside  -

blossoms and flowers and 

plants a'plenty, all in a very

perfect fury of the season. See

this rose, then, growing

in the doorway. No one

other cares, and it

grows alone.

3676. TAKE ME UP

TAKE ME UP

Blue flagpole, surreptitious gallant one.

The oval mirror high in the sky is reflecting

back only luck  -  the jet plane passes, all

those people asleep. A small wind runs the

reeds and marsh grass, stirring small things,

making small noise. Way out here I see

the distant landscape of a towering city:

were it to fall, I would see its ruins as well.

As it is, a few marred water-birds idly

sit. They watch for nothing, I guess,

as I watch for them.

3675. MARIO

MARIO

OK Mario, I hung my hat on Streibel Road,

right next to where you disinterred that martyr

you'd told me about : long, tall Sally and her

district distinct boyfriend, some Wally the Cow

in a sombrero. Everything was lying about, passive

to a fault  -  and the only active thing was how my

heart grew faster and what was in my pants.

-

She'd said her name was Sheba, and I quickly

threw her down. Had my moment, walked away

and never trembled again. Sheba was left standing,

right before the frozen mirror that was dripping with

her stuff. Like a dream run amok, this was all too good.

-

We barbecued the mainshaft, and I was her head waiter.

3674. REGISTER JUST THE NOTION

REGISTER JUST THE NOTION

Of time running by, of the river of light, fading;

Make the ideal the norm  -  as some holy roller

preacher would plead just before the collection.

Bring the heaven from the stars and back, let it

cut right through your heart like a Jesus shaft

of light from on high. Bend to no man except to

help him up. Register just the notion of hope.

-

I find I dream in italics or boldface  -  captions so

raw and naked they underscore the fixation of

my mind to my hand. I try to make even the

thought of magic a magical thing. Let us stay

this discursive course ourselves until this

winding road comes upon its own silly end.

-

Keep the bead upon the dotted line.

Gently pull the trigger, but as if, at the

same time, you really meant it. And, by

all means of course, be sure the barrel

is first directly in your mouth.

Register just the notion.

3673. TAKE YOUR SKILLS TEST AND STUFF IT UP YOUR ASS

TAKE YOUR SKILLS 
TEST AND STUFF IT 
UP YOUR ASS

(Memorial Day (fucking))
-a new bark for the revolution's tree/
crazy man goes nuts/
call it whatever you wish-
------------
We are walking tepidly along the banks of
the old canal, near where the water has flooded
a hundred times - each of the old crummy buildings
sport their most recent mud-lines flood-lines water marks
like a ten-foot badge of some abandoned pride. A hundred
different flowers have bloomed, leaving nothing left for Mao.
That old, chubby Chinese moron once had a movement called
'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom', when such a killer bastard as
he was could finally presume to let an artist talk - and then turn
on him anyway and kill. I hope he's dead twice and suitably rotted.
-
That's what I said to you anyway, as we were walking. I was really
thinking of Hart Crane and the crazy fag leap he took off the back 

of a boat - trying to pick up sailors in the Caribbean, now that's for
sure the way any poet ought to live. He should have got his 
homo ass back to New York City licitly split. 
Oh, they don't do that do they?
-
I'm so tired of everything - all the rancid crap that passes 
for goals and merit today. Flamboyant fucking people 
walking along on their little pin feet, playing with screens and 
phones and screens and keys; nine-year old equivalences, 
and everywhere about them nothing. The land and the trees,
the sky and all those fancy elms. Up their fucking asses with all 
that too. I'm petrified sick of this world, and even when 
I wasn't I was. Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, all those Russian 
bastards got nothing on me. I want to go drown in their reeds.
-
Now someone says 'It's Memorial Day', while selling
some stupid paper flower to another unwitting fool. We're
supposed to remember the fucking stupid dead, the ones 
who've gone down, the ones who've fallen, the tricked-up
soldiers who've lost their way. 'Not for me,' I turn and say,
 'not for me, buddy, no way.'
-
I realize, as we walk, that you really do believe in
everything, while I believe in nothing at all.

3672. SALACIOUS BLUE GIRLS

SALACIOUS BLUE GIRLS

'Twirling your blue skirts, traveling the sward

under the towers of your seminary,

go listen to your teachers old and contrary

without believing a word.'

-

Should I too be there? Wear those trousers rolled?

As put, above, by John Crowe Ransom, oh crazy

girls of Mapplestance Hill, look not down on me gaping.

-

I wrote a couplet to T.S. Eliot. He too responded with

spittle. It's always been like that : the most gorgeous

of the beauteous ones, every Paul Muldoon or C.K.

Williams out there, think nothing but of 

outsmarting their days.

 

3671. TONTIN COFFEE HOUSE

TONTIN COFFEE HOUSE 

(1793 - Corner of Water Street

and Wall Street - 2012)

Where to this : then praythee 

listen? 'The system of probables

invented  -  we are now told  -  

by a newly displaced God?

Are you naturally crazy man?'

-

'God exists, or God does not

exist. Where is the problem?' -

or so Simone Weill put it, right

before she starved herself to 

death. And, yet, here we sit.

-

The soldier comes in, stinking

of pigs and shit. He seems so

very nervous, agitated with

his musket and hat : 'Th-they're

out there, tt-they're in t-the harbor

n-now! M-More yellow th-than gold,

l-like the piss of G-God's own Army!

I see color b-before me running!'

3670. 1868

1868

Matt the gump and Aegis the mule, both

coming over the hill at Cemetery Ridge. 

Oh little do they know the war's already

been over for three long years. War of

Southern Secession, Civil War, whatever.

I stood up to try to tell them! Like looking

at someone returned from the dead - a

legend of mystery, a field-rifle filled with

tired fury. Good God Almighty man!

Life does goes on! Then : some oddball

cannon in the sky I saw - and I noticed 

the procession of bedraggled men in tow.

I was having a vision of the wartime dead,

coming back, down my way. Coming

for to carry me home? Well swing 

low sweet chariot!

3669. THESE PROVISIONS

 THESE PROVISIONS

I must tunnel to Hell first through your

barricaded heart. The night watchman

says he hears you curse my name : the

silence of time, yes, I admit, can be as

deafening as all that too, but I tell him

nothing more. We've outlasted all the

gimcrackery and avoidance together.

-

Onto the shelf I watch you put the regular

junk of an everyday life : cornflakes and

maple syrup, tomato sauce and a jar of

pickled beets. No matter; these things

just are, like the smile on your face.

-

Somewhere behind my head, your

stupid music goes on : boys singing

about girls or girls singing about boys.

It's everywhere the same - the loveless

seeking love, or those in passion seeking

an out. Sex and madrigals, organ
preludes, all that a'capella crap.

-

I no longer have the hesitation needed

to run after yet another dream. It was

once a dream of you, but I've placed

that too on the shelf we've stacked.

3668. AWAKENING

AWAKENING

Turning slowly, I awoke  -  the

chorus of some fifteen robins

singing in the trees. Those

'just before', pre-dawn minutes

of darkness, I like them the best.

-

These Summer morns, or what

they are in May's late end, keep

me occupied for hours.

3667. PEARL STREET

PEARL STREET

'My client took a hit on Pearl

Street. He'd entered a room above

McKibbin's, awaiting a later contact,

and thieves broke in on Tuesday -

stripped him bare, beat him bloody,

and took everything. Almost a month

later they finally sent him home on the

Black Ball Line, back to Liverpool

anyway  -  paid for by the members

of the Merchant's Commission. From

the Sitting-In Hospital to the

grand old British Isle.'

3666. CANCEL

CANCEL

Last I knew, school today was

nothing but money: you enlist the

rolled enclosure and they let you

watch the sun. Call it entertainment,

your higher learning's done.

3665. MOST THE GENERAL WAY

MOST THE GENERAL WAY

He is slobbering ham again. The wiry

fellow with friends on his arm : the Jewish

boy with his yellow armpatch, that Catholic 

kid all sickened and scared. Eating no meat

on Friday, like some strange medieval pagan

with his practice  -  the fat nun declaims to

him the rightness of God's cause, all the while

her dildo is a cross. I never withstood this

dance of time, and have fallen with the best.

My own childhood was no test of reason :

I was raised within a very stupid cave, and

brought out on a rack. My parents, both

long dead now, caved and I was their ransom,

saved, for nothing except abstemious hearts

and practices; learning nothing but the bad.

-

If I could rise, right now, today, and be

lifted like some Ezekial or Enoch straight

up to the starry heavens, I'd be laughing

all the way and go willingly to Heaven's

death, Heaven's slimy cross, Heaven's

fiery gate. As it is, my feet are made

of heavy clay, and I do nothing

here but stay (in most

the general way).

3664. 'THE SLAVES'

'THE SLAVES'

I too lived in 'The Slaves', as my

servant district was called. Indentured

laborers building one crazy city : One of

roads and foundations, storehouses and

wharves. I lived where they put me, then

and only then, kept as living squall. You

may have seen me cutting rock or hauling

water, slicing the ground for a road or a

canal. I lived as I died, a few times over.

My pay was the end of my life.

3663. MY MOST GENERAL COLLAR

MY MOST GENERAL COLLAR

All of this was yours, once upon a time:

the bailiwick tree on the old ozone plain,

the stevedore hats in a row. Fifteen loose

ferries were plying the harbor  -  all East River

playthings at work. The old man with the Dutch

clay pipe, he kept looking out, to the distance

for something. Some far geography to be rolling

in. I asked him to tell me more. He shrugged.

-

I was gone for two months to Carlisle by

wagon. We plodded the dirt-trails and the

rocky hillside pass. Pennsylvania beckoned,

but it took some doing : over the pass, around

the besieging rock of the Gap. Each time we

made camp, I wrote notebook entries for you.

-

You see, I was never alone, and the

smokes of the gangly campmen, the fires

on homemade hearths, the stupid soups

of rabbit and squirrel, they all kept me

thinking of home  -  that harbor again,

those old Dutchman planks, and you.

3662. HOLD THE DIODE : EVERYTHING IS SO ERRATIC

HOLD THE DIODE :

EVERYTHING IS SO ERRATIC

The street was littered with new surveyor

markings  -  horrid, plastic day-glo pink

ribbons on branches and fence, and spiked

and driven into the ground. The grand

surveyor markings, the things which keep

us found : the here of here we are.

-

(Hold the diode : everything is so erratic.

The eagle flies at dawn; the time

for all good men is born).

-

1911. The doors were barely set and

the tenements  -  the newer and the old  -

where still two-deep along each eastside

street. The more the poor were poor, the

more they lived in back. It seems, in this

world, each thing has its place.

-

Nothing's very saddled on and nothing's

very new. Then, much years later again,

Theolonius Monk was still alive when I

was last at home, drinking from my

fur-lined teacup. Surrealist intrusion

in the enchanter's domain.

-

I said 'play me, what can you play

me today?'  -  that hopscotch breviary,

that hep-cat toybox, that lady from Shanghai,

that heartfelt heartbreak overdone and brimming:

All like that it went, until the coffee was on

and the new brew was gone.

-

'Yo! Hard-drivin', scrapple-ridin', master of

blue. Misty blue, where are you?' Hold the

diode, everything here is so erratic. The eagle

flies at dawn. Oh, Susanna. Sewanee River.

Old Black Joe  -  the time for all good men

is born, and ready, and here, and now.

3661. GOING FOR A MINUTE'S LUTE

GOING FOR A MINUTE'S LUTE

Going for a minute's lute, and how

the sound  -  no matter with you  -  

then how are all things? I'm going

for a minute's lute, I cannot tarry long.

My sheep are restless, and  -  as you

know, we all still live in the barn. What?

You say? The Father's gone, with hunting

rifle out? Oh, then that must be him I saw

- the man along the ridge - dallying or

something, with a lady I did not recognize.

So, then, can we sit? No, no, must be going.

Yet, I'll sit  -  just so as not to stop than man,

in case his something's showing, now with

her. You must now know safely yourself,

no? Hunting rifle and all that. Ha!...we all

must be about. For my sheep, across the

field, I must shout - 'Haiaye! Haiaye!'

3660. WAS I NOT MY MOTHER'S FATHER BEFORE I WAS MY FATHER'S SON?

 WAS I NOT MY MOTHER'S FATHER BEFORE I WAS MY FATHER'S SON?

I have, by habit, already empty space put aside :

for my wishes and wants, my hearts and regrets,

everything so together jumbled. If quantity so were

a treasure, my chest would be filled to the brimming.

As it is, I must stand aside, wash the sand and salt

from all my aching wounds. I am dissimilar to none,

yet resembling nothing at all. My shadow only finds its

way back into the shade, and all is darkness in the end.

3659. BREVITY

BREVITY

They say brevity is the key to

effectiveness : which is all pure

unreason. To take but one example -

the long, long line of Mankind's development

has gone on for aeons and brought so little

to bear on to the face of this Earth. Except:

death, power, fear and tyranny. The mind

already breaks. At the same time, purely

outside of reason, is the effective joy of

sunlight, of happiness, and the light of

the Moon. As well. Short, effective 

days and nights. Ten gazillion people

madly clutching. The forced entreatment

of copulation and lust. Now  -  I say here  -

that's effectiveness. Let's do it again, so

as (just only maybe politely briefly)

to get it right and sure in this

here and now.

3658. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LAMENTATION

A BRIEF HISTORY

OF LAMENTATION

She had just landed, from Paris. I met her at the curb on

Barclay. Stretched out, hands a'kimbo, I tried reaching

the yellow cab for us both. Coming forth from the hut

of a descended waiting lounge, like an anteroom of

Hell itself, we found normal reason to sneer. And now,

an hour later, here  -  we were once again side by side.

-

Can travel be magic, have tactics of stealth and guile?

I did not know, and neither did she. My French was as

passable as anything else, and I realized what she'd just

said was, basically, 'you Americans have all so little

and leathery faces.' I think anyway. She then asked

if I knew of a comedy club for the evening. I shrugged,

'No, I do not, but isn't this one and won't it do?'

-

I had just then barely made her laugh : that famed French

snicker, the hustle of the shoulders, those pursed, happy

lips. What I wanted to say was 'Did your mother perhaps

ever meet Sartre, or Camus? Have you yourself met

Roncard or DeBouillard?' I didn't, because I knew 

I'd be stupid to try.

-

Turned out, her boyfriend's name was 'Fred Henry' and

he 'sat for dogs at NYU.' No, I wasn't sure what that meant-

yet, to remain comfortable I assumed it to mean he was

studying veterinary science at New York University.

What the heck, it worked for my frazzled heart.

3657. HARP O' THE WINDS

HARP O' THE WINDS

Take stock. Figure it out. Even as

a little boy you were holding the 

wrong cards. Now play your 

losing game without complaint.

Go forward from this time, and

remember : every waltz the

dynamite played, every city

that fell to the war, all those

faces, purple'd and maimed. 

Heat. Fire. Burns. Torture.

Where were you born little

fellow? In the ash-pit

of old Berlin?

-

There is no mantle sending

forward its light and flowers.

The only happiness you can 

find will come from within.

The glimmer of a happy

heart : you are all and

everything it can hold.

3656. OH CELESTE

OH CELESTE

The Italian organ grinder went by with a

monkey on a string; the monkey had the

face of five-million dollars, and was grimacing.

I love that stuff, like you can see the words

in the pose on the face  -  if only that monkey

could talk, what abstract forms his words would

take :  'I undertake, I am caught in the obscure, 

the wide expanse, this is a berserk land, I

bring nothing back, I take all I can.'

-

Someone put five dollars on the table, and left -

a five dollar bill, that is, not five singles. Well,

it makes a difference. Pretend, for instance, this

was a murder mystery  -  that sort of information

would be somehow important. As if a detective

was to ask, after the organ grinder's murder,

'what color neckerchief, do you recall, was

around the monkey's neck?' (Understand too,

the monkey itself was now gone, having

mysteriously disappeared).

3655. PRIESTESS

PRIESTESS

The girl with the ash collar,

I've never known before to be

so loose. She speaks for God but

laughs nonetheless. Odd how that

combination sunders and breaks.

Not a harlot of her own consternation,

or mine  -  for sure  -  she steadily

pushes onward. Yet all I see are

her doorways and windows, and

all those others peering in.

-

Funny, is it, how men get bent up and

twisted, wrecked by Life and foiled

by grief? There are certain of us

who build perfect houses  - 

while others, only good at dreams, 

walk slowly between shadows and 

darkness  -  even those wearing 

God's collar - trying to speak 

of the difference between.

3654. GOGOL

GOGOL

The buckboards on the

garbage scows of Life  -  

everyone now crammed all together.

Oldsters and the more than that,

those hanging on by sheer force

of willpower and brawn.

What is a poet? A skillful liar.

3653. CARLOS, I HAVE THE WILD JONES

CARLOS, I HAVE

THE WILD JONES

(eerie)

The passage I liked the best was the one sung by the

gay priest; the one chasing the boys afterward down

that holy primrose path. That shit makes me sick, and

I once was there. You can puke-proof the attic stairway,

but never the private billiard room with the two beds and

a lamp where the brothers and priests used to send

those selected young boys. Don't tell me. I know.

-

I was there. The only extent of that crap religion

is the extent to which it rots the brain. Every one of

those stupid dogma systems  -  Jew, Catholic, and all

the rest  -  they amount already to buckets of sin

before the party gets started. Oh you don't know

the shape I'm in.

-

Before I was a killer, I was a calm, young boy.

I stayed home when other kids went out to play.

I stayed home, just thinking of you.

3652.UKIAH TRAPPING

UKIAH TRAPPING

I am stuck here, and how can I

find the end? Like a wallet so

placed in a dead man's back 

pocket that no one can move it 

or see it, I remain unparceled

and invisible, even to this Life

itself. Oh teacher, oh teacher,

use the eraser on me! I have

nothing left to say or see, I

am grounded and useless and

silent and bereft. I can't get

anyone to speak to me : neither

the girl from Wisconsin nor

the girl from Palm Beach.

-

Believe me, oh God, I am not

yet perfect  -  I seep, I bleed,

I cry, I read. All those useless

things. I sit in a chair reading

Hart Crane, and all someone

else wants to talk of is Ginsberg

or Plath. Enough of that! Give

me the taste of dead loners.

-

Really, I could talk about jumping -

17 stories, no, not stories, floors,

for it's all one story really - up. I

listen to some bloated, disgusting 

woman telling her friend 'everyone

has tragedies in their life.' Oh

God, you who may live in some

sickly Heaven, come down then

and smite this world anew.

3651. SHEILA

SHEILA

Not to go ridiculous matter use

those fulcrum hands to rove and 

roam. Mistake the car maybe for

the cat  -  the theoretical cat yet

trapped : what's in a name anyway?

-

Today I am cleaned of all things.

Words and images all disappear.

Where are you now, Sheila? Is it

all still the same: that Ravel Bolero,

your trench-coat wears, that 

Summer Street inkling - when

I was lost in bright sunlight?

-

Yes, you can battle to the end

of all time, but I bet at the end

there's still time for all that: all 

your Neil Young decolletage,

those slight breasts always

pushing forward and on.

3650. GROUPINGS

GROUPINGS

Ten men enfractured and worn on a cross,

weaving the wrappings like neckward floss.

The vagrant crystal, so sweet; lighting the

horizon with reflected glory. Sweet Sun,

never go down. The awe that the candle

may hold for the flame, that's what I seek.

-

Carmelized, the chatter; and the cars all are

beaming: Yosemite to Santa Fe, all filled

with listless candy-people staring out to

butter the hills and mountains. Children

squirm and chirp, while Dad rushes on

to the motel parking lot, idling at a

quite high speed; steady nerves

and happy feet.

3649. MEMORY

MEMORY

Countenance foreclosure and

countenance despair  -  Flanders

and Frenchtown and Flemington

there. I carry my sunrise torch,

a form of yo-yo respite, back

and forth. I close my eyes, and

all I see are the faces of the

dead I've known.

3648. SUCH STUCCO

SUCH STUCCO

Such stucco in the light of day can

drive me crazy  -  the semblance of

a pueblo glow on the lowly and

sandy hills. I see nothing but gold

and God  -  and I am so tired of

my fellow man. The tinker-man 

talks, and he uses his geography

to grapple with the ground. Dirt

comes forth from dirt  -  old dusty

chunks of planetary matter. Too

small, all that, too small. I hold a

a minimum of doubt, and 

let it go at that.

3647. NEIGHBORHOOD SUICIDE WATCH

NEIGHBORHOOD 

SUICIDE WATCH

Who would want to live? Starlight and mendacity

mixed. Umbridge Cocktails, made by those

swallow-headed girls we all know well.

I want to be this vestige of a planet -

dust-dwarf clump of rock, swirling hole

of anti-matter. Just let me go. Now.

-

Don't lace me with your straight-talk.

Your disgusting platitudes of generous

grace. I barricaded the shed door twice

already with the boards of your declension.

I've taken your sons and daughters with me.

I've enjoyed all my own pretensions.

-

Visiting the old mansion on Tupplefanger

Hill, we suddenly remembered the old family

which lived there once : my God, the very

Tupplefangers themselves! Those old

Newark bastards with a brewery all

their own and all that saucy money.

-

It was 1964. We broke into the storage room.

It was filled with hundreds of thick, black

plastic Victrola records, 'thicker than dinner

plates,' you said. We managed to break every

last one : throwing at walls, smashing with

rocks, stomping with stupid feet. Our

very own Inquistion! Our Crusade!

-

Why we called it that, I'll never know.

The old cop who came to get us  -

in some ancient black Plymouth

with a single light on top  -  said

it was 'all for show.' Not a real

apprehension, I think he meant,

just a response, all for show.

3646. BECKWITH

BECKWITH

(the killing of medgar evers)
Something like that was the name  -

Byron De la Beckwith it may even

have been. I just cannot remember  -

1957, or maybe '63, I want to say.

Negroes being kept out of school,

lunch-counter sit-downs in lame,

crummy Woolworths, and news 

commentators all pretending 

they understood.

-

Then guns come out, or a

wild, mangy dog  -  shot dead

on the dirt road in some 'Niggertown'

bungalow settlement like in 'To Kill

a Mockingbird'. I don't know; I'm a

kid again, and things are all mixed up.

-

How crazy-well do we remember things

anyway? The art and the artifice of chimera

and change. I was not what I am not now.

Well, anyway, I think that's how it goes.

-

How are we sanctified? Loud garbage

trucks, and dumpsters hitting the pavement

and walls; those eerie, early-morning

sounds of service and servitude? The

little, fat man, sitting down to coffee, but

first taking his pills with water? How then,

how, are we sanctified? Tell me.

-

After the battle, when the still-warm guns -

cooling - are being put away, the

dead still litter the streets.

3645. GASES COMBINED IN DEEP SPACE TO FORM STARS

GASES COMBINED IN 
DEEP SPACE 

TO FORM STARS

I'd believe that if there was no form,

if Truth had a harness or if Heaven

had a door. Otherwise, nothing.  I

abhor those so-sure-of-themselves 

blowhards who proclaim all this

stuff. Science and strict language

wear a strait-jacket made of both

ego and vice.

-

The cup of milk is out for the cat

I never see  -  'Hojo', I call it.

In the morning somehow that cup

is empty; other times - along with

the food and chews I leave it -  there

are but crumbs and shavings left. Or

that's what they look like anyway.

Evidences only  -  see that, science

asshole, see that  -  evidences only.

-

Of what once may have been; of what

once I may have put out; of what once

perhaps the chimerical Hojo consumed;

of what once I may have made up. 

I simply do not know.

-

(And the stars give way to gravity...).

3644. LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : PALE GOLD

LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : 

PALE GOLD, Part Two

"I somehow still live, for now, here,

in a body now unkempt and without

any style  -  a twentieth-century anachronism

in a turning, crazy world made of newer gems:

The Lang Company, Mont Batier Clothing and

Home, Espandre's Animal House and Garden

Goods Limited. All the token shit of new jungle

living. 'We have cheese, now, in our golf steaks

and ridgeline purees.'

-

It's nothing more than fancy; a fancy

not imaginable, yet real. The moon, like 

an oaf, gives solace to those who, in

passing, anyone, would want it. It keeps,

as well, a schedule for those who would 

care  -  where it will be, when, waxed or

waned, broken or full. Like some

oh-most-regular fiery kin of comfort. 

And we, we fall for nothing as we

fall for everything and all.

-

Marginal scouts, and marginal scat.

'I love you for your shit, your knotted

head, you strange brown hair, your 

Dorset-coast freckly skin in Summer,

the fucked-up blue of your eyes  -  and,

yes  -  even the way you sometimes

sit, scrunched up, to cry."

3643. MAD DOG HORTICULTURE

MAD DOG 

HORTICULTURE

Give me nothing. Feed me loose.

Hike my skirt. Wend my wander.

Call my mother. Write to Laos.

The pen-pal in the rice field, he is

dying now of blood. Remark on

how the ages crumble. Let

the mad dogs out to play.

Let the mad dogs loose.

Call the settled master

back once more to rule
the royal roost.

3642. LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : PALE GOLD

LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : 

PALE GOLD, Part One

"When I get out at the jack-pines, yes, I am

already then dead-tired. Not dead, mind you,

just dead-tired, as I said. The hills around me,

all that nature crap I see  -  configurations of

shadows and atoms and molecules done up

in their temporary dress  -  illusionary to be

sure, and who the fuck cares? I want for

nothing, because there is nothing.

-

Not for any high-flying, high-horse-ass

reasons of philosophy or near belief,

but because (fucking a-all) there just

is - Nothing. Not worth looking at,

not even worth caring. All that 'candles

in the wind, don't let your light go out'

crap is but real-estate-sentimental-acres

bullshit, the kind the dime-store used to

sell, and gone to hell for naught.

-

Generalities of matter, and  -  oh Hell!  -  

for the time being alone and there's no

time being. 'Junkpiles of soil and rock,'

Pavarese said, 'the world is a construct

of meaningless variables.' And all these

particularities, he would see them too,

just as I am, the hikers, the man and the

woman with their stupid backpacks and

dumb hiker's asses, boots and cut-offs,

walking sticks and the rest, he too would

see them and get bored to death saying

'Intellectual failures, chic hangouts for

bastardized Nature freaks and the 

assorted bottled-water admirers who

always drift up.' And then anyway

they drive home and get there and

continue to ruin their fucked-up

transient world like a permanent

bad situation. I don't care; my

thirst for the absolute overcomes

their thirst for shit."

3641. ENGINE ROLL-UP AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING

ENGINE ROLL-UP 

AND I DON'T KNOW 

WHAT I'M DOING

Come forth from Elandraville,

friendly dog. That old South African

enclave was once my home too, and

I've not met anyone hailing from

there since 1982. Let's put down

the window glass, roll the awning

out, and just sit here glaring at

some wicked high tea and lemonade.

-

It was a very old Anglia she was 

driving, and he came by  -  and

unbelievably so  -  in what was,

back then, called a Humber 

Super-Snipe, a real 1960's car.

Parked together like that, even

their silly cars looked like sweethearts

on the South African veldt.

-

Yes,then, we just sat and waited.

They were still fighting harshly in

Vietnam  -  crazy American troops

and their allied British support-force

fools. Oh, everyone died together and

I guess it really made no difference.

While, here, in this swell place, the

blacks (as I would call them there)

had better, you said, 'keep their

place, mend their ways, and 

stay abreast of repercussion.'

-

Stay abreast of repercussion! What

a crazy phrase  -  I thought about it

and thought some more, over and over

turning the words : by repercussions

did you not mean retribution? And could

you not just have spoken that instead?

-

No, I guess not. In its place, murder on the

farmsteads, fiery necklaces of burning tires

'round dead men's necks, and  - of course  -

damned snookers and  tea at either noon 

or one, (I truly do forget).

3640. I'VE HAD MY WAY WITH THE ROAD

I'VE HAD MY WAY 

WITH THE ROAD

I've written through poverty and carted my

cards to theater. I've had my way with the 

road. I've dined with Kit Carson and Jack

Tworkov too  -  no dissembling there  -  

not just anyone would do.  I was once

as important as Time Magazine - now

I'm as useless and wasted away.

There are things I have to do, and

they get done : sometimes slowly and

sure, but never poorly. And more - I

used to listen and watch, all the people

growing old and infirm, feeble and dire.

They keep on talking,. All these things

around hem transpire while they just

go on and on  -  until, one at a time,

(I'll bet) they expire. Life gets like that

for everyone. Hagen berry, listless juice,

swagger jelly and all the rest. I've had 

my way with the road  -  'been there, 

done that'  -  as the billboards used to

say, before they were neon-garish lit,

before they were bold with their stuff,

when Burma-Shave signs kept the

roadsides humming and most

mountains had not yet been cut.

3639. SCHOLARA

SCHOLARA

To somebody just like you I'd be nothing at all :

the unfound oasis in the desert full of plight, the

wounded cry of an antelope with a spike through

its heart. Wild or not, that ends that. Having

never looked up, I can never look down. 

-

The Wizard wears the face of his hawk today:

San Francisco matchbooks on the travel guide

to Mandalay. People sit about, slumped and

glumly staring  -  some vague and third-world

airport of the mind keeps them holding patterns

to the things they won't throw out.

-

Old ideas are the curse of the working class.

3638. THE OLD SCHOOL TIES

THE OLD SCHOOL TIES

I have to admit (wind swells, trees twist)

I never know what men talk about when

they say that (shutters slap, water pools).

And what do I care anyway? Five generations

of the same stupid people, over and over.

-

Linen, aspic and lime. Three things without

meaning (geese overhead, low, cackling in

flight; the blind V formation breaking away).

There is nothing sublime in Man as a kind.

-

They buried the carpenter under his willow tree.

They burned his house to the ground, then calling

it purification  -  his disease, it was said, had

already infected five others; (on high, the white

plume of a far-bound jet, in silence). I look

over to the right and see what could be a scene

from 150 years ago : twelve cows at rest in

a muddy, grassed field. Nothing of the modern

age at all  -  an old wooden fence, the bare and

worn path, rutted, the lazing cows, chewing.

-

If I can bring you something, please tell me

what it is ( a man lights a bonfire in the middle

of an open field. What he is burning, like a

mystery, in a second intensely flares. The

wind catches the fire quickly, spreading

hot embers everywhere).

3637. TAKE TAKE

TAKE TAKE

Take this, insane patter, crazy warlord,

mother of pearl handgun revolver barrel casing

inlay, petrify the stonemason and alleviate the

quirk. Anything different, take and make it the

same. I saw your house today, all done in

orange and yellow. I don't know why, but it

reminded me of the drone of a flaming sun

coming down the mountain to consume

the valley - yet I couldn't look away.

-

I spent the today in Chestnut Hill  -  some

puerile-glorious outcropping above the land

of Philadelphia; took Germantown Avenue

all its way out, past hundreds of slum folk

walking about, past twenty stone homes

still amass with their beauty but ruined.

The old is all gone. The new is but

leftover wreckage and ruin.