Thursday, May 31, 2012

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.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

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.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

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.
 

Friday, May 25, 2012

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.


Thursday, May 24, 2012

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.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

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.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

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!'

Monday, May 21, 2012

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.

Friday, May 18, 2012

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).

Thursday, May 17, 2012

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.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

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.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

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.

Monday, May 14, 2012

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.

Friday, May 11, 2012

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."


Thursday, May 10, 2012

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."

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

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.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

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.