Saturday, June 30, 2012

3751. A'KIMBO

A'KIMBO
Surrender at the hostel.
Separating the jeopardization
infringes the abridgement of Hell.
Handy things to be doing at this
end. I was cupping your breast
when the fire broke out.
-
Just like the illustration on the wall;
an old erotic picture of a guy from the
far east holding his woman's tit in the
swirly and colored style  -  gold-gilt
and swirls  -  of his hands and arms.

3750. CONVERSATION COMES FROM CHINA

CONVERSATION COMES
FROM CHINA
Nobody knows this or when
and what becomes of that.
Fifteen ice-ages of man have -
already - come and gone and
here you are crying over another!
Or, what was that, over heat or
warming? I truly forget. Your
new sarcasm is unbecoming,
but you know that. I can tell
by the smirk on your face.
-
So now, like gigolos from a cave
in Dundee, you all go on spouting
your lava mouth junk. Conversation
comes from China. Lessons learned
from it? Yes : panty lines tell nothing,
underneath it all she's naked; the child
is father to the man; it isn't itself, hot
like this, it's more the angles and the
rays. No, no, I say ; 'It's not the heat,
it's the memories. it's not the heat,
it's the memories.'
-
All that stays with me  -  a very long
time, or an instant's inflection instead.
I just never will know.

3749. SEEING IS BELIEVING TOO

SEEING IS BELIEVING TOO
All those skulls I see among us,
ringing their peals for the ages aloud :
we cannot see out of the eye-rotted
dead sockets, yet we proffer allegiance
to what we view  -  how curious and
how encumbered, then, all that we do.
Seeing is believing too.

Friday, June 29, 2012

3748. DILIGENT TRAVEL ITEM

DILIGENT TRAVEL ITEM
The diligent travel item of who we are
and what we wish to be  -  yes, it comes
to us in legions. A simple mind (even the
most simple) can comfortably circumnavigate
the globe, and every water has its endings  -  
river, gorge or ocean. How many years,
since Adam's time, have we walked
the fractured glen?
-
 Are you looking for something? Can
I help? The bottom of this land is rich,
a farmfield, a paradise, and everything
grows in a such grand profusion. A
Babylon to the Gods, but a simple
Eden for us.  I cannot keep from
running; one sainted foot before
the other  -  an ancient travel
that cannot keep me still.

3747. TO RECONCILE LOVE

TO RECONCILE LOVE
(the fire of all his purposes)
To reconcile love with death is
very hard  -  nay, it cannot be
done and I shall give up trying.
Listen as the voices sing - fey
and level, high and trapping; a
regular chorus of light, in the
chambers of the trapped, and 
I will give back nothing in return.
-
There comes a time - I think - 
when one needs to admit the
import of every single thing. 
Difficulties abound, yet every
particle matters and our place
and consciousness are made of
millions. Like the inland Strella
Mountain of Portugal's major
internal lake, the hulks of old
seafaring things bob up. We
too are alive on a sea of our 
own. To reconcile this with
death, all this, is oh so
difficult to do.
-
(I am sorry to be sad and 
always untranquil  -  and I
take my odds from where
they come. 'Ye shall not
recognize them.'
-
Neither tranquil tropics nor
Cape Horn's swells shall leave
my dark den, so desperately
trying to break through to a
blessed light and air.To 
reconcile all this with 
love and death is
very hard to do).

Thursday, June 28, 2012

3746. STEEL THAT BENDS

STEEL THAT BENDS
Rails stretched over the land, taut and
sloppy together; the rise, the hollow,
the flat plain. Steel that bends by never
bending, alters by not altering at all.
Upon the train seat, amidst raging noise
and a morning's fury, someone has left 
a book. A careless astronomy tome, no
less, and just as I am watching this Summer
morning's sun fat bob upward along a
fading horizon. I am watching at speed -
some train-pace never marked by numbers,
so I know ever not how fast it be. 
Past tree, past tree, past tree.
-
The astronomy book, so heavy like
a brick, sits mute in reference to
anything real. This train is pouncing
over the land. It is morning again,
'neath Heaven's celestial band.

3745. AND SO, REPUTEDLY SMALL

AND SO, REPUTEDLY SMALL
The face here wears a thousand disguises  -
things I see and things I do not. Take that
lip, for instance, the upper; with what joy
it seems to smile and glimpse and glimmer
at things. My veritable circus of reaction,
you can be. The red-cheeked love that is
all of yours, that too can be cloaked in
Happiness. Ah, what a fine portrait I see.

3744. SPARROW

SPARROW
How the sparrow lives, how.
Where the sparrow lives, where.
Neither more nor less, everything
acclimates. There, the world  -
good for us all -  is one big nest.



3743. PRODIGAL

PRODIGAL
Something like this should never happen : he came
home with his tail between his legs. Dejected and
forlorn, bedraggled and clothing torn. I never saw
a smile less authentic. The small wind which blew
through his bones, even that presaged a portentous
despair. From years out on the pampas, now it
was all soon over.  Man makes bets on the legions
of moments  -  wins some and loses others.
-
'Pull up a chair, and have a beer.' I heard the guy 
say that from the end of the rope. The lights were
dim, but no matter. Near to him, the other fellow
sauntered off. 'No man, I've heard that story
before, and I really have to go.'

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

3742. NEAR THE GRAVE OF ALLEN GINSBERG

NEAR THE GRAVE 
OF ALLEN GINSBERG
Not being quite I the one yet
standing athwart train-stop
cavalcade, I watch! The open
trestle bends to shoddy Newark
as the Hackensack River flows
to Newark Bay. Entreat at the
Robert Treat Hotel, once Newark's
best, and now ask: 'Why?'
-
Just but more than a mile from here
I can sit at Ginsberg's grave to say
'Oh Allen, what was saved? Oh why
these days? We sing of them, long
and lonesone and ragged and raged.'
-
The railroad tacks run along 
here too; stupid and decrepit 
beneath the Budweiser sign.

3741. AS NEEDED

AS NEEDED
Robin's egg blue  -  just as the morning
broke. I was walking the curb near the
big, gray house when I saw again the
sign in the sky  -  a big, curvy moment
for me. What is it you now want?
Not enough mystery?
-
Mystify me : throw me your pellets like
a dog gets thrown the things around so
as to eat all moments. I too shall scurry.
The man with the Audi coupe comes
out once more  -  another morning for
him  -  carrying on his shoulder those
sleek and so modern golf clubs anew,
in his brite-blue golf bag too. Robin's
egg blue, or not, still I sense blue.
-
Just like his medical suit, his scrubs,
his daily subscription to Everyman's
crime of time (same as mine, this crime).
And, just like a million other things no one
needs, the situations bring themselves
forth: the rank offal of righteous control.
-
And sadly too, no one heeds what
no one needs, so it all just goes on:
all those fallacious and windy deeds  -  
art and medicine and sport and death.
I specify this moment for one reason
alone  -  glaring, forceful source, father
of love and money, an old Nobodaddy 
himself  glaring down. And William Blake 
was right, I bet, when he wrote :
'Mercy wears a human face.'

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

3740. NO, YOU'VE NEVER MISSED

NO, YOU'VE NEVER MISSED
(Some king of crinoline slip, some kind of ivy)
OK, brother, then, things I know nothing about :
let's start there. The way the faded peak you erected 
twenty-years ago still stands over Dad's old barn;
the farmstead, yes, that lingers. In this old country,
good fiction is no fiction at all. Everything's true,
if you want it to be. Cows moo while hawks fly
overhead and a few dogs are always baying.
No one ever talks, any more, about speed-reading.

3739. DON'T

DON'T
I wanted to say : don't touch my stuff, don't
give me any better ideas. They're yours, or
can't you see that? However you see things,
it's not the way I see. You can mark and mar,
you can talk and critique, all you want. It
won't matter. My meanings still come forth
from the words I receive, in the manner and
the means that I'm given. So sorry to move on.

3738. PENETRATE

PENETRATE
Long ago and distant : caves and fires, pure
red pigments, clay and shards. Everything was
so different, and even the sunlight was glazed.
I swung around once, just to understand depth
and vision  -  I was learning, and all of this was
new to me new. Amazed, unsettled and raw.
My tongue tried to speak, tried finding sound
that had meaning : most difficult, yes, and new.
What a world : an entryway portal where things
seemed heavier and more slow than ever, where
each thing had to be stipulated and spoken, where
first the creatures who stood had to agree on a
meaning for all of what they said. Nothing was easy.
 

3737. LOOK! MEASURE AGAINST MEASURE!

LOOK! MEASURE 
AGAINST MEASURE
'A tree will drop leaves to weather a drought, will take
measures against bad times to come. As for us, nay;
we wantonly consume, and go mad with excitement,
to forestall the horrid day when we shall have to be
without. By any other definition, 'tis Madness!!', they
would shout.'

Monday, June 25, 2012

3736. ONLY A FREEDOM COLLIDES

ONLY A FREEDOM COLLIDES
Now marksman, now preacher, look
up from your tools : only a freedom
collides with intention, disrupting the
millions of gallant fools. It is we ourselves
who are sitting in this harbor, don't you know,
not our lone reflections. The wind comes up
from the water, moves things about; all the
paper-cups and leaflets blown about.
Only a freedom collides.
-
The men who are in the window, the
cat who sits on the stoop, the twisting
fact of light (which can never twist in
truth), each of these things stands apart
and  -  real enough  -  stands apparent
and as truth. I can only watch to observe,
and only a freedom collides.
-
The long, dead wash of old times, I say,
yes, does all seem ever to continue  -  look,
see, Franco gone, and Tojo gone and
Ceacescu and Selassie too  -  all those
mighty names of the past now gone. Yet
everywhere new names arrive and arise.
Only a freedom collides, even here.
-
Even there, only a freedom collides
with slavery and only a freedom collides 
with war and only a freedom collides with
bondage and ruin and frozen will. The way
it has always been, and the same way
it will always be. Only a freedom collides.
-
The gulls are seamlessly spitting  -  they
gorge and yell, they throw things back
into the harbor grave. We know their
leavings and we know their gleanings.
Outside of that, little else comprises our
matter : the little man, the apron'd one,
comes out sweeping something, to push 
away matter. To haul his moment scurrying.
His moment is free, and yet only 
his freedom collides.

3735. AND NOW THE BIG ONE

AND NOW 
THE BIG ONE
As I write, as I swear, as I utter:
now is the moment before me  -  on the
curb nearby, that woman is buying wine
in a paint can. I do swear. It's true.
Near to that, a $4000 BMW motorcycle
is for sale on the sidewalk - a 1992 K
something or other. Not bad at all, nicely
kept, mileage not much. Across from that,
the Tickenor Art Gallery shows nudes as
clowns and still-lives with trains going by.
The walls are made up as faux-distressed,
as if we (all) lived amidst a revolution.
I am beaming, for I really do love all this stuff.
Winsome girls in Summer clothes glide by, to
sit for coffee or small lunches. Overly-strange
dude'd men, with tattoos and heavy-frame glasses,
a tophat or two, they too pass, alone or together,
or hooked to some woman or man. Who knows?
I want to scream out for something, anything:
'Does anyone here know me? Would anyone here
give a damn?' A singly scary black guy does sidle
up, asking for 'small change for water?'  -  enjoying
his odd integrity, I give him 50 cents. He takes it,
in an abject, humble way that makes me,
already, sorry for nothing
so much as myself.

3734. INTEGRAL TO NOTHING

INTEGRAL TO NOTHING
I am a distant wanderer, walking with a stave of
greenery bunched from a tree - I walk yonder hills,
streaming ideas back at me. It takes no intention
to make all this work; my days are unseasoned,
each new, and done without rancor or pain. I have
a starry heaven above my head, and a place at
night for same : I place things down as dreams
surround, and awake with a world for a bed.
Intentions are as simple as wishes.
All things should be well.

3733. LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN

LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN
The King of Malevolence is wringing his hands,
dire prophets are snapping at his iron heels.
There is nothing left for him beneath the sun -
this death and destruction has already been done.
His cards (I noticed) had all been marked, and
the hangman had already colored his tree. At
the nearby saloon, the girls were taking odds
on how long it would take : would he linger writhing,
would he piss and crap his pants, would his neck
snapped once be enough? These were all good
questions of the moment. Over at Boot Hill,
Jardot the Snake had already dug a fearsome
hole and filled it twice already with his own
spit and venom. It should be a lovely day.
No guns would even be needed, though
Marshall Bleek and Sheriff Tawdry would, 
I'm sure have their arms at the ready.

3732. HERE AT THE GRAVE OF GENERAL MEADE

HERE AT THE GRAVE 
OF GENERAL MEADE
What was this Gettysburg stuff if not death and
destruction: a cause worth defeating, for whom
and what cost? I don't know  -  and now, on a
Philadelphia hilltop I stand exposed in a blistering
Summer heat, looking down at a grave I've never
known. General Meade, at my feet, is dead; his
bright flag waving yet in this breeze. I don't know
why, or how matters are, but it little matters,
really, how this world runs its course. The dead
are their own, and all their silver and coins have
their cost. I won't even look down.
I just walk away.

Friday, June 22, 2012

3731. TRAVELING (barnyard of doom)

TRAVELING
(barnyard of doom)
Like like, like me a late starter on the
Mississippi Delta, I want to wring your
favored hands over the broken sides of
the ruddy pool at the old Warwick Hotel.
1315 Gravier Street still will have to do, and
we'll roll our carnival dice together, me and you.
-
The hunchback shall wear his fragrance and
slime and outside of the jagged window edge
will pierce the nighttime sky with light - a
purloined light which has pilfered night -
the light of morning and morning's light.
Take me to your taskmaster, 
like me a late starter.
-
And there are too many herds
in this barnyard of doom.

3730. WHAT ALL THE YOUNG FOLK BELIEVE IN

WHAT ALL THE YOUNG 
FOLK BELIVE IN
'My freedom is unbound, I know no
fetters, the law cannot hold me at all.
I go where I want with whomever and
listen at will to all things.' Like an
armistice call and a treaty for some
Robert E. Lee, every connection
brings something back. 'Do you not
know,' he was heard to say at Appomattox,
'do you not know that my father rode with
George Washington and the rest?' The
silence, there too, was deafening.

3729. MORN

MORN
It benefits us to arise, to seek that
winding finger that slants the horizon.
Look! Look!, dear amigo, the white
splice across the sky, it is here, this new
morning's sun, arising high. How soon
before the mid of day is it now?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

3728. UPDATING MR. HIAWATHA


UPDATING MR. HIAWATHA
Your sure swig swing-hat semblance,
a nomenclature so vague from the 1700's,
and before that, the stories ingrained,
they make me sure I am here. This land
had nothing, and no one came from here
who came here. Interlopers all. We had to
mythologize a thousand stories to make it
valid and sure. The waves no longer break
on Plymouth Rock. Instead, some new form
of Portobello Mushroom Cloud keeps the
feeble masses occupied. Happiness grows
like candles on a cake of excrement -
seemingly chocolate, folks, but the joke's
on you. All around the land, just under
the dirty ground, the bones of all your
dead and famished Indian bodies.
Now, 'ain't you proud' for that alone?

3727. WAINSCOT

WAINSCOT
I want to go, I have the heavings and intentions 
of finding out - where the lady-land vespers 
disappear after they are heard, how the
running robin skitters and turns over this 
the bounteous land like a thundering herd
of very quiet birds. This, this is presented: the
first morn of Summer the year's longest day. 
The radio voice that presumes to tell tall 
tales of all of these things, the smattering
of small-talk that moves such things along.
-
Yet, no, this morning sky is not like that at
all: the train whistle shrieks, and the tiny
red car, all noise and blather, yet storms 
down old Nassau making its riot of sound 
and smell - the ancient odor somehow of 
burned and wasted fossil-fuel brought up
from a million years to remind me of the
tell. Longest time - longest day; all together
and just as well. That little Spanish fellow,
I see him drive glibly along : unknowing in 
his malfeasance, a dumb-struck smile 
upon his face, listening to song, staring
straight out, his longest day forever, 
just rolling along.
-
Somehow I know it has always been thus, 
and I shall make never no difference
no how. My small card of time, already
punched, is running along and down, sending 
its palest vibration outward - see this, see that, 
I was here, I did that. It all matters very little in 
the end. I want to go. I have the heavings
and the intentions of finding it out.

3726. CALIFON

CALIFON
Now you have that marvelous look - you get to keep it,
it's yours, I'm hooked. I'll run it backwards over and over,
well, forever - just to make it last. Purloined apples, and
that bottled water at the bridge. Every principled edifice
we ever imagined can be ours, together, for the taking.
That crazy man, over there, he's said he's selling his
entire collection of vintage slot cars. Amazing that
some people would want nothing more than that,
nothing more. I stare back  -  your eyes are
a frothy, wet mix of wonder and awe.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

3725. PRIME-TIME BATTLE

PRIME-TIME BATTLE
They fought the war untended, doing what they pleased.
The men lost legs and arms as if they were candy bars,
easy to dispense and easier to replace. Why men do this,
unwittingly and without even asking, is always beyond me.
There's not an upper-level officer alive who will tell them
it's shit, all for naught, there's no freedom involved.
Like clouds filled with murk, that's an indecorous concept,
that men die for principle and fight with valor for goals and
for honor. It's all dog-eat-dog and enforced control. Rank 
and serial, level and command. The very opposite of 
Freedom, no matter where you sand : not worth a lick,
and no going back. Every man for himself and the other,
dead bodies litter the illiterate field. 
They fight their wars, untended.
-
(Why do you fight for 'Freedom' as a slave?).

3724. ARTIFICE AND PLACE

ARTIFICE AND PLACE
Having jammed the window up, I could not
get it down. Of course, yes, a friend laughed at
that, saying 'better than not being able to get it
up!'. Gallows humor of the rest-home sort.
All around us, the shorebirds made their
popcorn noises, and the slow surf steadily
pounded  -  its language soft yet not, and
all beyond my comprehension. I took the
old rag and walked away. At least that
window was clean. Peering out, what was
that I saw? Some silly man walking along,
metal detector in hand, and a pleasure
boat near the coastal wall  -  coincidently
named 'Up and Ready!' - OK then, I
laughed and went along my way.

Monday, June 18, 2012

3723. NICE DAY

NICE DAY
Man washes his car with lust and dreams as I,
passing, observe. I come upon his workmanship;
he's beneath a tree, working in the shade. I don't
wish to see anything, really, of his day. A hubcap
shines his face back to me  -  some 'classic car'
crap from another day. Cars and mufflers and
exhaust and mirrors. All that decays.
-
I want to see this dude's dreams : I want to
catch that picture of his love that dangles
from the mirror  -  some topless Spanish
babe with a smile and a phrase. Anything
to help him move along his days.
-
I remember a play called 'Equus' :
the lesson of which was, essentially, 
that if a young man isn't grooming and
brushing his horse, it will be his car
to which he's doing the same - someday.
If the horse survives as dream, if
we survive Decay.

3722. RINGOLEVIO

RINGLOLEVIO
Read on the porch, while standing up. I went all the way 
out to Portland New Jersey for that one, just looking for 
things, finding old me who could tell me what's up. I found an 
old man in a ragged antique store, selling anything leftover that 
came his way and, apparently too, he thought would sell. That 
usual assortment of dead-beat shit  -  glasses that magnified for 
reading, old records albums of Vic Damone, tea cozies and 
bottles of milk from long-gone dairies. I didn't know anything, 
was just looking for this commune's old farm. 'Oh yeah, you mean 
that one, that guy who wrote, I think, what was it, I'll Sleep Where 
I Fall. Christ, yeah, we knew them all back in the day. What was 
that, '71, '67. I forget. They had them girls, sprightly little things, 
they'd walk around here to get groceries and stuff, nearly nothing 
on, or then nothing underneath anyway  -  these great big floppy 
gown type things, with nary a stitch underneath. I remember, the 
light would catch them in just such a way and we'd all get a show : 
those little mounds  of tit, that hairy clump of bush. Yeah, don't 
sound like much now, but then - whew - the town council 
meetings on Tuesdays, they get all a'flutter. All for nothing 
anyway, them girls never did a thing 'cept, I guess, fuck hard all 
their commune men. Beats me, now, and so did then.' I laughed 
back at his face, telling my own stories : 'I was there, yeah, some 
of that was me, yeah, all together cool enough. We came up from 
east 3rd, Christ Almighty with them girls in a bushel!  All they 
ever wanted to do was to fuck and suck for free food and a 
baby!  That was  '71, exact; we was among the first up here, 
setting up for free, on Peter Coyote's family farm. He made 
that name up, by the way - and you probably know that.'

3721. LINEAGE

LINEAGE
I've got a black closet full of memories of race : my
North African forebears five generations back, that
old swarm of compatriots ending in the south Italian
maelstrom without a tongue to speak. And on the
other side, Bari, and all those Albanian seamen
running back and forth to that Italian port. Ah, yes,
my life is a mix-up of races and people long dead.
I had a crazed father, with even a pillow for a head;
and a way-too-sensitive mother, never realized until
dead. I only hazard a guess about all the rest.
-
And now? If it was Keats or Shelly who said 'Poets are
the unacknowledged legislators of the world,' they were
only partially right. I am tired of being ignored. I am sick
of this silence. I want to be acknowledged. Everything
else, to hell with it all. I am writing a new scripture for
those who can read. For the rest : those effervescent
cat-callers and dreary dweebs of their  ordinary times,
they can all rot in their days, for all I care. I know what 
the words 'fuck them' mean, and they are said.

3720. ABRACADABRA BROTHERLESS SIS

ABRACADBRA
BROTHERLESS SIS
'Wearing the bio-tribe, we eat nothing that
contains meat or animal. We drink only
fresh water from Montgomery Spring.'
Penciled in a chiseled stone, these
words did little to secure my hunger.
'You know,' said I, 'you know at all
I seek for nothing to eat. I am never
hungry, and drinking only adds to my
woes. I am not of this Earth, and those
problems you have do not enter me.
Anyone who would harm another
life, of any sort, in my book is the
Devil's company anyway. The truly
divine body can subsist on but
sunlight and air, yes, I said,
but sunlight and air.' 
-
'That cuts, out of the equation,
all need for money and power,
all forms of violence and hatred.
Or don't you see that, stupid,
vile Man? Do you
not see at all?'

----

3719. ANGEL OF LIGHT AND ARMOR

ANGEL OF LIGHT 
AND ARMOR
I am kneeling at the cellar door, where the
slim light enters the room from some other
space. Living here, like this, as it's been for
years, I never tire of these special
circumstances : the angel that comes
to visit, the moving coat of frost on the
solid, lightened doors. I can scratch
things back, I can write the words
from another realm  -  a lit torch of
good intention, a lingering fire-patch
from still another distant Heaven.

3718. TANGLEWOOD

TANGLEWOOD
All that figurative matter, all those ideas of power and
lust : I am thinking of you in the backlight, sheer and
shimmering, some white cloak over your shoulders.
No more than that, blunthead, this is 'art'. All those
fey fellows clamoring, all they do is sketch you with
charcoal on their coarse paper boards.
-
The key, I notice, to good landscape painting is a
progression of colors off to the horizon. That line of
distant mountains, arrayed in rows receding outward -
the farther off they are, the lighter their color and tint.
Those things closest to the viewer bear the most color
and strength; things farther off can fade out and be faint.
-
I like the idea of that. In every aspect of life, that can
be worked into whatever occurs. I am still watching
you, fortunately quite up close. Near to me. And,
oh, so vividly colored. You are as unlike the
Berkshires as a cat is unlike a dog. For these
small favors, I am quite happy.
-
I may soon swoon. Your vivid pinks and
idle flesh-tones are enough, I say here,
to make me shudder and faint.

3717. GOAT-MAN

GOAT-MAN
The amateur goat-man has sure got my goat : 
leading to a fair Harry and a lingering suspicion. 
He's a Jew-cat on top of old smokey, and a 
wandering Arab in a mosque of Paralay, the old
Arab quarter of Rome. I see him standing athwart 
ashes, shouting out, 'It's me! It's me!' while tourists 
take his picture. I never sit down, and I can only 
catch his shadow. Every six months, it seems, all
somewhere else again. 'I'm so tired of London! 
I'm so tired of Spain!'

Friday, June 15, 2012

3716. DO IT LIKE TODAY

DO IT LIKE TODAY
I really mean it. Make that noontime
swagger fade, come out to the dawn's
own early light. Going past anything
before, you will clearly see: the grass
in the cemetery is white with wetness,
a glistening gauze of raiment now signalling
the dead to arise  -  a semaphore-vision
of fear and trembling. In one part of the
sky, a thin sliver of new moon shyly fades,
while, in another part nearby, the newest
sun begins to blaze. I am nothing, and
I am a part of all this.

3715. MAGNIFICENT OASIS

MAGNIFICENT OASIS
('ain't nothing like the real thing, baby')
All the portents of the best to come,
the wildest wager, the mountain's best
scent  -  they hang low on this sullen
horizon. I am in an 11th Street tenement
of mind, only now trying to break away.
Next to me, this place called Paradise Alley 
hides too its hordes. The Chicago Outlaws 
are lined up at the 1967 fence  -  they have
come to New York, with all these motorcycles
and girls, to try to take over the city. My own 
list of people grows outward: Andy Bonamo,
Billy Joe and Holly, and the rest of all those
hippy hanger-ons, who would mostly all 
soon be dead. That crazy Mexican giant we
all called Frito, he'd just killed his wife in
Colorado and was hiding out here  -  or 
so he said  -  he'd thrown her out of a
moving car, passenger-side front door,
speeding around a curve on a treacherous
cliffside road, got the door open and
just shoved her out, at 50 mph. He 
said she was 'dead at the bottom'. Yeah,
that story just went on and on. I remember,
he would talk to us in front of that stupid
factory freezer in Rappaport's Ice Cream
Shop on 2nd Ave and 6th, while, behind
him, on the cheap AM radio, Marvin Gaye
and Tammy Tyrell sang a duet. Well, he
was there most every day, until one
day he just wasn't.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

3714. I SWEAR, NEVER AGAIN (the Olde Town Tavern)

 I SWEAR, NEVER AGAIN
(the Olde Town Tavern)
'I never boasted of all the harlots who've had my
big dick. I never yet toasted the whores I've roasted.'
The sing-song man was clearly drunk, or well on
his way to filth and destitution. All the same, he
paid for everything he dumped, and even paid
for mine. I'd let him talk all day  -  if we have 
to listen bum-fucking Presidents at their whim
and time, I'd see no harm in listening to him.
Like a priest or a minister sublime, this guy
was poised for a rebuttal not mine. 'The women
I've known, whew, man, I could tell you stories! Here,
here, smell my fingers kid, and that was just last night!
You, you think I'm old, right? Fuck, she was 27, and
still as tight as me right now. My golly, what I time.
I brought her in with my knuckle, and Christ Almighty
wasn't she a'smilin' then.' He never stopped. He
used the Daily News for a napkin. I swear he
was pissing his pants. I threw a five down
on the bar, and got up and left.

3713. GUNNERWALL

GUNNERWALL
He took the oath to never bother anyone
again : walking past the doorway of the
firing-squad's lounge, just sticking his
head in to say hi, and keeping on his way.
He bought five tickets to nowhere, train,
rail and bus, and a package for Bombay.
'Mumbai', said the clerk, you mean 'Mumbai.'
Even Rudyard Kipling wouldn't know the
answer to that one. 'No, no, well maybe,'
he said, 'maybe I want Kilimanjaro, or
the Darjeeling Express. What's the
difference, really?' The young girl behind
the clerk looked up and smiled, 'My
mother's family once hailed from
Gujurat. Back then they were quite
wealthy. Alas, nothing now. Katjiawar, 
Madhya Pradesh, places like that. You
should see, maybe, Lothal, Dholavira,
Golo Dhoro.' She went back to her papers.
Everything seemed right in its way, 
and he smiled back beaming.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

3712. THE ECCENTRIC FACE OF THE WORLD

THE ECCENTRIC 
FACE OF THE WORLD
The eccentric face of the world has its miles 
and centuries while I have my none and nothing;
yet, my sleeve is a smile and my leggings are
pleasures and joys. This bomber-wing-like
faction, so extreme in its manners and ways,
can take down a town or a city in time.
'I have nothing so much to do as wait.
I am Ozymandias myself; look upon
my works, towers stand to falter and
mountains tend to sand. All things
amount to nothing at all.'
-
The five grand acres of Carnegie Lake
are now shrouded by fogs of the
morning and ringed by the wet
trees of June. The geese and the
ducks  -  as well as the four-legged
dwellers of this water and wood  -
come gingerly out to the shore 
to wager. This morning fog at
dawn, so thick, protects and
grants them cover.
-
All things amount to nothing at all.

3711. AND OF CLEVES

AND OF CLEVES
The most beautiful laurel leaf, barely in place, just
hanging. I stopped for a moment, surmising my place.
Nearby, the small fountain gurgled, its water spitting
forth a gentle stream. As if a sky was overhead, the
great blue beckoned. As it was, instead, a few girders
and a light-long pole had to suffice. Indoor fir trees, never
right and never at home. Why, so displaced, is ever this
world of plans and constructions? And, yes, people pretend
to be living here, well and at ease, in full.

3710. HAVE WE?

HAVE WE?
Have we yet marked the end of our days with a
pleasure of mayhem and haze  -  the thin, leftover
smokes of fun and passion and frolic and zest?
No, not yet; for there are so many more before
us : I scale high the Monsey hilltop, I look for
the boards on the ledge. This overlook is
called scenic, by some, by this ridiculous
Parks Service sign, by the last fool who
looked out in his time. I myself now
see nothing much at all except the
shadows of a dark deep past : That
Inness landscape, the trestle-train
slowly seen smoking its way over
the fair and distant ridge; those
Delaware River rocks, high and
mighty, still so far above 
our heads.

3709. THE CRACKUP

THE CRACKUP
The crackup, the Hayden viewing stone where
they store the molasses and water. I will rein
you in, I will suffocate you. I will razor-wire
your face into a hundred little pieces, raw
fellow recondite mouse biscuit, leveler of
houses. Now let me talk : give me that old
black desktop phone, let me sing the ages
in a broken mouthpiece where even old
Methuselah manages his own mimicry.
I am the biscuit man! See me here again!
It may be high Winter, but it is warm, and
I am sitting at the Brooklyn Waterfront Cafe
where the coffee is made from blood and that
waitress is running size 6 in decay on white pink
buttocks with a maudlin candle-top double-breasted
spindle-top bed. Work your magic on me! Put now
your legs behind your head and let me see the
Union Jack  : in the dozens, when time gets slow,
I see she gets busy reading 'The History of Rain'.
-
Over at the library some translator is giving his
event; a 'translated' talk about translation, they
say, but I can't tell. 'La Rondure Returnez Vous.'
Very well then, and Alsace-Lorraine to you.
-
I turn around three times : the old ruins of a beat
tobacco warehouse from the Civil War days  -  when
everything else on the harbor-front became a hot
ammo-drop ready to blow : big frothy ships with
billowing and tandem sails filled with briny soldiers
and dirty men  -  survivors!  -  and then the ironclad
that was tested in the waters, made right here at
the Navy Yard. Gone and gone and goner and then
the vicious war was over. I sit regarding nothing. I
think regarding everything. Take my hand and
I will waltz you away, right now.
('Let us go then, you and I').