3812. LIED TO YOU

LIED TO YOU

I did. So what? Who cares?

You should have known anyway,

that I was not Superman or Jesus Christ,

two identities I tried to fake. How you

fell for me is worse than how you fell

for my stories. Now, the jailer makes

his rounds with that simple tray of food :

for me! Jail toast, jail coffee, a jail fruit-cup,

jail meatloaf, and the most wonderful jail potatos.

I truly have everything that I need. Now, let me

ask you again, do you believe that one?

I lied to you, I did.

3811. ANTIPODE

ANTIPODE

I am sailing on this wide-eyed water rising

in swells and fits; every heave of this craft

makes me nauseous again. How can I

hold steady when I feel like I'm ready to 

die? Near me, the two blue-eyed fisherman 

are boldly drawing in their catch  -  fish after

fish, as if it never ends. Feed the masses, then?

I would certainly think so. They smoke their

lethal cigarettes, clouding my air even more.

Have I mentioned I want to die?

-

This far out on the water, what can I see?

Only a distant horizon, traced gently with

Atlantic City buildings  -  the sick skyline

of hotel and casino. It's actually far enough

away that I can use the fixed line of sight

to see how high we rise and fall. This 

ocean water's always a gamble. How

high? (Have I mentioned I want to die?).

3810. MALVERN CAVERN

 MALVERN CAVERN

Deep down deep they went so far that

out what seeped was the blackest tar.

I'd never seen anything like this before.  
-

Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer together

could never have made up this yarn :

Aunt Polly was really a man and

Becky did the whole entire town and

that's how the fence got painted.

-

I read it in the wagon, between those

two books Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,

I'd seen it all and mixed it up enough,

and that ! that was my vagrant youth.

-

'Oh on the ole' river a'coursin' I went free,

'jes floatin' old Nigger Jim and me, and

them two crazy guys and the Shepardson

girl and the steeple that rang my demise.

An' I a-never know'd nothin' at all after that.

-

Say, Huck, ain't that my noose meant a'fer

your neck ? and how could they mix us up?'

3809. JUMBLE

JUMBLE

I suppose you came home for supper,

like I suppose you ever cared - the soup was

pea green and the coffee brown like mud. All

things made me so unhappy. Underneath the 
carpet, the runs of cracked wood were all

well-covered. I hid in the closet until you left.

-

Just as I never met my father, I'd never before

met my mother  -  both were strangers to me.

Used to being alone, disowned, I took no

bad feelings of whatever I was (not) given.

My life was a blunder, a slum. I really

should have died at seven.

-

Alas, I lingered  -  I grew too old, too soon;

I stayed at this fair until the tents and

carnival acts were all gone. The bare

ground, looking abandoned and worn,

was all I ever saw. My mind, too, was

but a sepia photo on a chipped and

barren mantle I seldom ever looked at.

Enough. I'm so tired, just let me go.

3808.SINGING A SPIRITUAL MUSIC

SINGING A 

SPIRITUAL MUSIC

Oh made of steel, oh you are not.

The cauldron at the entrance burns,

and your fury knows no ending  -  I would

never stay to watch. There are chickens

here, scratching at the ground. I sit back

just to see them go. On the wooden

post hangs a sign announcing 'eggs for

sale'. It's all silly and simple, but it

works; people do stop.

-

By the drawbridge, a few carousers

take their stands  -  a lady on a bicycle

stops, a man preens his crummy-looking

dog. Not far off, the river that leads to

Pennsylvania runs its steady way along

the border. Logs and wood float by.

-

I'm steady, and pretty sure of what I know.

I deem appropriate only the things that I

feel matter : the red rope entwined at the

door of the barn; that thirty-year old car,

still left here in the weeds; the hayrick,

now old and sagging on bad springs.

-

Down below all this, in the center

of the world, I know another voice

is singing. It is one I cannot always

hear, but when I do I understand

and heed, and listen for more.

My spirit is a pliant thing.

3807. THE ORDINARY BEING OF THINGS

THE ORDINARY 

BEING OF THINGS

'Catch him on his way out, then he can't linger

to talk.' Amidst a hall of distorting mirrors, we

are given (somehow) time to speculate about

our place and being. Isn't that, alone, enough?

No, it's not, for you are seeking answers too;

and all these people who work in a halfway

house are truly in a halfway house.

-

I find that I cannot get anywhere, because

 of 'things' : the flowers on the mantle and 

their conspicuous vase; the leftover, shiny 

paper behind the used adhesive of the stamps;

the old, brown bag that the rolls came in,

the shoebox on the dresser - filled now

with old photos and cards.

-

How things change surprises me.

I really can get but little done.

-

You are always playing that same old

music  -  some adagio by Samuel Barber,

or another Berlioz dream of a witch's Sabbath.

I'd rather a Pavanne by Ravel right now - but

that's how so many things differ, and why we

walk about in awe. First everyone watched the

woodsmen rubbing sticks to make a fire  -

which they treasured and kept.  -  

-

and in certain characteristic ways, called

it God; just like the fiery Sun above. Now, 

at the end of a 10-second matchstick, the

flame flames out and we think

nothing of it at all.

3806. TALKS LIKE SO TIRED AND DREARY

TALKS LIKE SO 

TIRED AND DREARY

My reality is an expression of a set's 

expansion  -  a configuration wherein

all things exist at once; every facet of

was and is, could be, making a fabric

of the 'real' that I see. All is of 'now',

and it is temporary and passing. I'm

so happy we met this way - yet I 

wish things were more lasting.

3805. KINNELON, WANTING

KINNELON, WANTING

(a change of season)

Only the wild dresser knows the

things I'm seeking  -  Reality marked

in a flask, 'midst a vacuous shield,

erupting from things within.Don't ask.

-

It is early morning here outdoors;

the new light sings while the birds,

it seems, cheer as Summer carries

on. The food truck idles, and a

lone and solitary man is now seen

struggling with a cart of frozen meats.

-

No hydraulics lift the sun.

No dark matter shuts out the sky.

Everything is present at once,

and all is singularity.

-

I remember you walking in, past the

glass doors and the lamplight fixture.

You carried yourself with a certain

elan I could never attain nor reach -

a lovely doe, whose mother was gone.

This was really all a mystery, and there

was something about the time, the light,

and the idea now of a change of season.

3804. MAGIC

MAGIC

I never harmed a flea, 'til a flea harmed me.

I never ate a cow, 'til the cow ate me.

I never dreamed a dream, 'til a dream had me.

I never acted blind, until I could no longer see.

My life was a magic moment, unfettered, free.

My life was a magic moment, 'til the magic

disappeared me.

3803. INTIFADA?

INTIFADA?

This is the sickening heartbeat I remember : calloused and

weary, only beating now because it has to. I don't know why

this ever came to be : outside the orphanage, 4-stories of red

brick with reinforced glass windows and a Jewish star in the

masonry above the doorway, I remembered your name, and

how we'd met and now what's come to be. A quiet tear rolled

down my cheek as again I dared myself to look up. This was

nothing like an infraction, though they could call it what they

wished. I'd heard that word before : a breaking of the rules,

a crossing of a broken heart. Maybe not. I never did find out.

My mind was too dizzy and before long anyway it was over.

I lit a candle and cursed the light. Can you figure that? I lit

a candle and cursed the light just made.

-

If I was a million miles away, or a hundred, or on the very

surface of Mars, I'd still be thinking of you, and this moment.

There are no Jewish stars in space? Or is that what they

all are? Beyond borders, even the ones we can mend, there

are always others, always, others trying to get in.

3802. HIGH PRAISE

HIGH PRAISE

Reading again : all those tyrannical Popes,

their sisters and daughters and, now, right

at the present day, a hundred Internet scribblers

posting their God-flamed works. Every critic has

a brother, and every brother is a critic. Critical

acclaim, critical condition, critical situation, and

critical decision. I want to decide to get out, go

away, leave the flaming jackals to their own

devices. Cats and dogs lick their asses because

they can. I think Internet poets do it because

they really, really, down deep want to.

3801. MEPHISTOPHELES DOOM

MEPHISTOPHELES 

DOOM

'Them's the wonder they that wander o'er

many a stinking rubbish hole' - two drunks

were sadly singing what I thought could

actually be a pretty happy song; wobbling

along, clasping shoulders and each holding

a green bottle, filled I was sure with their choice

of slog. I just hoped it wasn't their own piss.

The building fronts were broken  -  a meat-man,

a marketplace, a truck depot, a baker. Everything

was closed. The lights of the night-sky had taken

over  :  Chelsea Piers, the big gas -station, the

looming towers and that universal television glow

we all live with, even the best of us and ever the

worst  -  and even those who won't admit to it.

I surely knew carousers in my day, but here the

girls themselves did all the gawking back to those who

gawked - tendentious blouses, high-heeled shoes, and

yellow taxis that matched their dress and cloak. My

God, what a marvelous world this shit turned out to be.

3800. MICHAEL TOMES

MICHAEL TOMES

I want to disengage the grave, and

take the coating off the mountain -

and I used to see glimpses of that

everywhere : the future with no edge;

me standing near a fountain; and you,

with your head in your hands.

-

Now, someone tells me you are dead,

others hand me a notice  -  off in the

wilds of Afghanistan, the tumbled sands

something like this: narrow, blue, pulsing

with blood, scimitars, minarets and mosques,

proud camels, charnel houses, rifles slung

over shoulders padded and proud with War.

I always said you should trade your firebomb

gunfight-army days for the peace of a Jersey

shore or some more solid vacation in Maine.

Take up dance; Kalashnikov traded for Baryshnikov.

-

Looking at a paper now, I realize I know nothing,

and you were always a cipher  -  the long lost dead,

a penny between clenched teeth  -  or, as in old

early photos, the grotesque western bandits, 

bullet-ridden and dead, propped up for one last

photo, one last shot before burial; the boot-hill

cemetery, the pauper's field, or just a grave on

the edge of some dumb, useless town.

3799. ROOM FOR MORE

ROOM FOR MORE

Extending both arms, looking skyward, I said

'Buonarotti, come over here.' Michelangelo soon

enough came to me. I asked what he was doing,

and he replied, with a startlingly eye 'I'm painting

on my back! All the time long, this boffo Pope he

makes me do his biddings. With sticks and markers

I first have to line out all the ceilings; while he watches

he critiques my lines, that ignoramus. Knows nothing

of what I do, or what I want to do, only knows what

he thinks he wants. Ah! His church, it is crap, all

crap, and he's in indulgent hock to his collar; but

then so am I and so I must work, even for a fool

like this.' I agreed with him, saying 'yes, you do

look tired and worn; in fact, you looked stained by

work, the color of brown blood and bad frescoes,

no?' He groaned, to agree  -  a noise I knew meant

a certain satisfaction. 'This Julius, this Pope, his

Vatican is a cesspool, a vile vale of corruption

and wicked men. His sisters slander, and the

others  -  those not in the know  -  they just bow

and pray and bend and pretend. Oh woe is me

for just being here alive.' I gave him a chance

to recover and then I spoke : 'Michelangelo, you

are missing the point  -  this paint, these ceilings,

all that you do, will live, believe me, will live on, and

hundreds of years from now people will still be grasping

your name in wonder, and gasping for air as they see

what you've done. You are operating outside of time,

so be glad for all that  -  nothing works to stop you,

and all that glory still awaits. Even in your after-death

moments, people will regale you with tales and stories

of what it is you have done. So, be not restless, and

remain in place. Be still. Settle yourself in. A very

long haul awaits you ahead.'

3798. NEW CAREERS FOR LETHARGIC PEOPLE

NEW CAREERS FOR

LETHARGIC PEOPLE

I ran into the fence-line running. At face-level, it gouged

my cheek and took out an eye. So, saucer-faced for the

remainder of my days, I lived a dog's life in this New

York City gutter : bumming for fleece and cigarettes,

stealing every wafer and water I could find, making deals

with both crooks and cops to stay alive. They called

me 'One-Eyed Alcatraz' and always seemed to find me

when needed. I couldn't hide, but I was so much out

in the open that no one knew exactly where I was.

Sweet deal. I took to horses, and groomed many a

mare in the side-street stables : where the workhorses

were kept  -  drayage and cart, food-wagon, water-tray,

firemen's-wagons and all that. I smoked ten billion cigarettes

in the run of this ample life, I bet. Nothing ever stopped me;

power, stimulation, energy, they all were my own. And

every woman I ever had never left without asking 'once

more, again, please.' Just the way I liked it. My birth

and anniversary days were held under docks and wharves

where I slept; kindness and the gentle paid me visits, I ate

whatever I was given or whatever I stole. And whenever. I

kept no hours for nothing at all. Until Death, until Death,

it affixed me, put me in place, stopped me dead, and here

I am alone to tell you - one more orphan, swirling. 'I would

not stop for Death, so Death kindly stopped for me.'

3797. IN THE DIPLOMAT'S HOUSE

IN THE DIPLOMAT'S HOUSE

His wife was a  bitch, and already his

foreign-tongued daughter was whoring.

I knew that and so did he  -  it doesn't

take a foreign intrigue to smell wet panties

and protein-infused breath. He was just too

stupid to realize, or step in, or complain.

Dumb shit, always the ragged diplomat.

-

I sat around their house plenty of afternoons;

east 53rd, doorman, crystal doorway and, down

below, the fucking east river in all its pounding glory.

I stayed whenever, and they let me be : some sort of

American adjunct to their foreign-education outreach

program was I. Complete bullshit and illicit crap - it

let them launder money down a trap, and all I ever saw

of anything was, here and there, a crisp fifty and all

the food I needed. Plus of course, her; OK, I admit,

both hers. Again, he was too stupid to know.

-

I should have been President of something,

all the knowledge I picked up along the way.

3796. AND NOW YOUR WORDS PASS

AND NOW YOUR WORDS PASS

I have grown so tired of the melancholic

gloom  -  look, look, I am aces and funny!

Nothing can stop me now - only, you tell

me, how green is the other grass? Madmen

make marks, and their stentorian tones make

me snarl. 'We've done a lot out of thin air.'

-

The girl saying that to me had strayed this way

from somewhere else. I decided to say nothing

back. This man with no voice - a real person  -

pulled her over and flashed her a paper  -  to write

her a note. She willingly sat; I don't know why.

But, oh, it seems, so many things are

different in the light of day.

-

My fellows, my girls, this is Poetry's world.

The broken quotation, the truncated swirl,

the fractured quatrain. Don't take more than

a moment to stop where it stops. Keep going

on; your life is the adventure to laugh at, and

I have grown so tired of the melancholic gloom.

3795. AS THIS ANONYMOUS MR. MELVILLE

AS THIS ANONYMOUS

MR. MELVILLE

I am often found waiting, and like

this I wait - silence, exile, and cunning

together. The sled of time, my seaward

dogs are pulling, and I watch them go.

Goodbye old land  -  it is good to see

you pass. I hear tolling bells  -  Trinity

and Church, any of those harbor streets

around me; yes, I am ever and always

your stranger. In this tiny prison of things,

I am kept, but I am not guilty.

-

Call me what you want  -  I am gargantuan

like the whale. I seize, and thrash about. I

seek a comfort among the something : windlass

scurry, ribald aces, dogged sailor aloof at sea,

regurgitate again this sorry tale to me.

3794. YES THEN, THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

YES THEN, THE 

ANIMAL KINGDOM

I have seen your shoulders watching the

Kalahari, egging one thing or another over

the desert sands. You bring all things along

so well : kingfishers, the way it's said, the

curling, blinking, lit-up sign which somehow

avoids all records and definitions. I am not you

and you are not me. Sit next to me; let us share.

-

Human footprints, human hair,

human moments, human fear - holding

things together, this human capacity;

and I am, as yet, so afraid to move on.

Some say we should evolve to other things.

I am staying right here, while my happy heart sings.

3793. SHRAPNEL

SHRAPNEL

What is this shrapnel 'neath my

skin? It's festering, it hurts. It 

is a wound that I still must carry -

a heavy loaf of really bad bread,

now coated with postules and sores.

Oh so sorry for me, I am.

-

What is this shrapnel beneath my skin?

It is happiness in pockets beaming.

And of well I remember the wounding

and hold it dear still. And, and so

happy for me, I am.

3792. SALAMANDER DWELLS IN BONES

SALAMANDER

DWELLS IN BONES

Too many people ask me for good sense; I have

none really. Too many people seek to find my ways

out; I have none really. I go about my means, forced

by myself to function  -  first this, then that. What

works, works well for me, at that instant; and then

it's over. I don't stay around.

-

I'm standing between two buildings: one of a

yellow, painted hue, and the other solid with

hundred-year-old brick. This is an old spot, here,

and I like it  -  it reminds me of, and I can sense,

old industry and hard-working men. Block and tackle,

trucks and tracks, nails and hammers and labor.

None of that ephemeral stuff we deal with today.

-

Right over here, some jokers have landscaped a

very strict garden; a grove of flowers and seats,

molded chairs and a plastic-wood table. All crap,

even the plans for this must have smelled.

Distasteful as all, for me, this distended

parkspot dangles and gapes, tries hard

to be something it never can be - a real

and authentic place. Jesus God, do

I want to run and hide from this

pathetic waste.

3791. PUTTING FORTH WHATEVER YOU WISH

PUTTING FORTH 

WHATEVER YOU WISH

Sheep and goats must always be kept with 6 miles

of water - the distance they can walk to and from 

twice a day. How do I know that? It's like the

old struggle between pastoral and farming as

ways of life : the fixed circumstance, the moving

tribe. Cain and Abel again and again. I just know.

-

I was struggling with pen to paper. Even

before language, and then after, I understood

that most of mankind would not understand

whatever it was I meant or was writing.

The very first message, or signal, I

suppose, was fire. Burning bush,

voice of God, fiery stylus.

Whatever you wish to say.

3790. OUTSIDE OF YOUR NATURAL BLUSH

OUTSIDE OF YOUR 

NATURAL BLUSH

Don't think too hard, it stresses your face;

and all those lovely lines of solace and grace

keep calling me in. I've read books before,

just like this; right to their very endings.

-

Everywhere I go, there are moments bringing

things forth : the French guy in Marcus Garvey Park

calling for his dog to be leashed once more; the

two boys at the water fountain, arguing and pushing

each other for access. It was all so uncomfortable -

they were simply hot and cranky, each.

-

How can we ever co-exist? Like this, to a

man, we grow so weary of each other, en masse.

A company is known by the company it keeps -

outside of your natural blush, I don't think there's

anything really right with this world.

3789. OWING TO THE MOMENT

OWING TO THE MOMENT

Catch this will you - the tradesman in the Pirates

cap is wearing his sleeves rolled up, pulling on

his pants, and smoking a cigarette  -  all three

things at once. And you thought your life

was complicated.

3788. FENDER AND BRUSH

FENDER AND BRUSH

'The entire time I was here we never

found the meaning, and that thing

was always bent  -  like Nefertiti's oasis

it just shimmered and was lost forever.

I must first make an example of you.'

-

Even on this wide, hotel porch, I noticed,

people gravitated just to talk to each other,

as if the silence of being alone was just

too much to bear. Waiters carried out their

sand-soup and coffee while carrels of baked

goods slumbered in a rack. Along the horizon,

beyond the pounding surf, the ocean sagged,

its boats and tankers long drooping in a haze

beneath a wavering and distant sky. The silence

uttered its noise, the noise its silence. Casino

voting was the topic of the day.

-

'I must first make an example of you' - I had

heard the man say that, I was certain, but couldn't

glance the meaning nor the context. As it was, they

were just words  -  weird, distant, and evocative

of something, wildly floating around.

3787. PORGY AND BESS

PORGY AND BESS

In Wintertime, these mornings are freezing

cold no matter what  -  ice wind off the water,

always blowing in, white caps curling like a

sneer, the thin snap-spray of a wispy salt

on everything. I know I can never escape

these days; every pillow and blanket wet

or damp and even my dry heaves run to

soggy. This beach-life sure is a test -

there's just nowhere to go in this room.

(I live alone, with Porgy and Bess,

my pen, and the rest...).

3786. CHINATOWN

CHINATOWN

The nickelodeon was spent, the screen behind the

glass was gone, and fifteen chivalrous soldiers led

the way to both time and reason. Not knowing what

a capstan was, I never ventured forth to see. The

flowering Chinese woman at the old Mayflower Cafe,

well, she was a different story : Tong War maiden,

Nationalist Party lackey, fevered yellow whore - I'd

heard her called many things like that in my day.

At the end of Mott, or one of those crazy streets,

they had a chicken in a booth. For a quarter in the

slot, that chicken somehow would dance and peck,

and out would tumble some sort of crummy prize.

I always wondered how long the chicken lasted and

how many they had to replace. It all seemed

so callous and crude.

-

That's the way it is and was  -  not much changes

in the realm of the sorry and sad. I think of a hundred

things at once, and realize they're mostly all sad.

Especially here, in Chinatown  -  or at least some

nutty old Chinatown of the mind : ducks, glazed,

dead, and roasted, hanging on hooks from their necks

in the restaurant windows; piles of hacked, webbed feet

for sale; stupefied, fat fish, rolling low in a tankful of

bad water; diners selecting their things to eat while turtles

play on their death-watch in small, plastic tanks. I have to

move on, giving thanks, I guess, for the smallest of things:

-

the light shining off that puddle, glinting its way

back to me; the little girl, shyly blowing bubbles off

a plastic stick, while her brother plays, nearby, in the

open tenement doorway and along the stoop, rolling

small toy cars along the three bottom steps.

3785. MY DELICIOUS YEARS

MY DELICIOUS YEARS
Some semblances of fast things yet haunt me: the
wicker basket at the old club line, the quick, stiletto
kiss while awaiting new judgment. All that was now
so long ago but not forgotten. They can outsource
everything but the mind.
-
I still have all those shallow items we left at
Mariner's Cove. You taught me how the city
girls would wrinkle their noses when trouble
was nigh and who to trust with pilfered arms.
I liked all that  -  the rent was cheap, I was
young, and no one had yet really invented law.
-
Did you mind those minutes as little as I did?
I always spoke my words in truth, though now  -
only so much later  -  we learn that such things
as truth never really existed for anyone at all.

3784. FARRAGO

FARRAGO

Yes then it was - in the park, I had my fingers on

your touchpad; we were discussing Darwin's

hallucinations and it came to be that you said

'he was stoned.' I looked around, trying to

decipher the who or what you meant, and I

realized there was no one there.  At that

moment, the funny man selling Italian ice

began singing to himself. A tourist with a

Leica around his sweaty neck same over

to ask if I've lived here all my life. 'Uh, not

yet', I replied, 'at least I hope, not yet.' He

walked away with a funny, checkered gait.

3783. CIRCLE

CIRCLE

There is a great, magnanimous circle in the

heart to be filled by the love of Mankind.

As all circles are, this one is endless, and 

rolls about, back over and upon itself, to

infinity's endless end; to the place where no

man has been, to the seamless circle, within.

3782. MOMENT

MOMENT

I haven't a moment to best my own circumstance:

the bread, the filler, the leavings, all gone. Birds

have eaten these seeds from the ground. Nowhere

but where I have strewn them, of course. And

now  -  before the chilly wind of Winter arrives  -

I throw back, in the same manner, all my caution

to these changing winds and give up care. There

is nothing more but monsters in the moment. Now

we will see what things win out. Alas, my friend,

the world is over - if it ever was at all, if it

really ever was at all.

3781. POST-MODERN DELIVERY

POST-MODERN DELIVERY

Skip two beats, one falsetto after

pauses, enter staccato and drone, all

syncopation gone. Variable timing

notwithstanding, hold meter and tone.

Jump phrasing, end rhyme.

-

Two cups of flavored tea, cinnamon

oasis onion bun, padicule the mannerists

humming. 'I've never been so embarrassed

in my life! My God, imagine the nerve of

that man!'

-

Outside by the picnic table, but still within the

ring of fire, some poor men were barbecuing 

pork. Soon there was nothing left. The chickens

had come home to roost; the barn door, someone

had left open. Three fine horses were loping away.

-

Skip two beats. Use falsetto after the pause.

Enter staccato, end rhyme.

3780. UNDER A SEMBLANCE OF THE FORGE

UNDER A SEMBLANCE

OF THE FORGE

There are no stars, no stars in the sky

tonight; if any, there are five. What have

we done to ourselves to live this way?

An how are we complete? Divorced as we

are now and separated from everything that

ever was, we claim our Now to be ideal, a

pinnacle reached on the heights. I cannot say,

but know I will. Distracted and dazed, a forced 

face of Mankind just keeps running on.

-

The sky is black with a blackness here of

its own, by our lights. We have made it so, here,

anyway  -  dollars and finance and the stipple-toned

men with ledgers and counters and dodges and

tricks. They make their designations, they plot

their ways. By contrast, I stand by silently

watching as they all miss their mark.

Aloof is my only manner.

-

I cannot tell you a different story, for

there is no different story to relate. The

far sands  - of Eden, Mesopotamia, Babylon

and the rest  -  we've left them all now, and

they are gone. There are no stars in the sky 

tonight. If any, there are five.

3779. FAR MAN

FAR MAN

There are no rudiments; nothing

basic to be seen. William Blake

on the catamounts of desire wailing.

Someplace odd, the Ferris wheel

and the carousel can only be seen

spinning backwards alike.

3778. MY FRANK MEMORIES

MY FRANK MEMORIES

Oh fuck! I am so faraway and wasted by

everything gone. I just don't live here anymore.

This world has no more parasol  -  just fast

endings, loose pieces, and disjointed

enclaves of loss : madmen sunning

themselves in duplicitous words; all

those cloying wives as one atop a

sunstreaked porch. I can't even

marvel at things any longer. My

jail-term is a biography text.

-

A Summer breeze at the window

is a daughter I never had. The wildlife

in the gritty park is the mark of all

my drowned intentions ; slight

piggishness, lust and labor in a

bushe-basket of need and want.

Rumor has it we all get a claim.

-

This chiseled sunlight is a subterfuge.

And I am so living on borrowed time.

3777. SANSKRIT

SANSKRIT

Don't bet the last dollar, unless

you're feeling extreme. Don't dodge

the taxman, nor - I suppose - don't

tax the dodger either, for that matter.

A simple cake has complicated icing,

(or is that the other way around?).

The swami was eating free-range

toast he'd made himself. I wonder,

how did Kali like that one?

-

There's a new white fence around

Cemetery Grove. And along the

perimeter now they've gone and

built new homes. You know they're 

not going to call it that, 'Cemetery

Grove' of course. No. More probably

something like : Lone Pine Estates,

Weeping Willow Gardens, or maybe

Wailing Oak Hollow. Yes, yes -

Wailing Oak Hollow, how apt.

3776. ANTS ON THE APPLE

ANTS ON THE APPLE

I was surprised to see ants on the

apple core  -  someone had thrown

it down, once done, and now it was

swarming with ants. Somehow just

as well dependents of an Adam and Eve

once more. I make no connections, mind

you  -  merely a comment so as to reflect.

How jagged these reflections are; straight

lines broken, hitting from mirror to mirror

along the wall. Eventually, yes, even

letting us to see around corners.

-

Oh dog, I am so silent. 

The ants are swarming the core.

A thin, malic acid nectar, sweet

and rich. People eat apples for

hundreds of reasons. I once read,

in an article on same, that they were

very good because of their 'vigorous

cleansing action on the teeth' (always

liked that phrase thereafter). What's

that tell the ants, I wonder?

3775. HALLOWEEN AND DEMONS

HALLOWEEN 

AND DEMONS

In the resourceful fell of a late October moon,

those crazy, loopy kids in costumes are now

genuflecting before their idols : character

dolls I never know, wizards, whores, bakers,

chiefs. The low smoke of someone's new fire,

billowing out of a rooftop chimney, curling around

the neighborhood's now funky sky. Little demons

parading with bags. Everybody wants to be, something.

We have the Druids lolling on Nature's hay bales. The

archfiends, with their knives and sabres. The mad

witches of Halton Grove, riding their proverbial

broomsticks. Why not, these nut-kids say, why

not; every hole is fit for something. I can only

nod and agree. I can only nod and agree.

 

3774. MADRIGAL

MADRIGAL

Leaving the entrance at bright of day, the

telling dawn, the beginning of something :

catcalls and the sunlight, the noise of

many birds. All those sticks of granite  - 

the cemetery markers before me  -  all

those I can do nothing about. Every

tag a storyline with an ending. And I,

of little care, pretending.

-

I am so lonely. I want something to

latch onto. I hear a door slap, the only

manmade sound I get. Someone else

scrapes by in a car  -  same Malibu

crap in a beat-up paint job. Just the

way the poor-folk do it, so do I. Let

me learn a language  -  something,

anything  -  by which to converse.

 

 

3773. I NEVER SAID THAT AT ALL

I NEVER SAID THAT AT ALL
Only right now is it time best to
consider, so many things having
already turned : that Carnival time
in Rio, that Opera House in the
harbor at Melbourne, countless
little things in the gulleys and
shores of time. I sit about, reading
History in little bits and pieces.
-
Someone tells me the Civil War
ran at a blistering pace. You'd have
to prove that to me - I see instead
a more pure and languorous idea,
of slow battle in so many pleasant
places - a Battle of Wond'rous Hill,
a thousand men dying of wounds
amid a beautiful picnic grounds.
People eating cole slaw, sipping
drinks and telling stories. Children
on the field across the ditch, all
spinning hoops and chasing balls.
-
You then wonder, may I be confused?
No, rather so a hopeless romantic that
I demand a sense of right in even the
worst of times. If it is my own blood
flowing, then at least it shall be pure.
-
There is a nomenclature inside of
Nature that makes all things right :
the good comports (somehow) with
the bad as the lovers, in fact, embrace
the haters and all things come together.
-
As one? No, no, I didn't say that.
I never said that at all.