4052. WITH MY OWN SWAGGER

WITH MY OWN SWAGGER

(to Jenna)
What difference to blood or diamonds

does any of this make? John Ciardi died

a long time ago, and his last words to me

were 'get lost!'. How do you like that now,

I wonder? And is your nose still running?

Are you sniffling on? I've got a dirty friend

now living in a Brooklyn hovel. I want to

be all things to you except for trouble. I

want to publish 10,000 books and pages.

I want you to slobber on me. I want to see

you naked. How far away can any of this be?

-

'Take no comfort in waiting.

Everything now is already too late.'

4051. WHAT THE SIGNPOST SAYS

WHAT THE SIGNPOST SAYS

Dead of the year, edge of all things,

sorrowful finish  -  each and every frolic

over. Turns now that calendar page.

Just look, look at the trees.

-

I want to think I've introduced new squalor -

left the rudderless boat at sea, listening to

men and all they say : that awkward voice,

'here I am' today  -  all backwards.

-

It is the beginning of something

(find ye joy), just as much as the

end of another : and the moon

still hides behind a cloud.

4050. THERE IS NO HUMAN NATURE

THERE IS NO

HUMAN NATURE

Outranking the fox and the lemur, perhaps,

Mankind enters the world on a drumstick of

sentient wrath  -  walking the woods and the

forests, singing of rhymes on the unchanneled

Rhine, marking crazed civilizations with new

stories and times. In how many versions  -  over

and again  -  just by crucifying another

lynch-man story  -  have we entered our

own realms of religion and doubt?

There's nothing really but shadow.

-

'Tyger, tyger, burning bright' and all that wrath

we see tonight : Everything is somehow only 

'us', burrowed in those bearskins around the

fires of the night - stuck like legends; pinned

now, hard and fast, to a ancient wall of myth.

4049. THAT PLEADING AGAIN

THAT PLEADING AGAIN

Like some lark upending its cage-home, so my

outstretched arms tried reaching for you. The

warp and the mettle, the woof and the strength,

of all things within this world held me back. And

though my eyes were shining strong, that

glimmer of light was not enough. All I've

ever noticed were fences and locks.

-

I have so much to give, my little precious one:

the mind that stretches back a million years, to

even before the shape of a conscious world had

shape, the raging of wind on a meadow, the piffle

of rain on a brook. My heart is pounding for you

as I walk : vacant land and limbs and talk.

-

Oh, how all things have changed. Where once

the cavernous land of light and power stood

strong, now  -  like my heart and mind

themselves  -  the whole world grows

weary with waiting for you anew.

4048. JUST LIKE THE BRUNCH OF A WUNDERKIND

JUST LIKE THE BRUNCH
OF A WUNDERKIND
They played piano with their teeth; they
juggled soft rolls with both hands, talking
all the time of the new girls they'd had
and how long it all took : busting heads
with a really hard stick. They sat back
and lounged on leather chairs, speaking
of Dad and those trust-fund affairs. The
Titanic had nothing on this : they could
all sink to hell as far as I cared. I washed
their tables and clouded their cloths. So
little they knew, really, so little : Mariette
had already flashed me her crotch, and
Sonya had shown me her breasts. These
clowns had no clue. I worked for a
living, and they'd have to do.

4047. CHARLES STARKWEATHER

CHARLES STARKWEATHER
'Who knows what? Here I am, all alone
again. I've left all that candy in the couch
and now I'm walking empty-handed. What
else can be said and what am I doing here
anyway? As a child I had but few toys; everyone
always angry or yelling about something. I
never could keep up. Now my head hurts, and
my eyes won't see. Blurry. Not clear anything.
If I wanted a bicycle I got a shovel. If I sought
forgiveness, I got a slap in the face. Nothing
ever made sense. Who knows what?
Here I am, all alone again.'

4046. 'SANANDA SEZ'

'SANANDA SEZ'

Oh so very long ago, at the Lincoln

Tunnel traffic hole : in fact the place where

my father was born and reared some, was

the Lion Theatre. So much happened there,

I cannot list it all  -  suffice to say 'K'. And

maybe 'Sananda Says.' Who knows and

who is is to say? Hippie jargon clanging New

Age palindromatic drivel, brought your

way by the same people who pulled 'Sister

Mary Ignatius' out of the hat for you. Or,

would have anyway, for money  -  enough

money to be involved with. You know those

theater types, don't you? I hide nothing, so

read it and weep. The newsboys were huddled,

just like me, under the stairways, trying to keep

warm. 'And what a crummy, downward life is

this, huh, no?' That was said to me by little Johnny

Tokun, the feisty kid from Beach Street. He never

really knew anything else but just said what he 

could. That was me; that was me; that was me.

4045. MY NATURE

MY NATURE

It's in my Nature to peel the flesh and skin the bone;

I never understood what even I myself was about,

but at least I recognized a few salient traits: I'm

no good around blood or laughter, I run from the

first hint of fury. Looking at flowers, I wonder only

about their wilt; seeing a tall building, I only question

the climb. I know all words but find no rhyme.

4044. STREETLIFE SONG

STREETLIFE SONG 

Not getting washed much : nothing so 

bad as six months out. On the street. 

Pushcart to lariat, boulder to post, old 

feedback to older dumpster toast. And 

everywhere I look, something new is 

gone again. Every doorway that I knew 

by heart had an extra entrance for me : 

outside the miserable end of the Bowery. 

Bottles and booze, or scratch and weed, 

everything ready for every need.

4043. BALTIMORE STOMP

BALTIMORE STOMP

I went there with the best of intentions -

bringing home the bacon while wrapping

up the deal, as is said. What matters now?

Nothing, for how little got done. The inner harbor

they've chopped to smithereens and turned it

into a toy - people walk about like zombies

seeking this and seeking that. I'm tired of

taverns with themes. I sick of pale barmaids

in jeans. So, then, let me here tell you a

little something new : what stands in now

for the modern age is an atomic lie standing

for nothing at all. We've wired every terrier's

foodbowl, we've cut back every tree and bush,

we've altered every old and living thing.

I really hate the Baltimore Stomp.

4042. THE SPORTING LIFE OFSIDNEY BARROW

THE SPORTING LIFE

OF SIDNEY BARROW

(near Christopher Street, 1986)

If I have left you standing alone in these torrents

of rain and ice, well, that is my nature and you

should be man enough to take it. Instead, as I

see it, you have carped and cried and wagered

like a woman for a most romantic ending.

-

Suppleness like leather is a face, a look, a

misappropriated glance : this is a crowd

of weeping homos, here, in front of the

churchyard lawn, sobbing and gesticulating

for the cameras, like Jews hawking streetside

wares or explorers bent for oblivion.

-

Too little, too late, too far, too much.

They have catty names, not real at all -

poor boys a'lit from ghettos of the mind,

placebos for their own wear and tear. I

will not take that apocalyptic coat

and wear it....

-

For I know - and have seen - miracles that

occur; things that change both numbers and

aims, both endings and desires. So much of the

altered mind is in the interpretation of what is

being seen. Present at the creation, disposed to

love and giving, the glance that causes things

that stay  -  like holes in the hand, or thorns

upon the head. Should we not mark the passage?

Loaves and fishes are multiplied in the mind :

'I must only have thought I was hungry."

-

[Too little,

too late,

too far,

too much].

-

Collonade, Astor Place,  MacDougal Alley -

places in the mind are often not real at all.

4041. HERE'S HOW IT GOES

HERE'S HOW IT GOES

Tell yourself a hundred times a hundred things:

how the stream and its water runs, where the new

light comes from, how the starling learns that song.

Expunge nothing  -  from your memory, no failure,

no fault. Write those spinning words that come,

accompanied or not by their musics and graces.

It will all come to you more times than one, like

a chain-letter sent from some annoying source,

the letter returning anew after each time you've

sent. There's just nothing you can do.

-

A grand cathedral was never this vast  -  those

columns by Bernini never meant any more than

this. I have been given the writer's mantle to

use and explore. I take my first steps and

am always seeking more - yes,

a hundred times more.

4040. AT THE SILBERSTEIN COLLECTION

AT THE SILBERSTEIN

COLLECTION

We wash the pastry down with wine.

As people speak of spaces and volume, my

scant eyes are alerted by the wall's sheer

movement. Photographs from another place:

caftans, beggars, tea and elephants. These

pictures seem merely to say 'I have been

somewhere you haven't.' A camera makes

all the difference, no?

-

I wouldn't know what to do with money.

The thought of so many choices would soon

become painful. A hard poverty is more my way -

less to travel, more to see at home. Camera or

not, I move about seeking only a solace

from the wind or the sky.

-

Outside, staring up at evening, I watch the

change from sun to moon take place in the

deep December sky. The delicate arc of lunar

light attempts to meander but cannot. As the

sinking sun submits, I see vast shadows

take over the building walls.

-

This is a city light.

Amidst glass-walled buildings it

moves and changes with the seasons.

Inside, now, a collection of photographs is

pale by comparison. Silver-oxide chemistry

has very little heart. Although each image

is sharp and precise, the soul of a deeper

place is missing.

-

All the world has streets where people

are wanting. Even here, beggars line up

to wash. I need not travel for that to be mine.

I wouldn't know what to do.

4039. WAVELAND ESTEEMABLE

WAVELAND ESTEEMABLE

I've never taken a dog to school, never studied well.

All that I've learned, I've learned myself  -  the endings

were never worth the beginnings. We spin in place - all

zones as one : past, present, and future contained.

Everything as one, together, esteemed. 'If you can

catch my drift...', like the boy on the ballfield said.

-

It was 1959, and I think I was once already finished.

beginnings, and the new sun; endings, and the high,

black sky of night above. We practised our repetitious

plays : first base, over to third, and back. Throwing balls,

fast and straight like bullets, and then arguing who

would pitch tomorrow's morning game.

-

Small girls were all watching  -  though they weren't then

small to us at all. Same age as us, or our sisters  -  things

worth having, retrenchments of their mothers themselves,

we'd strive to suffer and play through for them. Maybe

they'd watch and maybe they'd see. Dad's car rolls by,

the empty road seems his alone. Those whitewalls,

and that chrome, by God, in the sunlight.

-

Whistling back at snake bit kids, the ones who

didn't play : that other group. Quieter ones, mama's boys,

the retards and the readers. I well knew them all.

4038. APACHE BROTHER

APACHE BROTHER

Man in the weave : a soft, red,

head and strange dark eyes. How

to die after living in such a tapestry

so bold. The chicken in the corner,

was that too not his  -  or did

they not eat flesh then too?

-

I rather think so : fancy all

that. Bison or buffalo, rugged

or soft. Truly, I cannot tell,

Apache brother.

4037. OVERLAPPING STORIES

OVERLAPPING 

STORIES

Chiselhurst and Benson, Hartfield

and Troy, any of these names would

do : and just as well. We are harnassed

to our own delights.

-

I've seen such old magics in the mud -

all those early, early cars bogged down

and caught. My tiller-driven Olds will

make a nothing of you. If it's Dayton

you want, this will have to do.

-

Here we are, again, all the same

but in another world. Like those

tarnishers and marksmen we read

about, we make our meek adjustments

to what this feeble world will throw our

way. Old women die. Old women stay.

-

The light is shining darkly onto that

varnished table  -  where people linger,

where people talk. In this air today, there

is too much kindness to go around : it seeps

from gashes in the flesh, from all those tender

parts we walk around with. I am not your

messenger, just your Joe, and if you confuse

me with any more than that I will have to go.

-

And, oh, have I told you? This is now a new

and different world I am about to enter.

The old one just will no longer do.

4036. NERVOUSNESS

NERVOUSNESS

The best you can do is keep it

going where they're headed  -

momentum or decisive movement.

Science has its goals, but fool men

just keep moving randomly. The

difference is negligible anyway.

As John Maynard Keynes put it:

'In the long run we're all dead.'

-

I've headed my time for flowers

slowly away : fractured time and

sterling moments are all now

just a memory.

4035. ESTERBROOK

ESTERBROOK

My 1953 Dodge has stopped running - 

and that tiny, little ram's head on the

hood bears resting now. Oh let it all

sink in the weeds now forever. Cranebrook

and Festerbrook and Esterbrook too -

all those now crazy names. Three-speed

column shift and the fabric seats as well.

Bench seats, they were called. Even

bank robbers could sit alongside

each other, shooting back.

4034. ALLEGIANCE

ALLEGIANCE

Spit out your fighting words standing.

I own a sixteen-room house - with a

man-sized baker's oven in the great

room where I could cook you alive.

Nothing else is like it in the world.

It was built in 1852  -  right before, 

in its day, the Civil War, when all

things had a different meaning, and

everything, even the small, was large.

It was, then, just the way we lived.

-

I have slipped my shingles now behind

the meager pilings of whatever is left

from the civic fencing. OK then, no

not really. Those are the posts where

the Virginia men died. We never gave

anything back, and left it there as a

memorial graveyard for the men who

perished. The fighting was right here,

along this field. The dead we buried

afterwards; those left alive, well, those

that crazy poet came and prayed over -

until they too, eventually, perished.

4033. I DO NOT MIND YOUR HORSES

I DO NOT MIND 

YOUR HORSES

And, obviously, they do not mind me. I've whitewashed

the corral fencing - just as you'd asked. Every bit of

my marking time was joyous  -  those horses pranced

or stood and watched. I loved the every moment.

-

Nothing like work at all  -  had I been Tom Sawyer,

some other way could have been found to get the

painting done; but as it was I reveled every minute.

-

Here's the note I'm leaving  -  you do not need to pay.

4032. INCIDENTAL AMONG THE CARLISLE PAPERS

INCIDENTAL AMONG 

THE CARLISLE PAPERS

Incidental among the Carlisle Papers were the

items left on the list : how often he'd made offers

to adopt, how many visits to his doctors were

kept, what he ate to 'ward off' yellow fever. None

of it worked, of course, and he died in his 45th

year. History little noted, though these papers

are here. I'm reading them; in an old colonial

library in some tiny New England town. Near

to my lodgings, the old Proctor Marble Works

and a gravestone store as well. How touching

and funny all this could seem. Yet, right now,

in this cold, steel rain and all its biting wind,

I care for nothing at all except staying within.

Cradling my arms in hot coffee, reading with

a pen and a notebook, selecting a passage

for this or for that. Carlisle had said: 'to my

mind this modern age is but a passage to

death, a newer way to be found for doing

the same old things, just doing the

same old things.'

4031. REVISIT

REVISIT

I won't go back there again though I must

and though I have. Oh, tempestuous one,

H., you have driven me to this : Ginny Flowers,

the erstwhile whore in the Woodbridge Towers,

sitting astride her couch with her little, black

child playing by the window and Die Hard again

on the screen  -  for at least the twentieth time.

All this now seems so dreary. I could not talk,

though we tried to speak, and that fat biker fellow

kept coming around  -  saying he was hungry,

saying he was dry, wanting another beer, scratching

his disgusting stomach, asking for a blowjob then and

there. He knew all about Bruce Willis : who'd just

bought a town in the South Jersey wilds, was not

yet quite bald, seemed humorous and ready for action.

I stood up to say I didn't care and was so very tired of

all this crap. No one agreed, they just shrugged. I was

so sad and angry that I left by the backdoor stairs.

4030. LOVE

 LOVE 

Throw your bare, naked leg up here, 

closer to my face, like you do so well.

Let me shift here in a moment so grand.

It's a shame, if it happens, that this is

all over so very quickly  -  and then

we're only left with each other.

 

4029. SHADOWS AND LIGHT

SHADOWS AND DARK

And me, I want so much to make a time :

a gray, dark time; a tan, faint time of brushless

shadows and washes. I want to live in the harbor

of the shadow of Death, and see all its wandering

souls, illicit loves, and general peace and quiet.

Take me from this sodden morass  -  where things

clump and stick, where piles of the same are massed

against each wall : bare lights boldly blinding the borders

and edges of every singly realized object. Everything -

screaming now together - sounds but a useless road.

Nothing is worthwhile said when there is nothing

worthwhile saying. All things have been devalued.

4028. DISTURBANCE

DISTURBANCE

Yes, I live with the animals that are within my

walls. I can hear them scuffling - dragging things

and eating twigs, making noise and disturbance.

I can live with that among my space, and they are

welcome to it. More like spirits and things ethereal,

they remind me of other realms and things to share.

I really don't care and wish them here. Come, go,

stay and settle in. My own thoughts are trees and

bowers where things can land - nest and roost.

Go ahead, enter and stay. I live with the animals

that are in my walls. Really, it's OK.

4027. PLEIKU AND THE HORIZONTAL MAN

PLEIKU AND

THE HORIZONTAL MAN

I am determined to help the delirious in their

riot of frenzy and chaos. Jump that cab, leave

that omni, travel where no man has gone before.

There are twenty doorways fronting twenty-seventh

street, and I am watching every one : lame

people come and lame people go. Everyone,

with something in their hands, seems ready

for their own, personal dare. There can be

no carapace like the carapace of here.

-

'Swig, man, from that bottle! Didn't I know

you in '74? Wasn't that Pleiku we'd been

fighting for? Then they took the hammer, in

'69, from us, that frosty Nixon bitch, crying

like a lame wolf about everything before.'

-

That was from the lowly man, now settled on the

ground. Around him, there were swirls and lightning,

angelic shit from another place. I figured he was

dying, yet no one seemed to worry about a thing.

The papers in his hand were stained with brown.

His flying spirit, I'd have bet, was already gone.