Monday, December 31, 2012

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.'

Thursday, December 27, 2012

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.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

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.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

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.

Monday, December 24, 2012

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.

Friday, December 21, 2012

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.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

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.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

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.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

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.