Tuesday, April 30, 2013

4356. PUMP MY FRICASEE

PUMP MY FRICASSEE
'Down in the Belgian castle the three men who
wore leather were acting like rakes : sizzling
dynamos of fabric and fury, lustful avengers, it
seemed for six hundred years of history. Far out
in the distance, the trim line of a river could be seen
down below : I wondered about the marauding
raiders, and if they ever tried coming up this way.
Everything was peacefully settled; this was
Belgium, after all. What else need be said?
-
I'd forgotten whether it was King or Queen who
ruled this place. None of it mattered to me; I
was here from a land of the free. Drinking beer,
swaddling myself in a new intimidation.
-
I wanted that girl over there to notice. To see.
Me. That's how silly I was at twenty-three.
I wanted to say she could pump my fricassee.'

4355. I LOVE TO READ THE ENDINGS

I LOVE TO READ
THE ENDINGS
(what was it the bride wore?)
Mystery matchbox, penny arcade.
The lithesome young lady is wearing brocade;
I almost made her once, back when forbidden
pleasures was a perfume. I think. I forget. So
much is overdue, and so little brings satisfaction.
There are one hundred people a day I could
think about if I chose to, but I don't. I just
keep moving on and this wagon train won't
stop for nothing but water holes, feed bags,
and the occasional oasis made of  -  when
we do finally get there  -  nothing at all.
-
I was walking through the woods, nearly
in the middle of nowhere. A tiny path, it
seemed, tried leading somewhere. I went.
I followed the push/pull of all those fair
intentions. When I got where I was going,
where this path had led me to, I was
amazed. Piles of used tissues, not yet
soggy with weather and rain. Piles of
used tissues, and condom wrappers
galore. (What was it the bride wore?).

4354. NO ONE IS FAR AWAY

NO ONE IS FAR AWAY
'All my future's behind me,' said Joe with a laugh. 'Might
go down to Perth Amboy, get me a job in a munitions
factory, but I'd rather be blowed up in the open, you see?'
Black dog barking, outside my door. Carmelita in her mantilla
lace, sucking on an orange ice. Outside, on the street, two buses
roll by, one behind the other, both marked for the exact same
destination. No one gets on; but then again, no one gets off.
'Tell them to all go take a flying Rimbaud at the moon.'
-
Well, I wonder. What I wonder is how to read a letter;
written in black ink, scrawled almost sideways on a piece
of scratchy old paper. Like a side of Kong, or something.
A long, wrangling letter, one written by Andretta. I knew
her once when her dog was King. That was long ago.
Times has passed; I don't owe her a thing.
-
Now listen here, old tidy cake. This is the telephone
they've invented  -  you've got to turn the crank, hold the
earpiece here, and  -  yes, yes, OK  -  talk into this
thing here; no, no NOT like that! Talk regular, no
one is far away. I tell you this  -  no one is far away!


4353. I TOOK TITLE TO THIS LANDED OASIS

I TOOK TITLE TO THIS LANDED OASIS
Here where the fluid waters lie, where the two-toned
house of Theo sits, I am hearing someone cry. That
paintbrush in his ear, it should not be there. Off to
one side, there is a clown-face in the window. You
know how that is? As you're looking at one thing
and another catches your eye  -   meticulous in its
confusion, there is no explanation given.

Monday, April 29, 2013

4352. THE SLUG-HEAP

THE SLUG-HEAP
No, there's really no such thing, you say, just
open endings and dead-ends where illogic and
images play. I nod, and I have to agree.
-
I've been enrolled for thirty years in programs
that have brought me nowhere at all. Brusque
manners and rude opinions, of those I've got plenty;
friends I've lost and others I've sent away angry
and hurt. That too, I abound in. My lot is the same
as that sorry one, those jokes you used to hear:
-
The suitcase too fat to close, the submarine
with screen doors, the pumpkin that turned into
a coach, and then back again, and the sorry girl
inside, fearful once more of such transformation.
-
My signal light's gone out, and all those ships and
trains have crashed already. I am a widower in a
new widow's cloak  -  for all my world is done
and I am nearly alone. That, my friend, may be
the slug-heap you keep trying to disprove.
Spend some time with me and see.

4351. WE WERE SAILING ALONG

WE WERE SAILING ALONG
To rid this narrow world of all that's in it - some
gambler's theft, some trick of trompe d'oeil, whatever
you say it is. It's all and it's real. ON MOONLIGHT
BAY. I never had the fever that comes with the
pox, but I could roll over, endlessly sick and feeling
bad. Simple as all that, I can be. YOU CAN HEAR
THE VOICES RINGING. Now, this ringing moonlight
stays behind; I watch the lunar calendar, if only to
see what I can recall of what went before this time.
Full moon from half moon, blazing to life. THEY
SEEM TO SAY. Light me up another one of
those blazing Winter-side fires so I can sit by
the flame and watch shadows. The bricks throw
off a smoldering heat. YOU HAVE STOLEN
MY HEART, NOW DON'T GO AWAY. The two
blind kittens the janitor brought in from the cold,
now he says they're not blind, just too young
yet to see. JUST AS WE SANG LOVE'S OLD
SWEET SONGS. I finally did think I understood.
ON MOONLIGHT BAY (on Moonlight Bay).


4350. AND SO I SERVE GOD AND MAMMON

AND SO I SERVE
GOD AND MAMMON
'This ain't no finger food, mind you, what I'm serving;
this is all I've got. The life-chandeliers have already
come crashing down, and the dark room only echoes
hurt. Every table-top for miles around already bears
the marks and cuttings of sacrifice and woe. Even the
thundering voice above has spoken out : 'Stop! Stop!
Enough of your bloodied meat and blackened corpses,
no more dead sheep, no more dead horses!''

4349. MENTION ME

MENTION ME
Mention me at the Mennonite factory and what
it will get you? A few bonnets, some chow-chow, and
an open -faced apple pie cooling on the sill. No one cares
for really real things. Ephemeral mention, like some drawn
magazine profile of a screen-star in her dishabille  -  all that
cleavage and the bare-bottom'd protusion splashed like
a road map on a very glossy page  -  brings forth nothing
but the lurid task of easy men drooling. Circumstantial
evidence? Yes, he did it in advance of thinking, I'm sure.
-
In the distant American past, people dropped kids like
pieces of water, things from the well, coins in a fountain  -  
some of them lived on, many others died at birth. All those
colonial graveyards, when I look now, are filled with dead
children at six  months old, eighteen days old, one and a half
paltry years. they are buried with those little bonnets on; 
oftentimes, I note as well, with their dead mothers at their side.
It's all amazing. It's all just the way things always are.

4348. HOW THEY PAVED THE ROAD TO HELL

HOW THEY PAVED 
THE ROAD TO HELL
...Is beyond me, past my comprehension, outside of
my ken of interest, and why? Slippery surface when wet,
iced over conditions at freezing? No, no, I don't think so.
-
Oh Annabelle Lee come follow me : we can take this
disquisition and quiet down the cows. We can ride this 
slope to Hades just to see what's there. The time is now.
-
For sure. They make such certainties of every little thing.
Like flies buzzing the marmalade, it attracts the mob by
scent and by attraction. As you do as well. They've paved
again this road to Hell, and I shall take the highway.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

4347. NOT EQUIPPED TO RESUSCITATE THE DEAD

NOT EQUIPPED TO RESUSCITATE THE DEAD
I am not equipped to resuscitate the dead, and
I'm not sure I'd want to if I was. Better, perhaps,
to lead the mourning and let the chips fall where they
may instead. I am really not equipped to resuscitate
the dead. I have read the books and all those stories :
'Lazarus, arise!' and all the rest  -  that stinking foul
offal of garbage and dread, piles of bones and the
ranks of the dead  -  and think perhaps it would be
better just to walk off. Mourning and crying maybe.
Yes, that would do. We cannot re-write a chapter,
re-do the plot, re-order the ending. Everything we
live has a better logic of its own. The Union dead,
or all those Cossacks lying flat upon the field, those
hordes of Chinese warriors, those Arubic warriors
panting on the African steppes : simply let them be.
They have played their plot and run their races,
ended their goals and left their traces. What
care I for that? A better thing for one
man to do - just live morally, singular
and sole. Leave all the rest alone.

4346. I HEAR VOICES

I HEAR VOICES
I am hearing voices again - the deck hands
are jabbering, the noise of the background jungle
strong. I cannot shut things out : they imbue the
essence with the real. Let me sit here, just a
moment, to collect. I am lost. I am singular.
I have but a short plank to walk. I own
little. I remember much. All-in-all,
good shape?

4345. MAGICAL FLUTE HARP WOES

MAGICAL FLUTE HARP WOES
What was that you said? The Magic Flute? Some
kind of musical opera lance-land that is. Let me
look up all this : the oratio, the hie to hives, the
music, all that sound. I sit back in this seat  -
too comfortable by a quarter by far. Never to
figure this out, the wide ceiling beckons as I
look up. I have nowhere else to go, and cannot
leave here now. This is a subscription seat,
and I'm very much stuck in place.

4324. AND THEN

AND THEN
The cantilevered rainbow falls; it topples
like broad light from a sullen sky, overstepping
bounds and limits. Into that one place, we
fall, following that which draws us. In the upstairs
loft, the artist is heaving paint, his strong and
recurrent brush piling pigment into the matter
while, off-side in practice, a supple jazz band
pirouettes its whiz-bang soundings. If all of this
were fifty years ago, I'd believe in it much more.
-
As it is, candy-sweet and wrapped in today's idea
of festive doubt, everything goes on. Plans are made,
and that woman, again, the one with the two red
shoes, drifts in as nimble as a kite string. But,
she goes nowhere. No flight, not ever drift. Just
another drink is poured, and then,
just another more.

4323. OH, I GUESS

OH, I GUESS
I've taken all this time to let
things rub off on me - like the
Red River Valley, I feel lonesome
with a horse running away. Some old
Ranger captain comes by, to try talking
to me - all his sharpshooter and rifleman
stuff, the horse and those spurs. My own
ways, by comparison, seem so milky white
and tenderfoot. He lights up a small cigar with
a match he strikes on his boot. I look up to see:
an eagle, way overhead, flying off. Or at least
that's what I thought I saw. Oh, I guess.

Friday, April 26, 2013

4322. NOT FROM NOTHING

NOT FROM NOTHING
I dreamt of a God who said 'Make me some dirt,' as
if this God was unable Itself to do it. Secondary
infestation of power and will, I figured. What did
I want with any of that - 'all or nothing,' as they
say in the swamp brigades. I simply moved along,
aware of my ends and all my own manifestations.
I had hands to clap with and feet with which to flee.
Any harbor storm, come a'blowin' in, could take me
out. (This entire last scansion is pretty much without).
'You make up the meaning as you go along.' That
was the final thing this feeble God had said to me.

4321. PORNO

PORNO
I can stand most anything but the playback
list you've given me : layers of bad sound, words
and melodies I dislike. My decision? I'll have to
just walk away - playing my own suite to the
rafters overhead. Doing my best Sonny Rollins,
right here where I stand. There's no compunction
like the one I have; straddling everything between
the what and the is. Reality grooms this fashion.
-
Now, in some back-row, bad-theater, seat, I sit
around watching a bad pornography whittle away
my time : some small girl screeching, more pain
than glee, and a guy, twisting her over like freight.
It takes longer than it should, yet it seems over
in an instant; her face, a sticky mess.
(No creampie here).

4320. HOLDING THE LONESOME-BELL

HOLDING THE
LONESOME-BELL
The nexus, the sexus, and the plexus of all
I've ever known and been  -  a streamlined
oasis, so running down my back. Grade school
merchandise, the memories and the Spring Fair,
little kids running around with vacant bicycles
and scary stares. Up front, somewhere, a broken
teacher ringing a bell for love and participation.
-
Who will ever speak up for the animals I see at
my side? Or are they just imagined like the rest
of these crudites and shallow wafers? In a
fairyland world such as this, who makes
distinctions of what is and what is not?
That sorry teacher, holding a bell?

4319. NO REAL CANDLES

NO REAL CANDLES
No real candles here, just untended flames
somehow elevated over wicks : that's the
true magic of my hands. And no real
achievements either  -  just the spell of
things that might have been and that
I wish had been. All those pale,
stinking beeswax candles, in
the lobby of a church to
which no one
any longer
goes.

4318. UNDERWATER LAMENTATION

UNDERWATER LAMENTATION
No specious words, nothing without value  -
this entire world is hemmed in by loathing.
There's a white picket fence sagging along
the back lot; needing paint as well, its tone
bespeaks a bedraggle world. The landscape
itself just bobs and weaves. Try following
that with your hand or eye.
-
Like studying Van Gogh, only to find he traced;
or following Duchamp to learn only that he'd
piss anywhere  -  no urinal ever needed, Mr. Mutt.
High tides and higher endings -  
so many things the same.
-
I have viewed a lot of things in my sorry days  -
Montmarte in the hoariest weather, Angkor Wat
when it was good. All together, I'd trade my
shinload of memories for a spoonful of what
you can give : largesse and benevolence, an
underwater lamentation straight from the heart.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

4317. STATION

STATION
I put my station where it wouldn't matter  -  
Bob the conductor, now flashing his cards.
I walked the three miles to get myself here.
If only I could stop thinking of you, so hard,
with such a concentration. I'd sit to rest,
here at the station, which I've put where
it wouldn't matter. Bob the Conductor,
now flashing his cards.

4316. FREAK

 FREAK
This is a wondrous appetite you've got here; my 
goodness I can't say what. I love the haste and the
swivel. I love every move I see. This cakewalk takes
the stage; people talk about you. In a hundred years,
nothing left but a squeamish photo of something you
did  -  archived material in the House of the Id.
-
Let's go down by the Caramoor trees. I lay you in
a bed of leaves and roses. We can listen as the
southern river runs by, carrying all that dirt and
destruction southward  -  while I, with arms at a
full salute  -  will take everything you've got. I am
the ogre in the sideshow. I will be your freak.

4315. LOOK

LOOK
I have the same gross habits as you -
the same slime'd desire for fortification
and validation as the everyday man in the
middle would have. My life doesn't sing, 
it hollers. I have the same gross dreams 
and distant hopes as the grease-stained
hobo who once rode that rail. We each
ride that road; we each try, and fail.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

4314. UNDERWORLD

UNDERWORLD
Hasty makes the wide hole wider, the
barn door open, the dogs out. Stupid
questions, stupid answers. References
not even a nun would approach. Who
loves you? 'God loves you,' Sister Mary
Martyr Joseph says. On the tabletop,
her Essence of Cintop tea is getting
colder. My entire life is like glittering,
twisting smoke, the steam puff of
a miraculous, momentary drink.

4313. I WANT TO BE STRETCHING

I WANT TO BE STRETCHING
The truth is wider than the Sargasso Sea,
even Pilate tried avoiding the issue  -  all
that evidence pointed to nothing but a weary
question. A shrug that the ages cannot shrug
off. Things elastic make a life  -  truth stretches,
all those bounds and realities consume what's
vivid before us, and then artist comes around,
elongating, stretching and twisting that streetcar
around the corner : turning but still where it
started as well. Can an object exist, in two places
or states at once? The nuanced feint of quantum
physics, the Shrodinger's Cat of what I'm living.
Amidst all this hardwood framing we call our
own  -  most certain  -  Reality, I'm sure I detect
too many wormholes, places where knots are
gathered, and distorted patterns where the grain
is stressed. I'll try ignoring it all  -  just so as not
to upset the steady-state crowd around me. I
do like to laugh, though, I do like to laugh.
And I want to be stretching too.

4312. THE EXECUTIONER

THE EXECUTIONER 
(familiarity and degradation)
Only those already with title are
given another title  -  the peerage
of such kingship decrees, yet I
spit on your mantle, my good
Lord Charles. Such a mad and
maneuvered comedy bespeaks
nothing at all to me  -  and this
I ask: Where has your peerage
come from, and where will it be
going? For the lines of your
enchantment take me nowhere.
-
I too have hammock and bed,
and a carriage and a dog who
adores me. My own peerage is
worth a counsel to the King, and I
can speak better words than that
insipid coal-car of a nothing. The
better part of him dripped down his
mother's chin and wet her thighs with
leakage. So take my head, you bastard
fool, disarm me now. I welcome such a
public death before the all to see. You
may take my head and loins, but
you shall not take me.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

4311. BAADER-MEINHOF DREAMING

BAADER-MEINHOF DREAMING
In the sleeve of the coat of my pocket I
keep a photo of Ulricke Meinhof. For
no reason but to remember Life instead
of Death; and it's all that easy. Early AM,
I am riding a train through the false green
woods of Nowhere at all. Houses like
boxes are lined in rows. As I leave the
small city that cityscape wanders and
breaks away; then the woods themselves
come and go. Just after, where it should be
farms and quiet, begins the rubble of all the
new. Homes bigger than homes should be
except for the large spaces where idiocy
must fill. The silences of all these people
roiling about, endless in their stupefying
habits. I dream of Ulricke, and reach into
my Red Brigades pocket - wanting to,
hoping for, looking to, search out a new
revolution and kindle a flame in someone's
lonely heart as mine.

4310. NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL

NO ONE WRITES
TO THE COLONEL
Garcia Marquez was right, no one does. Not
that anyone ever wanted to, mind you. You
know how those Colonels are - snap to
attention with fealty and a snappy wrist,
salute to the stars and say something
about war or the domestic situation.
People are being killed, they fall like
pins, in the street. And these dolts
just keep fighting amongst themselves.
-
The guy, anyway, got everything wrong :
calling Costa Rica an island, talking of
the land-locked country of Aruba. No one
ever corrected him; out of fear they just
blanched. It was 'severance pay forever'
if anyone opened their mouth. Such a
silence, yes, is deafening,and quite so.
-
As for myself, I never liked the cigars;
they made me sick. That and his meager
height when compared to all that bravado.
Head over heels was meant to just be an
expression, but for him it worked as well
as a description - just nothing there at all.
-
Number one contender for the middleweight
crown. Head of something or other. Collector
of misfit women and all the nation's cast-off
losers. No one writes to the Colonel. No one.

4309. POETRY WORKSHOP GUY SHIPPENBERGER

POETRY WORKSHOP GUY SHIPPENBERGER
At my feet lies a puddle of mystery, the
old hankering after one million myths
of time. No energy greater than this :
the motherlode of what builds up.
The poetry workshop guy comes over,
after listening, and says 'why did you
ever write that ? and when you wrote it,
why did you write it like that ? What
were you trying to say ?' I looked back
and said 'look here chickhead headhaven
honcho guy, I said what I said - don't ask
why. Or I'll put my modifier foot right up
your iambic protractor diameter, and how'd
you then like that?' He ran off. Only later
did I admit I was faking, and had no plans
at all. After that, things were better; until
his wife got involved (who may once have
been a man. I couldn't tell). Oh swell.

4308. HEAR HEAR

HEAR, HEAR
'If there was any justice, that guy would
be dead already. Kill Dzhokhar now, end
this travesty, and why should he live on?'
I watched this guy, feeling good. He sneered,
with lips like Elvis had. I wanted to buy a
new car : a Toyota Tamerlan, or something.

4307. WEIRDNESS HAS A JUSTICE

WEIRDNESS HAS A JUSTICE
And a texture and a fabric too  -  all so
many ways to keep apart the things we do.
In looking up the face of the corpse, I found
two versions of the very same shot : in a
way not much different than a Shroud of
Turin thing, the sort of idea that people
fight over for years and years.
-
Now one has to ask - was there a gunman
in the bushes, and if so, what could he see?
No strange assassins have ever been women,
now tell me that? I brush forth the flower
that's now fallen from your cloak; a memorial
trapeze to an artist on high. So much is now,
so little is later than.
-
On the back of that 12 page calendar found
hanging over the desk  -  7 years old it was,
forgotten and out of date  -  was scrawled a
telephone number, the sort you don't see
any more : 5 or 6 digits, and then a letter
or two. Something European or from some
other place. I happened to know it was the
Army posting Mr. Jantz's son had while
in Germany; but I never said. It was more
fun to watch the perplexed detective fumble
over what he thought could be a clue.

4306. ANIMALCULES IN PEPPER WATER

ANIMALCULES IN 
PEPPER WATER
(john adams)
Ulterior motives are nothing, this is
America my friend : the place where
all men glisten alike. Gold being dross,
as dross is gold, means nothing - no 
difference at all. And I'll never hide 
from that marking. My kinsman,
Major Molineaux, would know.
-
'The regular and uniform subordination
of one group to another, down to the
apparently insignificant animalcules in
pepper water  -  a proper society is
like a plenitude of Nature, nothing
ever lost, nothing ever wasted. Order
is Heaven's first law'...from Jonathan
Edwards and John Adams too, we get
where we go, we do what we do.
-
So within the fabled house of gables
I have to ride the carriage supplied.
And I have been a fool for far, far less.

4305. PERFECTLY FAKE

PERFECTLY FAKE
(lexington ave., 1976) 
Fake faith and fake fidelity fought -
forget the figment of frailty, please.
(Oh figure for me a mistake).
I jostled the old Automat tray
and plate. 42nd and Lexington  -
somewhere by that Daily News 
globe and the Ford Foundation 
indoor garden. Fearing for my
safety, I felt for something more 
substantial instead : like the sting 
of a false Spring, the spark of this
so spectacular setting. Instead
of all that  -  I get the coarse 
man with the tattoo'd arm, 
ink inching incrementally
to incredible images,
sitting next to me.

Monday, April 22, 2013

4304. INTERVIEW WITH WHY I AM DONE

INTERVIEW WITH 
WHY I AM DONE
'You want to know why I am done? Because people 
are sickening, that's why. Every mis-step takes me 
more away : I can't even stand the face and the smirk 
anymore. I don't have it to tell; my tell is not for 
signification. The snide, crying toilet-faced whiners
move me not, and I am not to be in their own
strait-jacket any longer, and they can go to Hell,
as well. Oh, that's swell  -  if you wish to meet me
now, you can meet my firewall first. My words and
pictures alone will greet you; for I am out to sea.'
-
'Land of the brave and home of the free : everywhere
I turn that's another putrid lie, a worldwide lie. You
cannot be free when no truth exists   -   the exposure 
is deadly, and the only Freedom you have is the one 
which must come from not saying at all. I cannot call
a thing a thing  -  its true nature remains hidden by
popular consent  -  and everyone goes along for the
ride. The world is a corrupt title, hanging from a thread.'