4289. MANAHATTA

(MANAHATTA)

[-walt whitman's brooklyn ghost

at Pfaff's Manhattan-]

The way the water gathers in puddles,

the way the lark ascends - these are

items in my bag of vibrancies, my land

of blends, the character of this life indeed.

Nothing if not insuffereable, I have counted

many characters in my one-time possee.

Yet, now again, they are all gone and we

have brought in really nothing wise at all.

Old memories that linger are just bad habits.

-

The Buddhist idea of God is of a being so

superior It thinks it doesn't have to exist at all,

or show itself, or leave a message or command.

That fits nicely, I know already, in my hand.

And then there are others - Gods - somehow;

the stern enforcers, the flame-throwers, the

Ego-Maniac self-centered ones. ("Jehovah?

He's under federal protection because he knows

too much"). Like Blake's Nobodaddy, truly

a roiling laugh a minute to behold.

-

I sit here wanting : I want a cup of coffee, I want

a fifty-dollar bill, I want a squeeze on your old

balloon, I want what's in your till.

-

These, these now are the things I've been reduced to.

Can you see my karma coming through? Do I have

a medical moment when even the doctor says 'cough'.

I hide my own intentions like the beads and wampum

of the Carnarsie Indians and the Dutch so long ago :

sitting as they were, flat-footed on a very watery

island, but one which - from that very instant

on - alas, was just as doomed as me.