4797. KEEP TALKING

KEEP TALKING

Manitoba and points north; nothing to make

me mad. On some sideways bus, the guy reads 

a book on family ties  -  the man owns a junkyard 

and, in this book, his daughter has a kid she keeps 

secret. I told him it didn't sound as if it would 

interest me; then we began talking about an older 

book I'd once read, and he had too. 'Letourneau's 

Used Auto Parts', as I recalled the title, by Carolyn 

Chute. It was fun the way we both reminisced, about 

something so long ago  - a simple, silly book with 

Big Lucien in the lead. I guess the northland made

me here think of Maine. Then the bus stopped and 

we all dispersed. I really didn't wish  to see him 

again so I skipped the return boarding and caught 

the next bus. That meant a four hour wait, but it

would be worth it, I knew.

4796. TEMPLE DOORS ARE FLYING OFF THE SHELF

TEMPLE DOORS ARE 

FLYING OFF THE SHELF

You don't think it's evil, any of this? You don't think

it just plain stupid shit? Had there been an instance like

this in headers of Jerusalem, some jeremiad would

already have taken us down. The guy with the whiplash

would have entered and cleansed the place. It's happened

like that before. As it is, we live like geeks  -  some eating

chicken bones and gizzards with their laughter and smiles.

-

Takes me down for the count, it does. Another decrepit 

televised drunk, drinking his Shithead Moose blend, holding

a shadow-mike up his ass to discover new sounds of the season.

I pass the window where hundreds are waiting. Fat and small,

cheap dollars all  -  they want their candy, they want their trikes.

I can't even look away, scanning this bleak horizon twice.

-

Give me a hand that holds the sun and the stars,

twirl me a cosmic moonlight  -  my solar system is 

all heart and soul. None of this crap exists.

4795. NEW SCRIPTURES

NEW SCRIPTURES

I don't want to break my elbow lifting beers, nor 

do I wish to spend seventy good hours raking 

and bagging leaves. These things I will leave to 

others as they are not my concern. I am torching 

new paper, printing new money, I am writing a new 

scripture, for you. That means, I'd admit, you all  -  

were I from the American south, it would sound 

better, that 'you all' stuff. My pencil is an eagle's 

quill; I'll let it be at that. 

-

This radio plays things all in reverse, the smokestacks

are drawing their smokes back in, and Isaiah is taking

back all his words. I am seemingly left here with

nothing at all : carabinieri are staring at me alone.

-

I don't wish to miscarriage justice, nor kiss the

back end of a queen  -  but I will stand here now

forever. Making sure these words can get across,

making sure I say it all, and making sure that

everyone  -  even Aleck himself  -  listens.

4794. 2. FRENCH FOR SPECTACLE

2. FRENCH FOR SPECTACLE

Into this I came  -  and I do not know what

to call it. A dying Life? Or a living Death?

Whichever I may choose, I err; for the

reflection of the other than shines brighter

than does the choice itself. Nescio (I know

not). From God comes Healthfulness, and

all good things proceed. So I take heed.

-

My infancy and youth is dead long ago, yet

I still live it  -  thinking and memory are my 

salve as here I sometimes stand, looking

forward while thinking back; thinking behind

while looking ahead. For you who live forever

and in whom nothing dies, I ask, both then and

now was I ever anything at all? Those things of

which I have no memory now  -  suckling, crying,

being born itself  -  did they not then exist? Or

did they nonetheless occur and I but do not 

remember? So too with all else, and with the

infinitude of both you and all Creation? Were

they ever, and are they now?

-

Outside, the willow cast its flimsy shell about,

the wind ruffles it, the limbs creak and bend  -  

that Spirit, is it then the Spirit as well of all things?

Is is all, then, You, I ask? So I may take heed.

-

Let the kettle boil, set the settings for a guest;

as we do not know, so we do not know, ever,

who it is that may be coming. Be ready, then

be ready.

4793. 1. FRENCH FOR SPECTACLE

1. FRENCH FOR SPECTACLE 

If I call upon you and you come, where shall you

go? Or come to? You have created me for you,

and therefore my own heart cannot be quieted until

it rests in you. And yet, 'by thee, with ye, and without 

thee' I must yet live in this miserable garden. Anything

alive is already imbued with you; how is it, therefore,

that I entreat you to come? To me? Who could not

be anyway, unless you were first in me. Were you not

already within me, I should have no being. Therefore

why entreat? Heaven and Earth already contain you, 

seeing as have you have already filled them  -  but, 

the overflow, the more of what you have made, 

where does the overflow go? For you cannot be 

contained, so it must then overflow. You are

not scattered, for it is you who gathers up us.

-

Ever active, and ever quiet : like the sunlight in

a solarium, beating down briskly on hot Renaults

below. The shoulder of a tea cup and a coffee, a few

crumbs still left upon a cafe table. What is any of 

this then, and of what meaning, without you?

-

Dic animae meae : salus tua ego sum.

Say unto my Soul : I am thy Salvation.

4792. HOW EVEN I LOST THE WAR

HOW EVEN I LOST THE WAR

I never killed a thing. Except a dream. I never

spit back any muck or gristle. Except bones.

There have always been bandits; now the world

allows them to shoot. Here's my heavy load : the

village I'm sleeping in has lost its name; some old

French burg or an indeterminate wedge. A tank

sits in the square  -  blistered and burned, with the

half of some dead German slumped out the open

top. Jeez-Louise, what a site! Or 'Quelle Spectacle!'

if you'd prefer. There's a loaf of bread on that femme's

mantle I'm just dying to steal as my own. Look at that!

Smoke darts slowly from her kitchen's lone stack.

4791. GARISH ENTICEMENTS

GARISH ENTICEMENTS

(christmas season once again)

I am hiding out in the middle of New York City,

now as invisible as a comma in an encyclopedia's 

entry. Who and what to care, I'd never know. 
The girls around me wear lace, and I'm not sure 
they even know it anymore. The entire world's gone 
sexy to me. 'Lights, camera, action', do you know what 
that means? Even the Santa Claus at the corner pot, 
ringing his bell with some whore for an elf, seems to have
 a hard-on  about something or other. Not enough pay? 
Too cold for his liking? Working too many hours like a dog 
to a sleigh? Again though, what care I for him? Or even, 
for that matter, for his elf? This is some gigantic porno-shoot, 
and even those visiting dweebs from Oklahoma or Dubuque 
don't know what they've gotten into. Lights in the sky tell me I 
should go to a Christmas Heaven, but it seems like Hell to me. 
I'm tired and cold and hungry too, and I haven't shaved 
for 240 days. Buy this, or buy that, every sign seems pregnant 
with its own inordinate citified mush. Two drunk bastards just 
now stagger to the curb, one puking out his brains into the gutter.
 'If you can't hold it, don't  mold it', I always say.  Or is that,
'if you can't drink it, don't think it'?  Shit, I already forget what I 
wanted to say. Let me step back  a bit  -  it seems that taxi wants 
to ram my leg. I listen close, and I hear some idiot say, 
'I'm going into St. Patrick's; I really gotta' take a dump.'

4790. SKATING TO DEATH

SKATING TO DEATH

I am skating to death on thin ice, and there

is no one to take my donation : you can have

my liver, and all my bile too. The postman can

take my legs, and the stupid jock can have my

muscle - this, not that there's that much to go

around - may be useful. Yet, yet, yet, the one

thing I demand is that only she can have my heart.

Yes, only she can have my heart, forevermore.

4789. SOMEBODY, UNFASTENED

SOMEBODY, UNFASTENED

Two shoes of the melody already gone,

we are sodden and bereft. There are beer

voices and the microphone. The high lights

are on, way above, beaming like arcs or stars

amidst a faceful of sunlight. Even if I shrug once

more, no one will notice anyway. Now the bastards

are calling for me to take the stage  -  I have nothing

to say, or nothing prepared anyway. But, no matter,

words come to me like pennies in a perverted bank.

I'll take it easy, and just let them laugh. It's fun like that.

-

'Cars never start, once they begin running.

Rain never ceases to be, once it's stopped.

Puddles come together to make an ocean,

of swirls, of limits, of eddies, of swans.'

That's what I told them, ad-libbing, and

they're all cheering still, 20 minutes on.

-

Play dominos atop the keno tale, you idiot.

Take your drinks in the dining car. Put your

luggage, oh please do, on the pheasant shelf

at the end of the left-hand hallway.

4788. CAPTIVE LEVANTINES

CAPTIVE LEVANTINES

We should really be ashamed. We are forgiven.

All things are atoned. Our wiles and wits will not

again betray us. In bowing down before that tree,

oh members of another race, you do dishonor

Gilgamesh, and me. I have two selves. I do not

ever really know this except when I am dreaming :

things are happening to me, but it's not 'me', for

the 'me' is really 'I', who is dreaming, or watching, 

or witnessing me watching. And then I awake, aware

of what occurred but not there; here instead. Or so

I think. This world is worse than a snow-globe that

has suddenly lost its bottoom  -  that tiny scene is still

intact, but everything else is leaking out, and empty,

and snow, like pigeons, just flutters to the floor.

In plain English, I understand nothing. Enkidu

and Gilgamesh, discoursing. That Kingship of

Man, building those walls and cities in each

place it can. Oh captive Levantines,

have you really no way out?

4787. MOMENTARY ILLUSION

MOMENTARY ILLUSION

By not complaining, I'll not complain. And the

wide-muscled men around the table won't notice.

Here's my hat. Here's my sickle.  Let's let it

go at that. Today the wind was cold and it curled

my hair. having forgotten my gloves, my fingers

froze stiff. At least they didn't curl, for then the

gloves wouldn't fit.....anyway. I was listening

to two kids complain about money. Like

a Saturday matinee without popcorn or 

glee. One said he hated old people, 

because  -  as he put it  -  'having 

made all their money, now they

don't want anyone else to

have it.' A momentary

illusion, I thought,

for sure.

4786. I WANT TO GO WHERE I CANNOT SEE

I WANT TO GO 

WHERE I CANNOT SEE

Let this operation now begin : take my eyes, peel

them back with your clinical knife, destroy my sight,

un-layer my ideas of being. I want for nothing more.

-

I am tired of all this anyway  -  the bloom and then

the flower and then the simple death  -  Autumn to

its Winter orgy. Same old sex, same old positions.

-

Instead, open up this new window, where a newer

darkness dwells. I can still feel your flesh and moisture;

I really don't need to see. Hold my flaming arms

around your dousing carcass. That's it. I

understand all things better now. It can

stay this way.

4785. MARLTON MAN

MARLTON MAN

The loam and the subsoil are all alike  -  a nothing

of sand and muck. Not so many miles from the 

end of the Barrens that people still talk of the

ways of old  -  the marl, the peat, the fir forests

collected at the edges of roads. I used to know

all that too : Blackwood days and nights, things

rolled over into brotherhoods and frights. The deep,

dark pine woods we'd walk, the sounds of an

evasive silence in a farmhand's truck, a stranger's

car passing  -  only occasional things they were.

Mornings in bright sun, we'd walk out and, I still

remember see here and there along the old sand

road girls' panties hanging from a limb. 'That's

how they do it now,' you'd said, lover's lanes

and old, dark roads, you get lucky with your

girl in your car, you hang her bloomers from

a tree limb before you go. Unwritten code, 

you know.' I did and I didn't understand.

Blackwood was full of that. Like boys in

the know, we too just pretended.

-

I don't miss the dense old Jersey nights  -

others have come since, to talk and sing about

all this  -  the Springsteens and Bon Jovis, the

Pattie Smiths, all in a row  -  pretending at their

drama, screaming musical chants but knowing

nothing really. Now, it's better all silence.

Panties from trees, hearts from a stone,

and me, and you, alone.

4784. KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS

I took my gold doubloons from your attic where

I'd had them kept; nothing quite dramatic, they

were still there yet. You'd placed a soldier or a

sheriff there, it seemed, to guard them. Yes,

I had to slay him quickly, just to get him to

move  -  silly action perhaps, but that else could

I do? The locket of possession I wore upon my

heart, though he claimed to recognize it not. And

these things, after all, were mine. Only later did

I realize once again my oversight  -  if I had killed

a Sheriff, as may be, I forgot to remember this :

every Sheriff has a Deputy.

-

It's way too late now for condolences, small one,

kind one, kinder heart and coronet. I am sorry

for what I did, but more sorry still for leaving yet.

My matters matter not; I should get used to that.

4783. FREE FROM ANYTHING

FREE FROM ANYTHING
No card, no label, no meaning to the
meaningless. Here I am, walking the
streets like a string returning to source.
Wake me when this bad time is over.
For the time being, I am free.

4782. NUMBERS

NUMBERS
Who are these rich folk with carpets for
their brains? What is their count, and
how high their numbers? Capricious,
how the lapdog sings. Instead of
whining or barking out, the sweet
and precious sound of slumber
in an overly-protective world.

4781. CRUD

CRUD

High post and red bandanna, Malcolm West

and Russel Deaver. As if we were cadets, on

some outpost in a crummy mission, we sat there

drinking military coffee. Tasting like crud. Black.

'Used to be we fought for oil, now they just give

it to us to drink.' The guy saying that said, as well,

that his own father had died in 1974, killed in a

gas-line in a Chicago-suburb. '600 people waiting

for gas, there cars all lined up, steaming mad; they

all had murder in their eyes. My daddy's mistake

was his big mouth. Always was that way.' I

said I'd never experienced any of that  -  living

far out in the country back then, most people 

had their own bulk tanks, maybe 100 gallons 

each or more : farmers and tractors and things.

'Everything took time, yeah, but even running

out took time as well  -  so it was cool.' My

words of wisdom went off well. Then the

mortar hit; right nearby  -  end of that scene.

Malcolm and Russel. No more. Me, I

survived. Bent and twisted, but

I survived.

4780. THE LEND-LEASE REPORT

THE LEND-LEASE REPORT

My bite was your banana, and they were

building new houses on Ravenwood Hill.

We used to play here when we were kids.

You said you remembered. I knew you did.

-

Now, the water rushes down from the holes

they've dug : errant houses already listing in

mud. I wasn't ready for the inception of the

new, but here I stand now, wondering what

 to do. My house is your new charade.

-

There's a water spout coming up from the

meadow below :  all blown out, that idea

just runs free. A half-mile away, down the

hill and over the sand, I can see the

shoreman's shack where it still

does stand. 'That's where I

live now,' you said. 'He took

me in when I lost the land.'

4779. HIGH HAT

HIGH HAT

Unclaimed changes, tempo breaks, long

slow drone of the peripatetic shake : this

piece has no score at all. 'We 'jes playin',

man, or does you not understand'?

-

I did, and then I did again : smoke was

pouring from that tenor sax like a made-up

scene in a bad old western : six-gun Molly

comes a struttin' in sweet, here on 27th Street.

-

'I lost the law when the law lost me, and now

there's just nothing more to do; been comin'

here each week for near on a decade already.

We learn to play just watching them play.'

-

Over on the riser, the drum man skittered,

hi crazy blue eyes mad, gone far, out.

The tempo he kept was the heart of

a cat : stern, wild, careening and fat.

4778. TINY DISGUISE

TINY DISGUISE

Bring me your harness, your bit and your strap.

I can't get over it, where it's at  -  you do this for

money, that other fellow said. I've been to New

York high-rises before, but this is so different. 

High above a city like this, I look down, only

to see the same things as ever, in a tiny disguise.

Have you ever read Frederick Seidel, a really

rich guy from a wealthy family, old now, dainty-old

and writing enormous, great poetry from a very

abstract perch  -  and rude and ribald and rowdy?

Just by looking, you really can't tell a thing. I glance

and the ceiling, and the walls start to sing. I'm

looking at you, and imagining. My goodness then,

Holly, what'd you put in this tea. It's making me 

watch you make a fool of me. Strange bait,

grand enticement, but such a tiny disguise.

4777. MENDICANT MOUNTAIN

MENDICANT MOUNTAIN

Telling me how the world has 'Hebrew roots', this 

fellow was selling his squash  -  the vegetable man 

near Elizabeth Street kept hawking. Jewelry, scarves

and gloves, and silly tourists a'plenty strolling by. 

My own take on the matter was that the world 

was over, roots or not, and what we lived in 

now was merely an echo. An aftershot of not. 

Doing our time, as it were, on Mendicant Mountain

for free. Thus, the reason for gloves and 

scarves and squash indeed.

4776. INCALCULABLE

INCALCULABLE

I'll be sitting at some Red Hook bar at the

time you arrive. I know these things inherently :

the gulls will squawk and the saltmarsh of the

harbor will be filled with water taxi craft. A

few testy girls will be walking near Fairway.

Artists, everywhere again.

-

Tall men are like icicles  -  high and thin, but

just melting away. Russians or Slavs, we make

no distinction because we cannot. Looking out

at the potato sky, I am watching another sun,

a dimmer day, something of the Winter approaching.

-

I like the sounds of cataloguing where I am. I hear the

bricks of an ancient ground, like some Roman aqueduct

coming back into being. Real men rise to the occasion.

4775. I WAS HIT WITH A FEVER

I WAS HIT WITH A FEVER

I was hit with a fever, a love of the life, just

the other day, deep in the night. I arose like

a spirit and broke through the web; coursing my

moments back, into all I have said.

-

I saw windmills of glory, waves of good sense,

layers of doubt and malfeasance too. The doors to

my castle were sealed with a feeling of dread, yet

they opened for me and I went right through,
yes, yes, I went where they led.
-
Here I am to tell thee.
My presence is here, whether
living or
dead.

4774. WHO ME WHY

WHO ME WHY

Nonsense syllables again and again.

Officer Slocum has now arrived.

You can be sure of that.

-

Once, twice, three bananas,

like lamplights on a tree. 

Each thing I see is a thing

I cannot see.

4773. BOARDING TIME

BOARDING TIME

Slingshot the darling pantomime.

What else can we say? Everything

silent runs in double time. Beneath 

the pictures, the organ will play.

-

In old flickering black and white, 

three men are boarding the train :

I wonder, are they magi, or some wise

men of old, taking the train to points

untold. And anyhow, who reads the

schedule on adventures like this.

-

Organ guy, still playing his tune, I notice, 

does grunt and grown. Not  understanding 

why, I think of some rock guitarist hooting 

and hollering beneath the sullen 

doom of his instrument.

4772. HERE

HERE

I shoulder my responsibilities

curled on a shelf like a cat;

looking like that.

4771. IF YOU LET ME JUST GO ON

IF YOU LET ME JUST GO ON

Please don't stop me now. The pigeons have

left the coop and, over at the river's edge, the 

two cormorants are staking themselves on poles.

They watch the glimmer of the river's top like I

watch Life itself, hoping it won't stop. Grant

me that at least. There are many ways of

meeting people  -  words and winks together.

Nothing ever seems really to work for me  -  

every time I come across a new oasis, the 

sand  falls through the bottom of the glass 

and I am stranded here once more.

4770. I AM A DOCTOR

I AM A DOCTOR

You may think my racket is healing

or to diagnose  -  but really I take bets

on the side : that man shall die by 95, or

never see another day of ease or health,

or be down and out by 81. You may 

think this black bag holds implements of

trade, but I say no. For 10am there's 

a blueberry muffin, and for midday 

lunch, a very nice sandwich

with pickles and chives.

4769. AND SO DISASTER LEANS HARD ON THE ICE CAPADES NOW

AND SO DISASTER 
LEANS HARD ON THE

ICE CAPADES NOW

Suspenders cannot keep up with time or fate  -

barely holding as it is these things in place while

the barrelhouse piano plays a tune from 1948.

I remember Mary Holbrook and her downy face.

How she loved horses and old things and her

two tiny songbirds in their old wooden cage.

My own life was like that then  -  that was

the age. I can't complain so much.

-

Now I have a lever'd book by some Capuchin

brothers  -  don't they make toothpaste?  -  and

a sideboard nun named Sister Fidelity. It says Jesus

is expectation and only pure faith is real Salvation. 

Oh, I wouldn't know, and how should they?

-

I wake up one day in Yeats. I wake up one day in

Eliot, Pound, Rilke and the rest right into the present

day  -  and that mess of Whitman and Ferlinghetti,

Sexton, Sarton, and Plath. What do I know about any

of that? Like the wizened old man in glasses and a

midget's white beard, picking his nose and examining

the train board schedules, exclaiming 'the 5:37, the 6:21,

6:39, 6:54, or 7:14.' Numbers are like flies on a screen,

I think to myself, swatting them away. (I am going

nowhere. This is where I'll stay).

4768. ST. TROPEZ

ST. TROPEZ

See the 1950's moon. It is dying

to wane all over again. 'If I ever meet

that Frank Sinatra guy, you can bet

your ass I'll kill him again.

4767. MY DELIBERATIONS

MY DELIBERATIONS

You can't call a color anything but its

color  -  chocolate brown or coffee brown

notwithstanding  -  though coffee is often

taken black. Go figure that. Now the moment

before me has opened up. The train-voice lady

says the Trenton Local is running 6 minutes late.

I can't wait! She's talking, evidently, about the 'past';

it has been, until now, 6 minutes late. Yet now it

breaks now into my 'future' - 6 minutes of my

'future' to be taken up. What is all this gibberish,

and oh how time bends.

-

I think I'd like my tombstone to read  -  'I can't

talk now'  -  well, not so much for me, I don't talk

much anyway. Maybe the others, (who never seem 

to stop), can hold the advice while pissing on the space.

I don't really know, but I won't discuss it. I can't talk now.

-

In Japan they can't remember addresses because there

are none  -  like in Tokyo, no place has a place really.

I'd like that  -  everywhere  -  and for all I care everyone

can remain lost : looking for things; looking and listening.

Before me are a number of paintings, done by a girl  -  

she gets the faces right, and the limbs are perfect, in an

almost sexual perfection of delight. Overall, they are

paintings, say 20X20 inches, of girls kissing girls. OK.

Girls in bonnets, in ballerina outfits, in tights, in masks,

in short, 'fuck-me' skirts with open vests and taut, cute

breasts. Everything but naked. Yet I can imagine the

rest she need not paint  :  that thin tissue of vertical skin,

wadded and pulpy and leading within. Also, two guys

on a beach. I wish I was them.

-

You can't call a color anything but its color  -  rose madder,

ivory white, ebony black, cerulean blue. That'll have to do.

4766. THE RAZOR WIRE DIVIDES MY BRAIN

THE RAZOR WIRE 

DIVIDES MY BRAIN

(Mother)

'Bring me home; let me see them.'

Those are the only words I remember her

speaking - never knowing why. I only

imagined the rest, I was sure. 'Let me

understand their works and how they talk.

Within such understandings, I am mesmerized.

I can't thank you too much for taking this time.'

-

For taking this time. I can't thank you too much.

(This razor wire divides my brain, truly).

4765. CLEAN CLINIC

CLEAN CLINIC

I went to the laundry to wash my clothes down :

everything was running low, dirt was all I found.

-

New the light which broke the sky.

High as heaven, and more than I.

-

Now the steps which cleave the woods

have split the world in two. I have done all

that I could; is it the same with you?

4764. WIRE HOME THE RAGE

WIRE HOME THE RAGE

Come on now, wire home the rage, bring the fires to

the hearth, let the whole world see your age. This is not

some damsel-wastrel pauper in distress, no Pauline in

peril down the rail-tracks' stretch. This is real life you

miserable wretch.

-

How many times have I imagined the dagger in your brain  -

my most beautiful silver-handled one, piercing the shit of

your brow, watching the filth seep out. I would laugh

like a cavalier clown  -  a different name in every country

I went, my Charlie Chaplin overview all yours. 

They haven't caught me yet.

-

'Scram-the-ram on the baby's pram.' That's how

they call it in Borstal and Bristol you know, 

about stealing a Paki child and running him down.

4763. I AM THAT

I AM THAT

I am that which has survived. I am that rust,

running in a streak down something old and faded.

I am that single headlamp, telling you all stories

of my olden days. I am that mad man running - 

twisted and bent - with the ancient lantern

in his hands.

4762. PALINDROMATIC

PALINDROMATIC

This life is such a fizzle.

This step is good for pets, this

God, after all, is but a dog.

4761. NO TRESPASS

NO TRESPASS

It's how we strengthen the weak and maim the strong:

carbonation, of a sort, in the fruit drink of life. The soldier

walks off with a local, they bed down, they hunker, they

escape the petty strife. Soldiers will practice their

urban warfare in fake cities set up as sets. Like some

less grandiose Hollywood of old, someone play-acts

dead while the ketchup juice flows from a head or a

groin. People in pieces, while truth is purloined.

Why is it that we need to learn to kill?

-

Look at these people anyway  -  six years, maybe, 

out of puberty, playing now with bombs and matches

as if the stick ball crowd was coming to the schoolyard

to watch a game. I lift up a rock. Beneath it, I find

nothing but disgust at how we live.

4760. OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD

I've left most everything behind : no friends

come to call, no messages are left. And I

don't mind; in this inquisition I will be neither

bad cop nor good cop. I just hate the routine.

-

Every little question makes me sick, and all this

living is a lie of doom. I read books, and get ill.

I write words, and try dying. I paint light, and

get darkness; every tube I've touched is a paint

a tinted shade of black. My God let this angel go.

-

Here are the colors of the rainbow  -  a system of

glide, an arc in the sky, the elisions of a hundred

words. I have the temperment of a clownish dove.

Oh my God, here I go again.

4759. BRINGING IT HOME BUT IT'S ONLY 6:30

BRINGING IT HOME 

BUT IT'S ONLY 6:30

My caravan took a wrong turn in the desert  -  

camels and cartwheels twirling. Now there's a 

double at the electric ritual shed  -  someone 

chanting seance notes. If there are any more 

spirits coming forth, someone 

better let me know. 

4758. THE MAN WHO SOLD KENTUCKY

THE MAN WHO SOLD KENTUCKY

This deal has no ending  -  the horsemen are lining

borders as they slide across the land. This shall be

which river slices between. And Mr. Jackson

hasn't crossed here yet. That was Henry Clay

you saw. Now the same thing running in the

meadow is the bluegrass-ruffling wind and all

seems as silence underneath the stars. We have

time to leave Virginia for westward grows our

destiny, and all those Baptist ladies give for free.