Saturday, November 30, 2013

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.

Friday, November 29, 2013

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.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

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.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

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.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

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.

Monday, November 25, 2013

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.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

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.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

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.

Friday, November 22, 2013

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.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

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.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

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).

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

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.

Monday, November 18, 2013

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.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

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. 


Saturday, November 16, 2013

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.