Tuesday, December 31, 2013

4884. MY RUN-OFF CALLIOPE

MY RUN-OFF CALLIOPE
Bang the drum slowly, and all hail
the conquering heroes. Each of those
having something to do with something 
else, they keep me enthralled of this
miserable world : killers and thieves
in high places, wearing their jackets of 
swarm with their pick-axe faces and legions
of followers. We simply give things away.
Now and again  -  the turn returns; it's the
turn of Manhattan's tao. Wild-woolies and hackers
with turtles and dues coming in. Keep out now.
-
Here's an idea : (let's cheer this). Pay a high
wage for the morons who serve us poison.
They deserve it. It's their occupation  -  and those
in line, all the while, will listen to the other whine
about fat and calorics and death. But let's 
pay them to kill us, we're not dead yet.
-
Sometimes I just want to laugh; other times just cry.
Other times, I take my thin-sliced fry-pan blind to
seek out every bastard doing time. Black man,
white man, yellow man, fool. They all cheer the 
same their wired-bastions; scavenger hunts for
nothing at all. My maddened calliope peals and
twirls. Let this motherfucker crash to the ground.

Monday, December 30, 2013

4883. DAWN

DAWN
A triplet at wavelength : lightly
the low light, just coming on,
seems softly rising already,
and oh so quiet again.

4882. SEMANTIC


SEMANTIC
The simple life achieves a simple
end, and it is over. The floral rake
moves slowly over land. I think of
people and I only hear voices - all
those different tongues and varied
hearts. Scribing is hard to do, and this
is always a difficult work. Talk not so
self-assured, lest you soon be fallen.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

4881. IRREDUCIBLE REVERY

IRREDUCIBLE REVERY
The camera eye wears its makeup well  -
never squinting, it leaves no lines and has 
no marks. Movement cannot fool, just blur.
I've already arranged the school chorus to be
high for the weekend nights : together we will
sing of manners and ways and forms. 
-
There is a man with a guitar on his shoulder;
he seems to be mapping a song of the world.
I know his name as Reggie Forest and have 
spoken to him twice  -  he sings a jagged song,
of places with farms and roads. The ancient
cyclone of song goes on and on.
-
Even Pete Seeger lives at the side of a hill; right
across the roadway from where Zelda Fitzgerald
was once locked up  -  asylum, sanitarium, call
it what you will. The place still stands, and I visit.
-
Sixty years ago and some, beatniks used to hitch rides
right here, up along 9E, to get to Bear Mountain and
such places as that  -  living outdoors, nights in Summer
under the stars. Yes, yes, it's legendary. And all these
wonderful things are an irreducible revery.

4880. JAIL

JAIL
On the fetters, past the locks. Sit on
the cold, steel bench. Make the smoothest
entry, handle to soap but once.

4879. OF MICAH

OF MICAH
You know all those biblical names : you can walk 
through an old graveyard and see twenty of them. 
They ring so true and real. It's a very strange sensation,
hanging idly there with Bills and Bobs and Bobbies.
What has happened to sensation? In Laurel Hill
Cemetery, in Philadelphia, the nice lady showed me
the icebox on wheels wherein they used to keep the
dead for viewing. Civil War days or thereabouts.
Some crazy factory name was on it, and all. They
made an industry of cooling the dead to be seen. 
-
That night I went to sleep with flowers on my brain.
I somehow can't always believe the dead are dead, but
then what's the same. No matter. My mother's dead; she
died years back, working a polling station for some infested
election. My father's dead; long gone, from a crazy house
where they only wished they had ice. His mother too;
pretty much the very same thing. And then here am I.
-
A reformer, a revolutionary of ways. My fingers are coiled
'round some already ceded trigger, having lost my marbles to
the powers that be. I kiss no ass, but I kill no bones. They
should think of themselves as lucky  -  senators and congressmen,
Presidents and their fucking ladies too. Movie stars and the
big-time singers and dealers of woe. Screw them all and may 
they die. I'd love to cleanse this country to the bone. But, for
all of that, I'm supposed to salute and stand for the pledge,
act like a fool and say rah-rah-rah. The gun? Oh, I've hid 
that long ago in the meadow, by the well, at the lea.
-
Today, I met five Russian ladies, and two guys who
were driving them around. Russians too, husbands 
or whatever. We were at Liberty State Park, staring 
at the ass of the Statue of Liberty in the pouring rain.
My dog was at my side, and soaked to the bone as
was I. 'What is her name?', they asked with their accents, 
'she's lovely.' I replied to them kindly, knowing they'd 
meant my dog. 'Liberty, I call her; Liberty is her name.'

Saturday, December 28, 2013

4878. EVERYTHNG I'VE NOW DONE

EVERYTHING I'VE NOW DONE
Anger fuels the monarch like the oatbag feeds the
horse  -  between such bouts of disenfranchisement
we are left without recourse and peace. I am so
thinly veiled here; my comments are barbed and
pointed. There are ten hundred ways to take a
city down : Clintons and crybabies and churchbells
together. If any of this is a dream, I'll take pudding.
-
I'd much rather honor your fever  -  the hands I now
wrap around the solace of you. More important than
even the uncovered breast, the secreted horn, the
soft down of hair on a belly, is the formation of
the now in the world. Let me wet you dry like
a raisin in a small box of love. I can't go home
before that. And I hear they've now invented
the phone. Here, let me help.
-
Things move fast in Zeiderdown. The small post-office
at the thwarted corner, the sewer-grate where the
carriage man waits, the same horse who parries
the brick-lined ground. I watched the inspector
carry his tools  -  he drags things as if he's mad.
-
Everything now I've done seems to lead me to this :
reading religion and reading your kiss. Both things,
together, at once, as if joined. Ah, just the
way I like it again. 

4877. THE NIECE OF ALICE ANTOINE

THE NIECE OF ALICE ANTOINE
When I awake from all of this I will see clearly  -  
where I've been and when and how. All those
things I've never wished to know : the oak tree
blemish, the solace of the cowherd and the rookery.
Look, just look, how that farmhouse holds oh so
many rooms  -  each lit, each almost moving.
-
My trance has never forgiven me for being. It's a
pain I must live with, and cannot live without. Does
anyone know, I wonder, how I love all things? My
forthcoming, my giving, my crucified heart  -  as one,
moving the equation forward, Venus to Mars and the
cosmos beyond. Into the Sun, running back, where
there really is no backwards at all.
-
My God, how can we survive? We do, and stay in
place. I watch her now, lighting a lamp, with a cloth
face and a gloved hand. Who can I call, or should?
Where can I turn to be beseeched? I am the little
wren, causing havoc in a little place. I wish to be
alone, here, with the niece of Alice Antoine.

4876. BEAT POLICEMAN

BEAT POLICEMAN
He said he was a beat policeman. Even though
I imagined a guy in a beret with bongos and a
cigarette, he meant he was a cop who walked
twelfth street. Oh well, the fun was still there, 
or did I put my foot in it?
-
No different than walking with a podiatrist. Would
that be right? I don't know and I never wonder.
All things are now so strange that all I can do is
walk the water at Pine Street, or climb the pines
on Water Street. Oh jeez, there I go again.
-
Fake french accents slay me  -  all that nasal stuff
with a twisted tongue. The raised eyebrows of a
sixty-year-old man never make much sense. And
I'm a guy; imagine what it does to girls, and young
girls especially. I'm up to my neck in all that, and
I feel guilt every step of the way. Pearl necklace, 
anyone? I'm glad I'm not gay.
-
He meant to say he was a cop. He meant to say he
was a cop, filthy, in a city of sin where now, two old
gizzards of some old white-house days will be waltzing
their new Matilda into the effrontery of the mayor's 
mansion. Me, I hope they can all arrange it, to die
together in one fell swoop  -  and take their dirty
process with them. Blind boy beggar beat cop
now wearing his stupid beret.

4875. THINGS LIKE THIS I CAN MAKE DISAPPEAR

THINGS LIKE THIS I 
CAN MAKE DISAPPEAR
Your wallet, your heart, and your car. I am, after all,
quite talented in these spheres. My globe is the sponge
of your head, grown into circular motions, while you
looked away. That was your watch I just took. Your
entire self, I'm hoping, is next.
-
You'd better not put your feet up on that footstool right
there  -  unless you wish to walk home with no shoes.
The light in my alleyway is a stolen illumination, and it
will not last long. Scabrous tales they tell of me, those
storytellers, those monsters, and those who make things
up. I've clenched a bible in these teeth for so long
my overbite is garish by now : listen up, I offer you
this  -  take my hand, I won't bite; things like this
I can make disappear.
-
There's a panel in your love space where the folds
intersect and overlap  -  if the world should end
right now, I would still remember that.

4874. WEATHER CHANNEL TIDBIT

WEATHER CHANNEL TIDBIT.
I notice today the weather-girl is dressed like a whore;
makes it easier to take bad news? Is that the thinking.
So many of these people, these management men, think 
like Jesse James with a hard-on  -  always producing an
attractive-of-skin idea in the mind of the accountant
before them. Let the dear lady gesture, while she stretches
that stormfront to the east. The wost that can happen is 
a rise, in the ratings. Of course. no matter today's storm
will decimate Wilmington, or flatten the rest of Maine.

Friday, December 27, 2013

4873. TO TAKE SUCH SEDUCTION

TO TAKE SUCH SEDUCTION
To take such seduction sideways I am riding you like
the hills of Troy, thinking of nothing so much as the
hour and the effort and joy. So many moments
matter only when reflected in the oval of time.
We live through the memory of the idle.
-
Down here, among the streets of the now, at
Barrow and Bedford where once Chumley's stood,
I am propping myself up against a building that
leans. I am cold, and probably a little drunk. Across 
from my eyes, I see the doorway where once lived
Delmore Schwartz; up those stairs, past the lobby
light. He most often felt worse than I do now.
-
To take such seduction from whence it comes, I
would first need disrobe you and revel in the sight
of all I see  -  thinking fast, yes, but moving slow.
-
This damned cigar's light throws nothing back  -  
just the hum of this disheveled drunk next to me,
ruing his life and cursing a wife, showeringing my shoes 
and spitting back something vile. Thank the lord it only
flows downward; but my shoes aren't worth anything
anyway much. He has soaked them now, to the touch,
and I live through the memory of the idle.

4872. THE WALLET BIRD

THE WALLET BIRD
Reading stories of Reading Gaol, while
carrying a pitcher of hard-edged ale to 
the prisoners in 29. And I never knew 
Orwell liked turkey. Raspberries maybe,
but turkey, no. There are so many things
to be told, un-named, and then re-learned.
-
I get impatient waiting for rain, and the cat's 
meow, the elf's return and the sidling forest 
of the here and now  -  everything is, at this 
weak point, anti-climactic, and how. 
-
On I-95, driving my way to Philadelphia once
more, I pass the rancid old cell of  a huge prison
wall  -  long ago replaced by something new, with
visitors' lounges and nurseries and conjugal-visit
trailers, right across the road. That's how much
it is that things have changed. But I'm still doomed.
-
The old and the hideous, those ways of torture and 
pain, the forced confession with the hair on fire, the
hangman's noose in the other room while some rabid
priest volunteers to hear your last confession. Just
like that, I realize the wallet bird has fled. There is no 
truth left anywhere at all, and all men standing are liars.

4871. I WOULDN'T MIND HIS FACE

I WOULDN'T MIND 
HIS FACE (WWI)
(Paul Fussell)
Attitudes of decrepitude; sock-dolls and fiery
deaths. 'We heard another matinee; we heard 
the maniac blast.' And, oh yes, the moment was
an integer of pure engineering, a farce corrupted
by lies and logic : 'this last bullet won't kill; the
lucky ones die, the unlucky get maimed.'
-
Now, I myself harbor an attitude like this :
'I am not you, nor am I your brother. I would
just as soon kill you  -  now and here  -  for
trying to steal from me than ever have to vote
for you again. Let me walk you, please, back
into these deadly trenches so I can see you die.'
-
Wilfred Owen, Wilfred Owen : 'Beauty's bearing
or muse of mounting vein; all, in this case, bathed
in high hallowing grace.' It becomes impossible to
salvage any life from this, when the ringed circle of
a flying death is landing down around each neck.
-
And I have run for miles to escape you. Silver doom.
Siegfried Bastard Lying Fool. Last in, first out. Dying
men tell no tales. 'You rolled;  I watched their hot
hearts fling flames....' I wouldn't mind his face, if I
could only see it staring up. We heard the maniac blast.

4870. HAPPENSTANCE

HAPPENSTANCE
Drive the car backwards reasoning you've
already been. Paint the house topside, letting
the bottom repair itself. Stay put on the porch
alone. These are choice assignments for all.
-
The wind that drives the point that steers the
arrow the pricks the steer  -  whew! -  that's
a mouthful for sure. Now, I'm too tired to talk.
-
Everywhere I look, there's someone stepping in 
shit  -  morons winning lotteries and newly born
matrons marrying billionaires. The whole, wide
world and one grand Mummer's Parade. Let
on one talk; the silence is so perfect, by contrast.

4869. WE MUST DETERMINE THE WINNER OF THIS CONFLICT OF TIME

WE MUST DETERMINE 
THE WINNER OF THIS 
CONFLICT OF TIME
(modern poetry)
Though there are none, there we make claim  -  
no matter and nonetheless. The small heart in the 
palm of a hand -  some tattooed distaff wandering  
-  lets us know the trebled meaning. Continents of 
blood and conflict make the season. A yellow box 
of corn meal still sits on the baker's table.
-
The abbot is singing his song : a slim sponge of
Gregorian chant in his robes and aces and beads. 
He's been to Vegas like he's been to Rome; in his
dreams, and his holy dreams alone. This secular world
is a new spear to his heart -  the one in his chest here
takes precedence. When his mother died, she was buried.
-
I have no verve for this whirling world  -  my amalgamation
polka has left the dribbling universe alone. Where I stand
up, the ceiling already is in place. I am boxed, in a cavern;
I am caught in a maelstrom of a time of my own.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

4868. AS THE SWAN GLIDES SIDEWAYS

AS THE SWAN 
GLIDES SIDEWAYS
Yes, I am watching. Various things react to 
the wind; finding differences and finding the 
same. Those small ripples crease the surface, 
yet they are not my focus : I am watching 
the swan glide sideways.
-
A scene such as this amuses me, and takes
my own breath away. Would that I could
be as graceful as that, even being taken off
course by forces greater than myself. As it
is, I remained resigned to staying in place,
to watch, and not to move, or try not to.
-
I am watching the swan glide sideways.

4867. I'M NOT SERIOUS

I'M NOT SERIOUS
(carabinieri to the heart)
I'm not serious to say I live for fun and reap the
results of every pinnacle's high joke. This is the
handy mountain, the top of the lip, the view that
runs all the way to the Tiber. What care I now for
sadness and gloom? I watch the pasta eaters in a
form of dream, twirling their forks with intentions
and minding their own meat's business. They say,
in Italy, that traffic lights are 'for advisement only'.
I can understand, thereby, the black Fiat whizzing
by and the old yellow Alfa taking the sidewalk route.
-
Once I knew grammar and what everything meant : the
very stitch of a sentence and comma. Now, by contrast, 
a thousand supple tongues are yapping and lashing at
me, and I understand nothing except the silence of my 
own lusty wishes. That nicely tuned woman over there,
turning her back to her man, wants me to look twice at 
her vehicular face : the tread and the roadway of 
someone's desire. This traffic light advises 'Stop!'.
-
Glitterati and the rich; all those wealthy mavens of
marriage for money  -  things the padres and the popes
all have blessed. Make love for children only; forget making
love for the love of money; that's only what bad girls do.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

4866. NOW IS THE THINE

NOW IS THE THINE
My kettle drum fries and chips, your
over-cooked worms and frijoles, everything
together in our big mashed pot. I say, 'Let's
just keep it brewing, let it stew all day long.'
You laugh it off, and say 'Can't be done, we'll
die of thirst before morning.' Egads, what a
juggernaut we've made. Every circumstance 
of this life conspires now against us. I love 
the flowers you leave in the morning.
-
I am a volunteer in this army of servitude, the
long and languid wasting towards a God in absence.
She shows me pictures of her room; I love them too.
As well, as much, as anything else -   for I am happy
too. Wherever I will be going, I will be leaving now.
-
I love the flowers you leave in the morning :
there's nothing else like them in the world. I look
for Odilon Redon in my historic mind : the flowers
he painted were often haunting, with colors, it seemed,
meant to explode, or be exploded together. Ah yes,
my haunting sadness now; ah, yes.

4865. LET IT LIFT

LET IT LIFT
At the dark of the year such a new year's
need before dying. I should take a pass just
for all the things I hate. Pain has a remarkable
meaning : (would you put me in the ground
before I am finished)?
-
These boats have a peculiar veneer and then  -  
yes  -  the people. My girl named Photie, in her
loose, gray dress. So many questions arise.
There is no externality but the outpouring of
the Self, and I am dizzy once again.
-
Blake put it once : 'As a man is, so he sees.
As the eye is formed, such are its powers.' 
And all deities reside within the human breast.
I have long ago stopped the striving and the
care. No more to gain means no more to lose.
-
The shine of metal comes from the sun  -  
quickly a passing, late afternoon, before
an early dark. Here, here, at the
dead of the year.

4864. 1923

1923
The dirigible came down with a nearly
silent thud. It was 1923, and I was sitting
back, smoking a Chesterfield, thinking of
Amanda, thinking to rise at the chance of
a lick. A lazy dog sang a dog chant nearby;
as well as me, it was getting by. Cherry chant,
and why all the people I know now weren't
even born yet then.  How and why is this
overlapping time, so frightful and strange to
me kind?  I am no longer enchanted by Life.
The nature of Evil shall proceed  -  from all
the groans of my heart. No place to rest, and
the thick neck of my buckler, it is holding me
in place and he keeps me down, has no
pity upon dust and ashes. It is 1923.

Monday, December 23, 2013

4863. MY MIND IS A NAME

MY MIND IS A NAME
This is a secure command of word :
the cherry trees are dormant, blanched
in the cold sun's delight. The debenture 
of my heart is bleeding once again for
my feelings; I awake knowing precisely
where I've been. The news I just heard
is the news I'd already known. Before
the curving bend, the time has already
happened. I am engulfed anew.
-
In this long, thin room, everything is
shaded, and the lights are soft against the
mirror's face  -  yellow to soft white, like
an artist's chalk, fading off, away. The only
lines are made by shadows, things twisted
over and across the objects in their way.
-
I have a hat that I came in with, long-settled;
and now it is placed upon the fireplace mantle.
Something unused  -  like a wish, or like memory.
I will leave it there for a moment as I think.
-
I never understood a thing  -  'A Child's Christmas
in Wales' seemed just tragic to me. Coal scuttles.
Felled trees. And a hole in the forest where a
wildness before had been. I miss those old
days, surely now, surely.

4862. 5. FRENCH FOR SPECTACLE

5. FRENCH FOR SPECTACLE
The beggar has arrived before us  -  with
his withered hand arrayed. There was
nothing new to attain; just some joy
without care. Let us move forward  -
(perhaps a troublesome turning and
winding  -  to encompass the joy
of a temporary felicity).
-
That beggar man enjoyed no true joy.
He and I; equals.  Rejoice he then  - one 
in his drunkenness and I in my sloth, or regal
desire or  -  even  -  envy. For I cannot see
Thou in glory, nor that which is not Thee.
-
On this Parisian street, a spat, a spat, and
a violin. The musician was passing cars with
his vibrant strings  -  how strong was the street,
a red doorway, nothing meek. Quisnam 
esset tenendus vitae modus.
-
'What course of Life was to be taken?'

4861. THE LORD'S WORK


THE LORD'S WORK
(pop aria)
The Lord's work is done in
completion, as finished when 
created. It is only the hands of 
man, and logic, that break it 
apart and make claim then to 
put it back - all falsehood 
and claims and lies. Even 
the taking off.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

4860. ANNOTATED MISANTHROPE

ANNOTATED MISANTHROPE
One pile of rags at the doorway, five bales of 
paper, wired, at the door. Don't trip, be careful.
The lonesome doorbell rings  -  the elevator light
comes on. Four floors up, the loft is busy; men with
buckets and a hammer wired to speed. It was Bellow,
in Augie March, who said, 'there's a dark Westminster
of a time when a multitude of objects cannot be clear; 
they're too dense and there's an island rain...'
-
Now some mischevious tyrant has the doppleganger of
a black angel parading with apologies, trying to sing
the air to make amends. I am more sure of walking to 
125th street than I am of believing him. Fifteen wrinkled
hambones, three letters of library reference, and a rental
car to Elmira, all my own. The oldest movie I've ever seen 
is playing on a tissue'd screen  -  some ancient film about
babies being slaughtered by a man in a bib. I forget the 
rest, not sure I've seen what I think I've seen. You ask the 
questions, I'll fail the test. The lonesome doorbell rings.

4859. CAN'T ALWAYS BELIEVE I'VE MADE IT

CAN'T ALWAYS BELIEVE 
I'VE MADE IT
Hard to make it there :  minor science, 
major gain. There are echoes down the 
running  -  one more week to make the grade.
Another year goes changing hands. I think
I'll go back to Albany  -  Cooper Towers,
Wormwood, and Christmas lights, along
some wooded glen twenty miles off.
-
My friend's a civil attorney; each year anew
he lights the trees on his five-acre lot. Too
much to do, but he's got a lot.

4858. WE MEANDER

WE MEANDER
I followed the hawk to its perch  -  we were
watching. The big lady thought it was a soccer ball;
I knew differently. High up on the branch, there it
was. Distance is a geography we mix with.
-
I have nothing to conceal, nor pretend .Spaghetti on
the stove is boiling in its water 'A la dente', as my
father would say. Two weeks are more than enough.
-
The county of Middlesex, the Township of Woodbridge,
the crowd at Hurd's Brook, the mess at Parker Press.
There was a hanging tree on the old church lawn : a few
names, jotted down, remind us of who was hung.
-
And then, here we are, living on  -  long past circumference,
long past memory; allied now with nothing at all.


Saturday, December 21, 2013

4857. FISSURES ARE GLORIOUS THINGS

FISSURES ARE 
GLORIOUS THINGS 
Here is the layout : Delmore Schwartz catting 
around, running between a few big, old cars. 
He wasn't fast, when drunk, but he could move. 
I can't remember what movie it was, but which 
was it that used 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips With 
Me'? That's the one.
-
Oh say that's rich. Everything these days seems
to be a double entendre. How high does the
cat-walk go? Who parked the slab-sided
car backwards? Fissure are glorious things.
-
Here is the layout : Ted Williams has lost
his head. Rounding first, he slides into
second and - boom - just like that
it's gone. Heading for home?
Fissures are glorious things.

4856. FROZEN LIVES ARE ALL ALIKE

FROZEN LIVES 
ARE ALL ALIKE
Insipid are the reservation of the doomed :
the restaurant, Sweet Caporal, takes information
at the door  -  too late to change your mind.
Too late to change your mind, and who would
want to anyway. 'The flop I found was in a tall,
clapboard hotel.'

4855. THE NOMINAL LOVE OF NOTHING AT ALL

THE NOMINAL LOVE
OF NOTHING AT ALL
I've got nothing on the mythmakers : winds of
fury and surging gods of lust. The skies are
twisted with their fanning winds.  The land
at the harbor is white with their foam.
-
Here is how it all should be : Nature's bridge,
a chariot over the river, now swarms its shores
where people linger. .Everyone who watches
is gaping  -  all those tired, envious mouths.
-
I straddle two continents; yes, I
go wherever I may.

4854. HOWIE DOBSON'S BOMB

HOWIE DOBSON'S BOMB
(on to this then)
Up in the tree for you and me : Howie Dobson
built a bomb that failed to ignite. It was 1964.
Every lane was peeling, its leaves and trees and 
rivulets were bleeding. The whole world was in awe.
-
I'm reading the famous last words of various people.
Not one of them really says much : Gertrude Stein,
'what is the answer (silence); ok, then, what is the
question?' That one, I kind of like, but knew already.
-
I don't merit much : it's Christmas now, it's deep of
the solstice for the Winter season, shortest day, etc.
To try and make something of that is just too much.
Everybody's yapping about something.
-
Did I mention, Howie Dobson built a bomb?



Friday, December 20, 2013

4853. CAR WHEELS ON THE GRAVEL

CAR WHEELS ON 
THE GRAVEL
(part one)
Having to leave things alone, my body walks
away from my mind. The car wheels are
crunching granite, pebbles and rocks. A
man with a single crutch is lighting his own
cigarette. 'Isn't that supposed to be done for 
others, like some lithsome blond in an old
noir film?' I ask. He grunts. The entire
episode made no sense anyway, so
what's the difference.
-
If people were able to really translate moments,
there would never have been wars. As it is, 
I really can't prove there ever was one anyway.
Total subjectivity like that always cuts me short.
-
When I was young I got hit by a train, like
seven or eight years old -  me, not the train.
Then, months later, awakening from a mediocre
coma from which I can still remember every thing
and every dotted i, I realized I was a thousand
years old but grandly young all over. Strange.
-
It took a while for people's words to form; from their
mouths came garbled sounds, filtering as if through a
sieve or something first, and only then falling back into
my field, as words. Or words I understood anyway.
No one said anything important or grand anyway : just
stuff like 'are you OK? How are you feeling? Where have
you been?' I'd better they had said 'where have you gone.'

Thursday, December 19, 2013

4852. ELIXIR AND ENAMEL : TRUTH

ELIXIR AND ENAMEL : TRUTH
The wedge truth of the water sparkles;
a Tahoe enema for sure. Well, to be seen;
not that I even know what it means. Reading
a book where a mention is made  -  girl goes 
water skiing on Lake Tahoe, keeps falling down, 
realizes only later that her bikini botton, all this
while, was nestled into the bisected crack of
her vagina. People are laughing at her as she 
gets back on board the boat. And then she says:
'still to come, a few minutes later, another surprise,
Tahoe enema.' So that's where it left me, all this
annoying prose. My sacred life, on the other hand
is quite different : arms and legs always in place, the
right clothing, like a soldier wears or a military man,
and  -  long lost in those old daddy memories one 
keeps, the man talking at me, 'no, son, don't do it
that way; people will think you're quite stupid.'
Oh only I realize how very little I know.

4851. ALL THOSE HANDS

ALL THOSE HANDS
I can tell you straight what I think, or I can
take a long time, weaving a story, telling in
the end nothing really at all. It's all those hands
which go into the making. Were the Brooklyn
Navy Yard now to sink, where would they all
get their primo coffee from? Tell you straight?
They'd be lost or just go somewhere else.
-
There's no necessity like the need for Life.
With each breath seems to come yet another
responsibility : I see you talking, and I hear you
seeing. How difficult can either be?
-
The code-counter where I keep my medicine is
now under lock and key  -  there's a marshall coming
in from the state dispensary. I guess I'll need to
ask him what he thinks he's doing. The answer I
get will be quite the thing to hear. Or see. One
of those other conundrums I can certainly
live without. All those hands into the
building of nothing real at all. I wish
I was ten again.
-
I need a congregation of my very own
now to preach unto. All those
hands will never do.