Friday, January 31, 2014

5003. WE WILL ALL A'ROVING GO

WE WILL ALL A'ROVING GO
Who among us shall remember what was? We will
dissolve like tomorrow's acorn breezes, across the
plains and fields -   dying oaks and dying embers each.
I remember my father used to seek the final end of
everything before he would say it was done. It never
made sense, and things were done before he was over.
Now, there's really nothing. I can walk you to his grave,
or take you past his house. That's all. What pleasure he
had in hand, he has taken all with him. Life is like that.
-
Jesters and clowns. Fervid ones and crusaders. Workers
and bosses  -  everything at once. Who talks so fast is
talking low, who talks so loud is talking slow. How is it
to distinguish good from bad, dross from gold, or neither?
We will all a'roving go, and little shall matter either.

5002. DERIVATION MOUTH

DERIVATION MOUTH
It comes as no surprise, they say, this man is
now clearly crazy, clearly adrift. I stopped into
the grand opening, just today, of a new felafel
palace and wished them luck, as I asked for 
two hot dogs on a bun, but no meat which I 
don't eat. The fellow from somewhere running
the place looked me over, quizzically and asked : 
'Very good sir, how then do you want this served?'
I replied, 'In a black suit and an undertaker's carriage.'
-
I knew he'd agree to anything; grand opening, first day
aiming to please. He went into the back room, and
just never came out.

5001. OFF AND RUNNING

OFF AND RUNNING
Off and running on  -  what sort of distinction is that?
Are you off or are you on? I want to walk the Walking
Purchase, from right where it started by the Delaware.
All those lying, blasted sons of William Penn, how brazenly
they cheated what they played. I hate the likes of all that.
No wonder Dad went home in anger to England once more.
-
Somewhere along the way west, I passed a huge boulder
the other side of Quakertown or Bethlehem or somewhere.
It was huge, with a crazy plaque denoting some woodsy
lunch that was held there in a grove in some 1750 backwater
time  -  a break in the work for a treaty and discussion. That
was long before the knives came out. And then I got to
Conestoga. The river and the town. All those wagons, once
made there, and all that westward trek. The Mack Truck
overland haulers of their day. It stuck. I love that stuff.
-
Now I fly paper airplanes from the crazy-house woods.
I lean against the scabbard of another man from Hell.
When they call I answer, I eat when the ring the bell.
Such Pavlovian intentions do me well. I am living still.
-
Now I cradle your head in my arms. I was reading today,
in a library stall filled with aching and blood, how to kiss
for comfort and love. Kiss gently, upon anyone, at the
site of the third-eye, between the eyes and up 
some high. It brings peace and bliss and aura. 
It brings Love and a golden glow.
-
(I can hear it now : 'you're gonna' kiss me where?').

5000. YOU'RE BEING LIED TO TOO, TWO SNAKECHARMERS

YOUR BEING LIED TO TOO, 
TWO SNAKECHARMERS
See the slime on the snowman : he's buried
his eyes, just like his carrot. The coal seam
still hurts from where they ripped it dry. 
-
Faces on a moving curtain  -  like the passing 
frenzy I visit. Girls in winter hats, still grinning.
Guys in suits, sucking on their phones as the
deals go down. I'm always sad and happy both.
-
So, here I am. Mr Ledger-Man listeNing to me,
sitting back in that foul brown booth : your 
Guiness mouth betrays your Budweiser mind.
-
Two plus two makes four, wherever that plain
arithmetic is still in play. Catholic parodies abound:
one always equals three. No wonder nothing fits.
-
No wonder nothing fits.

4999. ALL THOSE LISTS

ALL THOSE LISTS
Perhaps I've got all those things; I'm no longer
sure  -  the sorts of objects you never own, just
have. Sunset, watery down, ducks, fir trees, tides,
glasses of wine, pennies and nickels, doorbells and
stops. Anything else can go to Hell if I don't have
it; you don't possess, you just have.

4998. MT. PALOMAR

MT. PALOMAR
You've really got to hand it to the men with 
the lenses  -  they've seen what they claim 
is the cosmos at large. I believe them, sure. 
But they've forgotten one thing : and when 
I say ONE I mean it in that same cosmic sense;
for there is no one thing, and now they know it.
Such a number is false and the only unity this
Life has is the multi-faceted turning with which
it glows -  everything is churning. That same
dense richness is how Cain slew Abel and 
Daniel went through his lion's den. 
-
Now they say it's proven, we are. They claim 
to see beyond their ides of star and place and 
time  and meaning. well good for them why 
don't they state it -   unequivocally, and stun 
the world for its own fat moment. I saw all 
that long, long ago, and I'm still here  -  like 
the jet age yet streaming, like the smoke from 
my tea and  the steam from my coffee. I watch 
the vacant swing in the park. Slowly, 
atmospherically, without anyone there 
at all, it moves of its own accord.

4997. FITZCARRALDO

FITZCARRALDO
When I woke up not knowing where I was and
it was no crime to be out of body : that was when I
knew myself best. The charnel house, at last, had closed.
Fitzcarraldo was to be no more. I could put away the
spectacles and my shovel. All my friends were near.
-
The man from the German movie crew was filming an 
opera house being built in the Andes  -  anyway I think
that was the story he was telling. I was still dazed from
a rap on the head. He said men were dying, falling from
cliffs, and the railroad cars they'd put in place rolled
backwards, over cows and horses? There had been
a fire, and someone had had a heart attack too?
-
Listening to stories like that, I was putty  -  this puny
23rd street bar held no other attribute for me. Across the
way, right opposite the art-supply store I use, was the old
Chelsea Hotel, speaking of charnel houses. I'd been in there
maybe twenty times  -  various reason, or to look at the
art on the walls  -  pieces given in place of rent by shabby
shits with no money left. The same shabby shits who went
on to fame and now the rent was 'enormous'. Dollars
grow like Pinocchio's wooden nose sometimes,
and everything has got a suitable story.
-
Our nostrums are useless. Prayers and missions don't work.
I wish to bring a doctor into this house to minister to all
the suffering  -  the dead guys from the Andean cliffs,
the horses, wailing in pain as they died, even that
railroad locomotive, gathering speed as it roars
down the hill. Heaven helps those who ask.
I ask for nothing at all.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

4996. SOMNABLATEER

SOMNABLATEER
I am sleepwalking through this life, never wanting to
be here, and once trying hard to leave. I sleepwalk
the day and I sleepwalk the life. I am lost in another 
ether; fixatious drama of life and love, limb and loin.
I don't care much for aplomp, for the royalty fixations
of the common guy, the ruminations of Maria or Charlie
or Joe. Yeah, it takes a big ego, I guess, to proclaim;
but I've been called out on worse, and don't care.
My mind is enflamed, and for me that's what counts.
-
The hardship of riches is a poverty of thought.
Light in the greenhouse, and broken glass in the
greenhouse panels  -  I want to know, I want to 
know  -  who threw the rocks that broke the glass?

4995. MY DISTAFF LONGING

MY DISTAFF LONGING
Two sides to every picture goes a long way to
explaining. The mirror has a back, and it reflects not
a thing. I'm here in the Jumble Shop, at the corner of 8th,
walking in both dreams and memories alike : when you
were still here, when the world was alive, when meanings
were cautious and coy. Oh, how I loved just being.
-
Now, some guy has a junked Pontiac heaped at the curb.
No one wants this stuff any longer, and even the stores
at the edge of the street stand mostly vacant and cheap.
No more Pallazo, no more Wilentz. No more Madame
Rienzi's. It's all over now, Baby Huey.
-
I want to wander and just look at glass  -  the windows 
of another age. A time when I could just talk and just
go on, no mattering and no one cared. I lit a match and
cursed the dark  -  or I staunched the dark and cursed
the match. Dizzying arrays of everything else; and
the world is vast arrayed against our possibilities.
-
I call you out now. Come. I am here.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

4994. NOW, MARIETTA

NOW, MARIETTA
'Punch the idol with three green eyes, strike
at his arms and smite his thighs  -  he has come
from some other land so as to screw up our days.
His meaning and ways are not ours.  I have seen
him bow down, this is true, before trees. What can
that mean? Not worship the oak once again! We've
had our Druidic drivel driven home with a patch, a
driver with his team of horses. He drinks at the river
of doubt, no doubt, and steals babies in their swaddling
clothes. I'd not trust him to nut on a tree or thimble
a wafer while darning a sock. He's not mine.'
-
Oh my, and isn't that enough. I'm sitting here at the
piano bench, riffing through songs I remember.
Little thought now is given to that which you say  -  
in fact I think you're crazy mad dreaming again.
There is no such man as you proclaim.

4993. THIS FRAMING IS A LEGEND AND I CAN'T GO ON

THIS FRAMING IS A 
LEGEND AND I CAN'T GO ON
I once owned 40 acres and a mule; traipsed west on the promise
of free soil and John Wilmot. Left Towanda with a premise:
'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men', so
the banner said. I was richest among these wise, rich men.
Alas, ended up we fought for free the slave constabulary.
-
Wagon trains and broken mules, Shattered wheels and lots
of explaining  -  bible-touting red men trying to forswear
all we'd already lived. Out and lived out and out and worn out.
People naming towns, it seems, can never come up with
anything true. Dukesbury could never be Shit-Town Dry Acres.
Floating Elm could never be named Hanging Tree.
-
It's so many year on later now, let me tell this America a
trick or two : nothing is what is, everything you know is a lie, 
no man is free, Jesus was a dream, borders end in the mind,
mothers and children bear no resemblance, the furtherance of
rights is a furtherance of slavery. You want I should go on?
-
I am the new judge, sent from Tivoli through the pass at Allmount,
around the watery bend on Turn-Par Crossing, and along the
bottom lands to Rispoli. Now I am here. I have to listen : listen 
to those pleadings of the man with little water, the one with too
much land, the one with five dead children and no helpers to 
till and fray, the mother gone crazy with memory and screaming
 through the night, in her broken cabin with empty shells for
windows and a dead-man in the bed who was her husband once.
-
There's a hanging in the gloaming by the station here tonight.
Everyone is coming, far and wide. We must proclaim the
Death of Evil, right here, in front of me, before the dark of
this night sets in  -  dusk it will be, the less then to see.

4992. ALL SUPERLATIVE JIVE

ALL SUPERLATIVE JIVE
All superlative jive shall go unheeded, and the
handclappers need not apply : my raven in the
mizzen is left to be stern, my high hopes for
shore leave soon are fading. It's been ten
months already on this jabbering sea, and I'm 
tired both of noise and of quiet.
-
Once I land, where will I be? And what place
has a shape like this? I speak five tongues, but how
do I know? What speaks a native here, and how?
What are they eating, some purloined turtle fish from
the bottom of a kettle-scow? Ask me for dinner? No,
not now; I've sterner stuff to finish yet within my iron gut.
-
We've fourteen left from seventy starting out  -  how's
that for odds of streaming? Swim the rafts to the land of
gout? Two, I remember, in fact too spears to the head
and died. I have one man's knife, and boots as well.
Some picture of some lady, I don't know. Bothersome
mettle, all this human stuff with others. I'd rather be a'sea 
and sick than laid up here again in a bad-man's trick.
-
Feels like iron, feels like gold. All the same to me, so what?
I cash for nothing 'cept living on, blubber boy. Come be my
mate again if you've the constitution. my stuff is sterner and
more than steel  -  the kind of rub that can cut your ribs
in two. Keep back then, before I throttle you.

4991. NOBODY TALKS ABOUT QUICKSAND ANY MORE

NOBODY TALKS ABOUT 
QUICKSAND ANY MORE
Instead we stand the metal in the corner, the easel
 in the middle of the room, and go on talking while the 
model disrobes and simply sits there, even before the 
charcoal crayons have been given out.
This is no way to end an armistice, 
I'd swear before a court of law.
-
Wars have been started before. Names have come
down through the ages; all that Helen of Troy and 
Cleopatra stuff, but it all winds up twisted 
and lame. I no longer know where to stand,
nor sit  -  reading history books by candlelight;
what a fit this all is for words that will  live,
as they say, in infamy.
-
I worked ten years in a harbor-side port, saw
men killed by their crushing burdens. I sent
men away  -   the bored and the brained  -
on riverbed cruises and seas to distant lands.
Crossing Africa, on foot, so many were mauled
by natives that no one ever said a word. But
things are so different nowadays : nobody
talks about quicksand anymore.

4990. THE USES OF PAIN

THE USES OF PAIN
(arbeit mach freit)
Here where the holly grows loosely, the fens are gouged
and the marshgrass active. I feel as if I should be moved.
-
The thin horizon seems simple : in this case a coastline,
leathery and slick. Osprey blinds dot the field.
-
I will hold these hands like this forever. Standing
still, even then, I sense movement upward.

4989. OLD BLUE STREETS


OLD BLUE STREETS
I want to carry you backwards, take you to
Striver's Row. I want to lift you up, bring you 
to the Jumel Mansion. I want you to see with 
my eyes, and wear my cloak. The world is a 
mountainous place, and I have grappled 
with the heights.

4988. ONE HUNDRED YEARS

ONE HUNDRED YEARS
August 1914 will soon be upon us; I might
not be here, but it will. One hundred years since
that stinking first all-defining war came down upon us  -
or us that was then. Stinking, shriveled men and their
tight-assed women; arms-carriers to death without questions,
bloated and grimed and murdered, like paste upon a deadly
field. Carrion never dithered  -  trench warfare was a fine
dinner-plate for banquet. Passenchandaele. Somme. Verdun.
-
How did people rise and sleep, live and walk with themselves,
then? How sickeningly morose and enfeebled the dire happiness
of War as noble cause and frolic. A day at the beach. A picnic in
those bloody trenches. I must leave my senses for this to work.
-
We've done it worse since then. I know, and I say, and I see.
The same twisted, stupid fucking wrecks  -  in uniforms and
tatters still stupid, and proclaiming Liberty, Honor and Duty.
May they (each and every) live a day and die. To get what
they deserve in ignorance and folly is not good enough.
I hold no respect aside for dunce and dribble, mice and
dope. Yossarian, Catch 22, the Naked and the Dead, let it
all go on. I'm still back on 1914 for this one.
-
I hate war and I hate Mankind that does it. I hate those
who serve and I hate those who've died. Let them shrivel,
I don't care. Every day is choices made, every day is another
selection : you opt for the radar and the gun, the uniform and
the might, the military budget to feed the shits and pay them heed.
Go ahead and have fun. Scum. But don't dirty my land
 with your futility.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

4987. NOW THE MOMENT HAS ITS CERTAIN MAGIC

NOW THE MOMENT 
HAS ITS CERTAIN MAGIC
I make it proud that you be you and I be me, and in
no uncertain terms will bow to that premise forever.
It took me a long, long time to come to that agreement
with myself. Now I sit alone, looking at the wall,
wondering what became of all the fun and happy.
I see your kid has scribbled again on the wide,
white panel where I once kept my plaque.
I'll erase it tomorrow, I guess, and no
harm in that.

4986. SO MANY TIMES THE TABBY HAS GOT ME

SO MANY TIMES THE TABBY
So many times the tabby has got me : flickering,
lingering, hanging about. It seems there's always
a tongue for the habit. In the center of the barn,
here between 18 Holstein and 2 Jersey cows, there's
a lot happening for a cat to see. And me, as well.
I've taken more than one cow-kick to the shins 
or even the face and the body; not fun.
-
Out back, through the barn doors at the rear
which open to the downward sloping field, moon
soaks snow with light, a few birds seem ready to
fly, and  -  from where I'm looking now  -   the
whole world seems ready for right. The cat
curls itself up for a sleep to the memory.
-
Tomorrow is another day  -  heard that before.
Yet it's only nearing six o'clock and here I am
already over. Done and finished. If a form of Life
is hero-worship, something like teachers or writers
who purport to teach, do, then what else is there
but derivative product? Poems after the poems of
someone else, endless writing drivel about walks
and talks 'neath the starry morn sky.
-
Be done with that crap, I say. Quit finding daisies
under piles of shit. The farmers here call this manure
spreader a honey wagon, and I know what for;
 oh yes, do I know what for.

4985. DON'T LET IT MATTER IF THE MINT MAKES THE MIND

DON'T LET IT MATTER IF THE
MINT MAKES THE MIND
I want Zoroaster back. He was just looking
great, like Superman, and then he disappeared. 
'Act fast' was his quick synopsis of all he'd seen.
I wasn't yet blemished, but I neither had direction
nor concern. Just getting by, as the tattoo says.
-
Look now look : It is deep before dawn, the new 
morning is yet scrambled. The black dark gray of the 
nighttime sky tries fading but fails. I see its gloom
still hides a desperate moon. An angel, on board
the flickering beam, drops light from something to me.
-
I can't move and I am frozen in time. It is 12 degrees
already, and I am near to gone. Over by the fenceline, 
someone walks, with a flashlight as well  -  anything,
I figure, to break the gloom and keep us all running
happy. Or, it is, at least, as I hope. At least I hope.

Monday, January 27, 2014

4984. RISING

RISING
The airs of sanctification cause a pain
as much as any other  -  I call upon this
force to direct even my arrivals and departures.
Like some tormented St. Christopher, watch
thee over me. But why you ask? Because
I get tired of fighting for the right.
-
Tumescent becomes a tired life; it fits it well.
Old and worn now, down at the edges with the
same old things  -  yes, people are clowns yet they 
flock to other clowns as well, just to see, to chatter, 
to gloat under the usual matter. It's the same old fodder 
always  -  Little Rock  and Hope and here, 
all the same, all the same page.
-
And the same red blood runs through the stone,
making me purple now with rage.

4983. CANADA IS MAKING ME OPEN UP

CANADA IS MAKING 
ME OPEN UP
( the self-lubricating stuff)
Scoville and aperture : the jarring man
in new black hair and the thread of new
noises all around. He says, 'I will be your
host,' and people move away. I fully
expected him, in a Christain sense, to 
next say 'eat me.' But he didn't, thankfully.
'Do you believe in aliens?', I ask, 'for you are 
certainly acting one yourself you know.'
He ask me if I am opening up, taking steps
to my own credit. I didn't know what he meant.
-
Somehow. Perhaps. Superlative. I am.
'Remember Genya Ravan and Asleep At 
the Wheel?' I nod. 'Why yes, I do,' I say.
'Can you not understand that you are from
another place and are only holding out positions
for the benefit of others? For the light that must
be seen.' At last, I knew I'd be going back.
-
As if holding another staff, I am rising high,
floating above the crowd and tired of the gaiety;
The robust, the playful, the fiery, the faint. Oh, yes,
the faint ones, meek of heart : they shall 
inherit the Earth (and they can have it).

4982. HORATIO RICHMOND ANTI-MATTER

HORATIO RICHMOND 
ANTI-MATTER
Oh boyos and hobos and girlos and me! The raft is
rocking; gently, sweetly, and profuse, filled with dreams 
and old letters from home. Let me go, let me : there's a
shack by the railroad, a little hermit's place, and one old 
guy inside named Fritz. We throw him money and he shoots
us with salt. His first child was a pellet gun, and it's 1954.
-
I want to dream again  -  the letter rack, the telephone bench,
the rocking chair and the love seat too. I was only a little boy,
but had to learn these names. My house was made up of things;
my mother's new phone cord was eight feet long  -  so she
wouldn't be tied to the phone when she was tied to the phone.
-
What was the matter with that? I crumbled a week later, in front 
of a train that took me down. 'Thank God it was only a locomotive,'
my Mother used to say. I never quite got that, but it meant she 
was happy that it wasn't a long train  -  it was only an engine 
and a spare and a coal car, going somewhere. 
Seemed fucking pretty long to me.
-
'Don't despair,' they used to say, 'Don't despair, Aunt Bluebell's
here.' I spent my live in a cauldron, turning and turning and 
turning to be shined like a small-kid's marble. I want
to dream again. I want to dream again.

4981. REHASH

REHASH
All things new are old again  -  now we 
are at the ready and let laughter ease
the tension. All things old are new
again; lest we miss the mention.
-
The body requires certain (and simple)
things  -  the fire hydrant source of the
fire to ease the flame. There is something
unending in all that we do  -  I am certain
this goes on forever.
-
In some sense I am alone  -  solitary, forceful
and brave.  In another, I am quite weak yet
part of another million things and people :
Men, objects, dreams and wishes.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

4980. MAINSTREAM RUNNING CLEAR

MAINSTREAM RUNNING CLEAR
Let me write, OK? I am the echo of a salvage, the
creature of a kid, the third off-shoot of a vagabond
band, one guy who scurried into the ring, two others
who were shot dead. Now, we try talking, and no one
even listens, let alone understands. I snuck under the
ropes when the referee wasn't looking; the short count,
the long count, they both went against me.
-
The slats of the fence, well, some were missing  -  thin
enough for a cat to escape, thick enough for a cow. All
my stories went through with no problem  -  I lassoed
the pretty seamstress, I caught up the fallow garage. My
featured anomaly was mumps on the brain  -  in some
vast medical record my history remains. There are 
people, I know, who ask: 'How long can this go on? 
Who is the guy? How and why?' I just sit back and 
smile. Explication's in my blood, on the slipstream side :
my grandad murdered and my grandma sewed. My
Uncle Nabuko fished eels and clams on the sand.
-
The South Jersey whistles, I remember them  -  through
the pines, along the waters, up the shoreline, down home.
Me and Leo Benjamin, walking the sandy pines out behind
the retreat house and dumps, we'd find  -  nearly each time -
some girls' panties; bloomers and bras hanging in trees. It
was a local trophy custom, Friday and Saturday nights, at 
least - 'you get the babe, you leave the trade. Just to
 prove you at least got laid.' Local legend. Pineys all. I
never let no provincial gall like that get to me.
-
Every time I got to the end of that book, the one about
B'rer Rabbit, I'd get lost. A man is a man and a slave is a 
slave, but with everything written in some old-time code, well
then what were they tryin' to say? B'rer Rabbit happy and 
wise? Or not? Don't put one over on me; don't pull my leg.
-
Legerdemain  -  do you know what that is? - when the magician
does a trick by the quickness of hands : I lived a lot like that most
all my days. Singing cat 'o'nine tails to the cat o' nine lives too.

4979. IF I WASN'T SO LAZY


IF I WASN'T SO LAZY
(Hemlock)
If I wasn't so lazy I'd be dead by now : as it is,
my feet are up again. Sitting in a twist like some
hibernating bear to think and to decide about the
cold and the gold. How far should I stretch my tired
limbs? In the other room, someone putters over a
soup-bowl and a cup; regular restaurant fare for when
others  come in. Me? I haven't moved in days, just thinking.
 Pearl-handled pistols always sound like a good idea;
 but I have no more of them.
-
I need a handler; I don't need a trainer. I need someone
to tend to my place. I don't really want to talk, just yawn;
thinking  of tomorrow, and deep outer space - where the
planets can become my own eyeballs, where the light of
some reflected sun is the blanket I sleep in and wallow.
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd be dead by now,
 (having finished that last, lethal swallow

4978. THE LATE NIGHT CANON


THE LATE-NIGHT CANON
It is a far and distant wandering the
mind conjures in darkness : things peopled
with little wrens, tall buildings stretched with
lethal shadows. The flawed carapace of Mankind,
looking back, spends energy in just trying to retrieve:
all the names, all the totems of the wandering tribes,
the pathways to Eden and past and beyond. With every
excuse, this strange coffee-closet cl
oses in, a deeper wrap
for a colder cold. I am sitting alone, like a regulatory miser.
Depending for light on the darkness, seeking the dark fort
a light : every page I can turn has an echo that, somehow,
I am lame enough to just keep reading, just keep reading on.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

4977. TO WHERE THE MOON IS NOT A PLACE

TO WHERE THE MOON 
IS NOT A PLACE
Milk makes the Milky Way, but lactose intolerance
somehow kills all that. The policeman took a header,
tumbling down a long flight of stairs. Something about
a safety keeps a gun from going off. I am reminded,
immediately, of that scene at the end of Taxi Driver,
where de Niro's guy goes ape-shit and splatters all
those walls with blood like an instant Nestle Quik moment.
I remember Scorcese saying it had to be toned down in
color, the studio guys got too nervous with all that red so
they turned it more brown. Oh well. Get with the program.
-
Here I am. Alone again, naturally. When that song came
out I had an outhouse with two adult seats and one child's
seat  -  holes of certain size cut in the planks. It was cool.
My grandmother came to visit once, from far away. She
went into the outhouse, to see what it was like, and  -
unwittingly  -  walked into something that resulted in like
a hundred bee stings to her head and face. She screamed.
She thought she was going to die. She was yelling :
'Take me home! I don't want to die here!'

4976. FOR GOD'S SAKE LET THE LEMMINGS GO

FOR GOD'S SAKE LET
THE LEMMINGS GO
My computerized fake list of idiots grows  -  they have names
like Eldridge Montrose. The misanthrope who stands at the
mirror is not me. I enter where no others go, and that black
mirror takes me in. Should I ever return, I do not know.
-
Now, in icicle raiment and bright with desire, there is no one
around  me. No longer a demeaning quality to my face or 
mind. I want to coat this big-room floor with a wax and a 
dynamite clear. Children are eating cookies, leaving crumbs
at the window's sill. A woman has lit a candle, beseeching 
something for a something else. I did a leap over the pantry
just to get to the door. 
-
If I were a scribe in a tenth century cell, I'd be looking
down at something seen below. Not through glass,
exactly  -  more like something opaque, a density of
 mind, another reality entire. Since I am inclined to
accept chance when it comes my way, I think of
nothing as being awry. I accept my own 'All' of
this life  -  the swings, the arrows, the slings. All
defiant in defeat, I still in place remain. I
love the double entendre.
-
An individual with a compelling task finds himself 
often involved in ideas and actions for which he is
no longer responsible. Being motivated no longer by
caprice or arrogance, he finds himself driven instead
by a dire necessity, one which he himself cannot
comprehend. It comes down upon him with a
savage fatefulness. This man (a sometimes me)
driven by a daimon, steps beyond the limits and
enters, for himself, the untrodden, untreadable
regions  -  air there is thin. Light there is thinner.
-
It's not like heads-up in the land of the living, but
more like a heads-down in the land of the dead;
and let us all mourn together.