Monday, March 31, 2014

5217. I SADDLED YOUR ARMS

I SADDLED YOUR ARMS
The command said 'go'; said 'go and kill,
feel free'. The whispered said 'just try and 
come back to me.' War and death join together, 
somehow; they run down the arm like rich and
purple plum-juice dripping on a hot, sultry Summer 
day. Pain in the pleasure. Hurts so good. All that
comes from Death is more of what it brings  -  
and still they carry out newer rifles and guns,
never stopping even to hear the tales of the
last. The big General, the Buffoon, with ribbons
and medals and proclamations, he's over there,
leaning on a car  -  a faded gray army car  -
handling his big cigar like some artillery magnate's
daughter's fondest wish. It's all for nothing now,
and goes away. The little green Jeep, cuts in,
from the left, arriving fast; I hear the sounds, a
pow, pow, and the General's gone down.

5216. THE VISIBLE AS FUGITIVE

THE VISIBLE AS FUGITIVE
We will begin with those Frans Hals
faces : a tired and destitute old man, 
an artist, painting the faces of what new
capitalism has done to his fellows. The
flat and sunken faces of old, worked-out
women, the crooked and wirey face of 
some business-burgher-drunken-man. 
Simple statements, and peeled to the faces,
each, as they're shown. I can look no more.

5215. POSTAGE STAMP BOX ART

POSTAGE STAMP BOX ART
(11th street)
Here I am next to Webster Hall, standing
by a post office which sells DaVinci postage
stamps in blocks of sixty or so : as I think it
anyway. The fury still resounds of music hall
laughter and all those old political signs  -  knots 
of people acting as one to react and provoke. The
labor leaders now of a world long gone dead.
-
For me. For me. Inside the Post Office it is today's
fat world, and I watch them lining up  -  their struggling
packages and mistaken letters and forms. Slovak, Italian,
East European, Hispanic, Black, and Indigent all together.
Your tired and hungry and poor defectives abound : and
then the hip, once. Patent leather. Gay glasses and Izod
limbs and livers. 'The Virgin and Child With St. Anne
and St. John the Baptist' is now being sold at Window
12. A boatload of wanderlust to the traveling servants
of St. Dread. Boat to port. Reel to real.
-
Outside  -  still slathered with my pain, the crazy neon
sign of Gotham Billiards yet punctuates the time across
the street from Webster Hall; while wise-ass kids pass
the time eating donuts, and mothers and grandmas roll
something on wheels by windows; windows and shops
all in a row. Everything aligned, everywhere I go. 
DaVinci postage stamps, for sale and Window 12.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

5214. STORYBOARD OK

STORYBOARD OK
I awoke listing to starboard having been a'sea for five days.
Nothing of sustenance like unto this before. I thought I
heard water running, and it was raining outside. But for 
two times twenty I was alone and repentant. Where
else could I have gone? It was, in both ways, the ending 
and the start, yet people still talked of old things.
I swore I'd never enter such debate again.
-
I manage to leave marks in stones and writings on
the walls of caves  -  things to recognize; things 
people would see. Yet earnestness like this is
such a fragile item : glass, gold, the chalice,
and each ready for the breaking anew.

5213. 'UNTIL LIONS LEARN TO WRITE, HISTORY WILL BE WRITTEN BY HUNTERS'

'UNTIL LIONS LEARN TO 
WRITE, HISTORY WILL 
BE WRITTEN BY HUNTERS'
Well, I heard that somewhere once and then read it again
recently  -  so I ain't claiming it's mine just wishing it were;
in its way, it's precise. History being written by the victors,
as the other old saw goes. But now they're chaining us to
their tables of filth and debris. I don't think we need to
like it anymore, or even accept. Let us stand tall, 
and revolt. Let us push back and rise up.

5212. DON'T DOUBT MAJESTY

DON'T DOUBT MAJESTY
Never press the lever that says pull,
and don't pull the one that says press.
That all seems so simple now : I note
they've painted the new kids' signs in a
Katzenjammer way along the broken,
starlit pavement waving me home. The 
leaves will look adorable when seen from 
home - while I'll have none and I'll be
alone. But why is a baby always the first
to quibble, or - for that matter - be
quibbled over? Like Thoreau, or maybe
Emerson, put it - watch how a baby
so quickly reduces adults to the very 
same state - all giggles, and coo's and
ah's. I'll never know why or how, but yes, 
it's a form of majesty too, all of its own.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

5211. A CHOICE OF CHASTISEMENT

A CHOICE OF CHASTISEMENT
I am taking this way with me now, for I am the
blue-marvelled hightster who walks the lanes and
alleys : I have a torch for my heart and it always 
lights my way. The difference between doing and 
thinking no longer exists. I can manifest my Soul.

5210. JUST THE WAY WE MAKE THINGS UP

JUST THE WAY WE 
MAKE THINGS UP
Everything fits a fashion  -  the lines and melodies, the
harmonies of day. It's just the way we make things
up that differ. That small boat at the landing dock,
it bears a painted yellow line along its side which
balefully reflects the happy face of the girl getting
in  -  as if we are seeing the other side of the happy
that is. It's just the way we make things up. You
say tomato, I say tomahto. Farther up, on high,
the Fire Marshall in his tower sits and watches.

5209. POSITRON REFLEX

POSITRON REFLEX
Here's the way I make it now back from the
dead the very cleave'd dead, the dainty ones
who can never move but never believe again either.
An atomic bomb on the way to the USA sneaked 
on board a Malaysian jetliner filled with 44 USA agents
on the way back here  -  all is found out, in a willful
panic and admission by decision, of culpability. The
entire thing is brought down, deep to sea, and so as
not to detonate whatever portable device is aboard :
USA knows its culpability, yet can say nothing except
to spread confusion and apprehension about location, 
various 'pinging' sounds, different probable sites, differing
cover stories about durations of silences, messages, and the
rest. Everyone else who may have deceased upon the plane,
will be dealt with eventually but let's get through  this now first. 
-
I believe, I believe in nothing at all; except the trancheing of
lies and the spreading of mischief. In the duplicity of everything
and the sincerity of none. How are killers made? They are born
and go to school  and are taught the same religions as the precious
fool. Once unhinged, the metal sprite of the knife arises. All things
take their marks. The drama coach begins teaching the steps.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

5208. FADING ADS OF PHILADELPHIA

THE FADING ADS 
OF PHILADELPHIA
Bombay, and not Mumbai, is how the faded postcard
named the place, in 1966. From a Mrs. Ida Wilmot to
a Jermian Phace. I could not tell the difference between
the real. You would not either, knowing how old family
portraits fade. An insensitive graffiti, all this, anyway :
maybe Jermian was her boyfriend. Was she the mother
of the son? But would the name have changed like that?
I couldn't know in any way, but in 1966 she visited India.
The faded ads of Philadelphia are like that as well :  all
these brick-checkered old buildings still somehow standing,
having withstood a plague and a riot or two, ten storms and
forty feet of snow. The old lettering still, now and then breaks
through : 'Cunnigham Soaps and Pumice' from 40 years ago.
In this day and age, now, as well call the moment, what little
maters what we've salvaged o'er the years or what's still kept
before our eyes and ears. We see nothing. We hear little.
The battles of World War II are now taught by little unionized
teachers in their slipper-feet and bunny-tail pajamas, as it
were. They tip-toe through their tulips of dread, afraid to
mistake what they haven't got right. Bombay, 
not Mumbai, is the place.

5207. HATING TO BE A RAM ON MOUNT MORIAH

HATING TO BE A RAM 
ON MOUNT MORIAH
My forces are already marshaled, and everything else
is gone. I only hear the slovenly silence yelling back.
All here is what I stole : 'You were my gym buddy ferreting
along spotty fluorescent ramps...Peach sirens, entryway
orderlies. Mangled disposition stations.' Outside of that,
I knew nothing; but what I was supposed to know from
that? I purposely sharpened my pencil in the hearts of
lonely women  -  divorced, broken in two, lonesome,
keening, fractious, tired, slovenly, lazy, sick. Nothing
else ever seemed so exciting to me. We even  -  you can
remember  -  took that trek three days deep into the
wilderness (three days, three days, all this biblical shit
is always in threes) until we reached the top. I'd always
meant to kill something, and I finally did. (Dance one
fabled evening and hear the skylark do something,
anything at all  -  go ahead, I dare you.)  -  Ever since
that noted day you know nothing's ever been the same.
I'd hate to have been that ram on Mount Moriah.

5206. DANGLING DIAMOND EARRING

DANGLING DIAMOND EARRING
Even here, in Forest Hill, Newark, I am afraid of nothing;
no danger lurks worth reporting, and I am kept with a
figment of a God. Your dangling diamond earring, that
too, means nothing now. Silks and stockings, glittering hats,
all those hipster cats at the Barclay Lounge, try shunting
all of that aside. The black guys with their funny Cadillacs
and overdone girlfriends for the night; jive talk, funny walk.
I am here in camouflage; I am a sketchbook for my heart.
In a row, some fifteen buildings glitter cheaply  -  neon-lit
and bar-room lights where people hang, half in-half out.
Music too loud to be good trounces the air and the silence
with moments of trenchant portrayal while another deal
for flesh or sin is finalized. In a hurry, everyone moves
so slowly as to be seen. No digression tolerated.
Yet I am not afraid. Not money, not glitter, not
your dangling diamond earring will take this
night away  -  no man can stand up to the
power of me. That bootstrap is a gutter 
by which I'm lifted up. I'm richer than
the rest, in a thousand different ways.

5205. DELIVER THE LETTER THE SOONER THE BETTER

DELIVER THE LETTER 
THE SOONER THE BETTER
Old men were sitting around. I swear I saw Elvis too.
And a John Lennon type waltzed in with a Bo Diddley beat.
Johhny B. Goode was standing in the shadows. I discerned
nothing but little that was good. Spotswood and Jamesburg.
That's where I'll be going. (There's a big book in the corner,
filled with names and faces too, and everyone always smiles).
-
This building is made of sugar, and that one has a candy-cane
spine. Three steps up, the Grange Hall of Robert Bly is opened
wide while all tractors, left running, are singing. No one watches
but I do, warily. The single black cat of Esther Ray is on  hold.
It too is awake with its one blind eye. Old men, sitting around.

5204. DARK MATTER

DARK MATTER
Negative royalty is eating crabs and watermelon,
flank steaks and marble cake. We need not lift a
finger. Catalogue the bromides, my own leige and
lief. I am the matter made of flesh and blood.
-
Outside the doorway, the crippled mayor is
walking his dog. He is unaffected by and earth
with its currents : of air, of things. Of light or dark.
His uncredited dog is in his walk-on role. Insipid. Lame.
-
Can we, can we, stop and talk, pass the time of day?
No, no, I must be going. No, no not like this at all.


Saturday, March 22, 2014

5203. A SIMPLE LANDSCAPE OF LINES

A SIMPLE LANDSCAPE 
OF LINES
And now a far design for a new season.
Out of Adam Pelt am I, and left here waiting;
(aw, go jump out of a lake). Inland layers,
1. people in trees; 2.monsters with claws;
3. and sirens, all on the scary sea.
'And how many have fit against the hem
of her memory? (Yangtze Charles) : one
poet of only the great river; all similar ground.
(a simple landscape of lines). Every so often 
a mystery  -  something serene yet unknown  -  
arises. FRIGHT  WIG  CADAVER.
The Sad King : The King has a mountain
he cannot miss. It is a coronation of power
and light - yet - He knows it not.
[Old Punk Art] : Much blackened and
over-dressed swine. 
-GALLERY 45 OPENING-
New Art For the New Masses.
Assess. Asses. (Like the wine-dark sea).
-
Then, to stack the house against myself, I 
have the habit of doing things I don't remember,
of not being 'there'. Doorways and windows too.
-
The flaming mountain ignites itself?
While all the hillside village sleeps.


5202. MY MAIN-FRAME CHANGE

MY MAIN-FRAME CHANGE
My moonlight on your chin : oh God how I love you.
The dark trees along the river's edge, they amass 
themselves between light and shadow, shade and 
darkness. I can see nothing else. There's nothing
else to see anyway. And this matter at hand,
whatever it may be, is useless after all.
-
Without quarrel I have lived this filthy life - a sordid
intelrude between one death and another, between
a life and another try at same. Now, now, I ask for
nothing. I want nothing. Little given, little taken back.
-
My scrimmage at the goal-line includes no baggage
nor any tickets for other destinations. I am nothing
but a candle here, representing all that I have been.
I sought only Goodness and the hearts of men  -  and
have (somehow now) found all of that and more.
All of that, and so much more.

5201. MR. DRAGOVICH

MR. DRAGOVICH
(the ancients)
He sold office real estate down by the marshes and park. 
He'd shortened his business name to 'Dragos' and had a son,
Jeffrey, with whom I played. We did lots together though I
cannot remember much. Bicycles, baseball, and some banter,
I guess. Those years were long ago, and mostly now fulfilled -
things like Sputnik and Erector Sets kept us busy. The world
was a flat pancake  - which made me always understand how
some of those ancients felt. Expectations and linear thinking
only extend outward in a long, flat sequence. When all things 
are the same no one understands the circularity of a circle
and all its expectations. I think Mr. Dragovich is long-dead
now, and, Jeffrey, who knows where. My own world has
imploded and re-formed any number of times; all these 
momentary flashes - like everything else - now slowly
sinking deep into their own black hole to re-appear
somewhere, pristine and whole and entire again.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

5200. CIRCUMSTANCES

CIRCUMSTANCES
(the new eugene o'neil)
This one rolls over, leaves me behind, gasping;
and only the following conclusions can be made  -
the Lone Ranger was never alone, the wind in the
willows was shut off long ago, and 'Intimations of
Immortality' is really a dreary read. Every instance 
of collateral damage is a monetary gain for someone.
-
I'm sitting back here, reading a newspaper riddled 
with facts that don't lie. My small glass of iced tea is
turning to something else, like the words I am reading:
lies, distortions and fantasies with purpose. 'Old Mother
Hubbard sat in her cubbard eating her curds and whey,
along came a spider who was known to invite her to a
fantasy camp near every day.' Twisted logic, and all
the newfound pretzels in the world. Hanover, PA is
a good place for that.
-
In the local lingo, 'going bowling' means your
seeing a man about a dog. Or a horse. I already
forget. Some of the big barns have distlefinks gaily
painted, and beneath them old women in dainty head 
bonnets sit  -  counting buttons or feeding chickens.
From what I've noticed, for each old lady there's
three young daughters. You do the math. You 
count the orders. The Eggman cometh.

5199. FRIGHT WIG CADAVER

FRIGHT WIG CADAVER
This Andy Warhol jig is up : something silver
yet moves. Give me all your chances now.
(The song moves through air, resounding off
buildings, creeping about like a widow in the
dark). I have no understanding of surprise.
-
I see you are a proper lass. I see the gentleman
lurking  -  only those who demand for company.
Silver platters and silver foil, like silver hair, are
mostly unbecoming. I should move away.
-
Every so often a mystery  -  something
serene yet unknown  -  arises.
I heard some silly girl say : 'when my
bed caught fire, it smelled like a garden.'
I have no understanding of surprise.

5198. ALL MY NEIGHBORS

ALL MY NEIGHBORS
All my neighbors are gruesome fellows, growing
stock keys and knives in the middle of their gardens;
keeping wealthy wives locked deep within a closet.
I barely speak to them, but nod. Every milkman they've
ever had never left the house alive, was never seen again.
I've got some gruesome neighbors with kith and kin of
oh such monstrous proportions. They light rooftop fires
just to read the mail. They pour hot lava down upon us
all just to make their own comfortable warmth. How any
of this ever got started is all beyond me; but now, for
the moment, that's they way it is and how it's gonna' be.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

5197. RAINING IN THE HOLE

RAINING IN THE HOLE
It's raining in the hole and this is not the
Comstock Lode. Don't try to remember:
the guys who ran the art museum are all
dead.  What's left on the walls behind them
are just the shadowed marks where paintings 
used to hang. Dreams. Wishes. All that
fulfillment stuff. The only thing that matters in
the end is the ending. As was said by that 
Costello guy in the Boston crime movie, 
after the other  fellow at the bar says his 
mother's not doing well - 'she's on her way 
out'  -  he says 'We all are; act accordingly.'
I like that, and excuse me for being direct but
it's a hit and all men are going down.
-
Nothing to steal; my mother's jewelry box was 
filled with junk  -  costume jewelry and big, red
clip-on earrings in the shape of a rose only a clown 
would wear. I sometimes wondered why I ever 
came down that chute : made me wince and made
me cry. My origins were nothing much, but who's
to blame for that? Now I compare myself to any
of the dregs I see on 34th, and I laugh aloud.
Fat, black mamas with asses the size of Georgia,
and skinny black guys with pinpricks for eyes, doing
the sidewalk shuffle while talking loudly and looking 
for change. Money, not the other item. And I wonder
why I'm still alive : for Jesus Christ O'Malley's sake what
am I doing here? It's a hit and all men are going down.
-
The felt hat is worn like a cadaver. The black coat fits
no man at all. That woman's fake ermine rides the carp
like a taxi on a scam. The policeman is whistling his
idle tune while sizing up the post office goon, that guy
on two good legs coming down the steps. 
Grand finale, hot tamale. It's a hit and
all men are going down.

5196. STOOL PIGEON

STOOL PIGEON
I know what that means  -  that filthy bird
that hangs around shit. The flowers are all
gone and I don't care. Pavement and the
workers that go with it have come to town;
they've replaced many lawns with lumber.
Small cars owned by students boarding in
the rooms above are cluttering the lots along
the way  -  I can see the people coming down 
to the streets; upon their places and upon their
ways. To something else I'd guess, but not
guess at. I wonder why it's me who gets all
the space to tell these tales, make these words.
Back in Bayonne I can remember my own;
my grandmother  -  saying she was going to
the 'terlet to make water.' How is it that people
speak their natural language so strangely? Or is
 it not natural at all? Sometimes I knew what
she was going to say before she said it and it
was all nothing at all. Strange ways and I am
bereft. I have no honor; left at the gate as it 
was. My home was a great arm, which I used
to maneuver things around me  -  to get me out 
of place and bring me along to something else.
The men of Art, and all their boozing women.


5195. ALL THOSE THINGS I MIGHT HAVE WISHED FOR

ALL THOSE THINGS I 
MIGHT HAVE WISHED FOR
(Luna)
How many have brushed against the hem of her garment? 
How many more have lingered by the fabric of her memory?
All those things I might have wished for (long ago and distant) 
have come to pass and I find myself needing nothing at all 
(just misplaced energy and idle items staining the ground).

5194. BEING AT BREAKAWAY RIVER

BEING AT BREAKAWAY RIVER
And suddenly sleeping in caves for we've nowhere else
to go. Like Breugel's Village Wedding Feast, we are
crazed and busy with anticipation; all swollen, misshapen
people scurrying around. I see nothing pretty in any of that.
A swollen face is like a swollen loaf of bread. The face
with creases looks like the walking dead. And then the
lethal Magi arrive, showing up but to look like clowns,
old, strange fops from another, distant land. We are
 landed, yes, living in caves, here at Breakaway River.

5193. PAINTING THE NAKED BODY

PAINTING THE 
NAKED BODY
Every artist assumes something  -  that the line just
drawn will end; that infinite space will eventually contract
and run back into each other  -  as time bends space, inward,
so too the line. The splotch of color, anywhere, is sometimes
just a mistake, a smudge, an errant dollop of cerulean blue.

5192. WHAT I MEAN IS TO CREAM YOU

WHAT I MEAN 
IS TO CREAM YOU
There comes nothing from Nazareth, no good anyway :
the streetlights of that dumpy town still burn tallow,
donkey wax, the creepy drippings for animal assholes.
Every cash register has a man with a checklist right
next to you : like me he has much to say  -  'I don't
want to hear about it anymore, I'm tired of what you 
say to me. I have to listen endlessly to your stories
of dormers and gutters, things you built with your
carpenter hands. Go away.' Something goes, better
than the quiver of an arrow in the arc of shooting a
bird. Straight and steady, into the target's heart. Like
that, all in this little brown town hold meaning to their
mind and faces as personal things, not worth sharing. 
I did, at one point, I admit, love every daughter in this 
town. My name is still graffito'd on many a postal-dump
box. no good comes from Nazareth, nothing good at all.
Jacob, just go away. Please go away now.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

5191. CAPE HATTERAS HAS ITS LIGHTHOUSE

CAPE HATTERAS 
HAS ITS LIGHTHOUSE
The seeming winner of the trilogy has come home to his 
Outer Banks Harbor, only to sit alone and watch. His wife is 
gone  -  a long-pilloried fleshpot anyway no matter. A staple 
on the sign of life, he sits forlorn and confused about this crazy
life on land. 'Crazy travelers all, and we're back together
again.' Then he adds, 'and it's a good thing too, for I was
way lost and far-off.' There are no more reasons than that
for a man to pine for this existence, even when he has it.
In the deep dark of early morning, just before the break
of the light, this time it is me looking up at the strangely
reddened sky. 'In morning take warning.' I still hear
that like a Saturday morning disaster bulletin breaking
into a cartoon-character show  -  'red sky at night,
sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailors take warning.'

5190. ALL MY LIFE

ALL MY LIFE
I am gone now; just a trace remaining, yet all
my life I kept waiting for something to break out  -
some ragged, raging beat for the slow music of
time  -  I'd been listening to that dirge forever,
yet nothing ever happened. And now, so many 
years later my mind is a box, broken with a bad 
lid at the top. Fifty years ago it little mattered.
Every dark street led somewhere new, everyone 
belonged to another; I was homeless and, it seemed,
arrayed against myself. I took any hand offered, 
and I walked off down any wooded lane.

5189. MANNERISM

MANNERISM
I am an artist of dead chalk and yellow blood,
leaving my strange markings on neighborhood
walls  -  you may have seen. May have not. I
am not sure, quite, if there's really a difference
at all. Here, let me catalogue : Moon, stars, sun
planets, mists of cloud and smoky matter, distant
dots on an unbroken sky. I see things like they are,
or may have been. Recreate the planeload of that
mirror, please  -  like an unpaid astronaut waiting
for air; that's me. (I remember very cold air, of a
Winter's night, in Elmira. It had been frigid for twenty 
days, everything frozen rock solid: like ice, a sculpted
masterpiece of this world had turned to stone).

5188. I SEE WHAT YOU DON'T SEE

I SEE WHAT 
YOU DON'T SEE
I drop things all the time and then I cannot pick them
up; my life is a baleful hole and I have little room to
move, no place left to maneuver. 'I wake up with 
this marble head in my hand, which soon exhausts 
my elbows, and I don't know where to lay it down.'
If it's broken, don't fix it; or, maybe, if it's not broken,
don't fix it. I forget how that goes. Here, where I am sitting,
everything is broken, nothing's fixed and everything fixed
was never broken anyway. Just like a flag on the land
of someone else  - your own flag exactly  -  you realize 
quite suddenly that it was not YOU who put it 
there and you do not know what to do.

5187. KEEP THE MARGIN ACTIVE

KEEP THE MARGIN ACTIVE
There's nothing pure left. That old, rustic church
on the footpath to Blight Ridge, it bespeaks another
age  -  when purity reigned. Peasants in a circle, singing.
Farmhands loaned out, raising barns and raising bridges.
Nothing goes on with direction : the one match that lights
a hundred fires. Two men stand, leaning against a thick,
wooden fence. They're close to disagreeing about 
something  -  I can sense their anger rising. Towards 
each other, and all about, to everything else as well.
There really isn't anything pure left.

5186. THE WAY YOU GET

THE WAY YOU GET
There are so many avenues to take just to reach
the lake; it's all mind-boggling how this could be.
Two hundred years ago, nothing here at all; now,
a dungheap of wrappers and junk, a broken canoe
with sunlight for a bottom. The sheen of oil glistens.

5185. PISSING ON MOUNT ARARAT

PISSING ON MOUNT ARARAT
The rooftops are secured by love. There 
is more true realism in the craziest picture 
of the most abstract subjectivist, in the silent 
concoction of lines, dots and spots, than in all 
the harmonious worlds commissioned by 
bureaucrats. A strange, silly, crazy picture is, 
after all, a true expression of at least 
one living human's soul.
-
A mountain had died : all that was left were
its rocks, its fields of stone. Along the sideway,
the craftsman was making metal wreaths adorned
with metal leaves. At every local village funeral here
in these mountains there are some hundred plus
people and usually as many wreaths as people. The
creator of these funeral wreaths has become rich.
-
Notwithstanding the rest, I stand before a pile of bricks
on a rock-strewn hilltop, alone. Some old, broken
construction site, long ago unfinished, is before me. I
am pissing on 600-year old bricks and all the ground
beneath. The relief of a poetry like no other : for thousands
of years poets have been striving to convey Happiness.
That, now, which I have here achieved.

Monday, March 17, 2014

5184. UPSET THE CHARACTER OF THE FREE MARKET

UPSET THE CHARACTER 
OF THE FREE MARKET
Kill the beast in Triton. Line the roads with the famished
and the dying. The dead can fend for themselves. We here
have already achieved so much. Land of the Great, America!
We've already got our first woman President  -  fact being that
he's a black woman is even better. We've already had our first
Black President some time ago. His name was Bill and we're
paying still. The next was a George, not Washington mind you,
but who'd want that anyway? The Georges and the Bills, and
together with the new one who shops for sweaters in New York
City, we're a well-rounded mass of lumpishness going nowhere
soon. The crime of Crimea can happen to any goon. Lift not a
finger to wag the dog; run a nice mouth, talk it down. But I
respond thusly :  'I am the ice monger, the fisher, the ringer of
bells, the man who toils to bring up the rear, dragging forth the
old ideology of fear lest we faint from dread  -  dread which
is always with us, intent among us, within our hearts and souls,
never leaving, always present, just here. Just here. Just hear.'

5183. TENDENTIOUS LOTIONS OF TIME

TENDENTIOUS 
LOTIONS OF TIME
Only fish and the busy cutters
who cut  -  all on the shores of 
Lake Savan, where the unattended
communists of old are still working
to build their empire. The singular
world of all those old-timers : 
Uspensky, Roerish, Ozanyan, 
Nalbandian. So many busy Armenian 
names I no longer can recall them
all at all. And here, and here, this
lousy English is sometimes I think
such a dead-end. I leave it go for
there is nothing to say  -  nothing high
or exalted anyway. Everything we
debase : Comfort Inn Hideaway
Retreat, and  -  of course  -  'music'
as well, everywhere. The tendentious
lotions of American time, like this,
make me sick all well enough, sick.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

5182. ST. JOHN AUX FRANCE

ST. JOHN AUX FRANCE
Never existed, I made him up. He was a
holy man nonetheless. Used to stick forks
in his eyes to show his imperviousness.
The masses roared and the Cardinals
cringed. They knew on the holy days this
man would work wonders : used to peel
water with the slice of a knife, recite
chemical formulas while standing up
on one leg alone for hours on end.
Dwarfed all the giants and roared
on for hours. Kept the good office
on the top of the towers : every
national cathedral worldwide
held a bed set aside just
for him.

5181. DREARY LORD JIM

DREARY LORD JIM
The milk on the table has no beginnings; it's
always been around. At least for me, in my 
brain, years before, it was planted. Timeless 
and ever-present. Without change. That's how
things are. Like an M&M, or a car  -  the core,
the essential idea, pre-dates itself. Eternity falling
through envious space, while each of us looks on,
absorbing what  we see. So. I. Call. It. That.
What does it take to make real change? A new
revolution by a gun, replacing the old revolution
by a gun? The one which only now is mythologized
in every fourth-grade classroom by unionized
teachers working for the state. Getting paid by
tax dollars while preaching Free. Enterprise.
I. Do. Not. Know. I just have to pay. Oh, an
endless heed is all all this for useless chimeras 
of Freedom and Cloak and Dagger and Belief
in everything equal and fine and equitably right.
Ma'am, please, if you will, pass me the bullshit.
Please.

5180. TEAR ME DOWN SOME, I KNOW I CAN COMMUNICATE WITH DOGS

TEAR ME DOWN SOME, 
I KNOW I CAN
COMMUNICATE 
WITH DOGS
I don't have to prove a thing. Isn't that weird? The brainstorm
where the candy-store was is now a bowling alley made of
green. My lead dog Guider pisses there all the time. We talk.
-
My second dog, Jingo the Parasite, has a sister who's an elf. We
understand that to be exceptional, and discuss its ins and outs in 
our own courtly manner  -  from a long line of junkers, he knows
what the junkyard dog feels. Pontiacs and a Lincoln in rare
profusion; everything together, baling his hay and feed.
-
The third dog I want to mention is the worse of the three : I call
her Dioge, pronouncing the 'e'. You may think, as I did once, that 
it's short for his full name, Diogenes. But it's not. Simply put, the
fine dog's name is D O G; spells dog. These are elements of things
I can talk of. We communicate well, these canines and me.