5530. CREATURES LIKE THAT

CREATURES LIKE THAT

I'm sick in my head, stuck like a Tesla 

in a theory of class-electronics. My wires 

are wired weirdly at all. I simply have no 

basis no more. Any longer, Nikolai.

5529. WELL-HONED EDGES

WELL-HONED EDGES

The watermelon man sings his own praises, sitting on 

the Elizabeth street next to his truck. One truck, filled

high with green orbs  -  the rack body sags with its

orchard-field fruit. Watermelons fat and dense along

the ground. Green water shells holding their red insides.

5528. SHARPIE

SHARPIE

You may think I want to live all this  -  the thin

veneer of nonchalance, the eating in diners that

charge by the minute, the taxicab ride in reverse.

I get nothing back; no money, no grace. Nothing

but the old perverted sneer on some bearded

Middle Eastern guy's intrepid face. 'Driving for

fourteen days straight!', he says, in that perfectly

inimitably stupid accent. "I am very happy for you

then, sir,' I say in reply before he crashes a wall.

-

'We all die together, or we all live as one.' That's 

also what he told me before the lights went out  -  

the hospital plasma bank didn't have his number.

Fortunate for me, as well, was the finding that I

had no blood to give. Loose as a lamb on the lark

of a lemming, I ran off into the dark-foiled night.

5527. WHY I HATE THE DRUM MACHINE

WHY I HATE THE 

DRUM MACHINE

It's a rock solid line to nowhere, patterns of repetition

and cheap-sounding noises. The splay of too many notes,

 too high and treble somehow, not like a drum at all.

I don't understand the concept  -  it being the presence

of hands-on tempo and definition being sought. Nothing

of that comes out of this at all. It's pure lazy grain.

-

Falsity and hallelujah alike; not worth a graft or a

contortion. I am the humbled servant of another school,

beating in jungles on tom-toms for message and urgent

sound. Why not resound? What is this electronic ticker,

instead? A pale staccato pacemaker  -  like an old 

woman wears to bed. Better the silence, to me.

-

Junkers and narrow-minds; the sort of men

who wish to stay out-land, afar, distanced.

5226. SICK SAD SOLID

SICK SAD SOLID

All of the things above are heavenward fleeing :

the time of the now is a sickening mess and I want

nothing new planted for fear it will grow. Outside

some gunslinger's house on a Pennsylvania roadway,

I am slung over the wheels of a car  -  the gang he was

part of lived here, hiding out, until capture. Now it's all

nothing but a note on a roadside plaque. I enter the house

looking, but I can't get in  -  so many ghosts are crowding.

-

People don't listen to me when I tell them about myself. 

They laugh, or run off. Frankly, it's painful but here's the deal:

I am not here for you; my visible eyes are but marbles, the

things you think you see. I am spirit, enforced in a rubric so

you can recognize. I don't care if you do or not, though I

wish you would. I am ten thousand years old, as if that

number really means anything at all. I have seen a million 

candles go out in a lifetime of light. I am indifferent to 

darkness yet hate disillusion and lies.

-

The ditch-digger's ditch is nearing its bottom.

There is no deeper cut to go. Nearby is a stream,

running circles around everything near. The moss grows,

the lichens, the mushrooms and stems. How sad it all

seems in this dark and dreary churchyard in a cavern

by the wall.  One hundred years later, here it is, all.

I will keep my quiet in the peace of this place.

5225. WE HAVE PLAYED

WE HAVE PLAYED

We have played our hand out until there was nothing

left  -  thatched huts, old barns, the carry-over of an

old generation. Memories are starker than the end of

an envelope flap slicing into a tongue. The goats are

somehow brought out of the truck on the side lawn

of Washington Square. Tomorrow is the big day.

-

Love abounds where evil sleeps  -  two-for-one, like

the price of a bargain-basement slip-up. The lovers, by

this time tomorrow, will be all arrayed  -  arms a'kimbo, 

things overlapping, red stains and bruises on necks and 

legs. Frankly, me dear, I cannot take it any more.

It has all become too much. We have played.

5224. MY NAZI GREATCOAT

MY NAZI GREATCOAT

Here, in the center of the white hallway, off the

alcove leading to the grand windows, are the evidences

of what has transpired. The General, having recently left,

has entered his other realm : bosses and commands and

duty. The wine glasses on the wide table are unattended.

There is no one else here, yet everything reminds us of 

the moment. A man has left white gloves upon his chair.

5223. STOLEN FROM ME

STOLEN FROM ME

The ends of the means never really mattered; like

Joni Mitchell tried saying a long time ago : we are

stardust, we are golden. Crazy air-headed hippy

twit. It comes around to nothing, all the smattering

of the long applause. In looking up at the nighttime

sky, already Jupiter has a billboard or two.

-

I raced my Carlton to the head of the pack  -  

twenty-one cigarette minutes later, they all were

seen and gone. Moments in a stolen language;

comes down all to gibberish now. If God climbed 

down from his mountain now, there'd be no one

there to greet him. Who invented the computer-screen

envy we're all tied up against? Not He?

-

Ten stones of granite, each with a curse? Some weird

slab of rock on fire; another Moses with a burned-up 

face? Radiation marks upon human flesh  -  marred and

scarred for the rest of this life. I want to run and hide,

my logic is all dishevelled. I cannot any longer see.

Everything old has been stolen from me.

5522. CAN YOU BE MY ANTI-DEPRESSANT?

CAN YOU BE MY 

ANTI-DEPRESSANT?

Banging sticks on the forest trees  -  no one hears so

no one answers. I am blessed with a trickle-down

form of silence so benign. My anti-depressant?

Can you be mine?

-

When the cheery wind blows throughout these trees,

I neither listen nor notice nor heed. I want nothing, so

as to have to give nothing back. Take it from me,

I have no need. Can you be my anti-depressant?

-

It really is beautiful out here. The vista is so grand.

I am hanging from this tree  -  until the rope breaks

anyway and drops me back to land. Can you

have been my anti-depressant?

5521. SPORTS

SPORTS

Shelley? Didn't he play for the Mets

and they always forgot the 'e'? Milton?

Wasn't he on the Pirates? They called him

Beanball Milton, and said he was blind as a bat

when he pitched. Rilke? Didn't he play a

tippy-toe'd third base for the Giants? And 

wasn't Roethke on the Dodgers, always

stopping the game for some silly pigeon 

to pass? I really know my sports.

5520. I'M SORRY, BUT I ABHOR OPERA

I'M SORRY, BUT I 

ABHOR OPERA

Before the day is long, the long mornings shorten.

I see people singing while they do their chores  -

singing, in fact, about their chores. What is all that?

I hear them singing of larks and broken hearts, the

red sea and awkward virgins. They sing on horseback,

and in carriages. Like some inebriated parson in a country

church permeated by chemicals and coal gas, they all look, to

me, as drunks, and dumb as a stupor  -  crazed, berserk, the lot.

-

I'd rather sweep with sticks the czar's country lane than bend

my knee to one of these sick fantasies. Rich people who swoon 

cannot fall too soon   -   I want to be there when their revolution

rings its noisesome bell to take them down a notch. In fact, to tell

the honest truth, I'd like to be the one to do it, with a knife perhaps.

5519. WHAT DOES IT PROFIT?

WHAT DOES IT PROFIT

(amanda graves, pray for everone else 
but don't pray for me)

No more talk; silence is the only option now.

The man in the far-side seat has placed his

antique into the heap  -  '49 Merc, or something

low and fat like that. No one wants it anymore.

The cowboy goons are gone, Marlon Brando is 

dead, and the fast guy what's his name James

Dean is cut in two behind his wheel. Sal Mineo

died by the knife, while Ernest Hemingway just

got tired of it all. And why not? What good, 

after all, is life?

-

If I ever had to give a eulogy for someone important 

or wise, I'd stand straight up, look out, and say  - 

 'it's not like that at all, no it's not like that at all.'

5518. MARCELLO

MARCELLO

There are a million large waves washing up 

from the sea...and I am one of them, looking 

ahead. Dead matter to the flotsam, heavy 

jetsam to the mate. There's no getting 

around it, and there's no better way.

-

Some miners have lost their minds while

these scuttles are floating abroad. Coal, oil,

fuel, grains, the aimless hums of, even, a mental

liposuction for the morons in the play. It's all

as one big heave, and I no longer have a say.

-

The Gods that answer are 
always talking past me anyway.

5517. I HAVE

I HAVE

I have a secret rendezvous with only a 

certain form of Death  - an Emily Dickinson 

fragrance of of a secret room of doom. 

I've re-lived it now five hundred times. 

The echoes are yet running in my corridor.

5516. I REALIZE WHAT IT IS I MISS

I REALIZE WHAT IT IS I MISS

It's the darkness and gloom, those old gray 

streets, the solid concrete and steel, the 

shadows everywhere, like dusk at all time.

 Everything today is like a carnival -

color and plastic and play.

I want to go back, under

the Grand Central ramp - 

where everything dark

creeps by me.

5515. THINGS I'VE WANTED TO SAY

THINGS I'VE WANTED TO SAY

Are things never said before. I understand the

color of your iced-radish soup, something like

matching your eyes. I find that I listen really

good to foreign policy speeches  -  the kind

there used to be with Nixon and Johnson and

Ford. No one has them now, least of all the

current guy in the shed. I used to enjoy them :

strategies and reasonings for killing ten thousand,

for paying Monsanto for all that Napalm, for giving

Boeing their millions for airships that kill. For 'thanking'

the soldiers who'd done it all? Bullshit forever,

my country reeks of thee.

-

Now, I don't know, I've lost all that and don't

want to listen to crap. I'm too old for bullshit and

having nothing to gain. My clock's running out, and

the sand in my hourglass runs right up my ass. What

difference does anything make? There's a lawyer

for every sop, and a sop  -  as needed  -  for every

foul-mouthed lawyer who wants to run a play.

-

Ticket's to the Super Bowl? Want to go see the Olympics?

Soccer your game? Come with me  -  I can win this case for

you, take all your dough, and handle your bankruptcy too.

Perks and gratuities; that's how it's played.

5514. THE CRAZY ORGAN GRINDER MONKEY GUY

THE 

CRAZY ORGAN GRINDER 

MONKEY GUY

Sometimes at sunset the man with the monkey

comes playing his music in the streets below :

children laugh and mothers smile : things of 

the moment stop still for good cheer. I don't

know why  -  I always took it as sad, a music

both dark and profound. It was 1924, and

I still remember being there : Aldo Cavalcanti,

the name I went by then. Previous incarnations,

like my father and his kin.

-

I thought I'd forget it all but now I remember everything.

The grave of Lilly Omadoro, all those lilacs, and

the horse, pulling her glass-front wagon, the

funeral hearse. Gates of Heaven, on Gun Hill

Road, in the Bronx? Memory fails precision,

yet that's what I recall. A sadness too.

- 

The hundred trees were thick with green as we

all slowly returned home. A Prince Street tenement,

and no one talking. The music guy came by

unknowingly  -  I gave him a dime to go away.

He almost cried for his mistake. 'I'm a'so sorry,

I did'na know this, I'm a'sorry again.' And

he left. The language was funny, but I

understood. He was gone, and we

all stayed sad.

5513. UNFOCUSED ART

UNFOCUSED ART

I'm sitting back in full color  - watching

Bob Dylan dance like a goose. I'm

swearing the girl on the stage is green :

big feathers and a boa hat, pasties, I

think. Or are they his sodden fingers

clasping? Life, then, really is a series 

of dreams. My, my how things

have changed.

5512. MY BIG MAN (the writer at home)

MY BIG MAN

(the writer at home)

Cartwheel elliptics and nothing to show : sunglass

and wine glasses all as one. On the wall, the bicycle

sets standing up, one wheel always spinning. The

groin has a callus, the back aches still. For too many

years alone I've tried this begging route - now my 

fingernails are three-inches long and I'm digging

your back. We are in this moment together, no

looking back : the jouster and the jongleur alike

have just come in from the afternoon stage. you 

knew they were coming; I hadn't a clue. Now

we've got to feed them. That's all up to you.

I'm sitting at home writing; tell them

to leave me be.

5511. GREAT FINGERS OF CHANCE

GREAT FINGERS OF CHANCE

The idea of a wrench is to stagger the bolt, break 

the silence of the metal seal  -  thread to thread, a

tight embrace. The idea of love and lust together 

combine in somewhat the same way, to hold things 

fast together. We target the maniac who runs of 

the road. 'He's gone too far this time!' 

-

Five hundred thousand broken marriages  -  what they

used to be called  -  will attest to what I say. The sundered

seeking of comfort and company; two stupid words said

once too often on an altar or a floor of convenience.

What's given short shrift is too little thought.

-

The farmer doesn't just plow his field  -  the soil is

first prepared and sweetened, cared for, and watched

after long before the harrow comes.

5510. FENESTRATE

FENESTRATE

I left my pencil on the ledge, right next to where

that asshole jumped from  -  goodbye to all that, 

as Robert Graves wrote in 1929. I'll take it all

back again too. I'm riding my petrified motorcycle

down Rahway Avenue. I'm running right past the 

prison when I think of you : Tinkerbelle scat-squad

gay-blade inmate. Lock down in key town, remember?

-

On 34th street they keep the big money as small change, 

and they wander too  -  between apple-carts and the 

sunglass man, the pretzel guy and the pastry slops. Tourists

come out from Dubuque and ask me : where is the illicit

center of all attraction here? I take them to my room

-

At night, the sky drops like a blackboard guillotine;

all those crazy heads go flying off.

5509. MOST AUSPICIOUS

MOST AUSPICIOUS

Keep on waiting for something to happen. Go ahead.

Here, right around the bend, the slickfest train will be

arriving and all those drunks and felons stumbling off into

their other defeats  -  the home life of rascals and cheats.

Dish-cloth, wash-rag, motherlode, basket. Everything at

once, in a great big heap.

-

I wouldn't get off at New Brunswick if Napoleon's

mother herself was paying me. Swineherders fester

in that plant's meadows, and everything there is a'tumble.

You'd better know the other tongue and wear a Stetson hat.

The man in the diamond Chevy is looking back at some

senorita's wide ass. Live is a chivalrous mess of tacos and beans.

5508. CHARLIE RANGEL BEEFSTEAK LIAR

CHARLIE RANGEL 

BEEFSTEAK LIAR

I keep my bellows in my bedroll, it's more

secure that way. Easier to access too. There

is sand in all my pores; I've got nowhere left

to go. Vagabond ways and secondary cousins,

the whole wide USA is making me puke :

-

Man on the TV says lies, lies, lies. Man

beyond nods some more. Lies, lies, lies.

-

Death to a dollar there ain't no more left -

this nation is bankrupt, living on a dream

deceased, broke like a banker's midwife in

a childless world. Illusion takes over : 'we 

can think this through.' 'Fraid not, scaredy cat.

-

It's all figment of a juicy lie  -  you trump the

corner, I'll cover the middle. We manufacture

more junk, they buy it all. Plastic imported

crap; sells like gold. Swarming the un-natural

stores, lining up at fake dairy cases. It's our cause

to push filth. It's our mission to never end.

-

Man on the TV says lies, lies, lies. Man

beyond nods some more. Lies, lies, lies.

5507. YOU WANT AN ABSTRACT WATER SOURCE?

YOU WANT AN 

ABSTRACT WATER SOURCE?

My tears in a bucket, how would that do? I can't

bend over any deeper than this; my sorrow is

already to painful to bear, and for anyone else

to watch. This stuff should never see the light

of day. Witness the oasis, but then let it fade.

-

You want an abstract resignation? You want

me to say I give up : okay, that's pretty easy.

Time on your hands is time on my head. I'll be

here when the lilac's bloom again.

-

The primrose lane is paved. Achilles' tendon

is still hurting in the absence and that big monster

from 'Gilgamesh' is dead. Something's gurgling

in the age-old water. We are men, and part of

Mankind's mess  -  old, with swagger and pus,

strong and delirious, grown wild with desire,

and now...so tired. You want an abstract

water source? Leave that to us.

5506. MY REASON FOR BEING

MY REASON FOR BEING

Let me propose : it is all now lost in the glove,

as distant as a hand in an avalanche  -  that

snowy glide of the last thing you saw. Before

the mountain caved in. Before the whole world

went white. I have no index cards from the old days

to show  -  penciled-in info, penned explanations.

Nothing I can bring to the party that would help 

with the lighting. I've always been a latecomer, the

fireman on his probationary term, 6-months to learn

on the job. But  -  alas  -  too late for the fire; just

look at that pile of ashes where ten used to live.

Everything over and done : one hand in the 

gutter, the other on the rung. This ladder, 

buddy, goes nowhere. What men do 

now is no longer my concern.

-

How people consume their originations is

legion  -  the stuff of bibles and history.

Hannibal and Charlemagne dining out

with Alexander the Great.

5505. IT HAS SOMEHOW OCCURRED

IT HAS SOMEHOW OCCURRED

It has somehow occurred to me that I am always alone, with

no one to talk with and no one to reach. Solitary confinement

like this is a bitch. Can you hear me, then, can you? A minute

into morning, and I'm already lost in the rest of the day  -  a dim

light at the station, where the one lamp, near to my head, has

been out for 6 months. I sit nevertheless, awaiting. Just the

other afternoon, coming in the other way, I saw there was 

a painter crew from the railroad there, with ladders and

maintenance stuff. But they were just sitting, more lost in

space than I ever am. I hope it was break time for them;

and I bet that lamp-light is still gone. So little gets done

by so much and so many. So, as I sit, I hear the sounds

of cars and a bus  -  the taxi guys, as always, drumming

their foul minds on the tops of their cars, waiting for

fares while they smoke. Drink cheap coffee from the

handicapped guy. Eat donuts from the donut guy's

truck. Might as well be a tomb. They're all gonna'

die from those habits real soon. I'll say 

goodbye if I have to, I guess.

5504. NO PATTERN IN THE PATTERN, BUT DISASTER FOR SURE

NO PATTERN IN THE PATTERN, 

BUT DISASTER FOR SURE

In the Springtime, everything blooms. And then 

by the Solstice it's all over in June. People call it 

happy, people call it gay. But, alas, it's all finished

by then for sure. Hiatus, when everything sits. The

Summer just says, 'I ain't a'marchin' anymore!'.

-

There's no getting back from what's gone. Each 

tree is tired, every branch just wants to wilt. I stand 

alongside the willow, wondering what winsome world 

will take it away. Over and done with. A memory.

5503. 50,000 LUCKIES

50,000 LUCKIES

And why not. Sometimes the easy way out : every

chance is another disclaimer; something to be said

for nothing. I built this wooden shed in three days with 

about three hundred nails, who's counting. There I

brought it up. A wooden shack with a painted door, a

window made of rotgut and a shelf for twenty bottles.

500 hundred books later, here I still sit.

-

I found myself in love with round numbers after the

day I met you : a penchant for iambic, I am like that.

Multiply the force by the acclamations of love  -  one

hundred five hundred a thousand lines an inch. Well,

there, the opposite of Haiku  -  so much piled on

information that the pattern and the lines are infinite.

-

Heard it before, done it all. Every heartbeat, 

another excuse for something.

5502. I WENT ON FROM THERE

I WENT ON FROM THERE

Midnight in Moscow, or some other precious time : I

walked past the Outbid Palace, crying in my heart.

This yesterday was over and all the diamonds in the

Orthodox world could never outdo these icons in

my mind. I remembered where I'd been, and why.

-

Outside the hilltop mansion, on some Catskill peak,

all those dogs barking and the man with the Jeep;

two sacks of groceries, to keep him a week. He's

hard at work, hiding out, seeking solace, away

from the world as on an Alpine peak.

-

Sometimes it happens like this, even before we get old:

confused and audacious, not knowing the this from the that,

mixed up with all things, the eithers and the ors. I am a

shining urn, dispensing some rich, dark flow. I bring,

or at least I hope to bring, a Grace to the world,

of a heavenly place and presence never seen

before. As 'adios' means 'go with God',

so too I mean every word.

5501. SAM

SAM

My dog is a wonderful wallow, her neck as

thick as gold. I know where she dwells is

a most-certain Heaven of a detail for things

to unfold. I'll not see that through  -  she walks

here with me, and sleeps at my side all the

time. As I am content when she is best; my 

workload is lessened by her just being mine.

5500. MYSTERY AND STUPIDITY

MYSTERY AND STUPIDITY

I want to conjoin the dead, and bring them back.

It's is the longest day of the year and the things which

are just beginning will still have their ends, just a bit

longer 'til that fabric rends. It's all silence now,

everything is. A stupid silence that rules the day.

-

The man with the Toy Store is running. His Lionel

Trains will not wait, the rubber ducky beneath his 

arm is too large for any tub I've ever seen;

still I want to conjoin the dead.

-

When this morning light starts echoing down,

between buildings and street, on Seventeenth

or on Twenty-Third, things will all be different

again. The Chelsea Hotel will run a new light 

on staggering dames and twisted old men, the

needle-marked denizens of the now and the then.

-

I want to awake dragons, still the running force,

elope with the Earthman's new wife! It is all I

can do from driving away every natural thing :

the deer in my headlight, the raccoon fighting 

fists with its brother the squirrel. Can you find 

me, can you, in this puzzle?

-

It is the longest day of the year and I am gone

mad again with the force within  -  a sense of

revelry and age. I have been here ten thousand

years, and the mystery and stupidity run on.

-

This coffee tastes like saddle polish. This water

tastes like soil. They way I used to run my world,

the gnash of coal and oil  -  these are all the things I 

carry, what I bring forth from my other world.

Listen up, oh stupid people ! the mysteries are

unfurled ! and it is the longest day of the year

indeed!

5499. DOCTOR FILTH

DOCTOR FILTH

Everything is fleeing the stove, and the patter of

feet can be heard. Do you too wish to run off?

Miraculous poses like I've not seen before, are

stretched out like a public man's wares : all those

pots and the pans, the rags and the wagons  -  the 

elixirs and potions for magic relief. I hear a horse

whinny as it patiently waits for another Doctor

Filth to get going. Run off, my little man, this 

day is done with you. Run off, and get away.

5498. SEVEN BOOKS OF GOLD

SEVEN BOOKS OF GOLD

The maimed man, the broken one, the lame

man, the twisted one. He came by me today

to talk. He reached out his hand, for something,

for anything, that I ignored. I'm a bastard like that

sometimes. I look like shit and I feel like wurst.

-

I was reading Mark on the train. Mark 8 or 13, or

something. It's just the most direct gospel, but it's

so fucked up and difficult to read : there's this one

part, all jammed together, three or four stories

crossing into one another : a madman on an island,

'the Geresene Demoniac' across the water. The cure

of this man is as follows : Jesus goes to the other side

of the lake, alone; none can follow him, to the

-

Gentile side, where the pigs are kept. The demoniac,

presumably Gentile, is possessed by an unclean Spirit,

named Legion who, as is the custom of demons in

Mark, immediately recognizes Jesus as the son of God.

Mark emphasises the enormous strength of this madman;

he haunts tombs, no chains can be found to hold him.

Day and night among the tombs and on the mountains

he was always crying out and bruising himself with

stones. When Legion is expelled by Jesus (even the

single word 'Legion' , which the devils possessing the

demon gave as their name, is singular but collective

here - 'My name is Legion, for we are many') and

entered into the herd of swine, which herd promptly,

en masse, destroys itself. The cure prompts terror

among the other Gerasenes on that side of the lake,

who implore Jesus to go away. He does so, leaving the

madman cured and docile, clothed and in his right mind.

He tells the man to remain there, and proclaim his cure.
-
Then there this woman who's been bleeding for twelve 
years, seeking a cure in the crowd around Jesus back on 
the land. She secretly touches his garment, Jesus exclaims
'who touched my garment!' and the power goes out of him
him. She is cured. Unlike to the madman, 
He tells her to be quiet and tell no one.
-
Then the important Jew comes forth and tell Jesus his
daughter is dead ('the daughter of Jairus is dead'). He 
pushes through the crowd, leaving it, and takes the 
parents with Him to the dead girl's side, saying 'she is
not dead; she is merely sleeping.' They laugh at him, with 
disdain. Nonetheless she arises, and all are amazed, after
He's taken her hand and said an Aramaic incantation 
over her. He tells her to rise, and she does. He commands
the parents to silence and tells them to get her something
to eat, 'she is hungry'. Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue.
The name Jairus means 'the awakener'.
-
Weirdly, none of this is anything new; forerunners of these 
people, and foreshadows and echoes of these and other 
tales can all be found in the Old Testament. Jairus is
mentioned in Esther. It's all very dark and mysterious.
I read on, and reel. It's all so deep as to hurt.
Why am I back in this world?

5497. OVERTIME BLUES

OVERTIME BLUES

That barricade is to my doorway, which is

closed.  All very simple, communication is

cut : I've weathered the mob and cleaned up 

the mess. The charwoman's crystal car has

returned to its state   -  some say pumpkin, 

but I don't know. There's no magic to the

magic going that goes on around here.

-

All the flying things are grounded, and the

circus tents are down. Any manifestation of

ribald play and frantic glory has long ago been

removed. The Turkish parlor is still filled with

people, as if they'd not heard the news.

5496. AFRAID OF PLACES, AFRAID OF FACES

AFRAID OF PLACES, 

AFRAID OF FACES

Nothing amiss in the jungles of Africa now  -  the 

Zulu warriors have all gone home, with their winning 

ways and glamorous thoughts. The shaman was

fried at the stake for one too many mistakes. 

Gazelles and giraffes, alike, applauded. I was

not keen to continue, but bravely soldiered on.

-

The pinnacle of a power is sometimes just a pyramid

of mind  -  a vanity, a mistake, a bad confluence of

events that no one stopped. The first man who made

the dugout canoe  -  where would that have been?  - 

some Nile basin warrior or some Allegheny speedster

in buckskin and leather? Floating by committee, with

all to agree? I'd never know. I'd always wonder.

-

Like those dark people in the caves of Lascaux,

flinging a pigment by the light of the torch, putting

an ochre or a madder on the hard stone wall, a line

of black in the shapes of a horse or an oxen, or some 

fornicating bull. Is that how they learned the world

around them? Witnessed something, then ran in to 

mark it down? Is that how it happened, oh shyest one  -  

afraid of faces and afraid of places? You tell me, 

and let the rest of the world be dumb and mute.

5495. WHY I'VE GOT TO EVADE YOU (the modern age)

WHY I'VE GOT TO EVADE YOU

(the modern age)

The sullen vase sits upon the shelf  -  motiveless,

as if it had a meaning to divulge but cared no to.

I meander over to inspect the flowers, as if I too

had reason to do so. I don't. There is none.

-

This is another happening : tomorrow's venture

blistered into a liquid-filled heart set to burst.

Dim light thwarts any reading  -  of this place,

this thing, or the situation at hand. I assume we 

have been here before. That sort of 

familiarity breeds a contempt.

-

Once I saw a car after it crashed; split straight

around and up a roadside telephone pole. Occupants

were all over the grass  -  shattered would be too 

good a word. The silence around the scene was as

odd as the still-spinning right front wheel higher up

the pole. There was no motive or reason.

-

Right then I could have been far away, someplace 

else, watching all this on screen, or between blinders,

or through a 3-D lens. It's as if I remembered common

things of some thirty years before. So much has changed,

yet a memory lingers.

-

Alone, I am sitting here to write to you.

Singly, I am amassing letters to words to sentence 

to message  -  the thin bronze of sequel to event, after

the fact. These are difficult times, all around us,

and for me, each of us, all.

-

I wish nothing but joyous news.

I want to live forever.