Monday, June 30, 2014

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.

Sunday, June 29, 2014

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.

Saturday, June 28, 2014

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.

Friday, June 27, 2014

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.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

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.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

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.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

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.

Monday, June 23, 2014

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.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

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.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

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.

Friday, June 20, 2014

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.