5856. DUBIOUS FRUITFUL

DUBIOUS FRUITFUL

'Where is it you'd like to be? How far to go?

My mother is the one who kept you going.'

-

Now it's miles back for the steel mill where

my father made barrels : the small-stock

staves man, churning his lumber and wood.

-

Horse feed and oats in a bucket. 

5855. I LEAVE A LOT OF THINGS UNANSWERED

I LEAVE A LOT OF 

THINGS UNANSWERED

Your rowboat is a foil in the middle of my

slipstream heart; it runs the limits of the river, 

rolling bank to bank.  Like a Mark Twain 

impersonator myself, I run all the gamuts of

being a fool. Here is my shoulder to cry on.

-

We are sitting too long in the sun, young John.

The pleasure is hurting my head.

5854. MEIR KAHANE IS DEAD

MEIR KAHANE IS DEAD

When Meir Kahane was shot and killed,

I was looking the other way  -  a crowd of

people, one loose gunman, Marriot Hotel,

Lexington Ave., and all the rest. The guy

ran off, tried to subdue a cab, and then

turned instead and shot a cop. In the chest,

this cop instead of going down stayed up, 

shot back, and got his man. Carlos Acosta

shot the shooter in the chin. El Sayyid Nosair.

He always sounded like an airline to me.

- 

Well, well, that's the way these things transpire:

quickly, like the world's a'fire; same with Robt.

Kennedy in that basement kitchen L.A. hotel.

Down in an instant; Sirhan Sirhan wrestled

to the floor and kept in place forevermore.

-

Ideology has a way of not crimping the

ideologue's style  -  instead it adds impetus 

and pushes him along. Things occur, as it

seems without plan, yet years later all of

it turns out to be part of a great scheme.

Everything was marked and counted.

Everything done and delivered.

5853. NEWS FOR ENTERTAINMENT

NEWS FOR ENTERTAINMENT

Triple bypass, she's not dead. Everything 

was done in time.' The passing moment 

carries so much weight. Fellow traveler 

along the road, all hail. 

-

I remember some years back a Labor Day

weekend like this, much the same anyway  -  

clear blue, grandsome days, nothing much

going on. The world was a paradise for a day.

-

Then the planes hit the towers, took them all

down. Everything tried to alter composure; for 

a month or two there was frenzy everywhere  -

the dirt and grime, the trucks and cranes, the 

lights and the mendicants running.

-

Soon enough  -  believe it or not  -  it all settled

down. The criers had done their crying, the killers

their killing, and the massed American forces too

eventually set out on all their violent missions.

Whatever. I've nothing more to say.

-

Now it's a hundred and fifty years back, or so it

seems. The frivolous world has forgotten, all those

pieces of puzzle and fire have gone back to their

place on the shelves and everything is frivolous

once again. Too bad the line has been broken?

-

I rather liked the dark and despair, 

the anguish everywhere.

5852. CARMELIZE ME

CARMELIZE ME

This crazy bakery truck has now lost all

its energy  -  bad glass, can't see out the

windshield, and no longer the brakes do 

work. Like a foreign man in a money 

passage, the entry is already overdue.

The medieval page is taking his notes,

marking for serfdom the leaders and

goons. I love to come in too late, listening

for nothing else but what I missed. What

kind of fool am I? I should write a song.

5851. GIVING FOR BLOSSOM

GIVING FOR BLOSSOM

It's not like knowing the answers to every crucial

question here before me, but more like simply

understanding what an answer means  -  I don't

really know. You ask what drives me forward,

how I do it? I don't know. Every constellation

in my starry sky is not yet ranked and numbered,

not even named. Like a bad explorer, I trudge

numbly onward, hacking weeds and maybe

trees, but somehow maintaining a steady pass.

It's good enough for me.

-

There's a language in the words I use  -  that's a

lucky break for me. Otherwise my words would be

as meaningless to you as they'd be foul to someone

else. I like to muss them up, those feathers made

of money, pride, and greed. The Numbnuts Harrys

out there disagree, trying too hard to understand.

-

That's the way it goes  -  presented as a foil, a finger

in some dike, plugging leaks of fame and information

until I get it right. My mud house has not yet invented

brick; I still live amidst the soil of the old.

5850. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SHOW?

WHAT DO YOU 

HAVE TO SHOW?

What do you have to show for this life?

Already your trinkets and baubles are tarnished.

I noticed your car has a flat, and your cabinetry

could use some new varnish. What do you

have to show for this life that can keep?

-

Meadowlark skyward jetstream arcing high,

bluebird singing dashing willow spry. What

do you have to show for this life, your high

times running so high.

5849. RIDING AT DAWN

RIDING AT DAWN

Nicely glazed brick, dim yellow.

The train station at dawn. Sunlight

beams at the window  -  the sensate

girl, unaware, stares down at her phone.

Like line muttering words, the sunlight

drowns her face as the train crosses water.

5848. OF UNCERTAIN DERIVATION

OF UNCERTAIN DERIVATION

You were not my first intention : I'd spent many

nights beneath the bridge, hiding for sleep beneath

the trestle. Easy food was everywhere; all those

stupid restaurants and the things they'd throw out.

Candli-lit dinners for two where I'd watch the

intended lovers dining at the windows : dim light,

another course, another glass of 1960's wine.

'Born Yesterday'; I knew it as a book, they knew

it as a wine. We stood our ground together  -  two

kids on two bikes, running midnights beneath

the elevated westside highway. Strange creatures

 roamed the docks and wharves around us.

We took solace in their company, as would

two lambs among the wolves. So strange

to think back now.

5847. OH SEVASTAPOL

OH SEVASTOPOL

'I want to carry a gun to the Russian 

frontier and kill the first bastard I see. 

That'll be enough for me, even if I die.'

5846. AT THE LINKS

AT THE LINKS

Those who cross themselves while passing a church

are fools for sure  -  giddy with the jest of stupid love,

for something they neither see nor understand. Like blind

golfers shooting pillows at holes in the grass, senseless

deviants they are for certain. How different is sex for

money from sex for procreation only?

-

Here then, take this away  -  You've got my battered mind

and valised heart already locked and sundered. I'm reading

stories of old Elizabethtown, things by Frank Thorne, all

those Sons of Liberty, revolting rascals, hiding out in

the Watchung Mountains nearby. Hidden copper mines

at  the forests aby the site of today's Trap Rock Quarry.

What a shame it's all long gone; even the Freedom song.

You trade off one kind of control for another, I guess.

5845. MY INTAGLIO, BROGUE, VISION

MY INTAGLIO, BROGUE, VISION

The way out of here is swirling before me, and now

I've lost a shoe and bottled my reserve. Get me an

oar for this rowboat. Now I can get away.

-

In dreamtime, I was huge. I was holding my hands out

for others, perhaps for you, in the hopes of getting 

followers. Words were tattooed on my palms  -  from 

a Bible before there'd been a bible. Another tongue, 

entire : 'emen maronecki duas ges fordie hauynge trop.' 

The angel Moroni had called this 'the tripwire 

language of God yet to come.'

-

Memorize these endings and bring allegiance to the fore.

My intaglio, my own black pupils, my fevered eyes:

without the listing of angels and demons, there'd be

nothing left to separate. I already have your heart.

5844. OLD TIME MUSEUMS

OLD TIME MUSEUMS

Old time museums were the best : the kind, the funky kind

with shrunken heads and scalped soldiers shown in disarray.

Earthquake upheavals where the shards and ash were still stuck

onto people's bodies in glass cases. Vesuvius and Pompeii kind

of stuff. And then paintings of all those beheaded monsters and

befouled maidens dying in lust for Jesus. Stigmata and sacred hearts,

girls muttering prayers while the devil ate their parts. A six-gun

on display, from 1881, with a barrel  -  the card said  -  as long as

'Wanderlust Billy's penis'. A gift from some showgirl at a hotel

in Philly. The shovels and the pickaxes of the forty-niners who never

came back. San Francisco Earthquake gold. The shoes of Diamond

Jim Brady and the waistcoat of Tom Thumb. And then, those huge

rooms filled with paintings of old Egyptian scenes  -  finding the

Sphinx half buried in sand, Oriental Masters levitating  -  all that

fine and crazy stuff for maybe twenty-five old cents. 

I loved those old museums best.

5843. EASE THIS OFF MY HEAD

EASE THIS OFF MY HEAD

The fucking garage collapsed, all coming down on me;

everything in it was packed away, but now all the shelving

is gone. Forget the motorcycle within, it's now a blasted

rubble. What am I going to do? I'll never replace those wheels.
This will all be nothing but trouble.

5842. DECK OF CARDS

DECK OF CARDS

Make my hands sweat, sweetheart; lording

over me. Bring the foursquare justice back  -

if I lose this, hang me from a tree. This paper

kingdom, these coated cards, bring me nothing

but a blasted misery : technicolor cowards and

network cameramen. The whole town is closing 

down but relics like me stay behind, with no 

place else to go, and no place left to be.

5841. WHAT IS CARRIED

WHAT IS CARRIED

The small breeze caresses the old land where

once the two ships sank  -  now they are huddled

hulks, each with its own hidden framework sunk

in the sand. Sometimes, at the lowest of low tides,

you can still see the ribbed-hulk of wood-structure

peeking above a dwindling surf. All those mysteries

of time and of place : how many long years now was

it? They say 'one hundred and thirty four years' and

no one remembers a thing. Ships carried people from

places afar; to here, to here, past a harbor to sand-bar.

Entryways by Verrazano, the Narrows, the portal to this

other world : swaddled, peaked people, stunned by a

dis-belief; without a strength and staggering, tired.

To rest, they sit in this salt-water field; providing

new dreams for themselves for all this eternity.

5840. THE SUM OF THE HARLOT

THE SUM OF 

THE HARLOT

Budweiser trucks are lined up in buckets; the guy

wearing shorts is working the spigots. It must be

the universal day of keg party infamy. Fifteen

thousand half-drunks in one or two leaky 

Porta-Johns waiting. Like Popes or something:

Porta John the twenty-third. I think I have to go.

-

Heavenly headache, would you look it that  -  that 

girl is barely dressed and thank God for the heat of

this day. Sombrero or cowboy hat, either was, not

much else. All these stupid guys, dazed and in line.

5839. WELCOME TO YOUR WONDERMENT

WELCOME TO YOUR 

WONDERMENT

Let me take you home : Davy Crockett Daniel Boone.

My prairie schooner is your house, your Conestoga wagon,

your secret doorway mouse. You'd never recognize this

world without me in it. Here is what I bring : starlight

singing and moonlight mute, the world in a sock-hatted

bundle. Even now, a blemish in the sky is shading the

fence. Windows are lit in the dark. Look, look out,

the whole entire world is calling.

5838. THANK YOU ALL

THANK YOU ALL

Thank you all for the kind cards and letters

coming in  -   yes, a part of me died and your

condolences are appreciated. It was buried in the

churchyard last Tuesday noon : part feelings, part

intention, part love and part hate. Right from birth

no one was sure what it really was. At some point

shaped like a bleeding heart, it in turn kept changing

shape  -  pitchfork, pick-axe, flaming arc. The light

of the morning always found this thing awake, awake

and screaming  -  seeking a solace or at least a refreshment.

I offered it all sorts of things, but it was always insatiable in

needs : consuming things  -  paints, pencils, coffee cups,

wrappers, bundles and ideas. Bedraggled was I, as a parent,

unsure of where to go with what I mat have had. What should

I do with this weirdsome gift : 'gift' did I say? Oh my.

Thank you all anyway.

5837. ADVENTURE STORIES

ADVENTURE STORIES

My Broadway oasis has willows and fawns :

she walks like an angel 'tween evenings and 

dawns. If I ever return from this big trip I'm 

on, I'll wait in her shadows for sadness-be-gone.

The distant perspective  -  I only understand  -

is the space between places, mediocre to grand.

-

There's a flintlock guy on the little TV, he's 

chasing down the rangers with intensity while

some local Shawnee injuns looking on do see

where they can take advantage of his property.

-

We mind gold, we seek silver.

We find copper, we want gold.

5836. FAT CALVES

FAT CALVES

The cow kind, the running kind that sit in the meadow,

lazy as all get out at least it seems. If I had such eyes, the

big brown kind, I'd never want to rise either. So here I 

am, sitting in the barbed wire enclosure, looking out at

some other world : carports and raspberry bushes; little

kids with play guns and carts. The farmer comes by, I

know, a little later in his pick-up truck to throw out a

few bales of hay. Slowly, slowly, they'll all get to it.

-

I've been sleeping in this copse for a few of these Summer

days now  -  nights are nice; warm and dark. I love the woods.

No one really knows I'm here, and those that do don't care.

-

5835. GIRLS ARE GREAT

GIRLS ARE GREAT
(bust out)

That was the name of the seamless band that

was playing on Haliborn Street. There were a

few guys in the background, but I think the rest

were girls, yeah. Everybody was smoking cigarettes,

oddly enough, the legal kind  -  pot. It's the regular

ones now you're not supposed to smoke anywhere.

Signs instruct the smoker 'twenty feet from doors.'

Too weird for me. My inclination is to bring the bottles

out here instead, and prove that drinking goes well

outdoors. Keep your fragging cigarettes and smoke 

your ass to death  -  and then drive away in your

Sarah Silverman Cadillac. OK with that?

5834. CANNOT LEAVE THE DOWNTOWN RING

CANNOT LEAVE THE
DOWNTOWN RING

The guy with the trumpet is dead  -  he was killed

by mobsters on 23rd. Mostly, before that, he never

went above 14th. Too bad on that one. I met his

wife once; she was a darling truly.

-

Now, they'll talk about this episode for a long time.

The end of Swing-Jazz, it died with Jenny Benny and

the Jefferson Boys. Myself? I wouldn't really care

but I know who did the killing here.

-

Kind of makes me smile. A little  -  like wearing a

Dick Tracy watch on a Spiderman street. Buying

Peter Parker a Batman cape. You can tell by now, I

like to mix it up. They'll never catch up to me.

-

But if they do, I'm just as dead as he.

5833. GUSTAV MAHLER IT IS

GUSTAV MAHLER IT IS

(music overhead)

The scarf around the neck is flamboyant enough

but the music really makes it. There's a lot of incendiary

strength in a foreword like that : dark matter, in music.

The girl at the dairy, where I am watching, she seems to

squirm around a little much. Adjusting this, adjusting that,

looking down at herself, as if to examine  -  breasts and shoes

together. A tug at the groin, where something is fitting too

snugly? Little kids, in the middle here, of Central Park, are

scurrying around for their free afternoon milk  -  a tiny little

waxy bottle of it, looking strange, but, they say it's milk and

it is. This little forest-looking shed was built a long time ago

just for this : dispensing clean, new, and cold, milk to the

captive city kids. The Milk Dispensary, the cow barn. Up 

until the nineteen- teens there was even a little cow farm 

and field attached in the meadow where the milk cows

grazed. It was  -  all of this  -  thought to be a grand

form of social relief. And it was. Much like the old

tea-water pump down at what became Canal Street

and Broadway, about 1860, this was an authentic

effort, for free, to aid the sorriest of the city's cases.

good intentions, for all to see. I liked it very much.

It doesn't work so well today, at all  -  they'd rather

sell maps and tea-cups for money, while

Gustav Mahler plays overhead.

5832. INHASION

INHASION

Just like invasion, and in fashion too : the boys

with the jellied guns will be coming at you. Bend

the source of this idolatry backwards, please. If

you have to kill and maim, do it somewhere else.

-

I cannot understand your Jehovah, nor your

Jesus and your Allah too. How can any of that be 

believed in this day and age  -  blood libel, skimming

from the top, worshipping false Gods but killing others

for it first? 'This land is my land'  -  and I don't mean

Woody Guthrie. You still believe all that crap? They

believe this, you believe that. The Pope parcels out all

his free real estate, and you guys fight over something

the size of Central Park. What gives?

5831. ONLY THIS NARCOLEPTIC DREAM

ONLY THIS 

NARCOLEPTIC 

DREAM

I am running with the mountains, which are not

 really mountains, instead just highland groves of

trees where little people live. When I was young,

my first and most recurring dream was about myself,

living inside of a huge, hollow oak tree. Spacious, with

presence and warmth, it seemed to take me in as much

as it seemed, as well, to be me. I came back to it time

and again. And then, another  -  I was witness to a

landing of Martians who'd infiltrate the Earth, and

with little metal discs implanted behind their ears, 

had super-powers I'd not heard of before. I was not 

one of them, just an outside stranger, watching in.

In either of these situations, no words were ever

spoken : just scenery and dream-like scapes of

oddly happenstance occurrences. I took part

in my mind, but my 'real' me too knew well 

I wasn't there. Like a screen, projecting

something else, while I kept watching.

There was always another being

over my shoulder somewhere.

5830. FOUR

FOUR

1. It takes nerves to jangle steel.

Investigate mountains thoroughly.

2. Shun the human, bless the divine;

all the while a hundred Springtime

morning birds are singing at the dawn.

3. Life demands that you disappear.

You cannot be an active agent all the time.

4. The only question there ever is, the

only item we should ever investigate:

What is the nature of this moment?'

5829. SING SONG THE PYLONS

SING SOME THE PYLONS

The sensible form of ivory, the ancients knew it -

carved into an elephant or a cobra. Something both

fierce and delicate, like the light which springs

forth when the early morning comes, or the

lines on a very old person's face. We know we

are reading something, but not sure what. 

Interpretation is a dream-like thing : thought

of in recollection, never really witnessed, and 

forgotten as it fades. By such blindness, like

the faint lines on an ivory carving, do we

make our ways across the void.

5828. DO WHAT YOU MUST DO

DO WHAT YOU MUST DO

My mother was a Copek rail, my father was a

dead ringer : in both their times on Earth the

substance was the same  - things to be done and 

no way of doing them. Dance hall stories, Navy

men on crooked piers, defense plants with

fierce machinery, injuries, hearts and diapers.

What it all amounted to was an end run around

the truth  -  we are alive, for a sternly limited

amount of time, and then we are not.

Do whatever you must do.

5827. ALL THOSE MEN

ALL THOSE MEN

All those men are here from Kashmir; they are

dark and mysterious, running a shop. They sell

Afghani trinkets, and stuff from far-off, places

like Pakistan and a small kingdom in the Himalayas.

-

I started talking to them, a long time back  -  they 

were selling heavy blankets and coats, strange boots 

and covers, they said their brothers were yet all at 

home, 'fighting the Soviets in the cold.' It somehow 

made sense to me. It was 1978, Greenwich Village, 

it was always cold there too, and, anyway, I did like 

the strange, dark girl I'd see behind the counter. They 

offered me tea and beans. I thought. They weren't

beans but some sort of nut.

-

It went on like this  - quiet, dark nights with the

settled small talk of people in common. They asked

about me as much as I asked about them. No cars,

no riches  -  we were each happy in a poverty of

circumstance that had a certain wealth of poverty.

Such a confusion, they said, could only be American.

-

Over time, long time, their war became big; every

newspaper suddenly took sides, we fought words

for them only because they fought the Soviets. Then, 

years later, the Soviets were gone, and they'd become

the Taliban. What a fucking small world this is,

and how little did I know.

5826. DASH DAN

DASH DAN

This news is old hat : he was such a nice guy, always

pleasant and happy. Read the newspaper, doofus:

all things that come come in bundles, the light in

the canyon, the war on the hill. Camera-crawlers

will gush : the starlet whores who run for office,

the old ladies in drag and the blackface minstrels

already in place. 'We are the strongest, and we only

choose wisely.' Yes; same strange crap on a totally

different day. Facts being : we are evil as we conspire

to control, putting prices on percentage and great

ratios on the dole. 'Listen people : you are deaf!'

-

If you needed a wise man to tell you that, you

deserve already to die. The first time anyway,

and then the second too. Put your faith in false

leaders and for all I care go straight to Hell.

5825. MONKEYMASTER

MONKEYMASTER

I feel like a small time in Coney Island, or a

dumpy weekend in some Jersey Shore dive.

That same juke-box piddle playing; digital

soundstage and robotic people. Two girls,

swinging their gorgeous hips in time. A 

couple of greasy thugs, already halfway to 

drunk and stumbling around. The guy in 

the Buick, all bullshit and swagger, 

tries parking but gives it up.

-

I'm sitting here with a hole in my shoe and

another somewhere in my heart  -  withering

looks from the bar-keep, who seems somehow

too dismissive of a one-dollar tip for my taste.

Everything adds up; too bad it's to nothing.

5824. THE EMINENT THEFT OF KIRK FALLOW

THE EMINENT THEFT 

OF KIRK FALLOW

You may remember how things used to be : those

old movie palaces where you'd walk  -  still outdoors  -  

to an open area beneath the marquee, where the ticket

purchase booth was glass-fronted and inside it someone

sat. A walk-around area, before you'd go inside, had

all the posters and blurbs and such for the upcoming

attractions and the present show. It wasn't much, but it

all felt so different. Like a little town somewhere else.

-

There wasn't any murder in the air  -  even if the film

was a murder-mystery. And, for lonely men along in

the crowd, there was no romance either, even if it was

a romance, playing. Yes, another world, and the ticket

clerk only grunted, or said a few words at the most.

-

Nice place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there.

5823. SOCIAL SECURITY HEMINGWAY

 SOCIAL SECURITY HEMINGWAY

Also : Hemingway the Sun Also Rises. 'Robert Cohn 

was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.' 

That was not the original opening.  Referencing Brett Ashley 

instead, it opened, originally, 'This is a novel about a lady.'  

The original first chapter was discarded, along with deletions, 

earlier drafts and other titles.  The author's grandson, currently 

at Scribner's, is Sean Hemingway. Curator of Greek and Roman 

art at the Met. It has its roots in Ernest's experiences in summer 

1925, at the annual Pamplona running of the bulls. With his 1st wife 

Hadley Richardson.  In Paris, Gertrude Stein signed a photo on 

the title page 'you are all a lost generation.' Nobody would have 

heard of the lost generation if Hemingway had not immortalized   

it. The author's only surviving son is Patrick.  He lives in

Montana, and is 86 years old. 

5822. COLUMBUS IS OVER

COLUMBUS IS OVER

We are roiling the bounding sea, praying our words

to the Virgin Mary, some angel unbroken, without wings

herself, in the starry skies above. These waves are making

me sick, but I pound this deck for the love of God. Behind

me, some other ships, with love and fires of their own, keep

the splurge going. Sea to bounding sea, water splashes like a

death to come  -  another distant land, something to be found.

5821. HAPPENSTANCE

HAPPENSTANCE

The miracle of the bells has happened, a light 

over the roof, two sleds parked at the door. All 

I can see are lists : the man in the iron hat chunking 

apples, his green tractor tilting as it rides over a 

rough terrain. Making merry always takes a toll.

-

Have I lived before then? My heart wants to answer

well before my mouth begins talking. Sign language

for the blind  -  in an instant I realize that is useless.

-

Oh how this life hurts. Hurts I say. Listen up.

5820. SMATTERINGS

SMATTERINGS

Now the tribe is the yellow horde delivering

newspapers to I don't know where. All these kids,

with their 'news to nowhere' ethos. My hard-boiled

stance is that of a knife-edged reporter with a stiletto

in hand. You want my sources? I'll kill you first.

-

The banana-boat family has left. The ex-patriot

Cubans  -  after filching a few items from the medicine

chest, they too are gone and but a memory. I never did

find out what they wanted. Down Argentine way, the

nice dancer with the fruitbowl hat, I had my way

with her two times. She loved it each, screaming

like a nutcase as she came upon the couch. I was

frivolous, yes, but fully satisfied.

-

Madonna said she wanted to play Evita.

That was back when she was here. I let her.

Now, there are five surly dudes sitting around

an outdoor espresso bar table, just drooling

over pictures of something. A horse-carriage

goes by, slowly, clop, clop. In the carriage, a

beautiful woman, sensing the men's delight, lifts

her shirt to show them her New Orleans tits.

5819. PARALEGAL SECRETARY

PARALEGAL SECRETARY

My paralegal secretary will beat your

para-gliding sportsman guy to death.

She'll tear out his eyes and wash his

face with his own blood. Then she'll

mangle him once again for good measure.

That's why she was hired : she's really

very good at everything she does.

5818. YOU SEEM TO ACT DISTRACTED

YOU SEEM TO 

ACT DISTRACTED

(I recognize nothing)

You seem to act distracted to me, one little

finger everywhere. No concentration anywhere.

All those things combine to make me doubtful.

There's nothing new in any of this; it's all been

done before  -  as if reviewing the reviews the

act has picked up a new flash. I am a camera,

just watching, and do not recognize what I see.

-

There is a language of walls. Nigger words and

shouts, stuff painted on the sides of railcars and

bridges. Voracious oaths and cries for attention

and help. Everywhere I go, I can sit back and

watch it all pass  -  window attractions, the

fat girls with the big ass. It gets funny sometimes.

-

White folks are even worse  -  they come at the

picture from angles oblique, expecting that their

righteousness will be tolerated at all costs. Again,

with no other chance, I am forced to listen to their

blather  -  entitlements, beachfront homes, the daughter's

faint wedding. It's mostly guilt and aggression, any of

this. No matter who'd doing it, the end result is the same.

Human waste, a human loss, a meaningless living, a game.

-

I recognize nothing.

5817. TOFFEE HAT

TOFFEE HAT

The talk around town was another million men,

the stupid kind, the immigrant kind with the

endless face in the phone crapola. I walk around

such estimable idiots whenever the chance arises.

Oh, gardener, will you mow this lawn and cut this tree,

will you trim my world and bake my meals? Hidden,

archival man, hordes as one, behind the pizza-oven-stove

to clean our now-foul American mess. You make my

sandwich  -  even that, you say?  -  with filthy hands 

and a moribund face. Why should I eat that? Why 

should I tolerate? Deliverance is just a habit.

I am so happy to be so distant and far off.

5816. TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE

TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE

The incline of the small mountain was not that much;

in fact it was the border of these two states. Not knowing

what to call it, they named it, what else, Indian Head Rock.

So there it stands. 'Athwart' the Delaware at some delicious

point, the sun will shine on its rocky flanks forever. Well, 

you know, 'forever' like they say  -  all that 'world without 

end, amen' stuff. Whether true or not, I'll never know.

By the time that ever gets here there will be machine-made

men, an entire 'Machine-Made' Mankind with a totally new

logic : perhaps no more subtraction, just all multiplication.

So, anyway, I'll just sit here and think back  -  all those

ancient men of the forests, the ancient Algonquins and those

Alleghenies who inhabited these places by Spirit. Tangible

objects were yet depended upon  - all was smoke and image.

And that's where I'd much rather be, for my reasons of surety.

5815. YOU CAUGHT ME LEAVING

YOU CAUGHT ME LEAVING

There's no post on the fence and the August flowers

are now drying and getting pale  -  it seems as if, yes,

all things are winding down. Biblical growth, the growth

of an entire Spring and Summer, seems to flash away as

quickly as it comes. A few months of this, then more of that.

I don't take sides. I can like either. My fragrances come,

anyway, from a more heavenly scent  -  an odor of

accomplishment sent from above. 

-

It's not as if you must like me : you may look askance and

I'll survive. The tongue-lashing accrues to me as merely

work, more stuff I don't wish to do. Talk you yourself then,

if you want to. I'm open, but I won't drag you in.

-

How meddlesome, rally, can any of this be? I'm standing 

outside of Washington Irving's city home, at Irving Place

actually. This is not his estate'd mansion, upriver some, at

Irvington/Tarrytown. I like that too. This is, rather, a small and

crenulated little townhome on the corner of Irving, by 14th,

by Madison Park, where still the little flowers are growing

in his flower-boxes. No, OK, they're not his now, but so what.

-

I stay here, sometimes, as often as I wish  -  with a notebook or 

a sketchpad, sitting. There are benches for people like me, and

no one makes a bother. It's quiet enough, for New York City.

Not far away, there's some sort of high school of something or

other, but even that too is quiet. A big, enormous head of

Washington Irving is in place there, outside, at the corner too  -

some silly homage, a sculpture that really shouldn't be.

Everything gets over-sized when you deal with vanity.