Sunday, August 31, 2014

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.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

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.

Friday, August 29, 2014

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.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

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.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

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.


Tuesday, August 26, 2014

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.

Monday, August 25, 2014

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.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

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.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

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.

Friday, August 22, 2014

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.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

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.