5957. YOU ARE

YOU ARE

You are seemingly sorry, for what? For me?

Don't be. Like Al Pacino, I'm alive in Sneden's

Landing, living with a famous girl. We drink

vain Margarita's on the deck  -  seeing the

Hudson swirl.

-

My latest thing, a Range Rover Sport Deluxe,

sits sideways on the padded carport. I parked it

there myself  -  for Robert to take care of, change

the fluids, gloss the coat, just make it sure.

I'm due in Vermont on Tuesday morn.

-

After that, there is no more. I've got  -  not 

yet  -  no schedule posted. perhaps I'll do a 

local talk show, one of those with a caravan 

of clowns who are always laughing and making

light of ills. Bob Hope, like that, stupid stuff,

and I quote : "I just heard the Statue of Liberty

has AIDS, but she doesn't know if she got it from 

the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Fairy.'

-

Stupid shit he was, I hated that guy. And people applauded

his ring-necked pomposity  -  even went to Vietnam and

played his coastal snuff before the insane, breaking

soldiers  -  no brooding, just being an ass. Sex jokes

and innuendos on the eve of everyone's death  -  out

there, the soldier crowd, probably in a ratio of

four to one, survival. Anne Margret's breasts too.

-

Amazing the things we put up with, truly.

5956. MEDALLIONS

MEDALLIONS

Statuary goes green, I see it every day. John

Witherspoon himself, standing. Read the message

like any of the tourists standing nearby  -  a camera

athwart their every eye. A homily such as this, 

they should go read it in church.

-

And then their softly hammertoned voices : 'quickly

some see look at this this is where...'. Yes, this is

where oblivion trails. The void enters. The open

space. The chorus sings : 'we are nothing, nothing

at all. In all this immensity, we are nothing at all.'

-

On Saturday I hope to hop the hammer, take the orange

bus, ride the P, travel the campus loop. I'll return,

hidebound by a new adventure : a sandwich on the

green, sitting at benches hardly ever seen. The

Japanese Peace Pavilion Bell will surely have

to do. I am myself, and nothing too.

-

40,000 feet of dogs and people. The football players

and their dismal grind. The traffic and the cars; all

those tarmac surfaces covered with cold cuts and

mustard, beers and wine. What a world is this!

5955. STEELSHED

STEELSHED

Put it away now; run like a steed. You 

are anarchic in your every new need.

-

Pliers and shovels. Tent pegs and screws.

Hardware the likes of all the unknown.

-

Only slaves know nothing of their destinies.

5954. ALL THE MILLION THINGS I HAVE BEEN TOLD

ALL THE MILLION THINGS 

I HAVE BEEN TOLD

Not a one of them was really true. Pontius Pilate put it

rightly  -  what is truth? Truth is what you have until the

real truth surfaces  -  that the entire world is a lie, and all

appearances deceive. Language is a dance made up to

send rhythm to the lies we hear  -  something we can move

and wiggle to. First it's Peace, and then it's War. And

then we find no difference between them ever was.

-

Words lied again  -  you bastard swankherds, you pointed

minions of the Devil himself. Blackjack spike boots backwards,

marching deadly over time. Ever onward Christian soldiers, bah!

-

I have a thin craft, some boat like to slicing water, that takes

me o'er the shoals and tribulations, the rapids and the swells.

I cling while it moves, I hang on tightly. Never stray, don't

let the eyeballs wander, watch where you are headed, and  -

most importantly  -  be sure to keep on going somewhere.

5953. NOT A SHRED OF INTERVIEW

NOT A SHRED OF INTERVIEW

Shoelaces are untied again. Nothing's gone over

the falls. Me and Marilyn doing Niagara together,

and oh that mist! This dark fellow, drives a 1953

DeSoto over to see us  -  smokes like a chimney.

Oh, yeah, the car does too. She jumps in, in a

red negligee that the mist has turned clear. I can

see over pore on her body. 'Not much for

uncharted territory there, Misters Lewis and

Clark.' I muttered that to myself.

-

If an interview is an exchange between two, then

a monoview has got to be this : just me, muttering

to myself. The backtalk of a simple sage, the

soundings of a sickened age.

5952. THE SUMMER SUNLIGHT OF ANCESTRAL GRIEF

THE SUMMER SUNLIGHT 

OF  ANCESTRAL GRIEF

Yes, when I see that I know it is right. I light a candle,

and begin praying to the Katzenjammer Kids. I remember

my uncle, frying eels in a pan, eels which, just before, had 

been sliming around while he cut them in pieces. So easy,

as if they were lazy snakes. The fryer, the fire, the frypan 

itself  -  really not much of a choice for these fine, free things.

-

Oh well, I entered Life. Like this, I stood silent and small to

watch  -  people talking, and songs on a radio as big as a house.

A baseball game on a TV with the screen the size of a small box :

men drinking beer and wine, swearing to squint to be swearing

at something  -  single, double, home-fucking run! On Saturday

nights, just as strange, the fights  -  men in shorts, on that same

screen, beating the daylights out of the other to beat just the bell.

-

I often thought of nothing much at all. Was I in Hell? How did

one tell?  'If the shoe fits, wear it' - that was all they ever told 

me when I found the nerve to ask. If the shoe fits, wear it, again.

5951. CALLING ON SHEILA

CALLING ON SHEILA

The city streets aren't made for parking  -  the idea

of a curb is to curb the deed. I walk wherever I wish.

It's easier that way. There's thin light that passes

between thinner buildings  -  all that glamor and

glass as I stand to let the people pass. I am their 

Pope, I am their Leader, Il Duce, Caesar, the Czar. 

(Oh God, how I need a czarina).

-

So then, imagine what it's like to be this crazy. I 

want to get married tonight. I can't. How old fashioned 

is that. Nowadays they take what they want with a jab and a pat.

(Oh God, how I need a czarina).

5950. I NEVER MADE FOR HOME THIS EARLY

I NEVER MADE FOR 

HOME THIS EARLY

Gunslingers, put your shit away : douse the torches

all you big dicks in the posse. They're aint 'gonna 

be no hanging; go home to your wives and kids.

This whole issue's a fools paradise, and it's been

presented to you by madmen for sure : the blackguard

in the White House, the whiteguard in the Senate and

House. What do any of them know anyway? The

whole place has gone mad. Mad, I say! Mad.

-

Insanity runs the rulebook as well as rules the roost,

sets its new parameters, and every bastard nods. I'm

stuck in here with Princeton fabs  -  these knockheads

studying International Law and International Political

relations, while around them an entire world of words

and goodness sleeps  -  or has it all been killed?

-

All it takes now is to know the secret words and you 

can be as mad as the rest : Boko Harum up your ass, 

and how come Crimea isn't just presented as Crime A?

Because they're all too chicken-shit to pray but not to prey?

5949. LEARN TO DO ALL THESE THINGS TOGETHER

LEARN TO DO ALL 

THESE THINGS TOGETHER

The sun has a harrowing mask, the world a disguise.

We are broken into our own little pieces, while 

outside the legends the living survive.

-

Now they bring the cars doors home. I hear them

slamming and the voices of boys not yet men

are heard  -  the awkward and raspy change

once again, while I sit here to ponder.

-

I haven't a suspense any longer  -  all my

mysteries, like the acne of boys too  -  have

been cleared up. Everything solved, but

still making little sense  -  and why did

that butler have that knife anyway?

-

Would I want to say my prayers in some other

language, if only I knew the tongue? Kneeling like

a fruitcake at the bedside of a jerk? Sending

something back, so they'd remember my name?

-

An immanent demise can, for certain, draw attention.

Now learn to do all these things together.

5948. HEMLINES TO HIROSHIMA

HEMLINES TO HIROSHIMA

In the great gauge of the world at least we are talking:

your voice beats the sound of your gun? I look out

to the distance : Mount Fuji, again, undone?

-

Here the moon is unsettled; it sits low, like a ridge

on the crest, biding some bayside time 'til tomorrow

comes by. I'll send a hello to the new season.

-

How does this go? Or how did it?

The God of the past is long ago vanished,

and the God of the future has not yet arrived,

and we, as in a dream, are born into the time between,

not knowing what we should understand as Real.

5947. OLD JOE CINO

OLD JOE CINO

Here's the freshest scene I'm painting  -  

a brush within my hand, another in my head,

bleeding color like a rainiac would bleed rain.

I won't even bend down for fear the audience

here would miss a beat  -  this old joint, this

mess, this ruddy, old stocking, hung by a

chimney with care.

-

'Porcino was short, and he always smelled; not

that he was dirty, I don't mean that. But he had a

virile, manly smell. He was short and plump

and he got plumper. He had eyes like Hedy

Lamarr. His eyes could just transfix you.

And he was so kind, that it seemed like a

character flaw :  an abundant, humanistic,

and all-embracing hopeful attitude.'

-

'Porcino? We all called him that. I

think it meant something like, little

fat pig  -  something. Anyway, old

Joe, he never really minded.'

5946. NEO-CATHARSIS

NEO-CATHARSIS 

Break all those bones, run the amok along the edging; 

take from one what one delivers. Here is the anomaly 

lizard : black panda, something easing, waiting. 

Tradition only demands forgiveness - with the 

other eye, it winks. Just yesterday, that man on 

37th, crushed by a falling concrete slab. No one 

writing about it, not one report, would say that

 he was 'dead'. All they could say was that, at 

the scene and beneath the slab, 'all that was 

visible was one arm protruding.'

 - 

I haven't got the energy to come to things like this, 

to counter every accusation or refute every lie. 

I am nothing but the wind-up chronicle I choose to be.

(You listen to them, or you listen to me). 

-

 My mother's long gone, my father's born dead - 

 I am alone in this non-chivalric world : 

chasing pebbles, finding corn cobs, eating hay. 

Whatever I'm reduced to is what I am today. 

My shack leans stiffly in a wind. 

I only pretend at fighting back.

5945. ANOTHER DAMNED LIFETIME LOOMING

ANOTHER DAMNED 

LIFETIME LOOMING

I haven't had enough time for a semblance of

blue lips. These aren't oases in front of my 

eyes, they're just illusions. Now that that's

out of the way  -  see that glimmer over there,

it's just another damned lifetime looming, and

already my brain's gotten ahead of my self.

-

Although it's sometimes freezing cold, right here

where I stand, they're frigid moments only in passing.

Some have words, and some bow down. Some,

in chainmail armor, are still fighting their battles

of the past. I think I will take to the open sea,

and simply sail away deliciously.

-

One time, I stood out looking at the churning river

before me : heavy coastline, dense with rocks. Some

hikers, up above, were yelling to one another, nothing

I could make out, but a message nonetheless. That was

when I began yearning for my own Appalachian Trail :

Some weird wizardry of woods and forest, deep within,

 and another damned lifetime looming.

5944. BIBMAN'S BEACH OF THE DAY

BIBMAN'S BEACH 

OF THE DAY

Here I go again; weathering a storm, eating 

at broken tables. Walking where the errant 

soldiers died, I see a plaque saying they were 

buried here. Found after exposure, dead  -  

abandoned, hungry, wounded and foul. The 

National Oak has nothing on them. I walk 

away wanting more. The distant sea is rolling 

in, near here, the waves yet smash the shore.

5943. ENIGMA VARIATIONS?

ENIGMA VARIATIONS?

Enter the left and enter the right; the forceful

pale soldier is gunning. Others stand forward,

alert in a room, listening to things they do not

understand. 'We are madmen, we are fools, 

we are killers, we are ghouls. And this will

never stop.' On the fields shown on screen,

pictures in green of death and destruction,

these people watch willingly to see what they've

done. Bastards can never cave in. A certain

geo-politics is all that's needed to excuse

dead children and the maimed limbs and bodies.

Payback never matters, just as bastards never 

cave. Would that I could watch them die as well, 

these tax-funded mad hatters, these military obese.

Warfare has become the most methodical of games,

a clinical, pale effusion of clean hands and distant 

stares. Reserve for me a perfect stance, from 

which to watch this sickening dance.

5942. NADIA

NADIA

Sitting on the bumper of a car  -  just a

piece of the ass grabbing the support  -  

resting back and just going to talk, Nadia 

goes on. Her new boyfriend too is talking,

and at such an ease they seem at rest. He is

married to another, she not. He is Ilya from

Russia, and I've known him a year  -  partially

a pain, I've tolerated his time. Now, it all fades

away. I am more glad for that than not. Her? I

really do not know, just having seen and nodded

any number of times : they've somehow found their

own circumferences far better than the circles they

had before. I think of them in love, and wonder.

5941. AND NOW THE OMEN

AND NOW THE OMEN

There is a sprinkle-fest of faeries

which recurs from time to time : 

small children, in a vacuum-packed 

school hearing words of the

Grimm Brothers and Grimmeslhausen 

too. I enter the wrong room at the 

same time as I enter the right room.

Duplicity such as this, though not a 

harmful matter, demands attention.

5940. REMARKABLE MEN

REMARKABLE MEN

We run the shibboleth from plural to plural, 

leaving outsiders at the door. Like some speakeasy

of the mind, the little peephole that slides open has

an eye within it. If you say the right thing, you get in.

-

The raucous crowd rocks its own ride  -  thrumming 

sweet drinks and overdone meats at the harborside.

5939. CHAINMAIL

CHAINMAIL

Sinecure. Safe and easy. I can

sit back and not care about caring.

I can blot out the sun yet sit close to

the fire; frankly, my dear, I don't give

a damn. There are times for things, and

there are times as well when nothing 

matters. Enter my soul, this is my essence.

5938. WHY WOULD SHAKE HANDS WITH A MAN WHO EATS FIRE?

WHY WOULD YOU SHAKE 
HANDS WITH A MAN 
WHO EATS FIRE?

They've painted the streets now. Not just the lines  -  

as they do, say, in Syracuse for the St. Patrick's Day

Parade. Green lines everywhere. Our world too has 

a 'Green Line'  -  something to do with military force,

a strategy to keep others away. Bang the gong and shoot

the gun. Imaginary red lines, I've heard of them too :

the war-time clangers and the bombs were supposed

to go off. Life changes nothing in its very soul demise;

a departure from the manners of the very-mannered way.

-

Listening to men garbed in cammo? Why not. Exchanging 

fire with a nutcase duo? Why not. Riding a tank to Mt.

Ararat's top? Why not, again, why not? I want to

leave you shaking your head in confusion, and
yet, I wish for you to embrace me, 
maybe hold me forever.

5937. HEAR THEN WHATEVER HE SAYS

HEAR THEN 

WHATEVER HE SAYS

Gunnery captain man-handled man floating

a'sea on a scape full of foam. Mentioned

meanings, still coming down : sirens off

the shore, lady-voices singing back.

-

There's a chorus of men delicately hanging :

from the banisters at the edge of the ship, they

look down with lascivious eyes. And only a 

daughter without blood would know this.

-

I received a letter today from a friend in need.

He's desperate and screaming loud. I'd bend

down to help him but he won't take a hand.

Just rudeness. Just anger. I feel like Saul Bellow

here approaching Delmore Schwartz. That's a

poor analogy but I'll make it work. Read

Humboldt's Gift. I did; it works.

5936. COKE FRASER IN LANIN LAKE

COKE FRASER 

IN LANIN LAKE

Here come the pipers again, and the fire engine and

those guys  -  everyone milling about waving little

pennants 'neath the small-town trees. Big oaks, bigger

than small-town dreams. A few antique cars, fancy

and wide, come trailing behind. People cheer

and people wave.

5935. TROUBLE

TROUBLE

I've had trouble hiding my Gustave Moreau; those

all-momentous moments and the pictures that go.

I delight in these warren-wrens and watch everything

with you in mind. There are countless stories about to 

fold : the little priest from the Mission of St. Demetrius,

he his holding out his hand while men in line walk

slowly in for sandwiches and coffee. Freed food

for the homeless, yes, but who's checking? And are

mot we all, at heart, as homeless as any wretch  -  

losing chances to turn our lives around and

living through truisms instead. Life, then, is

what we never had.

5934. BOMBING FOR PEACE

BOMBING FOR PEACE

I am able. I shall do what I can do.

I am bombing for peace, drinking new

blood for refreshment, I am killing for

the cause of Good. I am maiming so 

others may walk. I am dropping clusters

so men can find Peace. I am bringing

forth a light, from a very dark place?

-

(I am no better than the nastiest brother you can find).

5933. NAKIMOTO

NAKIMOTO

Enforced with violence  -  those drivers,

hiring bosses, longshoremen who didn't

play ball with the system got hurt. The

toothpick behind the ear told the hiring

boss what was up that day : scheming

paybacks and the moneylender's due.

-

The day we had to shoot Andy Hintz was

no different than any other day : out on the

rooftop in an early morning light, one hundred

pigeons cooing. Down the top from the opened

doorway, to the second-floor landing just as he

was coming out to go downstairs. Five quick

pops took him down dead. In an instant, we 

too were gone. Right back out the top again, 

and over. Everything was covered well.

-

No one told him not to look, no one told him

not to live there. Where everyone knew. Too

bad for all that. No more Pier 51 for him.

5932. OUTRIGGER

OUTRIGGER

I can clearly observe the tides  -  even as,

on the river now  -  the water is but running in

or running out. The ripples and swells will tell.

-

Let's crouch here to watch the frogs and turtles.

It's pretty amazing, these things sunning on  a log;

as if they knew the moment, as if they ruled the

time, as if they lived amidst all things.

5931. THIS EAST VILLAGE

THIS EAST VILLAGE
(though 44th and vanderbilt)

The sang-froid of the cold-blooded : an old

cemetery behind gates. 'Preserved' Fish, of New

Bedford is here in the ground. Pronounced

Pre-SERVE-Ed. I like that name always.

The rest of the family  -  Hamilton Fish and

the rest, along with Stuyvesant, made the city 

around here. I walk their ghost. I live in their

present, which is my past. Heaven help the rest.

-

My few friends left in the Angels still smother E3rd.

Their armaments and motorcycles gun the street  -  

known as well as the 'safest' street in the city. Try

that idea on for size. Death's head for lovers.

-

Here are my hands  -  take them; wrap the rope around

me and hoist me up like Nathan Hale. Sept. 22, 1776.

5930. JACOB'S RELEASE

JACOB'S RELEASE

Some days I just walk these city streets alone and

endlessly, my big heart pealing, my poor eyes to view.

I have no gifts or magic to bring to these teeming hordes

of people  -  and things  - I see. They are brown figments,

in a way, and they just go on. Every moment of the

present is not real; each is but a reflection of everything

that's gone before it : the old John Street church, now

just sitting there, was once a hotbed, a fiery place  -  of

blacks and slaves and runaways and burials and 

intriques and prayer. All jumbled together in

one hot instance we missed : now, for 

goodness' sake it's real estate.

-

Half-measures have never been for me : I dive, and

dive again until I hit bottom, or leap, until I hit

the sky. It's senseless as all get-out, but it keeps

my life alive and going. Right now, in passing,

I shoulder every responsibility that ever was

and make it mine : I want to change the world.

5930. MORNING TIME

MORNING TIME

It was so damp this morning my nostrils dribbled

and the dim of the sky colored nothing at all. 

Every morning window was shaded dark-to-black, 

as if the entire world was in waiting. Sensitudes of 

kings and empires were filling the air with feeling 

as everyone knew exactly where they were 

and no one knew a thing at all.

5929. THE EMBRACE

THE EMBRACE

You know. When copper turns green, or

brass items weather. Patina, I thik it's called.

Two men, in a bear-hug of happy success,

are embracing. In their huge Winter coats,

like bears interlinked. One man, while I watch,

works slowly but surely too, pulling a large knife 

from his very deep pocket and plunges it twice

into the other man's stomach. The man falls;

already gone, I'm sure, before he hits the ground.

5928. HEROD

HEROD

Why am I watching this, and who is this

man? Looking out at the crowd today, I saw

they were all cheap merchants; hook-nosed

and selling pennies for pennies to pennies.

I am above all that. I rule.

-

An episode like this can give me a fever.

5927. PARALLEL POSTINGS

PARALLEL POSTINGS

Oh my dear we've gone one pediment too high today;

walking architecture as if it were a hillock. No one

counts the steps to the top of the tower. 

5926. ONE IMAM IN AMMAN

ONE IMAM IN AMMAN

Disrupt the disorder and alter the clime.

I've always been pretty much of a faith healer.

Disrupt the disorder and alter the clime.

5925. THERE'S BEEN TIMES

THERE'S BEEN TIMES

There have been times  -  one hundred and more  -

when the central lighting has come down : the forces

of the King, wielding scabbards and swords, take over

the bridge and let no one pass. Claiming to add to the

cover, the men come by checking paper. New times.

-

New times have new eyes. Delivering new stories, telling

new lies. Does anyone really know what's going on?

-

I ask the Muslim dude, in his craziness, to behead me,

and this time he refuses to budge. My luck. I stand

before the President, who snoozes very nicely in his

new golf shoes, and gently wake him up. 'Kind

Sir, I hear it said your busy thinking?' He nods,

and gets up to change his channel once more.

-

The central lighting has come down again.

5924. COOL MISSION MAD-MAN GLIMMER

COOL MISSION 

MAD-MAN GLIMMER

I'm hunky-dory to this awesome story all over 

again  -  reading a fairy tale backwards, wishing

a genie back into its bottle. Back me up, hold me

steady, this fence is about to fall over.

-

Someone has parked a car in this bush, front bumper

right up to the center; everything's twisted, the branches

are down, I'm pissed and I'm angry as hell. I want

to sue this truck-driver bastard for all he's commercially

worth  -  which ain't much, I hear-tell.

-

Have you ever had to sit, for hours, listening to the patter

of others? All those gruesome, sad-story writers who go on

about love and lost-causes, dead folks and remorses, the

fire in a heart that's gone out. So tired, so sickeningly dull!

My writing formula for them instead is as follows: be

outlandish, be rude and be bold. And then, just as much,

listen to my words about your story, three times spoken. 

'I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.'

5923. LET'S PUT OUR FINGER ON SOMETHING

LET'S PUT OUR 

FINGER ON 

SOMETHING

(traveling in time)
She's the sort of girl they nab in the department store

for taking a scarf or a wallet  -  something stupid and

whimsical too. She doesn't need either, already having 

a hundred. Claiming an ancient lineage from a Baroness 

Von Schmenkenberg or something in Austria, two worlds

let her straddle them : like high, like low, all those riches 

go. It doesn't matter, and the words don't work : an alibi 

is just like any other lie only perhaps safer if it works.

-

They pimp her fondness for riches like they pimp a

nine-year old's eyes if they could : innocent and loving

all in one. What's the matter with anything here?

-

Baroness, I'm sitting in this stinking garret now, 

drawing lines on paper with pencil, just trying to 

make things work. You're out on the ledge pretending 

to die again. My stab at Existentialism has not worked. 

I'm blind again, and oh so stupid once more.

-

Look at that skylark : it rolled past the southern 

window just as you were pouring that drink. 

I swore I saw it stop and look. Birds don't do 

that, do they? I'm' trying here to put my

finger on something.

5922. FRENCH HORSES

FRENCH HORSES

I squandered my vast fortune

buying all the horses in France.

If you see a horse there, it is mine.

5921. BEER NUTS

BEER NUTS

You make me swoon solid like chocolate,

down beer nuts like sliced apple, choke back

my laughing tears. These are the suburban

prizes of the game of chance I live.

5920. WELL WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH ME, AL SMITH?

WELL WHAT'S THE MATTER 

WITH ME, AL SMITH?

I took to the streets the day after the fire,

everything was still smoldering along the 

ground. I sought a new Townsend Plan, 

I wanted free money. Look up Fifth Avenue 

yourself, you old fool, and see what all these 

cars will bring : new places to implicate people

 in everything that ever goes wrong.

Minetta Brook goes underground.

-

In these monied canyons, all those bastards with

their pens and pencils shall smart away their loss

and then claim profit. I am left, in the street, and

helpless. I sigh like a camel snorts. It's so sad.

5919. AND WHO IS GUIDO BROWN?

AND WHO IS GUIDO BROWN?

'It's only food until you eat it,' he said  -  a most

typical understatement for him  -  easy to understand,

yes, what was meant, yet dolefully strange nonetheless.

Who wishes to sit among riches, thinking of this sort

of stuff? Not me. In Beethoven's odd marketplace,

I'd buy the snuff. The outlandish stories, the Chinatown

food, the blunders, the fakes, and the reasons. Enough.

5918. LOVE IN A SACK

LOVE IN A SACK

So many meanings, in this night : pipes clattering

for the first time this season. Autumnal moments. 

No matter where I turn, there really is an apparition

before me. The 17th street marksman still sleeps.

-

A guidebook to this terrain is fearsome  -  something

as written by a Freud or a Jung. I can't make matters 

simple any longer. There's a pen in my ear and a

heart in my mouth. Oh, Mama, oh.

-

What happens to a returning fugitive, a soulful

wanderer who sits in the park : all days are the same,

the birds will proclaim. Lethargic, gray, and dark.

-

My intentions were never to last this long : find love

and peace, and abscond and be gone.

5917. GORGONZOLLA NIGHTMARE ICELAND

GORGONZOLLA 

NIGHTMARE ICELAND

I awoke with a start, I'd slept with a bear, I looked

all around, nothing was there. Floating through

space, aimless to boot, I entered a place I could 

sense. There was music playing, they said. I was 

deaf. The rainbow apparition took the face of a 

fawn, five delightful flowers were sunning, a 

maitre'd came over with a halo asking if I wished 

to by a raffle ticket. 'For this?', I said. 'If you win, 

you get three,' he replied.

5916. ARAPAHOE BROTHERS PLAYLAND FIESTA

ARAPAHOE BROTHERS 

PLAYLAND FIESTA

I got on the boat marked 'Funhouse', it took me to

the Chamber of Horrors. I got in the car marked

'Tunnel of Love', it took me to the same place too.

I stood straight up and waded through muck, I shouted,

'Hey guys, what's this, what the fuck?' A stranger strolled

by with his distorting mirrors, he said 'This is 

your life, now you know what queer is.'

5915. LAND-LOCKED BREVITY

LAND-LOCKED BREVITY

I saddled the escarpment with my figure, 

walking  -  long steps across a windy field. 

Rock strewn and strangely cluttered. 

5914. FINE STUFF ALL THIS IS

FINE STUFF ALL THIS IS

You are a child of nothing; not so much nothing

as nothing is all. You are everywhere conscious.

The mind that inhabits you knows no limits, and

creates for you the 'Real' you walk through. Go on,

then, head held high. Look forward.

-

The riches of Kings that have come and gone are

hidden yet in the brazen dunes of the sands of

time. They do not stand still  -  all things will

change and vary. Stand as firm as you wish, 

but you cannot.

-

Here in the marvelous patterning of a kindergarten

gulch, we get to hear words and watch the actions of

men and women in their times : loud and soft, the

gentle tissue which wipes the concrete block.

5913. SOMETIMES

SOMETIMES

Finding myself wanting a hateful force to take 

the mouth from those who speak : of God, of 

war, of all those things which maim and mangle. 

Yet they speak of a brave and a braver. First one 

side, then the other. Gallantry blows like a nickle 

slingshot shudders  -  the stone flies, ripping  

through the air, no one knowing where it lands.

-

Stretch the marble quarters, listening to your brain.