Friday, October 31, 2014

6041. NO WASTING

NO WASTING
Saddled the horsemen. Wise guy.
Go with caution, brother; and watch
the wild winds. There's not anything
here to be left behind. We've cleaned
up everything that was left.

6040. BEGGARMAN, THIEF

BEGGARMAN, THIEF
He died whenever you want it to be  - everything
was pre-arranged like that. Think it over; it's
really pretty amazing. In the same vein  -  right here,
dark green armchair, lantern-light on a table, feet up,
smoking a pipe, it's me at station thinking just this:
This 'God' thing I keep hearing, I've got it figured,
if it was. This "god' thing didn't have to do anything 
at all. No seven-day creation, no fall of man, no long,
sad story of jettisoned love and hope. All 'God' had to
do, by script, actually, was come up with one 'idea' of 
something that accepts all that as possible, and let them
do the rest. Yes, yes, let them do the rest. Mythology,
History, Religion, it's all up to them. I've done my part.

6039. A WEE BIT UTENSILE

A WEE BIT UTENSILE (1958)
Not a word maybe but it means a tool, and that be
that. Not yet, I wasn't born yesterday. It's difficult
to eat when one's mouth is closed  -  I learned
all of that a long time ago, as a young boy out
out camping in the woods. Wish I'd never left.
-
Do you really need to know more? I'll tell you:
when I was eight, I was hit by a train and only 
woke up about half-a-year later. They thought
I was dead at the scene, until I groaned when
some rough-rider first aid guy started to drag
me around. I was scrunched, you see, beneath 
the metal dashboard of a '53 Ford wagon.
-
My mouth was wired shut for about nine months  -
broken jaw and face and such All I could eat was
baby-food sucked from a deep spoon through the
metal clamps and braces holding my mouth. That,
and custard  -  which, believe me I grew to hate.
My parents' neighbor, Myrtle, used to come and 
visit  -  after I'd awakened from my coma-death -
about every two days with another bowl of that 
crud. Oowee, I hated that stuff.
-
Then I was in traction, all wired up, for another long
time  -  and some stupid male nurse kept coming around
to change the sheets  -  every time, twisting me and turning
me until I grimaced and cried out. It was so weird. Can
you figure any of this out? But, hell, do you really want 
to? I'm still here, and here I am. Utensile, it is.

6038. WALK AWAY WITH EYES

WALK AWAY WITH EYES
The sensitive, simple narrative no longer
works. Homogenized flute. Part-time Wall
Street. Walk away with eyes. Just trying
things sometimes works. Amidst, oh, the
pulse of a supernova; rocks, like heartbreak,
crush even the rivers of Eden.
-
At the Roman Circus I met the cartwheel
of the sun, that has no name. Fires had gone
out, and everything was already leveled, with
just people milling around. 'Our Jesus is kept
in a bottle.'
-
By hand I am needing a breakthrough  -  
melancholy surprise, and the blues are
of a postcard hue. Starry heavens.
Box-shaped malingerers, more shy
than boys. It is axiomatic, all this range.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

6037. I WATCHED THE OLIVE

I WATCHED THE OLIVE
Loaded like a dictionary  -  pimiento and
garlic indeed. Here it is, we sit at the table
holding napkins, wondering what's ahead.
Horror night? Things that jump out of candles,
or into the candle-light, however that goes. I
can see through ghosts like the fabrics of a
gauze. Ghouls. Goblins. Skeletons. Ghosts.
-
Some fools are eating fire   -   the mental man is
bending spoons, the card-reader is, well, reading
cards. Outside of my small circle of friends, the
only things left are the dead and the haunted.
By George, let's run to the graveyard again. Yes!
Let's run to the graveyard again.

6036. HARROWING, THE POSSIBILITIES

HARROWING, 
THE POSSIBILITIES
He took his tie from around his neck,
he ran forward a couple of steps. Screaming
aloud, he projected his intentions : 'I will alter
this world once more!' The surge of the roar
of the crowd of the hoard was all that had
commanded the scene. Police boats in the
subtle harbor rattled. Some few marksmen,
hired police snipers, took their aim. 'Lethal,'
it was said, 'this man is lethal, and he has to
go.' Demagoguery with a human face. Truly
the worst : no worst than the collective
for of assassin police  -  up for anything
and able to do the task and cover the
needed tracks. Just a few pops  :  I 
heard I heard it all.

6035. DASHBOARD FINGERPOT

DASHBOARD FINGERPOT
I am the engineer, the small one reading the blueprints.
I nod as if I can understand all these lines : understated
elegance, the glory of the universe. Here goes the beam 
that will hold the edifice up. Watch out for those things 
which dangle. I have such delight  -  on my face and in
my eyes  -  when I see how all things work. The man with
the gabardine hammer, all he wants is a silly profit.
Dollars for dollars, and a penny for your thoughts.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

6034. AMASSING THE SMALL THINGS

AMASSING THE 
SMALL THINGS
She had nice, red cheeks, but that was that : 
first words spoken, 'we in America!' I was 
not sure to be alone anymore, yet I 
gave her a blanket for the taking. 
-
Conspiracy ends when people get hurt :
there's a story for every disaster. In the
morning, the bells and the whistles will
ring and all those new factory hands 
shall run off to paint mercury and 
lead on their own disasters. For
every story, there's a lie.
-
That girl was still dancing, when I left
this 'gentleman's club.' It was not that
at all : more like a tendentious assault
on even the fact of being human.


6033. RUNNING THE APOCALYPSE

RUNNING THE APOCALYPSE
Now that I'm running the apocalypse, let me settle in : 
my dangling feet have just landed, the candy-jar is
filled to burst, and  -  already  -  I can hear five 
hundred kids splitting seams at the door. As my 
father used to say : 'this is not a couch, it a 'settee'.'
He was an upholsterer and all that stuff made a
manner of difference. I'd always figured a settee
was one who sets. Like me.
-
Now that I'm running the apocalypse, let's make
flames come out of faucets and water from a
match. I think that would be a grand coaltion
of moment and matter  -  grand photos on
buildings, bells that won't gong, and women
sitting around with cigarettes in their holders.
I  -  truly, and in despair  -  want a new world.
-
Rilke it was said 'you must change your life.'
When it all comes out in the wash, there's no 
change to ever be made, he knew not of what 
he spoke, and I never too much dug his 
overly-sensitive nature anyway. But  -  
since I'm running the Apocalypse now  -
change will start today.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

6032. NOT TRUE, ALL THOSE THINGS

NOT TRUE, ALL THOSE THINGS
It's not true, all those things he said : the water
was already wine and the hordes weren't fed by bread.
We were short already, by a hundred, before we even 
started. None of the cars would start  -  jumper cables,
new batteries, all those guys with wrenches; it all
seemed sincere, but no one really meant a God-damned
thing they said. I stayed around to watch the ending,
but fell asleep instead. Now there's bunting on the
alley wall, and the crocodiles steaks that people
were eating were  -  supposedly  -  tasting really good.
Holy Frijoles, Batman ! What to do now ?
-
I rode the train this morning  -  way before dawn  -  to
New York City. When I got there, I had time for everything
(it's like that now) and I watched the sun come up over
the east-side buildings. Light was everywhere, suddenly.
Things glinted and shone; glass reflected back. What a
worldly kingdom all this is, I mused to myself. I went
over to the man holding coffee in his hand and repeated
that selfsame sentence. 'Would I wish that that was so.'
That's what he said in response to my good intention.
-
He meant a material gain. I just meant a good intention.

NEW POST NOT POETRY, TEMPORARY


Artist: Gary Introne, born 1949.
 
1967 - Began at The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, from its initial location at the big loft on old lower Broadway, to its new home at 8W8th Street, the old mansion of Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney, later the original Whitney Museum, as three brownstones were joined as one. Lived in the basement, after moving from 509 e11th Street, also as a sort of night-watchman of sorts until Mr. Rush came in each day at 6:30am. Being paid $16 a week and sleeping either on the grand old art-library floor or in the basement cubicle I'd constructed from, and within, an unused, huge fireplace space.
 
Wordsworth it was who stated 'Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility', and I guess that works as well for my art. I spent my times there in a small glory  -  working under the presence and the instruction of Milton Resnick, Philip Guston, Nicholas Spaventa, Charles Cajori, Esteban Vicente, Mercedes Matter  -  and her husband, Herbert Matter, photographer  -  sculptor David Hare, and others. Also, the wonderful music lectures of Morton Feldman. John Cage and Buckminster Fuller showed up too!
 
Both my 'emotion' and my 'tranquility' were paired with my 'art'. From the trudging with and building of stretcher bars, to my endless street explorations of NYC : cast-offs, old wood, found objects, ads, paper pieces, posters and street art, I 'recollected' my days. That is my art. The straight, yet very crooked, line  -  the paradoxical joining of one into the other mixed with pigment, color and form.
 
Anyone can identify fringe activity where something is appropriated loosely (and in art the 'modern' world allows this). It is the artist's activity now, the academy being long dead to us all. I grab onto stuff, move it around, reconfigure and transfigure it  -  into psychology and new drama. Value is added and influence acknowledged. This is culture making, not some minority activity. It is what artists do, and how they see. It is not the act of making a commodity  -  instead it is the mark of the transformation of the world around us. I want it to sink into you and become a part of you  -  and trouble you.
 
I like the work of art, and I like the ease of art. It's the easiest hard thing I've ever done.
 
I was also accepted to the San Francisco Art Institute, which option I declined, not wishing to undertake that 'lighter' transplanting. I like the darker world of my own New York. In 1973, I went to Elmira College, with artist-in-residence Gandy Brody, until his death in 1975. Since then, and here then, the rest.
 
Most important is the line, and then the form, as they are both brought into play  -  into something else altogether.
 
Gary Introne

Sunday, October 26, 2014

6031. LORD FORGIVE ME FOR PASSING JUDGEMENT

LORD FORGIVE ME FOR
PASSING JUDGEMENT
Justice O'Hare, oh how I hate you, and all for which you
stand. I'd rather hang from a bridge than talk to you.
-
At the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, at the Manhattan side,
underneath it actually, is a plague about George Washington.
-
No one cares and no one reads it, or even knows it's there.
It was Cherry Street then, and, as President, he lived there.
-
He and Martha. They had a pew over on Broadway, at Trinity
Church, and the plaque says they were seen to ride each Sunday,
-
in the morning, on their big white steed, riding to church.
A dumb enough story, but worth something, yes.
-
What galls me is the stupidity of today's world : no one giving a
care to anything of the past at all. Nothing real. Nothing true.
-
Lord, forgive me for passing judgement, but
it seems now it's about the only thing I do.

6030. METAPHORS MAKING ME WINCE

METAPHORS MAKING 
ME WINCE
Twenty harness doctors standing in a line where the tree
meets the horizon and the maid in her lace tells all she
knows. Juneteenth this isn't. It's more like a Mayday
for the heart. Here, here are the keys to the car.
-
On days like this, my mother used to bake. Cookies,
bread, anything to pass the rope of time to another
set of grabbing hands. The priest in the rectory, a flute
ready to play a steady accent, the man with the payment
book, they always came swooping through.
-
One or the other of something shows up at the cat-milk
doorway. Meowing goes on in the middle of night.
While everyone else seems far away at sleep.

6029. COUNTING MYSELF IN

COUNTING MYSELF IN
You are in a fallen world, where men are kissing
men again, and girls are kissing girls. And  -  though
I need not be, one way or the other  -  I am all OK 
with this. Nothing bothers me; affectless as I dare
to be. I walk in endless circles through these myths.
-
When people say it's all one way, I tell them 'gender is 
a recent thing.' Of course, no one understands : instead 
they gnash their teeth, uncomfortable they curse. They
flail about as if it mattered. I am from some other place,
nothing bothers me  -  did I say that once already?
-
Fifteen thousand people mean fifteen thousand
different things. You err in finding one prediction
for a very chaos'd predilection.

6028. THIS HAMMOCK SHALL BE AS MY GRIDLOCK

THIS HAMMOCK SHALL 
BE AS MY GRIDLOCK
Here in the city they say nothing is forever;
my Blinky Palermo motives wander as far  -  
as far as time allows; there is no ending
to anything at all. Mondrian is my catch-basin
man. The boat-guy down on the harbor pier,
he's standing on two good legs waving
something in. I'm not intent to move.
-
Not a muscle, not a twitch. I shall stay right
here forever, or until I die, or  -  if those aren't
the same things  -  until something massive moves
me. Propels me upward. Raptures me back to
Reality, whatever that slimy franchise is.
I'll have fries with that; make me
one with everything, as that zen
guy said, just now, to the
hot-dog vendor.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

6027. SOMETIMES WE WERE JUST CHATTING

SOMETIMES WE WERE 
JUST CHATTING
(no escaping, Penelope)
Here between towns, somehow neither here or 
there, things are put together strangely  -  the 
whitewash on the fence drains down the eager 
gully, people dance a naturalistic dance.
-
It is said the hubris is a bad trait to follow.
Aristotle called it 'shaming the victim.' Other
men of method means call it other things. But
what goes down is a fateful insurance about
episodes delightful or goals which need to be.
-
No escaping, Penelope. The strange
Druids are still dancing 'neath the dark.

6026. MY GARGOYLE FACE

MY GARGOYLE FACE
Gargoyles staring back, waterspout faces intent 
on remaining. I will be working on that : here I
sit, looking up. I am a face of my own, my
masonry precipice of doubting and wonder.
-
When they put up this building, everything was
so much easier  -  stonemasons in place, carving
to belittle their world. Around them every form
of caricature watched as, far below, humans
on horses and in wagons looked upward.
-
To see some glory in God, to find some likeness 
of a heaven or their own wicked glory. To convince 
themselves that they'd convinced themselves of 
something. How different, then, all that masking 
of faces while men with hammers and
chisels went busily about their work.

Friday, October 24, 2014

6025. I WAGER

I WAGER
Do me this favor, come to the river with me.
I wager it will change your life. I am the one
with the cloak of a martyr and the cap of a clown.
How can you avoid all that?
-
Let me distribute the following : awareness of
the world around; good feelings for the rest of
Man; expressions of affection for Nature and
the animal kingdom. I harm nothing.
-
Now it is 3PM. On this stupid highway, people
are fouling their nests  -  ten-cylinder Ram trucks,
a few with loaded beds and broken trees and branches,
loudly crowd the busy shoulder, trying to avoid 
the two who rear-ended each other.
-
My shadow throws a hand across the roadway:
my charades make sense : the cloak of a
martyr and the cap of a clown.

6024. INTENSITIES OF HELL

INTENSITIES OF HELL
Intensities of Hell can be like Heaven, 
if only you live your life alone : waiting for
the caramel budge to break inside the oven,
where your head last surely sat. All those
women I used to know, doing their best
Sylvia Plath. To scream 'Daddy', to scream
'Daddy', at this and at that.
-
We are all monsters when the skin gets peeled 
away. Every thank-you fades to go-away. I cater
to the needs of everyman : or whoever that is right
now for whom the wind is wild and blowing.
There goes the rooftop. There goes the shed.
-
I watch this fine-boned woman sitting for tea;
she is thinking she's still in Schraft's, like Audrey
Hepburn would be. It's all a foil, and her chiseled
features send me money just looking. I wonder,
inside her head, what her Daddy-Monster is.
-
So then, Jane of Lexington Avenue, kiss me in your
dreams if you'd like, or spit out my name with the
drudgery of some exploitative moment that I am.
Chase me until I fly away. Just call me 'Daddy' today.
-
Hear the chimes of the Westside church. They ring, and
they peal, they sound and they hammer. There's nothing
to go away from; every sound is its own redundance.
All those intensities of hell, so startling they are.

6023. LONGING?

LONGING?
Waiting for nothing, beneath the trees:
a few boys playing stickball start singing.
The low sky, clouded over, races its dark,
coastal-storm clouds overhead : branching 
and breaking the shadows in a dizzying motion
of a newer form of stop-time. Games are to be
played. Yet, what am I still waiting for?
-
My longing wears a step-coat of wide diversity.
Here, the buttons are blue; there, the clasps are
bright red. What am I to do? I try reaching out
for something I ache for  -  I cannot reach, it is
all too far off. A man's reach should exceed
his grasp or what's a Heaven for?

Thursday, October 23, 2014

6022. MONTECITO, BABY

MONTECITO, BABY
Not that this wasn't the one : the true survivor,
the one to outlast the stars, the pinnacle of all
the image. Here the chambered nautilus stays.
-
This was Ho Wan Pi's desk once. He placed it 
here after a feng-shui dream. That dream was 
of the end of the world's wide realm and the 
entrance to another geography altogether.
He went.
-
Now, it is said, the whole, entire world is California.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

6021. I'VE GOT THE BUCKLE FOR THE BUCKLE

I'VE GOT THE HUCKLE 
FOR THE BUCKLE
(totally abstract)
Demonstrate the illumination factor by lighting
the lamp. We walk amidst the darkness as the dark
men vamp. The human factoid as a consensual fiction. 
Human society as a consensual fiction. If that is found
so, I say what of human reality as a consensual fiction?
Hold these packages for me : I am entering another realm,
and I need to find the key to this apartment. As at the School
of Visual Arts, on 23rd, there are so many confusing things :
the art-supply-store, the school-store, the school itself, and 
then all feeders who duplicate the services and try to feed off
the student-art crowd that congregates. Until nighttime, when all
they do is party, drink, party, screw, fuck, drink, play, amble and
party again. Then they walk east, and disappear into the river.
Sometimes I just feel off-kilter. I want to wear that school-cap
but cannot figure why. I have the off-centered idea of geometry
never being art : angles and planes and rigorous attention to
rational detail. Like the fellow in the white apron whose job 
it is (somehow) to re-fill the broken eggshell with its original
contents. A sliver of Life for the silvery man, indeed, that is.

6020. CICERO IN 45 B.C.

CICERO IN 45 B.C.
Had his throat slit. It was in the Fall of
44, 6 months after the assassination of
Julius Caesar, when Cicero had written 
his treatise on the responsibilities of
'civilized' man. Yes, even back then. 
It was called 'De Officiis', and long
would outlive him. Church fathers, 
medieval grammarians, Renaissance 
humanists, they all loved it.
-
In 1455, shortly after Gutenberg had
printed his groundbreaking Bible, what 
was the second title to roll off the presses?
Why, none other than 'De Officiis.'
-
Having his breakfast one day, of a creamed 
and curdled yellow milk, Cicero said, 'Well,
now. What is all this?' His man-servant, in a 
dutiful service, replied, 'Why sir, it is nothing
alone, yet is a jumble of oh so many things.
I think they shall be calling it 'the Future.'

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

6019. SOMEONE'S LAST INTENTION

SOMEONE'S LAST INTENTION
They are clapping, Eduardo, for nothing,
while we play stupid music of the bounding
main. How'd that ever get started anyway? The 
sea as the 'bounding main'? I mean, let me talk, 
don't get me wrong, listen. I like it. It's got a
nice feel. But, what's the essence? What's it
really mean? Bounding main?
-
The martyr on the ship I last saw sinking was
not any martyr at all  -  bawling, crying his
stinking eyes out as the plastered ship went 
down.  In that sinking it made its own wake.
He pealed a merciless peal for value and mirth,
in which it was all soft enough but sounded to hear.
-
His last intention was to pray aloud  -  but the water
caught him good and all his screaming did was garble
up that sound into something else : 'I seem to be dying,
my God, dying here ! and nothing now comes of it!'
-
I wasn't close enough to hear the rest, and he was still
spitting words when I saw him last. He there reminded
me of a Captain Ahab of his own, going down with a
vengeance but going with a purpose as well.

6018. ARMS AND THE MAN

ARMS AND THE MAN
Listen to this then : the roar is of
the men, fighting backwards over
field and glen. The stretched hand, 
over the waters, reaches out. 
All we hear is the rush.
-
There is a single purpose to every 
thing in the world : a continuance of
circumstance, a constancy of want.

6017. REASONS TO BE

REASONS TO BE
I hadn't wanted, so I did without.
This little table in the red cafe is only
large enough for one. Even with the 
other side not against the wall  -  as it is
now  -  there'd be quite a fit for anyone 
else. I'm sitting here on Decibel Street -
well, what others call 72nd. Every noise
seems  -  yes  -  amplified and accelerated.
-
How fast does everything move? In retrospect, 
the world is unchanging. Glacier-like, the rocks
and boulders atop the earth are long done heaving.
Nothing moves. Nothing whatever changes. 'I think.
therefore I am'  -  trying to tell us something? 

Monday, October 20, 2014

6016. TITLE THIS SEQUENCE (1966)

TITLE THIS SEQUENCE
Sitting on a train with the landscape spinning by;
moonscape, dreamscape, winning. A small wreath
of smoke, something outside, reminds me of a
factory of old. The guy next to me, in my memory,
is damning himself with a cigarette. The small
silver case he holds holds ten.
-
There's nothing to be done. I have to breath.
Whatever happens after this can be his funeral  -
so they say, in 1965, that smoking kills. Lung
cancer, emphysema  -  old those big post-Kennedy
words. What Lee Harvey Oswald started. The
real New World was coming.
-
I sat back and was reading 'The National Observer'.
It was a weekly back then  -  some Liberal funk paper
out of DC. All fun and games, how to solve the world,
end poverty, quest the debt, reach the moon, save the
blacks. Medger Evers. Those three guys from New York,
Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Like yesterday,
man, like yesterday.
-
When bowling was cool. When the Beatles were breaking,
a new surge with all those fey British groups. When Esquire
ran Dylan on the cover  -  all that crap. 'Writes like a poet,
sings like a rebel'. Pure frozen-fuck hype. When bowling,
yeah, bowling, was cool.

6015. THE MANHANDLED TRIO

THE MANHANDLED TRIO
I wish this world could be Paradise.
I wish I could walk through walls. 
Open the lock 'round my neck.
Let me out.
-
There are stupid parents on TV.
What I just heard I can't believe : an
Army commercial, in which two dullard
parents are speaking to the camera. 'When
he first joined the Army, we were really
afraid. We just didn't know what to expect.'
-
What did you expect, genius folk? A game-show
a day with no one pecking at the window? No 
winner's allotment at the cost of someone losing?
-
Sometimes I wish to just bury myself in 
an overcoat ten times larger than me.
I wish this world could be Paradise -
but it ain't, okay?

Sunday, October 19, 2014

6014. ARTISAN WELLS

ARTISAN WELLS
Not artesian, OK? Those were the wells from
which the beer my father drank was made; so
claimed. 'Artesian' wells. This is different.
Who else can make water so well?
-
I make no claim to inherent talent or a way
with things; but I for sure know I cannot 
make water :  unless in the way my grandmother
used to mean when she said she was going to
toilet  -  'I've got to make water.'
-
Does anyone know why I'm so confused?

Saturday, October 18, 2014

6013. HERE IN BLUE

HERE IN BLUE
Always, always, waiting.
The green guy is chewing gum.
His daughter looks like an ace.
My farthest place from home is
seeing this distant vista. I sit.
-
This camel-back notebook is 
shaded in gray  -  pencil markings,
splotches or smudges. Every tiny
drawing  -  believe me  -  means
something. Mysteries abound.
-
I look up and am startled by a 
strangely hooded horse, seemingly
agitated and staring back at me.

Friday, October 17, 2014

6012. THIS NATION IS AN ENTITLEMENT

THIS NATION IS 
AN ENTITLEMENT
I could not entomb anything more important 
than Death itself  -  that which comes bearing 
the graces of cover and scent. Those cowardly 
boxes which drop right into the ground. Now 
they are made of some incongruous matter 
which never decays. Because we cannot speak 
rightly of any death but a dog's, make mine a 
small box of rottable pine instead; thanks.
-
Here, here, let me vote. I'm sure it's something.

6011. TRAVESTY

TRAVESTY
Wooden hands wear a black hat.
Open doorways let in light. The goyim
are watching the man in the Sukkot hut
drink his overly sweetened wine.
Why any of this occurs at all
is way beyone me.

6010. THE MARKET CRASHED AND MY ASPIRATIONS SOARED

THE MARKET CRASHED 
AND MY ASPIRATIONS 
SOARED
(stay close to your own inventions)
Throw those God-damned dice down on the table, come
here you little rat, bring me another cigarette and scotch.
Take my scorecard and shove it up your ass, stand around
waiting for whatever else will come. I have Salvation now.
-
Perpetuate the dagger that cuts to the heart, the entire idea
of violent death. Go to the confessional to strangle the priest.
Write something obnoxious on the altar-piece's awning.
Bring home the candles, cut down the monk.
-
Stand on the corner of Beaver and Pine, peeing into a blazing
cup  -  beat the next stockbroker you see to death and pieces.
Set ten-dollar bills ablaze and throw them off your shoulder.
Bow down to no one but itinerants and thieves. Gird your
loins, write home to mother, and enjoy your stay in jail.
Whatever else you do, stay close to your own inventions.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

6009. SUDDEN INFUSIONS

SUDDEN INFUSIONS
Grace, like a battleship, is coming home to roost.
With all its guns and armaments I can only look
forward to so much more. They named this ship
'Loki'. I do not know why. But, will I understand
the battle anyway? Not on a dime.
-
People fight to a grimace in thinking they're
making a point. And they are  :  the rubble and
the bodies left behind will tell. Even though your
point is pointless, buddy, you've played it well.
Now the unearthly silence is all yours.
-
I have to stand here like the rest and watch the cardboard
cutouts of ladies and men  -  who should be better, who 
should know more  -  act like morons on their dancing stage.
The little politician cretins cringe, for nothing. He and she
lie like their honor depends. They are as bare-assed naked
as any can be. Foolish, stupid, and dumb, the three.
-
Particulate matter will settle. The smoke and the grime finds
a place. After a few days, the bloated bodies  -  if there's a flood  -
will at least float away. The birds and rats will have the eyes.
The vultures can take the tongues.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

6008. PRESIDENT OF THE HANGING COMMITTEE

PRESIDENT OF THE 
HANGING COMMITTEE
'If that's Art, I'm a Hottentot.'  President Harry Truman
said that, on one of his better days. The rest of the time
he was bombing other cities. Good for him, atomic weasel.
He also chased journalists who criticized his daughter's
piano-playing in recitals. Better man than I am.
-
And, hell, I'm President of the Hanging Committee and that
gives me great power. 'Cept I don't yet know what that's about :
am I hanging this here 'Art' or we still doing subversive lynchings?
Jesus K. Rist how do I get in these confusing situations?
-
As a youngster I played marbles with thieves. They would
supply me with the mandatory marbles and those marbles
were always square  -  or at least way out of round. 
Nothing ever worked, and so I lost every time.
Buckets of dollars, and dollars for a bucket.
Better man than I am, now do you know how
that feels? The hurt is flecked with pain.
-
But, still, no matter, I am : President of the
 Hanging Committee again.

6007. MY PANTS ARE IN THE TOLL ROOM

MY PANTS ARE 
IN THE TOLL ROOM
My pants are in the toll room where they hold 
themselves for ransom  -  painter's loops and 
gunslinger eyes, a hook for a holster for a word 
to the wise. If everyone is scared all of the time, 
then no one is scared any of the time. I use that
as my parting couplet. I'm done.
-
Here is the seat where the magistrate sat. See how
the indented cheek-marks refuse to leave. What's
with that? All he did was shuffle papers while
I tried to talk, yes, even I, talking like a hollow,
couldn't reach his inner brain. He allowed us
to go home  -  but nothing more than that.
-
Before he came back he said he would 
call. No one mentioned to him that we 
had no phone at all.

6006. WE THE AUTOCRATIC

WE THE AUTOCRATIC
Look now at this :
look then at this.
Parse the list, 
thin the choices.
Make the 
parsimonious
noise as if you
really meant it.
Go on sailing.
But, whatever
else, do not
remain idle.

6005. THE MEGLOMANIACS

THE MEGALOMANIACS
King John the Marshmallow, and all those kindred
spirits, he drove himself high in a hot-air balloon.
Quite the new fashion, made the town swoon. He
rose up high, over fields and woods. Looking down
he spoke : 'My Kingdom is good.'
-
Down below, good Queen Sally was making love
with Elmer Swansong. A soothsayer, a wise-man,
a seer. All he kept saying was 'Johnny be good.'
He was thinking of the future - had never learned to 
read or write so well, but he could play the guitar
like ringing a bell. This the future. He took care 
of the King. And the King's maidens, and the 
King's mistresses, and the King's wife  - 
 in fact, all the King's affairs.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

6004. PAINTING THE TOWN RED

PAINTING THE TOWN RED
For painting this town red you get five years  -  
hard labor or not, all that's up to you. There's 
coffee in the deep-dish morning, if you can find
your way through the dark of night. Some ghouls
and spirits there won't let you be. Annoyances abound.
The rich-cabs, town cars and limousines, in the dawn they
sit and curbs and idle for the morning debutantes who make
their way. I've seen them, NYC TV people, on their way
 from Princeton to their studios in private car transport. 
The drivers are so cool as they sit and wait. Right outside 
D'Angelo's Italian market, there's always two at dawn. 
Over at Small World, where they wrestle every day with the 
coffee kin, I love to watch them go at it  -  memories larger 
than mine for words describing all those 'beverage' orders 
outlaid for the nonce. Only a few minutes. Never a lifetime 
sentence. Yes, and all that goes for clothes; not my
feeble daily rags, I mean 'clothes', the kind the big stores
 sell, the rich array of form and fit and fabric  -  everything
 for the king or queen who wears it. Language and words,
 clothes and jewels, all that together in painting this town red. 
Somehow. Red.