6114. THE MANSION PLAYS THE MUSIC

THE MANSION 

PLAYS THE MUSIC

The stairs seemed twisted but they went on, 

for over one hundred eight years they'd done their 

job. Up in the second ballroom, musicians sat 

around. Waiting. A mere beat in time, a rest-stop, 

a changed tempo, a stop to everything. Some 

form of early-century music was about to begin. 

6113. SO MENLO

SO MENLO

I have tired already of the

dissembling crowd which

spills out now from every

atrium. My God, they are

shoppers with awe. The 

tepid remonstrance that

comes from scolding would

have no effect on them at all.

-

Punctuate the life with

ramps and balconies where,

as one, that can watch each

other only attends their ways.

This is a brand new place, yet,

already, a flaw in the wall.

-

Let them attend their days.

6112. IT'S GOT TO COME FROM THOSE WHO KNOW YOU

IT'S GOT TO COME FROM

THOSE WHO KNOW YOU

Fisticuffs and a brand new scarf.

William the Conqueror and

William Tell  -  it's over, or.

There is bread in my hands

and blood on that bread. I

am a Sarabande.

6111. RIDERS

RIDERS

The riders were coming with their blood and their

glory, to fight this modern age  -  cowboy swansuits,

tiding with chaps, spitting tobacco while chewing a match.

I looked up from my perch (I'd just become a bird, in this

different life) to see where it was I was. It was all new to

me, and just becoming. As a bird, it wasn't so bad. A

cannon blast ruined the sky, as I realized, already, those

guys would kill me with their percussion.

Another feeble life, destroyed in a wartime grimace.

6110. MEAGER AUSPICES

MEAGER AUSPICES

The diamond was already broken  -  I gave it

to anyone who wanted. While running in place,

the final fellow fell. I've haven't handled anything

this difficult in a very long time. I know I'm not

much, but that girl, to me, just exudes sex.

-

I haven't worn gloves in years  -  the cold is 

fleeting and doesn't last long. Besides, I need

my fingers. Cameras, pens, the rest.

-

Look up at the sky if you get the inkling; the

white lines are spelling something out. The

words are short, but I cannot quite understand.

6109. SHADRACK

SHADRACK

Yes, he was here; just now. He left 

wearing purple jodphurs and a gun. 

The story went around that he was

broke again. Came out of that fire, 

just talking of God.

6108. ONLY NEW JURISDICTION

ONLY NEW JURISDICTION

My fellow chivers, there is nothing that presents

itself to us forthrightly. Does anyone understand

how everything hems and haws? Even the flame,

about to scorch, wiggles to and fro along its way.

-

'Get to it, man! Come along now!'

-

I am a recluse and a hermit. I've let everything grow

long and frazzled, bleary and glum, and I wish to 

see no one. My life is all a word, no more, no less, 

and I tend to that with a primal dedication.

-

Can I be covered, in my silence, by your heart?

6107. HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF THE STILL-LIFE IN THE MIRROR

HOW TO SOLVE THE 

PROBLEM OF THE 

STILL-LIFE IN 
THE MIRROR

The first time ever I heard Camille Saint 

Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals', I was scared

out of my mind. Not so much by the music, but

by the concept itself    -  I was standing near some

Fourth Street hole and it just ran right through me.

Since that time, I've been living up to nothing. It

still amazes me. You listen to every inch and boil 

of what you hear; it knocks you dead.

-

I do not need the storyline to cross the dangered border:

there I am already, hip-boots at my neck, strange-hatched

crossfires nipping my face. I dissolve, and soon I'm gone.

-

Netherland. Neverland. Whatever do you mean? All

those strange, big animals are looming, lady, take your

shelter where you may, before I have my way. If there's

ammunition in your gunbelt, brother, show it now. I void

for no one, yet I'll piss in these woods  -  the wild things,

indeed, the wild things are running. That's all I ever see.

6106. IN THIS PART THE ANVIL GOES SOFT

IN THIS PART THE 

ANVIL GOES SOFT

Here's the crux, or the heart of the matter : some odd

literary phrase twisted into movie use. The storyline breaks 

when the hero goes home, wounded but still indelicate and

yet unbound. The next morning he is shown dropping all those

wine bottles into some municipal recycling sidewalk vat.

Dramatically, it fails  -  yes  -  but makes some sense as

a lesson for those who've chosen to watch. No reason exists.

-

Sermons and sermonettes, the dogged motions of all our own

lives. Words spoken from a script, words spoken out of turn

things coming back to haunt, the simple wounds of love.

In this part, the anvil goes soft.

6105 MELCHIOR

MELCHIOR

Being shamed by nothing is really not so

bad  -  even that naked silhouette in the 

window across the way has its place. Outside,

those old churchbells are ringing again.

St. Sebastian of the night owls, or something.

-

Was it Shakespeare who put it : 'the slings and

arrows of outrageous fortune'? If it wasn't, then

I'll claim it for my own and screw the rest. I've

gone this distance, I've passed the test. Now is

but the time for milking tears and wiping venom.

-

Looking past my happenstance, I know I've

reached the loamy soil in a most fortuitous was.

Yet, having the manner doesn't give one the means.

Alas, Melchior, alas.

6104. HERE'S THE MANIFEST

HERE'S THE MANIFEST

They've intermingled the letters of the bestiary

with the funnels of the horn : people are screaming

obscenities while a number of buildings burn.

I'm not taking notes, mind you, just noting. The

most offensive thing to me is ignorance.

And I'm seeing plenty of that.

-

If there ever was a unicorn, one to be had  -  not the

hippy fantasy of all our goodness  -  I'd bid on it

just for conversational value. Like the Fairway

Market in old Red Hook, Brooklyn, the story

would echoes down after years of neglect.

-

Bestiaries fumble the real world into dreams.

The old carpenter-wheelwright-sailor, nursing his

beer at the edge of some filthy waterside bar,

he's trying to tell me something. I cannot hear.

Water taxis rip by us, the Fairway parking lot

roars noisily its metal clank, and I have to

just tell him I'm nearly deaf. He knows I'm 

lying, but doesn't really care; there was 

nothing much left to say anyway.

6103. IN THE HOUSE OF PETER LORRE

IN THE HOUSE 

OF PETER LORRE

I went to the house of Peter Lorre to sit for a spell

and talk. I wanted to ask him about that 'M' on his

back   --   he spoke : 'Well, Hans Beckert was a serial

child-killer, the central character. Putting a brand on

the unthinkable, you could say.  It was 1931; movies

would do anything they could get away with, so if the

fickle public could accept a serial killer, and identify

with him, why not? Back then, we couldn't 'show'

those deaths (yes, how times have changed), and so

it became palpable and disturbing that Beckert himself

was childlike  -  we made it so the audience could see

that. Remember, everything was new then. I was short,

for an actor, among all these others, and it was said 

I had a wounded angel's face  -  that's how movie people 

talked, type and character and 'emotion', though all of it

was fake.  My first role, for which I really did have to

wait, was Beckert in 'M', in which I played a boy dressed

as a man in a nearly floor-length coat. A shroud, of sorts.

It was all shot on sets, in a sardonic portrait of the police

and the underworld, competing to discover the child-killer

who is disrupting the city. A blind beggar realized Beckert's 

identity. Another man scrawls a white-chalk 'M' on the palm 

of his hand and slaps it on Beckert's back. That leads to my

real 'moment'  -  when I, as Beckert of course,  suddenly

notice the 'M' on my shoulder in a mirror. It might not seem

like much, but I played it from deep within  -  who can avoid

their own inner 'demons' their own mark on their back?

It was said that I brought dread and pathos enough to the

role that the audience was confounded. And then  -  in

movie reckoning  -  I had to be 'eliminated' to keep

society 'well'. After this film, yes, which made me, 

there was no going back. Once the audience had

learned to 'watch' in safety the dissembling of

another man's character  -  which of course we

all shared  -  there was no going back. We

were then ready to look at anything.

-

Oh, but all that was so long ago.'

6102. UNUSUAL CONUNDRUM

UNUSUAL CONUNDRUM

Man the measure of all things; I've heard that

before. It's unproven, it's not true, it's a mess.

Here's the steeple of some dumb little church;

deep-valley, hills, waterways, tree-lined roads.

So totally beautiful in and of itself, you'd wonder 

why 'Man' ever arrived. Yet, let's look, what would

it be without that? Certainly not the dainty church, 

which professes all his beliefs. Only the manner of 

Nature then takes over  -  the love of the gulch, the 

copse in the truer heart of Man. If not, then, why

do we lie in the Earth, interred for the ages like 

some courageous bee, just awaiting that first 

warm day to spring back into Life?

6101. HORNED TOAD

HORNED TOAD

(evergreen cemetery)

Fire on the mountain. Jubilation Day. 

The late and the lost. Anything at all, 

today. My manner is polite but stern, 

staggering and straight together. Yes, 

I can walk the  line. Flugel horns I'm 

hearing in the back of my mind.

-

Dinner at six, or whenever you want.

Who cares about eating on this planet?

A precious moment keeps ties to the

Divine; everything else can rot.

-

Now, Thor, put your hammer down : 

I have walked four miles and am already

resigned. The grave of Stephen Crane is at

my feet. The obelisk memorial is unsigned.

6100. ALL THE BIGGEST WINNERS

ALL THE BIGGEST WINNERS

The way it goes nowadays is this: the painter

wears a mask, the carpenter has a new house,

the ballerina wears a gun. Dark shadows finger

the night, in an examination of something

unspoken while the woods crawl with endings.

Birnham Woods, to be exact  -  a large new

development on the outskirts of town.

-

Here's where I sit : myself lamenting something;

Banquo, Lady MacBeth, Duncan, I can't recall.

Out before me someone has a new car, a Honda

Dagger, it's called. I mutter strange words :

'Is that a Dagger I see before me?'

-

There's no complicity like an empty life  -  the

hip-hop boys are shagging flies in their baggy jeans.

The girls from the nearby projects jump rope on

this fine and sunny day. All their mothers, combined,

amount to nil. The world is an empty stage. 

We find ourselves stuck here, until...

6099. PACHECHO

PACHECHO

Flammable liquid, eyes good as gold, 

nine points on the map, everything oversold. 

What's left in a nation of warriors? Out here, 

in the cold, I'm walking some old Rahway 

cemetery, right past an obelisk for the dead 

of the Titanic. Listen to me, listen someone.

Does an entry from a wider stage take 

over the small first act?

6098. MERCHANT OF PENANCE

MERCHANT OF PENANCE

Oh joy-God there is no good in this :

nothing is saved and nothing is lost, there's

not much difference now in the in-between.

Like someone said in the locker-room, 'We 

are what we are'. Stand before the mirror, shiftless,

look at who you see : I am responsible for nothing,

yet I mourn somehow for all. How can this be?

-

For me, the edging has always been the most

enticing part of life  -  the chance, the reach,

the fumble. Once you never leave the spot marked

home for you, you never leave anywhere else either  -

a fixed fixation on fixing the fixation. There's no

fix there  -  because you're either living it all 

or you're not living at all. I love the way

I can fuck with words.

-

So then  -  find me if you care or can. I'll be sitting

on some broken log in a woods so deep and dark 

you'll have trouble finding yourself, let alone me.

The aura in which I live, you'll just have to see,

because I won't be there at all.

6097. JOEY LESCANO

JOEY LESCANO

He's not any one's fool, he sharpens pencils

by just staring back, leaves water around the

icicle's rim. A thirty year old sink-full of

bathroom is him. Only medieval portraits

can do justice. I bow to acquiesce.

6096. THE INCREDIBLE FIRE HAS SPREAD

THE INCREDIBLE 

FIRE HAS SPREAD

The man with the mandible is icing his cake, the

lights have been strung like a celebration, dipping 

in the middle to lower the room. Dimness is a new

reflection, while I am standing alone. This fellow 

here, he holds a jagged peak. The lady next to him

is hollow. Not for nothing are the readers of this

sledge undaunted  -  their money can get them

anywhere they like. Exchanging pictures of the  

marlins off the coast, or their children on the 

boats. I feel like a toast left out of the toast.

-

I can give you fourteen dollars for the thing you

just said, if you'll only promise to never take it 

back. The incredible fire has spread.

6095. FINAL FALLING OBELISK

FINAL FALLING OBELISK

Rotogravure the new montage, take my feature

to the highest hilltop, proclaim the word to the

newest register. Hank is coming to the freezer.

I love where I dwell now  -  this is truly the land

of absurdity, and I can speak it well. There's no two

lines connect, all that parallels eventually intersect

in space because of curvature, all that, is a misnomer

for some sacred moment. There really is nothing at

all. And Hank is coming to the freezer.

-

That photo of the final obelisk, that's his  -  the one 

the Pharaoh sent, the last building left on the sandy 

steppes  of loam, the only figment of infinity that 

ever mattered. His sister was my lover, his father 

was my brother, and I am now indebted to all and 

everything. And Hank is coming to the freezer.

6094. CATTLE CAKES AND CAR STAIRS

CATTLE CAKES 
AND CAR STAIRS

Was that the battle mentioned; the one with the

twenty horses on a far-flung field? Where some

Colonel Somebody lost control and shot five of

his own artillery men in a vengeance? Is that how

they won that war? I do think I read about that.

-

Now anybody savvy enough to nap the nickel would

clasp the bell, announce intentions, and bring forth

every man he could : sabers and bullets and guns.

When I visit that field these days, it's all brambles

and tree-trunks and shrubs. They've told me that,

somewhere beneath this soil, are the remains,

probably, of about 1500 men  -  like some old

dry-docked Serbian terror-field, soaked and nasty

with blood. That may be true. Difference to you?

-

I'm tired of history, and tired of tomorrow and

tired of today. Nothing left for me to do and

little left to say  -  maggots with magazines,

people misunderstanding everything anyway,

gallops and gulps, like dick-filled mouths in

a prison hallway. I can't be there then, and I

most certainly won't be there now.

Find me a woman with class.

6093. GLOOM TENDENTIOUS

GLOOM TENDENTIOUS

Ashes to ashes, dust to gloom.

I've heard the tendency latent : lost

a finger in the battle of happenstance.

Only now I stand squared, waiting for the

little phone to ring. It's a statuette of a

jelly-caked elephant from 1964.

-

There aren't any shadows left in this room :

like saviors on vacation, they took their

little satchels and left  -  something about

supplies to travel with, socks, and a shirt.

I don't listen much to anything I hear.

-

If I painted this green into a corner of black

I'd be sure to find something to get me out.

Oh Lord, get me home before seven.

6092. LIFE : ANOTHER ROOM

LIFE : ANOTHER ROOM

This is the way it seems to me  -  all those

issue and foibles and noise. Life, as another

room : something just off from where I am.

-

I can sit back, making that choice, and muse on

something from here; this other place I am at.

Life, in that other room, runs on. The voices may 

change, or have changed, but the struggle with

memory and its languages remains. Out there.

-

Sullied by nothing, there is no meaning at all.

I think it's the dirt that gives things the meaning.

Isn't that what purity means?

6091. NATANDREE DU BLISS

NATANDREE DU BLISS

You want your moment of happiness? Yeah,

that's for me. I'll give you your horsehair

whip-slide opening right across the side of your

head. Then I'll break you. Chalk-circle call girl.

Red mounted yellow devil. Green-curdled gay

cake slab. Every store front on Cincinnati Street

will be open from noon to three. Today, at least;

and then we'll see. Be there, and look for me.

-

Hermes wears a tie. The moment of the messenger's

message comes nigh. God gave Noah the rainbow

sign  :  'No more giving, the next time's mine.'

6090. ORBITAL

ORBITAL

I've got a few friends left on shore, yeah, sure, 

they congregate. I hear them talk as I sail away, 

always getting farther from their breath. God, it's 

lonesome back there. Everything I said, I wasn't

supposed to say; everything they said was OK.

I never did get the hang of that. It's said that this

land is a free land  -  you can say and do whatever

you want. I'll mention that to the hangman next time

we meet. He's always busy doing his wife, learning to

read, talking at speed, cutting down trees. He has the

Mexican tongue  -  short and quick and happy. Ruining

another man's land, pouring out of Pocono cars at 

five a.m. to get a plastering job for the day. Every

morning I see such things  -  land grab, run away

free, without a hitch, them, and me?

6089. BROOKLINED

BROOKLINED

Not ever knowing what it means, the fourteen

brothers surge forward  -  Carter and Bray, Hector

and Langley, William and Chance, Bartram and Leo,

Kent and Martin, Michael and Herm, Nathan and Reg.

That was the end of that.

6088. ATYPICAL MORIARITY

ATYPICAL MORIARITY

Standing on the beach like that, I knew

it wasn't him. Holding hands with nothing,

he'd usually have a revolver, and a second skin.

This was a waltz, with a Matilda I'd never known.

How's that? You don't understand but you swear

you do? Too shiftless and atypical, Moriarity,

this just isn't you.

6087. IN CARPATHIA

IN CARPATHIA

So much is said, and as much is said the same is

sad. The dead deer is still lodged in the windshield.

I will lock my doors whenever. I see ice and I see

snow. Yet, my life is a disgusting bungle.

-

The last statement defines me : there's a hermit in

the forest, sitting by his table, smoking on his pipe.

6086. FINE MINK STOLL

FINE MINK STOLL

What little marrow is in the bone is

all I have to use :  carcinogenic catalyst,

the cancer of the fossil shown. Scars, and

fractures  -  they say he was killed in an 

avalanche. For the most part of my hole

I got an ill religion and a fine mink stoll.

-

'I'm next door to the cornstalk, by the side 

of the sheetrock. I will wait for the 

morning like a dog for the moon.' It's

not too soon, it's not too soon, it's not

too soon, it's not too soon.

-

I've got hands on the peach pit and I'm

gonna' try to weigh it for the maker on

the plains with his hands still on the

spool. This time I'm no fool; got an

ill religion and a fine mink stoll.

6085. SCHOOLBOY WEARS A HAT

SCHOOLBOY WEARS A HAT

And eats oranges at the wall, and sits on the stairs

out front. The low sky preens his face. A whitewashed

glimmer shines on his family name. A prince is coming to

America again! Or at least that's what he's thinking.

6084. NOW THAT YOU'VE GONE AND DONE IT

NOW THAT YOU'VE GONE 

AND DONE IT

(little man's bio)

I can't type worth a shit, yet I've been doing it for years;

not the right way, mind you, just my own way : while

looking down, eyes on the keys, typing away but not

seeing the screen. I'm blind, but not that so yet.

-

It's a little mystery to me how all those mummies have

learned  -  they're running fingers a mile a minute and just

staring at the screen, the words of which they've typed. 

Seeing it instantly must be a gas. For me, no, alas, it's

a task. I have a horrible notebook, and a blackened

finger's horrid grasp.

-

So, instead, I just relax and try to figure out some other

open meaning for some other open world : asphyxiated

on oxygen as a human as on grass or any one of those 

wonder weeds they're always talking about. And  -  before

this gets any further out of hand  -  it's not me; I don't

smoke, weed either, and only drink to chase down food.

-

This little stupid bio has put me in the mood : you've got

me off now and saying too many things. I'm out  -  now 

that you've gone and done it.

6083. FENDING THE ARMS

FENDING THE ARMS

Albert Coalesce, that's what he said his name was.

Or maybe it was Albert, more or less. How do I know

what a name means, or how to be fending it off?

No manuscript like this was ever  before produced,

and I have nothing that's even the same as the things 

which there already. One mighty nightmare, this is.

-

Please find me the channel to pass through all of this,

steer me through the shallows, beat my head upon

the stones  -  and then let me see your Gibralter before

we take it all home. I'm here, standing on the corner,

by, what is this, Bleecker and 10th?

-

Nathan Hale and Thom Paine too, you know they

both hung around here, but now the settlement's as dry

as bone and Minetta Brook is in the loam, drained and

sent through pipes instead, and no one knows a thing.

-

When was it, someone asked, that I really 

entered the mainstream? All I could do was

shake my head and laugh. And I was, already,

a nervous wreck. I could feel it in my bones,

but all I could do was laugh.

6082. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION

The cigar smoke lingers like a whiskey taste,

fouling the eyes and the face. Here, between some

other dawn and some other place, I sit about

watching both light and dark  -  I feel fortunate,

actually, to be in such a place :  where that distinction

can still be made, where the difference is obvious.

These can be my Boy Scout moments, I suppose.

-

Another rendition of the same old song : like those

Campfire Girls of old with their 'Wo-Hilo means light.'

-

Sweetheart, honey-dew-melon-face, who cares?

Are you the only one?

6081. IN A LOW-GRADE STUPOR (luncheonette)

IN A LOW-GRADE STUPOR

(luncheonette)

Outside of Hank's New Luncheonette, everyone was

just standing around - no one really knew that word,

well, none of the young kids anyway. Those who were

twenty-five, if they weren't staring at their phone like

in-place morons at Hellespont Gate, were laughing

over the word, calling it quaint to know what it meant.

I didn't care, I don't eat such gruel anyway, but this

Hank guy, he had some balls to do what he did.

-

Opening a fifty-year old eating place as if it's been

there forever, like the lunch counter at an old

Woolworth's or Kresge's. Standing solid with the

grilled cheese and boiled eggs, the slab of nasty

meatloaf with a creamsauce from the dregs. A

wilted lettuce with some sick tomatoes. Yeah,

this will work, this is how money grows.

-

Nobody really said a word, they just panted

and bellied up to the faux linoleum counter,

in a low-grade stupor worth something. In a

real low-grade stupor worth something.

6080. TO ERASE THE PAST

TO ERASE THE PAST

To erase the past, wouldn't you just make

a future? Some new Code of Hammurabi

where the nickel isn't worth a dime, all bets

are off, and the circumstantial evidence doesn't

prove a goddamn thing? That's the way I'd want

it  :  armchair memories and sitting like a King.

-

Here instead I have a listless feeling that

someone's about to break my jaw, that my friend

Aleck really races his fearsome boats, that the new 

kid on the block really does have a...nine inch cock?

See what I mean, and how'd that get in there anyway  -

or is that a line for a girl to speak?

-

One day I just took it all out  -  grab my own gun and

put it to my forehead. I'd already drawn some dotted

lines to guide my hand across the image in the mirror.

Pow! Bang! There, now it's over.

6079. THIS IS A CIRCUMSTANCE

THIS IS A CIRCUMSTANCE

Here where they hide away the dwarfs  -

those little guys on lawns with lanterns 

pointed hats  -  like lawn-jockeys yet 

somehow not an offense, things are 

more easy to take. I lit a brushfire 

fuse with the tip of my furtive nose.

6078. HOW DID THIS EVER HAPPEN?

HOW DID THIS EVER HAPPEN?

Both my hands are broken, my hunched 

back is an ache. My eyes are dead to any 

sound. I can't go on much longer.

-

When I swam with Captain Ahab  -  or was it

Captain Queeq  -  I did feel something pulling 

me down but never could get relieved. From 

that end, I reached the bottom of the open sea.

-

Funny thing of all of this is now : I can smell

a fake a mile away, a poser just doing time; the

somnolence of insipid background music, the

staccato of gunfire in a really bad play.

6077. NUNCHUCKS

NUNCHUCKS

On this crazy desert island I don't even know what

they are  -  those throwing sticks of a dynamite craze,

chain sticks, martial arts fighting sticks. Where do the

hands go on this contraption? I've only worked with

my mind before. Now I stand entrapped.

But why would you take me down?

6076. I MAY HAVE

I MAY HAVE

How I may have mayhem'd the bottom I do not

know : my sleeves were driving to Towanda, just

entering the Endless Mountains in some Pennsylvania

daydream when I thought of you. I was struggling  - 

this most certainly pulled me back to a fresh attention.

-

Like a medieval portrait of some sniveling princeling

looking back in disdain at what then passed for a mirror :

a boy so like a girl, no real distinction between them.

My own eyes stayed, shiftless, on the road; a few weird

settlements, places where people lived with their cows.

-

I guessed that I was tired enough to bleed right from my

eyes. Isn't that why they get red? Alongside the roadway,

at her RFD mailbox, some farmgirl had stretched. I was

stolen again  -  she had the fulsome body of something

I just had to touch. Yet, singularly, and alone, I moved

along. These are some sorts of Currier and Ives scenes

that even the barber shops never witness.

-

Here then instead, I sit me down at some awful place

named 'Theo's Alaskaway Eats'. Route 6, westbound for

sure. Way out nowhere. What this fellow must have

been thinking when he named his dumpy joint, I'll

never understand. I order jackrabbit stew? You

say that's my only choice.

6075. FOR FRAGONARD AND FOR JOHN DUNNE

FOR FRAGONARD AND 

FOR JOHN DUNNE

All these prettified things  -  lovely to see and the

touch, outlawed. Look with thine eyes, sweet thing,

and only that. We are somehow part of an obscure

caravan  :  gypsies and minstrels, dark-eyed girls

dancing in the grass. Oh Mr. Painter, don't forget

about me; I bend and I swagger, for all to see.

-

And then the bell tolls, the bell tolls for me.

6074. MY SHARE IS PERPETUAL

MY SHARE IS PERPETUAL

So sings the church on the corner, so sings the

knave in the loft : choirspeak and every stupid

thing alike. In the evenings, a painted-purple

dove of night descends, something like a

darkness, with amends, and runs the sainted

street straight on. People stop to see what

goes, cock their ears to hear the sounds.

'My share is perpetual', they think they

hear it said. Later, at dawn when all the

new cars come by, no one can recognize

where they had been : seen dropping off 

people, seen picking up workers, builders,

mechanics, angels and serfs. What strange

world and land is this, where God is

still addressed as 'Lord', as if it were

800 A.D.? If the share is perpetual,

then we should just let it be.

6073. PIPPA PASSES

PIPPA PASSES

Bells and pomegranates together alike.

Ottima knows too. Love and lust, together,

are equals  -  to the headstrong sky, to the

winsome moon, to the distant travelers, to

the monkeys reflected in the vast sun's eye.

6072. OF ALL, MY NEW DIABLO

OF ALL, MY NEW DIABLO

It is a shimmering visage, this, now  -  glaring

eyes and raging nostrils, detectable flames 

where ears should be. Devil. Devil. Devil. 

-

I've never harped on things like this before, 

yet I believe that Evil exists, exists and works

its furied ways into the hearts of Man. Why 

else would everything else appear 

in this so-fallen world?

6071. IT HURTS

IT HURTS

It hurts if it's all the same  - 

I landed on a comet, I rode on

a train. I closed my eyes, it was 

all the same; hurtling through

space, with no end in site.

6070. A CHAIR YOU CANNOT MOVE

A CHAIR YOU 
CANNOT MOVE

Sit here, then, thou reliant quibble-master, the

one who will not stop, 'midst all your glooms of

gold and gilt - for I have heard you too, as well,

and for what reason even I am not so sure.

-

Oh frigate on the choppy sea, how unlike you all

this be : stepping-stone fast forward, recollected.

windswept, or broken, this ship of mind floats on.

-

These waters which can drown us, are they not all  -

as Whitman said  -  the seas of God? Passage to

you! Mastership to you! Then, celebrate, yes!

-

'Lo, Soul, Seest thou not God's purpose from the

first?' The Earth to be spanned, men to become

brothers and sisters to be sisters? I wish't all to

handle the selfsame love of goal and purpose

together, riding these human waves still.