Tuesday, June 30, 2015

6837. SO WHAT IF YOU

SO WHAT IF YOU
By just saying the words you can be as tacky as the
next  -  left-leaning or circumspect, right-winger or
central-city leaning neutral. It's all nothing; it's all
your genuflecting in a pool of shit and blood to make
amends and ameliorate your conscience. Go ahead,
go ahead, stand on your magic mountain and bellow.
-
I have eyes, yet I see not, and ears, but I do not hear.
My last jar of Vaseline I used for crankcase oil in the
hopes the heat would break it down into a more liquid 
form. It worked as far as Iowa, and then I ripped the
main-rod. It's just like politics  -  all those little whores
sucking the big guy's weenie. I use that word only once,
here, to get past the usual censors of nothing but that.
-
I put my engine to rest long time ago. Like Mao said,
'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun', and 
who am I to argue. Chinamen geek. Maxine Hong 
Kingston powerless witch-hunt lookalike bitch. Deng 
for dung, I always say about Chinese politics.
-
Here, the old men are sitting around getting haircuts and
blanching about their testimonials dinners that went wrong.
Who dresses these guys? They get up in the morning like this?
I never wore shorts my entire life, and never will, and these
skinny-legged pinfoils are wearing orange and green and
red like some golf-course freaks on his way to their devil.
Wish fisherman's hats to boot. If any of them have a
pension, it's just to relieve their tension  -  they wouldn't
know what to do with anything anyway. Why bother.

6836. A MR. NIEMYER

A MR. NIEMYER
He wasn't a clockmaker, exactly  -   though I'd seen
him fix many. More like a very short man, and that
was that. Nothing distinguishable at all about him, no
real 'thing' to point out. He just was. And I knew him.
How it came to be, I can't remember; I'd seen him once
or twice along Eighth Street, when it was filled with
shoe shops and hippie stores, smoke shops and an
Orange Julius too. Now that's all gone, and I haven't
seen, I have to say, Mr. Niemyer is forty years plus.
What's it matter now, except that you're probably
saying 'well then, why write?' And I don't know  - why
do anything? How to make reason of the way things
come back into one's mind, one's realm, again out of
nothing, from so long ago. What is the past that we must
must know it, and know it twice? One day he asked me
in, gave me some food, and a bottle of beer  -  which I 
didn't really drink, and it may have been actually my 
very first beer out of home  -  on the road, as it were. 
We talked. I saw he was very nervous, and then he told
me about everything that he'd lost, that had been lost,
in the war  -  his mother, his wife, his children, his world.
Burned, embers, nothing, death. The only way he'd survived
as sole survivor was by hiding on a ship and ending up in 
Baltimore, from where he came to New York City on a 
chartered bus, pretending to be a member of the Knights
of Columbus heading to a convention. He got out in 
Philadelphia, took a train from there, alone, and with
one bag and his clockmaker tools, he'd found a room
on Allen Street, and stayed. And stayed some more. 
And stayed  -  only because, he said, he 
was afraid to ever move again.

6835. PATHOS

PATHOS
Pathos wears a jacket,
as children paint the wall.

Monday, June 29, 2015

6834. AT THE THOUGHT OF

AT THE THOUGHT OF
Myriads of storm-clouds entice these propositions, and I
have nowhere else to go. In 1974 I walked Elmira College
daily, only to find myself caught in a campus of want. I
was not entirely there, yet I wrote those endless papers, and
made sure I formulated endless thoughts. I had some form of
formlessness, and haunted artistic corridors too. Looking for
line and form, finding the scent of color and oils.
-
People seemed to think I was a magician  -  finding that open
coil with which to energize my heart, shocking myself into
existence, landing on Earth, from some other place indeed.
Quickly, and oh, I learned all those other languages and all
those other tongues. Each day, in the postal lobby of the
college's mailbox hall, I picked up my copy of Granma,
most faithfully, and read my Daily Call. Red Marxist 
menace papers and chatted with Mao Tse Tung. For
nothing at all that either, except a drawing by Andy
Warhol, or a hush and a shudder from a visiting
Rod Serling, who himself was soon dead.
What was I to do? And at the
thought of what else?

6833. SWOLLEN HEFT PARK

SWOLLEN HEFT PARK
At the corner of Wedgewood and Ellis, that's where we go,
where men shell out steel for some minutes of danger. Even
parking a car gets troublesome  -  all these wooden handles and
these crazy-assed locals with shotguns and sabers. The sign says,
'Do Not Idle'  -  way too philosophical for any of that, and what do
they mean anyway  -  the cars? or people standing around? Why
can't they just be more clear about it? Do they want us there, or not?
I can buy popcorn at the concession stand, or ice cream from that
wily fuck who comes around with the noisy, jangly truck. What
is that his bells play, 'Turkey In the Straw'? I can't figure nothing
of this out  -  my nerves are shaky and my time is running low.

6832. THAT WON'T BE NOTHING GETS HURT

THAT WON'T BE 
NOTHING GETS HURT
I walk unknown, like a stumble-foot loose warrior,
yet I still put out the garbage and do the laundry here.
That's way too much contradiction for me : Brooklyn
maybe instead. The five story walk-up, the old neighbor
who used to work in the Navy Yard when it made real things;
bombs and warriors and steel planks and ships. That corner
drivel diner with the nine-hour old gray coffee still sitting
in the pot, stewing all day, and people drinking it like it
was goldwasser or some elixir. Yhew! Kill me now.
-
Then along comes a Mary Ellen or something, with swagger.
She walks right past my young self and I have her. Now she's mine,
and always. We walk down, entering Prospect, and sit on a bench 
watching some tired kids play an old game of baseball. The dry
paths are base lines, worn out by nothing at all; and the backstop
stoops, it sags and wobbles. A foul ball could knock it over.
That won't be nothing gets hurt.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

6831. NO GREAT TEMPLATE

NO GREAT TEMPLATE
In the way of satisfaction, they have given out
tokens : ideas of salve and love. No man is an
island, except those who are. Let the little children
come to me, as I go about my Father's work?
-
The pottery kiln was still warm as they buried the
small bird in the yard, It had fallen or been killed
or somehow died. Probably no more than ten days
old, I'm not sure it had a clue the nest was no longer
its home. What's it called, a fledgling? Dead,
before it even had a chance.

6830. OF A FIRE

OF A FIRE
All I hear are echoes -  and these flames crackling
away. The woods are burning down? Wasn't it
Norman Mailer who wrote, 'Of a Fire on the Moon'?
Yes, it was, about the moon-landing. It was quite a nice 
image; that 'fire' on the moon. The fact that there wasn't 
really one at all didn't mean anything  -  he made reference
to the lift-off of the module back to the command ship.
And then, the Grateful Dead, they hit their gong with
'Fire, Fire On the Mountain.' I always liked that too.
-
So, what is it about fire that brings me here? What
obscure idea must I jettison to tell you what I mean?
Poets aren't supposed to explain, just rather find that
crystalline magic which prospers the image to come right
at your face; to be recognized and be understood, sometimes
without making a smidgen of sense. If it has to be explained,
well, then, one may as well just write prose. Like a guidebook
or an instruction manual instead.
-
I think back now, over these last 10 months or so and realize
there's not a thing I miss : I don't miss the purpose or the ways 
or the people or the reasons or the meanings. I don't miss that 
coffee-shop at morning, or all those sweet girls talking at me,
those guys with their funny hats and lively ways, the black
squirrels who run the campus, the little cops on their one
man scooters scooting over the grass. The annoying people
on the bus or the train. Nothing really at all.
-
It's more like I just miss fire : the fire of ideas, and the fire of
lips and the fire of the hearts I may have seen and touched.
A fire, such as those fires, it stays with me, and goes now 
wherever I go. It doesn't have words; it just burns on.

6829. WHAT WOULD I BE?

WHAT WOULD I BE?
(my life as a drone, so many  years on)
I am not my own best, always falling short. In
my ways, I amount to a Delmore Schwartz, running
between cars, maybe, raggedly demented, never up to
promise, not having reached potential  -  crazed, cranky,
and gone. I have to say I'm sorry for that; bad scene, yeah.
But, why? I don't know, can't say I know, and won't pretend
it's so.  Wasn't drugs nor alcohol  -  I was always too stupid
for that, and lived my live as a slave instead. Doing what 
people said, living like a drudge beneath the stupid heels of
a workaday boss, a scene of loss, of stasis, of patience and
waiting. Of doing, and shouting out, I was more afraid of 
the hurting, the constant God-damned pain. Six hundred 
bucks a week for peeing in a gutter and listening to shits.
Oh but I was the wiser fool  -  they all go home to live with
themselves, while I went home to live with someone else.

6828. COMING HOME BALI HI

COMING HOME BALI HI
(all a really true story)
One time I stayed up all night, with the guy from California
who had the water bag for the mountain passes hanging on the
front of his Chevy pick-up truck. That was a long time ago, and
the truck was maybe a '64 in '76. Something like that  -  but I was
tired and we stayed up, mainly because he wasn't and he just kept 
talking. I must have been pretty worthless, just nodding and listening,
probably not saying anything back, but this guy had arrived about
8pm, from driving like 5 days across the country. He was probably
still wired or up on something and raring to go. He'd parked out
front, entered the house, we all said hi and the rest; had coffee, and
that was that  -  he just never shut down. Where hospitality is
supposed to end, I guess I never knew. I was a working guy, fact
was, and I had to be there at 8am. I guess I could have just said
'goodnight' and left it at that while I slept, but it was seemingly more
interesting this way. My life was pretty much a bore, and work was
a drudge. Did I mention 'what else is new?' I can't rightly now even 
remember what there was so much to talk about : I guess news about
Benecia and San Francisco  -  his two recent towns in California  -  
and cars and trucks and his version of news of the world, which wasn't
mine, but that never mattered. They had a different head there, that
California bent that I could never get. Until much later then, he 
changed his mind  -  by the nineties he was hating taxes, hating 
Mexicans and hating all sorts of regulations and California 
restricted things. And then by 2004, he was dead. Blew his own 
brains out. Smithereen'd his head all over the inside of a stupid
car in his own backyard. Just goes to show what sleep deprivation
will do, maybe, after a while. I don't know, and it doesn't matter
now. It wasn't me and I wasn't it; him either. Both ways, we'd sort
of each saddled different horses to ride and only this one crossing 
at the gulch was what we, momentarily, had decided to have in 
common. About five-thirty or six in the morning, we heard the 
garbage-men come by  -  this was back in the day when two garbage 
guys walked along with the truck, threw the contents of cans in the 
back of the truck  -  all done by hand then, and live. These guys talked 
to pass the time, as they worked. When they got to his truck with the 
water bag on the front, they started laughing and loudly proclaiming, 
like 'Get a load of this! California plates! Guy rides 'cross the country 
with a canvas bag of water on this bumper!' We laughed too, just 
hearing them  -  little men, with not much understanding. 
Water bags were advised, back then, for passing over the higher 
altitudes, the Rockies and such. Extra coolant just in case, 
something about overheating, needing water,  I didn't 
know. But I didn't care. It was cool  -  coarse, tan canvas bag,
with two nice leather straps, holding about 5 gallons or so of water, 
with a great graphic of an Indian Chief's head on it, printed boldly. 
That's probably, when you sort it all out, the thing I understood the 
least  -  the Indian Chief. Is that a way of thanking America for taking 
his land, killing his children and  wives? 'Here, we welcome you along, 
here's some extra water for your backward trek.' Baffling, no matter. 
I'm still alive, for now; he's the dead one. Both. The Indian and him.
 Soon enough, the sun came up, the sky got light,
 and I did, eventually, get away.

6827. LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT

LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT
It is long after midnight on a dark night of love
with the rain pounding down on the hours above.
Between now and then, I'll split the vague difference
and have you step into my dreamworld alone. Watch
me wanting you. Bring forth your stepping stone.
-
There are too many stories in this naked city for me 
to know or care about five or ten. I quibble over 
nothing, for all of it is boring. Long ago I left this 
world with a quiet wave goodbye. The street I left 
from did not even sigh. There were screen-men on 
the corner, blind, yet watching me as if they could see.
-
I've shouldered many burdens over many years, but never
 you; now I get the chance. To have and to hold, yet you are
so cold. They never said Death would bring me to this.
It is long after midnight on this dark night of love.
I am wasted, abandoned, alone.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

6826. BROUGHT FORTH FROM THE WATER

BROUGHT FORTH 
FROM THE WATER
The last crazy landing, the final man, the frontier
beyond which no other frontier beckons : I went
to deep space only to find another way home.
Wormholes, indeed. Holding out my hands, all
things were relative; the same temptation someone
would have in the wilderness. But oh, I'm so tired
of dilapidation. There is no time, no time at all. 
-
Here is my coloring book, take it with you to sleep.

6825. GAMELON ARE THE HORNS

GAMELON ARE THE HORNS
The mystique widens as the message grows :
somehow someone is coming again. A religion
takes over; first he's here, then he's killed and gone,
then he's back again only to leave again and say he'll
be back again but you won't know when. Whew!
That's a heavy burden for me to bear.
-
I don't know if I want to carry that burden. Hey, excuse
me Sir, but do I get a choice? A real choice, not just the
alternative is damnation kind of choice; that's too easy.
Is there anything You can do? 
-
I went to school, all those years; I followed all the
dictates of what they said and did what they told me to
do, pretty much. Now for that I get nothing, or what
do I get? I still have to listen? It's just noise to me now,
like a Summer of horns by guys on LSD.
-
I have a solution, a solution outside of faith; it makes
me real and whole and functionally correct about all that
I do. What's this big criterion anyway, about this life? And
what are we to measure it against? The dwindling light of a
fading candle? It goes, it flames, it withers, and then is gone.

6824. MAKE LOVE TO THE SPARKLING PATTERN

MAKE LOVE TO THE 
SPARKLING PATTERN
Someone says 'you can't be there, there's nothing there,
there's not even any reason to uphold.' I want to nod, and
say, 'yeah, you're crazy alright.' But I don't  -  today was
a too-nice day for me to carp and quarrel, even with the 
rain. I walked the Wakahoba Creek with a heart of gold
and a pattern of love. The woman next to me assented, 
and, alongside us, freely, this miraculous dog kept up
and stayed with us, loose and curious, the entire way.
There was a sign, said 'Copperheads.' I guess it meant
snakes. Or was that some sort of old phrase of money?
No one knew anyway, and I didn't care. I got to the
little barn and shed I'd sought  -  nicely red, and some
people nearby I'd known before. We all sat down and
talked. Did I realize here a pattern? Yes. This life is
a silent grace, a period only broken  -  now and then  - 
by the right kind of talk if you let it. I saw their faces,
the freckles and the spots, and knew this was another
moment : something to have and hold and treasure,
like the flight of a distant bird, coming back for
another dose, another cage-kept go-round of living.

6823. BACKLIT

BACKLIT
Here, where the velvet of a black rules the
fabric of the night, here three men are smoking
cigarettes at a table for four. A slow neon, just 
over their head, pulses something about beer
and moose. Two of the men hold cards, while
another is making a call. If there's a fourth,
perhaps it's to be him on the other end.
-
The perky, young girl with the tray passes by. She
throws a smile their way and asks how they're doing.
How are they 'doing?' I, who question everything
want her to ask again, get their attention, and really
rub it in, press for an answer, demand.
-
Not to be, she's gone. If these guys have wives and
families, she'd be their daughter, or good enough to 
be. What can you expect from youth? A youthful
cavalcade of might and wisdom? No, I think not  - 
rather just another tearful wedge of the self-possessed
with emotions where their minds should be and  a
cartful of frolic for brains. I get up just for getting 
up, realizing I still have a handful of fives.


6822. MIDNIGHT DAILY

MIDNIGHT DAILY
I seek to rip the sky from the screen and the
view from the precipice, but I see there is
no way : people come and stay, while others 
come to jump. At the reviewing stand in
Heaven there must be quite a show.
-
What literal explanation can there be? Other 
than a shrug without real knowledge, most people
just stand around  -  even the kids at Princeton,
whenever I noticed, were concurrent with something
else, with not being there at all  -  dancing in place,
nodding their heads to a febrile music from the
earbuds in their achiever's brains. Gym clothes
and running shorts alike, the look of the day.
-
It's midnight, daily, before I get to close; this dumb
and vacant store stays open late just so that I can
learn. Read something else. Understand what
cannot be understood. Nod my way to the
land of another language and place, all 
with a very sensitive eye.

6821. I AM

I AM
I am that one you passed today  -  that one bent over
and stooped. My name, it is Legion, and you may
call me so. I am, perhaps, what you too would be.
Please look my way  -  try to say, something.
I am not here just for me, but I here represent 
something we all could be.

Friday, June 26, 2015

6820. GODS DON'T KILL

GODS DON'T KILL
My lanky friend, the atheist, was standing on his
ant hill, alone. To hear him tell it, he wouldn't even
eat an apple because of the references within.  Ont
boot was set upon a rock  - the smallest of things, 
but a rock nonetheless. We're we're being subjective
each separate item so matters much.
-
Far above him, the eagle who'd recovered was soaring 
along : new birth, new bird, no more pangs of DDT.
He muttered something about why people using their
Gods as foil aim to ruin the world and spoil and kill.
I answered to his reason for disbelief : 'Gods don't
kill people, people do.'

Thursday, June 25, 2015

6819. HARMLESS THESE ANIMALS ALL

HARMLESS THESE 
ANIMALS ALL
Hold forth these words : I love all Nature, even the
bad, for it is greater than me, and speaks in a silence
I understand. I call it Husbandry over all the land.
Harm nothing, and go as you came.

6818. HERE IT IS AGAIN

HERE IT IS AGAIN
I've decided, the here and now, I've decided to
be afraid of dying. It's getting late, and I know
it's creeping up on me : some horrid tin-pan disease 
to take me down. One day, out of the blue, noticing
and knowing I'm through. Where to go? What would
I do? I want to live on, past all this; hell, I'd like to
live forever. That's how much I've got to do; but I
know there's a sneak happening. One time three is
all over for me. Live and let live, I say, today,
and every day. I know to be afraid of dying.

6817. BACKELOR THE AUDITOR

BACKELOR THE AUDITOR
I hear you, yes I do. Outside Newscorp today,
the Fox News team. I saw them  -  there were
three. The one in the scoop-neck blouse, well
she was the one for me. I couldn't make out their
words; they were saying some more idiot stuff
about the Supreme Court, or Israel, or AIDS.
You much know the types by now  -  they talk
and make fake emotions, and somehow the
little people eat it all up. It works, it takes;
and, yes, I saw it here today.

6816. MAD HATTER

MAD HATTER
They have come for the man in the tophat now :
he was always too tall for their taste. Lincolnesque,
perhaps, with that tough, granite face. People would
see him in a bakery or a store and just stare.
-
There was always confusion : the light-wand of the
late night sensations, why they've all come and gone. 
They are left for nothing now, with only traces behind 
of what they may once have been.
-
I've dug a hole for myself, and now one for you.
Let's jump in!

6815. PAROCHIAL

PAROCHIAL
(13 feet above sea level)
I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. I live
in a town of more losers now, where the
tough stay tough and the weak get going.
All parochial concerns by small men in
shiny hats begging quarters at corner lights,
while their painted ladies wait in cars.
-
It's a place where everything is self-generated,
and the only concerns are the things of here : the
waters which course through these rivers and
streams come from nowhere else but here  -  and
go nowhere else but here either. A dredge-pond
wherein everything sinks. I keep forgetting.
Nothing that happens anywhere else will
ever be bothering us.
-
It's about not asking for whom the bell tolls, for
it tolls for thee  -  you know that one; the rabbit
in the ass, with those big ears sticking out, the
little chubby guys worried about nothing but the
mite in their barbecue-eye. And you must remember
this : 'we're weak, and we're little, yeah, but 
we take care of our own.'

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

6814. I WANT TO BE LOOSE (RADIO PLAY)

I WANT TO BE LOOSE 
( RADIO PLAY)
1. You've got nothing on me. I am invisible see.
2. The car-stairs lead nowhere at all, and the jumping
box only houses a turtle. 3. This will remain so.
-
4. The greatest DANGER which threatens Mankind is
COLLECTIVISM. Everywhere attempts are being made
to lower the happiness and the way of living of Mankind to
the levels of termites. I am against these attempts with all
the strength of my being.
-
5. Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds
us and in which we are ourselves contained. 6. There are moments
in which the surroundings of time and object do disappear, and
that is the sainted moment of mystics, to which I aspire to live
in; and mostly do. All other categories pale to this one,
which has no explanation.
-
6. William Blake says to me the following : "Have confidence
in objects, do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the
world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny
in order to attain perfection. Seek this path and you will attain
from your own Self ever-deeper perception of the eternal beauty
of creation; you will attain increasing relief from all that which 
now seems to you sad or terrible."

6813. MORNING MAGIC, FULL OF SHIT

MORNING MAGIC, 
FULL OF SHIT
I awoke with an ache, a twist in my leg, and
a sore head like my tumor was bursting. I
could be dead in an hour -  and I figured that 
for sure. 'Well, he was just standing there,
muttering something about hating another
damned day, and then he lost his grip on that
creamer with Half and Half in it he kept, and 
it fell to the floor and crashed, and so did he. 
I guess he was dead before he hit; that's what
that tidy nurse said when she first stood up
from being bent over his body. 'He's better now',
she said, like it was some sort of joke  -  when 
the hell did the medical profession start hiring 
comedians? Is that because of Obamacare? Then
the cop came over, asking me fifty questions like a
quiz show, like I was a culprit  -  'how long have you
known the deceased...?' And the rest; what the hell!
I never even really liked the pain in the ass that he was,
always going on deep about something. He deserved the
dope he got, how's about that? Should I have said that?
Would I have been already locked up? How's this shit
ever get started  -  what a mess we're in. Morning magic,
full of shit, and I can't get anyone to listen.'

6812. THINGS BETTER OFF WITHOUT

THINGS BETTER OFF WITHOUT
(my new sea bright, nj poem)
Taste the sea life, go to the wave, walk through
the surf, clamber that jetty, sit back and relax. You
are better off living this way  -  completely free and 
without the words of worry you hear. Mountebanks 
and swindlers, all in this together. Keep your distance, 
sonny. And all those girls will get here soon. Scan 
the skies, like Laddie says, and you won't need a 
weatherman to see which one of them blows.
-
In the morning the black car was covered with June bugs.
I guess they were all dead in the heavy morning moisture,
at least it was so it seemed. I looked up to see from where
they may have come, but the only thing above was a
telephone pole with a vapor lamp, and some wires. I
don't know where these things live, but I guess I
know where they go to die. Things better
off without.

6811. SO GO DOWN TO THE VALLEY, DARLING

SO GO DOWN TO 
THE VALLEY, DARLING
Into a room full of staring I enter and I am. The
telegraph show is in the corner, smoking a Marlboro
Light -   just like a medieval animal I see he is breathing
smoke and fire. But he's just a Marlboro Man. And I
see that this land is strange indeed : the lamps have
curtains and the lights are yellow. Someone sits bent
over a piano of licorice ice, twisting and turning
those cautionary notes that only teachers can entice.
God bless those who care and those who enter here.
God bless the wrinkles in her clothes, and the 'I know
where you two just were' smirks on that beanpole's
other face. I keep watching, and I know they're
lovers who'd just sneaked away. Save my hands
at the side of this cone. Love me again,
or I'm going home.

6810. THE BACKGROUND OF THIS CITY'S BURDEN

THE BACKGROUND OF 
THIS CITY'S BURDEN
It has been said that suicide is authentic, a particular
and real and individual act : I answer OK, I guess it is.
I can't kill you, and you can't kill me, so we do it to
ourselves straight on. Authentic, yes, and right from
the source and to the source again.
-
Buy  -  as Styron said  -  an artist creates his own
authenticity, what matters is the conviction and
boldness. Invading alien territory. The here and
the now, they bring forth their own, constant
troubles. Some things just can't be evaded?
-
Bu why am I here, listening to Hendrix in the
night? 'Hear that train a'coming', once more. The
target that precipitates this act of suicide is one that
makes a blind necessity out of something that otherwise
'may' just be. Certainly no cowardice there.
-
So it is that I walk west along 22nd Street, in this shadowy
dark night alone  -  heading for something, looking for the
ferrule which which bolster this life; not its end, but the
life which continues. Somewhere I can go, home again,
where someone at least knows me. My God, I want to
hide, and then die, and then come back again  -  to see
then that everyone knows who I am.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

6809. RENT THE HALL AND THE WALLS ARE FREE

RENT THE HALL AND 
THE WALLS ARE FREE
As I see it, if I said  - as the complete autocrat  -
'bring me the head of Diego Garcia, and I'll tell
you why later,' you'd scoff. Understandable, though
not for me. I don't have to say why. I see things.

Monday, June 22, 2015

6808. I'VE GOT THE FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLE BEE RIGHT HERE IN MY HAND

I'VE GOT THE FLIGHT OF THE 
BUMBLE BEE RIGHT HERE 
IN MY HAND
Each time the forest closes the night opens
up to the possible world  -  the stuff dreams
are made of : alternative versions of the versions
of Life. All manners of speaking, and words are
jumbled, and meanings cross. The wind becomes 
the butterfly which then becomes the bird. On the
forest floor, standing, a single human looks up.

6807. INCREDIBLE CONSOLATIONS

INCREDIBLE 
CONSOLATIONS
Things in the sky tonight are like figments :
solstice, longest day, fittest moment, nicest time.

6806. MY MAD DATE WITH THE MARSHLAND

MY MAD DATE 
WITH THE MARSHLAND
Yes, you can shoot me in the back of
my head when I'm not looking. I know
it'll be like that; some disgruntled cat
about something. My swizzle-stick goes.
I am the bridge-maker at the apartment
house of goodness, and I am reading the 
Maypole of Merry Mount alone.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

6805. TYING THE SHORE-LINE AND STANDING UP STRAIGHT

TYING THE SHORE-LINE AND 
STANDING UP STRAIGHT
Like long-life to a mystical man, the strenuous
limit of day after day can be stretched forever.
We need do nothing but live and live on. Here,
by the water's dappling edge, ten or twelve boats
are docked and rocking  -  water and tide rising one
moment and falling the next. It appears there is no
one present anywhere, and the boats are untended.
-
Which is a pleasant matter  -  enabling me to just
watch and enjoy. The movement, the flow, the enabling
thrust of the ocean and swell. Why have it all mussed by 
people  -  I figure  -  with their beers and sodas and loaves
of shoreline bread. Children who wail and bawl about things,
mothers who prance and the fathers who dance  -  landsmen
each, with only a pretense of seamanship. A waste, truly,
and I'm glad they're not here. I can smile.
-
The way a wearer wears the bathing suit, the cut of a flagrant
seam, the buttock of woman's width, all these things, I've seen.
The modern angel of days and time no longer holds out surprises
for me  -  yet still, I don't plead for these things and would rather
not see. I get tired, of people, and would rather not see. I grow weary
of things, yet they persist to be. Ah, sunflower, weary of time....

6804. THE LEITMOTIF

THE LEITMOTIF
I can see the leitmotif of your manner, but I don't
want to  -  I can settle out, more abrupt and more
clear than your own half-measures would make.
The thematic tune behind all things seems always
there, it never changes. Once that melody is caught,
once that theme is captured, the rest is easy sailing.
Tomorrow is already a Monday and there are so
many days on either side of it. I want to wish 
for more than that, but eternal time is not a 
gift I have. All things run down, all things 
run out, as the tempo decreases itself.

6803. MY SINECURE IS THIS MONOCHROME BRUTE

MY SINECURE IS THIS MONOCHROME BRUTE
Well, the hub-caps were shiny : she was wearing a glare,
some Spanish-style shirt with too many spangles. She
kept bending down, pretending to look in the mirrors
of the cars to check her splendid face. So funny, all of
it. Is this the defining moment of any Elks-field car 
show, or are we just supposed to line up for beer?

6802. DR. YES

DR. YES
The good man says we 'act' our way all
through our day : one man as a father,
another as a husband, another as a friend
a co-worker, a mentor. I want to say back
that there's another behind that to whom we
must owe a prior allegiance, as it lurks.
Somewhere, a real 'me.' The nagging
feeling of a genuine self who grows tired
of all these strings. 'I want no more of
the puppeteer', is what this self sings.
Master narrator? The one who stands 
behind the stories, to explain away the
truths, the misdeeds, and the mistakes
as well? I will take that idea and run.
Self-deception, meet the authentic me.

6801. THINGS TO DO

THINGS TO DO
A semblance of purity can pierce one's veins just
as much as the real can : purity knows no bounds.
It is in this interim magnet of force fields we live.
There are many things I wish to do, and I am doing
but a few  - I can list my lines of heart and lines of
mind, yet they all lead nowhere. Others fly to China
or Pakistan and Oman. Some go by ship to other side
of this ocean, or the other. I simply stay at home to 
work my way out. Work my out of the wormwood 
I'm in  -  an enticing spot not overly conducive 
to good reasoning. I am mad with a frenzy 
all my own, and it cannot be explained away.