Friday, July 31, 2015

6961. FIRST YOU HAVE TO FIND HER

FIRST YOU HAVE 
TO FIND HER
Ten thousand meddlesome things : Mike, at
the garage named 'Mike's', with his head once
more underneath a hood. He's always staring
down at metal; the small deli next door, seemingly
always going out of business, then back again, and
then out. Who would want to buy anything from
there? Mike says he only gets buttered rolls and
coffee, if he doesn't make his own.
-
Next to that, the old house with the ten cats at the
garage  -  they roll around and then just seem to wait.
Someone feeds them, and they stay, someone gives
them milk every other day. 'It's not me,' I've heard
Mike say, 'Whoever it is that lives there, but first 
you've got to find her.' Storylines of a similar bent
recur : the sergeant from the local police comes by;
all he wants is to be sure Mike's got a current permit.
-
Then, just up the road, is Sal's; another garage, but 
way larger than Mikes, and with a crew of five. An
antique fire truck sits outside, and Sal's also has five or
six charter-buses that he keeps. Local schools, field trips
and sports teams going places. He's got two drivers as
well  -  one old, black named 'Cheetah', and the other
some retired prison guard making pocket money. He says
he 'likes the zoo trips the best. I mean, I take the kids anyplace
they're going  -  museums and sport-sites and down the shore
too, but I like the zoo trips best. Seems everyone's happy.'
-
There's a lady there, she does the payroll and the accounting;
schedules trips, lines up buses and drivers, and all the rest.
Betsy. Nice lady too, but (yes) first you have to find her.
She drives a vintage square Buick  -  that's how I know if
she's there. I look where she parks (same spot always) and
if there's no Buick there, I know she's not either. Things get
easy, but never out of hand. Just, first you have to find her.
-
They call this Cavendish Road; sometimes people ask,
the ones who are lost or otherwise don't know where they 
are. It was an old farm road, long ago, and then, like 
everything, like the rest, little by little, it got built up -   
once small building after another, and then another small 
business front and a driveway and a garage, then a light, 
and  -  finally - a big paved road and traffic too. Now, most of 
the time, and especially during school time, there's a crossing 
guard about : always helpful and good to see, but,  
-  yes  -  first you have to find her.


6960. HIM THE ONE

HIM THE ONE
Him the one down the rabbit hole of 
eminent domain; never got breath, never
came up again. I was the one waiting with
the tea-cup in vain. Him the one, with the
verses of songs with the words just too long.
I took the remembrance, and then I took his 
hat. You can't bring me nothing, 
if you can't bring me back.

6959. NOW THAT IT IS

NOW THAT IT IS
The gaping hole in the chest, well, that was a
heart. The transplant wouldn't take, so they
just ripped it out  -  I do feel better now, 
somewhat relieved in fact. I'll find something
to fill the spot, sooner or later, I'm sure.
We spend a lot of our time at the riverside,
now that it is easy, and now that I can move.
The fish jump the water with ripples and
bubbles. Both things I envy them having.
Two days a week a man comes by with a
cart  -  coffee, pastries, finger foods to nose
at, and all the rest. problem is, he intends
to talk, and do nothing else. His prices may
be cheap, but his habit is expensive. Talk.
Talk. Talk  -  once of those guys who thinks
all space has to be filled with words, an
incessant chatter, on and over, about 
inconsequential things. I finally always
end up just sending him away, but he 
always does come back.
-
I can function pretty well  -  like an uncaring
hillbilly now, without a heart. I get by, and I
look at various things with a different eye :
the squirrel who prepares for Winter, the
bird of prey, high overhead, just swooping
around to see what's fallen, and where. Every
few days, another roadside carcass, or a deer
laid dead deep in the woods. Things I, as a person,
would never usually see. I'm lighter by a few
pounds too  -  and all that raging sentiment has
also disappeared. Whatever happens, I don't care.
Now that it is gone, that is the way it is.

6958. A WRITER'S LIFE IT IS

A WRITER'S LIFE IT IS
(...at all)
You know [you would know, yes] that it doesn't
always have to make sense, and that making sense
sometimes makes no sense at all. The candy-wrapper
is all the gift you gift; not the candy itself. And that
the line on the wall is not a line at all - just a shading
where the light goes dim : so like a harbinger of
all yet to come; yes, of all yet to come. 
[You would know, yes].

6957. AGRARIAN IMPULSE (nature)

AGRARIAN IMPULSE
(nature)
Certain things you have to learn 
to love : that hatchet in your back, 
that axe you are holding, without 
a handle. Those trees, now 
begging your forgiveness.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

6956. I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO BREAK THE LOGJAM

I HAVE LEARNED HOW 
TO BREAK THE LOGJAM
Seven a.m. and the matinee blues have started
already. I have to go on at one. Nothing ready and
can't read my lines, let alone know them. Drunk like a
fig for four days already  -  I swear I never wanted this.
Much rather be in Albuquerque doing an Arthur Miller.
Here though, this slathered stage-door is covered in
debris and markings, and someone else has left a
puddle of piss in the entry. Nothing but filth lives
here when I'm away  -  that's the dark side, and the
one I never see. By contrast, they bow down to me.
-
I don't know why, and I've weathered a lot of storms.
The limos pull up, and some hoodlum gets out instead,
demanding money and a free pass for his 'friend'. All I
can do is groan. 'I don't do tickets, sorry', would 
probably just get me killed. Listen, don't be me.
Though I have learned, yes, how to break the
logjam, it brings me nothing good at all.

6955. THINGS THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED

THINGS THAT 
HAVE DISAPPEARED
Becoming the left-handed merchant of dreams
is nothing at all like being starlight : diffused are
the colors of eternal time, the time that never ends.
Is this the manner of the means we keep? If so, I
have already lived a hundred lives and lost a thousand
men. Hannibal, be silent and cross those Alps.
-
Otherwise all of it goes by the boards. Poe's cottage, as I
visit it, means little to me, Annabelle Lee. Now the dark 
roads cross its edge, and it sits there like some pile in the
middle of a really bad spot -   an intersection of nothing
and all. Whoever it was who sickened there and died
has no power over me. The broken fence, I decry.
-
This island makes me sick  -  its criss-crossed roads
now covered by creeps and useless people, serfs and killers
too. No pantomime brings forth a juggler for the begging.
Anywhere I go, I want to leave; and taxi-drivers try to
earn their pay by passing by, not stopping, just passing by.
The world is an emollient of turmoil, and so many things
I once knew and cared of have disappeared. 
There is no way to get home at all.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

6954. TURN TO PENNY BUNKUM

TURN TO PENNY BUNKUM
She's really a great lady, my favorite kind, the
one I love most, the daughter of mine. Though
I never had one. Always wanted. Life is a
cumbersome life-raft, somehow both pulling you
down as you wear it (it wears you) yet saving
you as well, keeping it all afloat. Otherwise,
what is there anywhere? A Qwik-Smart roadside
stand, an attraction of sodas and malted, a queer
qwid on the edge of his/her own disaster. God,
I can't stand people who can't make up their minds.
-
I have a ginger-felt hat that I wear; the brim is too
long for the subway; takes up two seats. Plus, I
probably look like some stupid montanero with it
on, singing putrid songs about some highland
farmland, the lass who got away, and the fine,
fresh water of the River Leewon. So, now I
sit next to the electric meters at the side of some
crude cinder-block building dispensing refreshments
in the hundred-degree heat. How has it come to this,
that the State will dispense refreshments for free
to its minions. And who am I? The geek with the
brownie shirt was just making fun of me for
drinking hot coffee. His point seemed to be that,
on a day like today, everything should be cold.
Pretty much like I was to him. Foolscap
head-dress upon all his motivations.
-
'Wanna' watch a movie? I got one in my car. It's
about a love match between this criminal from Mars  -  
but no one knows that, of course  -  and a lady he meets
at the library. They fall in  a sort of love and he winds
up in bed with her daughter. Unbeknownst to everyone
anyway, in another time-zone layer, he's already her father
in another family and they raise astral sheep that graze on
the surfaces of hard-stone planets peopled (though you
can't really say 'peopled') or inhabited anyway, by chimerical
beings who want to be present but are not, and cannot be.
It is only vicariously, through imaginings, that they can 
exist at all. Something like a dream in our own sleep, but 
one which doesn't disappear and you can remember always.
-
By the time I get around to answering that guy, he's back
in his car with the windows down and the movie is already
playing (I think) on the back of the driver's seat, and, on the 
back seat, two kids are intently watching it as he drives away.
While I turn back to Penny Bunkum again; 
the daughter I never had.

6953. ROBESPIERRE RUBBER BAND

ROBESPIERRE 
RUBBER BAND
I want to think that was the name in full  -  funny name
for a funny guy, though I profess the French probably 
pronounced it not as 'rubber band' but more as 
'rubeairebond' without the 'd' as well. So much of
that is just funny stuff; I'll be laughing to August
first. I just tonight realized, too, that I haven't seen
a television screen on since February first. I don't
know what the French would say about that.
-
It's all a round-robin, it's all a fool's game.

6952. A LOAF OF POUND HAVEN

A LOAF OF POUND HAVEN
Michael the Marksman was just by here; he 
broke all the windows in this house. 'Peppershot-
haystack-broadspray-pattern' bullets were all he used. 
They smelled like ammo, but sounded like belch. Michael
said that's the kind of ammo they used in the Old Testament
to break up the crowds  -  like at the Tower of Babel, and 
when Sodom and Gomorrah were going down. Yeah, like
I believed him, and I can't believe he thought I would. 
I know the truth, how those crowds around Moses were 
stilled with Motown songs, and a burning bush.

6951. CAPPING THE MOTORCYCLE DEATH-HEAD

CAPPING THE MOTORCYCLE 
DEATH-HEAD
The van was in the weeds, the old style of van, 
windowless, white, like a delivery. Of something. 
Hopefully alive. They pulled it over, into the 
marshes by the end of the bay, and  - yes  -
threw something out. I'm so tired of all this. A
personal sort of home-grown terror. Bikers on
parade, fighting turf wars like shits and giggles.
-
What tendencies to unbalance the land are rife with
this fair stupidity? I can name ten, but I won't. Club
names and majordomos too. Collective IQ? maybe
a hundred  -  and each time they kill someone else
it decreases the lot by five more. Zero can't be
far behind. Why else this game, charades on
wheels of fire. Charades on wheels of fire.

6950. MAYBE MADAM MADE HIM

MAYBE MADAM MADE HIM
Never knowing what happens in the house of ill repute,
they're playing once again the blues. House of the Rising
Sun and all the rest. I splashed my Jack Daniels against
the deck of that porch and started fighting with that guy :
he'd proclaimed himself the winner of a single-man contest.
I didn't know even a touch of what he meant, but was just
tired of hearing his shit. If you've ever fought with a broken
bar-bottle, you must know what I mean. The feeling's intense.
-
Nothing much came of it  -  drunks aren't good at anything  -  but
I walked away proud I stood up for something. Problem was,
in my stuporific haze, I hadn't a clue what it might have been.

6949. LOST 'EM ALL IN THE FLOOD

LOST 'EM ALL 
IN THE FLOOD
The place where I used to live is no more;
cowboys and hoodlums abounded. I had huge 
metal boxes of automotive tools, and the lingering
carcass of a motorcycle too  -  lost 'em now, all
in the flood. I walked away from an angel singing,
and a purloined cat a'wail. There was a neighbor
or crutches who wanted my clutches. Lost 'em
all in the flood. The mantle-piece made of marble
fell hard-down off the wall, tearing the brackets
and gaping large holes. I could put my hand in
them, and the marble it stayed on the floor. I had
sheafs of beliefs and a Maidenform bra. Lost 'em
all in the flood. It wasn't so much the water, 
much more it was the mud.

6948. WHAT KIND OF MYSTIC ARE YOU?

WHAT KIND OF 
MYSTIC ARE YOU?
After the dark and then the light, that little
paper bag, blowing down the street. It chases
its own eddies in the twisting surface breeze. I
know and understand how things pass : their is
a source of mayhem within the heart of peace.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

6947. BUGLER

BUGLER
Did twenty things today all different : went to the
vet not for me of course got a letter from the govt. in
the mail, yes for me, and not good, replied twice to 
some cockamamie address in Philadelphia on Spring 
Garden Street, the same street where the once-great art 
school was but now is sunk and Robert Venturi has a 
building too, if anyone is after old-swank colloquial 
revolution-making architecture  -  it's nutty but I always
liked it  -  so anyway nothing of any good import happened.
-
I'm thinking whatever  -  you have to take the good like 
you have to take the bad, and they all mix together anyway. 
It was a point I always tried to get across to my crazy father 
who was always so sure that the only things good were of his 
own race and nationality, which meant nothing to me. But he'd
never shut up about it  -  how that was paramount, and in the 
forefront of everything. Don't marry out of your kind  -  or 
something; I never figured it out, and he went bazooey 
anyway and lost it until there was no sense left. 
I never did tell him I was an alien.

6946. STRANGE BACCARAT

STRANGE BACCARAT
These are dark images, of a dense and foreboding
nature. Black. Are you never happy or elated?
Sipping in your Chinese cups this fragrant tea,
why is it mere bile that it coughs up? Do you see?
-
Love and goodness and an infatuation with grace :
each of those should be enough to lift you. Walk, then,
down this linear street with me. We will pass the bar
and the tavern, the pizza place and the greengrocer
with the retarded son who handles the lettuce and the
pears. Only those, apparently, are what interest him.
-
His father has said to me : 'It's all in how I handle him,
and it's all very well. Each day, every morning, I bring him
in and I tell him he's the head of the Lettuce and Fruit
Department. You don't know. It swells him up with a
sincere pride, and he's happy and busy all the day through,
sorting, arranging, misting, and watching his subjects.'
-
I walked away somehow with a glow : a wondrous and a
truly amazing world, and one, as well, somehow just
filled with love in even the harshest circumstance,
and a strange baccarat at that.

Monday, July 27, 2015

6945. HOW TO BE ME AND WHY

HOW TO BE ME AND WHY
Simple. Don't. Stay up all night reading Ulysses, having
dreadnought libels thrown your way after five hours dead
in slogging through Joyce. Watching all those pictures come 
to life thinking about Hell, labor, and strife. Buying a 
stress-heavy ticket for lottery millions. Misgivings.
Talking to that girl, again. Two years ago, everyday, it
was about her Jeep, now it's about her Benz, and she 
looks different too. Not mine. Just different. Everyday,
in front of the house. Today, a block away. Again.
School-girl graduations turn into twenty-year old
things instead. Interesting transformations.
-
Dark coffee, late night wine, anything red and bitter.
Have to stay up, just to watch the clock crash land while
another friend flies off to Paris at dawn from JFK. No,
Newark. Newark to Orly. I am an orphan here in
Fat City; holding court in the chess club of Carmine
Street, sitting down at the Bowery Poetry Club for
another tense break. Crush me a dark-roast now.
Will anyone understand if I say I mean a person?
-
How to be me, and why? Please no, don't. One wasted 
life is more than enough for the legendary calculation
about how humans live. 'The way we do have our
tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics
do be fainting for a pussful.' Stephen laughed.

6944. OH ROVER

OH ROVER
Oh, Rover, you are the one : skipping like a heartbeat
over glistening water, watching the filled boats come
in, seeing the people emptying out. Just an evening's
reverie, this time with you and me. A commuter's new
nightmare can be our own Heaven. We watch while
they wait in the hundred-degree heat. No milestone 
like this, ever before.
-
So what do I care; Hall of Fame, with A-Rod's name.
All those now-debunked fortunate ones are leaning off
to the other side : watching things fade, talking politics
with someone else's boss, seeing the skirts go 
strolling by. This stretches my own tendency to 
blanch; like demanding filtered water 
on a camping trip to Nome.
-
When I was 7, I said my prayers. At the very same 
time, regardless of prayer, I was hit by a train and 
'Dead!' they declared  -  but I came to life to welt 
them a mutt like they'd never seen before. Before
them  -  like Edith Piaf  -  I will stand up and say:
'Je ne regrette rien.'

6943. I AM WARP THE HOOF

I AM WARP THE HOOF
Triangle Shirtwaist stuff, and the Brown
Building, and all those ancient girls impaled
on fenceposts. Each time I walk by I die anew.
My lot in life : to associate with the burden of
each and every other. This is not an easy task.
-
I have no modern features, am an old disgruntled
soul; larking profundities and scheming profanities,
what more can I do? I want to smother you with my
concern. Redemption is a single circle whole  -  once
I close it, I am free.
-
Like everyone else, I am everyman too. I draw
pictures with my mind and  -  like this!  -  they 
come to life. But then I have to care for them.
-
(I am sitting in a cab along eighth avenue watching
a crowd of protest surge and swerve. They remain
angry about something, something of no concern to
me. This man behind the wheel here, he begins telling
me how I will be late and he cannot help it. I smile to
him in the mirror. 'It's okay, fella', I say,
 'all will be forgiven in the end').

6942. RADIO SIGNALS FROM OUTER SPACE

RADIO SIGNALS FROM 
OUTER SPACE
The high enrichment of a nighttime sky is pulling
down the half-moon as I watch. There are vast
languages passing  -  things I don't always get
to understand, but often do. Radio signals from
outer space are not necessarily from another
place : the soul is in the Spirit wherein 
lives the wandering heart.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

6941. TUNIS

TUNIS
I remain in love with ten thousand
things. Like Basho, on a hilltop, 
scribing out his simple mind.
See the wind shadowing through
these fir trees; while I sit here,
picking at my peeling skin.

6940. SLOW ESSENCE

SLOW ESSENCE
The forest will not come to me, I will go to the
forest. All those darkened animals of my surmise,
I know I will see them among their shades and bowers.
Nothing any longer shall scare me off; for I am of them
and they are of me. We share the essence of this Earth.

6939. AND THEN HOW I MADE TUCKER'S

AND THEN HOW I 
MADE TUCKER'S
This is all the now: St. John of the Cross and
that dark night of the soul stuff. That's in the
been there-done that department, as old in time
as it seems. The dark curtains are covering my
eyes, and these people think I'm already dead.
There are lilies in big vases all around me, and
someone has put pennies on my eyes. 
I dare not awake, they'd kill me.
-
Think about it anyway: what more is to be said.  
Down on Forsyth Street all the ghetto boys I ever knew
lived there. And Stanton maybe too. It never seemed
right, and I loved it there, dark and bleeding dangerous
as it was. Knives came out at night, and I remember some
girl got stabbed to death for not having sex.
-
Every ten years a new batch of people start saying 'what's
the world coming to?' It just starts all over, for the new
bunch, but it's like a re-run for the old. And then the
world never comes to anything anyway  -  black presidents.
women pretenders, exotic embezzlers, and crooked cops.
The more things change, the more they stay arranged.

6938. I CANNOT HOPE TO TURN AGAIN

I CANNOT HOPE 
TO TURN AGAIN
'...Because I cannot hope to turn again consequently
I rejoice, having to construct something upon which to
rejoice.' Well, Hiram, there's your berry juice and that
was T. S. Eliot squeezing the grapes. These men all share
despair - something like that of Tiresias and the hollow men.
All crazy coots anyway. And more than that I can add :
the churchyard gate was broken open, the collection box
was mine alone  -  the poor can go take care of themselves.
What makes this all interesting is that I start out with the
knowledge that all these others have to first start from
scratch to acquire. So, I'm ahead when I'm behind.
The quest for Salvation, you know it really requires
much more than just transcending the mere denial
of carnal love. I only want to endure, and after
the separation is ended. Key-marks and signal words.
Do not doubt for a minute they're not consciously placed.
What I hate the most is the over-and-over aspect of this
baleful life; repeat behavior, like running a stop sign
over and over until finally something hits you hard;
or jumping in front of a train only when you are
sure of the timing and sure it's arriving. Why 
miss yet another great opportunity. "I hear
that whistle blowing, it's coming down the 
line...' Conclusion: 'the amount of research
required by the context of this poem is not
justified by the amount of reward the
poem has to offer.' Huh?

6937. JEPSON AT LARGE

JEPSON AT LARGE
These handcuffs are hurting my feet, and these
shackles are killing my hands. All in all, it's a
mixed-up jumble. Can I drive anyone home?
-
The fourteenth girl with the fleur-de-lis should be
the one I choose : she'll come right at me with food
and pies, and make some goodness out of this world.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

6936. I GUESS I GET TIRED

I GUESS I GET TIRED
Here, where the treetops sing, wires on wires,
dangling from poles, and the broad sky wide-eyes
its place, I get tired of hearing about the successes of
others. I am a carrion. I only wish to pick the bones of
the failed and the dead. Tell me nothing more, please.
-
Though I am happy for your placement and your 
success, I really wait for no more of that at all. In fact, 
please, just disappear from our my bead-trimmed 
window; your information is cluttering up my
space, and I guess I just get tired.

6935. NEARING TREMAIN

NEARING TREMAIN
The two farmers I thought were  family were
watching me as I was watching them. Some strange
Route 6 store named Piggly Market or something,
nearing milk and bread, nearing eggs and coffee, nearing
cigarettes. They all were there, and those two took it in.
Everyone looked up as I entered, of course  -  same old
crap like a Bob Seger song. Those two, I'd swear were
siblings setting out to do each other. 
-
At the entry, some lonely beagle was struggling for my
attention, on  a rope that neared extension as he wiggled.
All good things like this always come together : the local
gun, the cop with the ill-fitting suit, his twisted Dodge
Avenger Police Special looking mad as hell through the
trees. It too seemed looking at me, and the dirty-messed 
girl standing by the counter in twenty-day old jeans.
-
'I bet you'd think to just park anywhere, mister.' Addressed
me so, she did. 'No, no,' I said, 'I parked where it said open.'
That seemed to satisfy the bunch, even the languished cop,
of whom the others greeted the morning and noted, 'Morewick'.
Maybe it was 'morning, Rick.' I really couldn't tell. A thought
flashed in my head of something to say, but I didn't say it
because I couldn't back it up  -  'It ain't no sin to be alive.'

Friday, July 24, 2015

6934. BRITTLE

BRITTLE
How I had to shake my heart to break away
I cannot say : let it be sufficient to remember 
this alone  -  I was singular in my ineptitude.
I sat on the broken steps of the Marlton Hotel
just watching people pass. So many occurrences 
were present, I knew the time-warp was mine alone.
I saw this jack fellow, as he held to the banister,
both shaky and drunk, it was sad. 'Tristesse', I said
to him, 'Tristesse? It sounds like a fiber-cookie in
some future world.' Just then, another trembling
sound broke through the walls. I looked away.
I was tired, and finished with this all.

6933. PUSHING FOR IT

PUSHING FOR IT
Glamor-girls grown seedy with attention; the kind
of anticipation a doting mother pushes onto her kid
dressed as Barbie  -  like some death-gown in a little 
play. The tumbling audience applauds, and continues
to watch what plays. A hundred little Jon-Benets.
-
Nightfall having arrived here with no luggage, in
mid-Summer you know it won't stay long  -  another
few hours, another morning song. Abbots and monks,
they crawl the dawn with their psalm-books in hand,
praising the god of locution and the God of the land.
-
I am stuck in the hallway, between portions of need and
portions of desire. My time is running down, like the
same time that nightfall has, and this candle, my sun,
has begun now its burn at both ends. Emily Dickinson
or one of those remainders said what a glorious 
light it throws. No, no I only see shadows.

6932. TRAIPSING TO GREGORIOUS

TRAIPSING TO GREGORIOUS
We were standing on Third Ave, or Lexington, 
along the side of the street : a few chatterbugs going.
One taxi veered sideways left, and the driver was
heard : 'You did not observe that signal-sign!' One
good, chortling sound. I couldn't remember, two days
later, where I'd been. Has that ever happened to you?
-
The car had passed the window clutter, but it did
hit the lightpost nearby, and I guess the taxi was right 
to say what he did. No one was hurt, but the cab took 
off. Smart man to get get away with something like that.
In my mind, the taxi had caused the crash  -  but by yelling
out and taking off, he put himself in the clear.  I don't
know who else said what, but I never heard anything more.
-
There are all sorts of professional and social business right there,
jewels and watches, travel and travel luggage, some wicked
German store even sells high-security travel bags. Eight
hundred bucks a pop was the cheapest I saw. The woman
all look rich, and the guys have sterling eyes.  So, in my
traipsing to Gregorious I felt like a rich man at large.

6931. OCEANS AT STORM

OCEANS AT STORM
Those decadent waves are riding me again,
tearing down awnings and ripping up streams. 
Little eddies of salty water run everywhere, while
the huge, white surf surges and spittles. There is,
entirely, no land left. The carousel on the boardwalk
now just seems to wander. Some kids are eating
cotton candy, and ice cream  -  the colors of
everything are childish. Moldy green, wild pink,
suggestions of blood in the red. Some blue, like
a dead person's cheeks. Suggestion is everywhere,
and these fat bottomed girls do suggest. I think
they've come here from Irvington or Hillside.
-
Cannot reach the talk, cannot haul the salty creature,
cannot bring the wasted, drowning man back home.
Truly, I am helpless  -  like listening to a calliope play,
though I be deaf. My head nods, but to nothing.
-
Oh I am my own Sigmund now : I am looking at
breasts and bottoms and hips again, and  -  Hell  -  
I am lost. What revanchist pier has gotten me here :
old cat-man, no-hat-man, walking the sandy shore
with a four-year-old dog who soggy traipses through
sticky sand. My arms are branded by sun. I have
no idea of protection, nor rays. I am burned, and
lush, with these moments, now, of living.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

6930. FRILLY AND SORRY TOO

FRILLY AND SORRY TOO
Around here they don't sit up all night 
talking about John Ford and all those 
blast-fungus westerns  -  they've got better 
things to do. Like unclog the sink of 
yesterday's bad debris,  or clean up the 
kitchen of needles. Put away the 
clank pots, and count those IOU's. 
Life is a miraculous montage of 
malicious intent. Sometimes anyway.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

6929. NOTHING MODERN AT ALL

NOTHING MODERN AT ALL
So many lost items on the ringtail of soul :
men who remember their childhood, others
who don't at all. There's little crazy difference
between. The wolf in the woods comes out at
night. Sundered are the differentials of form
and feeling  -  if you remember one thing you
can still remember another; one does not cancel 
the other. I've seen ghosts go door to door, peering
into windows and knocking at entryways, pressing
doorbells to be let in. They are looking for something
they left behind. Nothing modern at all.

6928. LOVE APPLES

LOVE APPLES
Before anyone knew the tomato was not poisonous,
no one ate it at all  -  it was part of the nightshade
family, and those things killed. They called them
'love apples' for whatever reason they had : I don't
know. Round and red, like a hearthstone circle.
Finally, somehow, they learned it could be eaten
and one wouldn't die. Now it's all over a pizza pie.
Just goes to show how things really do change.

6927. CAN YOU BLAME THE ELDORADO?

CAN YOU BLAME 
THE ELDORADO?
This load of paperwork will have to suffice :
the sheriffs are in the other room looking at the
photos. The two cars involved seemed almost the
same. Two Eldo's from 20 years back; curiously,
they crashed into each other. Three people died,
one still alive but barely. Can we call coincidence
like this a too-much game? Was this a high-speed
suicidal rush wherein two these like-minded people 
with both their heaving Eldorados, and spouses or
girlfriends or whatever, decided to crash into each
other at 85 miles per hour to see what happened?
I think not. I wonder, can they blame GM for a
fatal attraction between aging Eldorados?