Monday, August 31, 2015

7104. POST INTERLUDE

POST INTERLUDE
Listening forever  -  Duke Ellington's 'Caravan', and then
'Solitude', on 'Money Jungle. I can sit back and think :
there's nothing on the stove and the air outside just
gets too hot to breath. The smoke in this room is
churlish, and the few people who've come in give
me the creeps. Nothing interesting in this Bloomerland;
even the girls have shadows and cataracts both. The
gold in my drink is fake; the girl in my heart is real.

7103. OLD SCHOOL WORDS

OLD SCHOOL WORDS
'I've got plenty of nothin', and
nothin's got plenty of me.'

7102. RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR

RIGHT OUTSIDE 
THE DOOR
The piccolo, the flute, and David Kane.
This all brings back a memory of long
ago  -   David Kane was a kid at seminary
school; he'd just come in from Delaware;
lived in Dover as I recall. He brought an
instrument with him  -  a piccolo or a flute,
yes, something I'd never seen as an 11 year 
old. (I'd be twelve in a month or so). He'd
put it on the floor, leaning by the wall, just
outside the door. It was curious to me. Some
sort of farm implement from another land
I'd never see. Turned out not to be that at
all. Just a nice thing, and when he played
he looked like a Revolutionary War soldier,
traipsing a field, and bandaged and taped 
from his wounds, while the battle raged
before him and was rousing the troops
as the old flags burned.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

7101. THE MENDICANT CIRCLE

THE MENDICANT CIRCLE
They're weasels, all, you know. These
actors and these actresses acting as
enchanters from some other domain.
They're nothing : they have sex on the 
couch, the beg and they grovel to get
some sickening part. I spit on them.
-
They call it a party. So do I : like a
hanging party, or a gunslinger revel
in the clean, pristine air  -  wiping
the stage clean of vermin, clearing
the lens for the sake of that camera's
essential purity, the grace of a
thousand elides, new angles
beneath a klieg of old lights.

7100. SO NOW ALL THAT I HAVE BROUGHT HOME

SO NOW ALL THAT I 
HAVE BROUGHT HOME
Here is the impatience that we were 
speaking of : I cannot sit still while 
those flowers remain on the mantle.

7099. 'INVESTORS SEE NEW SIGNALS IN THE NOISE'

'INVESTORS SEE NEW 
SIGNALS IN THE NOISE'
And I see you raping the Earth yet more for pillage, 
I see you dining like pigs on the death of Life and the
life-force within everything. I see you bombing for 
parasitical reasons to take out Man for your seething.
I see you burning your cities so the unfit will leave
and I see your profiteers squatting on Mankind's grave.
That's what I see while you see new signals in the noise.

7098. I BEG YOU FOR KINDNESS

I BEG YOU FOR KINDNESS
Does anyone else know what this is like? Can
anyone understand how serious I am? It's already
dark night; I am moving along, withered.
Up ahead, just to the right, on this darkened
junkyard road, I see two seething guys  -  they
both looked really mean and angry  -  peering
at me, as if to see what take there'd be. Both of
them, in tandem, black-angered types, a racial
mix I can only see as polarizing already. I have
nothing but the knife on my belt, and I'm thinking
of myself, here, with a bullet in the neck, from 
twenty feet off, or just a shot in the head. What
would I do and what would become of my dog.
They'd have to shoot her too, I sense.
Good something, I need protection.
Two angry men on a lonely, dark,
abandoned junkyard road.

7097. NEARING LAND

NEARING LAND
Here the monkeys keep the marbles for themselves : this
is indeed a foreign shore. The cantilevered housewares
of the stay-at-homes are all well-used, but polished and
kept like new. No one has a care, they all remain indoors.
-
The luscious green of the neighbored trees adds the
nicest touch of comradery to all this being alone. I
haven't a moment to lose either : the ships are in the
harbor, I know they're coming home, these sailors 
with their girlfriends from the distant seas.
whom we must now prepare to entertain.

7096. OUTLIER

OUTLIER
(last call for the motorcade)
My hands are on fire, my shirt's now adrift : 
the running of the Pamplona bulls has nothing 
on this. I lost my last ID card in the circus tent  
-  now even I don't know who I am.
Nor what is meant.
-
Let me shrug these circumstances off. I can explain 
it easily away   -  it was in the early morning light
as I was standing outside the candy store; a few
stragglers were drifting by, I think from their
night before. The usual crowd of simpletons:
-
some guy spewing about vodka, another guy ranting
about the girl he'd lost, a clutch of dazed females, now
dishevelled and coarse. I love it when the female mouth
turns sour; words sideways, profanities and hates.
They had a car, these ladies, it seemed waiting for
them  -  some call-for-hire dimwit, chewing gum.
-
My lawsuit, if it ever reaches the higher court, will be about
the foulness of this world and all the damage it's done to me.
I want the retirbution of a real outsider : ten billion moments
alone, and twenty bucks for the back pocket of my own
new pants. (Then I'll grapple with the rest, and
let 'living' have its chance).

Saturday, August 29, 2015

7095. SET ADRIFT

SET ADRIFT
'People don't like me because I'm a primal-scream jerk,
but I say too bad for that.' I couldn't disagree, after all it
was his canoe I was in and the fast approaching rapids 
weren't that happy : I started singing songs  -  like the
sound-track to movies that made me laugh with their
incisive wit towards real danger. I was thinking to myself,
if there was a way out of this fix, I'd need it about now.
-
That was two hours ago; now I am walking through the
woods looking at mushrooms and fossils and twigs. The
large limbs of certain trees have already fallen in last week's
storm, the water debris where it was all washed up was
still piled around. I can't find anywhere decent to sit.
So I keep walking. The other guy  -  him with the canoe  -
he's gone and continued up the river. I told him I was
more determined to walk back than he was to go ahead.
-
Indian scout I ain't. I'd rather find a Porta-John at some
insipid old campground than ever take a dump in these
woods. I can pee in the weeds without any trouble, maybe
even eat something I find along the way  -  berry bushes,
wild asparagus, dainty little walkway mushrooms. Who knows,
I might eat eleven perfect mushrooms, and only err when I
eat the twelfth. I don't want to die like this, yea, but I'm
still not sure I want to live like this either. Greatest
vacation I ever had  -  set adrift in the deepest woods.

7094. TOMBOY

TOMBOY
So I'm sitting here like a tomboy, drinking
Stella Artois. What the heck is going on?
'I've never drinked this stuff before' - that's
the way they say it, and I probably won't never
ever to do again.  The only reason I'm here is
because the waitress is hot and I know she's got
a thing for me. Belgian beer in a Belgian cafe.
What more to do and what more to say?
-
I lift my glass to the underclass  -  the distressed,
the poor and the weary. But's that's all I lift. For the
rest, they can go to Hell. I really don't care about them.
I'm filthy rich, and I'm wealthy, and I own a Carribean
isle, and I've got two Swiss bank accounts and an offshore
shelter for my money. Anything I want, I've got. Anything
you want. I'll give ya', honey.
-
Some slumball nearby is scratching his lottery tickets  -  jerk
can't even find a dime to do it with. I throw one his way and
he's grateful as hell. Now all he has to do is win  -  or please,
clean up the mess of all those shavings. He just plunked
thirty bucks down to buy six five-dollar tickets. He looked
so stupified I at first thought he'd wait for them to call to
say he won. At least he's scratching off with verve.
-
I call her over and  -  yeah  -  send him another beer.
It's the least I can do : I want to go home with her, and
send him a thousand bucks as consolation. I'm sitting
here like a tomboy, drinking; and I'm quite 
the real sensation too.


7093. TOE-TAPPING

TOE-TAPPING
Grant me a single sense of time, as
it is there are far too many  -  this
bar-room reeks of confusion. The
broke-tempo jazz farce I hear needs
connection; too much is disjointed
and the sounds fly away. Like the
bagpiper I saw in Bar 55  -  some old
Greenwich Village funeral for some
cat who passed away to his longed-for
beatnik grave, too many people just
making too much noise around around
a single man, trying his very best, to play.

7092. THE SLATE MEN

THE SLATE MEN
The slate men are building a sidewalk or a wall  -  I
couldn't tell the difference : grounding slabs so
steadily into a patterned dirt. Folds of sheeted
bedrock  -  ochres and reds and browns.  I'd
have to imagine that the world is older, even,
than my own very first dream - when I was
dreaming of dreaming this.

7091. JUSTIFIED ANGLES

JUSTIFIED ANGLES
The Mathematician has his ways : all those
observations and substitutions and justified 
angles make sense to this mind : I instead have
absences and deletes, what are called shadows
where an object has been  -  erasures of the
normal mind. That's how I write and think,
combined. Fruition comes to those who wait?

Friday, August 28, 2015

7090. OUT TESTING BOUNDS

OUT TESTING BOUNDS
The simulacra of hodgepodge is keeping me
awake : I see billboards in the sky and fires 
in the lake. My personal representation of a 
mirror in disguise is nothing I would look at,
or even recognize. The tack shop is closed
for good  -  all the horses have now run off.
Symbols skate the sky and some young priest
holds a chalice : the signature song in the
hymnal is lost but the choir sings on.
Yes, yes, the choir sings on.

7089. ME

ME
I was a poor boy, who was born dead;
and before I knew it, that death was over.

7088. SCATTER-SHOT RETRIEVAL

SCATTER-SHOT RETRIEVAL
Maddeningly, the small crowd is eating spaghetti
and eggplant, Italian dishes ladled out by some
Guido who now fancies himself a chef. Sunlight
glints the red wine in each wineglass at the tables.
No one seems aware of anything : except their
garbled words and food and self. Conditional
experimentation on a twice-fading planet.
The wine glasses glint in the sun,
making cut reflections above;
a scatter-shot retrieval
for sure.

7087. MY BLUE SHIRT

MY BLUE SHIRT
The funny man, in the red shirt, was saying,
'I made money the old fashioned way, I stole
it.' Those near him were laughing. At the piano,
on the little riser nearby, Charles Folds was
plating his Thursday afternoon tunes. I had
stopped by to listen, and say hello. He plays
there most days of the week, a few hours softly
at the piano while people informally lunch. I get
coffee, and we say a few words. This is the enclosed
plaza of something, I forget  -  across from the Lever
Building, up the street a bit from the Seagrams Building,
on the other side of Park. Just things I like to do.
-
I never have money to do things like these others, and I
guess I stand out for that, but no one ever seems to mind. 
I probably look like a bum to them anyway, small, hairy
and gross  -  they all seem to have stature and bearing. A
30 dollar lunch would put me down for good. I get along
OK with the guards too, but that's probably just because 
that way they have me in their sights, that's why.
-
I often feel out of place, but do not care. I'm better than
them. They're dull. I am an artist who's not. An old uncle
I had used to just say : 'screw 'em all; walk in there like you
own the place.' On the other hand, another uncle would say,
'What are you doing? You don't fit in? Here?' My two conflicting
family poles of matter - I had to deal with both before I fled.
-
Whatever clothes I have, if and when I buy, I usually buy at
the Salvation Army store in Newark. Interesting place : poor
fat blacks, some hipsters looking for retro, in their weird-frame
glasses and tattooed dicks. Two dollar shirts and two dollar pants.
These people here are wearing two-hundred dollar button-down
Oxfords and deck-boy shoes. I shrug. And then I remember, the
shirt I'm wearing from that cast-off store, it's a Botany 500!
Some high-class light blue Summer shirt. Glad I put that
on this morning now.
-
I forget to remember to walk in owning the place though
the guards' stares made me soon remember I didn't.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

7086. THE VIEWER BLURS THE MEMORY

THE VIEWER BLURS 
THE MEMORY
There are some things I just do not care about :
this swish of blue color that was a car or the arm 
of a chair, the way that armband tells me who that
man is, the idle achievements of a blowhard in
the feckless dark, and all his words to that effect.
The viewer here blurs the memory. The far cry
from the distant point is not a mountaineer; no,
just instead some baby crying. Tears for fears, as
it were. No solace there, just windblown and 
hesitant thought running fast away and far.
-
I have no designated driver for the monster dreams
I ride in : mysterious circumstances beneath the leader
of the mark, the manner of the beast, the chipped and
dangled teethings of huge tribes of crooks and villains.
They run off with the lie; they run off with the future.
This viewer blurs the memory. This viewer says not
at all. I take my words for William Blake; not following
another's system at all, just instead to make my own.

7085. RETRIBUTION IN MORSELS

RETRIBUTION IN MORSELS
I would have to know a hundred more things than 
I do right now to understand a reason  -  I've heard
a million explanations, but the planar truth does now
come through. Gestation period : for too long perhaps.
Reheboth Beach, Delaware; some kids were throwing
tomatoes like they were mudpies at anything that moved.
I stayed still like Lot's wife  -  pillar of salt or not.
I'd be willing to bet, Delaware or not, they've
never read a book in their entire lives.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

7084. ABOUT TODAY

ABOUT TODAY
There was no one about today :
the streets were empty, and
the sky was gray.

7083. I WAS PAID TO DIE

I WAS PAID TO DIE
All that stuff comes together  -  outside, the city
sweeper, wetting the streets, nearly empty, as it 
rolls along its pre-dawn way. The two men in 
jackets, trading cigarettes as they exit their car. 
The strange lady with the briefcase  -  way too 
overdressed, I'd say, for post-midnight Summer 
air. 'I'm here to attend the Apocalypse,' was all
she would say to me. I hear that metallic bellow
which seagulls make  -  they are swooping in, as 
if in trouble, from the nearby harbor on the
east end of the city I'm in.

7082. THINGS I DO NOT NEED ARE LEFT

THINGS I DO NOT 
NEED ARE LEFT
Two left hands will not help this arpeggio; don't you
see the run of the notes, right off the page?  Just like
the Devil's Trill Sonata  - by Guiseppe Tartini, have you
heard of it?  -  there is a trilling movement everywhere.
It's called that because it's a devil to play  -  but I like
to think, as well, that in it the Devil had his say.
-
Soundless and difficult to hear or sense, the denseness 
of being deaf in a world full of noise is tough : the sky 
is never cloudless; it seems there's always 
something going on.

7081. NAKED NECK

NAKED NECK
And devolution marks the moment - we have turned
from other matters to this tiny little speck. The mote
in the 'other's' eye soon turns to morte for you and I.
The pleasant willow trees are dying, no water 
trickles down now from the landlord's fort.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

7080. DIVINE ENCAPSULIZATION

DIVINE 
ENCAPSULIZATION
This God is a sudden veering : oh how I
want It to be a verb. I swear to see it build
buildings with a lightning strike, break down 
Jerciho's walls again and bring me, so salty,
home  -  where the flowers adorn the wall.

7079. SEEMING DEARTH

SEEMING DEARTH
Like death the blind man staggers forth as much
confused as once alive : the olive tree grows
Jesus branches through his head, and he cannot
speak a word. On 21st street, the jagged memory 
of Earthside crime still lingers : heroin gods, men
with steel arms, the blackened veins, protruding.
-
We buy fruit from the corner stall  -  all stupid
stuff, nothing worthwhile at all.

7078. SERENE HIGH COUNTRY

SERENE HIGH COUNTRY
I took a bus, I took a plane, I ambled, I walked.
The things which came together make this land a lark.
The jazz-pizazz I left behind, all the Union Square
stuff long over. Here - instead  -  I sat and placed my hat.
There is no longer living when it's all become a task :
foursquare and beleaguered, tawdry and tired too.
Shall I wear my trousers rolled? I don't think
even that would do.
-
This book has no other chapter? And why is that? Being
stuck, such as I am, in acknowledgements and in citations
instead, I haven't time to write another word. This is
sad, and this is sorrowful. I have entered that higher
land : a serene place, all quiet. Now, if I could
only stand, and face this world erect again.
I don't think even that would do.

Monday, August 24, 2015

7077. PENTANGLE ENTANGLEMENT

PENTANGLE 
ENTANGLEMENT
I took a walk down Sunbury Square, off the island to the
left of there : what I found was all I ever wanted. Not a
care. But, undaunted, I remained an absolute silence
and wouldn't share a thing. 'This is my own secret here.'
-
I'm thinking to myself : the wager stays, the odds are
five to one. Jolly Roger, Summer fare. The plays and
pennants are in the square. Will Shakespeare sang with
Father Dominic. The songs are in the air.
-
I love a Summer festival : when all those ladies 
in waiting are waiting no more.

7076. AND WEARY THAT WEATHERMAN IS

AND WEARY THAT 
WEATHERMAN IS
Gunslinger, cap-king, cut-throat, daredevil, liar.
Too many descriptions to carry at once. Heavy
the burdens these cumuli bear. Give me
this mouthpiece to take to the air.

7075. CARRY ME BACK TO THE LONE PRAIRIE

CARRY ME BACK TO 
THE LONE PRAIRIE
Ham-fisted and with a cauliflower ear, the old pardner
at the Mello-Roll Bar sat back in his chair : 'It ain't right,
no siree, this ain't nothin' but trouble, and I been here over
forty years and you can't now tell me this fellow's coming
in here to build skyscrapers? Red Hook oughta' just up and
kill his type  -  there used to be little factories dotting all around
here, now there's nothing but filth and stores selling fancy flowers
and wines where nobody can park and everybody fights over it
and all these block-eyed kids sit around the outside bars just eating
or waiting to eat behind fences. See that, right over that, that was the
Waymen's Club  -  with the boxing rings and the pool tables. Used
to make money there every night there was a fight card, and then lose
it just as much playing pool to sailors. Damn! What a life I was!'
-
He didn't look like much, and the beer in his hand wouldn't last. I
knew that, but I hoped he would  -  a hundred years and more, I 
wanted to be his life too, not just hear it, be it, and I knew everything
he was going to say before he said it. Why settle in? Let it go? The
whole place now is run by the same creeps who gave us cartoons and
Ricochet Rabbit. I realized I was getting drunk  -  I don't know where
 that previous thought came from, and I'm not even sure about the rabbit.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

7074. OH SO NINETEENTH CENTURY

OH SO NINETEENTH CENTURY
The gamekeepers on these landed estates -  they're the
men who keep the wildlife  -  take care of and order the game
on large holdings. Fox and deer and wolves and cats, I guess.
They used to nail up the withered and shrunken corpses of
crows, jays, weasels, stoats, sparrowhawks, buzzards, kestrels,
peregrines, hedgehogs, and owls  -  all hanging in  a row like
bedraggled coats on pegs. They don't do that anymore, and it's
all illegal now. Like the loyal dog, always retrieving something,
everything about this idea is so old.
-
When Roger Tory Peterson  -  bird artist and environmentalist, 
was a boy, he found a golden-shafted flicker lying on the forest 
floor, and put his hand out to touch the dead body, only to
discover that the flicker was not dead but merely exhausted from
its migratory journey. It burst back into flight, and set Roger
on the path of his life's work. Things like that really do happen.

7073. LOOK ASKANCE OLD BUDDY

LOOK ASKANCE OLD BUDDY
Half in the distance, the sea was throwing foam,
and the lady on the pier was yelling 'We have three!'
I thought maybe she meant fish, since men nearby 
were fishing, but she meant me. I was walking the 
sands with my dog, and she thought it a great sight.
She said that's why she yelled 'we have three'. Dogs.
-
Barrel-bottomed boats were festooned with seaweed 
and people as the bottom roiled the top and the whole
surface was rolling : the ocean swore to its own concerns.

7072. WHEN EVEN THE DOG GETS IMPATIENT

WHEN EVEN THE 
DOG GETS IMPATIENT
Every so often I just have to wince : lines of crossing-guard
Catholics are being traffic'd by a moonlighting cop. One curb
to the other, the crossing like Earth to their Heaven? Their Hell
to this Earth? Or can one make it straight from this Hell to that
Heaven? My God, it seems I'm always wondering about something.

7071. ONCE YOU

ONCE YOU
Once you get it started it all keeps 
rolling in  -  like money, I guess, 
to one of those big-headed magnate
guys. Buddy, the bourbon, the bourbon.
I don't even know if we make magnates 
any more; hell, we don't make anything
at all, 'cept maybe Kleenex.
-
I never know why people say that though  -  
like, 'what'd you ever make, big-head?'.
as if they'd made things themselves. It's a
general conceit by people who work, have or 
had jobs, toil. Even the worker at GM, does he
really 'make' a car? He hangs a tailgate or
positions a seat or a mirror  -  everyone's got
their appointed task all on down the line.
-
Ah, I don't know and whatever about it cares?
From Macon, Georgia to the Somerset County
line, the world's a great big jell-fest, with
everything coated in slime.

7070. MACHINE HEAD

MACHINE HEAD
Before I sleep on the floor again, let me tell you something -
I have the ways of getting around this; I can stay awake
forever; in my land, creatures do not sleep. Here, by contrast,
I get to watch that trucker nodding off, spinning his wheels at
60mph and crashing through the barrier to the great ditch below.
It's the same with bad audiences everywhere : the story gets lame,
everyone's head begins bobbing, eyes slide shut, and before you
even realize it, the speaker is speaking to no one at all.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

7069. ALL NIGHT, DISINTERRED

ALL NIGHT, DISINTERRED
Frequently, the habit of declaiming things runs out, slides
down, disappears  -  that's why so many grow silent, no
longer even knowing what to say, let alone to think. 
-
I have seen this in the best of places, and the worst. The
Cevender Brothers Meat Market, for instance, where the
men with cleavers remain silent amidst all their animal
carnage. And the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where
even the most robotic masters of self-discipline break 
down and utter only sighs.
-
Outside everywhere, the buses glide by, lit from inside.
I can see people's heads, with their newspapers or bags and
all those sporting hats : Red Sox, Rangers, Yankees, Pirates
and mets. What the Devil does it all mean? The bus carries
people, but not a sound.
-
I can recall, with a friend named Paul, one night well into 
the wee hours after two am, a bus ride back uptown; mostly
in silence,  as we passed The Dakota. It was 1972. He 
pointed, and said, 'see that building there, that's where 
they filmed the movie, 'Rosemary's Baby.' We both 
looked over, scanning together the post-midnight scene.

7068. PASSED OUT ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

PASSED OUT ON THE 
CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
Just kids, oh just more kids, improvised in the studio
drums and noise : 'he do the police, in different voices.'
-
I want to see the mountains Route 6 headed west I'm 
going on streets of nothing at all certainly not gold. 
Legendary Lisa, light me up another butt.
-
Just more kids, he do the drums, improvised noise,
improvised police, in different choices.

7067. PLEASE FACTOR IN THE CRAZY GUY

PLEASE FACTOR IN 
THE CRAZY GUY
Summertime shawls and egghead dunkings, look at the
way this wild world turns : all the kids are at the pond,
Promised Land, Pennsylvania, and I can't believe they 
call it that. Cat calls and phrase falls, mothers are shouting
out names while fathers relax, Those dads with their beers
and cigars  -  big time motorcycle guys on parade. Cicadas
make soundtracks for eternity's film, no one notices the
food is burning, and that spicket on their grill keeps turning.
What are these people for, if not about living and love?
Just park yourself down, the world will keep spinning,
and you are allowed to watch  -  hear the infernal racket
in the woods nearby. The kids are having fun! Listen to 
their cries! Please factor in me, the crazy guy.

Friday, August 21, 2015

7066. DUBIOUS THINGS

DUBIOUS THINGS
(for skip spence)
Nature is a fine fettle to break down, a masterful
master, with a whip and a frown. You cannot break
what you cannot know  -  waters and winds will rule
you. What am I worth, when my most prized possession
is my copy of 'Oar'? Some there are who've told me they 
love it. I just listen  -  I want to be mad, and die.


7065. DARK NOW AND IT'S SNOWING

DARK NOW AND 
IT'S SNOWING
My mind is a fortress and outside the walls are men
looking back at me from their horses. They stare, and
then spit on the ground. I pretend I cannot see, and that
satisfies them. Behind them, as if on a scrim, runs the
noise and movement of the NJ Turnpike : somewhere
I seldom venture, where trucks run bent and cars are
lethal fractures. If the fabric of time can be rent, it
would from here the doing would be done. All the
trees hereabouts have been sickened and are dying.
The old apartments houses seem to lean, and the
donut people still line the Dunk-o-Rama, not
like they used to thirty-five years ago, 
but they're there. But today, no one
in there smokes. 
-
On the overhead sound system is heard some really
old song  -  a Tin Pan Alley thing, like 'Always.'
That confuses me too much, because all those
levels of overlapped time seem now only to get
captured by quaint, shiny entertainers, something
like Harry Connick, Jr., or someone, the kind who sing
for money and bend to the bows as a girl would, who
couldn't swing a mallet for shit. Girl-guys, that's it!
-
My undershirt is stained with sweat, and even somehow my
balls are sweaty  -  but I stay here no matter. If I can imagine
a winter coat, and big heaves of snow, I'm thinking I'll be OK.

7064. TIME AS HEAVY AS A GOAT

TIME AS HEAVY AS A GOAT
Soon it will be coming back : lightning flash and
snow together, wrapped like a scarf around cold limbs. 
I can hear those tree limbs crack. I won't have to 
sleep in the outside air. If I do I won't do it again. 
My moccasin head is heavy now.
Time, as heavy as a goat.

7063. LOADED

LOADED
Forgive the marketplace, it's filled with dread. The streets
of Newark are filled with State Troopers, filling in and aiding 
the ineffectual city cops as people fall with bullets in their heads.
Too many to be comfortable about, they say, but I say let them fall,
let the bastards kill each other off, let them fall. Over by the 
Prudential Building it all looks calm enough  -  rows of cheap 
dollar stores and bright-blue street-boy clothing and sneakers.
'Dress me right to die tonight,' one would think to say.
-
Now the drums come marching in : two local police on 
motorcycles, screaming back at the crossing hordes to move 
along, out of the way. Lights are blinking  -  fuck me, it's just 
another bunch of political goons  -  the Cory Booker stenchers 
and the Chris Christie fools. It's time for rail-tunnel-talk 
with the jerks from New York. In my car, here at the light,
Leonard Cohen is singing : 'Democracy is coming, to the USA.'

7062. THIS IS HOW WE BE DONE WITH IT

THIS IS HOW WE 
BE DONE WITH IT
I've lost composure, but taken my pill. I've
walked in circles, but gotten there still. I don't
know how it happens that I'm still alive. Here
the storm skies part, and bright lights recur : Gods
and angels and demons are walking forth, allied.
-
What kind of a mess-up world is this? Too many 
things left to Boyle. No. no, silly, to boil, this isn't 
a probate hearing. The watched pot, yeah that one, 
that story lies. It bubbles over whenever it wants. 
That broken watch, right twice a day  -  well, all
that can be said for that is, oh, sometimes, maybe, 
aye. For all the rest  -  white marks on a blackened 
chalkboard that rub off with a simple pressure. 
Even kids can do it. I remember me and Theresa Knox, 
in fifth or sixth grade, no less, without even trying, 
getting in done on the painted walls on School 4's basement...
cleaning the erasers with which we 'd just cleaned the boards.

7061. THE FILMMAKERS ARE RANK

THE FILMMAKERS ARE RANK
What started as a joke is now a rooftop industry;
Woody Allen running without pants, Spike Lee
leaping for joy.  Oh what bug-eared antics we
start watching when we let it go : I want to see a
car-crash; I want Superman spiked on that fence.
All I can think of is the Worthington Pump factory
disaster, like the Triangle Shirtwaist  -  things I see
in old documentaries, when people made sense and 
had time. The General Slocum, that horrid, burning
ship in the harbor outside; all those Germans burning
to death, always burning and fire and mayhem. Oh,
what the heck. What is it they say, life itself is only
a momentary movie wherein we have walk-on roles?
I'd like to agree with that, yeah  -  yet why is it that all
we ever get to see are our own lonely parts of the film.

7060. MYSTERIES OF THE AXIOMATIC

MYSTERIES OF 
THE AXIOMATIC
The autopsies have fallen into the waster-bin, 
and now everyone is back up, alive.  It's just 
like a Resurrection, really. The light pounds 
on the lab-windows like hammers, and all those 
beakers and bunson burners keep working and
filling up. Flames of a sacred heart; 
and everyone rises and leaves.

7059. TAKEN ON THE RUN LIKE THIS

TAKEN ON THE 
RUN LIKE THIS
My coffee is a tiger in a cup, ladled with
a spoonful of responsibility and two dollops
of care. Like so many others,  I sit at a 
window and stare, as a new dawn beckons.

7058. MY MONEY'S ON THE MARKED HORSE

MY MONEY'S ON 
THE MARKED HORSE
The strange guy with the grease-gun is coming around
again, and all those stalkers are out on the street. Loosen
me up a new widget please. Jehovah's Witnesses, good God
yet again, have taken up places in so many of the driveways.
It must be mission-day once more for them. Get out on them
hustings, and pump it up for the Deity! Yeah! But what happens
if you live in a world where Deliverance is only a movie? What
then, bungalow Bill  -  you're caught in your own frieze of a trap.
Like a wartime general who is also a mechanic, you seek to fix 
things up just as soon as you go about wrecking them.
Conflicts of interest, I'd say.