9341. MAY HAVE BEEN INFORMED

MAY HAVE 

BEEN INFORMED

Touching the electrical switch, you

can still get a shock. I warn you

ahead of time to stand in water 

not. Neither ways. Don't electrify

that zither. Stand back if sparks

start flying. You are not near a

big-deal as you think you are.

9340. AND OH I NEED MY BODHISATTVA

AND OH I NEED 

MY BODHISATTVA

Bring me no more rain, no more 

wind and storm; bring me nothing, 

but bring it. Give form to my dreams,

and make the real from my fantasy

into a land of seeking nothing. 

9339. LITTLE UNITS IN THE SUN

LITTLE UNITS IN THE SUN

Glinting like weevils on a cotton-spiked gin,

the landscape is dotted with something. Fireflies

at 7pm on a just-right evening couldn't be any

better than this. I want to learn and listen.

-

The farmer comes down from his new

tractor, proud and hale, dealing a bale.

So many are the things I love; so 

many are the things forgotten.

9338. HAD I ONCE REMEMBERED

HAD I ONCE REMEMBERED

The great insomniac night has left, 

carrying its rainbow and its quartered 

cloud. The room seems surely empty

without that presence. I feel that I

shall hit the road again : running past

the planted rows of doubtless corn

and leftover stubble. Winter rows

of idle kindness, peeking through 

the snow between the lanes of little

towns where once the natives

used to go. My heart, my 

heart is on its dashboard

once again.

9337. DO WE NEED AGING STARS AND STARLETS?

DO WE NEED AGING 
STARS AND STARLETS?

Six a.m. as the crow flies. Not enough

time to relish the thought. I'm walking

my way to oblivion, over or out from

something at all. King/Queen gets me

coffee from Small World by the time

I reach; they open the door a half-hour

more. I sit, and debate nothing with

nobody. Four and twenty blackbirds,

baked in a pie. I wonder if they have

that today? In comes C. K. Williams,

staring straight ahead. He's gone now;

hate to say he's dead. Not alone on that

count, Hell. What I can't imagine is how 

to make my own self fit. Do we even

need me around, to just sit?

9336. UNFIT TO DELETE

UNFIT TO DELETE

I want a new computer,

one with two additional

features a mere click away:

'Unfit to add,' and 'unfit 

to delete,' it should say.

9335. IT'S HURT

IT'S HURT

There's a type of grimace that shows the

hurt; there's another type that doesn't.

This isn't black and blue, it's color.

This isn't black and white, it's pain.
There's not a moment to lose 'til we
get to the station to ride that train again.

9334. SMOTHERED SHOELACE LOOK

SMOTHERED SHOELACE LOOK

Slathered in sauce as well, a character actor

in a really serious drama, the locksmith in

a prison-break-out movie. All my wildest

fantasies about things I'd wanted to do have

come to naught. Look, just look at me now.

A straight-edged razor, a stupid man in front

of his mirror-glass, hold something lethal in

his hand at last. This, this surely should be the

way to go. I need some important closing

lines, some broad and wild ending to this

broad and wild ride, this one-act play, this 

pantomime, this false charade.

9333. MY PENNY-FARTHING DOUBLE

MY PENNY-FARTHING DOUBLE

I can't go anywhere without this image

of the old and ancient before me. It's more

than sometimes cluttered, and other times

I'd really like rather to just be alone.

-

Saints and scribes, prophets and saviors.

All those kings who came down form

the hill. I live with those things, while

they each try to message me something.

-

How to level to mass of Mankind, the

playing field of the wide-open marsh.

The way the Rhine was straightened,

and how the Volga ran with blood.

9332. LEAVE SOME

LEAVE SOME 

'There's got to be wriggle-room in each

statement we make. Nothing is ever that

certain.' A stain on the hard-wood gloss

of the long desk before me held more interest

right then that what I was hearing. I can't

stand people like this.  And anyway, lest

I be so certain, maybe I don't mind them

at all. Can you imagine having a meal

with a creep of this nature : academic

palladium, sub-standard single-tone,

high-mode architecture of the

rather useless mind. Let me

sit a moment and stew.

Thank you.

9331. THE FABERGE EGG

9331. THE FABERGE EGG:

So that we have heard all that can be heard we have left our broad ears open and wide like at the very beginning of life when all sounds are new and you cannot yet distinguish what you are hearing from the normal background noise of an everyday existence so that the whoosh of cars on pavement the roar of bus exhaust the treble hum of drillers and diggers the basso profundo of trains and the deep hoots of boat whistles all can pass you by without notice without comment and the only sound you hear to notice is the tearing of a soda pop top the metallic rip that strange enervating sound of the aluminum can or the bottle of sugar-water you have been given in one or another guises as it comes to you whether CokePepsi7Up whatever that's the stuff you first catch on to and hold not even the sweet soft source of mother's milk any longer no sustenance there no margin of indifference just nothing as a flesh-life a reality once known a tribal hold has disappeared from all our lives and we have moved onto post-modern efforts at will and growth to be as philosophically sound and up-standing as we can and proud to walk the hovel or the train-tracks where whistles yet blow and teen-age boys with sticks patrol and the young kid with the baseball-bat-blasted head lies near death with an eye out of his socket and the blasted debris of people everything Sri Lanka once Ceylon Chechnya Bratislava Serbia New York Houston New South Wales everywhere there are pieces of life and people walking either to it or from it without regard for lateness or consequences and like the baton runner in the strange lead of some garbled Olympic Parade the torch has gone out the flame is unlit so we watch movies of Jack and Jackie from nineteen hundred and fifty three and nineteen hundred and fifty six and sixty and sixty three and try to forget and realize how all so much the trip to Dallas changed the world or at least the feeling of it which they still insist on pandering and everyone in those photos looks so bad anyway all the inauguration men in silk tophats and that poetry guy Sandburg or Frost or whomever they blew in from New Hampshire meaningless overlapping gestures will talk about how the land was there before we were and yeah I guess so all right no problem we were the lands before it was ours so what and why not now the mills and factories all along the rivers from Webster New Hampshire to Kennebunkport Maine are all gone the free floating log roll of time is ended we all look like ancients now but no one can recognize anything "They tramped on and on singing 'May his memory be eternal' and when they stopped it seemed that their legs the horses the wind went on singing it out of force of habit" all that at about the same time as those opening lines to Doctor Zhivago started pounding into people's heads and then even the rancid Hollywood cabal took it over and the next you knew there were hundreds of thousands of people over and over going to see moving pictures of a story without meaning unless they called it love love not ideology for the people stupid people wouldn't know it by that name and like pearls before swine they galloped through train cars and glugged the stuff down the words undiluted and directed by coin only memories of this or that memories of death 'I keep thinking of times that are long past of a house in the Petersburg Quarter you had come in from the steppeland Kursk Province of a none-too-rich mother to daughter...tightly closing eyelids heights and cloudy spheres rivers waters boulders centuries and years...the murmurs ebb, onto the stage I enter I am trying standing in the door to discover in the distant echoes...' as quickly and as simply as all that we think back to see and hear anew and again the other time and place of birth and from genesis where we have all come from the Kill Van Kull that lonely working river space filled with barge and boat and tug and tanker slowly gliding by with the errant water hum of work while the thin girl sunbathes along the new shore in only the summer sun or while in the deep winter the piled up debris and snow rots and discolors as it melts all things food banana peels cookies crumbs bookbindings tires everything along the working place where men nod before they speak if they ever speak at all and the time is clock-ticked for money only every contract written with limits and wages intact and sure to please someone as much as it displeases someone else and the low buildings house soldiers lost in time themselves still fighting on seas of ire and the nearby factories make things which people use and each small room above has space for family and growth and television and perhaps here and there a car before everybody later had to have two just think a trickle-up theory of economy the likes of which was never before ever seen and the rodents ran free and the rats and mice chased by cats with lice ran loudly screeching under bulkhead and wharf and the night watchman with his chain-key and flashlight walked the docks and watched out for contraband leaving not coming the internal theft was amazing there were all sorts of goods for the taking monkeys from China lights from Yugoslavia and hammers and tools made in Poland and France wonderful implements for nuts and wine bottles and cork-stoppers and pens and glass balls and globes of snow and rabbit ear TV antennas and poor beleaguered Japan back then even made cars but cheap metal model ones worth a dime for a hundred no more and all there was left standing by itself alone was a Russian Faberge Egg one Russian Faberge Egg and those boxes which went one inside another inside another inside another until small and smaller they simply disappeared.

9330. DULCIMER HOODOO

DULCIMER HOODOO

The last frontiersman I ever saw was

running way  -  flee, flee, to the farthest

forest. His way of saying, I guess, all

was over for him. There was a vague

campfire leftover, or the idea of one

anyway. Before the Cleveland Indians,

before the Milwaukee Braves. It was said.

In times that preceded the times we

know : different things in every kettle :

Buffalo eyes, the skins and pelts of

many things. Sell, buy, eat, or trade. 

One side, that new frontiersman 

running, and, on the other, those 

old Injun guys, and just as running.

Scalps and fields of murder all the

same. Smoke signals of a bad intent?

I just don't know; ask Chief Pontiac.

9329. HAPPY, CHAPPY

HAPPY, CHAPPY

You can call me what you want :

endocrine receiver master model

noxious fume perambulatory buddy

guy. It all comes together at the

carnival of I. New tents, just

ordered this year, will be in use

now everywhere. We troll the

broken valleys for things we can

apply. Happy, Chappy?

9328. ALL YOUR GLORIED SCIENTISTS

9328. ALL YOUR GLORIED SCIENTISTS:

'I wouldn't want to break you, send a fist right to your face, a brutal boot deep into your ass, but very often it occurs that these things become necessary and the only way by which to impart not the values themselves but the way in which they are being violated to the mind of another. It's a very direct way of experiencing the task at hand; something like 'do or die' and, don't get me wrong, again those old, tradeworn cliches do manage to give us a form of the manner in which old thinking once operated : the force of the cannon-shed, the power of the assaultive indictment, the force of absolute and final result, and I use them only as example, for these are more exalted times and we live with different brains now and a consciousness totally transformed. I cannot tell you how it breathes, but perhaps your gloried 'scientists' can.'

9327. I KILLED JOEY AMES

I KILLED JOEY AMES

Just by one stiff drink; just by saying the

truth. It was a comedy club, and they told

me I killed. He was found on the floor.

-

Joey Ames had 3 kids. Myra, Eloise and

Jeff. His wife, Mariana, was left behind.

Didn't seem to mind  -  that much, anyway.

I don't know the money story, what was left.

-

It was said, later, that Joey had a girlfriend, and

was always 'fooling around.' And then it was

mentioned as well that 'so did Mariana.' So,

this stuff works out, but too bad for the kids.

9326. HOW I WHISPER THE CATACOMBS

HOW I WHISPER 

THE CATACOMBS

These are bones, and those are skulls. So

many different things to behold. They say

that Christians worshipped here, then hid

here, then were found out, and then died

here. Such a faithful procession  -  if not

of beliefs alone, then of events.

-

I can realize that cataclysm, and feel so

strong for their souls. Diamonds on a

black velvet; vigil candles as a force

majeure. After all, what does it take to

die? Certainly some form of total,

total commitment.

9325. IT'S A JEWISH JOKE

IT'S A JEWISH JOKE

Truth holds a token to the heart,

and this always remains true. I 

had a friend once, yes actually a

Jewish biblical scholar, not like

'extremely' religious over it all,

but he knew his Shalmulunkah.

(I just made that up). But this

rest here is real. One time he 

and I were walking through a

Jewish cemetery  -  he was

looking for 'designs' -  as an

'artist' his trade was memorials.

I was taken with the big blocks

of Hebrew lettering that I saw on

so many of the stones, and I said,

'Sandy, (his name was Sandford),

I wish I knew what some of these

said.' So he started, went right to

one and said  -  'See. See this one.

The Jewish undercurrent, through

all these tragic ages we've lived, has

always been one of loose humor,

almost brave and bold humor, what 

we now say 'in your face', but to

God this was all directed. As if

He was always looking and involved,

and we were always trying snidely

to get a message through. It's Jewish 

humor here, you see. The Messiah.

You know what this says, here, this

one ('Eleazar Rothman, 1849-1912'); 

it reads, really, 'He never showed up.'

No, it's not about Eleazer; it's instead

Eleazer's final, curt comment about

his time on earth, here, awaiting some

more this 'Messiah.' Not so much 'giving
the finger to God, as, maybe, instead, a
Bronx cheer to God. You see. Humor.'

9324. REPRESSION

REPRESSION

Shackles and fermentation, they go together

like menage a trois at least in the eye of the

French beholder, that trompe l'oil to you.

Things are all over the place these days:

I say. Plus'd'argent donc plus d'amusement.

N'importe.' Over the last compunction, yes,

I've completed be course in d'ecole for dat.

Excuse the pidgin la Frenchy but it's a

degenertive world, no? Le monde

degenerative, oui? No? Avec la

luna, maintenement se suis.

9334. AT LEAST THE MOTTO WAS ORIGINAL

9334. AT LEAST THE MOTTO WAS ORIGINAL:

"Goldfish and goldenrod I’d heard it said and both of them seem pretty useless to me and since we’ve tamed the atom we’ve untamed the world but it’s never quaint enough that we don’t think about what once was and the old world is filled with interesting stories but no one today any longer knows them or knows them less or perhaps knows fewer of them – you know I’ve always liked using the word ‘fewer’ in any instance I can in place of the erroneous word ‘less’ which I hear so many people misuse ‘We have less customers today because of…’ but really it should be ‘we have fewer customers…’ the word ‘fewer’ being plural usage while ‘less’ seems to work perfectly well for the singular as in perhaps ‘less use’ where you wouldn’t say ‘fewer use’ but rather ‘fewer uses’ where it is wrongly said ‘less uses’ – anyway I’ll keep on with less diversion and fewer interruptions OK and moving from that to the next I’ll tell you another thing – as a dichotomy – we may want to be thankful for such things too as the battlements we just passed and the old lookout heights at the top end of this park old rock outcroppings and natural features from which the advancing armies could be seen at a distance by the settled-in armies and maybe we should be thankful for them because today’s everyday living and the calm we live amongst could not have been achieved without the sacrifices much earlier of these men who fought and staked out positions in what was basically a wilderness which was being intruded upon by others and all these others of course felt as right about their cause as did the local soldiers trying to hold out as well as the soldiers from another land sent here but for the fight and all the while the beleaguered and decimated native population could merely watch in wonder or look on in sadness and awe as everyone and I mean everyone went about killing each other (I wanted to say ‘killing themselves’ but that doesn’t work) in the pursuit of a fashionably idealized sense of freedom and correct politics but even in that old day when they fought NOTHING it was nothing really made any sense and less it does today and it’s like hearing a kid say ‘my mother is French and she loves me very much’ it’s all meaningless and without any connection to anything else and as much as we destroy the natural world around us that is as much as we must really pay back for what we give out and it’s all a terror at this point I was afraid somehow she was maybe coming unglued but wasn’t sure what to do not having spoken myself for quite some time yet I was totally interested in listening to this woman who just seemed to be rambling on and as we walked downward from her 110th Street lair near to the area where she taught and 116th Street and Morningside and the cathedral and all of that curious landscape up there (we’d just started at ParallaxBooks the interesting bookstore located up by that selfsame street with the most intense view of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine as it fronted the west – a sight I’d remembered many a time over the last 30 years but now this same street had completely refined itself and turned around its dreary location into something much finer and yes the Cathedral still proudly glowed – but we’d walked well down from there and her interest really piqued as we’d entered the park environs at The Harlem Meer as it was called) and anyway it was better to listen to her stuff than to have to hear some of the stuttering barbaric banter of those people walking by in either direction – the weird tourists from other lands with their cameras and maps and lunches the skinny local kids walking for mischief or bugging people the little groups of cackling girls on the search for whatever would bring forth their giggles the old people staggering along in silence seemingly intent on whatever the lovers entwined walking dogs or mooning the nature types slowly staring at trees and lingering beneath bridges or along the ramble their quiet and slow patter although soothing to the ears made up of nothing either the stately ones usually men walking by preoccupied with thoughts of money or prosperity or young women for all I know the religious types walking with God the kids learning to ride bicycles with mothers and fathers in tow the Japanese always eager to break out a smile and stare back the tough Germans walking with wood the hungry the fed the single the wed in EVERY aspect the pinnacle of mankind achieved even within its dregs but NOWHERE else was the talk so good not even the time I’d spent with Elizabeth Jenviers Liberte from 25 Fifth Avenue an awkward persona now so long gone BUT I never forget for sincerity breeds familiarity and good dreams do all the rest and with that said I was ready to let her go on and continue which she then did with some pretty amazing new subjects - all things of course I could have myself said too but was IN THIS CASE letting her speak for me "things I hate – you really want to know? – board games card games any kind of pass the time games and by games I mean where two or more people are involved because I really do enjoy crossword puzzles but that’s all not acrostics not jumbles nor any of those other weird word-games without clues or with convoluted methods and shapes and all that RUBBISH I like being alone and I can’t stand people who insist on staying overnight or who insist on having you stay overnight because I really demand aloneness and people bother me."

9333. MR. SHRAPNEL LIVES HERE

MR. SHRAPNEL LIVES HERE

And without a clue  -  all I ever see him

do is trimming his lawn or vacuuming 

his car or edging with a trimmer, and all

that's in the Winter too! Up overhead,

his wife is swimming in the Summer

breezes. I don't know how they manage

that, but they've got a bi-level living

going on. Dee-Lightful! I spoke to

him once, he said: 'This is all I

ever wanted!'

9332. I SIMPLY DON'T CARE ANY LONGER FOR ANYTHING AT ALL

9332. I SIMPLY DON'T CARE ANY LONGER FOR ANYTHING AT ALL:

Like what city would talk and what's talk anyway but evasion and who listens - these were the notions I thought of as I watched the cars go by seemingly as twisted and fractured as any piece of stupid truth they'd ever heard attempted to be spouted by some nincompoop strolling by (hey! I thought - if cities could talk why not cars listen) and all the years of understanding are gone by the boards anyway and why is it that for so many years the old lumps which were cars were once designed with carved clay full-size models and all we got were huge flabby rectangles besotted with silly fins or indentations and ostentatious lights and now that we've got computer-aided designs networks all of a sudden of some mass-produced great light have come on and we get produced the swoops and swirls of some design-cheese factory bringing forth the embodiment of modern-day sleek - kind of just like what ONCE was the super-headquarters of the You Benighted Nay Shuns before me but go figure that one out for yourselves because every time I talk back there's another ass-sniffing hound who won't talk to me or shuts me off or turns me out like some bad beef at a barbecue from Hell and the fact of the matter is 'I simply don't care' any longer FOR ANYTHING and the mouths of babes can utter what they wish but it's still shit from the mouths of babes - see - that never changes and the far-seeing God who's exited the scene a long long time ago may just now again be rehearsing in the wings and if that's so I'm with HIM for sure but the world's a bum place and Manhattan wears the mantle of something other than that though I'll never know surely what it is - bread shops on the Grand Concourse simple bookstores along the way and Grand Central Station filled with misers and miserable thieves everyday but (SHOULD I AWAKE one day and find myself blind) I'll still saunter along to wherever I find the nice things to model and the kind of entwined mass-malaria that settles the score FOR Hell's a base Heaven and they've OPENED the door !! woolly mammoths seeking to be heard line-force doctorates leaning towards third magnificent fulcrums drubby and hollow master mechanics learning to swallow EVERYTHING once known is striving for presence and countless man-hours lost still manage to stage the production of something with every new name BUT the more things change the more they STAY the same !! and then the interviewer came up to me and said "what do you think?" and I managed to utter some words of doubt to lessen the stink but he took out a wedge-shaped malodorous word and shoved my head down struggling to be heard - I finally shouted - "Thomas Edison's dead and his West Orange plant has been shuttered and closed for rebuilding but that's OK by me since I've already seen it but to make matters worse since I once knew his nurse they threw us all out of LLewelyn Park too when all that we wanted was to admire the view!" and the guy said back to me "is that one L or two?" and I sniggered a bit and went right to my work and said back to him (for all it was worth) "merry tidbits to all and to all a good fight ! and the cow ran away with the goon" and then I began thinking what I really wanted and I realized it was but to be alone and to sit by the river's edge with my hair shorn short and no wind in my face and to lessen the evil and save the disgrace I'd stay there for days on end taking space but all for the reasons of all LOVE and GLORY for I've been places NO ONE else has seen and how can you (really) go on with the simple life when you've been to the moon and the planets (I mean) what else really is there to see?

9331. MADAME CARLISLE READS DE MAUPPASANT

MADAME CARLISLE READS 

DE MAUPPASANT

And I don't know the rest of that story. The flowers

were fresh like a funeral. You know how they pile up,

all fragrant and lonesome, the eerie feeling you get

when death smells so pretty. I never knew why they

did that except to mask the scent of the deceased.

-

I got a check for ninety dollars. It was for something

I did at the pile-driver's station in Red Bank, New

Jersey. Three months wait isn't worth the wait.

Know what I mean? If I got the money right away,

that would have been fine. But if, on the other

hand, I'd have know I'd wait three months, I

would have asked for more.

-

Anyway. Sometimes you get paid for waiting,

and other times you just wait. The Admiral's

Schooner was like that. I couldn't tell what it

really was, bar, or restaurant. I hate that. A

place should have to decide  -  be one or the

other, please, and I'd know how to act. 

- 

The gypsy fortune teller lady she told me there'd

be a bad fortune coming my way pretty soon.

Cheesy bitch. What's that mean, bad fortune?

The opposite of good? Or just a fortune no

matter, but one that would do me bad? These

red-kerchiefed gypsy ladies kill me. Why can't

they just come right out and say something

straight? Mystery blows. I told her that.

-

There was a mystical blue ring on her middle

finger, quite large. I became enchanted, and felt

it sang of wonder and awe to me. But all she turned

out to be was a hag with a nag for a shadow. Now,

now, the cat's out to play, and the mice run away.

All this life is but sorrow.

9330. AMERIDOCRITY

AMERIDOCRITY

Yes. That's what I call this now. Screw them if

they don't understand. Cornflakes and Freedom.

Womanizers and Irish drunks, Nigger lips and

Dago pasta-spinners. Ameridocrity. The mixture.

Melting pot. Carmine DeSapio and Adam Clayton

Powell Jr. Mediocrity and America. Uncle Tom

and Johnny Appleseed. I'll take my five and give

you John Ashbery and Marlo Thomas too. I place 

another bet on John Meyer, Mark Twain and 

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The Armory 

Show and WalMart art. Everything you 

want in an air-conditioned nightmare. 

And Amen Henry Miller.

9329. PLASTIC FLAG

PLASTIC FLAG

It's not the sort of thing they give away;

not the sort that Jimi Hendrix would play,

or wear, for that matter. It's really junk,

but now the high school kids don't know

the difference. To them a flag is the logo

on a Pepsi can or something akin. The

Mark of Cain, drink only if you're Abel.

9328. DO YOU WANT THIS VOLVO?

DO YOU WANT THIS VOLVO?

When they hung the paper in this miserable

room, I'd imagine they were blind or drunk.

None of the seams match up, so where the

floral image meets another, it's all bizarre 

and without any match. And then, in 

another section, the barn or wooden bridge

or whatever it is, is completely mismatched,

to no sense at all. I can't assume this would

bother anyone else, but it drives me sure-nuts.

-

Is there a form of agreement, or a word for his?

Or, perhaps, I'm just a geek of the kind foretold.

'He will be wise in his ways, but so dumb in his

tastes.' Or like a tombstone which reads, 'He was

wise in his ways, but what a jerk otherwise.' At

least at the burial the stone is not yet there; so

no one will know that difference.

-

In the same way as the old guy, writing his will

again for the umpteenth time, looks up at a nephew

and says, 'Do you want the Volvo?' No one else

in the room knows a thing, except that

he's a daff old man.

9327. I MUST HAVE NOT BROUGHT IT WITH ME

I MUST HAVE NOT 

BROUGHT IT WITH ME

You can probably take him out in an

instant  -  just jump onto his roof from

the landing above it; the thud will surely

get his attention, and while that's underway

just reach down over the eave and shoot

through the window. Maybe four shots,

one is sure to land him. Silencer, speed.

Cheap hotels. Be quick and nonchalant, but 

keep it moving. It depends on a lot of things,

yes, and you're taking chances yourself,

but that's what you get. I've already checked,

there's nothing on camera right there. This

isn't the most ultra-modern place, remember.

We're lucky if they shovel snow.

-

That's the low sort of message about how

crime starts out. I know it, I've been there.

The lounge lizard guy, in the cheap suit,

he's from St. Louis, selling reference units

in insurance pools to brokers there, but

in town here for a few days to meet with

his home-office people. About NYC, he

doesn't really know anything much. It's

a cinch to get over on him. He couldn't

tell Herald Square from the Herald angels

who sing. Ha! I see a chance arising.

-

I know what he's about. I talked with him

just the other day  -  over there in the lobby,

by the taproom in the restaurant alcove. "I

guess it was an interesting Winter, yeah. We

walked through January, kind of, just waiting.

A lot of TV. The inauguration, the speeches;

it was a lot of stuff. People out my way, I

think, are still baffled. I can't say I am; he's 

an OK guy, and - frankly  -  hell, I wish I

was him. So do a lot of others too. That's

why all the opposition. People are jealous.

They'll never say that, or own up, no, but

look at it  -  nice family, tons of money,

beautiful wife, cute son and kids. It's

all just a pouting jealousy. Nobody

knows politics; they just pretend."

-

I could tell where he was at, I had a feel 

for him. He mentioned 36 grand upstairs,

and two laptops  -  all the stuff he had to

bring with him. And his car, parked in

the courtesy lot  - last year's Lincoln Mark.

We can take that too, head off to Canada,

and be done. But first we've got to get a

key somehow. He's in 417E.

9326. ASSORTMENT

ASSORTMENT

Red candy butter in Macadamia swirl,

sold in the aisle between acts. I took 

one; they were cheap. Not bad, but

gotta' like sweets.  The flashlight guy

was watching me, so I waved him over.

'That's my sister,' I said, 'her name is

 Clover.' Then I had to tell him I didn't

'take' that, she'd given to me and would

square up later. He agreed, but took it

as a grudge  -  'I'm not your mat to master,'

I said. He talked right back, 'Neither am I

yours.' Wow, I thought, a really intelligent

usher. So, for the moment I was safe.

-

It little mattered, because the lights went

out again and the thing started playing 

once more. Live stuff, up on stage  -  a

sort of musical number inside a dramatic

recital. I kind of liked it. I was entitled,

being a candy thief and all.

-

They'd asked me in to do a reading, in about

a half-hour, between acts or something,

while they changed the sets and the lighting.

'That's all good,' I replied, 'but you know I

can't read in the dark.' The booking guy

laughed, 'Of course, we don't expect you

to. It won't be your lights affected.' He

laughed again, so I said, 'Are you making

light of me?' He didn't quite get it.

-

Actually I like reading before  -  meaning

in front of, not 'before' as time  -  audiences

and such, filling up rooms with people. It

only takes a minute and I click right in,

having rapt people, wrapped around my

finger, listening to every word. It's a great

feeling. A regular public oracle, that's me.

-

You'd be surprised; I don't look like much

but there's a strange power to the voice and 

the stuff reads really well. No, I'm not

bragging, though I daresay you've not heard

anything like it before -   not that crap-rabble

beanpole ghetto-jump they call 'poetry' now.

The wailers and the angry race-screamers,

women or transvestites, or whatever that

stuff's called these days,

-

Then, on the other extreme, you've got

regular poetry types  -  the broken-hearts,

the sad and only, or the sad and the lonely;

the ones writing about sky and flowers

and the pale yellow moon. That's not me 

either. I can hold the room to your attention 

and make you wonder. I can split your hair 

with an heirloom comb. I can make you hear

 words you've never ever heard before.

A real assortment, if you ask me.

9325 . 'I DO SWEAR I WAS ONCE ON THE MOON'

9325. 'I DO SWEAR I WAS ONCE ON THE MOON':

So Neil Armstrong touched the moon - human presence of dimensional reality crossing with the solid eminence of white/tan sandy abandonment and the rigid prophylactic mind-set of reason and logic colliding with abstraction in a fashion of geometric conflict still avoided to this day - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being the first two of [ODD CONCURRENCE] TWELVE MEN who touched the surface twelve disciples of want from some other place of concrete stallions and rigid morbidities as in "I will make ye fishers of stars" perhaps and in his biography it is mentioned that 'Armstrong moved 16 times in his first 14 years' but always within Ohio when his father finally settled the family in Wapakoneta - not far from the Wright Brothers' Dayton (he later took with him to the moon - as perhaps some poetic gesture of travel-brotherhood - two small pieces of the Wrights' 1903 flyer) - has anyone ever thought of when consciousnesses collide what reality is in turn created and what mass-induced assumptions then take place : millions watching on small metal-framed televisions on some hot July night as two men dusted the surface of some small desolate and lifeless emanation of solidity afloat in dead air - a completely paradoxical vision of reality as we all knew it up to that point - something of no noise no presence no stirring no movement - so much so that even the spike-planted surface-flag had to have its simulated waving-in-the-wind posture made artificially and right there it still stands - as if blowing in the wind in a place where there is no wind - and all of this paradoxical peace and good-will opposed back on Earth by the darlings of youth decimating each other - Vietnam bloodbaths amidst massed puddles of anguish and death UPON WHICH each night nightly that same moon shone SILENTLY and without disturbance over the noise toil death and destruction in the paddies and hills below and for all of that it was THIS world which slumbered 'neath the moonlight from above - and did you know of the rivalry and the tiff between Armstrong and Aldrin and that although they did manage to 'pat' each other on the shoulder once they touched down it was Aldrin's snit over Armstrong's selection as first-man that caused him to NOT take any pictures of Armstrong as mission leader and once they were actually ON the moon the only decent still photograph of Armstrong on that moon was taken by Armstrong himself when he appears as a reflection in a photo of Aldrin's visor (Aldrin had expected to be the first to step-off but sometime during procedurals he was shunted aside for Armstrong) and the reason actually given was (for the 'American' character) 'Neil was Neil - calm quiet and absolute confidence and we all knew that he was the Lindbergh type - he had no ego.'

9324. CAPILLARIES THAT GET FROZEN

CAPILLARIES THAT 

GET FROZEN

They say WWII was no great sin; I guess the

next one won't be either. Not until we give

up on the numbers will they really count. 

The concept somehow remains, you

understand, without the Roman numerals.

The good thing about it all, I suppose, is

the higher they go up, those Roman things,

the more difficult they get. Who remembers

'L'. Understand?

-

There's a tank on a lawn in Westfield or

somewhere, supposing to commemorate

the dead  - what better way to go? Those

wobbly veterans, pooped on their beers

and shots, still try to stand erect. Saluting

their luck, or saluting just chance.

-

Somewhere out behind them all, across the

wild-splashed world, are graves and graves

and graves of all they've done, or what's

been done to them. It really doesn't matter.

They fought for something, and that's 

what counts, no matter how bamboozled

they've become.