582. THE CRAZY MAN IS CRAZY

THE CRAZY MAN IS CRAZY
'Just like your cunt is my pocket,
wherein I put whatever I want;
that sorry semblance of stars and
the chemical beakers which hold them,
those slab-sides of new in a very fine,
calm brooding - of which full lips can
only start the story.'

581. SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

(Too Much / the Car Wreck)

Just like something for everyone, we have
the habits of the scroll; the baby-talk fast-
feed lingo of the Soul. 'An idle mind, the Devil's
Workshop.' 'Pick what you want, pay for what
you pick.' ...and all the rest. They stand the test.
They come out best. BUT FIRST please retire
the bullshit, the horrid crap, the over the median
crazy car-wreck; glass and loosed tires flying
through the air, the singe of rubber and metal,
gas all a'fire everywhere. It's a terrible scene.
The focus is rare. There's now something for
everyone, but TOO MUCH is there.

580. AD MAN

AD MAN
Somehow I grow very weary of all the noise
I hear : jetplane rampage train roar whirr.
Just like that, some permission has been
granted to totally assault my ear.
-
I cannot turn around, to someone else,
and ask why. As I cannot stop some
bastard from trailing banners
in the sky.

579. EPITAPH

EPITAPH
(Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1978)

'When I was alive,
I was dead. Now that
I am dead, I have never
been more alive.'
-
At Gravesend, where the river markers
mark nothing but dirt, the old Citadel
church still welcomes whatever vagrant it
can hold. A can of cold soup and a few
prayers, whittled like a talisman over
unsuspecting heads. So little, going
for so much - while so much
goes for so little.

578. ENCASED IN IVORY

ENCASED IN IVORY
I am greeted by so many sights,
things strange and new to me : that
warrantless tusk, an elephant in
distress, blue water running down
the face of some African rock. This
gentle fellow, holding stolen jewels
in his outlaw hands, smiles, gleaming,
as he anticipates the moments ahead.
-
We hold such wild greenery as sacred
and rare - moss on rocks, thick and
varied growth overhanging every path and
trail. Somewhere behind us, the unknown
sound of a monkey or cat : a banging in the
sky, the gleeful cackle of another natural
force. Isn't that the seeming sense we've
striven for these decades on? If so, we've made
it work now, for both ourselves and all of 'them'.
-
An African river hunt with the spoils
of the sport going for naught.
A hollowed-out bark, skimming
swiftly, watches with the eyes of
those within it, every move I make.

577. CHAIN PLANT RECKONING

CHAIN PLANT RECKONING
We've taken the blinders off the dairyman's horse;
now it can see what it passes. No more than a simple
'clomp, clomp', its welcome noise colors the
morning. Ah! That should fix things!
-
Rooster engaged, making sunlight noises.
Old barn door, on weary hinges, creaking
its song. I walk on ahead, holding a
pail filled white with foamy essence.
Morning light, morning milk - both
seem equal for me - the
wonderful sensation.
-
Toil, labor and sweat.
Hay and straw, silage
and manure. It seems,
sometimes, I swear, the
pleasure of life comes from
its work. Nothing less,
nothing more.

576. BIOLOGY

BIOLOGY
All
species
make
feces.

575. THE DOCTOR OF HAPPENSTANCE

THE DOCTOR OF HAPPENSTANCE
Provisions for the horizon, the art teacher said,
must always be made first. One can prepare the
ground and the colors, but must know - before
beginning - where it will end. In other words, no
walking blindly through the forest of knives.

574. A GREAT WEAPON

A GREAT WEAPON
('The necessary musics of a needed age')
To be used right a great weapon should
be used on a great battlefield. Thus, (saith
the Lord?) I have dominion over you...
(You know and I know that story holds no water).
There's nothing great about living like this:
a sorcerer's jackboot stomping down, the
bad hands of an apprentice making rookie
mistakes, the liquid vehicle of a bad gland
dispensing all that semen.
-
When I was 9, a great thing happened to me:
looking up to the awesome sky I saw five thousand
1950's stars blinking on high and every one, in an
unwavering path, heading straight for an ending
already foretold. The man with the arrow, some
celestial archer, bent down to lift me up. I was
fearsome and proud, deftly traveling through the
ages of time - something Man would call it anyway.
He offered me a plug. I took it. In it, he said, were
held all the secrets of the cosmos.
-
When I came back down, he was gone, and I
was, somehow in a slightly different place.
Every measurement and distance,
slightly changed, amounted
to completely new things.
The universe sang on
the ground, with, he'd
said, the necessary
musics of a
needed age.

573. LEARNING THE MULE

LEARNING THE MULE
(look it up in the Temple)
You came into town on a crippled ass,
one walking sideways, cross-eyed, and swaying
while braying, bumping into all manner of things.
Everyone laughed, and then you fell off.
The townsfolk, unzippered, swore they'd
have their way with you - as their Bible
foretold. I was then a scribe, writing
all this down. Ignorant people amass
ignorant things, and this was, most
certainly, a sight to behold.
-
Behind the lemon tree, a girl was
playing sticks - longer straws for
gain, smaller twigs for loss; and a few
pebbles for use to easily keep score.
I wondered why I was always losing.
I realized only later she was a cheat.
-
The rabble sure can talk. Ten million
words a minute and not a damn thing
said. The fellow with the stern blue
eyes - every word he spoke was brutal
and insincere. I found myself hating him,
and wondered if that was right. Nothing
really, just the guilt-heavy sort of upbringing
I'd had. I'm sure he could have not cared less.
-
The Realm of Barbelo (in case you hadn't
noticed) is still alive and well.

572. YOUR OLD CAN OF STUTTER

YOUR OLD CAN OF STUTTER
...has kept me up way past the night, here comes
the light and it's right through the shutter. I wouldn't
know what else to do had I not read your
book : telling me to wither and die but never
give in, remembering the Alamo in so many
other ways, Sam Houstoning me, in fact, right
past the garden doorway and onto St. Ambrose
Street. Where the icing is free but the cakes
are immensely expensive : Heaven-sent malarkey,
fifteen girls for nothing, thirty men painting
thirty walls, one in each color of lightning.
That old chorus cat you called Mr. Finch,
it still sits motionless on the window ledge
right where you left it. Going in, going out?
-
I came home from Akron tired as a dog.
-
('Automatic poetry always makes me sick...')
graffiti found on a washroom wall in Ohio.

571. KANDUHAR

KANDUHAR
(Man Alone)
Morgana at the station, lining
the wheels. Ten minutes before daybreak -
a part of the moon still in the sky. Leftover
darklight, pounded by stars. Some lethal
infraction amidst bare bulbs and lamp-lit
rays splashing shiny light from pillar
to post. Coffee maven wheezes passing by.
An upraised hand, by Tommy Braden,
passes a 'hi' to his friend Tim-o Smith.
As solid as that bag upon his shoulder,
they've known each other for years.
A newspaper left on the bench extolls,
for whatever reason, the Yankees and
the Phils. Covering all bets, placing,
shills. Everything's in play before
the early morning's light.
OK with me.
I just want to be
alone.

570. WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
Where are you going America ? in your
solid chrome-headed plastic filigree
watchtower-dome hat plating to tag
the Tag Heur to paint the new room
gilding the lily until the landlord dies :
swan-swocket land-locked Myra-prism
artfield naked ranger wearer of stripes
and douser of all fires water-hose-weasel
splendor-splattered orgasmatron water-pistol
expansion-loving troglodyte with one leg held
high up stepping the fruited plain jumping rock
to rock in your excalibur surge to reach the
onion-silvered stars and all that Heidi-Ho!
Where are you going America ? and
where is it really to which you go!
Go moan for man go moan.

569. MAN UP EARLY TO DISTURB THE RAIN

MAN UP EARLY
TO DISTURB THE RAIN
I have no excuse for the wobbling of the planet -
how space elides the stars and everything above
us changes. I just know the errant meaning
of what we judge. The past, made of people,
is nothing. Every Swanson and Lechmor,
merely names to learn. They've mostly
paved Chicago with stories of ale-pot
fury - old industries now gone to seed;
Detroit too, Cleveland, the whole
great Monongahela.
-
Over in Pittsburgh, those storied and
furious mills are now silent and shut,
as quiet as some nun in an outhouse,
seething with embarrassment to publicly
pass her shit. It's all no matter what came
before - we are doused with our own
new stupidity, crippled, and wobbling too.
-
It is said the stars pass no judgment.
It is said the planets, ever silent, don't
even see us in our folly - thus we are
more aware of them then they are ever
of 'we'. They have no concept such
as that. They just rest, as a fired mind,
blazing - a wild consciousness drawn
deep into space; a wild mind
setting the furies afire.

568. MAL DE MER

MAL DE MER
After so long I am charmless,
and dizzy, mysterious and lost.
I can't turn around without hitting
myself. In trying to look up now, the awful
dispersal of time and its days drops me back
to bedlam - some wicked sort of dismay -
a distraction I can never place. I sleep
among my figments and imaginings; truly
my very own Hell. Looking up, lethargy
paints its sky with a crimson color only
fiery clouds and pits of disaster know.
Somehow the dead know the dead in the
same fashion as the living know others
living. Alas, I know neither; neither
one nor the other know me.
-
In trying to look up,
in looking up, I
am nowhere.

567. NORTHWAY

NORTHWAY
I wasn't always holding things in
the manner of some arctic traveller
making straight for the Bering Strait.
Dogs on ice, braying for bones.
Someone blowing a bone-flute, the
little sound, alone, scraping over
the snow and ice. Wind which howled
like a rampage sung the tune of forever.
Each morning, a dim light awoke the horizon,
which then trumped lazily its next approach -
more, more, more bright white bright ice.
We never seemed to move, though we
travelled all day.

566. DOWNTOWN

DOWNTOWN
There was a catcall from the welter
of noise - someone rudely shouting
a name. No one looked up to see what
was the matter. An inauspicious, noisy
muddle such as this certainly marred the
day. Workers in coats were struggling home,
wrong buttons on heavy jackets, smokes
from chimneys and cigarettes too, dwindling
upward in the dusk of a frosty night. 'We'll
save whatever we can if the big frost comes,
but for now all we can do is wait. Everything
else has already been taken in.' I couldn't tell,
really and for sure, if that was a gardener
speaking or a tailor. It's always like that in
this jumble'd eve of a city racket. Noise and
chatter, smashing together like pots and pans.

565. SHROUDED MAN

SHROUDED MAN
(for James Fenimore Cooper)
Let me put it this way :
the icicle is in the bowl, the
hand is on the water. What is
before me is the glass-image mirrored.
A life of death, a resemblance but not
the real. Why does the glimmer-glass
shudder, Mohican man? How far the
golden path through these Algonquin
hills? We've lost the world eternal.
All we've got now are settlers, hustlers,
roustabouts and bastard misfits knowing
nothing of either world. The Natural
calls the Supernatural, but to them,
nothing answers back.

564. YOU CAN'T NAME ME

YOU CAN'T
NAME ME
White wall, white shed, broad barn,
rural scene, city head. Two hands
holding candles - each a'lit - and
both looking for each other. Fire
into fire, flame into flame. The
reason it's different is 'cause
everything else is the same.
-
I awoke at dawn, and knew
you were there. I got up and
wet my face, opened again
my dreary eyes, and tried to
get away. Opening a faint
door to the greenway of the
dark, I felt like nothing so much
as returning to the deep deep
dream from whence I'd come :
a place of malice and mystery,
a place of silence and dark.

563. SOME IDEA OF AN EXPANDING AFTERLIFE

SOME IDEA OF AN
EXPANDING AFTERLIFE
All stars and moon and a
thin line of clouds - the black
and inky sky looked like nothing
but depth and presence, a new
brightness opening to some other
time and place. Idea? Brilliant
light? Bright opening? Opening
Light? I think otherwise in a
sporadic jazz-beam of broken
prisms and scattered rays; the
stuff one can't pin down. Like
passing shadings on a grayed-out
wall, they last for a moment, or
two, and, moving, are gone.

562. FORENSIC EVIDENCE

FORENSIC EVIDENCE
Magic dodo-bean airship palaver
keeping sentry on the high-topped air.
The handgun of the salient, shown to go
off, resounds with an echo unceasing.
Anybody hurt? Dead too? Put the
important ones in the important
cemetery, the rest throw into the
field. No one ever said a Civil War
was easy. We've run this river red
with rebel blood, and they've done
the same with us. Brother against
brother, blood against trust.
-
At the Southgate Seminary, two men
studying the Book are praying as
they nod their heads. They know
very little, and have chosen God
instead. All before them, out on
the modern field, it is Decoration
Day - where not just that one,
but every War is remembered

561. THE BLUE CARD

THE BLUE CARD
So many people smiling at one time.
Speaking biographies in wide, open space:
'we're alive and vibrant and happy.' I hear
such a gloried message is the style of the
day. Unknown to the others, the ceiling
has a crack, a major flaw widening. All
I can see is daylight through the air. A thin
airship pierces through the horizon.
(Were this a Magritte painting, I'd
swear a train was due, coming right
in through the fireplace too).

560. HARRY THE COMMUNARD

HARRY THE COMMUNARD
Contempt for the masses never ends
happily - they bend and they sway,
while from their little fields wild
flowers grow. On high, the
roofs of barns and corn-sheds
appear as nothing but extra
buildings on a sad movie lot.
A few sparse scenes, filled
with people who never move.
People who never move at all.

559. PROCLAIMING THE DECORATIVE ARTS

PROCLAIMING THE
DECORATIVE ARTS*
(dedication foundry)
'Bare, ruined choirs, the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune, all that crap you hear
on rabid commercials and the airwaves of
sloth and lethargy - I don't want to hear
no more. Pounce on the tiger like it's
eating a bone. Burning bright...in the
forests of the night....Yeah, that
William Blake can eat my hat.
-
He - and all the rest - they can go straight
to Hell too, if they're still waiting for
rides. I've got a '67 Chevy that'll
take 'em there. A little gas on
the pedal and we're off to see
the shtetl, or whatever.
-
Some bawling infant on the
sidelines of the pale - it's
seemingly never happy
and continuing to wail.
For that kid alone, I
proclaim the decorative
arts. Hats off to Larry,
he's got a good start.'

*For there is hope, of a tree; that if it be cut down, it will sprout again. Job, 14:7

558. APEX BROTHER

APEX BROTHER
'Everywhere I go there's nothing but conflict
and pain. Everything's composed of aspects I
can't deal with nor understand. The cat and the
canary, they both know what I mean.'
-
He squatted down while he talked,
lighting a small fire in Central Park;
next to a moonbeam rock, clustered behind
a stand of old trees. 'This small fire's just
to burn all the things I've ever written - and I
aim to too.' He pulled piles of papers from out
a valise, a satchel he'd carried in. Banded and
wrapped, he said what they were : 'these are all I've ever
done, my works; a novel short stories, essays and poems.
All these wonderful ideas. I just can't live with them anymore
and I made a vow to myself. They're all being burned.'
-
The little fire fired up - an unsightly reddish flame
and a glow of which I'd never seen, nor wish to
see again. Black spirit and white sprite, both
it seemed rode up in tongues of flame and
flared away. He was crying by now, all
a horrible sight.
-
'Everywhere I've gone, it's all been a
terrible flight. Nothing but conflict
and anger and fury and pain.
Everything's made of stuff
I don't get. The cat AND
the canary, they both
know what I mean.'

557. THE LIGHT OF ANOTHER DAY (Miranda)

THE LIGHT OF
ANOTHER DAY

(Miranda)
These endless square miles of plinth are killing me :
listen to that man talk boy he can talk he never
shuts up and it's only 6am before the light
actualizes before the room ends spinning before
whatever I'm supposed to do is even materialized.
Two rogue dogs from the driver's kennel have
taken to licking each other, or something, and they
stretch to bend in a contortion I only can
see in a half-light of the morningtide and then the
cute little votive Spanish girl once more steps
off her morning train from Elizabeth and waves
to me as I watch her walk away - in a red colored
Fall jacket she bedazzles with sway. I'm thinking of
some President or another, speaking off-the-cuff
from some pediment along the Shasta range - the
usual crap about preserving our natural beauty and
wonder. Yeah, I think I know what he meant.
The world is a sorrowful, dog-licking place and
the only beauty that comes around is when you
can find it in the face of another warm and pleasant
human being. I am watching her walk away.
I am watching her walk away, and the
light isn't even up yet, the light
of another day.

556. THE OFFICIAL HARD SURFACE OF A GOD

THE OFFICIAL HARD
SURFACE OF A GOD
I'll take my hand and put it down
wherever I please and whatever
the surface. You can make no
distinction to set me off. The
mica gleam, the stone hardness,
of this world and all creation
is but an echo of the perfection
of all my Paradise : water that
is not that at all, air that turns
solid, wind that runs like sound.
Every determination (you should
understand) has already been made -
ahead of time, as you say - by Me.

555. CANDY KISS

CANDY KISS
The ground was littered with silver,
the glittery kind, of cheapness and
fun. Someone had spilled, and
left, a big bag of candy kisses -
a vague, chocolate of a type,
wrapped in foil, in a gumdrop
shape. Teardrop, gumdrop,
elongated oval, silver-wrapping
tear-tag toil. Pull it back and
tear the foil. They literally
littered the ground.

554. BEAUTY

BEAUTY
Oh that Summertime bulge which
leads me right to your heart - again
and again and over and more. It
is the sweetness of an orange sun
broiling over the ground. Orb celestial,
Summer wand, charmed glade.
The roundness of your fullness,
plump, now glides me on.

553. I HAVE A CADENCE I DO WANT TO KEEP

I HAVE A CADENCE
I DO WANT TO KEEP
I am stuck with James Joyce in Trieste
and we are awaiting a train - one that
runs the waterfront slowly. And Nora
Barnacle who too has been waiting
has just now heard of the arrest.
We'd been brawling in a canal-side
bar - nothing very close to nothing
quite far - a few punches thrown
among others (thankfully) held back.
We were apprehended and taken to
jail, released after a hearing, and all
that. She is apoplectic at all the
time lost. We laugh it off as
a moment past its prime, at no
real cost. A water-taxi passes,
headed for Miramar, as we
decide (only so reluctantly now)
to dart up towards the summit of
San Giusto's hillock on the
Karst - the old city center
on the summit atop the hill.
Carlo Morpurgo and Lloyd
Trestino await us up there;
already quite drunk, we figure,
they are biding their time as
the birds do the air : a wavering
flight, a sway of the hands,
a certain cadence they
do want to keep.

552. TRAINMAN

TRAINMAN
The African conductor,
who was standing tall,
I'd seen before at Limerick
or Bordeaux; somewhere.
One of those dumb and
paleful places where tourists
flock to eat. He stood straight
as a tree and - as I watched -
hardly moved a muscle
but to blink. I imagined
him at some Sahara stand,
idly watching the wind and
the weather blow.

551. RIDGEMONT

RIDGEMONT
Egalitarian humanity takes turns
hugging other people - one by one,
filled with love and cookies. Children
stare up at the prison on the hill.
Its granite and stone walls, ever-foreboding,
try speaking to them in code. Like lollipops
of cherry-flavored goo, they melt away,
smiling to hide their fear.
-
Near the top, where the guard still stands
sentry with an afternoon rifle and scope,
some wily hawk swoops down, and plucks
up a screaming squirrel. It's over in a flash -
a pluck of air, some noisy crunch, and,
falling back to the ground, a severed
leg or a broken-off claw. The
poor grey-squirrel never
had a chance.

550. SKIP TO MY LOU

SKIP TO MY LOU
I wanted to press you till I broke you,
bend back your back, crack your neck,
twist you until you were twisted. These
were all my secrets. And still are.
The new word, for something that both
'was' and 'is', is 'wais' - which I shall
use, from this point on.
-
It always wais that I could love
you like a sergeant-at-arms, pledging
fealty at the meeting to maintaining all
order at whatever possible cost.
-
I wanted to succor you breathless
leaning leaving frolic at your
minions of frappled desire.
-
Be that as it may,
I must now retire.

549. THE SEPTEMBRISTS

THE SEPTEMBRISTS
(the gallery plot)
Art and speed, speed and art, somehow put
together at Lothario's pace : the gliding slime
that comes from oil, the running colors, the
certainly-not-frugal drip of a cow-painter's
wild brush. We make for images like these,
while broiling in flaming heats, under broad
shades and wide-brimmed hats. Hipsters,
flying low so as to dip to the tips of trees.
-
A crippled reporter enters, dragging a leg.
Trying to speak, she talks instead with a
pencil piercing her forehead. 'Concept
Art I had no conception of,' she writes
as the red blood slowly trickles, forming
a crimson lick around her lips. 'I'm not
famous yet, y'see, but I soon will be.'
-
That was the young artist speaking.
He wants to buy the gallery, if he can.
'Easier that way to sell my work -
just that and nothing more.'
-
Here's the baker. Here's the
maid. Here's the clarion
clapper. Here's the late
artist, so recently
deceased.

548. THE UPPER ROOM

THE UPPER ROOM
At my entertaining entrance - all the things to
be made sure of for certain - they do go on.
The parties of endless people and their
effusive old songs, the sour smell of an
old dog's breath. Someone playing Mama
Cass on an old thirty-three and a third - some
rotating black disk of trouble wailing away -
and God I can hardly listen. Both sense and
sensibility, in its Jamesian way, all gone.
The threadbare attic waits for a dance.

547. MY DISMAL PORTRAYAL

MY DISMAL PORTRAYAL
I sometimes feel like I'm in prison, serving
a life or two, with the people doing infantile
things : a sister buying a cake, a padre with
a fedora, a Clem Henley drawing a doodle.
I can do nothing but witness, as pain rips
through my gut - the wrench of a stiletto,
or the grace of a perfect cut.

546. COMMINGLED MUSCLEMEN

COMMINGLED MUSCLEMEN
The haven of the elixir went south for the
season reading with the light off and reaching for
the stars while here and there the two old train guys
frolicked with some lithesome badger carrying a torch:
'I salved my regina on Saturday last. What about you?'
The entire place erupted in laughter, the kind the doorbell
sells - madman cat-crawler Buddy Brittanica himself steps
up just the to say 'Ah, hey, before we over-reach, let's have a
minute of silence for the men in blue' and nobody understands
a word - 'guys with the blues?, fishermen with their catch?,
whaddya' think he means?' they said, parodying Carlton
Faraday the old bootlegger of Kensington Road. A round
of lame applause ensues. 'I'm warning you, don't do that
again!' is heard once or twice from the carbine tower
wherein the switchhaggler lived. 'All is calm in Littleville,
all is calm here indeed.' That was the last thing I heard.

545. POCKET CHANGE FOR COLONEL MINGLER

POCKET CHANGE FOR
COLONEL MINGLER
Eggshell bullfight horsehair majorette.
Carmen paralegal doorman omelette.
Never luscious cape-coat flathead,
roving garment handheld hatchet.
(How I wish the charming reed
forever formed the circle -
aqueduct, azalea, alpaca).
We remove at our own
peril every hazard
in the way....
Landing strip
ozone,
low-zone,
tray.

544. MORNING

MORNING
There is (to be told) no glare in the
sky this morning. The gray man's
own dulcimer light shines, with only the
most faint and distant reddish tinge to the
clouds in the heavens above - which
aren't really that, you see, for it's always
been thought that 'Heaven' (and even
then at that) was always far above the sky.
But anyway, I give this sallow grayness
credit. The leaves of the paper birch -
still quite green, an upland tree - are heavy
before the morning sky and massive (it
seems)...right here, where someone is
dragging a broom. The new light tries
to come forth, with birds now
just beginning to sing.

543. SHED THE CHARADE

SHED THE CHARADE
The horses, two of them, have stayed
near the gate - far too long for the afternoon
it seems. Harry the Haymaster, or whatever
the name of that little Mexican guy with a bale is,
comes over to see what's occurred. He doesn't
speak much, English anyway, so I don't even bother
to talk. Another guy, Eduard, I know, walks from the
barn with two mesh pails filled carefully with new
brown eggs. Forty or so per pail, I guess, makes eighty;
sold by the dozen in the farm-store nearby. Sorted
and packed in the usual egg-crate, they don't stay
that very long. Pricey but good. Free-range chickens, or
somesuch crap. In the yard here are three of the
noisiest, meowiest, cats I've ever heard or saw.
They've waltzed around in little cat circles, meowling
and bumping into one another - it's absolutely crazy
to watch. What they want beats me. To my left - two
precious goats with the softest ears and noses, and some
ridiculous Shetland pony with too much mane bumps up
against his corral, almost in annoyance. 'Too bad pal,' I
say underneath my breath. Maple Ridge Farm, Colllier's
Orchard, Pierce Hill Dairy : whatever they call themselves
here works for what they sell. Poultry. Milk. Eggs. Meat.
The gravel parking lot, bare except for maybe two cars,
seems slim but steady all afternoon long. One customer, then
another. Down along the side, the old farmhouse beckons.
　

542. FLANEUR

FLANEUR
Reading Christopher Isherwood along the
city sidewalk - a cantilevered street, with
people overhead. The wide crowd pulses
around me. Highline. Lowline. The same
perverse junk. That man in the fedora,
thinking he's Henry Gold, walks by as a regal
scold. His woman, with him, scowls down from
some nagging height. Fifteen legions dense,
the people are watched by the ranger with
the clicker in her hand - carefully counting
heads. I walk up to her, smiling, and say -
'can you count me twice?' She smiles back,
and says, 'no problem, good as done.'
I swoop my hand over her neck, and plant
a kiss on her bureaucratic face.
'Please remember me, just this
way, forever,' I ask of her.
'I am a camera, looking
at you.'

541. ELEGY IN A CONCRETE GRAVEYARD

ELEGY IN A
CONCRETE GRAVEYARD
My name isn't written in the past -
neither is it written in the future.
I am enmeshed you see in a present
of sorts : one amazing tranquility, of
prospects and dreams quickly going
down the drain. Trying to sketch a
perfect bluebird, I end up with a
terrifying hawk. Water, flowing softly
beneath the petals, rushes suddenly to
a new torrent and buckles the pavement
upon which I stand. It is all so incongruously
true that it must be taken as fact. It
gets (simply) no simpler then that.
-
If you pass my grave in your wandering,
please think, perhaps, to tip your hat.

540. IN THE SAME SPELLBINDING BOX

IN THE SAME
SPELLBINDING BOX
'If you looked at the really big picture
you'd see you couldn't blame us.'

539. FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY

FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY
I dog the coastline, seeking whatever
arises - things sticking out of the mud,
broken wheels where once a carriage ran.
Silhouettes and noon-time shadows, both
indifferent to each other, spend each their
moments in the sun. Alike. Apart.
A wailing cat in a similitude of grief.
-
They say once a great liner foundered here.
Burned and tipped; dropped its bastard
cargo a mile from the shore. The blaze - seen
for miles around - scorched everything. Its people,
their bags, their pets and all cargo too.
Only the Captain and crew, walking somehow
on fiery water, managed to survive,
arriving onshore to tell their insane tale.
-
No one for a moment believed a word :
virgins with balls of fire on their hands,
starting fires with their eyes; timid
travelers, singing of Trieste and of
the Hapsburgs, tying things down with
strings; mountains of red mud,
falling down, straight, from the sky.
All fantastic, and all thought a lie.
-
The Captain died, a lonely man, some
twenty-five years later still huddled in
his grief. Fear was his only daughter,
and sorrow was her cloak. They'd
let him live, if only to suffer more.
-
A public story of such great import
gets told over and anew. We read it
in history's reports, as arrow-like, it
pierces our dreams - part of our
unconscious noise, still, a
hundred years on.

538. HAM-FISTED

HAM-FISTED
Arrested development of the sort they talk about
in journals and quarterlies : the man with the
infantile projection, the woman who thinks she's
three. Operative personalities which, usually
grown out of by nine years old, linger.
A fellow who pops his eyes, the lady who
whistles through her skin.
-
We let them live, it seems through our
own form of genuine kindness - just
as they, seemingly, allow us our own
time too. Time to go on and prosper,
time to make what we do.
-
Some heavy- handed, ham-fisted God
named Fred or Harvey, I'd suppose,
very busy with tedious work,
just let some things slip
through those elusive
faint-line cracks.

537. NEGATIVITY

NEGATIVITY
Yes, well, we hired a mourner for use,
but he didn't know what to mourn and
couldn't find any reason to search.
Yes, well, we hired a flower-cart for
blossoms and blooms, but when she
arrived with an empty cart, she explained
'That's just the way it always is.'
Yes, well, we hired moonlight for some
moon, but when it showed up 'twas but a
sliver to what we'd expected to see; a
slim crescent moon to our full degree.
We all shrugged and figured 'it had
to be better than the dark.'
Yes, well, we hired a gravedigger
to dig out a tomb, but he arrived with
a rubber mallet and a simple teaspoon.
'Well, there's nothing more to dig,' he said,
'or we'll all be expired soon.'
Yes, well, we wanted to hear something
special, the best, so we hired an orator

grand from the envied halls of Congress.
He wouldn't speak a word, and
was a dumb mute no less.

536. STEEL

STEEL
I walked past the old mill, the old palace, and
the old bowling alley - where everything now
had fallen in. A roof turned into a floor and seagulls
roaming freely, the less-than-distant splash
of the ocean frothing in. As if, in some demented
vacation scenario, the sea had moved ashore,
the cowboy hats on the horsemen, the horses
within the carousel, even the broken bulbs
once lighting the roof line, had corroded and
died in a sea-salt reverie. Doom dripped like
salt water from every metallic surface.
Was someone screaming, or just
the gulls along the shore?

535. ARCHIPELAGO

ARCHIPELAGO
I broke my ten fingers on an over-arching
rock, shimmying up the mountain from bottom
to top. I never looked back - since I was
unable to - or had I not mentioned, my
eyes were gone too. I later lost my hearing
when I realized there was no noise - nothing to
listen for, little to avoid. It seems, somehow
now, as I stop and think back, it was an
Evolution in reverse - I gave it all back.

534. INVESTITURE

INVESTITURE

(pour 'A')
'How my high-toned repertoire takes in
so many lying friends baffles even me.
They've made stories up - under-handed
and stupid - about lives they've never led,
sequestered as they are instead in squalid
little rooms of no real conversation. And with,
then, no one to talk to, they have to make things up.'
-
I'd known all that before, but thought to
go with the joke to be in at the punchline.
'Denouement.' You'd see, I'd see.
-
A dirigible, scaling the sky.
Nothing floats like that, nothing,
except a big, floating lie.

533. THE HANDS OF MICHAEL FRIDLY

THE HANDS OF
MICHAEL FRIDLY
I saw the hands of Michael Fridly as they
were digging dirt with a spoon. A few feet deep,
he thought, would do the trick; 'I have these
memories to bury.' He said that, looking back,
to where the monstrous elm tree, still deep in life,
spreads its spangly branches overhead. A few
gracious squirrels cavorted for space, and they
tripped both up and down that giant trunk.
Michael was nonplussed by all - 'there's only one
thing I need to do and I'm doing it.' Dedicated to
devotion, managing to get it done.
-
As if an angel had descended, a new strange
light was present - casting bright powers on
leaf and on limb. Michael kept digging, with his
silly spoon. The more his head was down, the more
his face would frown. 'But Michael,' I said, 'look
up now and then. A wonderful light is around.'

532. WHITSUNDAY

WHITSUNDAY
They are amassing at the border,
all those puddle-jumpers and disenfranchised
slackers refusing to budge. The lights are
down in the canyon, and (they've suddenly
realized that) not a one among them can
read. Papers fly about and a few laggard
mothers scream. 'My child will be paying
for this forever!' The fat Russian lady
holding the tupperware cake falls
over in a swoon.
-
A man from the Central Bureau stops by
to see how (any) progress is going.
'Aleck', he asks, 'has anyone
here seen Aleck?'...of course,
no one answers him back.
-
The tar is still soft 'neath the feet.
That odd guy from Pennsylvania
is singing alone. 'Has anybody
seen my gal, has anybody
seen my gal?'
-
He gets it all right,
then he gets it
all wrong.
(A curious partaker of melody, he).

531. WHAT DID HE MEAN?

WHAT DID HE MEAN?
When the river was Scotch was the river
in Scotland? I couldn't figure what he meant:
'Him, with his foot in his mouth'...remember
that one? Riverrun. Remember that?
Escarpment over the fox terrier, the full moon
over the glade. I was watching them dance, all
those weird country people. Banjos and fiddles
and guitars, gaps between teeth, and other teeth
missing. The little kid in the 'foyer' (they called it)
standing there in his pajamas watching two people
kiss. Someone flicked the lights on and off, on and
off. Everyone laughed...for no real reason at all.

530. DELIVERENCE

DELIVERENCE
What hands have grabbed the sky tonight?
I walk in the dark where it used to be light.
-
Xavier and Quentin, whatever the names,
they each bequeath me something -
starry and bright, glowing and round.
High overhead, swirling millions of stars
and planets, as testaments to what should
be. Dark, deep sky. Heavens open high.
-
There was a time I entered Paradise alone -
walking hunched, heavily burdened and
sad. I sat down where I could and watched -
endless, squirming people realizing, suddenly
they were free - every assumption and attribution
they'd once given to the world was now gone.
-
It didn't last; it couldn't.
Now, I looked forward to
seeing a morning light I'm
rather more familiar with -
a man with a rake, seeding
old grass, putting down sod
where only brown dirt used to be.
-
What hands have grabbed the sky tonight?
I walk in the dark where it used to be light.

529. WITH ALL MY DREAMS IN FLIGHT

WITH ALL MY DREAMS
IN FLIGHT
In the confessional mode I'm at my best -
rushing home to check out the mail,
examining the sky for its passing fleece of
shapes in clouds, or just worrying about the
weather - casting all that as the fading
movie-background of the thing I call a
life. All the items I live to tell about.
I lose nothing in this matter-of-fact deal,
you see - let me tell you that.
Like shredding the fabric of wheat
or like some of my father's old faded
upholstery cuttings - items left over after
death has come and gone...all these
transformed things, yes, they may suffice
but can they make it sensible? All these chance
encounters and the meetings of beings and souls?
Our automatic bodies bob and weave, nod and
function and bend - we are the sum, here, of oh
so many parts. Everything, within a mystery without
a plot, within a puzzle without a solution. In the
confessional mode I'm most comfortable with,
the mystery stays, but it lessens a bit.

528. BRING ME SOMETHING NICE

BRING ME SOMETHING NICE
The high plains are interesting -
a place where birds seem to swim in the
air and only the most reverential moments
survive. We remember only what we want.
I shan't bother to relate again all those stories
and tales : that sharpshooter who lost his
lunch and got sick on the balcony roof,
the country squire dandy with some regal
but local whore wrapped around his arm.
Ah, but, lest I go on and do exactly what
I said I wouldn't do, I'll stop.
I must forget you too.

527. DO YOU KNOW WHAT? "!!"

DO YOU KNOW WHAT?
"

(It was Marcel Duchamp who said
'Art is the forgetting of the hand.'
I'd like to believe that Art, instead, is
the Word - and not much else.
Put all that mannered bullshit aside
and listen : !! : I can iconically say
the image is crass and representation
sucks. Don't you see? Can't you?
-
[The Helen Keller School For the Blind
had an Art Show in kind. No one arrived,
but then again no one stayed late. And
the art to be seen was so out of date.]
-
I am enamored of you Jillian Weaver.
I watch your trembly eyes in the movie
of my mind. I paint you secretly in
the dark while my dreams take flight.
In a (very true) painterly fashion
your cloak and your colors shine.)
"

526. INTENSIFY THE PROPOSITION

INTENSIFY THE PROPOSITION
This morbid semblance of life and death has
got me scratching heads : yours, mine and
ours, as we're all about this in together. No man
whistle-stops this treasure-train, and no
whistle-stop does it pass. We're all
in this about together.
-
I sat by the window, almost to cry.
I rolled back my eyes, to treasure the sky.
Moonlight becomes me and so does the
effort, the push, the effrontery.
I wonder, why?
-
Can I find not a language to squeeze
out the truth? In the words of Nepali,
perhaps : 'sas pherna sakdina' means
'I'm having trouble breathing' - and
'malai chahina' still simply means
'I don't need it.'

525. THERE IS NO THADDEUS MEDIVARKIS

THERE IS NO
THADDEUS MEDIVARKIS
I have come here humbly; bearing
rags and a pail filled with water. For two
days I have kept vigil with the Sun in
its risings and settings. If it can be
that you believe in something, it must
only be to believe in the Sun. We are,
in that respect, all primitives seeking
solace in light. Every mythology since
that beginning ends up at the same point:
whatever God you would call it,
it is the reborn Sun each day you seek.
-
Without that, this Life would be as water.
A passing flush, a useless flow.
-
I have heard the many words before.
I have seen the tall ones and the short
bow down or genuflect before their lucre
or power or wisdom or strength.
Everything fades, my foolish cherry,
everything passes away.

524. HEAVEN

HEAVEN
Align a dutiful heart to a
heavy hand and the result is
a profusion of chains and trouble:
the list of 'cannots' is awesome -
and one wonders 'why live at all?'
It's was always like that, the sparse
story goes : 'don't touch, don't look,
especially, damn, don't eat of this!'
-
Adam's first wife was named Lilith.
I wonder what she had in mind, to
disappear just like that. Go ahead,
precocious one, you can look it up.

523. ON SICKMAN'S MILL ROAD

ON SICKMAN'S MILL ROAD
That time in Lancaster County was spent wisely;
a little engaging of the locals and a run at the
Constabulary. The tobacco barn shuddered to
think, rolling onto its side with a ear-splitting
shriek. Two doctors and cow, nearby.
From over the top of the hill, another fellow
with an old Dutch name slowly sauntered over:
'What's gone on to here?' he said - and we
laughed and answered back, 'Not much yet,
but we're sure this will right itself soon.'
By three pm the sunlight was already angled -
set to the pitch and as good as movie-lights
themselves would be. 'Start shooting, let's go,
roll it now!' The miasmic Director himself
was speaking, 'I want no noise except for
that cow!' Slim the Slender he soon came by.
'That'll be enough; sun's goin' down,
we'll cut for the day.'

522. ALL OUR WINDSPENT LABORS

ALL OUR ABSURD
WINDSPENT LABORS
You cannot reach me, willpower baffle,
overspent crusader, darling fluorescent.
My absurdity has (long ago) been acquitted
of any crime. Letter-writing, that ancient craft,
itself seems over for now. Ten times ten the
years must change - and only then will things
return...to what they, as they, were, whenever.
Outside, the high clock tower rings its tone,
Trying to tell me something. We all turn deaf.

521. HANK THE BUCKLE

HANK THE BUCKLE
(at the Hudson Street pier, 1968)
And then there was all that:
folderol, the bridge at the river,
the lamp on the corner, the strange
door on the shed overlooking the harbor.
Inside lived one Henry Hyde, know as
'Hank the Buckle' to those who knew.
It had something to do with his
stripped-down manner, that name did.
Not a rifle, but a pistol, often near his
waist - belt and buckle together. All that
made for a mysterious name.
-
No one ever really knew what he did.
Card-shark, looter, car-thief, shooter.
It hardly ever mattered, for where Henry
went, there Henry was. Good for the
goose and good for the gander.
All that crap you hear.
-
He left one afternoon about 4pm,
and was simply just never
heard from again.

520. LEONARD THOR

LEONARD THOR
'I will make your moments glisten with
the sweats of your doom and death. No
Hammer of the Witches this is - instead
a pale shadow on a paisley wall. It's enough
to make one sick. An electric bridge in
Idaho, and someone bestial - like Kim
Carnes - locked in a freezing cellar.
That's what I call the comforts
of home.'
-
He was clearly crazy; sending me
pictures of re-touched women
from magazines or cut-outs pasted
like kidnap and ransom notes.
I just couldn't find time to
find time to care.
-
When a liar lies, he lies forever.
When a dead man dies he's
dead forever. Either way,
there's really nothing to
redeem - whether time
or spirit or soul or
mind.

519. TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

TWO SIDES OF
THE SAME COIN
You came to the tree of my
crucifixion and gently let me
down. I took you to the place
of my resurrection but - alas -
I clearly saw you frown.

518. LARIMOOR

LARIMOOR
The shrouded oasis on those
sudden shoulders rose - up to
heights not seen before. The
thin air of a mountain ascent,
the struggling forced breath
of an expiring man.
-
As bad as it all was, the startling
light of the next morning's glare
brought all such feelings crashing
to a halt. Life and love, never
better than in this rarefied place,
seemed just to go on and on.

517. MY MR. SAWTOOTH

MY MR. SAWTOOTH
One seemingly forthright Sawtooth Titus, a grand
old man I knew from 17th Street, wore a heritage
like a halo for me. He was from the 'Revolutionary
Titus's - of Grand Falls, Maine' and claimed his
family had settled there in the 1600's. He never
ate meat and yet took the cake, as far as I
was ever concerned, at never batting an eyelash
if something was free. 'Meat, fish or fowl, I'll
go by the price, thank ye.' That's all he'd say.
like you were supposed to understand.
-
He'd walk the street and - seeming to know everyone -
never come home empty handed. Pastry, pudding,
soup or gruel, he'd manage to get something.
Introducing me often as his 'Nephew Aurelius',
he'd never flinch at adding me in for his take.
'I figg'er, the more they'd see us together, they
more they'd think our needs.' I gleefully
acted as 'Aurelius' for near one year.
-
The Baxters of Merian, and the Sawtooths
of Grand Falls. Some durable duo betting
on a lifelong feud or an anxiety over something.
They never met, that I knew of, but he
sure talked of them a lot. I'd say 'but this
is New York, now who cares and why?'
He'd laugh and rear back his head, and
just say 'someday you'll see, my boy,
someday you'll see for sure.'
-
Mr. Sawtooth Titus sure could endure.

516. MY FULL-TILT BOOGIE

MY FULL-TILT BOOGIE
(Philadelphia, 8/29)
'I may have mis-represented something unlikely and
that shouldn't concern you anyway because shit such
as that doesn't always fly and anyway you said the
guy was drunk and as it was I was more interested in
the girl he was with. I'd known her from Pendelton and
was hoping she wouldn't blab.'
-
Well, wouldn't that have to do?
The waterfront had been turned into
a carnival anyway, and now all these
freshened people were boozing about -
I faced nothing but crap-talk like that I'd
just heard. What I wanted to say was, precisely,
impolite: 'The hands on this clock have turned ugly.'
-
I wasn't sure anyone would get the message, and what
it meant wasn't really positive anyway. I was drowning in
negativity, and this real estate was ranch enough for my bile.
-
'I remember one day, she took off her robe and there
was nothing underneath! And there we were, on the front porch
where she lived. What was I supposed to do? Scatter off and
run home? After that, we hardly talked - and that afternoon was
never brought up again. Hand me another beer, will you.'
-
McKracken gauge-face butterball ice.
Torrid myopic meander portion.
Nascent pneumatic fist-pummel tunic.
Anything like that would be better
than firing a gun...
-
The hands on this clock have turned ugly.
This real estate was ranch enough for my bile.

515. DAGLESH AND HENDORAN

DAGLESH AND HENDORAN
'Down by the water, there you can lump
things together' - Daglesh said that, talking
like a stringbean, river-shavers for teeth and
the oily carp were biting. 'I'd rather bring back
nothing than something' - Hendoran tried a response,
failing miserably. Together (thought I) these two
couldn't tie string. It was always a struggle to stay put.
-
Serene like disease, wild like a badger, overdone and
to a fault : they'd each together arrived, playing games,
filtering silt, and trying to get by. Stealing boxcars
in the night. Waxing apples with a carbide cloth.
These two got everything twice, but never what
they sought. Vaudeville paid their wages, and the
silly crowd yelled out their lame support.
-
By four the next afternoon it was all over.
The entryway was down, the tent was closed.
'I had to take care of my mother's cat and bring
her some tea' - Daglesh said that, making me ill.
'See that guy in the corner? Before he was the
coroner he was a crooner' - Hendoran said that,
and I was suddenly sorry I hadn't left sooner.

514. ECTOPLASM

ECTOPLASM
Sweltering heat made my blood run cold.
The contradiction and error of the format I
inhabited took its toll : forehead sweat, heavy,
ponderous weight, trouble breathing Earth air.
I'd never been this bogged down.
-
It was only my other place
which kept me going.

513. MISTRAL

MISTRAL
Yes, yes I have often touched the sky:
when the cool winds were blowing,
when the geese were in flight. When
the dark sky was falling and the distant
breezes rolled. Something there is
of the night in the day, and each lunar
phase, like a heart wanes and waxes.
We grow as bright, in the same way,
as that light which we reflect.

512. THE DAY MY FATHER

THE DAY MY FATHER...
The day my father came back from the
Navy, he was white as a ghost. I'd already
known him before I was born : he was out
at sea, in the South Pacific, and fighting WWII.
Sewing body bags, with his big, curved needles,
for burial at sea. Over the side, with a little
ceremony. Dead guys. Dead buddies. Dead
sailors on that selfsame ship.
-
He never got over the places he'd been.
Rocking slowly for days on a sickening
ocean - rising and falling with a salt-berth
and a fan; some crazy white hat for his head.
-
He was smoking endless cigarettes too.
It was nothing then, those Camels, inhaled
like the very stark freedom of home.
Old Bayonne. He was exhausted,
and seeing me, froze. I said,
in my way, 'Dad, relax; it's
just the way it goes.'
-
I knew my father before he knew me.
Sewing dead bodies for their
burial at sea.

511. WILFERIZE THAT PUSILEER

WILFERIZE THAT PUSILEER
I chant. They sing. The snug nettles
bring back memories of other things.
The day I met James Baldwin, at
Fordham. We were carrying on, like
kids, about Sartre and degrees of
alienation - nothing ever so insipid
has ever occurred again. He had big, fat
eyes. You can go look at his picture.

510. GRESHAM'S LAW II

GRESHAM'S LAW II
(Music Again)
It's a certain sadness that breaks the heart -
all that motion and nothing more.
We too are broken - like the modal
tenant when the metronome's click
breaks the silence of his urban night.
All that feeling and sadness and sorrow.
All the world's poor and all the world's
hungry, huddled together in a great
big room. 'To shatter the silence,' it's
been said, 'music can't come too soon.'

509. GRESHAM'S LAW (the 'Music' Industry)

GRESHAM'S LAW
(the 'Music' industry)
"Gresham's Law set to music makes me wince.
Just what we need - another whiny Jewish singer
with no real life experience strumming away on a
lame guitar about all his wants and feelings. Isn't it about
time we upturned those tables and did away with
the noise? The undertone of need and the squirming
array of guilt and desire? Jeez (I can say that)
I'm so tired of all that. If Bad drives out Good,
as it most certainly does, (and forget the money)
then we're all in line for a doozy.
-
It's those with the blinders on who claim to
see the most : 'my heart, my love, my
aching feelings and needs.' Oh, stuff it
and alter the simple chords. Or at
least learn to play music first that you
can read - a mathematical premise,
a march towards a solvable pattern,
a progression of notes on a
colorful scale. We all can't be
let's say, Scriabin."

508. THESE FLAGRANT WORDS

THESE FLAGRANT WORDS
For some sort of ragtag protest they
brought you home - tattered, and in chains,
and in rags. They stapled your face to the
posters all along the town - each way in and
out. Majestic as you were you were still 'depicted'
as a common scold, the criminal of the month, and
the 'one who wouldn't get away.' Chief Carmine
DesPais himself had said it.
-
In retrospect, out riot made little sense.
Or none. Three dead - one a child,
killed obviously by accident.
For that now we all
must burn.
-
'I'd rather raise Cain than be Abel.'
I heard someone from the other
end of the jail shouting that just
yesterday. Of course, from
where I was, I didn't really know
what he said - phonetics being
what they are. Being locked up,
perhaps all he said was 'I'd rather
raise cane than be able'. Meaning,
I think, he'd rather be proud of
being in jail for rioting than to
be out 'there', free.
-
For myself, I'm still really not sure.

507. HOMO HABILIS

HOMO HABILIS
(‘man the maker’)
There’s something changed in the manner of the wheel,
things once turned which now remain. A fixed maneuver
of ever-broken time, like the lime-box or the bucket,
running over. We thwart our manner by refusing to
budge: Man the Maker, with his carnival hat and
swagger-stick, imagery of the fantastic, and the
awesome light-brigade of what was gone before.
No cantilevered rainbow, this midtown slut
stares back, as certain of her giving as
of the taking she’s already done.
We’ve had it with all that.

506. CRUSADER

CRUSADER
We manned the barricades with fortunate guile,
having spent four months at least in preparing
the grounds for this stupid defense. Everyone
was already in pain : an old, grueling pain
of the sort that stops all other action.
The crippled monk, with his withered
leg, came around with the parchment
he’d scrawled for our oaths.
We had – yet again – to swear
allegiance to some crazed Man-God,
somehow stuck between two worlds.
None of it made any sense to us;
we wanted our pay, and some food.
Forced to dig still more holes for our
shit, we basked in the horrid stink
of ourselves no matter what we did.
It was a horrible situation – one so
delicately ‘human’ as to be inhumane.
(I wondered of this Man-God
again and again).

505. AND SO THEY TOLD ME

AND SO THEY TOLD ME
(At the Bowery Beer Garden, 1968)
Richly attired, like gentlemen in rags would be,
regency and chivalry and royalty all mixed together
(in a mad-man's idle dream), they stepped forward
and - as one - together all fell down the steps.
Yes, yes, a laughing roar ensued. The crowd was
wild with itself - engorging sacred beers and
clapping in a trance : something horrid and as
horse-whipped as a dance by some leprous
dope. Candles flickered from the so-active
air. All the idiot voices and hands a'fire.
-
Someone stepped forward to calm down
the crowd: 'And now ladies and germs,
the moment you've not been waiting
for! Matilda Malloy and her Far-East
Snakedance' (His words, exact). She
stepped out - some not-so-glamorous
specimen of lust. A few rags, a sheer
garment, and the rest taken on trust.
-
Oh how the selfsame hammer blew!
Oh how the skinny dance happened!
Un-clothed in as an instant and as
un-apprehensive as could be.
'She is naked, my friends!!
For you and for me!'
-
And the stupid crowd
roared, all over again.

504. THE TREMOR DOCTOR

THE TREMOR DOCTOR
They will take you, learned hand,
into their legal soup. Boiled with
the rest, you will indistinguishable
be. If that's okay for you, it's
not okay for me.

503. AT THE PLANT:IN THE PLANT

AT THE PLANT:IN THE PLANT
It was nothing said it was nothing
ventured and the same game remained.
We stood like dead lions propped up,
leaning just a bit, to merely pretend at
a continued existence. I never knew you,
you never knew me. Reading Uncle Wiggly
down by the sea. Ten Father Guidos and a
gilded church : Most Holy Mother of the
Reckoning Sea. Bells tolled for sailors.
Bells tolled for Thee.

502. AUDIOTONE

AUDIOTONE
Here it was the rueful ending :
We sourced the sound and found the rumor.
What it was, a glistening morning, meant more
to the squirrels than me. At every turn something
like light burst out from behind the trees, limbs,
branches, leaves. As one, and everything once,
together sang. I flew to that far oasis. A gentler
mind, on top of thinking, soaring upward in
fabulous forms of love and honor.

501. KOSTELANZ AT 4

KOSTELANZ AT 4
(Road Crew, 1972)
'I have been leaning on this life for so long even my
cane is bent. All the fructation of time has seasoned
me well. I am, to be sure, bested no longer by anything.'
-
Of course, no one know the meaning of his words
and we merely stared back without engaging.
Off to the side, tree limbs bore apples and peaches,
as they should. It was bestride this orchard his
house climbed - a wide, old white board farm;
left here from 1872, it was exactly stated.
-
Here together, five of us there were.
We'd come to mark the lanes for paving.
Working for the state, road-men, adept at tar and
pavement were we, and his story seemed like all the
others. We'd done this a hundred times or more.
-
The old Pennsylvania countryside, now just
dying to die, was still to be paved. And everywhere
we went, the markings for that we brought and left.
No more mud and ooze, no more cars and trucks
bogged down in mire. We said the same things
everywhere: 'State improvements' or 'Government
mandate.' Didn't matter. No one knew what we
were talking about. And we certainly didn't care.

500. THE SEMINOLE CAMPFIRE

THE SEMINOLE CAMPFIRE
A thousand pieces of matter, flitting away -
all sparks and ash and soot today.
That ladle with the spoonfit ending, it
too is made of wood and it will burn,
(if they feel it should). 'All creation
trembles at the thought of burning.'
Only the vile race, of seditious mind,
would think up flames like this and determine
its Hell to be within the nature of the Man.
It simply cannot be, oh lucky one, of
Stallion Dawn Speeding Spitfire Brother clan.
We will all howl beneath this fat and rising moon.
(Another life will come, but not too soon).

499. LOVE LOVE LOVE WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?

LOVE LOVE LOVE
WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?
It's all travail and effort, some sturdy
work where the tall beams stand. It wasn't
easy to construct this edifice, and now I
dare you to say it's not real. Authentic are the
accolades in my attic - high and high-strung
together. It was never easy becoming what I am
- the two-fisted hammock master, the painter of
ridiculed edges, the counter-snark with this
twisted, soiled dictionary. On that ledge nearby,
see that man about to jump? His name is Henry Coates,
and you've really led him on. Like Billy Pepper (my
rural mailman once) you drive the same sad route
each day...entice, pull back, entice again. And Laugh.
My God, it's the laugh that kills them. It's the
laugh that gets them every time.

498. DORIMAR THE DOMINION

DORIMAR THE DOMINIAN
I covered your housepaint in pimples,
wrote notes all over your jars, and then
left that night (Tuesday last) to have
dinner with that fellow, as you said,
'from Mars'. Not really an abject gent,
he showered the table with favors - some
fifty-dollar tip and money for a bet, took an
extra drink for his 'steadfast constitution' and
then left me there while he ran out to 'rob a bank'.
These are all the things he said : he spoke funny,
in awkward ways, and blurted things out you'd
never expect. 'That peacock has a belly like an
antelope', for instance. Now what is anyone, I ask
you, supposed to make of that? I don't think he's
ever read a book. Another curious quirk of character.
Now look, I don't begrudge a man anything: the creep
with the loud awful music ruining my space, the girl
with the skirt too tight for her waist, the tall, lanky
lady wearing nothing beneath her blouse. It's
all the same to me, if that's what someone
wishes to do. I can catch what I catch
and, sometimes, enjoy the view.
Life has, after all, its very
simple pleasures,
does it not?

497. DOUBLE THEME SONG

DOUBLE THEME SONG
(Someone Downstairs Was Calling)
He'd put his feet up on your 116th Street
footstool like it was a mushroom and he was
a fly. Outside the window, some mad gymnast
was contorting with a sign - 'Amin's Flint Elixir -
Gone For Good! What Ails You!' - such a sign
I'd never seen before. You had tried the classical
music channel, but all the radio was doing was barfing
ads and news; everything of a captive nation soiled
and stinking foul. On the chipped wooden shelf,
anyway, nothing could look good, let alone work;
not even your bare, naked ass, powdered and petal'd.
I'd seen your breasts in a book before, so I knew
the game you played. Patsy's Pizza, let me say,
never had such toppings. Just then, the buzzer
rang - someone downstairs was calling.

496. DEAD OTIS

DEAD OTIS
They spilled blood in the wagoner's cabin;
just as he was entering the shed. Two errant
bullets ricocheted from somewhere and entered
his chest. No Civil War malfeasance this - since
the borders had been cleared and hostilities
(we'd thought) were over. Never put it past
some drunken Arkansan shithead to spoil
the pot with bad vengeance. Hillbillies from the
distant mountain still reckoning with a grudge.
A dying man's blood can drown him in his
own lungs. We never figured for that,
and there was nothing we could do.

495. CARRINA MONTEFIORE

CARRINA MONTEFIORE
I shed olympic pounds after I first
met you. You were the darling of
my spring, the rigor in my mortis,
and - in a never-ending fashion -
the erotic dough of my bread-loaf
frolics. In all, it was as magical as
a monsoon in the desert, or of a
Heaven found deep within some
Hell. We wore our military cloaks
like Nazi footsoldiers : hemming
and hawing, bowing to salute,
sniping with a rapier, kissing the
concrete ledges. Ships, unfurled
at sea, never teemed with more
wild turbulence as you - and me.
I remember all this, and so much
much more, oh my darling,
Carrina Montefiore.

494. ALONZO, THIS AIN'T NO MAGNA CARTA

ALONZO, THIS AIN'T
NO MAGNA CARTA
'You can take your papers and put them
where you want - I'm not signing nothing.
This magnificent shoreline most certainly
doesn't need you around.'
-
A dulcimer baffle arose with the sun.
Big grey clouds, loud and fluffy and
broad, sequestered themselves all
along the horizon. No orange morning
was ever anything like this before.
-
Two hundred peasants let out a roar.
They wanted food and lodging.
They wanted no more war.
-
That's when I saw you and
our eye-sights met. From
that day forward, all I
wanted I could never get.
'Alonzo, this ain't no
Magna Carta.'

493. IT IS ALL BEYOND ME

IT IS ALL BEYOND ME
As each night I fall by the wayside and
only you are there, so too I awake distant
and starry-eyed from places I'd only dare
imagine : the farthest rim of stars and planets,
the place where the Heavens touch; a grand and
circular profusion of wonderment and possibility.
Sometimes, I swear, I awake only to say 'it is all
too much.' Earth has its moments and places
and things - the hard boiled-ridges of both
dirt and doubt, with rock and water and
fire and heat. Everything mixed, some
crazed elixir to stir, some ribald
concoction to eat.
-
I look at the distant skies and
notice the motion and curve :
a planet of possibilities at
each starry turn. Beneath all
of that, assured of only
myself, I know I have
so much to learn.
-
But still it is all beyond me.
It is all yet so far away.

492. ON GUNNISON BEACH

ON GUNNISON BEACH
I can't begrudge the frog its lily pad.
Sandy Hook to Sea Bright walking -
everything I saw was bad : token
remnants of old-years ago, sentinel
ships along the coast, dead Revolutionary
War soldiers marked and buried in the
sands. All this behind us, and now
the future - out of hand. 19-year olds
naked as they came, and ashen old
women looking the same.

491. OLD MEN

OLD MEN
'Dirigibles were flying low and cutting
the aproned sky - some light blue oasis
of nothing bantering within space to
fly - all words of their own, these new
things were, without a recourse to
meanings of old. We watched,
squinting our eyes, trying to discern
the lightning, the fire, the reasons for
these new things in the skies.
What was that above us, anyway,
some vague new future flying?'

490. YOU YOURSELF HAVE SAID IT (I AM?)

YOU YOURSELF

HAVE SAID IT

(I AM?)
The worst question ever asked, I figure,
was : 'I adjure you by the living God,
are You the Messiah?' Either way, whatever
answer, the responder is bound for trouble.
Pilate never had the nerve to question,
yet the High Priest directly asked!
(Just think, if that story is true,
how much he set to task).

489. THE TECHNIQUE OF ZEN

THE TECHNIQUE OF ZEN
'He's got some habits I frown upon.
The warrior class comes home early
and stays late - or leaves home early
and stays out late - something I now
forget. It's a winsome world truly, all
this toil and strife (and nothing I'd want
to repeat). With everyone so sold on the
good, I too wonder how evil gets done.
-
Graffiti with white paint covers the delinquent
fence - 'bury my heart on the lone prairie' -
and then the names, perversely, make
the handles : 'Solinquen' and 'Olyminiade';
whatever God-awful meanings they have.
Two wild horsemen, drunk on success?
Two frothy madmen, riding towards death?
-
We needn't agree on everything.
The pencil has lost its edge, and
we've mostly got nothing to say.
All things are won. All things
are one.'

488. THE GIRL WHO NAMED PLUTO IS DEAD

THE GIRL WHO
NAMED PLUTO IS DEAD
(Venetia Burney, 1919)
Eleven years old, nineteen, thirty-one,
forty-seven, fifty-six, seventy, seventy-seven,
eighty-four, eighty-eight, eighty-nine,
ninety - like the sun in the sky, the
black -globe-darkness distant-flash
planet passing; named after the
Roman God of the Underworld:
Pluto. The old woman who named
Pluto is dead.

487. ABSTRACT #7

ABSTRACT #7
Smutter the cling of that sour oasis
for there is nothing there but dire want.
The shoes are brown, seemingly forever.
Having walked an entire globe, they
hunger for more, with their tongues
hanging out. Surcease of violent
commitment, the awkward man
nearby is shadow boxing with
his own Hell - another epitome
outfoxed by marvel, a new
set of boxing gloves, all
glossy and laced, set to
pounce once more on
enigma and doubt. A
twenty-second century
hearse rolls by.Yellow,
like a taxi, it is now
filled with passengers,
yet driven by a
rat.

486. UNFREEZING THE MALLEABLE MAN

UNFREEZING THE
MALLEABLE MAN
He walks with a chisel in his
head, that old man bearing down on
death. Nothing can stop him now - those
ruins, those ruins you see were all his factories.
Piles of beautiful red brick, ringed by walls
with entrances for both trucks and employees.
The guardhouse, furrowed and lovely like
a brow, where each man checked in and
did his obsequious bows. Bossman. Owner.
Ruler. King. It's all a riddled rhyme, something
twisted around the circular tongue. Now at
his hole in the ground - we grasp together a
wrinkled bible, something with thin pages
and a gold-edged binding. Muttering prayers
that no one hears, muttering prayers
that no one hears.

485. THE HESITANT BURDEN

THE HESITANT BURDEN
Burned like fire which fused the glass,
we carry that fragile heart to breaking.
Pieces of things and fragments and shards,
broken items littering yards - such as they
are, these patterns have cluttered our
lives. That old green car is still running,
but it's been left like that for years.
Soft tires and a wide, thin wheel.
A thousand looks but too few cares.
Simply shrugging seems the way to go :
carry the force that carries the garden.
Let it take its own, sweet time.

484. PARADISE

PARADISE
Pottery and silverware; claimants to
a poor man's throne. Steps running
slightly a'tilt, yet leading to something
someone called Heaven once : an
enraptured fever, a hut where the
stevedore lives, a footstool
for your forgotten oasis.
We deem 'rest' as no
movement at all.
Somehow, it's
Paradise
we call.

483. FALSTAFF

FALSTAFF
Falstaff wanted things and got
very little back for his efforts.
If you want speed, hook up
to the swiftest horse you
can find and hang on:
for dear life, but forget
the dear. 'Ain't nothing but
jangling nerves,' in fact, is
what the horseman said,
lighting a fire beneath the
panting beast's belly.