817. WOLFMAN SHAMBLES, (Pts. One to Five)

WOLFMAN SHAMBLES
(Part 1)
Only a cantankerous craving for shadows that were
could ever make me see the past as prologue.
Now, when it seems that all things are living on in
an afterlife of their own sense and sensibility,
with myself and others as the mere,
and most baffled, onlookers...
-
The wolfman from the land of the dead, he is walking
with a crooked stick past warehouses of thrift and
efficiency. That Kingdom, he rules. Everything suffices,
beneath his neck, to break the supplications of rank and
order - a very old and ancient reptilian brain still
running on at full, fevered speed.
-
Past the streets of fire - 17th and 19th and 23rd and
all the rest, he passes with his mental poise, lucid as
a fury and hammered and cocked, like a gun ready
to fire. Looking back, not once but never, he misses
all behind him - walking straight on with bleeding fangs,
to the cemetery pass-gate where the gatekeeper awaits.
Tokens and coins for the dead? Nothing like that is needed.
He can barge right through.
-
Sometimes, it gets confusing. What is this? A tenth
life, a twentieth, or is this a mere rerun of once?
What death-defying terms does an immortal need to use?
And who can her him anyway? His candles are lit
by Death, which keeps the flame always burning and
the waxen shaft always ready. He picks off women as if
they were candy; 'liquor is quicker, but candy's dandy.'
He'd heard that said on night at Hendrick's, where some
men were drinking ale. The women within were hungry
and ripe; the men soon tuned pale. He bought them
Death for dessert, as the place emptied out.
-
'I wander through these chartered streets, near where
the chartered Thames doth flow...' He remembers stealing
lines like these to mere impress the deadly mortals.
They fall for anything, if you give them enough.
-
Only a cantankerous jealous gent, only a
cranky stranger, only a craggy, ancient,
man keeps light in the face of danger.

WOLFMAN SHAMBLES
(Part 2)
'Wash my hands of this blood.'
The man was bent over the curb,
madly swishing his fingers through
a puddle. 'I am tired and weary of these
blunders and all this filthy toil; yet
there is nowhere else to go.
This ancient life is ancient,
and it wears me thin. My

heart is the heart

of a dog.'

WOLFMAN SHAMBLES
(Part 3)
Accolades for the assembled dead? They pass in
rows, feet up, layer after layer of bones and dust.
It makes no sense to me what we call it - where have
we gotten these terms? Any afterlife of ill-repute,
some Heaven of Hell of mis-use, makes light of
the situation. Everything is endless, and it all just
goes on. As I watch him some more, I notice his limp -
he walks past the music store, scarcely looking up.
in the big windows, assorted violins, cellos, guitars
and a lute hang from wire and strings - the kids from
the Academy of Music nearby, they must buy these things.
I wonder if he even understands what music is?
Stopping for a moment, he bristles at a noise,
and, rummaging through a pocket, comes up
with a light. Something to pierce his darkness?
A small flash-point, like a policeman carries?
Where does he get such things?
-
Then it dawns on me - if he is Evil, then he is
so allied with Evil, and can have all its things.
He is one with the rational, the law-keepers,
those of rules and regulations - so why not?
Whatever he wants he can get. From them, and
all their sources, there is no difference to be had.
Particles of doubt never cross his mind. Unlike me,
he steers willingly, and with glee, into his personal abyss.
I watch as he walks away; looking once sideways, as
if to be searching for a gate - something for escape.
-
His other nefarious realms, I'd dare not visit.
Death is death, with no Life in it.

WOLFMAN SHAMBLES
(Part 4)
A man, a man who is sparring with religion leaves
so many things behind : the warbling of birds,
the scarlet of tanagers, the yellowing of milk
and the crumbling of fences and gates that sag.
It's a willing stretch, I guess, for them to leave
the Earthly Kingdom in search of their vetch.
They might as well have no hands, no heart,
no arms to clutch with, no eyes to see.
A Heavenly Kingdom leaves little to be.

WOLFMAN SHAMBLES
(Part 5)
'I murder with lust,
the neck is but a foil.'
He spoke that to the man
of darkness, into whose realm
he'd entered - half present, and
half-not. They'd joined their heads
together in the semi-dark, coiled in a corner,
between the two rambling spires of some
de-accessioned church where angels could
no longer aspire. Shaking hands, at first, they'd
really looked like two devils making change.
-
'When I was twenty-three, a million ago it seems,
I caught my foot between two boulders and twisted
the ankle raw - and it's never really recovered. This
limp, however, deceives my being - I'm truthfully now
quite well.' ('And truthfully, now, from Hell', I thought
to myself, wanting to laugh). I can frolic like a kid,
I can run the meadow like fucking Pan, if I wanted to.
Instead - you know - I love these dark corners and
dank streets, where these unassuming humans seldom
peek. When I grab them, then, they're doubly surprised.
It never fails to get a rise. And, by God, the girls are lovely.'

-

'Vampire, wolfman, werewolf, mystic, along with

magician, wizard, seer, sage, shaman - they all

go on, their stupid, Earthly words Earth-trod difference

made where nothing's left. Or is. Or was. And I shall

use such words, assembled and without reference against

them on any hilltop I can find; for you do not believe me,

that I have walked the past as present and the present as

then - was finished remembered over - into the future

both before and well after it was. These stupid pygmies

fear me far. To them I represent all things.'

-
'I well remember Empedocles, that fool, who jumped
into a volcano to first understand Death, that oh so wond'rous experience of which he sought to partake : 'Great Empedocles, that ardent soul, leapt into Etna and was roasted whole.' That he believed his illusions of what was said, he was so full of delusions that he wound up Dead!'
-

'Busy improvising new selves, this wonkish brain of

theirs as well endears them all of Death : they know

they must die, but now they can think about it too.

Figure it. Examine it. Walk around it. Dwell with it,

but not in - not then until it is too late (they are, after

all, mine in the end) and they fall with their tundrel'd

tumbling steps, collapsing into the shapes of their

lives and dreams - it's ALL what it seems, all

fools and vagrants nonetheless ('all the
world's a stage'), and all that crap.

...(end of parts 1 through 5)...

816. DALKEY ARCHIVE BLUES

DALKEY ARCHIVE BLUES
Dolly was an elephant, electrocuted before
the crowd. Fildo was a clown; accidently
strangled when he was hung by a rope
at the end of his act, and the act
went bad. Lucius was a fire eater,
whose insides burst. Maggio was
the girl who swallowed swords until
one went right through her and came
out her....bottom.
-
These things are all real and
you can look them up. The
dog whose coat was coated with
tar and stopped it from breathing,
the two horses who fell from the
tightrope walkers' platform and died.
Did I say tightrope walkers?
Don't get me started - they fall
and get mangled, they break in
two, their legs end up
around their heads.

815. REMONSTRANCE

REMONSTRANCE
I've grown so tired of people running backwards and breaking
the things they hold - dreams, hearts and reasons.
Any sensations of trust have long ago been put away,
broken and sundered, stashed in salvage bags
through which old men sort with glee.
-
The camel, that one fitting through the eye of
the needle. No, it's never going to happen.
-
Among my steadfast memories of all life's better things
there's always that picture against the wall, kept in
secret, only occasionally glimpsed:
Me, in an upper window, where I was born.
Down below, a few old fat, round cars, the
big kind like they used to make. In the picture,
I'm already like 12, and wondering why things
tend to fall in circles - dreams, hearts
and reasons too.

814. ALLIED

ALLIED
I am holding nothing back, winsome one of the
broken tailwind, speed demon of the airwaves.
We are like odd brothers, both broken on the
wheel, only somewhat housetrained and
still disorderly, and both reading that
yellowed vine of wisdom backwards.

813. RECREATIONAL MURDER

RECREATIONAL MURDER
I expect that any day now it shall start
just for fun. That essence of frolic that
is 'murder and run'. We can find them.
probably already grouping, perhaps at 22nd
and Tenth, or maybe 79th and First. Alas,
who's to say : But once they begin they
won't go away. Murder for profit is passe
today; now it's 'murder for fun', a recreational
play. 'Empties the system of bile for sure', they say.

812. CHARMING BRACELET

CHARMING BRACELET
It wears its life like a charm -
with jewels and stars and metal cut-outs
dangling hard. They move in the light,
and they move not only when you do.
Democritus said : 'Nothing exists except
atoms and empty space.' And then Browning said:
'As for Venice and her people, merely born to
bloom and drop, here on Earth they bore their
fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop.' And, lastly,
opposed to the very idea of a future, Nabokov called it:
'the obsolete in reverse.' And so, what we are left with
is a fancy prose nibbling at Harvard heels and Princeton
pudenda. Thus, here I am - Oh laboratory one, charmed
bracelet, dimestore library clerk, scientist without disdain
but deeming space to be all the same, walking circus man,
dog bath, coffee girl sipping in the morning rotunda,
wanderer lantern of Love, I know you. And (by the way)
leave it always to a prisoner for a fancy prose style -
somewhere where big words may mean wisdom and grace.
(Come save this race).

811. SATURDAY'S MUSICOLOGY

SATURDAY'S MUSICOLOGY
(a nation of glowing pigs)
'Always put a covering on anything good' -
that selfsame motto, hanging around trailers
and cars, never made any sense to me.
-
Frank O'Hara Lady Day Died - the poem
about that day, I mean to say - 'oh how I
tried, leaning on the john-door in the 5-Spot
while she whispered a song along the
keyboard to Mal Waldron and everyone
everyone and I stopped breathing.'
-
A coal-car was parked at the 1959 tracks -
cars filled with sodium chloride and coal
and flour and foodstuffs and more. The
Bonneville Salt Flats and the ocean itself
could hold no more than these rail cars held.
Two men were smoking alongside number 521.
One suddenly fell to his knees, right there in
the west-side rail yard, and - as far as I could
tell - died quietly and quick, expired, passed on,
passed away, like Lady Day too perhaps,
though far more certain than
her uncertain way.
-
We are calling it mass confusion, here,
in this nation of glowing pigs - and
I am so tired of being me.

810. TESTAMENT

TESTAMENT
I have watched an entire people cheer
willingly its serfdom. A roaring delight
before crowds, this new psychological
dependency. It is so deep-rooted, and
it hides so many things. I wear neither
grin nor frown; I am not one of them,
for they (all) are lost.

809. GRATIFICATION DEFERRED

GRATIFICATION
DEFERRED
The cellophane on the lampshade
meant something - a certain tension
of a vague dimension. A brittle, but
united, gentility passing itself off as
social grace or a social face. No matter
what anger beneath the pretense.
The dim light was splattered
on lampshades and the
lamp-base statues
remained unmoving.
-
The lamp, the table, the piano,
the couch : everything all-together
in as still a sitting-room as we
could not touch. Someday,
maybe someday, but
not this day.

808. LATTER DAY ACES

LATTER DAY ACES
There arises no way to adhere.
'Kind of Blue' paces slowly on
the ear as I wonder why. The girl
with the butterfly net is standing
outside the circle. A few boys are
laughing. It all makes me want to mark
the date. The air smells of Spring, but how?
Soils so pulsed, acceded to growth, and
all the little new piercings let out odor -
earth, soil, rock, loam, together.
'That is what we get for living,' the
old man says, 'that is what we get,
but why?'

807. THINKING IN EXTREMES

THINKING IN EXTREMES
Situations thought of in Latin, that
old, old tongue of so little use, lose
all their sense of emergency or fire.
The thinking itself puts it all out:
declensions and tenses and endings.
as if carrying around a huge rock
called 'torpor', everything is
slowed down by the dragging.

806. ERIN GO BRAGH

ERIN GO BRAGH
That little black man I always see,
today he is wearing a bright green
sweater, sleeveless as much as
incongruous. And then I remember,
almost in a slow time I'd rather
almost forgotten, today is
St. Patrick's Day.

805. 1964 IN TATTERS

1964 IN TATTERS
(a voice from the grave)
Now that we've pasted the memories back in the blank,
we can run once more amiss towards the forgetting of
what once was : the car-port, bedecked with the '59 Galaxie
and the slime from the grease-gun, that guy Bob Braun
writing journalistic pieces on the non-education of the
American west, my girlfriend, Mary-Lou doing you.
-
That was, back then, when I learned why Kerouac lied.
The sweater that never fit, the old clothing, handed down,
from the lumberjack/railroad bum Freddy Siam, each of
those things went into my running from the reality that was:
two fucking gendarmes from the military recruitment office
coming down the street where I lived. Parking their '65 Chevy
in a spot near the schoolhouse, they brazenly pretended to
nonchalance, walking once past the house as if they didn't
know where I was. 'Vietnam is calling' they said, and if
I wasn't ready for them they sure as Hell were ready for me.
'This is like some fucking bad dream' I said, 'and you are
Stalin's really bad henchmen.' No matter, they laughed it off.
-
No one would believe me if I tell it again.
How, in 1964, this country, even back then,
was turning into a freaking piece of shit.
Ever since that day, not a single thing
has changed. Believe me, I know.

804. TERRAZZO PEOPLE ARE COMING AT ME

TERRAZZO PEOPLE ARE
COMING AT ME
New geeks for modern people.
Not sure you did, not sure you didn't.
They make them in any old way nowadays.
Just this morning, in Morningside Heights as
the sun was new, I heard that woodpecker
banging on a tree. All the people around, not a
one looked up. The crooked, lame man, with a
crooked old dog, walked by me. Almost with
sorrow, I had to look. Across from me, on the
old sidewalk bench, a black man snoozed, all
wrapped in a filthy Winter coat and a filthy Winter
stench. Across his lap were two nasty plastic bags,
each filled with his wonders. I guess he hadn't
yet gotten the news : the world is changing ('even as
you snooze!'). The wild men were playing in the park,
as down below, past the cut through the rocks, the
Springtime league of Spanish ballplayers was right then
starting up. Bats and gloves and girlfriends and loves.
Just like that, the entire world returns to whatever it ever was.

803. TOO NICE

TOO NICE
(springtime)
I sat by the curtains as they blew into your face;
a little dance of the wind, made just for my enjoyment.
Outside the glass, two robins, and a redwing blackbird
celebrated some kind of Springtime. A sound, like a
rusty gate, came from where they were. Birdsong, in
its many guises, is always filled with Spring surprises!

802. RIVERVIEW

RIVERVIEW
This radio wears a blade.
Cutting sensations. Ripping
through Life like butter.
Rhapsodizing over little
things, while finger flipping
sensual dials. Playful rings
and tokens of another sort.
Music roars the house :
overturning everything
once so neatly arrayed.

801. SIMIAN

SIMIAN
How like the grove of happiness is this heart
which wears no sleeve - breaking out in
song with which the seamless songstress sings.
For each moment passing, there is none alike
to another. Even the scarlet sunset senses bloom.
-
Stare down this faint oasis, blind man.
You shall sense your vision soon enough.

800. A TENDENCY TOWARDS FRENZY

A TENDENCY
TOWARDS FRENZY
See-saw Marjorie-daw the cat ran away
with the spoon and wasn't that a frightful
dish to put before the moon but keep watching
the pot to boil and it never will. Yet soon,
so soon, Bolero, we are both finished and gone.
-
I awoke from deep slumber, with my mind
more scattered than before. All we have
is lasso and rope. Pity dogs and forgive men.
The southwestern gaze of some Hopi hope.
Prairie dogs and big men. This train was
coming down the tracks. This train was never
coming back. Why do I cry all the time?

799. ISTANBUL

ISTANBUL
'As long as you're making a point,
drive it home with an example.'
I'd remembered some fellow -
a Professor Derelictus or something
like that, at the university in Istanbul -
saying those words in a really funny English:
like, 'watch the gnomes, they will trample,'
and even as a foreign tongue it meant nothing
to me. The rest of the memory is a blur -
Drachmas, I think, and some coffee, with a
Turkish blend of tobacco and a man who
said it didn't exist. 'That's such an American
thing, this Turkish blend idea. Why
don't you just take it home?'

798. THE JACK SPICER HAT

THE JACK SPICER HAT
The entourage was adorable : as
clumped together as a fist. There
was a parakeet, and its chaperon
too. I indulged in nothing so much as
the sky - indigo-bunting latticework
drindl skirt heart of all things.
Let us see what Jack Spicer brings.

797. POTOMAC HOMES

POTOMAC HOMES
I see, are good for shit.
Many multitudinous multifaceted
means. Windows as dormers and
dormers as doors and driveways
as bedrooms and offices and dens.
They've made me full of hate in a
museum of the stars and status-quo,
in a never-land of 'no meaning at all.'
American frenzy! I could never walk,
I know, through that walk of the useless -
the double-speak that has no name, the
redundant run-on sentences by which a
people enamored of same run themselves
nameless in a game made of fame.
Oh these Potomac homes are useless shit.

796.STELLAR POEM

STELLAR POEM
The star along the horizon that turns to
fame, no, to shame, no, to pain.

795. BRAINCHILD MUFFIN

BRAINCHILD MUFFIN
We are the children of choice - as much as we are
children of chance. Cauldron philosophy such as this
should hold no hopes - neither of despair nor of
achievement. After all, it is already settled.
-
I have smelled the cold Spring in the morning's
fragrant air - a so very new thing. In the
morning's cold air I have smelled a new Spring.

794. STEEL SUSPENDED POOL - ABOVE A SKYSCRAPER

STEEL SUSPENDED POOL -
ABOVE A SKYSCRAPER
Feral cats were chasing their tails and
other things they couldn't find beneath the
now-blessed Tower of Saint Marcosi Square.
High up above, reflected light shone off an old
Orthodox cross, I'd guess gilded in gold.
Somewhere, an accordion played.
-
'Did'ja see yesterday's paper?' the man with
the suitcase said. 'Yes, but when I saw it it
was today's paper! - isn't that all so confusing?'
No, I thought to myself, sometimes it
just happens that way.

-
So alike, there are many mysteries we
cannot understand - water to vapor
to ice and back to water again. It's
all the same, but all so very different.

793. TRANSUBSTANTIATION

TRANSUBSTANTIATION
My biggest disappointment came from
knowing there was no longer an ending to
come. We had shut down expectation and
I was feeling nothing but dreary. The same
two fools were sitting near me again - discussing
their endless wood and paint and remodeling details
once more. Over and over I'd heard these notes.
'Be it like a hotel, umm, this cake is good, it's like
a single, yeah, I've got to pick it up by eight o'clock,
you're right, but I think the interesting thing is the
way we look at it - it could take a long time.'

792. THE BRETON HOLD

THE BRETON HOLD
There is none, he had none. Misery.
In the stinking, wet hold of this
traveling boat the mimicry is
all of monkeys. Simply put:
there are no windows to open,
you fool; we are well below
the water line. In the bowels of
this boat there is a bakery and -
though this is really more like a
ship than a boat - in the same way
(damn all!) this bakery's more like
a closet with an oven within.
Good God it grows so hot!
Together we sweat enough to fill
the sea with our own salty water.

791. MERCY

MERCY
He asked now simply - 'Is there anything here
I can use? Implements and tools are fine but
I'm looking for ideas, what I'm looking for, ideas.
Things enough to float a ship, mask a cause,
burst a reason and share a regent.' (And then,
in my mind, like Pilagio in a lost Ben Jonson
play - he explodes the dresser drawer and
breaks free of the writer's lines. There is no
force field for this - only the
momentary plug for Mercy).

790. TWINS

TWINS

The roof of your mouth

is paper thin. There was

an elephant being harbored

in your circus. The wind

past the forest was fierce.

These are all the sorts of

things you can't find in a

book - nonetheless, by a

simple form of persecuting

facts, I turned up every

evidence, and more : Lincoln

had no mother, the Brothers

Grimm were really twins.

The Brothers Grimm

were really twins.

789. FOR ALL YOUR PICTURES IN MY BOOK

FOR ALL YOUR PICTURES
IN MY BOOK
(an abstract)
Hard to realize
this life going
someplace.
Made of cut
paper and
scalloped
edges.
-
Hardness can
be as soft as
it comes.

788. THE ARTIST

THE ARTIST
The one time I wrote my hand by
tracing the lines, it seemed - to me, anyway -
an amazing tracery and a lifelike image.
I felt like Michelangelo, or some anatomist,
drawing images for an overhead screen.
'I am myself amazed!' I said aloud.
Running through the halls, I scattered
the biology crowd with my elated and
strengthened glee.
-
It's never been like that again,
of course. Now, in writing with words
instead of mere lines, what comes to
the fore is an awesome but grievous
catching of each flaw. Plus, my mind
grows now as tired as my hand.
-
Peruse these pictures in my book.
Go ahead, I'll not mind. As if my
head were turned inside out, they are
all I've entered and all I've left.
Markings, such as on a cave at
Lascaux, could mean no more
to a primitive man as these now
do to an honest one. I've
never harbored my doubts.

787. CRUSTACEAN BELLS BY THE BOWLFUL

CRUSTACEAN BELLS
BY THE BOWLFUL
( a true story)
I've not come this far to trip on your balderdash.
I won't wear the wig belonging on your bald head.
My factions are crowded in small big corner,
yet they outnumber your lassos by twenty to one.
That rise in your belly - it's either pure fat or
your corpulent complacency about your lies.
You see, you see, I can be as nasty as the next.
-
Those were blue skies once, I thought, fellow,
in your blue eyes. Now I see they're but the
wrinkled skin of a corpse turned blue all over.
-
Just today, I was out at the water by
Penn's Manor, where once William Penn
would boat to his country estate. I looked all
around, and what I saw made me gag.
Waste Management has run the place amok -
their piles of, nay, great hills of, trash (reminding
me of nothing so much as your mind), have covered
over this once great land - making all things, by signs,
'Off Limits' and closed to the public - as if, by
some totalitarian magic, the entire revolution's been lost.
What America may once have been has been turned to shit.
-
Just like you, buddy,
just like you.

786. AT PRINCETON

AT PRINCETON
I'm walking the genteel, tin-sleeved Princeton
streets in an early morning light with a wetness
falling down; not a rain, for it's ever so slight.
You may call it what you wish if you care. The
raucous choir of cemetery birds behind me sings.
I'm not reaching for anything special, nor grabbing
for any particular thing : my heart is happy enough.
Perhaps if I had a voice, I too would sing.

785. 8 PAGE 120

8 PAGE 120
'I have a pattern now, you
slattern vow - I'm putting canned
applesauce on my eggs. Just like
they used to serve at Bickford's.
I'm a regular fool in pale houses and
bless their all-bleating hearts as I watch.
They are leaving their car at Sheridan Square,
getting out as if they'd been there for years.
Rucksacks on the roof and a playful little
mess within. 'It's Friday! And three days
ago we were at Fisherman's Wharf, yet
now we are here! And San Francisco is far
behind!' They get out like sharpshooters
set on finding their prey. I wished I was
along. I remember thinking that. Some
lambs are female. Some
angels have wings.'

784. THE PROSELYTIZERS

THE PROSELYTIZERS
(the pros)
Well here's one I'll tell you I really don't
like - the way they push into your face with
their lousy words - words of the committed,
the ones who know it all, who won't take
any other advice except their own decrees.
Handing out pamphlets with the most
simple lessons. Mottos and catch-phrases
a third-grader could grasp. I don't
even want to listen, so leave me alone.
-
'Jesus died on a cross'.
But wasn't he dead already,
when the first words were written
about Him? Isn't that what you're
always bragging about? The Line of
David and all that? He really had no
choice, so what of it? If He had to be
what He'd been meant to be, in essence,
He was dead already, from the very start.
'No choice, no voice', I say.
-
I'll sit down right next to you, just
to see what happens. You grab at the crowd
like a suicidal fish lunging at hooks. If I didn't
know it already, I'd ask what makes you crazy.
Certainly not your attention to detail - on
that count you're actually pretty lazy.

783. CADRE

CADRE
I spilled coffee on your Papillon! Egads!
Now what do I do? Here we are, sitting around -
West 21st Street where you live - on an old dark
couch you brought in from the Salvation Army
(I remember, I was there). Now, with coffee we must
discuss Bakhunin and Zinoviev and Trotsky too.
By the way, that green velvet robe is really not
enough - almost each time you move I can
clearly see your breasts. It's OK with me,
mind you, but you'd better check first with the
movement. No joke, ideologues have died from less.
Crestino, over there, the Italian brother, he's still
driving a taxi - 'up and down and all around,' he
says, 'the Capitalist bastard streets make me want
to puke.' I'm not sure what he means, nor why, but
no matter. It's these little things that count - that make
me keep it going. I read that 'Kapital' frenzied bullshit
you had us read - frankly, I wasn't impressed. He
reduces the world (somehow) to power and greed,
and he scoffs at all the rest. Not for me, really.
My God, I've spilled coffee on your Papillon!

782. SERGEANT MAJOR BENICANT

SERGEANT MAJOR BENICANT
And really I can't thank you enough
for your stripes and resonance and
shape and form and reason and rhyme.
It's all so much together - wrapped up
as one big thing. Sergeant Major Benicant
marching on the field. What a major find!
-
There's not been one before you like and
won't be ever since. They keep their distance,
parading around you in fear! And all those
woodwinds you command - bassoon and oboe
and clarinet and such. Commanding presence!
You blow!
-
15 ancient cannons - Civil War vintage I bet -
are brought out onto the field. They are as
silently arranged as Death would be were it
being presented : men in tophats and girls
(incongruously) in gingham. I can't make
mention of anything else. It is too ridiculous
to say. Sergeant Major Benicant, a'marching
upon the field. What a major find you yield!

781. OLD DAYS

OLD DAYS
Wire ahead? I wired ahead
to tell you I'm here. But the
wires are down, so what do
I care? Bet no one says
that anymore.
-
I'm trailing on the steambound train.
It's pulling smoke before it's came.
Smoke settles and lingers on every sooty
door. Bet no one says that anymore.

780. SOURWOOD MOUNTAIN

SOURWOOD
MOUNTAIN
Absolutely no activity
within the room. All things
cease their forward motion,
all tired and bereft. 'If you've
got the notion, I've got the
motion.' Absolutely no activity
within the womb.
-
Rooster's a'crowin' on Sourwood Mountain,
so many pretty girls, you can't count 'em.

779. METRO

METRO
Sitting beneath a picture of the Metro -
city-black iron railroad beams arching in
front of glass. All the glorious city light
just streaming in. At the photo's very border,
right next to where she sits, I notice how her
head and hair themselves stream their own strands
along the picture as well, adding themselves to
the played-out drama. She casts, by her very
own shadow, a darkness all her own, her shadow
across the Metro's glass face. I see her form
reflected too - a simple and visual mathematics
now. Just one thing after the other, and her.

778. JAZZ

JAZZ
Sounds as if it could - pace the street
by a lassitude of reed. Foreboding,
roadside stands where collards and
sweet potatoes were grown to be sold,
and hands exchange both sweat and money.
From Coleman Hawkins to John Coltrane
amazed sounds reinvigorate the morning border.
'We are like this,' they say, 'we are morning-glory
bashful beautiful stalwart midwives from Minton's
to Basin Street and back, St. Louis Chicago cotton fields
and prison holds of gallow ships and African slaves
stretched forth by their captivity to sensify and then
poison your long-wicked and white man's world.
Off-track wrong key low-key blue note
jazz world Art Tatum fire!'

777. FROM THINGS ABOUT TO DISAPPEAR I TURN AWAY IN TIME

FROM THINGS ABOUT TO
DISAPPEAR I TURN

AWAY IN TIME
(samuel beckett)
To watch them out of sight, no, I
can't do it. The preponderance of
evidence is that (yes!) we live. Marking
puddles behind us, we pile all shit and
debris wherever we may. It wouldn't
matter, in the long run, where : corridors
of the Capitol, being used to such things,
would readily accept such garbage. Yet,
onward we pivot - delighting fanciful crowds,
spilling insensate millions, dumping pails of
grease upon our open sea. The paradox
remains : things appear while disappearing.
The highway is a headache cutting through
verdant green pastures.
-
My God, I've been there once. The soil
was rich and brown, the air was filled
with air, the mind with mind everywhere.
-
The man, with his face staring down,
was trailing a shadow all the way
to the gallows. Things everywhere
are so bleak, it stayed long after
he himself was gone.

776. MARSHMALLOW DOCTOR

MARSHMALLOW
DOCTOR
He carries a flexible cane that
bends when he walks with it.
Makes no sense to me.
He's such a quack he
should be shouldering
a duck. His wife, when
I see her, is always in a
dark green coat made
of horsehair (they say)
from 1881. Back when
horsehair was really
good, I guess.
No telling what
money will do.

-
When she walks
away, she too
looks like a
horse's ass.

775. LADIES OF THE MARKETPLACE

LADIES OF THE
MARKETPLACE
Ladies of the marketplace,
ladies of the market fair,
please won't someone listen
to me, read my words, love me,
hold me in your arms, enrapture me,
smile back at me, listen to something
I've said, and show understanding,
nod, smile, touch my arm.
Show somehow I exist.

774. BLACK RIVER DREAM

BLACK RIVER DREAM
No one ever told me different:
'You can't extend that hand and expect
not to be taken; bring me these drugs, and
I will give you sex; drive this car to Cincinnati
for me, and a guy there will take it off your hands,
give you five hundred dollars pay, and a bus
ticket home.' It's always like that, story-lines,
bad ideas, and stupid deals going down.
-
Deep in the Black River Forest, outside
of Chester village, I came across this wandering
Weimereiner hound - loose, running free, without
a collar, unfettered, gentle and meek. It led me
to the cave we entered, running me deep
beneath the rocks to the lantern in
the back. Like glistening water
taking a shape of its own,
the light was held by a
man of indeterminate
substance.
-
'Listen to me kindly, my man,'
he'd spoken backwards I
realized, 'for what I am
about to tell you has
already occurred.'
-
At that point, he took
a fire from the palm of his
hand and inserted it,
I noticed, deep in
the center of
my chest.

773. WITTGENSTEIN'S BROTHER

WITTGENSTEIN'S
BROTHER
Had no arm, was a one-armed pianist,
carried those same crazy thoughts
that his brother did but played them
out in a keyboard frenzy instead.
Almost the entire family, except Ludwig,
committed suicide - I guess at a certain
point all the options lead one to that.
Like 'it runs in the family' - or something.
Ludwig built his sister a house, and taught
sixth-grade somewhere way out in the country
for what seemed like forever. Then he quit;
went back to his philosophy, repudiated
all he said before, and re-wrote his entire
body of work with different views.
His brother came and went - one-armed,
into life, out of life. Very much like
Ludwig's work itself. Existence, I
always figured, really has
its conundrums and
paradoxes. It just
can't be helped.

772. OUTSIDE BELGRAVIA

OUTSIDE BELGRAVIA
There was nothing else to do -
fifteen geese plodding around, with
their incessant cackle and that stupid
wiggle. I watched them for five minutes.
A policeman came over and asked 'why?'
I shrugged my shoulders and said,
in my worst ghetto English,
'why not, man?'
-
I wasn't trying to be philosophical,
but this scholarly guy came over
and said he'd overheard me and didn't
wish to be ponderous but 'I firmly
believe that was the same 'thought'
- if, of course, we would call it that -
that 'God' must have had in
considering Creation.
'Why not Man?''

-

I said that wasn't what I'd meant
and that there was a comma in
what I said. But, making no sense,
neither of us understood each other
clearly. Then, I noticed, WE shrugged
together and said, 'so what? It
really makes no difference.'

771. NATURE'S WILD GRAB

NATURE'S WILD GRAB
(the watch/clock poem)
It's a force of Nature, like the tree
breaking concrete to grow - which is
stronger, which is more real? I am walking
morning streets like a pilgrim walking in an
ancient land. I see things never seen before;
a cauldron stopwatch held by a rising sun.
The light dangles before me like a thousand
ancient desert sands - caravans of dreams
and illusion, an entire world in spectral watch.
-
This beggars the mind, this reality blemish :
Mankind's oh-too-fervent step within things.
Everywhere changing what can be changed.
-
Yet, that tree still breaks the concrete, lifts
the slabs around it, twists and bursts the
human reins which have tried to pull it in.
Stopping that which is unstoppable, I surmise,
is the winding motion that keeps us running.

770. THE PILGRIMAGE AND THE FAITH

THE PILGRIMAGE
AND THE FAITH
Washing warrants with water, the alb
and the chalice combined. The glimmering
light from some lakeside pavilion leads me
to think of you - and things of that nature.
Just as I look over, squirrels are running the
table, scurrying by the branches low-hung
and twisted. They remind me, right now,
of words dangling down a page.
-
We have no rights to forfeit. We have no
means to discourse upon or explain. We are
to the shames of ourselves - big-words amidst
little meanings, gophers upon a field of gold.
-
If I stand tall, only then am I little higher.
My fabricized dreams, themselves reaching
heights of stars and comets, never fall to Earth.
The cloak I wear is made of them, that very
fabric of ought and combustion. See now,
here, how I light this feeble campfire upon
this lakeside field. Picnic grounds for pilgrims.
A hard cloth to wear for those who yield.

769. MUMFORD

MUMFORD
I wish no city beautiful. I sit in
no gilded manse. Parlor house and
sitting room, together they tumble -
like sheaves of Chicago wheat down the
shutter-shaft. What we most try to do
is disappear. I want no civic maelstrom,
at least from here. The Dawn has its sunrise
disciples. The Night has its sunset foes.
I want no city beautiful; I want
what comes and goes.

768. DRUNKEN BOAT

DRUNKEN BOAT
(for A.G.)
And only twelve years later,
acting preposterous, standing alone.
Such a hopeless mess, I wish I could help.
But the bride has left for Laredo and what
remains at the altar is dirt. Drunken boat.
Drunken boat. The deep, dark sea is calling
but all you've left behind (drunken boat,
drunken boat) is, at the same time, gone.
There really is no reason to return. It is a
hopeless land, my friend, truly a hopeless land.

767. IN THE DARK

IN THE DARK
DON'T MAKE ME LOOK
(to be played at top volume).
You are the craziest kicker I know.
DON'T let me down - take the capstone
from the monument and turn it into bread.
Here's the way it goes : 'ta-da-ta-da bar-ump-ba'.
Something like that. DON'T MAKE me look it up
(either). Now, for the moment, sit back down
and take this in : 'I was the little one, hiding still,
and the one in the back of the dark room
was watching. DON'T MAKE ME have to repeat
this. I left the glass when Glenn came in, and at
that point there was still wine in it. I DON'T know
what happened next. SHE SAYS he got drunk and
lunged at her. Maybe so. I don't know.
They turn the lights out at ten.
So, by then, DON'T MAKE
me have to look for things,
please, in the dark.

766. THE WALKING OF MATTHEW DUPRE

THE WALKING OF
MATTHEW DUPRE
Matthew Dupre was a cripple from age nine.
His father had run him over with the family's
farm tractor and he'd broken both legs and a hip.
Just like that, cracked like a pretzel, but (as the
country doctor had said) 'with a whole life to recover.'
When he told me that story, I laughed, thinking
it had unforeseen, double meaning. I doubted those
country folk ever got it : a whole life to recover
can mean many things. I guess Matthew never
got the point, or never mentioned it anyway.
-
Hell, like so many others back there, he walked
with a decided limp, a gimp, his every ordinary day.
Never played the sports or the baseball and things
that others did, or tried. he stayed within, morose -
I always thought 'trying to recover that whole life
of his.' But, in that way, I guess I never got the point
either. Matthew went on to preach, and teach.
-
Country boy lesson master and all that stuff
I hated. Though he never really left his village -
farm country anyway, not like a 'town' -
he somehow had become of 'Minister' of
something, and people would call him Reverend
That was a whole lot to recover, and was
always something I hated.

765. LIVING BEYOND REPROACH

LIVING BEYOND REPROACH
('he spoke like a man of the world')
It was almost comical how he swallowed his
words - some sort of ersatz fragmented accent
from between France and Mars, with Benelux thrown
in too. He walked like Marlon Brando chasing flies.
Living beyond reproach is like that : one can't be too
careful about the ways and means.
-
The one time I visited Carpathia, I was stuffed
in a frozen carriage with three Gypsy souls.
We rode through the cold in a bevy of blankets -
chasing vampires and werewolves and ghouls.
There was (really) something special about
that place.
-
I'd been, of course, to Sofia already - the soft,
wayward city beyond this continental divide -
(I'd divided this part of Europe up for spoils
already, in my mind, just as if I was Stalin
and Roosevelt and Churchill combined), but
it was nothing like this. The Chancellery silver
shone, and the icicles of the morning, I was
told, had already been there forever. There
was nothing between their now and their then.
-
But, these are places today outside my control.
Living beyond reproach, as I must here do,
I can only watch from a distance. My own time,
sadly, slides slowly off its platter, and the only
gruel I get to eat are the words of surly masters.
'One can't be too careful about the ways and the
means'...I'll always remember him telling me
that. (He spoke like a man of the world).

764. NONCHALANT

NONCHALANT
Nonchalant, I walk along the barriers where
the rifles point at me, knowing none of them
can do me harm. I am bulletproof in my way.
This is no incognito moment : both they
and I know who we are. Their ragged
footprints have come from blood and death,
and no mirror exists to reflect them yet.
At the same time, I have no real substance
into which their harm can take root and injure
me. I was there at their beginning and I'll
be there at their ends. All together, one big
exemplary moment in an overlap of time.
No babies sing such a tune as this.
No starling noises these ideas.
-
We come from nothing,
and we are, and
then we are not.

763. THE LECTURE

THE LECTURE
'The third tier of your tiara made me tired'
those were the words I awoke with, a ringing
in my head, an echo-canyon of something I could
not place. I awoke then and went on. Towards
you. Towards an image, an oddly amorphous
form of clout and power, and, without reasoning
about it, I entered another day. Hands bandaged by
crisis and desire, eyes slanted backwards by the
pressures of reality forming itself anew around me.
That is what a day is after all - time piercing essence
and making a material physicality which manifests
the very thought stream before it. So, watch your
ways, young men of the jury, for you are
more powerful than you think, truly,
more powerful than you think.

762. INCANTATION

INCANTATION
(not at all)
My time and its intentions are of
a momentary infraction - I lose things,
and they reappear later on, I put things
away and they become hopelessly lost.
Like the ship, floundering or lost at sea,
whose Captain knows it should be headed
somewhere but cannot find that place - nor the
means to reach it - I stand a'watch over this
buckling plain, wondering what to do.
-
The wood shines, a wicked veneer.
The water pools, making puddles on
the shiny surface. I see nothing but
the reflections before me. The entire
world thereby is rippled and alluded to,
but just as much as that - unreal.
What shines is only light
from other light.
-
Parade my monsters before your cloth.
Let us examine what we see, and how
we see it. All that moves is what's
before. All that moves is holy...
No, rather, all that moves
is what is moving.

761. ST. ANSELM'S SEASIDE CEMETERY

ST. ANSELM'S

SEASIDE CEMETERY
(Portland, Maine)
Ah! The moon and the tomb, they both
have struck again! Beneath the pale, weak
moonlight nothing else comes through.
I am hearing the messages from afar!
Distant Heavens. Distant star.
-
The tempest-trees partake of what they will -
willow, hemlock, ash and oak - and the elm
trees, I note, are right now burrowing down.
-
None of these, I know, are the long-sought
woods of ancient sailing vessels. The
salt sea faces back, without a blink,
these acres of unfam'd dead.
-
They say the eyes are windows of the soul.
Here? Where? What is left but nothing
when the dead are all we have. The
eyes, for sure, are gone. And, too,
the soul has already fled.

760. A SABOTAGE

A SABOTAGE
The parsimonious fault that comes with the
wielding : hammer and sickle, and the rest.
Five hundred thousand lost in the mists of
time and history, the vagaries of all the words
of worlds all lost. 'We've buried the stinkers
where they'll ne'er be found. The rebels and
the rabble together.' That's how the authorities
talked. Nomenklatura, to be sure.
-
I was heavy with the sheaves of my work.
Bent by my back, my bones creaked for
want of solution. Each day another struggle
ensued. I ate the leather of my shoes
and the bark of trees.
-
An entire other side to the story.
We tried bringing it all into the
light of day. But Stalin, the henchmen
who waded through filth for him,
and the hunger of paupers did the
job for us, and better than
we ever could. Now, it
is, everywhere, over
and silent.

759. CONCLUSION SEVENTY-ONE

CONCLUSION SEVENTY-ONE
Having walked a divergent path - twenty miles
of a sideways trek - this ending, this destination
looms nearer than before. One would hope
it's been worth it. Clouds in the sky are
midway between hope and despair.
And so am I.
-
Lethal doses of everything eventually
take their toll. Lethargy and languishing
together make this Jack a dull boy...
or whatever that saying is.
The baker has stopped
baking. The cow no
longer gives milk.
-
Thereby, (isn't it to be said),
we have reached the end
of all deliverance? A very
self-apparent conclusion
looms before us :
-
We've been duped into
believing there's
something
to come.

758. OH, JESUS

OH, JESUS
Oh Jesus, my feet are up on your couch.
I am listening to Appalachian folk songs
from a hundred years ago. The words are distant
and the melodies just aren't like that any more.
They're saying you flew through their skies
like a raging wind chasing the flooding river.
I don't know much about that, but I can
certainly get the gist. Old Mama Muffin,
and that guy with the corncob pipe.

757. AMONG THE WITHERING DEAD

AMONG THE

WITHERING DEAD
Down by the park they marked up the bodies :
12 in a row went down at the stream. All
those household pests and termites together,
things held in memory but things never seen.
-
I never knew what the magic number was.
Now old Jimmy Baldwin AND old Al Haig are dead.
Two together, so different and far apart, bumping
heads in their great hereafter. Like music in a
more-than-distant background, it's only something
I may have heard. Leave it to me to forget.
-
My dear mother, my God I forgot, the two of
you are also dead! Mom and Pop. Dad and Mom.
However one puts it, you too are both gone.
I just don't know what to do. All these names
a'jumble'd, one thing as dead as the other.
I have come to the conclusion - I may as
well here tell you - that 'Life' is good for shit
and that such shit is in large profusion.
Jimmy Baldwin, Al Haig, and you.

756. TIME'S PASSIVE PASSAGE

TIME'S PASSIVE PASSAGE
Amidst all this turmoil, it is a mere bruise. I did lose
an arm at Salamanca, I'll admit, but that pain passed,
and I've moved on from that. I read your letters
in my jail cell, but only when they pass them
through. What you state is obvious : I
really am stuck, and stuck on you.
-
Ten years ago, you could never have convinced
me things would come to this. Drudgery for
the King (a ruler I've never even met), a distant
posting for his obscene Holy War, injury,
maiming, and now this. Most of of my
friends are gone. Hiltard Rayo, my
closest friend, (remember him?)
is blind, but gets on quite well -
and he knows his wife and children
are gone. No matter to tell.
-
We two, you and I, are very lucky.
If what you say is true - that there
is no other man (which I actually
doubt) and that you still will wait
for me - we show fidelity like no others.
I, in love with the moon as seen from
my cell, and you claiming to love me,
stuck in my Hell. What's a mere
soldier to do? I can wait as well.

755. WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU

WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU
You'll want to know something - name, address, age, weight.
You'll not get anything from the scenery. High-hatted,
the drumroll pounces. I was born in a cage and
never have left : witness the destruction and
unleash the force. Walking on the water
makes one incomplete. The ghost
marks time - his wicked cadence
on his painted drum.
-
In the basement of the American Legion Hall,
the marching band, practicing, walks
round and round in circles on
the floor.
-
What echoes down this hallway?
The words of a man explaining himself:
how he spends his money, where the mission
shall be, how he needs to find a forum. By my
overhearing, I am forced to listen. Adjoining tables.
I am not amused. Lifestyle. Courses. Mission. Reflect.
All hideous words, from an enormous mouth. Yet, I
want to wish him well. May he populate the world with
Spirit. Out of place? No, no. What is out of place is
what is missing - the reporter, I am finding, seeks
perfection through other people's words, not his own.

754. THE ANGER SEED

THE ANGER SEED
(I Think To Myself)
They all have their Klaus Voormann moments,
the rattlers, the singers, the killers, the dingers.
Imagination flies its stringed loops all over this sky.
I am watching from a distance, as two fellows emerge:
they are eating fire, blowing down the black smoke
between their flaming lips. I shoulder no burden that
would ever equal this (I think to myself). Then, just
aside, two swaggering Lebanese elephant handlers
enter from beyond the curtain, leading three broad
elephants swaying. One has a saddle, upon which sits,
nearly naked, a quite voluptuous woman. She stretches
outward with her arms and - of course, of course, one
sees the shape of her breasts. Guaranteed to get a rise,
the move awes the small tented crowd. This audience
erupts. I think again, to myself, 'where am I?'
-
I answer to no one; but I answer to you -
I am in Swinton Station, Indiana, at the yearly state fair,
where - in order to see these things - the county farmers
come far and wide, witnessing this fleshy cavalcade
behind the tented doors, as if it were some 1930's
sexy sideshow today. This is incredible, and how
can it be? I think to myself - these are the very same
men who shoulder rifles and bear grudges like I
carry pennies. Watch out, therefore, the unsatisfied
urge : the urge to lust and violence, one unfulfilled
leading to the other enacted. All those crazy
Summer gunmen, going home to take
out the family.

753. MOUNT HALOGEN

MOUNT HALOGEN
So tired I can't blink.
No bright lights up here,
only the glare, only the glare.
-
Keep me waiting half the night -
spindly shadows made for fright.
No one to talk to for sure.
-
Man comes by in a coonskin hat,
carrying a helicopter and a hammer
and some kind of corny thought :
His rotors look funny to me.
-
Up here, everything is illusion,
at best - volcanic dust or just
a hoary fog. One way or the other
everything remains dark and shady.
-
The only bright spot was when I saw
I saw your footprints in the volcanic
ash; some kind of fallout it was,
from long ago and the stormy past.
-
Now, only the glare, only the glare.

752. LOCAL SPIRIT AND DOUBLE SWAP

LOCAL SPIRIT AND
DOUBLE SWAP
You can have your old-time country music by
the bowl-ful. I've not seen a hog nor a hollow
around here for ages. The little girls are
splendiferous as they like what they hear.
Vacationland! Fat thinking in the sun!
But everywhere, the incongruities abound:
that stranger, with his dump truck, snoozing;
that worker, hauling his load. Two gentlemen
from Verona, you might say, kickin'
and strummin' their own.

751. AT LEAST WE EXIST

AT LEAST WE EXIST
'And the doors shall be shut in the street';
(Eccles. 12). The man who possesses no
reality, like a scarecrow, rules over his
(barren) field. Let me also wear such
deliberate disguises...in a field, behaving
as the wind behaves. And into the mirror now
there shines a light - 'Moon Castro Eventual
Comfort Eternal Rest Sofa'. The teas and coffees
steam their little smokes as we, at rest on the
precipice, detract our blank attentions from
their day. 'It was on Tuesday I worked, and
then all those snows came; the wild, windy
morning, and, though tired, I still had quite a day.'
They are lined up at the corner, all these people
now, waiting for the slushy light. Behind old
Nassau Hall, to my right, some kind of a Sun is
rising. I do not know why the gardeners are yet
at work, why the snowfall is being moved by
machinery of a great production...
-
'She has eyes, eyes of a bold brown Spanish
face that oh! if I only knew! (The space between
us grows, where that space should only close).
-
And thus the prophet said, 'if all things are vanity
'midst this colloquial divide, then such things as
meaning and moment deride every moment we live
and I and we are living for nothing.' I am living on
Dante's broken shelf, living without promise or
blame, and what this is, a boring life this is, it
can surely bring me to shame. ('We do not wish
anything to happen; seven years we have
lived quietly, succeeding in avoiding notice,
living by only partly living').
-
The signpost on Lattimore Way, I noticed,
was writ by a broken hand - some twenty years
back and more. The letters had dissolved to a
pale, painted fade : 'So far as we do Evil or
Good, we are Human - and it is better, in a
paradoxical way, to do Evil than to do
nothing at all. At least we exist, at least
we exist, at least we exist, at
least we exist...'

750. SPACEMAN

SPACEMAN
In the cavalcade of your ways I see starlight.
Truly, it appears as a glimmer from the Heavens
to me. The distant planet Ner/Stra, unknown yet
to Earthlings, sings with a light, through sounds
and colors. All that is yet within me - I may
have traveled, (though it was but as sleep)
but that has never left me. We shoulder this
illumination much as you carry water or weight.

749. EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE
To demonstrate a candle, the flame is lit.
We sit in the corner, idly talking, while
that flame consumes the houses all around us.
Experience, then, is the suture which closes
up the wound : we watch, but do not burn,
we are cut, but do not bleed. It is like that,
simply put, and forthrightly so. There is
nothing else we can do. Fluttering by me,
the hawk is but the hawk, the owl is but
the owl - no matter darkness or light.
They, so consumed 'midst 'self' as are
we, whatever the designation, do what
they do without thinking, just doing.
-
I walked to the water's edge,
and only then realized
my pail had already
been filled.

748. REWARD

REWARD
I posted a reward for my soul on the town-square
wall, and got such a response that I was overwhelmed
and couldn't even talk. So many common people had
claimed to have seen it, in every kind of place I
myself had never been. It got confusing very
quickly, and I was left doubting my own
very presence. I looked for my soul
myself, and couldn't find it.

747. CARNEVAL

CARNEVAL
Is for suckers.
All those who believe
in the frenzy of atonement.
All that 'life, death, and make
up for it all' stuff. On the other
hand, I did what I wanted and walked
away. No Rio beachfront revelry for me.
-
I used to summer in New Orleans before
I was banned. Mardi Gras always just started
the revolt : by three months later we all were
crazy. Laughter and loving, shacking up in a
shotgun shack, getting the names straight only
the next morning. It went on like that, I tell you,
a long, long time. Six weeks of Lent, a poor joke.
We made up for all that doing without in a mere day.
-
Nobody ever died. Nobody got too sick.
A few girls probably regretted it, but had time
to amend their ways later on. Salvation is easy
like that. Beads, beer, babes and booze.
That was all our motto said.

746. MY WINTER BLINDNESS FADES

MY WINTER BLINDNESS

FADES WHEN I SEE YOUR

BLEEDING HEART
This is no sample kit - everything in it is real.
The rapture, the fire, the intense feel of love
itself. Some marvel at a burning bush, I marvel
at the marvelous. A Valentine's Day spent in
mourning could make no more sense than this.
-
We walked together hand in hand. It really
was like a storybook picture. You muttered my
name, I mumbled something back - not really
knowing what to say. Then, at long last, we sat
down together in our warm and cozy space.
They brought us coffee and a platter,
things we'd never really asked for
but nonetheless kept in place.
-
It was all new to me : those Greek guys
with their baklava, the hoary dark drinks
they pounded, that crazy guy playing
his little guitar (or whatever it was).
Before I knew it, everything was over -
you'd said your prayers and spread
your cloth. It was the first of many
such engagements. We stayed
together longer than we've been
apart. My winter blindness fades
when I see your bleeding heart.

745. SEMAPHORES AND DESTINY

SEMAPHORES AND DESTINY
In that small place where my uncle once lived,
there was a carbine on the wall. His closets were
stuffed with music - and the wonder of it all:
photo albums of Alsace-Lorraine, where he
spent three long years, he said, teaching English
to miners, or minors, I never got that straight.
I was but twelve at that time, and always wished
to own that prison-painting he had hanging.
He said it was done by a guy serving life
for murder. It was about 12X15 inches, I'm
guessing, but was a wonderful three-dimensional
farmhouse, with a fence and a distant vista
and some trees and a stream or a river.
What struck me about it, always, was that
it wasn't simply flat. It had a third dimension,
pushed out where the mountains and trees were,
recessed for the river and water. I hope you
can get what I mean. I marvelled always:
this prisoner in some distant land, spared
of death, I'd suppose, but doing life (not
so unlike us, after all, I'd think), finding a way,
in mostly greens and blues and browns, to show
some fuller extent of Life as known than one
would normally see. A super-realism behind bars!
An optic intensity missed forever! Some kindred
surrealist lost by an escaping death sentence!
I never really knew, but, alas - now all gone.
My uncle's long dead, the prisoner too, I guess,
has gone to meet some final judge, and the painting
itself, why - now, when I ask about it - none who
should know know a thing at all. It's as if it never existed!
(I hope that final judge appreciates art).

744. EUREKA BREAKS DOWN

EUREKA BREAKS DOWN

(Madame Exhilia singing her aria!)
I can't want for totality or grace.

The snow is three feet high and more

where they plowed the piles and left it.

People will walk through anything at all,

and now that everything is essential

- or made to be seen as essential -

there are no questions asked.

The world has become a necessity,

and such a necessity we have to deal with,

not like days of old where people only

did one or two things their entire lives.

Now everyone is all at the point where they

each want to do everything, experience it all,

and be part of the whole entire thing:

bullshit mavens at the market selling trinkets

to whomever, story lines of carpet baggers,

rock and roll hee-haws screaming their shit,

opera ladies singing their swoon, while the

pince-nez guy (12th row, I'm watching) jerks off into

her kerchief and gives it back to Madame Exhilia

singing her aria - and no one notices a thing.

Meanwhile, the room explodes in a darkness of

Napoleanic proportion, or Neo-Napoleanic as
they'd say now. Everything's bigger, everything's

smaller. I don't know the difference here,

and anyway anymore everything's

accessible and everybody wants a piece.

743. OVER HERE

OVER HERE
It is said : this man killed his God
for thirty pieces of silver; about the
price of the Sunday Times today.
I wonder if it could have been worth it.
What bank accepted such money,
what interest was paid? How much
cost the wood for the cross?

(And what could such money buy)?
-
I wallow in this stuff like dirt :
all this myth making and story.
As Anne Sexton said (I paraphrase) -
the New Testament is so small;
its mouth opens four times, as
out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
yet somehow man-made, held together
by pulleys, like the stone-jaw of a backhoe.
-
Anyway, why bother? It's a long one-act play
without any intermission. The swooning, the swords,
the blood and the crying - along with Death -
play character roles that somehow
just cannot hold (any longer)

my full attention.

742. ODER AND NEISS

ODER AND NEISS
(or else)
Don't take the key from the doorway,
don't write your name on the ledge.
Right there, where the cat sleeps, that's
from where Jezebel jumped. She landed
the three floors down, right to the
pavement below. Two broken legs
and all painful as Hell.
-
But that was long ago. When Berlin
had two sides. When Regensburg was
new. When the girls in Bonn were still
speaking 'Bonn' - which is not German
at all. I remember laughing at that when
someone asked Gertag what people spoke
in Bonn. 'They speak Bonn!' she said -
something of the equivalent of a southern,
country, hick town local dialect in Amerika.
I said 'I thought you all spoke Kafka.'
-
I make tricks. I can put a cigarette through
a quarter. But what I cannot do, Goddamn it,
is make your memory disappear.

741. MY PALEST VARIATIONS

MY PALEST VARIATIONS
Rimbaud and Verlaine, the Buggery Brothers,
still bother me like snot. Two atrocious
characters wrapped up in mythmaking and
romance - the same dour surge that makes
pus run or blood trickle. Young romantic
children of today - every Patti Smith and
Bob Dylan of the configured world - can
still run out of their way to praise the
effrontery of these two characterless swans.
-
I'd hate to be around their table.
Flamboyant blowhards, flaming pistols,
running hordes and overly-sensitive puffs
crowd it from end to end. Servings of
pink potatoes and purple jellies would be
their fare. Why do we listen? Why do we care?
-
Up high, the height of Gods, up high, the Heavens
of all the worlds - that's where the true poet's
mind dwells. Not in devilment, not in Hells.
Oh, why do we even bother?

740. A FEW THUGS BEATING ON A GIMP

A FEW THUGS
BEATING ON A GIMP

(509 e11th st.)
I don't always have the time for great panes of glass;
the city-streets soldered with glamor and taste. It's
all I can do to stay slow, walk without haste, understand
what's before me, and stay - in my way - in place.
-
The doodle-meister paintman, running between garages,
I've seen him before - with his murderously sullen girlfriend
laughing about something while she put on her high
black boots. They were sitting at a bench in front of
some old parking lot. Behind it, a row of tenements
showed their nasty backsides. Sneakers on a clothesline,
thrown over it, as if for spite. Someone once told me
that was a signal meaning drugs are traded there, dealt,
sold, whatever. 'The Trade', in street lingo.
-
Things like that are beyond me. Graffiti, spray paint,
dealing drugs in tenement yards, under clothes of grime
and basements of filth. Wherever we go, it seems, there's
a story line that follows : regimented gruffness, power-play
in the alley, a few thugs beating on a gimp.

739. ALL OF TODAY

ALL OF TODAY
Though nice, the constant beauty of
ice, wind and snow I wouldn't want
to live with. When transient, it comes
and goes, when permanent, it really blows.

738. MATTER OF FACT

MATTER OF FACT
Atoms are indivisible
sounds run in waves
light is a quality
energy is mass and
essence combined
all things relate to
one another.
-
Indivisibility is not
invisibility NOR
divisibility - and
the quality of
mercy is not
strained.

-

Depending on what you depend on
is depending upon what you depend upon
and whether or not you go off the deep end
is dependent on what you depend.
More than that I cannot say.

737. FRAMEWORK

FRAMEWORK
I have a skeleton under my skin. I can
feel the jawbones and the knees, for
instance, quite freely. Yet, I wonder,
what will I be when it vacates me?
Shall I wander, loose and flaccid,
flopping around without a form
or a frame - in a spiritual guise
all airy and breathless, something
there with no name? Will I be
able to see....something?
Anything?

736. MASTER HENRY (now what?)

MASTER HENRY

(now what?)
It was fitful to throw a hum into the snowbank
like that, Master Henry. What in the world were
you thinking? That guy's new Audi was but
four days his. I'm sure he was as nervous
as could be : your frenzied, crazed behavior
must have made him wince -
so close to his new car.
-

It was (also) pitiful to throw that bum into
the snowbank, Master Henry, but that's
another story and he did probably have
it coming. I saw how he was going through
your pockets when you left your coat
on the bench. Yet, kicking him in the
face when he was down was probably
a breach of etiquette.
-

All in all, you've done a fine
day's work in less than
twenty minutes. What's
next to do?
Now what?

735. CALL ME WHEN THE REVOLUTION ARRIVES

CALL ME WHEN THE
REVOLUTION ARRIVES
Do not hesitate to chase down what you
see - a fleeing preserve, an idea running
away from you. By such means are revolutions
begun. One man, clamoring over something,
shouting high from a leafy perch, can caterwaul
the masses to prime their quick revolt.
-
We, in shackles, huddle over pain and want.
Blankets of bad philosophy and the lies of
schemers attempt to cover us from their own
prescribed cold. Following such orders, the
wise Captain says, will bring peace and happiness.
-
Instead, this compost heap of old ideas is riddled
with enforced rigor. Compulsory order keeps chaos
away : yet it is their order which shackles us,
and our chaos they most fear. Their own frightful
conundrum keeps them in fear just as our own
fear of them keeps us from chaos.
-
I have to lay my cards down with Chaos.
It is the more creative way to die.

734. NEGATIVE VACATION

NEGATIVE VACATION
Underfoot the ice barks - a resounding crack
of 'where not to be'. I'd much rather not understand
The darkness is thick like a brush - a harsh scrub
on a dirty scalp. There is so much not to be seen.
At this time of morning, no shadows even try
leading you on. Such quiet becomes me.
-
Were I to sink in this brash disdain, I think
I could only perish once. A singularity such as
that is gladly accepted; a peril undergone
willingly. My winsome spirit seeks to fly,
in this manner finding its own distant sky.
-
I've not lingered here for nothing. Breadloaf Mountain,
Scalinger's Hill, North Pomay Point. Each of these
places hold memories, but things I'd rather forget.
Who cares of that listing boat sinking in the sound,
the cave at the bottom of Aubrey's Meadow, the
old cabin where Lentinon stayed for the Winter?

733. CHARLTON STREET

CHARLTON STREET
Nothing but a crazy fucking silence.
2314 and the 3rd floor freight elevator
13th Street where they made porn flicks.
Now there's nothing. From uptown to down
only the crackle of money : ornamentation
stricken with sledge-hammer angst, all
those gargoyles of a true old decoration now
either dead and/or buried. Far away and long
ago, I can't even remember how it was
done.
-
'Surround yourself with your own ideas,
yet place them in a tradition of yore' -
though he never said that, those words
were used against T.S. Eliot in a court of
law; well, literary law anyway. What he'd really
said was : 'the entire world has fallen away.
Instead of pillaging, take what you can from
the past to advance the present.' The only
reason I know all this is that he used to
live right next to me at 87 Charlton.
-
He used to cook feathery eggs on Thursdays.
His ex-wife would sit in a chair, crying.
He spoke of tea as if it was gold.
He was really from Missouri,
I was told.
-
He used to say cool things:
'the door opens on her like a grin,
and the corner of her eye twists
like a crooked pin.'

732. AT PIPPIN SOUND

AT PIPPIN SOUND
The water runs like water runs.
The mountains rise like mountains rise.
The highway drives like highways drive.
There's no sign of the settlers left.
-
This Park Ranger babe tries to tell me
how things were. Where they slept and how
they cooked. I know (and she knows) she's full
of shit. As if it was all about home decor back
then, she's going on about chairs and windows.
-
I simply decide, like a wildman from back then,
I'd much rather throw her down and strip her bare.
That's what she'd remember about the past.
'He came in quick and he pulled out fast.
Ugh, I think anyway. That's how it was.'
-
There's never any justice to things that can be said.
If it can fit into words, it's a lie instead.
The water runs like water runs.
The highway hums like
highways hum.

731. COUNTING UPON REDEMPTION

COUNTING UPON REDEMPTION
1. Someone hard and fast and soft
and stern and demanding and sour too.
All so defined; as it had been, by the
legendary Cloud-Maker Firebush
Original Burning-Man - that old
volcanic deity of dumbness, God.
Be-Bop-Ba-Diddley-Bop. Him
groweth home-grown bloweth
blown, Jazz-King morning sunlight
movie-man marquee moon mash.

2. Swing low Sweet Harriet coming for
to carry my bone, swing low sweet
chariot, coming for to carry me home.
I - bop be diddly pe-dad dah! - looked
over - be dum bop! - Jordan and
what did I see? A band of angels coming
for me - wha-za-sha-bomp-wa! -
coming for to carry me home.

3. The morning sunlight pales itself along
and crying on past the horizon old moon
new moon hanging ring-in-white while the
smoke a million mornings rises - one million
mornings, man! - and lingers its mark like a
broad medallion in a long and lazy-lit sky.
If we are the birds, we sing; we do that very
bird-like thing without thinking at all and
all of that goes just goes and all and all
be-bop-a-diddley-lu-a-baby, yeah!

730. FOR THE DURATION

FOR THE DURATION
It's too simple to see with these eyes
how I love everyone I meet and yet
hate to go on living. The reverse side
of this dance-card was apparently
marked by Death itself. Stamped
with something that reads
'For the Duration'

729. BROKEN

BROKEN
My hands were broken at the bank,
my mind went sideways at the church,
my eyes gave out in prison, and
- only later - my lungs failed
until - at the end - I realized
I had prophesied and
rehearsed my own
unending death.

728. INDEPENDENCE DAY

INDEPENDENCE DAY
Independence Day came and went
and brought forth in its own way
that posse fielding forces on the lawn.
Horses with their bowed heads,
tentgrounds and fireworks; everything
filled with that unsorted frenzy of Love.

727. DREADNAUGHT

DREADNAUGHT
Something mingles my blood with Charlemagne.
I don't care which or what : there are no streetlamps
on this corner, the sky is falling dark fast, and all
I can see are these shadows...of the past.
I was once a youth armed with lusty fever,
playful antic and the joy of a magical spree.
It turned out very costly - as nothing was
for free. Beating me at my own game,
the lineage of blood said I came
from Charlemagne.
-
Eagle tarnish fuel temper
flame volcano wood-beam
ceiling tempo toolshed manger
chapel fury iceman rehearse.
-
We are the failings of everything
that has come before us, and the
victors, it always seems, are the
ones who get to write History.

726. CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION

CONTRACTUAL
OBLIGATION
There's no cast to the angle :
the men who build bridges don't
care, and the others don't notice.
I'm sitting up in a leather chair,
my feet straight down. Reading, I'm
trying to beat my own slouch, or
slump, by consciously sitting up
straight (in that leather chair).
I may have said all this before.
-
Somewhere I've heard that
tonight is Chinese New Year.
Year of the dog rat snake,
whichever. It hardly matters,
never in fact, to me. I surmise,
like some dumb old horoscope,
that it's all meaningless drivel,
borne of ages, carried aloft and
then forgotten by modernity. Except
in glee, the glee of greetings and
greeting cards.
-
The man I used to know -
over there - Freddy or Frank,
is smoking a menthol cigarette.
He's looking out over the porch,
gazing at nothing. As I remember,
he was as dumb as an ox and a
pain in the ass too. I'm glad
he's alone. Smoking, these
days, is a very lonely gig.
-
There's no cast to the angle.
The men who build bridges
don't care, and the others
don't notice (a thing).

725. MY COMFORT

MY COMFORT
(Life Without Limits)
A community of holidays wrapped in
nothing special - ice rolling off a cliff
along a distant roadway, two signs - without
meaning - spinning wildly in the wind, that
Winter hare, momentarily stunned, just staring
out. My silence is a comfort too - white
wires of an old telephone line, poles and brackets
now all white, covered by new-fallen snow.
Community gardens inside glass globes.
Alligator sewers 'midst a mishmash of time.
Everywhere I turn to look, there is, (it
seems), something 'other' beckoning.
I am outside the picture yet
within the frame.
-
Steamed-over windows dripping with dew,
an enormous shelf, bought in New London,
and now suffering in an early Spring.
I live within the anomalies,
if I live at all.

724. EXPERIMENTAL

EXPERIMENTAL
I'm thinking of being taunted.
Notwithstanding. Effect.
The long dawn of a lumberjack -
trudging up the village hillside in
the dark, with an ax and a saw and
nothing more. What do they want
from him? Five trees, big, cut and
sundered and chopped in a day.
Let alone. The. Bringing of it. Down.
-
All those measly peasants
and their damned fireplaces.
Cinder-pots for the practice-flames
of their storybook Hell. Big Bad Wolf.
Cat in the Hat (ain't no lumba-Jack).
-
If you say a prayer before morning
I can guarantee you there won't be
no mourning. Everything will
F A L L
into place perfectly; the
lumberjack will get his trees
and the peasants will get
their fires for the hearth
through the Wood
HE bringeth. Like
God again; someone
else JUST LIKE A
GOD.

723. THAT OLD RUSSIAN CITY

THAT OLD
RUSSIAN CITY
Where Chagall kept painting his
dreams; oxen and carts flying over
the sky, past moons and rooftops
and stars. I guess he wasn't really there,
so to speak, but that's what dreams
are about anyway. Interiors of exteriors,
maybe, or the other way around.
-
Like a mirror able nothing to reflect,
that too is an achievement. Something,
after all, to be noted or remarked upon.
Vitesk or Vitebsk, or whatever it was.

722. I'D MET ANNE SEXTON ONCE BEFORE SHE DIED

I'D MET ANNE SEXTON
ONCE BEFORE SHE DIED
By her own hand, of course. That's
the way it always happens. Nothing sparkles like
death-as-dessert. I'd just been getting used to her,
liked her looks, loved her smile, and really dug
her work. And then, out of the blue, somehow,
she decides to take her own life. All that
confessional poetry crap had just worn her
down. The letter she left me said simply :
'I could have told you sooner, but
I'd already forgotten the words.'

721. LEGENDARY APPREHENSION

LEGENDARY
APPREHENSION
They put the highway right through my head :
things winging, flying by, high rates of speed,
everything a blur. Not that I minded, mind you.
It's all the same to me. The sharpshooter named
Raymond, the one from Desert Storm, showed
me long ago where a sniper should hide.
-
We were in Jersey City, sitting out front of old
Captain Al's, a now-gone beer joint all creepy and
run down. Right across from it, they'd built new condos,
and at the very top, some strange-looking pinnacle
stood out. I said 'a great place for a sniper, no?' -
and he, momentarily startled, blinked back and said
'yes, actually yes it is. That's the very sort of space they
taught us to find in sniper school, for urban warfare.
I spent many an hour, fully armed, in just such places.
Funny you should notice.' I laughed, and smiled back.
-
Sometimes such coincidences just seem to come together.
His erstwhile girlfriend, also there, Laura or Brenda or
some sort of name like that, had no clue what we'd
said. She was too busy enjoying the others enjoying
her. The whole scene was funny - she was showing
off as best she could, we were talking about killing
people, and right down at the end of the street,
a perfect and near view of Lady Liberty's backside
was present - the whole statue, in the harbor,
framed by the street - the Statue of Liberty
I'd had yet to meet.