967. HERE'S MY EYELINER JUST FOR YOU - WATCHING

HERE'S MY EYELINER JUST
FOR YOU - WATCHING
That crazy motion up on the screen, the
in and out pump like two porno stars
working, I can't figure it out. Oil well?
Piston in a cylinder? What is this?
-
The dog makes a noise, the cat rolls over
and meows, the dim lamp flickers. Yesterday's
old moon peters out, in today's new sky.
Somehow, this all connects. If Arthur
Conan Doyle walked in here right now,
I'd have to ask him what he thought.
-
It's been too long since rainwater paved
the streets, puddling in black lumps where
the indentations are. Low spots are all alike.
Things gather, and never leave. We're
left listening to the noise of the crowd.
-
It's after midnight now; the table, still set,
awaits guests who never showed. The
thin candle, nearly burned out now,
flickers with its own regrets. I know
the feeling myself, having just
now come from nowhere
to get myself here.

966. CLINGERS

CLINGERS
They're clinging to me like dope fiends,
clinging to the lamppost I hang on. Not a
gibbet nor a cross of steel could beat
this situation. Badness in the alley.
A mock fury in delight.
She too knows what's going on :
little girl lost, and her in skirts, wearing
that ring and smiling. I wouldn't want
to be there for that - no, man,
not at all.
-
It's a lack of luster that makes lackluster,
I suppose. It's the darkness on the
light side of the moon that
really makes us wonder.

965. I HAVE TO GET BACK

I HAVE TO GET BACK
'I have to get back to equilibrium,
how do I get there?'
'Uh, you can't get there from here'.
Shades of emendation from dark Satanic mills,
thundering lights along the seascape where
Turner dwells. London's cheery fog? 'Sa! Ain't
no such thing!' Trolley cars within lights and
taxi cabs in bunches. 'Didn't I eat this sandwich
already? Like last Tuesday?' So much confusion,
can't get no belief, businessmen they hear me cryin',
Plowmen dig my...what the hell is that?!...and you've
got it all wrong.' So stop your crying, run back home,
the Bradford County National Relief Fund still waits
for you. They have handouts for mothers and little
children too. You need socks? You need a new shirt?

964. WATCHING MR. MOTO

WATCHING MR. MOTO
('this is Poetry?')
No forks in the house, just pails and pails
of food and all they do is eat with sticks,
or shovels. Cheesiest Chinamen I ever saw.
No, no, can't say that : fondest coterie of
Asian cats ever seen (how's that?).
You know how when someone reads
the newspaper upside down you know
they're faking for sure and probably
can't read a word? Well, that's exactly
how I feel. The sunrise is already later
by like ten minutes a day, and it's the
final day of June. What's with that?
Backsliding already - damned solar system
tilt and twist and spin. Mandarin characters
and a calendar upon the wall. Faded
watercolor of some highland falls
and jasmine, pines, or something.
What do I know? High above, a
dove flies. I'm not sure if this is
real life or just some watery
calendar etching with the
year already out of date.
Mr. Moto? Poetry?

963. BY THE TIME I GET THROUGH WAITING

BY THE TIME I GET THROUGH
WAITING, I'LL HAVE GOTTEN
THROUGH THE WAIT
And it's really most unlikely anyway :
you and I, together, waltzing through
that seaside graveyard looking for
Revolutionary War soldiers, buried
there from the Battle of Monmouth.
We're holding drinks and a sandwich
in our hands. Eating amidst the rubble
of Death is disconcerting, to say the least.
I remembered something from Wordsworth
or Longfellow, or one of those old tyrants
who took pen to paper and memorialized
stuff like this. How no one dies in vain but
for the memory of lost love, or mother, or
the land so dear. How the natives, like
Hiawatha bereaved, still clamor for vision
through the woods and the trees, The silence,
I remarked, is deafening. The sunlight shakes
through the Heavens like holy water leaking sacred
from some Papist pail. There's nothing past elation
to keep the mind at bay. I watch a nearby limb as
it slowly leaks its sap - torn from the bark, but
still connected, it yet hangs. Everyone else, save us,
is dead; the tree limb, by contrast, exists now
somewhere between these two quite different states.
I accede to the demand, and decide to live on.
The Revolutionary War is over and, ever at
rest, all these soldiers are calm.

962. THIS JUST IN

THIS JUST IN
'They took our documents at the border,
stripped us bare and made us lie down in the
marsh. There must have been maybe 70 of us.
I think I alone survived. One after the other, they
took us away and then, as I said, made us
head for the marsh - we were all crouched and
scrunched together, and then - somehow - they
just began firing. The sounds were horrible -
gunfire, screams, groans and grunts.
Then it grew, very slowly, silent.
I guess I survived by being
under everyone else, and -
though they tried to check -
no one found me alive,
until you did.'

961. ALTAMARINE : BAD WEATHER

ALTAMARINE : BAD WEATHER
Bam! Bam! Don't do me there! Let it horrid
pass me by! I genuflect with my only hand,
but it always seems that no one notices.
-
The sign says in 1823 there were over forty
people living here - a sawmill and a mission post,
together. I can hardly believe it myself. All that
visceral work, and so few female delights.
No families, apparently, were ever formed;
which makes me damned suspicious.
(Bam! Bam! Don't do me there!).
-
An overland stage went weekly from
here to Freehold and back. That same leathery
parchment tells me that, in Freehold, there
was ample provision for ribaldry, and
even a bordello. People used to say, 'boys
will be boys' and all that crap. I don't
hear that much anymore. Everything
now is so sensitive and caring.
Bam! Bam! Don't do me there!
-
Nothing makes sense anymore.
In the tiny graveyard on my right,
the sign says, all those original
millers are buried.
-
(But it always seems that no one notices).

960. WHEN THE MORNING PARADE COMES KNOCKING

WHEN THE MORNING
PARADE COMES KNOCKING
'What did you have in mind?' I heard her ask, playfully.
'Setting the moon on fire, destroying the rays of the sun,
whitening the sky of morning with justice, cutting off
fame at the knees. Is that a good enough answer for you?'
And then the funny man with the summer hat and
the owlish glasses came over and - holding his
scavenger-hunt clipboard, said, 'Can you help me
with this clue, but don't tell anyone else? Whose
garden was looted for this hedgerow and trees?'
I answered, since I knew, and continued sitting down.
'George Washington's at Mount Vernon. The little
plaque that says so is right there, beneath that bush.'
I pointed about 30 feet away where, in fact, it was.
He bent down to peer, wrote down his answers,
and thanked me twice. 'All life should be that easy.'
I said that to her, but she was already gone.

959. BURKE VALLEJO

BURKE VALLEJO

I am a thief of character;

I am a character.

The toothache gave me a headache,

the headache reinforced the toothache.

I am the one in the shadows,

the one leaning forward into thin air.

I live outside the four walls you think you

see me in. I am enamored of nothing but

the little things that may interest me.

Once I was a trapper in the distant

fields afar, now I track vast dreams with

the smallest effort. These are all my marks.

I am the one performing without the net,

there, see me off to the side in

that old carnival shot -

traveled for years with that crowd.

Not a thing to show for it, nothing.

Drink your tea, and be quiet. Listen.

A woman like you can make me walk the plank.

I’ve had images in my head for five days straight –

the toll they take is the toll they make.

Sometimes, I try to remember the ‘Chamber of Horrors’

in that carnival show. It had an entrance clothed

in black curtain. The little cars took you around.

One day, I found a small man walking through there.

On foot. He came to me in the dark, and said:

"How do I get out of here?"

I remember thinking for a moment, after he startled me,

and then chuckling : "There’s only one way," I said.

"The way you came in is the same way out."

958. MARY CANTWELL LIVES FOREVER

MARY CANTWELL

LIVES FOREVER

I caught Barstom at the Rudder.

I swear he said the same about them all :

'I created a circus, and I ran away to join

it.' I guess that about sums it all up about

as good as any. I can't yet find the palace,

and I've certainly lost Mr. Mobius now.

Yet, somehow, the light never goes out

within, and Mary Cantwell lives forever.

-

I am oh so sorry for oh so many deaths,

and others I couldn't care about at all.

It is like that everywhere : mass graves

in the Balkans, frozen stiffs in St. Petersburg,

dead babies at the Baptismal fonts. I hate

the Ukraine as I hate the Danube - a

swilling marsh, a trashy highland, meandering

everywhere yet drained and channeled,

sides and angles and bridges to nowhere else.

My heart will always have a hand in love,

and Mary Cantwell lives forever.

957. CONSTRUCTION

CONSTRUCTION

('delight is a candle')
The tireless work of the construction
is done. The roadways are finished, the bridges
are in place. Now if they only had somewhere to go.
There are cows with fewer paths than this; meandering
over hill and dale, river to post, marsh and swamp
and back again. Now, if only I could juggle this fast.
-
I watch the land beneath my feet.
It ripples and rolls, shading this way
and that. Between us, we smile - the
entire world is seen this way, beneath
our feet, yet sovereign and sure.
I have nothing more to say.
This dog is, certainly,
set in his doghouse.
-
Delight is a candle - not to
a blind man, one who cannot see
at all, but for for someone as myself -
with blurring eyes in a hazy
half-light wherein the
candle really does
help.

956. THE WORK OF STRANGERS

THE WORK OF STRANGERS
(Ed Blackwell)
Jeremiad farthest reaches
longest day fevered nightmare
coastal skimmers. He's the one
with the magazine face, lost in the
junkyard and cleaning his gun. It
doesn't take much imagining to
see where this is going.
-
I sat back and wondered -
who played drums for Coltrane?
But as it went, the music played
on. The dimmest orange light had
just broken through the clouds - a
daybreak at some five forty-five a.m. -
and all it was was just behind my left
shoulder in an orange sky of delight and
fire. But now, and that, only for a moment.
-
Jeremiad farthest reaches and
who played drums for Coltrane?

955. JUST NOTHING THEY COULD DO

JUST NOTHING

THEY COULD DO
(a true story, related)
In republican centers you can never
find these two - the big one with the
yarmulke bragging about Israel, and
the little one with the torn boating shirt,
looking up, saying 'I don't know why
everyone's so down on them for raiding
that ship. I rather admire them for it.' Ah,
so the joyous homeland of the satisfied and
the sated! Yet, then, just as quickly, the
conversation changed, to someone's health,
or lack of it - death, in fact - always a
concern for these two when near the
register. 'His liver gave out. It just
gave out. I understand, at the end,
there was just nothing they
could do.'

954. ANY SEMBLANCE TO THE MARITIME ENDS RIGHT THERE

ANY SEMBLANCE TO

THE MARITIME

ENDS RIGHT THERE
They fall, they fall, they tumble:
arc'd omnivores dousing their strength
on the domino'd stumble of reason.
The thin boats slither in their gloss veneer -
here and there a sail, bending over, in the
constant of a breeze.We hail the moment to stop
to watch : stay, linger, remain. These are not
boats, but angels, true crafts of a Heaven
made of water with grace and light!
-
Well, it seems like that anyway...and then
come the rueful owners, fearful of their
monies and costs. They wipe old sweat
from newly formed brows. Vowing to
come back tomorrow.
-
On the trampoline nearby, I watch, as
over the fence from my gazebo by
the sea, two naked girls are romping
on the jumper, laughing as they fly.

953. IF

IF

If I can be made to be what I am

I'll be happy alone on this porch.

The red-wing blackbird at the Jimson

Weed - one equation together forever.

A life such as this would a prime number

be. I'd not need dancing or dining nor doubt

and decay. All your idle chitchat, I'd so

let you say. Your postcard from the

Poconos is there, on the floor.

-

I don't want the matter, but neither

does it matter what I want. Somehow, this

first day of Summer has no meaning at all.

A loudspeaker on the wall proclaims :

'Joltin' Joe has left and gone away.'

I almost no longer wish to listen. If

I can be made to be what I 'be',

I'll be happy alone on this porch.

952. IN CAT

IN CAT
Forty years and later, we are
walking backwards. That leaves
no room for memory - I see you
do agree, and nod. 'Why now?, and
why such short, snappy sentences?'
Saying that, the man with the mandible
cigarette tips his eyes and winces.

951. MEPHISTOPHELES RUNNING

MEPHISTOPHELES
RUNNING
Thin gauge railway running through the meadows,
carrying coal and straw and hay and people. Why?
Only for a gimmick, these days. That fare - used to be 35 cents -
now having risen to $5.55 makes little sense to me : one gets
the very same nothing for the very same ride. 'The old
Iron Bog Railway served an important role in its
day transporting raw goods and people to and from
their places of need.' I was, anyway, never sure
what that meant. Places of need? Places they
had to be? Places where they were needed?
Places that needed them? Places they
needed to be? Why not just say
destinations, and be done?
-
The hot sun above my head had to be
one hundred and ten degrees, and this
damned black train spewing sparks as heat.
I sure didn't need that. Then, only then,
I noticed - this lead car engine had a
name - there, weirdly inscribed on the
nameplate above the outside boiler :
Mephistopheles.

950. LOUDLY DAWNING

LOUDLY DAWNING
(ancient)
Like a crustacean just struggling to talk,
('it can't be don't, shan't be, won't'),
I meander through some shaded
glen thinking of nothing but past
motives. The tree indicates the wren,
the old, idle barnyard shows where
things once were. Down on its wheels,
the tired hayrick bears the scars of
many a wandering struggle through
fields and acres of grass. On the
side of the milk-room, the bent
pail still leaks. Everything takes
its form and nothing else speaks:
only the shape of things, wrapped
by light, casting hard shadows,
dwindling to a moment
before all things have
gone away.

949. McSEMPRIS

McSEMPRIS
Saturday found the derby hat wanting and the
dirigible long gone from the woodshed. He'd parked
the Franklin where all could see, but now there was
nothing but a crowd whizzing by - no one stopped even
to look. Two cats meowed by the awning. Down
on its luck, the broken turntable just spun. If
there had been time enough to paint the fence,
well, no one had done it after all. No matter.
They'd splatter - morons with toothbrushes
held in their teeth - anyway and the job
would never get done. Lilies of the Valley,
or somesuch painted flowers, seemed wild
all over the side of the barn. Nothing
but a view, like I'd never seen before.

948. A FURTHER GIRL

A FURTHER GIRL
The rowers and their voracious appetites
are out on the lake again : not swimming,
exactly, but rowing. Louisa May Alcott
says : 'Regards to Plato. Don't he
want new socks? Are his clothes
getting shiny?' I see the car with
the bumper sticker that reads 'Jesus
drives in the right-hand lane' has passed
me again. One last thing, a very minor
matter : The Great Wall of China, does it
end at the sea? Is that where I'd find
Puerto Rican Lasagna to be?

947. INELUCTABLE

INELUCTABLE
To the leering, dark and self-referencing
channels of Christianity and any of its
quirky adjuncts, I have no allegiance.
As such, the rebirths of 'Nature' as symbol
fed by pagan feasts usurped by an
anti- intellectualism of the sort that, say,
Easter is, cause me no pause but thanks.
Words may graze those feasts and stop
and drink. And too one hundred flowers
may bloom. Mankind? - as Auden said,
'to fresh defects he still must move.'

946. SCHNAPPS

SCHNAPPS
I didn't know what he was drinking, and the
way he talked I'd never. Know, that is.
'Gin and tonic' or 'skin and vomit.' Indeed!
What a tres-confusing perplexity aye! -
to be, and then some, so confused.
Why it, it made even me myself desirous
of a drink, y'see. Gin and tonic, skin
and vomit, Ginderomic, yes ! That's it!
I'll have now right off one of those!
A Ginderomic here sir, if you please!
And, oh dear, make it snappy. In fact,
well, yes, bring me too another glass,
and make is schnappy!

945. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Has long since been superseded by lawn care,
medical professionals, bargain hunters and
big-box stores. The American revolution has
long since been superseded by stupid bankers,
beauty and nail palaces, sushi platters, California rolls
and new car lots run by salesmen in suits; electronic
stores and home remodelers and gardeners and landscapers
too. It has long ago been superseded by gas and oil
plazas, roadside restaurants, fast-food joints,
parking lots and highways, truck-fuel-oil-tankers
doggie-grooming emporiums beauty shops and mortuaries,
garbage-heap leftover dumps, day-care centers,
rancid schools, stadiums, theme parks, graveyards,
supermarkets and more so much more so very much.
Did I leave out churches and the village-square
gazebos where the decaying politicians still
make their horrid speeches with parades and horns?

944. MOREOVER

MOREOVER
Oldavai Gorge?
Was that the place?
Where Mankind started?
Discovery of the circle and the
square, the line and the wheel?
All that stuff? And only by an
art of such breathtaking simplicity
is the world made? Was the world made?
Where was the screen? Who filtered this
reality in, or then out? I can't say, do you see?
-
Let me get personal - as a little boy, I walked
the gaunt streets of Bayonne, looking at churches,
listening to my father tell me where and how
he lived. The place where his house once was -
'now gone?' I asked. 'Yes,' he said, 'now gone.'
I was surprised how little it mattered to me.
-
Old immigrant Italian soldiers, looking like
for all feast-days small Mussolini henchman
bent on enacting revenge : a stupid Italian
grudge killing, eye for eye, all that talk. I
heard it all forever, in language after language
until I was strangled by the ill-repute and the
stench of death itself.
-
As I grew older, I still wanted to know -
'who started all this stuff, and why?' No
one ever answered my catcalls or queries.
Now, they're all dead - their sickening vengeful
pride having delivered them from nothing, least
of all the grave. I guess they get flowers, though
I wouldn't know, never having visited one of their
graves. The old streets are all gone, just like them:
fedoras and toothpicks and ill-fitting suits.

943. MR. MONTPELIER

MR. MONTPELIER
Yes, yes, I've hanged the change-man
and changed the hangman. I've
put a new morality in place. Making
something from nothing has never been
as easy as this : looking beyond my shoulder,
and over the next hill, seeing what's coming
before it's due to come. I bow to no one, yet
the bowing's done. Now look at that!
The ring is on the other man's
hand again.
-
'Entering Marmaora, we were first all
puzzled by the size of things - either
over-ample or too small for humans.
Nothing in between. It was certainly a
strange place; and the noises we heard
were all repetitive and annoying.'
That's what I read exactly on the
old explorer's guest card.
-
Nothing is ever tuned to the
frequency you'd think.
As I saw it, (and so I
told him), the dumbest
ones get the loudest voices,
and vice-versa too.

942. NOTICE!

NOTICE!
(profligacy poem)
All changes must be clearly marked.
Tag label Sedlak marking barrier
blister clasp tape strapping.
Hand hold only. Do not bend.
Keep from heat. This side up.
Do not rest on edge. Packing
list enclosed. Surreptitious
drywall entry. Mark by hand.
Do not undo stenciling
All changes must be
M-A-R-K-E-D.

941. LIME HOUSE

LIME HOUSE
The sundered hands of
a broken slave. Bereave me.
Lime house. Root cellar.
Summer kitchen. Down
by where the water runs.
I ask nothing, and,
oh, oh, I take less.

940. HOW I LOVE THE GAME

HOW I LOVE
THE GAME
You make me shudder,
you make me weak.
Lie down in green pastures,
pump up the meek.
On the edge of the small,
stupid town (that is not, really),
the carnival has set up camp.
There for eight days, give or
take a few. The set-up guys
come first. Despicable crew -
stalwarts and trenchmouth boozers
and dopers. They encamp in
their campers and wagons and vans -
all tools and rigging and wires. They
sleep on the grass, they sleep in their
pants. These grizzled veterans of all,
sexmobiles and Ferris Wheels.
The whole, entire mess goes up.

939. DEATH IS NOT PART OF LIFE

DEATH IS NOT
PART OF LIFE
I walked Mr. Twain through his paces
and grew deadly tired at that. So much noise
and a wearisome toil . He once said to me,
'It's as if you got to find, well, something
to write about, just to keep going.' And
all that was well before Wittgenstein. I've
never been in battle, but I've worn
some armor old.
-
Those things, those dominoes set in
a row - you say they are people waiting
for the bus. I say no. Cadavers like that
can't move and they are stupid, blissed-out
kitchen workers talking swiftly in a tongue
from another land. They never stop - and
chatter and laughter I hate. Mexicali
Rose just got here, late.
-
The tall man, with the red bandanna,
I heard him say : 'There's no efficiency
like death; it comes straight at you, lurks
long, finds the lethal, and strikes.
Everything else should be so easy
but death is not part of Life.'

938. COMING UP FOR AIR

COMING UP FOR AIR
(Segal's)
It's not. Hardly. There's nothing there.
The old storefront in Easton, now long
gone. Some merchant name like a million
others - wedding clothes and balloons,
sunglasses and shoes, dress pants, beachware
and more. As the name is gone I can't remember
it. The building too is gone - and all I've got
is the photograph with the very stylized lettering.
A sign, signifying something. Myles, or Tep's,
or Siegal's. Yes, yes, oh that was it. How many
things just like that live on in the infamy of an
idle mind? Active? Encountered? Engaged?
Aye, there's the pun. I rub it in.
-
My only daughter, she's turned out to be
a mobster's wife, and what can I do?
Get killed because of what she's become?
I'll pass on that. She's snorting cocaine
in her living room right now, probably
lounging back in her panties and shirt -
his shirt - open down the front, unbuttoned
with nothing underneath. And the TV on,
loudly too. A mobster's wife, and
what can I do?
-
Trying to find a conference call :
fifteen popes talking to ten presidents,
dollars to donuts about nothing at all.
I can't speak the language, can't read
the tongue. I'm tying to find that
conference call.
-
Walt, pepper, grapefruit, onions and kale.
Men of so many other names - the girl
with the drum majorette, the ballerina costume
worn by the midget, she, the one on the
balustrade, she, the one of the pirouettes.
The old, old doctor with the black leather
bag. He walks in backward, and
leaves so sad.

937. THE GOOD MORNING OF THE BIG-LIPPED FISH

THE GOOD MORNING OF
THE BIG-LIPPED FISH
With everything all together, the man had
his hand in a fishlock, something like holding

onto a cat by the Simpson. The new-found
day was just crawling around the mission-post,
and the fat fellow with the cleaver was wielding
it close. 'On the first day of creation,' he was
thinking to himself, 'was it they made the water
or the sky?' He was damned if he could remember.
-
It sometimes seems it's always like that, a
mixed-up confusion, a Chevrolet when a
Cadillac was needed, or what you wanted
anyway. I remember the day I was too drunk
to drive. It was Memorial Day, about ten
years back. This girl drove my Lincoln home
for me, while I had to wobbly-walk. It was only
about a mile, I grant, but what the heck. She
was perturbed. When I finally arrived, there was
the car - but up on the curb. Just goes to show....
-
Seems there's an intention in Nature that's never
been met, or at least not yet. Leaves that whistle
in the wind, or make a rustling sound that you
can hear all through the night. A moonlight
that settles in eddies and coves. The dash of
the barn swallows, this way and that. In much
the same way, it was never my notion, intentionally
or not, to finish this life up with any semblance
of any good sense. But then, the intentions
in Nature are never that dense.
-
Danse macabre? Dance of Death?
Morbid jig-reel, square-dance met?
I went, just last week, to a fortune-teller's
wedding. In acknowledging my presence,
she said - 'In your future I'm willing to bet,
and I hope you're ready. I see death and
darkness and sadness; I see everything
except a beheading.' Needless to say,
that was some kind of wedding.
　

936. NASSAU HALL

NASSAU HALL
I am in a place where even the gardeners
are complaining about their work. It's a hard deal -
to have to listen - short, sudden words : 'now, time,
not mine, won't, damn.' The black squirrel, an
ostensible beneficiary of their work, stares on,
watching the men. Not just another awful day, please.
-
I look on as well, straight ahead as
if I don't know. A wonderful star-sparrow
breaks through the light. I am smiling again.
-
Ajar, the door, and both the books are open.
We wish where Washington walked - quelling
that magnificent, mythological beast within us.
Revolutionary, after all, not just some foppish
ungenerous lad. I can't be all I want to be -
and that (I note) can make me sad.
-
Nassau Hall is not my home. It now dimly bespeaks
to me of other horrors - once, on these quaint old
Indian lands. We concentrate now on newer ideas
- of which the many I want to say 'Ideals' - carnage,
native blood, a violent usurpation, dispossession,
brookside assaults, murder, bounty, battle and death.
I can't not think, I think to myself.
-
I look on, straight ahead, as if I don't know.
A wonderful star-sparrow breaks through
the light. I am smiling again.

935. OUT THE KENDRICK

OUT THE KENDRICK
Miscreants are bereaved and
beavers are lost. Ideas are like
honey and pathos is vapid.
I like things like this :
suspenders in the window,
new lighting along the edge,
drawn drapes to keep the
light IN, not out. A solemn,
mellow sort of religion to
usher in the new music.
-
Had I not turned around, just then,
that steamrolling truck, headed
straight for me, would have never
been seen. Would I have written
my memoirs about that? I wonder.

934. A COUNTRIFIED GENOCIDE

A COUNTRIFIED GENOCIDE

Some people like their eggs and bacon,

tea in the morning, biscuits and chicken.

All that vilified crap. That went out long

long ago. Boxcars lined up on some old

Auschwitz steel, Italian guys with carabinieri

guns jamming the barrels down their own

throats and firing. Death as a sideshow :

Hungary, Poland, Russia, France; all

those postcard places. I was reading just

today an old Le Monde about the progress

the tanks have made. Trespassing fences

and trenches, no fortifications seem strong

enough to hold. Some King Alphonse tried

that once - maiming all the horses and

15,000 men in some weakened attempt

to gain a few thousand feet. It all went down

so badly - 'jes' like there t'weren't no one

home.' Jethro Mawther said that, chewing

tobacco, as we sat in the front of his ratty

old Mercury. Oh Jesus, some situation for

the ages, for sure. Eighteen dead men

on a barbed-wire fence.

933. IMPERIAL MEANDER (false bottom blues)

IMPERIAL MEANDER
'De King, He don't know nothin'!
And about nothin' that is too!'
Porphyry in Akron Hart Crane
dirigible Life Savers candy heart
matter. I swell to follow your
punching bag - only once
my bulging heart.
-
Here are my notes for your reaction:
I was born not once but twice.
The first time was Bayonne, NJ.
I was born beneath the Bayonne Bridge.
I had no mother and no father neither -
and only once the bridal heap took
something off the top to make me.
Make me wince - come-shot sperm
dribble overflow jism rumble rhythm.
Two gangsta' hoodlums crazy in lust.
If you can't find your mother, than
who do you trust?
-
Second time around I was a'risen from
the dead - a second-tier mulatto bent
and twisted. They uttered last rites
over my head - and extreme unction
was my function. But I showed them.
Excommunicated. Nicely Expurgated.
Some new soul just risen from the dead.
-
'De King, He know nothin'!
'Bout nothin' neither!'

932. THE HOLY LAND CRUSTACEAN

THE HOLY LAND CRUSTACEAN
Five fingers to a glove, one wrist to a hand;
we make our meek allegiances...whatever
that old line was. I simply forget. Standing
by a rainy window, crusted with grime, the
old dirt tracks down the glass as I watch.
I feel like a feeble refugee, eating mashed
crackers in some mushy tea. The sort
of stuff they feed prisoners in a Gulag, in
shirts with no sleeves and beanie hats
fat atop their shaved heads.
-
If I ever had a woman, I'm sure - even
that long ago - that I'd remember. As it
is, this rat-infested cubicle with yellow light
and shit in the toilet has been my home,
prescribed by some sickening judge,
for six long years already. Sixteen
more to go, the paper said. I used
it, way back when, to wipe my ass.
-
I don't have the willpower to watch even
the sand slide down through the pinhole.
There's nothing on my wall to watch,
even if I'd ever wanted to. I wish
there was a woman to clean
my face.

931. RIMBAUD IN TRANSLATION

RIMBAUD IN TRANSLATION
I don't have the muscle to do you in,
I couldn't muster the energy to slit you.
All I can do, actually, is listen some more to
your bullshit lines : jumping cadavers and
toasters that barf, thousand dollar pants
and handholds of gold. Preposterous horseshit,
all. But, here I sit, taking it in. I shan't leave.
I won't get up. Gun-running fucked-up young
bastard that you are, I'll outlast you waiting in
the line to Hell. Watch the window, shade your
face. Look towards the skylight once more.

930. SO AT THE GRAVE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

SO AT THE GRAVE OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Braverman, walking southward,
opening arms to winsome trouble:
a highland voice like a bird, a
sound like unto nothing else, e'er.
Procure the water for the goblet,
do. I hear the distant ladies singing -
an oh-high warbling voice, so
far, far, far away.

929. IT BEARS NO MEANING

IT BEARS NO
MEANING TODAY
My sheen entabulature - an
irrevocable echo between caves
and walls sundered by doubt and
left open. I am not at home. I
am away. I travel about. If
they play 'Shenandoah' once more,
I swear I shall scream.

928. JEW GODDESS

JEW GODDESS
(jewels and money)
The key is set and all the women
are dead. Now you've gone and done it.
Once there was a huge field of sunflowers
running high alongside the roadway -
all now nothing but a miserable pavement
and a parking lot with lines. And they burned
the farmhouse for good measure. Why do we
have to live this way? That corner of Hell, where
the developer lives? He will live right there forever.

927. MONEY MATTERS

MONEY MATTERS
The Gedze and the Orshards,
the Cubullais and the Wyants,
they are all, by decree, rich styles
of pottery. My spare change collects
them. Museum pieces, with a shed
in which to store them. Glass showcases
indoors, with thick, lustrous carpets
where inquisitive people walk. No
matter what we ever do, we are
mere shadows of our former selves,
and each moment makes us less.
-
I have a Butler, named Tendon, who
takes care of these matters : my museum
attendant, me helper, my go-fer, my star.
His daughter too, Carolina, I support;
giving them both housing and food.
It is, all in all, a wonderful arrangement
full around - they are secure, I am secure,
and - mostly - problems are never found.
-
Look at the sun going down over my
western pond. Isn't it a lovely sight?

926. PLAYLIST

PLAYLIST
Gone run down stark-raving crazy
now you are was then I me. Got stopped
[just we that] when the message came.
To bear witness, I speak. I speak
as a survivor lost amongst survivors,
each and all of whom thought to swear
they too were last. So, so we are all not
then alone. So what?
-
'We can't be silent! We must give evidence!
My God, we have been witness!' - such
Jakob, worked up, said. And [yet] I said
nothing in return. The conclusion [they said]
was: 'we've got to face the facts, we've got
to know what happened.' [I said]: 'Don't you
know?' [They said]: 'Well...yes....and no.'
-
It's never been easy being Sam Sham.
Though they try : run down stark raving crazy.
('Why don't you come down for ransom?
I've heard you like the kids').

925. PRETEND YOU CARE

PRETEND YOU CARE
Pretend you care about the price of babies
in China, pretend you care about captives and
death. Pretend you care about hostages in Haiti.
Pretend you care about men running borders
and fighters and old men starving and kids
on meth. Pretend it matters, even for a moment,
that some don't eat, that some drink water
that's bad, that others, housed in mud
hovels, go blind before they're ten. Pretend,
if you can, that religious people can't lie, and
that fighters are always right and the men
who gives speeches and hold office are
always honest and bright.
-
No, though I know, it's impossible,
no, I say you must go on. Pretend
things are right. Pretend there's no
alarm. Our arms are crossed in
obeisance. Our consciences
are clear.

924. RANDOM COLLECTIVE

RANDOM COLLECTIVE
They are sitting out in the light.
'Your Honor, my client is a poor
black man.' Whatever he meant, I
did not know : doing the job of a
black man poorly? Or being a
black man with no money?
Surely, he meant one
or the other.
-
I tire of things easily:
my spendthrift ways have
killed me, my banners, the
winds have whipped and ruined.
I wonder, when I look at them,
'why is it that red always fades away?'
-
Tightrope bicycle accelerator diorama.
The men in the particle smasher are all
famed PhD's, working on a top-secret project.

923. GANGRENE THE UNIVERSE

GANGRENE THE UNIVERSE
Damn the bezel once more! The rooftop itself is
gone. People looking up, gazing at things in wonder -
true Life, as never seen before : the wonders of
each moment, animal life, human-kind, all things.
We enter this strange museum at our own peril.
-
Well what can you pant at when the
excitement's done? A few fallen trees,
some guy putting new paint on his outside
wall, a blackbird, yelling at the wind.
-
I sourced the outtake to the woodpile by
the river : just about where Ellis last
took a snooze. The canoes were leisurely
bobbing on the water, while a few kids
went skating by on their runs.
-
On the whole, I really had nothing to do,
nor wanted to be doing anything at all.
Damn the bezel once more.

922. THE LAST DAY OF MAY

THE LAST DAY OF MAY
Get yourself set up very nicely, with all
things in their places - at least you'd think.
But then, by token surprise, we are greeted
not only by all the other things but by the voices
of old men singing the tired despairs of their lives.
Like hopeless diamonds. Maybe once would be
tolerable, but in earnest they just go on and on.
-
The wet, heavy dew of this morning's overnight,
this morning's colder May dawn, like a picnic
spread on water-glistened grass, opens its riches
for each squirrel and each bird. And, yes, it seems
they all partake. There are no old men in such a
morning moment. House-wren, robin, sparrow,
red-wing blackbird and Balt-i-more Oriole.

921. IMOGENE

IMOGENE
I miss you, Imogene.
I'd imagined that was your
shadow indeed coming over
the fireplace grate out here, near
the table where I sat. Lo. I was mistaken.
You were always a shadow to me, and
would be so evermore (even if I could see).

920. RAILSPACK HEIGHTS

RAILSPACK HEIGHTS
Railspack Heights, the place where the strivers
live, bounded by jazz and calypso. An
unseen mix to be sure, but one more than
worth seeing up close. Doves on the
blanket. Small fish served on bread.
-
We sat back and thought about where
we were. Along the riverbank, where
the mud was still shiny, the limbs and
broken branches of last week's flooding
hung haphazardly over the grasses.
-
I have thought about little else since.
Red wine, spilling like blood,
over the edge of the glass.

919. BY THE WAY

BY THE WAY
By the way,
I wanted to say,
I get the hang of it and
it's all really nothing at all.
I'm sick of my own temperature
and fever and would rather just
lie down and die than stand before
what I see. Gruesome loads of
oh-so-dead fish, now washed up on
the same shore where the equally-expired
seals are rotting. Why cares about Durango Bay
when we've got the whole world at our fingers?
Why limit the damage to one such small spot?
Let's fuck it up big time, and ruin all we've got.

918. CONCLUSIONS

CONCLUSIONS

Banishment forever!

One step up from your slumdog Goddess!

Your hands can't touch what your eyes can't see.

Or can they? One step from Heaven or five steps from Hell?

Whichever direction you go, it's always something.
Or, well, anyway - it never was anything I had
to be concerned over. My cloak was never
your garment.
-
Wind in the willows, owl in the tree.
Morning arises like an unsettled marker -
brooding red, deep and orangey-dark,
on the always-dangerous highway horizon.
I watch the trucks sneak by : all their torrid
combinations of noise, leaky fluids, gear-whine
smacks and the gruesome sound of big rubber
on pavement. Sometimes, only sometimes maybe,
I wish I was deaf for an hour.
-
They said some Virgin Mary came here from
Wichita - with a guidebook and an ace bandage.
Scouring the neighborhoods for winsome young lads,
the few she could contact were already engaged.
Baseball. Apple Pie. Mom. Chevrolet.
Any of that old American stuff. Like
Tom Sawyer on a five-dollar
bill. Any of that old,
American stuff.

917. THE ATMOSPHERE IN ALL ETERNITY

THE ATMOSPHERE
IN ALL ETERNITY
I was once just like you -
with two hands in the eastern pocket
and a gumshoe on my wand, with the kettle
pockmarked by rust and wishing to be forgotten,
the lamp in the hoarfrost descending, and the
lonely gilfrist running down. But, you also
should remember, I was - at one time just
as well - really quite unique. With my
marklight overdue and the spacious
argument of the court-cost
lawyer making no real
sense to anyone
at all.

916. THE ADEPT, THE ADROIT SKIMMER ON THE FACE OF THE POND

THE ADEPT, THE ADROIT

SKIMMER ACROSS THE

FACE OF THE POND
Just like the water running its sideways
rivulet through the mud and silt, I'm
sitting where the rocks run themselves flat
'twixt water and grass. A few trees here low
overhang. Over to the right, the long-abandoned
cabin I'm staying in leans and wilts like some old
mid-Summer tree just a'hanging in the noonday heat.
Nothing moves more than a shimmer; the adept,
the adroit skimmer across the face of the pond.
On the outside wall somehow still hangs a
shovel and a rake. No one's imaginatively
touched them for years - or leastways for
seasons. An old, wet curtain, remnants
really, hangs out of what once was a
window and a ledge. Like the Bible
would'a put it...'Dampness was
on the face of the Earth.'

915. MY RANDOM MOLECULAR COUSINS

MY RANDOM
MOLECULAR COUSINS
(the Malarkey Brothers Religous Tent Service, 1972)
Were targa-time remnants to come,
now would be the moment. I am sheathed
in a scarf of ivory - like a sculpture, like
a memorial. Martyred dead, unshod masses,
those slaughtered for what they believe.
In an otherwise broad gesture we too are
marching to a Praetoria, of sorts. Gold watches
hang from chains, wrists on crosses, nailed hands -
all these things bleed, momentary truths and tokens.
All those soulful mourners singing, they march across
the street from where the killings first took place.
A source-book for the redness of the river's blood.
The soda fountain makes a lie of the color red.
Even the Cardinal from St. Matthias' Residence,
he whacks off in rhythm to only the Gods of his
own frantic desire: eternal life, the collection plate,
the resounding success of 'Thy Will Be Done.'

914. THE BOXER REBELLION

THE BOXER REBELLION
(1910)
'There are many Christian converts who have
lost their senses. They deceive our Emperor,
destroy the Gods we worship. They pull
down our temples and altars, permit neither
joss-sticks nor candles, and cast away
our tracts on ethics. They ignore reason.
Don't you realize that their aim is
to engulf our country?'
-
I am resting on this highland hillside.
Near me, a red wing blackbird sings,
and a quick robin scurries along
the ground. The yellow sun is
high atop the sky. I am
seeing this, and I am happy.
Were the Revolution to
finally come, I know I
would not die.

913. AS LONG AS I COULD DO ANYONE, I'D DO YOU

AS LONG AS I COULD DO
ANYONE, I'D DO YOU
(Central Park)
The skyline was bleeding and I was
doing nothing but sitting here reading
a book. What a useless soul! All along
the dismal swamp, beavers and otters were
thinking together : what shall we do
when this city is gone?
-
The fat, rich ladies with their whoresome
daughters - the beautiful ones, the shy ones,
the smart ones - they were just sitting there
to await the tea and the scones, any of those
myriad desserts come flinging. I caught
one girl's eye, and showed her my tongue.
-
What do you do with money? Simply
throw it back in someone's face? Or try
to find finery of velvet and lace? The
line outside the Museum was growing.
Sickening people, standing up to
see the past. I knew things were
dwindling, but not this fast.

912. SASS SQUAD

SASS SQUAD
Quasimodo Alkalai and
all the rest. A guy walks into
a bar, throws his ashes on the floor
and says 'who says you can't be in
two places at once, that's what I want
to know?' Bartender looks up, says,
'Buddy, are you dead or are you alive,
and who's gonn'a pay for your drinks?'
The whole place then erupts into a
Hallelujah chorus. The dead guy seems
to slip away. At that point, flipping
a coin, I decided I didn't care which
way. And, therefore, why then
should you?
-
Straphangers everywhere
need to beware. Mad killer
on board, better take care.
-
Let's hear one for the needle, boys;
I've still got the marks inside my
arm. 'It's my first day on the
job,' she says, 'it's going
really slow.'

911. PASSED OVER BY FIRE

PASSED OVER BY FIRE
(the Holy Ghost)
The wind came through on a pass -
welcomed by no one but present in spite.
Windows shook while the preachers spoke.
Bells rang themselves in a fury of noise.
A cat, creeping by, stayed as close to
the building's edge as it could.
-
If I could have Littlejohn's eyes, I'd
probably see just as well : all things,
intentional or not. Mrs. Wambercotey's
housedress flapping, the sauce in
the bib of her coat. What I could
do with such knowledge would
prove that knowledge is
power. Just like the
preacher just said.
-
Too bad they know
so little. Too bad
they know so
little at all.

910. TESTAMENTARY

TESTAMENTARY
Dark men in hoods, with their crazy lights in the sky.
I am aware of nothing, but I am aware of them.
I have seen the written markings, their ancient
plans of ships - brown markings on sepia and faded
parchments. Stories of the sacred seas. Stories of the sky.
When I went up to their craft, they seemed to welcome
me in, forcing me to sit in a bath made of silver or
lead. I was 7 years old, and, really, quite

dead - 'til they brought me to Life.

909. MORDANT TRESPASS

A MORDANT TRESPASS
I'm walking past the open fence as people stare
out - blank moons with strange lunar craters.
As I pass, they watch. But they are not real.
They are chimeras that I have imagined in a
real pursuit. In my actuality, I am alone,
inhabiting a world filled with figments
and nothing more. I nod; they speak.
'I have lost my garment and torn what's
left.' I smile, and am forced only
to say 'but you look so nice in the
rags you are wearing.' And, indeed,
she did. As, indeed, did they
all. Only I, myself, stood out -
singularly clad in a strange
raiment of gold.

908. OH MOTHER

OH MOTHER

(from 1958 'til now)

The guy at the corner, the guy at the

corner, driving his car through the

meat-store window. Mother, there are

a rather few things I've forgotten to tell

you - that little store is long gone, replaced

now by a derelict and quite shabby 'professional'

building, long after it was, for many years, a big

thriving, chain supermarket. In between, so much

like you and me, it was nothing at all. Also, I now

have noticed a few 'working' girls working the

corner, for the 'massage parlor' inside. Everything

like this is quite a joke. These girls disrobe for free -

only the rest you have to pay for. Professional fees

negotiable of course. Oh long-gone mother, does this

make it, once again, a meat market, and have we

really come full circle like this?

907. THERE'S NO MAD INTENTION IN LIVING THIS WAY, NO MAD INTENTION AT ALL

THERE'S NO MAD INTENTION

IN LIVING THIS WAY, NO

MAD INTENTION AT ALL

Like the forgotten moment's undertow;
'we may have built the pyramids just like
the pyramids built us. A magic confabulation
of mystical likes and dislikes. We confound it all
now.' Running trains on time, signing treaties
on nuclear arms and debt and trade, shooting
dissenters, or having them shot, from distant
windows and ledges and walls. In the long run,
all this nothing will make no difference, and, as
Keynes has mentioned before, 'in the long run,
we're all dead.' Just like the pyramids' magical
undertow, we have all been swept away.

906. MILLICENT

MILLICENT
She keeps running down - like a
tired dog, she slumbers. I watch
her with a mad intention of
magazine pages and notebook
sheafs. At a certain level, all
people look alike. Millicent tries
sitting erect; her thinly trod
pants, like leggings, grip her skin.
Her fingers try holding the newspaper
and the glass, together, as she talks.

905. TOUR

TOUR
It's sometimes hard to imagine
the whistle-stop tour stopping.
Or going on; continuation being
another matter entire. It's never
automatic - all along the way
we've got all those bills to pay.

904. DISCOVERED AT HEART TO BE A SIMPLE MAN

DISCOVERED AT HEART
TO BE A SIMPLE MAN
Yes, that's me. Inglorious and
found at heart to be. Satisfied
with where I'm going, able to
shuffle off at will, determined
still not to be seen. Back at work
and liking it. Seated at a miser's
desk and locked in at the knees.
-
Nothing much more controverted
than that. List of friends - meaningless
if at all; acquainted with doctors, none.
Able to speak with the bigwigs and
kings - 'fraid not and I'm not besot.
By these means, even I, to use an
Orwell phrase, keep the Aspidistra
flying, or at least elevated, or at least
at large. Elated. A simple man at heart.

903. DOUBTLESS HE WAS TAKING RUSSIA FOR AN ISLAND

DOUBTLESS HE WAS TAKING
RUSSIA FOR AN ISLAND*
No, that's not me, that's Baudelaire.
French gruesome politics in a most
laughing manner. This riposte means
more malice than you'd think. It's the
sort of thing we'd like to say, in private.
-
I am holding a bar of lead in my hand.
It seems to weigh about ten pounds -
a sash weight, an ingot for melting,
who knows. Having been found in
the back of an old truck, it means
nothing to me. Linotype machines
used to melt these down for hot-
liquid lead to make type. I know.
I worked one in 1967.
-
He seems to take Russia for an island;
asking if it were possible to get there by land.
-

*After 'At One o'clock in the Morning' ('A Une Heure
du Matin') - Charles Baudelaire

902. PLATYPUS

PLATYPUS*
(my philosophy is hatred)
You would ask why and what is meant.
I knew that : Greenpoint and Williamsburg,
they all ask at once. It's really simple.
Wherever logic and linear thought
raise their heads, I abhor.
The world is not a straight line
construction - nothing matching
hopes and expectations. Those who
say so...they lie. Their breath is
but expectoration. They speak with malice.

-

*After 'A Season in Hell' - Arthur Rimbaud

901. THE HERMIT

THE HERMIT
Why was I holding the moon in my hands,
and who was it said so? No more frozen
ground than this was there - iced intellect
and hardened emotion. I spoke, and in thus
speaking to clowns I withered. With so little
to say I moved on. Eating dead bones and
manners - or, gnawing like a dog on the past -
I busied myself with great things made small,
not small things made great. Tuxedo and top hat
not, formal clothing away - the eccentric mode
took center stage. Simultaneous and direct,
together, I broadly swept the stage. 'I am one
man, yes, but all my own, and that can be enough
to make the difference work.' I turned on all the
lights and set to endeavor my hearts and wishes too.
In no such condition was I to be found : this is
why the wise man hides away. This is
why the wise man hides away.

900. DOORWAY AND FENCE

DOORWAY AND FENCE
Henry and Mark and David.
Jane and Jill and Mary.
Simple names like these
establish presence.
I am looking through a
doorway by a prism of
light on the wall. The
afternoon sun reflects
itself back. Window.
Lamp. Door. Sill.
Chair. Outside, green
leaves ripple in the wind.
The white square of the fence,
it seems, keeps it all in.

899. WALKING MAN ZEN

WALKING MAN ZEN
Harrow.
Harrowing.
Harrowing flight.
Harrowing flight school.
Harrowing flight school for bumblebees.
Harrowing flight school for bumblebees buzzing.
Harrowing flight school for bumblebees buzzing farmers.
Harrowing flight school for bumblebees buzzing farmers harrowing.

898. 34th STREET BRIDGE

34th STREET BRIDGE
The bridge and its towers together
rest - stone, brick and metal sunning.
The people talk, looking for their places
this side of a university town. We are
really nowhere, yet I am with you; holding
bags, gripping a luggage - with my free hand,
touching your hair. It is like that, and I can
think of nothing but the future now. The
sound of a train floats in the air,
as traffic whizzes below.

897. ONE THING ABOUT L'AVVENTURA

ONE THING
ABOUT L'AVVENTURA
We go out, leaving through the central
doorway. She wears a white scarf,
entwined around her neck like the
tendrils of a vine. The noise of
shoes on flooring is heard.
-
Raucous behavior, I have come to find,
is not new : Edie Sedgewick and all that
crowd, in and of itself, tried defining
a time by just such antics. Something
about that book always had an ending.
-
Now, instead, I stand outside your
window, looking in. The most
beautiful people in the world,
and all their expenses, are lined
up at the marble counter. Each one
pays their price, and the Turkish
guy, the most suave gent there
is, kisses each woman, gently,
on the cheek as they leave.

896. DISAPPEAR BY INTENTIONS

DISAPPEAR BY INTENTIONS
The evidences of the aftermath remain:
names scrawled on walls, houses disfigured
by paint, vandalism at every corner. Two
old cars, down on their springs, sagging in some
corner lot. The schoolyard fence, fallen in, has
lost its basketball nets. At the corner, the old
red-brick firehouse marked '1894' stands
proudly but forlorn - bereft of any use
and meaning. Kids stare back, at nothing,
wincing to belch or throwing some
stones. It's now a cat-like world -
silent but for meowing, when not
chasing some useless yarn.

895. NOT HAVING DONE

NOT HAVING DONE
(no new enactment)
'Not having done a thing right all
day long worth doing blue under sky
patchwork raincloud vista rubric totally
mine. For now, the new robot rules
the idiot roost but no new paradigm yet
encampment seems in place SO I stand
aside and watch the sky - looking up with
hands at side : notice this they say and watch
fair clouds passing high distant jet plane looming
hawks and vultures and ravens; these things all
skinny-dipping in the Heavens. Why not I?
Then you : my silver-sleeved dreamer,
waltzing now slowly across a
glimmering faint light.'

894. CIRCLE

CIRCLE
(Gather up the men at Carston)
I am yours the way thread belongs to
this coat, the way the nail belongs to
the hammer. The cross to the beam.
The ice to the icicle. All together in
a togetherness - not that I know
what any of this really means,
but, in the manner of the
letters belonging to the
word, perhaps you
already grasp what
it is I mean.

893. FOOLISH DOGS

FOOLISH DOGS
Oarsmen to the helm,
jackhammers to the pavement.
See them go! Hear them work!
All things exist - just as we assume -
for this singular moment in time.
Edifying to think this way! No?
Foolish dogs. Sun in sky.

892. PIANO SPLICING

PIANO SPLICING
'We are breaking up the room
and the space and the sound too.
How? Why? There doesn't seem to be
a science-answer. And anyway all this
is not just physical.' There really was
nothing more to say.
-
Astral spectral solar fissure
space and time with that fleeting
hole of moment we live in. 'Momentous?
No, not always nearly not but
empty too just is.' Moment alone
by one - ten thousand splicing
like sound. Overlapping chords
and learning then to intermingle
singles. Notes like this run on
forever. Notes like this run on
forever. Notes like this run on
forever.....

891. THIS IS ALL CONJECTURE THIS IS ALL SHOT FROM THE HIP

THIS IS ALL CONJECTURE
THIS IS ALL SHOT

FROM THE HIP
Moments like this make me wince - preamble
and recitation and I did the yellow dishes in
the sink but wasn't happy about it HATE the
color too ! the landlord came down the
stairway saying your rent was due and I gave
him one in the face and a kick while he was
down - here's the tip - next month's rent in
advance. So I guess you're set. Do the
library rhumba now with Bobbie. It
never entered my mind that you could
fit through the mail slot - Jeez how
was I to know and why?
Just because you saw
me once doesn't
mean you'll see
me again.

890. AT JUNCTION CORNER

AT JUNCTION CORNER
This is wild country; this is crazy land.
I wanted nothing back, so gave as little as
I can. From serendipity to stupidity, most
any highway runs you there. Storefronts
closed by the mescaline police - gerrymandered
outposts of sadness and grief, an outlook of
dismay. The Civil War era opera hall yet
stands, oblique to its corner like any
angle on a stage of bamboo.
Catcalls from the fat halls.
-
Wham-bam gesture Sam,
acolytes in LaLa Land.
Hear the roaring crowd
explode. All applaud
this lonesome load.
-
This is will country; this is crazy land.

889. TIMOTHY

TIMOTHY
Take a pose. Any.
And they all roll in.
One after the other,
the Tinker Street crowd.
Swear they are happy, all.
Even about the snow in Buffalo.
-
There comes a point
(in every asylum) where
nothing matters any longer.
A residual timeclock is ticking.
-
The craftsman strolls in.
Plasterer or drywall, or something.
White painter clothes, tool box,
lunch box, bucket, container;
carrying everything in his rough,
knowing hands. Coarse by contrast
to the space around him.
-
Erudition and punctiliousness are
mainstays of another, far more
proper, time. And then here comes
Butler Kendrick, with all his savvy
saunter, to do it all again.

888. THERE WAS A TIME

THERE WAS A TIME
Time curved. Images arc'd.
Reality ducked and dove.
Nothing was to be what it
seemed. The first light of
Eternity dawning : before
meanings, before names.
One place. One person.
A vast homunculus of
dawning possibility.
All things. There
was a time.

887. PAIRED

PAIRED
I have been paired with a
magic symbol; we go everywhere
together I know. It never speaks,
just shines immaculate and pure
and pristine. A golden glow. A
vital sign. I'd never thought of
this before, and used to laugh at
all the rest : Immaculate Heart
of Jesus, Sacred Heart of Mary...
whatever all that might have been.
Now I've got my own sacred symbol;
my paired throbbing light from within.

886. PROPERTY IS THEFT

PROPERTY IS THEFT
He's that man with the new country ways,
says 'How come I never heard of Mount
Minuscule at all?' Petty criminals end up
in jail, big ones end up very rich. This was
like Preacher Jimmy Allen, straight
out of the Ozarks, to you. 'Shoutin' the
Word everywhere's I can!' - as he said it.
-
'That sleazy fucking Father Knows Best
pervert called me Princess. If he does
that again I swear I'll rip his throat out
somehow and stuff the opening with his
balls.'
-
'He don't mean nothing. He don't know
no better - it ain't anyways like a smoking
gun. He didn't touch you, y'know. Not like the
last time anyway, with my sister Eleanor.
When he was done with her that night on
the football field, she came home with a
big white stripe across the back of her brown
jacket, from the grass on the field, the lime line.
Should'a killed that mother-fucker then, for her.'
-
Two cars rumbled by - dust-jacket silhouettes
right out of some holy Detroit nightmare, thrashing
the dusty road all dirt and gravel, piercing the clear
air with their metal-plastic thrall.
-
'Just like that, I decided I hated him.'
-
One of the cars halted - a dead-black sedan - and
went into reverse. 'Preacher car, preacher car,
answered prayers here you are!' was heard right
before two shots rang out, the glass-shattering
retort heard on window and metal with gunpowder
shock, while inside the now-stopped car (a dead
stop, to be sure), slumped the body of Preacher
Ronnie McClure.

885. MOONLIGHT EXACERBATED EATING CONTEST

MOONLIGHT EXACERBATED
EATING CONTEST
Everyone took a number and then stuffed
themselves with cupcakes. Or at least
that's what the sign said. Everyone sat
down in a row and then drank gallons of milk.
Or at least that's what the newsman said.
Everyone fell over, writhing on the ground.
Or at least that's what the police report said.
Some new kind of witches, a coven of
harmless fools, a militaristic nature cult.
That was crowd talk. You pick.
-
This is what happens when Mankind gets
crowded, when too many people live in
one place, when neuroses and anxieties
have taken over and prospered.
Cows lick salt. Mankind licks
its own ill illusions. All
this, and a highway
runs past.

884. FREEDOM

FREEDOM

It's the sauce of a man that

makes the spice. Whittled to a

time of his own, space and locus

understood - 'to be, or not...' questions

nothing but the operation. The river that

runs and the woods that move, all flavor

the feeling of Mankind's mood. On the horizon

bleakly sunning, all doubt and reason do I see;

and in shackles, oh poor Liberty.

883. MALVERN HILL

MALVERN HILL
There was a bridge curving over
the river, right there, at Malvern Hill.
I know, I saw it, I watched and I
walked it. The most beautiful place in
the world - something even my
imagination could not take all in.
Like spread fingers split by a
beautiful sunshine, the arms of
trees sheltered all the world beneath:
bright light in the valley, bright light
up above. Past it all, a gentle people
went on their way - the masons and the
carvers and the painters and the farmers.
At the dirt road's edge, near the grand
yellow house, a single rooster
was pecking the ground.

882. ALL THOSE OUTSIZED HANDS

ALL THOSE

OUTSIZED HANDS
All those outsized hands, which know nothing,
which do nothing, are now outstretched as well.
They uphold what, I ask : the faint law of a
retribution, the thieving law of stealth and money?
If so, then we are accomplices just by living.
-
I have watched the criminal and the cop,
two sides of a coin, both go down. I have
seen the judge, gagged and withered,
dying in his robes. The legislator
on parade, a hangman's noose
around his neck.
-
It's all so very simple.
There's nothing
truthful left.

881. DARKNESS

DARKNESS
The man was saying: 'my mother had
an interior life all of her very own...'
I was wondering back to him - 'with you,
or without you?' And then, as the
colored lights in the room came on, I turned
and said aloud - 'for whatever purposes of
mankind or fate, it certainly couldn't have
mattered to her whether you were aware of
this or not, so why bring it up now? She's
long dead, and what do you know anyway?'
He seemed to shudder, and a look came over
his face - the sort of look that arises when
one knows one's been found out. 'I, I never
meant to suggest...' He began going on, and
I stopped listening. I realized at that
moment that most family matters are
bullshit anyway. No one knows
a god-damned thing.

880. THE WREN

THE WREN

The shy wren, singing.

My fingers, hurting and bent.

The laces of my shoes,

open and untied. So

much, together,

in one small place.

879. THE RAFT

THE RAFT
I am adrift. I am afloat on a sea of disapproval.
Disgruntled adults joined at the hips, children
too baffled to think. Past me, on the water's
flat surface, float layers of oily junk. The only
tools present are the new bludgeons of
both ignorance and delight. For
them, I am making a new
language indeed.

878. FOUNTAIN

FOUNTAIN

Well, I came here a wanderer and left just the same:

dazed, unfocused, without a rectification of means

or ends. High overhead, the red-tailed hawk has

just swooped - something monstrously graceful

to watch, though fiercely swift and sudden for the

poor baby squirrel. Enjoy the ride, my little brother!

He has taken you to Death!

-

Simply put, I sit around and watch what happens,

without a care for the value of the deed, or the

world. A powerful music courses my veins. Thick,

like the red-blood of certainty, or the slow molasses

of sureness. In there somewhere, because of that,

I sense some odd existential power I can never trace.

-

Maybe that is where the source of all things

comes from. A self-sustaining definition that

answers back to no one or nothing at all.

877. AS IF EVERYONE POPEYE

AS IF EVERYONE POPEYE
You can't make the transformation from the
railroad tracks to the superhighway by reading
magazines on the ferry, Captain. We all know that.
And I think, because of it, the entire world wilts.
-
The Sirens out on the Aegean - those august
things we read about but can never place -
their voices linger on the watery wind. I want not
to listen but do so anyway. I live. Time passes.
It's all a story I'm convinced, but not convinced of.
-
High overhead, while I sit at a roadside table, a
commercial jets tears the sky. Seemingly rugged, it
- right now - looks as delicate as a needle coursing
thread. I can almost hear each fiber pierced: a
sort of silent but lilting scream, like Nature itself
dying in a valley, or the Yellow River, undam'd,
breaking fierce once more over rock and land.

876. THE FRIENDS OF LIBERTY

THE FRIENDS OF LIBERTY
Amidst all sinister apparitions came forth this
day - preening like some peacock with plumage
bold and garish - to strut an obtrusive phase
across my silent, green lawn.
-
My reaction - instead of a selfsame nod or
one more yawn - was to run and hide to a
martial retreat, a frenzied trot, smoke flying
and horses wide-eyed; a Lafayette and a
Washington combined upon a revolutionary
field. All of this, and more, athwart some
frozen, lazy river, iced in by Winter's wrath.
Trentonians, even, perhaps but for a week
or two, my spirits acted as men bivouacked
now alongside a raging stream.
-
It cannot be : this Freedom was always too
torpid, like a Whitman indeed - splurging
homo sensitive greenbacks over baleful
young men, aiding the wounded and then.
"Urge and urge and urge; always the
procreant urge of the world...I effuse my
flesh in eddies and drift it in lazy jags."
-
What real difference, oh Sons of Liberty,
Daughters of the Revolution, what difference
does any of it make? What difference, in fact,
has it made? It's all in the sexual loins, these
meanings we seek for. I tell you, it's in the
loins indeed, for only there is Freedom's need.
-
So I wandered the glade, seeking the innocence
before it would fade. Though all had, by now,
been long gone. I carried through, I stumbled on.
-
'I hear the trained soprano. She convulses
me, like the climax of my love grip.'

*Walt Whitman

875. FRENZY

FRENZY
Pretend for a moment I am not me and
you are not you - what I am and what
you are. Eighth Street's old Jumble Shop
of course would have nothing on this -
a mass of apprehensions frothing over.
Mountains of transformations, appendages
not before heard of: Medusa heads of
our very own, with eyes for hands where
hands for eyes should be. (I tackle here
a shorthand with words even I cannot
fully understand).

*'An external object of any kind is an unsupportable abstraction.
In order to conceive the development of the world, in the service
of geology, let us say, we have to present it as it would have looked
had we, with our bodies and our nervous systems, been there to
see it. But to say that the world was as we describe it, a million
years ago, is a statement which overlooks the development of
mind. The nature of a rock, that is, depends on the nature of
the mind that observes it; we can assume that rocks were different
things a million years ago, because we assume that minds were
different as well.'

874. POLENTA MODERNE

POLENTA MODERNE
Would they have taken the half-life
of Eider and waltzed it away had he
been free? I rather think not. This
one-time, strange aplomb, nearly rare,
less than extinct but by a moment,
followed him down the corridor and
even out towards the gallows, post and
noose. And, incredibly, guards watched
as he side-stepped a puddle on the way
to his death. We, then, have nothing
more to show, nor hope for, on this
way past our own lingering lives.

873. WATERLOO AND GOD, FORTUNE AND VIETNAM

WATERLOO AND GOD,
FORTUNE AND VIETNAM
This beautiful late life on Earth:
I think that God is with me, waiting
on human things too. The curve of
that little, bared foot; that ripple of
indented skin and the pattern behind
the knee; the moist glisten of eyes.
A million other things as well, as wise.
We should not doubt for a moment the
presence of a greater sense, or this
little life on Earth imagined bears no
being. The watchful two - over there -
speaking quietly in their corner: pale
skin, quick chin, each detail formed
with care. An embodiment by another.

872. PARADOX

PARADOX
'The reader brings,
the writer sings.
Context is a factor
of a hundred things.'
They each have their little moments
at the side table where the dirge is
sung and oft repeated. One thousand
hands, bringing supplication to a small,
round, wooden table. I notice no man
stops for anything his quest. The small
votive light, as an incessant Buddha of
untanked desire, weems its flicker forward.
A highly polished marble presence remains -
'is Carrera marble ever used for floors?' - I wonder
to myself. The high loft-ceiling, arc'd, cantilevered,
whatever the terms this architecture uses, also
soars; like words of a prayer, like songs of praise.
Bird-high, lifted, wild, wide and witty. So many
things, falling together, that everything stays in place.

871. DEATH IS THE REMEDY ALL SINGERS DREAM OF

DEATH IS THE REMEDY
ALL SINGERS DREAM OF
Chloe and Simon both together.
They pace the floor like two mad
gendarmes on parade. 'Thinking
about leaving?' one says to the other.
'Oh, I have to. There are no choices left.'

870. DECLENSION 25

DECLENSION 25
Window glass strains the elements:
pictures distorted and we think that's
a bird - some thrush or a sparrow.
Can't see really, can't tell.
-
Fire-truck speeds by with that
city-blare so often heard: flames
or carnage or trouble somewhere.
Window glass strains the elements here.
-
A bus-load of prisoners seen turning
towards the Tombs: dark green bus,
windows wired before glum, dark
faces within. Time does its time,
yet time never wins.

869. MIRROR

MIRROR
I may once have been you; I cannot say.
That reflection within you, it won't go away.
-
Of what use is all this philandering possession?
Why do you hold this God-forsaken image
so fast? It moves, I think I see, only as I
do, or in its opposite, perhaps. Really, too
confusing to even hold my interest.
Were I to exercise my choices, I'd
have them out on you - you'd be
gone like the lemon icing on
someone's classroom cake.
-
There is very little wonder to this world.
What images do appear, find their reasons,
linger awhile, and - fatefully - do disappear.

868. CONFESSION

CONFESSION
There was a fire on the edge of the fire, the sort
of complication no one ever wants. A doubling of
intention, a twisted-twice force of trouble and ruin.
Small craft were falling from the sky, but, no, not
really. They were dropping trails of water or something,
and as the wet-trail fell, before dispersing, it almost
looked solid. I was a witness to this, but never
wanted to tell the story. That meant a reluctance
to talk to authority, and a really glum view
of the world. I'm quite comfortable
with all that, as such, the way
of the world.