3651. SHEILA

SHEILA

Not to go ridiculous matter use

those fulcrum hands to rove and 

roam. Mistake the car maybe for

the cat  -  the theoretical cat yet

trapped : what's in a name anyway?

-

Today I am cleaned of all things.

Words and images all disappear.

Where are you now, Sheila? Is it

all still the same: that Ravel Bolero,

your trench-coat wears, that 

Summer Street inkling - when

I was lost in bright sunlight?

-

Yes, you can battle to the end

of all time, but I bet at the end

there's still time for all that: all 

your Neil Young decolletage,

those slight breasts always

pushing forward and on.

3650. GROUPINGS

GROUPINGS

Ten men enfractured and worn on a cross,

weaving the wrappings like neckward floss.

The vagrant crystal, so sweet; lighting the

horizon with reflected glory. Sweet Sun,

never go down. The awe that the candle

may hold for the flame, that's what I seek.

-

Carmelized, the chatter; and the cars all are

beaming: Yosemite to Santa Fe, all filled

with listless candy-people staring out to

butter the hills and mountains. Children

squirm and chirp, while Dad rushes on

to the motel parking lot, idling at a

quite high speed; steady nerves

and happy feet.

3649. MEMORY

MEMORY

Countenance foreclosure and

countenance despair  -  Flanders

and Frenchtown and Flemington

there. I carry my sunrise torch,

a form of yo-yo respite, back

and forth. I close my eyes, and

all I see are the faces of the

dead I've known.

3648. SUCH STUCCO

SUCH STUCCO

Such stucco in the light of day can

drive me crazy  -  the semblance of

a pueblo glow on the lowly and

sandy hills. I see nothing but gold

and God  -  and I am so tired of

my fellow man. The tinker-man 

talks, and he uses his geography

to grapple with the ground. Dirt

comes forth from dirt  -  old dusty

chunks of planetary matter. Too

small, all that, too small. I hold a

a minimum of doubt, and 

let it go at that.

3647. NEIGHBORHOOD SUICIDE WATCH

NEIGHBORHOOD 

SUICIDE WATCH

Who would want to live? Starlight and mendacity

mixed. Umbridge Cocktails, made by those

swallow-headed girls we all know well.

I want to be this vestige of a planet -

dust-dwarf clump of rock, swirling hole

of anti-matter. Just let me go. Now.

-

Don't lace me with your straight-talk.

Your disgusting platitudes of generous

grace. I barricaded the shed door twice

already with the boards of your declension.

I've taken your sons and daughters with me.

I've enjoyed all my own pretensions.

-

Visiting the old mansion on Tupplefanger

Hill, we suddenly remembered the old family

which lived there once : my God, the very

Tupplefangers themselves! Those old

Newark bastards with a brewery all

their own and all that saucy money.

-

It was 1964. We broke into the storage room.

It was filled with hundreds of thick, black

plastic Victrola records, 'thicker than dinner

plates,' you said. We managed to break every

last one : throwing at walls, smashing with

rocks, stomping with stupid feet. Our

very own Inquistion! Our Crusade!

-

Why we called it that, I'll never know.

The old cop who came to get us  -

in some ancient black Plymouth

with a single light on top  -  said

it was 'all for show.' Not a real

apprehension, I think he meant,

just a response, all for show.

3646. BECKWITH

BECKWITH

(the killing of medgar evers)
Something like that was the name  -

Byron De la Beckwith it may even

have been. I just cannot remember  -

1957, or maybe '63, I want to say.

Negroes being kept out of school,

lunch-counter sit-downs in lame,

crummy Woolworths, and news 

commentators all pretending 

they understood.

-

Then guns come out, or a

wild, mangy dog  -  shot dead

on the dirt road in some 'Niggertown'

bungalow settlement like in 'To Kill

a Mockingbird'. I don't know; I'm a

kid again, and things are all mixed up.

-

How crazy-well do we remember things

anyway? The art and the artifice of chimera

and change. I was not what I am not now.

Well, anyway, I think that's how it goes.

-

How are we sanctified? Loud garbage

trucks, and dumpsters hitting the pavement

and walls; those eerie, early-morning

sounds of service and servitude? The

little, fat man, sitting down to coffee, but

first taking his pills with water? How then,

how, are we sanctified? Tell me.

-

After the battle, when the still-warm guns -

cooling - are being put away, the

dead still litter the streets.

3645. GASES COMBINED IN DEEP SPACE TO FORM STARS

GASES COMBINED IN 
DEEP SPACE 

TO FORM STARS

I'd believe that if there was no form,

if Truth had a harness or if Heaven

had a door. Otherwise, nothing.  I

abhor those so-sure-of-themselves 

blowhards who proclaim all this

stuff. Science and strict language

wear a strait-jacket made of both

ego and vice.

-

The cup of milk is out for the cat

I never see  -  'Hojo', I call it.

In the morning somehow that cup

is empty; other times - along with

the food and chews I leave it -  there

are but crumbs and shavings left. Or

that's what they look like anyway.

Evidences only  -  see that, science

asshole, see that  -  evidences only.

-

Of what once may have been; of what

once I may have put out; of what once

perhaps the chimerical Hojo consumed;

of what once I may have made up. 

I simply do not know.

-

(And the stars give way to gravity...).

3644. LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : PALE GOLD

LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : 

PALE GOLD, Part Two

"I somehow still live, for now, here,

in a body now unkempt and without

any style  -  a twentieth-century anachronism

in a turning, crazy world made of newer gems:

The Lang Company, Mont Batier Clothing and

Home, Espandre's Animal House and Garden

Goods Limited. All the token shit of new jungle

living. 'We have cheese, now, in our golf steaks

and ridgeline purees.'

-

It's nothing more than fancy; a fancy

not imaginable, yet real. The moon, like 

an oaf, gives solace to those who, in

passing, anyone, would want it. It keeps,

as well, a schedule for those who would 

care  -  where it will be, when, waxed or

waned, broken or full. Like some

oh-most-regular fiery kin of comfort. 

And we, we fall for nothing as we

fall for everything and all.

-

Marginal scouts, and marginal scat.

'I love you for your shit, your knotted

head, you strange brown hair, your 

Dorset-coast freckly skin in Summer,

the fucked-up blue of your eyes  -  and,

yes  -  even the way you sometimes

sit, scrunched up, to cry."

3643. MAD DOG HORTICULTURE

MAD DOG 

HORTICULTURE

Give me nothing. Feed me loose.

Hike my skirt. Wend my wander.

Call my mother. Write to Laos.

The pen-pal in the rice field, he is

dying now of blood. Remark on

how the ages crumble. Let

the mad dogs out to play.

Let the mad dogs loose.

Call the settled master

back once more to rule
the royal roost.

3642. LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : PALE GOLD

LIGHT IN EARLY MORNING : 

PALE GOLD, Part One

"When I get out at the jack-pines, yes, I am

already then dead-tired. Not dead, mind you,

just dead-tired, as I said. The hills around me,

all that nature crap I see  -  configurations of

shadows and atoms and molecules done up

in their temporary dress  -  illusionary to be

sure, and who the fuck cares? I want for

nothing, because there is nothing.

-

Not for any high-flying, high-horse-ass

reasons of philosophy or near belief,

but because (fucking a-all) there just

is - Nothing. Not worth looking at,

not even worth caring. All that 'candles

in the wind, don't let your light go out'

crap is but real-estate-sentimental-acres

bullshit, the kind the dime-store used to

sell, and gone to hell for naught.

-

Generalities of matter, and  -  oh Hell!  -  

for the time being alone and there's no

time being. 'Junkpiles of soil and rock,'

Pavarese said, 'the world is a construct

of meaningless variables.' And all these

particularities, he would see them too,

just as I am, the hikers, the man and the

woman with their stupid backpacks and

dumb hiker's asses, boots and cut-offs,

walking sticks and the rest, he too would

see them and get bored to death saying

'Intellectual failures, chic hangouts for

bastardized Nature freaks and the 

assorted bottled-water admirers who

always drift up.' And then anyway

they drive home and get there and

continue to ruin their fucked-up

transient world like a permanent

bad situation. I don't care; my

thirst for the absolute overcomes

their thirst for shit."

3641. ENGINE ROLL-UP AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING

ENGINE ROLL-UP 

AND I DON'T KNOW 

WHAT I'M DOING

Come forth from Elandraville,

friendly dog. That old South African

enclave was once my home too, and

I've not met anyone hailing from

there since 1982. Let's put down

the window glass, roll the awning

out, and just sit here glaring at

some wicked high tea and lemonade.

-

It was a very old Anglia she was 

driving, and he came by  -  and

unbelievably so  -  in what was,

back then, called a Humber 

Super-Snipe, a real 1960's car.

Parked together like that, even

their silly cars looked like sweethearts

on the South African veldt.

-

Yes,then, we just sat and waited.

They were still fighting harshly in

Vietnam  -  crazy American troops

and their allied British support-force

fools. Oh, everyone died together and

I guess it really made no difference.

While, here, in this swell place, the

blacks (as I would call them there)

had better, you said, 'keep their

place, mend their ways, and 

stay abreast of repercussion.'

-

Stay abreast of repercussion! What

a crazy phrase  -  I thought about it

and thought some more, over and over

turning the words : by repercussions

did you not mean retribution? And could

you not just have spoken that instead?

-

No, I guess not. In its place, murder on the

farmsteads, fiery necklaces of burning tires

'round dead men's necks, and  - of course  -

damned snookers and  tea at either noon 

or one, (I truly do forget).

3640. I'VE HAD MY WAY WITH THE ROAD

I'VE HAD MY WAY 

WITH THE ROAD

I've written through poverty and carted my

cards to theater. I've had my way with the 

road. I've dined with Kit Carson and Jack

Tworkov too  -  no dissembling there  -  

not just anyone would do.  I was once

as important as Time Magazine - now

I'm as useless and wasted away.

There are things I have to do, and

they get done : sometimes slowly and

sure, but never poorly. And more - I

used to listen and watch, all the people

growing old and infirm, feeble and dire.

They keep on talking,. All these things

around hem transpire while they just

go on and on  -  until, one at a time,

(I'll bet) they expire. Life gets like that

for everyone. Hagen berry, listless juice,

swagger jelly and all the rest. I've had 

my way with the road  -  'been there, 

done that'  -  as the billboards used to

say, before they were neon-garish lit,

before they were bold with their stuff,

when Burma-Shave signs kept the

roadsides humming and most

mountains had not yet been cut.

3639. SCHOLARA

SCHOLARA

To somebody just like you I'd be nothing at all :

the unfound oasis in the desert full of plight, the

wounded cry of an antelope with a spike through

its heart. Wild or not, that ends that. Having

never looked up, I can never look down. 

-

The Wizard wears the face of his hawk today:

San Francisco matchbooks on the travel guide

to Mandalay. People sit about, slumped and

glumly staring  -  some vague and third-world

airport of the mind keeps them holding patterns

to the things they won't throw out.

-

Old ideas are the curse of the working class.

3638. THE OLD SCHOOL TIES

THE OLD SCHOOL TIES

I have to admit (wind swells, trees twist)

I never know what men talk about when

they say that (shutters slap, water pools).

And what do I care anyway? Five generations

of the same stupid people, over and over.

-

Linen, aspic and lime. Three things without

meaning (geese overhead, low, cackling in

flight; the blind V formation breaking away).

There is nothing sublime in Man as a kind.

-

They buried the carpenter under his willow tree.

They burned his house to the ground, then calling

it purification  -  his disease, it was said, had

already infected five others; (on high, the white

plume of a far-bound jet, in silence). I look

over to the right and see what could be a scene

from 150 years ago : twelve cows at rest in

a muddy, grassed field. Nothing of the modern

age at all  -  an old wooden fence, the bare and

worn path, rutted, the lazing cows, chewing.

-

If I can bring you something, please tell me

what it is ( a man lights a bonfire in the middle

of an open field. What he is burning, like a

mystery, in a second intensely flares. The

wind catches the fire quickly, spreading

hot embers everywhere).

3637. TAKE TAKE

TAKE TAKE

Take this, insane patter, crazy warlord,

mother of pearl handgun revolver barrel casing

inlay, petrify the stonemason and alleviate the

quirk. Anything different, take and make it the

same. I saw your house today, all done in

orange and yellow. I don't know why, but it

reminded me of the drone of a flaming sun

coming down the mountain to consume

the valley - yet I couldn't look away.

-

I spent the today in Chestnut Hill  -  some

puerile-glorious outcropping above the land

of Philadelphia; took Germantown Avenue

all its way out, past hundreds of slum folk

walking about, past twenty stone homes

still amass with their beauty but ruined.

The old is all gone. The new is but

leftover wreckage and ruin.

3636. LIFE WARS II

LIFE WARS II

Lifted the hammer to break the

ken, slaughtered the minions

midnight flashing; oh we're in

for it now. No? When I was a

young boy, I hid in a box, tried

on my father's huge shoes, made

my ice igloo in the driveway snow.

Those blizzard days seemed to last

forever. Now there's only nothing :

dad's shoe's but ballerina slippers,

igloos ice and snow all gone. I

want to break my days in two and

thereby get to live some other half

again; like finding a book with a

second life among us, like finding

a book with a second life.

3635. TO GOD ETERNAL AGAIN

TO GOD ETERNAL AGAIN

I have no feeling for love or for want,

for children or mothers and dads. They

are all unimportant trifles for me, each

a dalliance with but outline and form.

Instead, I keep you watching : most

important, heart, love, sublime. The

man with the castle-profile, some

accidental Indian recalling a place

he's never been, a Pacific Northwest

Haida native recalling creation myths.

None of that matters now, for that

creation is all over and done. I have

no alchemy or gold for you  -  even

my very best words are dross and

coal for your ash and fire.

3634.I'LL HAVE TO TRIM MY ADVANCE

I'LL HAVE TO 

TRIM MY ADVANCE

(Mammon Leftover)

The bankers collide with the law

while the brokers collude with each other.

It is mentioned 'there's no shame in the processs'

though the process had  long ago died. The wastrels of

hunger and meat, those things which are not profit, wait

about for crumbs or leavings. The dark side roars, the

situation threatens. Outside the stack exchange, I see

two hundred people scruffing the neck of good sense,

fighting back to the pillars of Mammon.

-

Tonight was the largest full moon of the year,

I am told - one must believe illusion? I saw this

wan disc dipping down, touching the rim of a now

not-so-solid Earth. 'Just a closer walk with thee, oh

dear Jesus, let it be.' Such were the words of this orb

as they lit on the sky  -  and then the drunk mavens

broke through. 'Cinco de LMayo for me and for you!

We get drunk on the land, we are singing your profits,

oh great Christ what a night is this!

-

'I thought you got drunk on profits,' I muttered to

myself. Ambling through this depressing morass,

I espied what I thought was one more roving prophet.

 'Tell me, kind sir, what shall come of all this?

Where are we headed and where do we dock?' And

then the spinning landscape stopped, while the feeble

crowd roared. 'There is nothing in sensation like death

or elation  -  two extremes, neither to be ignored.'

Miraculous exposure in the lightning of the surreal.

 

3633. ARRIVEDERCI

ARRIVEDERCI

Coming and going - who the hell knows -

I've been here before the Titanic, that

much I'm sure of. I reached with both

hands for that pier-side woman who

swore she'd help, but we lost that

grip at the farrago. Water swirled

around my head like some regular

freaked-out sideshow stageman,

and I went down to the Nautilus deep,

Davey Jones' locker, Poseidon's home,

Octopus' garden with you. Name it

whatever you will, it still smarts

all the same.

 

3632. BURNEY CIRCUS

BURNEY CIRCUS

All the trucks and two monkeys

are rolling  -  the Maytime and the

frolic together arrive.  The Burney

Circus brothers and girls I see

survive one other year. I still

remember old times, when their

Alabama plates read 'Heart of

Dixie'. Now, instead, a couple

with cigarettes, out on the gravel,

are making out already with a

passion like there's no tomorrow.

Two Nissan doors hang open near

the Chevy truck. Big-top center tent,

three-ring circus babe, open up!

-

A few more animals disgorge from

out the padded truck  -  I watch a

horse bend its swaggered neck in

some sort of horse-relief, while, near

the swallows in the ancient tree singing,

three elephants are somehow led on,

what seems, a string. They bop along

their parking lot like hipsters on parade.

The Burney Circus entrance booth goes up.

-

The staggering carpenters with their

hammers and their tools at work - 'I

never even thought about it,' he says,

one to the other, 'I went to school for

nothing, and the tits, and then I quit.

Now, fuck it all, this life is good.

-

'Three barns on a hundred acres;

never did find the house. Who's

gonna buy it? That farmland's worth

about thirty-five dollars an acre now -

shit they've ruined the countryside.'

He looks up, to put more something

in his mouth. A girl comes over, 'Johnny,

all you ever talk is dirt and bullshit.

Now just shut up.'

-

Nobody does what I do; I do it

twice and I do it new. In isolation

one becomes a God, it is said  - 

these men in turn become their

Gods of vice and glory! Such a dandy

place, each small-time gravel field they

take like victors, 'In hoc signet vincet.'

-

It is like madness and murder now,

the 'what can I see' viewpoint  -  men

barreling down highways from Kingston

to Mt. Bethel to Warren  -  erecting their

logical tents ten days at a time to

enchant the locals who, it seems,

less and less arrive to see. What's

a circus doing here anyway? 'Midst

dignity? Such as this is the modern day.

The Manager does not know and neither

do I, or they. My Martin Buber facsimile

tent is closing. (No man should need

suffer the fragmentary nature of his 

understanding of his own life).

 

3631. MISTER (Name of the Wind)

MISTER 

(Name Of the Wind)

The typical but not average 

but not peculiar but not regular

vessel is floating on my sea :

I call this craft 'Reality'.

-

What has replaced Bigfoot 

in this new and modern age? 

Some fat Moses now skimming

on mountain-top rock? I've

got a piece of Adolph Gottlieb,

so what - art like a clock.

-

Sophisticates as we all are now,

pretending to be; wireless souls

I see connected to nothing yet

determined to be.

-

Nothing has won. Nature loses.

That typical but not average

but not regular but not peculiar

sense of nothing to be.

3630. DRUDGERY SPEAKS

DRUDGERY SPEAKS

You proclaim the water, I proclaim the dust.

The idling mockingbird, perhaps, proclaims

for everyone else  -  all that toil of stolen songs

and repeated motifs. The lag and lunge the

songbird speaks. I wish that tongue were mine.

-

I took the daughter of Philip Marlowe to the

Philadelphia Hotel. We dined in splendor, and

then, well, sometimes you know the rest, other

times you don't. To our surprise, we met Danny

Bonaducci walking along the street  -  in a 

work-out suit on his way to the gym. He

looked like shit to me.

-

The fellow in the hotel lobby asked if I knew

him well  -  I answered 'Never before in my life,

thank God; TV stars are not my thing.' He

nodded and smiled and said 'Yeah.'

-

The girl I was with wore a new Swatch watch.

It sang the time on the hour and ran backwards

one lap. My whole life sometimes feels like that.

3629. OUTSIDE THE MENTAL HOSPITAL

OUTSIDE THE 
MENTAL HOSPITAL

Gyrate, all you people. These are ominous

places  -  all filled with lineages without age,

blind people blind with rage, and every

archetype you'd ever come 'round to imagine.

Let's begin : My grandmother died here, a

hopeless, wasted wastrel, bent and broken

and mute and stupid to my 9-year-old eyes,

with tense silence and a loss of words. Yes,

it was 1959. And now? All around me I have

to listen to people saying their stupid things  -

all those words she never said, and the words

she'd have liked to have said; all her silences

enforced by a rare and dense stupidity of time.

It is now that silence I'd like to enforce, that

I wish for and wish she never had. I wish to

be silent, but I wish too to speak for her, for

what she never said, for what she never had.

Her. My words are already lined up along

the corridors of the rooms where she was 

forced to live. No more, no more, the stark

dignity of essence or entry or being or presence.

-

March has gone already, and April  -  all those

brown and windblown grasses greening now,

in May, have become something else  -  a

sheetwise glimmer, a summer slide, a joyous,

wavy happenstance of all that we are given

over to live. The rain, in showers, filters down

on a grandmother's silent words. All these

years later, it is that which I am hearing : a

sudden newness to very old, unspoken words.

On all sides, the world rolls coldly away.

-

'The Easter stars are shining above lights that

are flashing  -  coronal of the black  -  nobody

to say it  -  nobody to say  -  Pinholes!' Gyrate,

all you people; these are ominous places.

3628. HOW TO PROFANE WHAT I SHOULD NOT DO

HOW TO PROFANE WHAT

 I SHOULD NOT DO

The cloth by the window edging was

piled up  -  colored cuttings, all bad

angles and leftover snips  -  the stuff

only a crafter could love : those crank

ladies who make their cast-off scrapbook

collages and the hobbyists of another

nature. Some six a.m. light was

struggling in  -  the room was flooded.

-

Glass in the door threw lines to the

wall  -  thinking of prism and color, I

thought to amend what I saw : a few

multi-colored flagons of life and love,

myriad markings leaving traces on

things we may have touched. Human

animal, with its tongue that never stops

talking. The twist of the story is the

twist of the end. They never tell the

little orphan his father is dead.

-

Multi-man, what have you bludgeoned today?

Cut? Ripped? Presumed to build? 'Even the

wreckage of old Europe is tempting to the

young. Creative. Contrary. Restless. ' I

took that line from Williams, with you to

guess the rest  - pompous, cast-off animal.

-

['I love my fellow creature. Jesus how I love

him : endways, sideways, frontways and

all the other ways  -  but he doesn't exist,

and neither does she. I do, but in

a bastardly sort of way.']

-

There is right now a quaint silence in

this very sick room  -  all things askew,

broken angles, no straight lines, piles

of papers and books. And I have to ask

(no, to no one) why am I here, how can

I be, where can I go? The wind has

breached the lintel, the clock on the

wall has stopped, and even the wires

atop the counter from the toaster are

frayed and severed. What next will be

coming? I have no one here to ask.

-

I need to be satisfied with substitutes, like

a really bad condensed milk when only

rich cream should do, or some false

glitter instead of the diamond of you.

3627. SURRENDER THESE ARMS

SURRENDER THESE ARMS

I fell through the timing, I fell through the

Earth : Grand Canyon respite for nothing.

I know that I could, if I would, find you.

-

The long, black car glistened  -  a thirty year

old Cadillac of some uncertain persuasion.

It beckoned in the darkness, the light glinting

and stretching off the varied sheet metal,

making attractive silhouettes and reflections

about. I wondered about provenance, and

whether they do that with cars.

-

At night, at best, when streets shine back, when

water reflects, when silvers turn white and the

moon loses yellow. We are all strangers on that

midnight shore we inhabit. So many intrepid

things, over and again, one after the next.

The playful cop, even he whistled and sang

as he twirled his club 'neath someone's light.

-

'Outspoken buttocks in pink beads invite

the necessary cloudy clinch of bandy eyes.'

I remembered that Hart Crane quote as I

saw what passed me by. She may have

had a number, but it wasn't to be mine. I

fell through the Earth, as I fell through the time.

3626. HERE YOU GO, MONTCALME

HERE YOU GO, MONTCALME

The key doesn't work any longer, a broken off

stump instead stays in the keyhole : no one ever

wanted in here anyway. Light too harsh, room

too cramped, smell atrocious, and  -  good God

once more  -  your dog, it appears, left droppings

everywhere. This reminds of a sort of new

post-apocalyptic design statement. Your

decor could soon be the new man's normal.

-

Why do you keep those Revolutionary War

soldiers in the swamp-infested maroon hallway?

They are, truly, about as collectible as I would

be in a houseful of other men. Around them,

water drips, you pass in a robe, and nothing

much else really happens. They must be

bored stiff after Lexington and Concord.

3625. HASTEN THIS FUCKING ARRIVAL

HASTEN THIS

FUCKING ARRIVAL

I genuflect to Death, as it arrives holding a

ten-card deck :  four jokers and a king,

three queens, an ace and a five. On the

back of each card, a secret marking

from the Pyramid of Cheops or something

like it; matter I never understand, charm I

never find charming at all. The man with the

powder keg holds in his hand a fat cigarette.

He threatens to light it and blow me to

smithereens. It sounds crummy, and yet.

-

I go with the angels, I ride with the Gods.

My army is an army of tyrants, all of them

singing praise for every myth that ever was.

The King's own wife, his Henrietta Moire, comes

to my chambers to disrobe. We make mad

love for fourteen hours, long, slow, unevenly

and dense. When we are done, I am so tired

I could die. When the King finds out, he wants

to help; but my life is saved by Henrietta's words:

'He really meant nothing at all by what he did.

He's infatuated by his time and his riches.'

 

3624. SUPERCEDING HELPLESSNESS

SUPERCEDING

HELPLESSNESS

Doctors come with jackhammers hoping to

find pulses in the deadest of wood and rock;

ripping all to shreds and pieces. Nothing gone

but nothing good. 'Here's the report you wanted :

we are all associated criminals now.' And that's

the way it was and that's the way it stood. I now

promulgate for you the manner of my steadfast

hand : 'I want your iron gate, I want your daughter

and your sister, together, I want your ten extra

acres and your stop-light barricade. I want your

marbles and your attic-furnishings, I want your

grandad's bag of gold. I want the tiles from your

kitchen walls and I want the jewels you sleep with.

I want your handguns and your hooligans, your

free cash and your guards.' With that I sat down

and told anyone who'd listen that I'd stay until

all of this was over and I'd gotten all I asked.

-

The dog-man came in with his frozen roulette-wheel.

It wouldn't turn, he took no bets, the window sash

fell with a racket and everyone suddenly got up to go.

3623. SEEMS WE ARE FOR A MAGIC VIEW OF LIFE

SEEMS WE ARE FOR A 

MAGIC VIEW OF LIFE

(rimbaud)

All very nice. How the words do linger. Will they?

There is nothing (I am only now finding out)

outside of this small and drunken boat.

Heard that before down the rivercut of Life?

-

I woke up with a Chinese man in my head.

He was somehow grinning up at me. A

Chinese version of a Creole love? Good

God! I should want for nothing but a girl.

(And the breadline was silent).

-

It was 1931. I was walking with

Mary Sodano past a Fifth Avenue

soup kitchen. Dishevelled people,

men mostly, were lining up for food -

in their meshed silence they were seeking

bread. 'Where are all the children? Are

there none of them hungry too?' I asked 

to no one's answer. And then I noted,

'And are they seeking solace or salvation?'

-

No more of this now anyway. Go to

Bordentown or go to Hell. Ninety

years later, they've built roads to

everywhere and you can, really,

get anywhere at all - except maybe

to where you want or where you should.

The streets have all died. The priests

have all died. The men with crew cuts

are all dead, and there are no more

women with thick, black stockings.

3622. LIKE CAVE MAN

LIKE CAVE MAN

Like the cave man himself, I was

never made to go  -  just instead

to hunker, stay and watch. The fire

cast its flame and embers my way,

and I moved aside as needed. I am

akin to nothing so much as to movement

itself : walking nomad, traveling guide.

To fly through the light, that keeps

me hoping. And - at the same time -

no staying, no waiting; all this warrantless

freezing in place, yes, it keeps me in line.

Shadows on the cave wall? Pigmented

pictures made from - both - love and

blood? I know them both, I do.

-

Things I may have seen? Yes,

they are here and I am waiting;

patiently, it seems, on a stern

and barely bitter Earth.

3621. LIKE LINDISFARNE

LIKE LINDISFARNE

- 'Bring me something back from the farthest shore' -

I have ice for hands and a magisterial command of

this one-sourced ancient language. We sanctify the

place of all the planets and stars, whizzing names across

the Heaven's arc'd abyss. As once before explorers came

forth to observe what we were, so now we arrive, looking

forward, to see where it is we may have landed.

Imagination's eye wings forth to breach the sky.

Same-time folds, so as to make the envelope

for Humanity's memory of even Time itself.