3851. LAUREL ARMS

LAUREL ARMS

'Saying one thing and doing

another  -  a run-on sentence

of stopping and halt. My man,

this table wobbles and you'll be

my waiter tonight? What is this?

-

Anyway - 'was saying' - came back

that day just before midnight, the

door was already open when I

arrived and someone was there

crying in the vestibule alcove.

Couldn't make out nothing else.

Went upstairs.

-

Isn't it funny how we skewer

the truth though, when it doesn't

fit our purposes? And in that

early morning light I really

couldn't see a thing  -  the

rainwater making all that

noise, the woman crying

in the corner. Sorry.'

3850. INTENT TO DERIDE

INTENT TO DERIDE

(a trip through old time)

This ride will never stop. That was the wrong

dollar you put in. Poor fellow, so faithful, so

glum. Outside any bounds of reason, I would

have to say that you've outdone yourself this

time. Putting pudding in the cup; over-cooking

the recipe batch. Watching the flies descend

upon the shoo-fly pie on the window-sill's end.

-

I came back from home ready for a fight. I was

fight-weight ready, I'd bested the previous nine

men in a somewhat illustrious career. One broken

chin later. And I looked around : where were you?

-

Nowhere to be found. And I mean nowhere. I'd

looked under every grass-skirt I could find, I'd probed

with my tongue every set of open lips offered to me,

I'd ridden shotgun on every fondled branch and bush

that came my way. No sense in pretending. I was

a Zorro to anyone else's swash 'Z'. The real thing, me.

-

Now I would struggle my way to fight the truth,

push back at the manager, slam dunk the fire-chief,

split the skull of the principal. Before it gets dark,

I'll be at your place, ready to light the new campfire.

-

Nothing ever made me cry like Civil War songs and

men who wouldn't die. You know the ones, twisted and

grimaced with sorrow and pain, lying on the bloodied

field howling for hours before they expired - and only

after hours or days of that. How could a man sustain

himself through of all that hurt and pain? What good

was this shit-pan of war then, anyway?

-

I was Lance Corporal Eidermeyer, I was Joe Trane.

I was the emancipated slave-guy, Barboe, I was

Sergeant O'Baine. We all came down from New York.

We all caught the damned death-train : Chickamauga,

Spotsylvania, Wilderness and Gettysburg. I don't care.

I don't know; and it is now this modern age. I am here

again, kissing your daughters, waltzing your dames.

The new, entire world is my daisy chain. This ride

will never stop. No. This ride will never stop.

3849. UNCLE UNIVERSE

UNCLE UNIVERSE

Unbuckles the stars, climbs down the

stairs, see past all horizons, knows

what's there. 'I haven't been in the

cabbage', he says, 'but I know

what's growing there.'

-

Oh, dear. I'm as perplexed

by all this as you are. I will

sit here, not recline, and

have another beer.

3848. HIT OR MISS

HIT OR MISS

Having brushed the daughter of the sky with my

hands, I looked back at the fire. No one else saw

a thing : the sky was ablaze. From where I sat, it

was all just shadows on the side of a big, white

building. A girl walked by eating candy  -  the candy

bar still in its peeled-back wrapper, she nibbled the

exposed portion with a hand to her mouth. How oddly

curious that whole scene was. Where was the

smoke? Where was the heat. I decided there

was something I much have missed. Wishing

I had a dog, I imagined walking it here.

-

I am always most curious about things most

abstract : unexplainable phenomena which

enter and ring the mind - the source of solace,

the aim of a disconsolate tear, the reason

some lone policeman would walk in fear.

-

There are no answers for things like this.

My sixth-grade memory book hides nothing

but the most obscure : John Glenn, Alan

Shepard, Gus Grissom. Crazy Amerikanski

astronauts chasing some dream-time Yuri

Gagarin to their own private Hell. Who cares,

and how far have I ever wandered. Everyone

else is dead, not one of those psychos yet

exist. Even Walter Cronkite bit the death pipe.

-

I realize I don't care, don't even give a shit.

Now sunlight hits the building-side instead :

bright, almost yellow, creeping shadow, lines

of a tree, light glinting off glass, blinding me,

two Mexican gardeners sitting around, quiet

leaf blowers finally dead in their hands.

-

This life, this life, this life, a life like this :

a crazy Mexican hat-dance

always hit or miss.

3847. ROTUNDO'S ITALIAN CAFE

ROTUNDO'S ITALIAN CAFE

I cannot undue the seamless dwelling where my

thoughts and emotions live : I am squandered and

cast away, spitting a momentary blood, venting a

second's ire. 'Put the dominoes down, Dominic.'

The Italian guy named Rondo said that, serving

coffee to three huge grunts who'd just sauntered

in. They were so obvious, it was funny. Leather

half-boots, where you just know a pistol was

tucked, one guy had a silk Yankee's jacket, with

what appeared to be, for sure, a false lining that

covered zippered pockets for waltzing out with

cash. They were here for the pick, their monthly

allotment of mob-money-rent, a part of the take.

'Hey, Angelo, how's the wife and baby, everything

good?' At which point you just know poor Angelo's on

the line : the well-being of kin and business depends

now on his ponying up the racket money, the protection

dough, the take that's not even his. Bad business, all

Rondo gets up and spills a cup. There's a tussle, a few

punches are thrown, and Rondo's down. I saw this all

from behind The New York Times : big paper, wide open,

in front of my face. 'No, Bud, I don't see a thing.'

3846. LIFESTREAM

LIFESTREAM

I have stepped out of that. I am sourcing the cosmos,

coming through loud and clear all through space :

edges and endless solar winds and radiated light

fierce and burning I shall see right through things for

verily I say unto you : Nothing exists and all is nothing.

-

This morning at dawn, a small bird 

was singing high up in the tree.

There was nothing else present,

just that small bird and me.

3845. OBLIVION CALLS

OBLIVION CALLS

I am spending most of my time

and space alone : next to you but

alone. Yes, there is milk on the table

as there are cheeses in the refrigerator

and meat on the stove. That is not the

problem. It is more like Oblivion, calling.

The semblance of world outside  -  the 

red-tailed hawk watching, the cowbirds

you've found, they almost all amount to

nothing. Willard has planted his 15 acres

of corn, now stunted already, and dry. In

June, at least, thankfully, we did get the

hay cut and in - bales of baleful labor, that.

Now, I court the spark of waiting  -  to just 

hope that something will happen. I am spending

most of my time and space alone, and just

not enjoying sitting home. I really want 

to flee, and Oblivion is calling me.

3844. HARVEST

HARVEST

The headlines are harnessed like loads of

hay and the small peat fires still burn on

the fields of Essen and Ruhr. Everywhere

across the continent, people are finding bones

and relics : blood-kin to carnage and war.

Two hundred years ago, as they were

changing the course of the Rhine, all those

Romantic fellows sang Nature's praise

and praised Nature's time. I'll never know

what happened to this life. The shacks and

the cabins, like everything else, are gone.

-

I slept in your Swabian countryside, just

as calmly and sure as a  badger or a weasel

lurking in the shrub. No man could find 

me and I was afraid of nothing in the world.

Believe me, people, I had come here

from another place : the fires and rockets

and brimstone and ash of a celestial face.

-

Now it is all grown, and I take it all in.

3843. ENKIDU

ENKIDU

The most furtive plea, the ancient of

days, somehow left me behind. My back

is arched now, on some treeside hard bench

in City Hall Park. I sit amidst soda cans and

visitors from Dubuque. I remember, it was,

Nathan Hale who was just here : hanging

from the Thom Paine tree. My God, the

ghosts are thick today  -  that blasted and

heavy white still lingering. The hand in my

notebook, even that no longer looks like

my own. What has gone on here, what?

-

I change identities like you do pants.

I walk through storms and happenstance.

My men are legion as we walk along.

They are building a city while I write a song.

-

An old God, an ancient God, a form of

iceberg and brick  -  breaking through walls

and all barriers of time. Force majeur, and the

invention of Thor's Hammer. All this is everywhere

the same: some pantheon of Gods we lift up and

exalt even as we wither and fall, running out of

time to do it all. No matter the dreams we may

hold or treasure. Life arranges for different things,

and we are so often left behind. Yes, it may be

that these men are building a city, even one with 

the names of God on their lips. But it too will

crumble and fall; their intent they shall miss.

-

I change identities like you do pants.

I walk through storms and happenstance.

My men are legion as we walk along.

They are building a city while I write this song.

3842. MOVING DAY

MOVING DAY

Your unwarranted obfuscation only

makes for confusion. I am lined and

weary, and you - I hear - must now

leave home. Thrown out, as it were,

like a badger to the cold. Take down

that cabinet, remove that bedpost, that

chair. All trace of you must disappear.

I am (oh) so sorry and saddened for what

occurred - if Death rides a pale horse,

and if the apocalypse has its swordsmen,

what's left, and what have you or I? Nothing;

nothing but these pennies, excuses, and lies.

3841. MANY MILES

MANY MILES

(I am home in the USA)

I have traveled the quays and

the Zuider Zee, old Kabul and

all the murder-mystery ramps

Czechoslovakia once offered. No,

I am nothing, and without my keys.

From Lake Baikal to Chittendenny

have I wandered - rifleman, squire,

dandy, lout. Now I am an old man -

just as well; I survived, cornered in

a dying rage, holding a broken gun.

-

My mother is long dead, and my

father's a faded memory; something

creased, like an old print in my coat's

chest pocket. He went mad in '98, nothing

much else to say - all that's over. And now,

and now, I am a revolutionary. My country

is dead or dying, and I am in for the kill.

-

Yes, come try stopping me. I already

have the knife to your daughter's throat.

Men say that I am dangerous; I am not.

I am a leftover Minuteman from a revolution

gone sour - and truly, truly anyway - it

is they who are the dangerous ones.; those

who cal me that from spite and envy.

-

But, it is Death I am looking back from.

I smiled my last, and they gently

closed the box.

3840. WHAT'S THE DELAY?

WHAT'S THE DELAY?

The hold-up was holding me up; the fire

was burning my ass. The man with the

bandanna over his mouth walked into the

bank demanding cash. No one not even

looked up  -  useless shit this bank-robber

was. I took out a dollar, and offered it to him.

He shot me, straight on, in the chest. I'm dead

now, yes. You probably read about the rest.

3839. GAINSAY

GAINSAY

Tying the high tree knot, the simple rope swing

was in place and steadied. A few boys, already

giddy with delight, huddled and swarmed  -  climbing

to jump. They swing forth, 2 at a time, standing on

the rope-swing as it blows wide over the water...

where they leap, let go, and fly, to land with a

grand splash in the muddied and turbulent water

below. If that's to be joy, it's the joy of a blood-brother

cut or a sacrificial punch taken in friendship. Go figure.

Boys to men, and back again, soon enough.

3838. INCENDIARY FURTIVE

INCENDIARY FURTIVE

In speaking in tongues, in talking to a

cousin, in learning those needed angles

for ricochet and bump, in all of those

things so much that is needed is an odd

classy silence. Even then, when the light

comes on, when the lick of flame flickers

over some lost apostle's head, there's no

room to maneuver and no need to reply.

Words alone can't do it. That bright,

shining blast of light comes through,

cutting the welder's world with its fire,

the mechanic's sure toil, the salesman's

glib knowledge. No, no, in such moments

as these, I walk away. I sense the light

and I sense the feeling. And I walk away.

3837. MAKING CALIBER

MAKING CALIBER

The fine-faddled fish are swimming away.

I look down into their strange world of water

from above  -  a simple, human height looking

down into the small river below. These curious

slips of being stand still for a moment, seem to

wiggle and peer, and then dart off, disturbed

perhaps by my shadow and noise. Who knows,

and I don't. In fact, as I think it through, they really

go nowhere, in that sense of leaving. They swim

the same streaming, moving athwart whether this

way or that. They are, in turn, as limited as me in

leaving the Earth or sourcing some new form of air.

We're all captives, it would seem, of some element

or another  - wind, water, vessel or wish.

 They can't stand, and I can't fish

3836. SINGLY

SINGLY

I have no reason to be here. I am bewitched

by space and time : commingling me with these

massive moments. Eyes that blind, ears that deaf.

All the others in this loaf, much as me, they see

nothing, and they hear less. Astonishingly, for

the entire world is a huge cyclical sounding board -

phenomenon, miracle, wonder and awe - connected

to the cosmos within. We create the moments as

we create the time. I will go nowhere else; I can

not run and I am too heavy to lift. Relativity, to me,

is just one huge One, a unity of all moment, all words

and languages and time and understandings. Like

fire, the world is a blazing thing and - like fire - it is

oh so soon dissolved and gone away. Singly,

as one, in an instant.

3835. LORDY, LORDY

LORDY, LORDY

So let's rattle and go for the reach:

just as the bat flies what we call blindly

so too shall we ourselves define what it

is we do, kindly. I won't shove, You know me

and I know you, and consistency is the

hobgoblin of little minds. Here we go,

here we go, Ralph Waldo Emerson or

Henry David Thoreau. And either of them,

if it was for sure was beaten out by

Whitman: 'Yes! I contradict myself!'.

-

Let me take the edge off your drink.

The edge off your cold? What's any of

that mean? I'm not sure, only sure I

don't know. And while we're on the subject,

let's get off the subject. Mary had a little

lamb, whose fleece was white as snow.

-

Oh Lordy, Lordy, and here it is I am again.

 

3834. UPDATE

UPDATE

I update this heart with your love.

Can you see it smile and bow?

Are the flowers I bring you

ever enough? Now? Yes,

we can do that together;

come let us go, before

it grows late.

3833. THE SMOKING STOVE

THE SMOKING STOVE

(stowe, vermont)

They planted the old man at the corner - from there

he could watch everything. Ruminate the message,

tight entice the glee. Like an old-time funhouse mirror,

they let him wreath in smoke his whole distorted world.

Travelers would enter  -  those touristy types from the

big-city wards  -  and gag and complain on his smoke.

No one cared; leastwise the locals. They were hell-bent

anyway on his funeral soon. The smoking stove was the

spot they gave him. A simple light in all that gloom.

3832. THE COCKSCOMB AND THE NUISANCE

THE COCKSCOMB 

AND THE NUISANCE

I was so tired, I was so beleaguered, I ran

away from home, taking this stupid boat to 

Sicily. A freighter, no less; I had to work. 

Why me? The passage was free - Liverpool, 

Bremen and all the rest; numerous stops, 

to make the test. Oil barrels, sacks of

wheat flour, crates of cloth. When I got 

to where I was going, they said 'get off 

and die, or do it again.' I did it. The 

journey home always seems shorter.

-

Like a pimply-faced teen I asked myself

again - 'why am I here?' No, of course,

no answer. I rebelled. I ranted like a seaman.

I began to think with my dick - I probed,

I pummeled. Every shoreline female I could

find, I fucked. God, it was all so easy.

Free time on the shoreline

-

Grog and all by the gallon.

I was twenty-two and

hung like a stallion.

3831. LIVING THE LONG LIFE

LIVING THE LONG LIFE

How things turn out; it's all got

to be done one at a time. First

you wobbly hit the ground, crying

and with no more stability than a

rubber ball looking for its legs -

Mama holds you, while Papa looks

away, and then your masked allegiances

all begin : the crawl and the stumble -

both proving you're attached to Earth.

You want to say 'attached again', but

maybe not. Soon it's over, you're free

and flying : rebel, scumpot, hipster,

scholar, asshole, fool, mogul,

master, rich man, dead man too.

-

I've got the memories here wrapped in

this fragile gauze. With them  -  can't you

see  -  I am walking Washington Street

and talking to you. I started this wise-ass

life asleep in Tompkins Square Park in

August, '67. I was 18 years old-  ten 

Puerto Ricans and their bongos and 

percussion all night long  -  in that 

band shell, damn, no longer there, 

gone now, and me, transfixed.

-

Well, are you listening or am I done?

Smoking something and ingesting tea,

climbing around like a midnight monkey

on the children's swings in the night until

dawn's morning took it.s swipe at me.

That monument to the Titanic - at the

other end of the park - well, yeah, it 

was there then and it stands there yet.

Not Titanic, damn it all, get it straight,

the General Slocum, on which many

local Germans had died in the harbor.

-

Now, what, fuck, I'm in a big, green room

with paintings all around me - each one the

same size and each one a large portrait

or someone or another : the large, blue girl

in a blue shirt with blue sunglasses - her blue

period - God I hope not though I sense some

red underneath the blue pigment; the girl on

the bed (I've mentioned?) asleep in only a

blue bikini bottom, or, as the scientists said

at the atomic test : 'no bikini atoll'; that smug,

gay dandy, in his sandals and shorts, with one

leg up on the bench - his tan leather briefcase

and pressed,white shirt - bare underneath - 

held in place only by one, central button.

He's smiling back like a dentist on a Bimini

vacation; a girl, lost in green, amidst a very

tall crop of corn  - stalks towering above

her; the naked girl in the netting; the girl,

again by herself, holding a cat. A real

rogue's gallery, and all of that,

-

I've concluded - to be sure - that reality

is a pretzel as it's presented to us : things

twist and turn, wrap over and around,

get baked and salty, and then....

3830. FROM SOLID AIR

FROM SOLID AIR

Man built God from the thinnest

air as God built man from solid;

from dirt and soil and dust, we're

told. Science man says 'I can do

that; I can take dirt and make man.

It's but Science and chemical stuff.'

To which then God replies : 'Aha!

But first, make dirt!' Pride 

goeth before the fall; in

this case, dirt and all.

3829. NOT ALLEGORICAL

NOT ALLEGORICAL

I am sitting in this great, wet fog

as it, cold, rolls in  -  settling white

over every green and tendril'd thing.

The insects have their lairs, and on

each bush the white lace of a spider's 

web - those famed cathedral weavings - 

spread their fan-shaped hand to cling

and capture every watery drop so formed.

Such a strange and surprising catch for

each little spider's batch. Other things are

dripping as little clouds roll by. I am

sitting in this great, white fog, just I.

(Every thing drips as little clouds roll by).

3828. SHOOT THE NICKEL

SHOOT THE NICKEL

I cannot shoot the nickel, and won't.

Turn the page, bend the arrow and

then let's see it fly. We are given

255,500 days, we hope, more or

less, to live roundabout. Make the

most of them, in all you do  -  for

what is squandered doesn't come 

back. Lethal obsessions take their

toll. Be silent, then. But be

steady and still as well.

3827. SPENDTHRIFT

SPENDTHRIFT

'I am the one, I am the guy:

I bought the earth, I bought 

the sky. I purchased my

pleasures, I bought food

and wine, great beasts and

beautiful women. I bought

homes and cars and all to 

my own delight. I never 

wanted, I bought all things.

Now, the open maw of

an empty grave stares

back at me. I bought

that too; I can't be

saved. It must be

mine. Say now,

can I buy more

time?'

3826. FLAMING SWORD

 FLAMING SWORD

No more than a Michael's message,

this guardian of the keep, this flaming

sword. I am substituting substance for

butter in every recipe I mix  -  locomotive

motive, enticing enticements, the bridge

over this river Lie. I am determined (oh,

have I not yet told you?), so very steady,

determined yet, to walk on water.

And all that noise out on the street,

that's the boys from Winton Point  - 

their pointed-toe shoes and sickening

black suits - all here to take back

their deposit from old Tom One-Eye,

the bookie-barber guy.

3825. HALF-BAKED MOON

HALF-BAKED MOON

Under blue sky morning with a

half-baked moon waning, whenever

it is dark we light lights and call it

living on. Starting, it is, how the light

breaks such angles onto the trunks

of those huge trees nearby. I am in

Woodrow Wilson's garden, sitting

at a metal bench and table - heavy,

wrought, and black, these things  - 

looking out over immense and glorious

grounds. Mrs. Wilson had all this

planted one hundred years ago. 

Two hundred and fifty years ago,

by the same chance, this was just

a farm. I cannot distinguish. 

-

Whenever it is dark, we light a 

light and call it living on. (I am

not inhabiting a space; I am

inhabiting here a Life, under

this half-baked moon and sky).

3824. SHACKAMAXON

SHACKAMAXON

From here, the ghosts of the Lenape

still haunt the trails and byways of

what we so cavalierly call 'the river.'

Bristleberry bushes overhanging the

banks  -  near the railroad bridge,

beneath the trestle grid, against the

storage silo, by the shed. So many

hundreds of things to count off,

and all the Indians are dead.

3823. GATHERING STONES TOGETHER

GATHERING STONES TOGETHER

Ecclesiastes has done it, God-damn!

I weather the fierce and  the easy, the

dead Whitman water-stream of old

Camden and the sacred inland harbor

of Kelpius' Cave. It is, over there, where

I stand  -  not here. Though my shadow

reaches, it never really leaves.

-

Listen to those sounds in the air -

all around us the gab and jabber of

creation - while you yet can. Relegate

to no man that privilege. The coin-tossed

war-soldier with his coat of arms and his

chainmail vest, his cannon  -  all, all, all

for naught, and damn him. There is a place

in Hell for those who have killed.

-

Kindred spirits, like us, we smoke no oasis.

We mar no surface with the idle marks of

a graffiti-obsessed world. For all Hell, again,

we are better than that. Better.

-

This morning, Oh Lord, the girl behind the

counter at the routine bagel shop was bursting 

her blouse with huge Summertime breasts and

nearly no clothes at all. I wanted to wonder,

but wandered to leave, buying nothing and

sadly ordering less. Let us gather stones

together. Ecclesiastes has done it, God damn!

3822. I AM DOING A MERCHANT'S BUSINESS IN A FATHER'S FINITE CAVE

I AM DOING A 

MERCHANT'S BUSINESS

IN A  FATHER'S FINITE CAVE

It not being my intention to sell you short,

I am in turn involved and very distant. I walk

ominously and only with a pure silence:

nothing to say and no noise to say it with.

This is a true-blood likeness to the old

quandary of all time. Around me, it is

one hundred degrees, to that I can attest.

I am sitting at a small, harborside table

in Red Hook Brooklyn, drinking some

pulpy matter claiming to cure my ills.

-

Claiming, or making the claim - so different and

yet the same. I wouldn't know the difference anyway.

Out on the water, taxi-craft and tugboats fight for

distance while, a'float on the more distant horizon

and beneath the massive Narrows bridge, international

tankers sit in waiting, flying - I assume - their very best 

flags of convenience by which to enter these waters.

Gulls fly and cry, while a father nearby, with his small

daughter, watches a cormorant dive and appear and

dive and appear again. Such odd birds, and slick.

-

Now, I have to ask myself - why am I even here? I'm

elbowing this reality with my smack to its jaw  -  taking

up the space I delve, the place I choose, the time I may

have myself selected. I care for no man, and no man cares

for me. That is apparent. Even their ripest sisters turn away.

This is then my startling moment. The sun lapses and fades,

darker clouds roll in, and my moment in the sun now seems

occluded by new clouds and with the darkness of rain.

 I care little or not at all for these things that matter.

-

Let me enter my scratch on this dotted line; I will sign :

ghost; mad hatter; insane traveler; fellow killer; madman

at the kitchen well; sailor sick of the sea; Montezuma

intent on revenge; sick Ahab, crawling back for more.

 

3821. SALVATION ENTERS WORLD

SALVATION ENTERS WORLD

Within this ghost ship on the spiral sea,

I am falling, falling faster than thee. The

truncated sun, split by two horizons, dips

low away to vanish. The sound of tarnished

energies  -  all the whales and porpoises of

this sea  -  are as nothing to the man I be.

Hold then, thee, my jangling nerves; coddle

and assuage my guilt and rage. Look then

homeward, angel, and seek to disengage :

this whole, entire life is nothing but a nettled

dream, an unsourced manufacture of our own

unconscious drives. And, yes, yes, though it

may seem to have an ending prescribed, it

only begins again to run once more; and we

then have nowhere, really, else to go.

-

Will you now come back with me? Will you

re-enter this torrid atmosphere so we may

share those other moments : the ones so

much better to recall? Let us look : the

colors of the butterfly, blown about in light

air; the sound of the surf, tearing apart

what is there; the light at the morning's

rise, faint blue and yet there. All of this,

my finely mattered, mannered friend, all

of this is of the days of the lives we lend.

-

And hark ! to the warbler then attend :

a sacred sound of sorts, a melody as 

if of God, coming 'round this bend.

3820. UNMARKED BY DALLIANCE

UNMARKED BY DALLIANCE

(living rich)

There's no one as special as the one with no

aim; running forward to dodge the careening ball.

He's the fellow with the pure apple-gumption.

No words needed  -  language is nothing but

a bore and a barrier to anything left. I only

wish there was more time, and time again.

-

Look, smart man, you've got your feet up on the

table and nothing seems to matter to you at all.

Even in this early morning light you sit, traduced

by a grave composure and senselessly sure of

all things : the mortgage, the weather, the car,

the schedule, the soon-arriving doom as well.

-

Up high, someone's festive balloon has escaped

from yesterday and landed, as it were, caught

up in the limbs of that oak. Too bad  -  silver

like that looks out of place everywhere it goes.

Much like happiness at a funeral, or maybe

tears as wedding. The same. In any case,

I tired of all that rubble wherever it goes.

-

Up, way up, and over all that, another

silver pierces silently the expectant sky:

the world's vague airlines, spoofing the

world we know, send their jets wherever

and anywhere they choose to go.

3819. 24th and SHEPPENARD

24th and SHEPPENARD

They told them to bring the table, bring forth the

magic cloth, and 'don't forget the most magisterial

thing of all' : the gold. Vast gold of kings, huge gold

of jewelers who weigh, fraught gold of the politics of

sweat and forced labor. Then came the next step:

they brought forth the head oracle, prized skull, dead

of old, which spoke. 'I may be dead or I may be Death

itself. Neither will be known; yet you hold me, in your

hand I am. Listen carefully to what you hear, and

moreso to that which you do not hear - that is the 

more important of the two. Time is a tide with no

subsistence, and it slowly slides towards you.

Beware then of all things, beware of Time.'

-

No one understood, nor spoke. I sat and watched;

I smoked (I do not smoke). I drank (I do not drink).

Everything was out of order : this weird dissemblance

of a place and moment, the many voices struck dumb,

all those men - tenured and important to themselves,

now knowing nothing; they all appeared as a chimera

would in a shadowy box of darkness and gloom.

-

Over at the counter, Marlena was standing. As I

looked over, I could only notice, once, that

she was disappearing  -  gone like vapor,

finished, and no more. It was 24th and

Sheppenard, that fabled street of old,

from which no man ever had returned.

 

3818. DID THE OTHERS IMPROVE?

DID THE 

OTHERS IMPROVE?

Who has been holding the chariot

hand? Who keeps the farmland's

waters over all the wide acres 

of grapes? Where oh where lives

Demeter now? My fruit trees sag

and rot, all the seed-bearing plants

are dead, as are my tubers, now

dry in the ground. I cannot even

produce mere dirt. Where, oh 

where, is Demeter now?

3817. THE TWELVE GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS

THE TWELVE GODS 

OF MOUNT OLYMPUS
I have a direct line in, from the east and from
the past. It's really nothing much different
for me. Outside the generated fulcrum,
everything else will exist : crime and all its
filth, broken windows, and all those piles
of dead, battered bodies. Don't you see,
dear little Mankind, how abhorrent
your deeds are to me?
-
I am the seminal one : I generate you.
You fail and when you fail I am meant
to be caused great pain. Of course, I
pain not; nothing is lethal to me, not
even you. Once was the flood,
this will be fire.
-
I wish not to goad you.
I seek nothing new.
All things are, and
always have ever
 thus been.

3816. LITTLE CARTWHEEL

LITTLE CARTWHEEL

(my semblance of music is new noise)

I have found here a girl I

really love : she sits atop

this cake. Really no more

than a plastic figurine quickly

skirted and looking like fun,

doing a cartwheel across

the surface of this glaze.

-

Red is like the sound 

of a trumpet to me.

3815. THE PIRATES AT FLAME OUT COVE

THE PIRATES AT 

FLAME OUT COVE

Never before like this : the pirate ship

rounding the cove and those strange

people waiting near the dunes for the

hand-off  -  exotic, stolen treasures?

Foreign foods and wines? Not for

me to know. There is, to be true, a

war raging in the outside world, but

what would they know of that?

-

A merchant's frigate, to pull up

alongside, flying some distant flag.

Take and plunder? Or just let it

be? Which is better anyway? It

is 1803, and there is really

no law on the sea.

-

Oh so many things are strange

and new to me. The wind rustles 

the marsh grass, silently.

3814. BY NAME ALONE

BY NAME ALONE

I've long wanted to write a piece that would

be nothing but title : something like, perhaps,

'Camel Does Sweltering Heat While Playing

the Fan', and then it would go on from there.

I suppose it could be done; 'Wins Fiery Dance

With Troubleshooter Harem Girl Who Later

Disrobed To The Roar Of the Crowd.' And

then, more : 'Dissembling Pontiff Stops By,

Preaches Sermon On Eye Of the Needle

In the Presence Of the Camel.' It goes on,

and on  -  which is why, I guess, 

I've never done it.

3813. GLORY DAYS?

GLORY DAYS?

Like the sinkhole you want the 

hundred-yard dash? The lap around

the fountain, the width of Albuquerque?

Anything you wish, go ahead, you can have.

It's all that stuff which makes the memory.

'I remember too when I scaled Rock Peak,

it was 31 degrees and windy as Hell; took

seven hours straight of harsh climb. Were

my hands free of ropes and picks, I could

congratulate myself by patting on the back.'