7091. JUSTIFIED ANGLES

JUSTIFIED ANGLES

The Mathematician has his ways : all those

observations and substitutions and justified 

angles make sense to this mind : I instead have

absences and deletes, what are called shadows

where an object has been  -  erasures of the

normal mind. That's how I write and think,

combined. Fruition comes to those who wait?

7090. OUT TESTING BOUNDS

OUT TESTING BOUNDS

The simulacra of hodgepodge is keeping me

awake : I see billboards in the sky and fires 

in the lake. My personal representation of a 

mirror in disguise is nothing I would look at,

or even recognize. The tack shop is closed

for good  -  all the horses have now run off.

Symbols skate the sky and some young priest

holds a chalice : the signature song in the

hymnal is lost but the choir sings on.

Yes, yes, the choir sings on.

7089. ME

ME

I was a poor boy, who was born dead;

and before I knew it, that death was over.

7088. SCATTER-SHOT RETRIEVAL

SCATTER-SHOT RETRIEVAL

Maddeningly, the small crowd is eating spaghetti

and eggplant, Italian dishes ladled out by some

Guido who now fancies himself a chef. Sunlight

glints the red wine in each wineglass at the tables.

No one seems aware of anything : except their

garbled words and food and self. Conditional

experimentation on a twice-fading planet.

The wine glasses glint in the sun,

making cut reflections above;

a scatter-shot retrieval

for sure.

7087. MY BLUE SHIRT

MY BLUE SHIRT

The funny man, in the red shirt, was saying,

'I made money the old fashioned way, I stole

it.' Those near him were laughing. At the piano,

on the little riser nearby, Charles Folds was

plating his Thursday afternoon tunes. I had

stopped by to listen, and say hello. He plays

there most days of the week, a few hours softly

at the piano while people informally lunch. I get

coffee, and we say a few words. This is the enclosed

plaza of something, I forget  -  across from the Lever

Building, up the street a bit from the Seagrams Building,

on the other side of Park. Just things I like to do.

-

I never have money to do things like these others, and I

guess I stand out for that, but no one ever seems to mind. 

I probably look like a bum to them anyway, small, hairy

and gross  -  they all seem to have stature and bearing. A

30 dollar lunch would put me down for good. I get along

OK with the guards too, but that's probably just because 

that way they have me in their sights, that's why.

-

I often feel out of place, but do not care. I'm better than

them. They're dull. I am an artist who's not. An old uncle

I had used to just say : 'screw 'em all; walk in there like you

own the place.' On the other hand, another uncle would say,

'What are you doing? You don't fit in? Here?' My two conflicting

family poles of matter - I had to deal with both before I fled.

-

Whatever clothes I have, if and when I buy, I usually buy at

the Salvation Army store in Newark. Interesting place : poor

fat blacks, some hipsters looking for retro, in their weird-frame

glasses and tattooed dicks. Two dollar shirts and two dollar pants.

These people here are wearing two-hundred dollar button-down

Oxfords and deck-boy shoes. I shrug. And then I remember, the

shirt I'm wearing from that cast-off store, it's a Botany 500!

Some high-class light blue Summer shirt. Glad I put that

on this morning now.

-

I forget to remember to walk in owning the place though

the guards' stares made me soon remember I didn't.

7086. THE VIEWER BLURS THE MEMORY

THE VIEWER BLURS 

THE MEMORY

There are some things I just do not care about :

this swish of blue color that was a car or the arm 

of a chair, the way that armband tells me who that

man is, the idle achievements of a blowhard in

the feckless dark, and all his words to that effect.

The viewer here blurs the memory. The far cry

from the distant point is not a mountaineer; no,

just instead some baby crying. Tears for fears, as

it were. No solace there, just windblown and 

hesitant thought running fast away and far.

-

I have no designated driver for the monster dreams

I ride in : mysterious circumstances beneath the leader

of the mark, the manner of the beast, the chipped and

dangled teethings of huge tribes of crooks and villains.

They run off with the lie; they run off with the future.

This viewer blurs the memory. This viewer says not

at all. I take my words for William Blake; not following

another's system at all, just instead to make my own.

7085. RETRIBUTION IN MORSELS

RETRIBUTION IN MORSELS

I would have to know a hundred more things than 

I do right now to understand a reason  -  I've heard

a million explanations, but the planar truth does now

come through. Gestation period : for too long perhaps.

Reheboth Beach, Delaware; some kids were throwing

tomatoes like they were mudpies at anything that moved.

I stayed still like Lot's wife  -  pillar of salt or not.

I'd be willing to bet, Delaware or not, they've

never read a book in their entire lives.

7084. ABOUT TODAY

ABOUT TODAY

There was no one about today :

the streets were empty, and

the sky was gray.

7083. I WAS PAID TO DIE

I WAS PAID TO DIE

All that stuff comes together  -  outside, the city

sweeper, wetting the streets, nearly empty, as it 

rolls along its pre-dawn way. The two men in 

jackets, trading cigarettes as they exit their car. 

The strange lady with the briefcase  -  way too 

overdressed, I'd say, for post-midnight Summer 

air. 'I'm here to attend the Apocalypse,' was all

she would say to me. I hear that metallic bellow

which seagulls make  -  they are swooping in, as 

if in trouble, from the nearby harbor on the

east end of the city I'm in.

7082. THINGS I DO NOT NEED ARE LEFT

THINGS I DO NOT 

NEED ARE LEFT

Two left hands will not help this arpeggio; don't you

see the run of the notes, right off the page?  Just like

the Devil's Trill Sonata  - by Guiseppe Tartini, have you

heard of it?  -  there is a trilling movement everywhere.

It's called that because it's a devil to play  -  but I like

to think, as well, that in it the Devil had his say.

-

Soundless and difficult to hear or sense, the denseness 

of being deaf in a world full of noise is tough : the sky 

is never cloudless; it seems there's always 

something going on.

7081. NAKED NECK

NAKED NECK

And devolution marks the moment - we have turned

from other matters to this tiny little speck. The mote

in the 'other's' eye soon turns to morte for you and I.

The pleasant willow trees are dying, no water 

trickles down now from the landlord's fort.

7080. DIVINE ENCAPSULIZATION

DIVINE 

ENCAPSULIZATION

This God is a sudden veering : oh how I

want It to be a verb. I swear to see it build

buildings with a lightning strike, break down 

Jerciho's walls again and bring me, so salty,

home  -  where the flowers adorn the wall.

7079. SEEMING DEARTH

SEEMING DEARTH

Like death the blind man staggers forth as much

confused as once alive : the olive tree grows

Jesus branches through his head, and he cannot

speak a word. On 21st street, the jagged memory 

of Earthside crime still lingers : heroin gods, men

with steel arms, the blackened veins, protruding.

-

We buy fruit from the corner stall  -  all stupid

stuff, nothing worthwhile at all.

7078. SERENE HIGH COUNTRY

SERENE HIGH COUNTRY

I took a bus, I took a plane, I ambled, I walked.

The things which came together make this land a lark.

The jazz-pizazz I left behind, all the Union Square

stuff long over. Here - instead  -  I sat and placed my hat.

There is no longer living when it's all become a task :

foursquare and beleaguered, tawdry and tired too.

Shall I wear my trousers rolled? I don't think

even that would do.

-

This book has no other chapter? And why is that? Being

stuck, such as I am, in acknowledgements and in citations

instead, I haven't time to write another word. This is

sad, and this is sorrowful. I have entered that higher

land : a serene place, all quiet. Now, if I could

only stand, and face this world erect again.

I don't think even that would do.

7077. PENTANGLE ENTANGLEMENT

PENTANGLE 

ENTANGLEMENT

I took a walk down Sunbury Square, off the island to the

left of there : what I found was all I ever wanted. Not a

care. But, undaunted, I remained an absolute silence

and wouldn't share a thing. 'This is my own secret here.'

-

I'm thinking to myself : the wager stays, the odds are

five to one. Jolly Roger, Summer fare. The plays and

pennants are in the square. Will Shakespeare sang with

Father Dominic. The songs are in the air.

-

I love a Summer festival : when all those ladies 

in waiting are waiting no more.

7076. AND WEARY THAT WEATHERMAN IS

AND WEARY THAT 

WEATHERMAN IS

Gunslinger, cap-king, cut-throat, daredevil, liar.

Too many descriptions to carry at once. Heavy

the burdens these cumuli bear. Give me
this mouthpiece to take to the air.

7075. CARRY ME BACK TO THE LONE PRAIRIE

CARRY ME BACK TO 

THE LONE PRAIRIE

Ham-fisted and with a cauliflower ear, the old pardner

at the Mello-Roll Bar sat back in his chair : 'It ain't right,

no siree, this ain't nothin' but trouble, and I been here over

forty years and you can't now tell me this fellow's coming

in here to build skyscrapers? Red Hook oughta' just up and

kill his type  -  there used to be little factories dotting all around

here, now there's nothing but filth and stores selling fancy flowers

and wines where nobody can park and everybody fights over it

and all these block-eyed kids sit around the outside bars just eating

or waiting to eat behind fences. See that, right over that, that was the

Waymen's Club  -  with the boxing rings and the pool tables. Used

to make money there every night there was a fight card, and then lose

it just as much playing pool to sailors. Damn! What a life I was!'

-

He didn't look like much, and the beer in his hand wouldn't last. I

knew that, but I hoped he would  -  a hundred years and more, I 

wanted to be his life too, not just hear it, be it, and I knew everything

he was going to say before he said it. Why settle in? Let it go? The

whole place now is run by the same creeps who gave us cartoons and

Ricochet Rabbit. I realized I was getting drunk  -  I don't know where

 that previous thought came from, and I'm not even sure about the rabbit.

7074. OH SO NINETEENTH CENTURY

OH SO NINETEENTH CENTURY

The gamekeepers on these landed estates -  they're the

men who keep the wildlife  -  take care of and order the game

on large holdings. Fox and deer and wolves and cats, I guess.

They used to nail up the withered and shrunken corpses of

crows, jays, weasels, stoats, sparrowhawks, buzzards, kestrels,

peregrines, hedgehogs, and owls  -  all hanging in  a row like

bedraggled coats on pegs. They don't do that anymore, and it's

all illegal now. Like the loyal dog, always retrieving something,

everything about this idea is so old.

-

When Roger Tory Peterson  -  bird artist and environmentalist, 

was a boy, he found a golden-shafted flicker lying on the forest 

floor, and put his hand out to touch the dead body, only to

discover that the flicker was not dead but merely exhausted from

its migratory journey. It burst back into flight, and set Roger

on the path of his life's work. Things like that really do happen.

7073. LOOK ASKANCE OLD BUDDY

LOOK ASKANCE OLD BUDDY

Half in the distance, the sea was throwing foam,

and the lady on the pier was yelling 'We have three!'

I thought maybe she meant fish, since men nearby 

were fishing, but she meant me. I was walking the 

sands with my dog, and she thought it a great sight.

She said that's why she yelled 'we have three'. Dogs.

-

Barrel-bottomed boats were festooned with seaweed 

and people as the bottom roiled the top and the whole

surface was rolling : the ocean swore to its own concerns.

7072. WHEN EVEN THE DOG GETS IMPATIENT

WHEN EVEN THE 

DOG GETS IMPATIENT

Every so often I just have to wince : lines of crossing-guard

Catholics are being traffic'd by a moonlighting cop. One curb

to the other, the crossing like Earth to their Heaven? Their Hell

to this Earth? Or can one make it straight from this Hell to that

Heaven? My God, it seems I'm always wondering about something.

7071. ONCE YOU

ONCE YOU

Once you get it started it all keeps 

rolling in  -  like money, I guess, 

to one of those big-headed magnate

guys. Buddy, the bourbon, the bourbon.

I don't even know if we make magnates 

any more; hell, we don't make anything

at all, 'cept maybe Kleenex.

-

I never know why people say that though  -  

like, 'what'd you ever make, big-head?'.

as if they'd made things themselves. It's a

general conceit by people who work, have or 

had jobs, toil. Even the worker at GM, does he

really 'make' a car? He hangs a tailgate or

positions a seat or a mirror  -  everyone's got

their appointed task all on down the line.

-

Ah, I don't know and whatever about it cares?

From Macon, Georgia to the Somerset County

line, the world's a great big jell-fest, with

everything coated in slime.

7070. MACHINE HEAD

MACHINE HEAD

Before I sleep on the floor again, let me tell you something -

I have the ways of getting around this; I can stay awake

forever; in my land, creatures do not sleep. Here, by contrast,

I get to watch that trucker nodding off, spinning his wheels at

60mph and crashing through the barrier to the great ditch below.

It's the same with bad audiences everywhere : the story gets lame,

everyone's head begins bobbing, eyes slide shut, and before you

even realize it, the speaker is speaking to no one at all.

7069. ALL NIGHT, DISINTERRED

ALL NIGHT, DISINTERRED

Frequently, the habit of declaiming things runs out, slides

down, disappears  -  that's why so many grow silent, no

longer even knowing what to say, let alone to think. 

-

I have seen this in the best of places, and the worst. The

Cevender Brothers Meat Market, for instance, where the

men with cleavers remain silent amidst all their animal

carnage. And the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where

even the most robotic masters of self-discipline break 

down and utter only sighs.

-

Outside everywhere, the buses glide by, lit from inside.

I can see people's heads, with their newspapers or bags and

all those sporting hats : Red Sox, Rangers, Yankees, Pirates

and mets. What the Devil does it all mean? The bus carries

people, but not a sound.

-

I can recall, with a friend named Paul, one night well into 

the wee hours after two am, a bus ride back uptown; mostly

in silence,  as we passed The Dakota. It was 1972. He 

pointed, and said, 'see that building there, that's where 

they filmed the movie, 'Rosemary's Baby.' We both 

looked over, scanning together the post-midnight scene.

7068. PASSED OUT ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

PASSED OUT ON THE 

CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

Just kids, oh just more kids, improvised in the studio

drums and noise : 'he do the police, in different voices.'

-

I want to see the mountains Route 6 headed west I'm 

going on streets of nothing at all certainly not gold. 

Legendary Lisa, light me up another butt.

-

Just more kids, he do the drums, improvised noise,

improvised police, in different choices.

7067. PLEASE FACTOR IN THE CRAZY GUY

PLEASE FACTOR IN 

THE CRAZY GUY

Summertime shawls and egghead dunkings, look at the

way this wild world turns : all the kids are at the pond,

Promised Land, Pennsylvania, and I can't believe they 

call it that. Cat calls and phrase falls, mothers are shouting

out names while fathers relax, Those dads with their beers

and cigars  -  big time motorcycle guys on parade. Cicadas

make soundtracks for eternity's film, no one notices the

food is burning, and that spicket on their grill keeps turning.

What are these people for, if not about living and love?

Just park yourself down, the world will keep spinning,

and you are allowed to watch  -  hear the infernal racket

in the woods nearby. The kids are having fun! Listen to 

their cries! Please factor in me, the crazy guy.

7066. DUBIOUS THINGS

DUBIOUS THINGS

(for skip spence)
Nature is a fine fettle to break down, a masterful

master, with a whip and a frown. You cannot break

what you cannot know  -  waters and winds will rule

you. What am I worth, when my most prized possession

is my copy of 'Oar'? Some there are who've told me they 

love it. I just listen  -  I want to be mad, and die.

7065. DARK NOW AND IT'S SNOWING

DARK NOW AND 

IT'S SNOWING

My mind is a fortress and outside the walls are men

looking back at me from their horses. They stare, and

then spit on the ground. I pretend I cannot see, and that

satisfies them. Behind them, as if on a scrim, runs the

noise and movement of the NJ Turnpike : somewhere

I seldom venture, where trucks run bent and cars are

lethal fractures. If the fabric of time can be rent, it

would from here the doing would be done. All the

trees hereabouts have been sickened and are dying.

The old apartments houses seem to lean, and the

donut people still line the Dunk-o-Rama, not

like they used to thirty-five years ago, 

but they're there. But today, no one

in there smokes. 

-

On the overhead sound system is heard some really

old song  -  a Tin Pan Alley thing, like 'Always.'

That confuses me too much, because all those

levels of overlapped time seem now only to get

captured by quaint, shiny entertainers, something

like Harry Connick, Jr., or someone, the kind who sing

for money and bend to the bows as a girl would, who

couldn't swing a mallet for shit. Girl-guys, that's it!

-

My undershirt is stained with sweat, and even somehow my

balls are sweaty  -  but I stay here no matter. If I can imagine

a winter coat, and big heaves of snow, I'm thinking I'll be OK.

7064. TIME AS HEAVY AS A GOAT

TIME AS HEAVY AS A GOAT

Soon it will be coming back : lightning flash and

snow together, wrapped like a scarf around cold limbs. 

I can hear those tree limbs crack. I won't have to 

sleep in the outside air. If I do I won't do it again. 

My moccasin head is heavy now.

Time, as heavy as a goat.

7063. LOADED

LOADED

Forgive the marketplace, it's filled with dread. The streets

of Newark are filled with State Troopers, filling in and aiding 

the ineffectual city cops as people fall with bullets in their heads.

Too many to be comfortable about, they say, but I say let them fall,

let the bastards kill each other off, let them fall. Over by the 

Prudential Building it all looks calm enough  -  rows of cheap 

dollar stores and bright-blue street-boy clothing and sneakers.

'Dress me right to die tonight,' one would think to say.

-

Now the drums come marching in : two local police on 

motorcycles, screaming back at the crossing hordes to move 

along, out of the way. Lights are blinking  -  fuck me, it's just 

another bunch of political goons  -  the Cory Booker stenchers 

and the Chris Christie fools. It's time for rail-tunnel-talk 

with the jerks from New York. In my car, here at the light,

Leonard Cohen is singing : 'Democracy is coming, to the USA.'

7062. THIS IS HOW WE BE DONE WITH IT

THIS IS HOW WE 

BE DONE WITH IT

I've lost composure, but taken my pill. I've

walked in circles, but gotten there still. I don't

know how it happens that I'm still alive. Here

the storm skies part, and bright lights recur : Gods

and angels and demons are walking forth, allied.

-

What kind of a mess-up world is this? Too many 

things left to Boyle. No. no, silly, to boil, this isn't 

a probate hearing. The watched pot, yeah that one, 

that story lies. It bubbles over whenever it wants. 

That broken watch, right twice a day  -  well, all

that can be said for that is, oh, sometimes, maybe, 

aye. For all the rest  -  white marks on a blackened 

chalkboard that rub off with a simple pressure. 

Even kids can do it. I remember me and Theresa Knox, 

in fifth or sixth grade, no less, without even trying, 

getting in done on the painted walls on School 4's basement...

cleaning the erasers with which we 'd just cleaned the boards.

7061. THE FILMMAKERS ARE RANK

THE FILMMAKERS ARE RANK

What started as a joke is now a rooftop industry;

Woody Allen running without pants, Spike Lee

leaping for joy.  Oh what bug-eared antics we

start watching when we let it go : I want to see a

car-crash; I want Superman spiked on that fence.

All I can think of is the Worthington Pump factory

disaster, like the Triangle Shirtwaist  -  things I see

in old documentaries, when people made sense and 

had time. The General Slocum, that horrid, burning

ship in the harbor outside; all those Germans burning

to death, always burning and fire and mayhem. Oh,

what the heck. What is it they say, life itself is only

a momentary movie wherein we have walk-on roles?

I'd like to agree with that, yeah  -  yet why is it that all

we ever get to see are our own lonely parts of the film.

7060. MYSTERIES OF THE AXIOMATIC

MYSTERIES OF 

THE AXIOMATIC

The autopsies have fallen into the waster-bin, 

and now everyone is back up, alive.  It's just 

like a Resurrection, really. The light pounds 

on the lab-windows like hammers, and all those 

beakers and bunson burners keep working and

filling up. Flames of a sacred heart; 

and everyone rises and leaves.

7059. TAKEN ON THE RUN LIKE THIS

TAKEN ON THE 

RUN LIKE THIS

My coffee is a tiger in a cup, ladled with

a spoonful of responsibility and two dollops

of care. Like so many others,  I sit at a 

window and stare, as a new dawn beckons.

7058. MY MONEY'S ON THE MARKED HORSE

MY MONEY'S ON 

THE MARKED HORSE

The strange guy with the grease-gun is coming around

again, and all those stalkers are out on the street. Loosen

me up a new widget please. Jehovah's Witnesses, good God

yet again, have taken up places in so many of the driveways.

It must be mission-day once more for them. Get out on them

hustings, and pump it up for the Deity! Yeah! But what happens

if you live in a world where Deliverance is only a movie? What

then, bungalow Bill  -  you're caught in your own frieze of a trap.

Like a wartime general who is also a mechanic, you seek to fix 

things up just as soon as you go about wrecking them.

Conflicts of interest, I'd say.

7057. WHEN A ST. FRANCIS COMES HOME

WHEN A ST. FRANCIS 

COMES HOME

These fields are rich with whisper - they sway 

and they roll with the breeze. I can hear 

(shh! almost) what they are saying; yet I 

know it is the language of birds, not mine.

Nonetheless : something rings a true bell; 

something comes as an understanding. As 

I do not need the translator for the sunlight 

or the rain, so too I can nudge a meaning 

from these oh so silent words.

7056. SHALIMAR

SHALIMAR

Amidst the tussle, amidst the tumult, the stars have

never left the sky and this long night of wagering

fates goes on. The black car in the driveway seems 

at rest. The thin crescent of a moon piles up ideas

for me to think on. I'd never want to leave this now.

If I listen deeply, I can even hear the majestic river 

running  -  it roils its ruminant rippling rightly.

-

I know there's a place  -  distant and away  -  where

I can go : not to be shattered, not to be healed. Just to

go. To self-identify with myself, in the way that it's

called 'to be whole again.' No magic there; just a

simple man's simple psychology of self. I'm off.

7055. NAKED GIRLS USING LAPTOP COMPUTERS

NAKED GIRLS USING 

LAPTOP COMPUTERS

I know now that I have truly entered another world.

I have my own voice, yes, and my own shadow, and

my own locomotion and digestion and all of that  -  but

one step removed from Mankind am I. There is no cross

that overlaps the bar : singularity is mine. Just yesterday

I saw a photo, and no one blinked. Something to do with

ease and the 'new' naturalness of green living and college

dorms. The message I got was 'we can connect the dots

for you, you need not.' A bevy of college-age girls,

sitting around a fanciful lounge room, naked, and

each was enhanced by being entranced on their

own personal laptop computer.

7054. SAY THIS AFTER ME

SAY THIS AFTER ME

The nomenclature of Silence is silence. They keep

it in a drawer. The catalogue cards, still stuffy, reside

in their own little chill. I notice they're from another

time  -  before comics and graphic novels and the

alabaster ways of the sex novelteen. This will be

Rugs Mill, Natoon Township County Library.

Trying to figure place out from that is too hard

for me to do. I am 'here', like a marker on a

retard map in some cankered mall.

-

What mess people have made of messes, that too

has a nomenclature of its own : my eyes are bleary

and I peer for what to see. The riverbank seems

crowded with natives  -  Indians I mean  -  running 

up from the watery banks and fleeing back into their

ghostly woods. Huge trucks roll by, driven only by

men with rifle-rack headsets and monstrous eyes.

No one gives a damn for that.

7053. THE THINGS I DON'T NEED

THE THINGS I DON'T NEED

Your fantasies have become a task, and I grow weary of all

this gnashing. Pulling teeth from a bull in a battle must be

easier than this : repeat behavior savages me. Saddle me up

another glass of something, I'm not yet ready for the work.

It's early morning again, and I'm already quite dead. The

Small World girl ignores me for the hundredth time, and

I guess I'll have to take it and just ask for coffee, and get 

my frigging ticket punched. One more of these and I get

ten and that's free - the kiss, or the coffee? Gee? I

never thought of it that way before.

-

I lost a lot of friends along the way, yeah; one or two 

have jumped from Skyline Bridge, and another three 

or four were killed on the road; one blew his brains to 

kingdom come in a baby-snit about something, and 

another one or two died of those nasty diseases you 

hear about : distended colons leaking  out the ears, 

nervous disorders about licking stamps and attacking

cars, degenerative cyclopsian syndromes. Stuff like 

that. I don't want to hear. Me, I paint cars for a living 

now, though for the longest time I was a boring 

desktop clerk; God, how I tried to find life.

7052. THE BRENTWOOD FACILITY IS NOW CLOSED

THE BRENTWOOD FACILITY

 IS NOW CLOSED

We've long ago stopped having anything to do with reality ;

this is a swagger we specialize in. Lies and indiscretions while

having absolutely nothing else to do: reading a book at a

stateside stable, pretending to own the horses and betting on

what we own. Can't beat the odds, but how odd is that?

Well yes, actually I did used to sell auction wines, but that

was before the green turf around me subsided to this. Four

walls and a ginger candy at four. Four walls, and a

ginger candy at four p.m.

7051. AND ARRIVED SOMEWHERE

AND ARRIVED SOMEWHERE

All these mountain greeneries and Sad-Sack fountains

mean nothing now : they've gerrymandered the graveyards

out here into their own pavilion.  Forsyth; Lipschitz; Wallengerber;

Wayne. Just a hundred and more delirious names. Every half-mile

another abandoned barn tells me something. I'm out of the well

and into the drought. Seems like, for sure. The underground

water stream percolates up to drivel a spring at the crossing.

-

I left yesterday morning, just for something to do  -  headed west

on some Route 1502, maybe read wrong, maybe 512. County

State or Interstate  -  makes no never mind again. At the Lehigh

Tunnel, I went right through. Fat Pennsylvania girls at either

side of the Wedgewood Diner.

-

Find me that statue again of the soldier with the lily-white rifle.

The bucket-top helmets worn by the cops, locally here, are made

lies of by mad motorcyclists whizzing by helmet-less. The streets

are paved with brains  -  and survivors alone remain to roam.

7050. EVERYTHING TAKES TIME

EVERYTHING TAKES TIME

There are a million followers of nothing and they are

all standing at the edge of the chasm  -  watching things

fall though not yet falling themselves. I can wait.

The young kid from the nearby high school, his name

is Paul, is saying to his friend how he 'loves the way

girls' breasts rise and fall.' It's pretty certain he means

these Summer girls around, he's too young to know age.

-

In my hand is a reporter's pad  -  the kind they used to use  -

with the coil at the top and the pages that flip up and over.

That was so reporters, writing fast, could just keep going,

in a flash. No one does that nay longer  -  I guess it's all

on tape or phone or computer now. Type your witnessing

story, put it on a drive, and plug it all in later to review

and edit. No one seems to run for phones anymore :

'The President's just been shot!', or 'That long-awaited

bill just passed by a slim majority.'

-

We are weary, and we are so jaded. I sit in the heat with a

spiked lemonade, or maybe not, but whatever I'm drinking

reminds me of Chivas Regal. I have sunglasses on, and

what I really want now is an eye-shade, like the old bookies

wore, and a cigarette, like Sinatra and Martin. Or better

yet, a Sartrean 'Galoises.' Nothing would be better than

falling into black matter -   the real darkness of certainty,

the idea that  we all will be dead soon enough.

-

But, instead, I see peripatetic jerks trading reams of

stock to make seven cents on a share for an hour. Whatever

any of that means to them, their mother and father would 

know  -  it's deep-seated need, its angst and dismay, its

long-ago things they just never worked out. It's about

as far away from sense as I'd ever want to be. And,

even though they talk big  -  with their wines and cigars

and cars  -  they're no different then me either : far, far

away from that Chinese monk on a high mountain peak

we all should be. I could admonish them to aspire.

but what in Heaven for?

7049. THE WHOLE WORLD STARTS AT 7:30

THE WHOLE WORLD 

STARTS AT 7:30

Today I awoke, in Germantown, at some

stinky hotel  -  their flimsy version of a

'Continental' breakfast made me dizzy. 

Badly-made coffee, and a creepy roll.

Buttered, but only if you wanted it so 

and asked. It must have been the 'lost'

continent, of Atlantis, that one.

-

The guy behind the masked counter said,

'why's your hair so long and why don't you

ever shave?'. Like it was sinful to be me, or

something accusatory. I smiled, calmly stating,

'my elegance, sir is religious, and stems from

my own private beliefs. I do not bother you, and

I ask the same from you. Thanks.' He was really

bothered by that. I told him there was a fine woman

up in my room. 'You done with her then already?' 

he asked. I smiled, and said, 'yes, sir, thanks. We

just talked for a awhile.' He laughed.

-

I turned to walk away, and thought better of it. Turning

back to him, wanting to tweak him, I said, 'And, kind sir,

I know what you are thinking, but I am quite fast. Take 

that Bible, Gideon's, on your counter. Look at the next 

to the last line in Revelation. That is about me.'

-

 I walked away, and as I did so, I heard him, after

opening the Bible, let out a huge laugh. 'Surely!',

he exclaimed, 'it says 'Surely, I come quickly!'

7048. CURRY BOY MONSTER FED

CURRY BOY MONSTER FED

The fish are wallowing in the awkward tank, 

almost sinking, almost a'float. I think they'd 

rather just wash away, like bamboo in the

Ganges, or a body in the sink. The sky is

opening up, some sort of monsoon rain

pouring down  -   the mud-red river

preparing to wash away.