9258. AUTOCRATIC JONES, THE RINGLEADER

AUTOCRATIC JONES, 

THE RINGLEADER

I didn't come for you I came for your

older sister  -  the one with the rose-petal

hair and the elevator shoes. Dial-eyed

wingtip, flutter-heart, bread-baking,

stewardess of everything good.

-

How's that for flattery? If five will

get you ten, what can this bring me

home? Outside the Red-Room Cafe,

two tables in the suddenly balmy air

held talkers who ate while they sat.

A warm day at riverside, ah yes, there's

nothing like that at all  - watching the 

new Winter babies on their first outing

in new strollers, while the new mothers

yet insist the old yoga pants fit. Ah,

to be in Lulumon again!

-

I've got nothing against Indian braves:

I know they still lurk  -  those Muncey

tribes of Lenape  -  and stare back; from

the waterfronts they lost, where their

passing villages would stop. Lean-to

and teepee, together, while fishing on

the banks of the Delaware or Raritan.

Oh boy, Tonto, those long days are

distant and gone. You might as well

forget all that now. They've got 

guns in their memories, while

you've got none.

9257.BROAD DAY ROSE - MICKEY BLUE EYES

9257. BROAD DAY ROSE - MICKEY BLUE EYES:

1. AUTOCRATIC AD LIB : Broad day rose : Mickey Blue Eyes : autocrat ad lib and Mandrake the Magician too - "I am sorrowful and sad and broken by the wheel but what can you give to me in return ? for I have sought to heed all commandments and rules too but it has brought me nothing : a rain still runs in my gutter and small birds come to drink THAT MUCH for sure I can say but there is no butter on the bread nor is there ANYWHERE any music pleasing to my ears Oh Lord ! can you hear me ? all things are fakery and soiled imitations and disposable wants and artificial needs : and I am speechless again and sorrowful and sad."

I read the story of Jacob and I HAVE read the same story too but it makes no sense of time or drama for me to know what I've read - nothing is as it seems and nothing is as it is and that paradox belies the entire underpinnings of what else there is GOD at first reluctant to get involved but then GOD making man to prove his own worth.-
There's always going to be someone to talk to you even when you don't want it - those stalwart types on the bus for instance - the ladies in the crisp skirts and blouses with everything somehow matching even if they don't so that the entire ensemble is put together at will to be stunning with expensive shoes and some sort of fantastic and crazed handbag and they exude some aged sexuality and they know it and all they want is some pale acknowledgement of that - what is lost is never mentioned nor are any of their feverish loves and lost emotions - and if they REALLY were anything they'd not be riding the bus and all that show-stopping look of their moment would be somewhere else : museum halls and lobbies enormous and vaulted restaurants with muraled ceilings and skylit dens the leather-bound library books in a tycoon's study wine caps and goblets of sherry or scotch thrown back like water and pictures of old Mohawks or Navajos on the wall with a Remington sculpture in pride on the mantlepiece and an expensive membership at some crazy uptown club : but no one ever mentions any of these things - engineers dismantle bridges or at least discuss the new ones they're building while matrons sample the teas and crumpets put before them and it's always in such a proper world that we lose more than we had to lose and walk away empty and void of everything else so that money becomes a mere subject to be considered laughed at and walked away from and just as some thirty years ago you could find artistic and comedic 'shorts' being shown on TV - old film festival things and student works - so now there is nothing like that left : phone booths sandwich shops steambaths and sidewalk social clubs : they've all been replaced with some bland generic and neutered-out reality no one knows enough to name and like some blitzkrieg from another war the sky is all a'lit with fires and storms and loud noises knock things over and the rubble lives in infamy and we fear EVERYTHING but fear itself.

- And I knew a man who knew a man who knew a man yet all together they could get nothing for their eyes were shaded and their cloak was DOUBT and all they consumed were the most bitter of roots and reeds so that NOTHING ever satisfied and they were never SATED nor sedated either and everything together had led them to believe in nothing and proudly too - so that one day the bridge beneath them - modern and strong and serene - just collapsed of an instant and they all fell to their deaths - far down below - far up above - it is ALL THE SAME in the instant of last movement and all things which are to come shall come in due time and that is the message of blood and that is the message of fame so bury your heart where the best wishes blow and you too shall stay there forever - (and that is the end of this message).

'Abracadabra one two three and there's nothing left of what used to be'

- that was the jingle running through my head as I walked some stupid parapet of a catwalk over the water Brooklyn Bridge Williamsburg Bridge Manhattan Bridge and all the rest - looking over the huddled masses yearning to be free (huddled asses yearning to be me) - there were women with beautiful faces and lithesome hands with men of indeterminate situations flying high over some golden globe of gilded commerce and there were hags and beasted-brothers and the foolish forelocked clientele of Mammon and the rest and they all walked straight ahead whether to or from where they were going I cared not and nothing for their ways and means - 'Watchtower' it somehow said in the sky and 'Domino Sugar' too I thought I'd seen - I simply sought companionship amidst the space of sky alotted and even had himself Hart Crane come forth to greet me I'd have barfed for once in his face and his and his Walt Whitman swaggering man while anyone who calls Brooklyn home calls something wrong and the icy frieze of art and its masters made me snort short abort the court and sally forth so I turned around towards Manhattan-bound and walked again that awful row of rows and lanes and traffic and towers finance police civic government and every 1930's form of welfare chisel-state synopsis I saw stretching out before me so sad and wasteful forlorn and bedgraggled and I KNEW THE END WAS COMING but I had no sign and the man with double vision looked over at me while I espied some sister-bride in all revealing clothing sold for seven hundred dollars on a March noonday storm of fence and ivy and "there was never half of what you've been told you know and she's only had those breasts now about 5 years" some wiseass New York jodphur had addressed me straight directly and I replied "that's OK for me for that's 5 more years than I've had them" and he laughed and said "hey pretty good wanna' do a show with me?" and I asked what he meant and he said he was playing open-microphone comedy bullshit at Wildegreen's Comedy Club on William Street in the pavilion and I said "is that near Hanover Square?" but he didn't answer and handed me a flyer and a discount card instead and as I looked at it I saw the figure of some half-robed woman bending over and I thought 'what the heck is this - some tight-ass giving me a card with a tight-ass on it?' and I never figured any of this to come far past anything but I stayed with my own program and minded my own pizazz and watched that guy walk away - saying not a word since anyway I was headed in his direction but I never heeded warnings and never paid at doors either so no comedy club was in my future and I put it out of my mind and wished instead for a seat at the India Club where real men sat to tea and lunch with the power crowd : I always liked that spot but never figured it out : was it some four-hundred year old remnant of all that used to be or just some gassed-up parody of memory and heritage wherever they could find it ? I wondered about stuff like that and never really got answers to questions or anyway I got answers to questions I never asked - which was pretty much all the same anyway and whoever listened to bullshit like that ? never mind never matter the clock's running down and oceans are failing and bad news abounds - so what seeks a companion when there's nothing else around ? bedbugs spiders cockroaches rats and mice I suppose and once I read 'never poison the space you live in' and that too made NO sense to me because if that's where the rats and cockroaches are what else are you supposed to do - break into your neighbor's joint and poison them there ? and that's maybe good for you but not too golden-ruley when it comes to your neighbor - see - so just let them slide and the planet will survive the world will roam and the entire cosmos will still have no meaning NONE at all unless you MAKE IT - which is what language is all about anyway 'the harvest of tares - sown in inequity and reaped in wrath' which pretty much describes the effect of the environment of the world of any Freddy or Tom or Mary or Jane : there's NOTHING you can do about it except just let it fall like Blanchard's Leather or Alice's Pioneer Pub out on Frelinghuysen Avenue : nothing but black-girl whores walking those streets and dudes on motorcycles trying to get drunk on a ten dollar bill while the hulks and skeletons of all the old factories crumble and fall and are taken away and replaced soon enough by prefabricated replacement ratty-looking tacky duplexes supposed to make up a city nowadays like some Charlotte Street project of the old South Bronx - given away for free and tax-subsidized on other people's money until the ends of days : COMING SOON to a theater near you!-
'The desire of the just ends only in good : the expectation of the wicked is wrath.'
-
I could never watch the girl go home alone - which is why I never liked movies and I could never allow for the removal of reality enough to pretend something was happening either - sort of the very opposite of the first and yet in some way the two are inextricably linked for in the usual 'movie' sense of things the girl it seems NEVER goes home alone because unhappy endings are frowned upon in an industry dedicated to the serviceable notion that all of life has happy endings and most-positive situations and any of that can easily be put into the service of generating profit and elongating careers for thousands of people : just today along Fulton Street and that area I was stopped by marshalls and traffic police and told I could not walk to where I was headed as the street was closed for filming of a television series pilot - a car crash - for a weekly show to be called 'Moore Street Con' about the streets of New York and the necessary cars had already been put into position - placed strategically - for the crash to take place and extras in expensive business attire and briefcases and the like had already been situated in place for the scene and lights-camera-action and all of that was about to start and the guy who was moving me about the streets right along there said they had been closed for the day and I saw that people were being turned away just as I had been and the nearby corner with the scene and lighting trucks also had an operational catering truck serving lunch to the actors and crew and as soon as that was all complete he said they'd be back to work filming the collision-scene as already set-up and I turned to him and said "you mean to say this really is an 'accident about to happen' don't you?" and he laughed and said he guessed so yes and I went along my way up the street towards the Strand Bookstore which was busy with its usual downtown branch activities - books in bins along the sidewalk and the rest - and it all gave me time to consider the fact of reality versus fantasy and real people against actors and situations which never really occur being made to occur and the whole reality at that point of everything else too and those sorts of thoughts filled my mind as I walked along : garbage men postal trucks huge tourist buses sanitation trucks and police people all rolled into one as well as handfuls of groups of tourists on their ways to or from and in fact one slow and dazed looking Fed Ex delivery guy ambling along with three overnight packets in his hands looking slowly for a certain and particular address for whatever reason right nearby to the old Excelsior Power Station and Eden Alley (which is now anything but Edenic).

9256. GOING TO CHURCH WITH EGG WHITE

GOING TO CHURCH 

WITH EGG WHITE

I was a kid, really nothing, and I'd met

this other kid, on the way to church.

The day before we'd been playing a

pick-up game of neighborhood baseball

behind the portables in the school-yard,

like we often did. Kids from one or two 

blocks, making a team to play kids from 

another set of blocks. Happened all the

time, and sometimes, new kids showing

up, there'd be people you didn't know.

That was this guy. We started walking

together, just by the happenstance of

meeting. When he said his name, I did

really think he said Egg White. So I was

calling him Egg. Only later I found it,

his name was a simple Ed; Ed White,

now called Eddie so this wouldn't 

happen again.

9255. MICHAEL-MANN

MICHAEL-MANN

Woe-betide and come aside

this leaking, battered vessel.

Like a prison-ship once in

Wallabout Bay, 1777, dank 

and rotten and filled with the

dead or the dying. Look about

you and see the rotted marsh-weed

and the tipsy fusilier's wand. 

I have to think about things here,

just for the moment, those camp-

followers and the unguided, all 

seeking money and tithes : the

woman who will wash your faces

for a worthless Yankee Continental

worth less than spit and falling.

I need to step aside now; I have

said too much. We bombed the

cannon-master's cannonade, we

three, like Musketeers, who 

whooped and screamed out

victory. It's all immaterial now;

the battering-ram of the deaths

off many, prisoners lost and

thrown, those overboard cases

each morning, wrapped in a bad

blanket, and strapped dead to

a cannon-ball that took them

down: watery death and burial.

Watery underground.

9254. IT'S A CRUEL

IT'S A CRUEL

It's a cruel gestation period

that brings me to you. Things

blossom in less time on Mars.

The green man, with the claws

for hands, he's been seen again

scuttling o'er the ocean floor.

That can only mean bad things.

Ocean-poor tidings and all that

it brings. Oh shit, poor tidings?

'Or maybe more' sings back

the echo at the cavern's door.

9253. WALLFLOWER

WALLFLOWER

Patty O'Gonowitz, writing

rock and roll lyrics on the

back of my tongue. I'd love

to be there when she's done.

Everything I ever thought 

about, and then some.

9252. SOMEDAY

SOMEDAY

Someday (soon) I'm just going

to sit up all night reading and never

sleep again. Well, probably. I'll try.

That'll leave a big gaping hole in

my social life, but I'll never notice.

The only place I ever go is to the

bathroom anyway.

-

I know there's no bouncer at the

door there, to push me away 'cause

I don't look like him, got me no

muscles, and no double chin. Soon

enough though, that'll be  -  they'll

start checking for gender, and 

want to see. Someday (soon).

-

It's so funny now, how they really

expect to let you select  -  your gender,

that is. Boy Scouts let in the gay guys

now, and that's OK enough. Knots, and

campfires, uniforms and neck-scarves

too. No problem, until John  - who used

to be Jane  -  starts asking in. They gotta'

say yes now, and who's gonna win?

That kid there, the one who wants the

merit badge for Kama Sutra. Him.

He's a shoo-in. (Big grin).

-

Yeah, so someday (soon), I'm

never going to sleep again.

9251. THIS BECOMES THE ONE FORGOTTEN

THIS BECOMES THE 

ONE FORGOTTEN

I have no plans, and there's nothing

going on : I live in an empty valley,

one to which Sancho Panza himself

has never come. I play dominoes,

sometimes, with the Spirit of Darkness,

but pretty much that is it. The phone

company took away my contacts,

long before the ark and Noah too.

-

Now, this pedal-pusher lady with

whom I cohabit is sometimes long-lost 

gone and I sit here drinking tea with 

Lords and Bishops. Early Grey Tea 

really grates my ass and the scones 

are too sweet for me.

-

Sometimes I wonder about things,

and then I just realize, instead, that

I don't understand a thing. So why

bother, and why the fuss? If, as I do,

we grant 'consciousness' to all things,

then how can I stand the sound of the

grief and the anguish? Sun burning

cars, cars killing deer, deer killing

plants and trees. All that noise

should really be deafening. Of a

horror, and of a pain. Everywhere.

-

I can't write my essay because my

fingers are dead and there's nothing

to hold a pen or type with. I could be

one of those guys who types with a

pointer on his forehead, but then I'd

probably poke my eyes out and go 

blind instead. Jesus, Mary, and

Joseph (such a happy family),

what's the use? This all just

becomes the one forgotten.

9250. THE VERY BEST OF APPLE WOOD

THE VERY BEST 

OF APPLE WOOD

They make this cross to last. Nothing

more than 4-inch rivets, you would think;

that hugest leap of time and space between

the years. Those Italian riveters and Mohawk 

climbers, clambering over their mountains

of dreams  -  to make a building rise, to

make a concept stand. I pledge allegiance,

to the land, and let nothing go before it.

9249. THIS VICE OF ALL THIS IS

THE VICE OF ALL THIS IS

I took tea once, with an ancient

Orson Welles. He was already drunk,

but willing to talk. We said in the

Palm II front, amidst that upper

east-side feeling that such a street

delivers. I asked a few questions  -

about the Mercury Theater and

those Martians at Grover's Mills.

'Was it really such a surprise,

the reaction you garnered? And

did any of you know this was

happening?' He chuckled, that

rolling laughter, 'Of course, yes,

we know but we didn't know at

that very moment. We sensed

that the people who listened

to us would be easy to pull

along. You have to realize, this

is all made up. This mass-panic?

Not going to happen  -  we simply

didn't have that many listeners.

The ones we had  -  yes, yes  -

we knew they'd be dumb enough

to leap if we held the semblance

of a stupid net  -  for them to see,

to think was there. And yet, it all

went on as planned. That was 110

w41st, Houseman and I had just

gotten the place and this was the

first : a big effect, we knew our

listeners were gullible, well, yes,

maybe so. I have to tell you, we

changed our tone quickly once this

happened. Within the hour we had

to act as if we knew it all along, the

hype, the action, all that new radio

noise! It was ours now, all ours!

And we played it for all it was worth

-  you need to remember the times,

the year, nothing like this had ever

occurred before. No, nothing.

The vice of all this is  -  we had

to make it work, for us, by us.

It was all our doing!

9248. I HAVE BURNED THIS MEADOW

I HAVE BURNED 

THIS MEADOW

So crass, the medal lives on the

chest of one Colonel Talbott, 

who is left, like incendiary 

rumor on some grass field,

to speak aloud his own

tales of valor. 

-

He does not know how I

have burned the meadow

before him so. Nothing will

last. Nothing will grow. His

old voice will try speaking,

but no one will hear, for I

have left raging winds in

all of the nearby trees.

9247. FIDDLE-MASTER

FIDDLE-MASTER

Play then 'til dawn thou one.

The shaded dark curtain of

blue-green shall enter and

separate this day from the 

other. We have no stronger

mettle than that.

-

And I shall hear you once

and I shall hear you twice.

Lucretia, to me. Yet, set, I

hear the day-tide's rustle, as

yet, set, it comes silent o'er

the near horizon!

9246. THE BREAKING LIGHTS OF KILGARRY

9246. THE BREAKING LIGHTS OF KILGARRY CENTER ON THE EDGE OF FAIRFIELD PORTER FIELD:

Have you ever walked out onto a stage with all the lights on and the audience at the ready and the stage directions marked with tape and everything set to go and what you THOUGHT was a script turned out to be nothing more than a newspaper article about rodents and survival in underground tunnels and the only thing you saw when you looked out at the audience were some flashlights or illumines shining back towards you and you couldn't for the life of you figure out WHY or WHAT they were but you surmised that behind each flashlight was some form of a human (you hoped anyway) head with some ideas of meaning and expectation - and whatever it was they were expecting to see you knew damn well that YOU weren't about to be the one to deliver it?

Have you ever taken the moment extra - when you have it - to dwell on the idea of experience and what you're supposed to learn from it - as if every bit of living was some lesson you were supposed to absorb and be able to pass on to others? Whew, I guess I did.

Like just today - between watching portraits of crass politicians talking back to reporters about torture and youth and the places they play and talking-head types playing fuzzy-ball tennis with their lackluster mouths and the scansion of their hands held open with the broken piano-keys of an abbreviated concert career - I swore I heard someone talking about a person who had 'choked to death on a Lifesaver.' And, of course, being the sort of person I am, that phrase in and of itself so paradoxical led me immediately into a long rant about the philosophical quandaries presented and the depths of the paradox itself and the story line in general dwelt upon the differential of the dichotomy between life and death amidst the pomp and circumstance of 'choking to DEATH on a Lifesaver' : and then I noticed HOLY SHIT! the audience out in front of me was laughing uproariously and I could do nothing to stop it from doing so and the flashing lights had all disappeared (even though they were NOT flashing they were called 'flashlights' so they must have, at some level, possessed the quality of a flash for someone so what the hell...) and I figured MAYBE just maybe if I keep talking and scouring the ceiling with one-liners and double-entendres I could maybe stop a war this war that war or any other war of my choosing - even though there wasn't a war really and it was all just a pretension to keep a cover while people randomly died or died by choice (another strange paradox I suppose) and anyway what really mattered was that the patterned element of behavior be kept in check and local - so that NO new weirdnesses were allowed to break out and alter the argument - and then someone really DID ask me what sort of math courses I had back in seminary school and I answered as to how they didn't really offer any they didn't do much about math and they asked WHY NOT? and I said 'well they were too busy trying to convince us that three was really one OR they were probably afraid that some jerk like me would go up to the board and turn to the class with the problem and ask : 'Now! how many times does 1 priest go into 5 young boys?' - and, oh yeah, the audience is STILL laughing on that one.

Yes, there are some things that keep one from practicing : I can remember my very own times staring out windows and hating the next half-hour of time supposedly piano time practice time silent I hated but went on nonetheless and up above my head was a green skylight along the atrium where this piano was  -  a seminary practice room a corridor an alley way  -  and the heat would build up as magnified some by the lass of the skylight and in that still room I could sweat an I swore I could watch the varnish of shellac (realizing I didn't even know the difference anyway) almost bubble up in the heat on the practiced wood of the piano top and then later in the cold when it dried it dried in little patterns like bricks both hard and bumpy and I liked that for the texture it made the texture gave the music something and they each somehow reflected each other and yeah yeah as a twelve or thirteen year old those sorts of things were important to me  -  the odd and the oblique  -  bu o one seemed to care and I never spoke of this stuff with anyone at all : knowing my world was sorry and instant and quiet and still while all the rest made their noises.

9245. A CITY THAT ONLY ONCE WAS

9245. A CITY THAT ONLY ONCE WAS:
There are always so many things to consider  - any one angle can really get a person  -  these days  - in big trouble; it's not like it used to be at all. And no one used to really even consider where they were headed with anything. It was a lot like the old -free-form stand-up comedy  -  where a guy would just come stumbling out onto stage, simply being whatever he was, and begin going at at. No real forethought : a person just grabbed at the thoughts passing through the head and instantly made something of them. It worked. It's impossible that way now; everything needs to be reviewed and counter-watched, just in case. 'Normally, yes, that would be very funny, but there's a person in seat 3D who is very sensitive on that subject, and that person is offended and has complained. We're going to have to ask you to leave.' And so they shut down your act and the next day some jerk in the newspaper begins a report about your bad attitude or anti-Semitic or anti-Socratic or anti-Synchrnoic or anti-Cybaritic outlook (they'll find something) and you want to reply and say 'my mother was a slave who married her overseer who then took her to Germany and made her convert and then she got a job cleaning the showers in some camp, what she thought was a Summer camp but turned out wan't that at all and then she got run over by a Mercedes and the hospital refused her treatment and she became suicidal and jumped off the bridge at Frankfurt-au-Main but all it did was get her accused off hot-dogging for pity...' Blah, blah, see what I mean?

The 'Watchdogs' of the press are anything but. What they are, instead, are a bunch of bloviating, sheeny materialists with no goal other than destruction and making their own fortune. It has become 'verboten' in Amerika today to point out WHO they are, as a class and a people, so I won't. Any first-page scan, here, of the NYTimes or the Wall Street Journal will tell you. We have become so shuttered and closed-by-enforcement in this land today that a person cannot even obliquely claim to point out a truth when it stares them in the face. Journalism today practices two things - either froth or destruction. They advance a leftist, socialistic, material cause or they distract. Fingering the common herd of humankind as idiots, they steer their mass-heads wherever they wish - and the horde follows, distraction after distraction. Just look at the daily news feeds of the mainstream papers, as a very cheesy example. No truth, no substance, just furtherance of agenda and carping.

I spent time in the east 90's and 80's of Manhattan. Carl Schurz Park, Gracie Mansion. Hell's Gate watching the river traffic. Also went to the Morris Jumel Mansion, Sylvan Lane, The Grange, City College - all of that uptown stuff from the past which incongruously exists to this day amidst the soiled wreckage of a landscape befitting a theme park named 'Garbageland'. Charm has, most certainly, left us. Any vista which may once have been has been obliterated. A jumble of noise, junk, trash, poor-man's culture, and gutter-critters abounds. Hugely propagating masses - kid after kid, an endless fraternity party, evidently - swarm the streets. They downgrade any cultural attributes which ONCE may have been present, and - stupidly - the city itself attempts lamely to mark off historic spots which may once have had some validity, with signs and markers and attempted restorations - all in the middle of a rancorous horde of dolts who haven't a clue as to either what once was here, America's past, or historical awareness or sense of validity. They just 'got' here, and could care less about how or by what means this nation constructed itself. It's a sorry shame - and of course this being liberal, socialistic leftist New York - the social-service constructs (which may ONCE have had some reality and use) have degenerated into a cess-pool of graft and corruption costing billions - but these people nonetheless have their hands out and they get what they can. The City of Manhattan foolishly undergirds a massive social-program and assistance system which would once have made Bulgaria proud - tattered and decrepit buildings, ruined hulks, littered and fouled streets, government school enclaves, social centers, hospitals, all pitted and sagging by mis-use and authoritarianism. It makes me foul and sad to witness it.

Freedom used to allow, in its concept, the Freedom of being free from government, as an individual. It does that no more. Decrepit social welfare, and all its indigents, are everywhere in one's face. Any grandeur which may have once been is shrouded now in doom.I saw once, old man District Attorney Robert Morganthau in Carl Shurz Park. He was walking very slowly, with a cane, up a few stairs along one of the paths in the trees along East End. On either side of him was a person, a male and a female in this case, handsome and natty-looking middle-aged assistants helping him along. I didn't know if they were aides, or perhaps adult children of his, or whatever. They all looked nice, smiled, and kept on their way. Life goes on, I suppose. Personified in him was an entire older, more gracious way of life through a city that only once was.

9244. AN OLD WEDDING

AN OLD WEDDING 

They begin as two in

the morning separate

ways, going home 

as one for the rest

of their days?

9243. LATE WINTER

LATE WINTER

It feels warmer 

out when I have

nothing to do.

9242. LOKI THE CATERPILLAR SWAN

LOKI THE 

CATTERPILLAR SWAN

All this air is nothing but motion and all

these weird creatures of God are bizarre :

Now they've all come together from under

that rock and I just don't know what they are.

That frog in deep green, it has wings. That

lamb has a spout for a snout. That eagle can't

fly, but neither can I , and that's something to

think about. Beneath the shell of that turtle,

there's marshmallow pie; while all four eyes

of that five-toed sloth are making a noise

like a growl. And I can just stand here

watching, because my feet are just

figures of clay, and try as I might, or

run if I can, I'd still never get away.

9241. I'VE GOT TWO ICE REASONS

I'VE GOT TWO ICE REASONS

And another day has passed; this one

rotten cold with night and darkness; but

I know the end is coming   -  the better

days of Springtime near. So friends and

Romans and all the rest, lend me that other

ear. And listen to this. I come to bury the

Goddess, not to seize her. There's enough

cattle corn in this crib for us all.

-

Now then, isn't that just reason enough to 

settle in? We can stay here and read the

real estate listings together. Do you like

doors in the roof? This house has two.

Look at this, a bay window, that comes 

with its own bay. Boy, that's unique.

-

OK, we'll stay here. I didn't want to move

anyway. All my connections are here : my 

half a friend, and the one other person I

go to meetings with. That's my crowd. I

traded in my big station wagon too, for 

a Smart Car, built for two. I never go

anywhere alone, with room to spare.

9240. LOGICIAN/MAGICIAN? WHAT'D YOU SAY? - True Story

9240. LOGICIAN/MAGICIAN ? WHAT'D YOU SAY? - True Story

So a week or so ago I'm in the old Princeton Cemetery walking along past the graves of Aaron Burr, his father the Reverend Burr, Jonathan Edwards, Sylvia Beach, Mayor Lindy Boggs, all the old Princeton University Presidents, and lastly the grave of US President Grover Cleveland himself (and his family members) and this guy comes up to me and asks if I can get him to the grave of Kurt Godel. I said I could, but it would be a walk - all along to the complete other end of the cemetary and past a little dog-leg in the grounds of the cemetery's layout. [Now I knew that NO ONE anymore really knows what a 'dogleg' is but I used it anyway and this guy didn't flinch]. After getting directions, he and his companion split up and he went on his way over to Godel's grave. In fact, because she didn't want to walk that far and back, he left his female companion with me, as I was still doing my viewing and walking on this way-other-side of the cemetery. All of which was OK with me.

He was little goofy-looking Jewish guy, I picked out immediately for a scientist or technician of some sort, and I actually could have cared less if I ever saw his sort again. They give me the willies, his sort - all precise, natty, neat, secure and thinking they're all knowing. And without a clue as to how nervously stupid they come across - like Woody Allen with a physics textbook or something. Nothing I care to deal with, 'cept for target practice (perhaps).

His woman, at the same time, was no prize either. Dumpy, eternally pleasant, pasted on smile, dressed like a frog. Turns out she was dying to lose him so she could sneak a smoke. He wouldn't allow her to smoke in his presence, and he was visiting from Maryland for the weekend and staying at her place - all the while, she said, complaining about it : 'it smells like smoke in here; you stink; your clothes stink; you shouldn't smoke'; etc. So she immediately starts puffing away.

I figured the visitation-sex must be so good for her (or him, or both) that she'd be willing to put up with it all for the sake of a penis - in this case, his. Just my thought, that was. That's not usually the stuff on my mind, and I could probably not care less actually, but the sickening sight of the two of them together in a form of enfouled joint-misery made me cringe. So I came up with the sex angle, OK.

While we were standing around making small-talk, not doing much, she noticed the nearby mausoleum. I forget the family name on it, maybe Murphy or something, but it was the usual - granite, boxy, with a heavy brass door, engraved, filigree'd, and seemingly left there for ages, untended. Inside, peering through the glass, one could see a crypt or two, two wooden chairs for seating, and a large stained-glass window letting in yellowish light. Rather nice, if not morbid. I told her, mock-seriously, that these things lately are being turned into great little coffee-houses and cafes. Very popular, especially in New England. She began to laugh uproariously. She said all it needed was a little neon 'Coffee' sign, a latte machine, and all that. We agreed it might probably just be the latest and newest trend.

Meanwhile Mr. Smokeless Himself comes sauntering back. He had satisfied himself by finding Godel's gravesite, as well as that of Sylvia Beach - whom he claimed not to know much about. I filled him in, cursorily - 1920's Paris, famed book-shop, Shakespeare & Company, where all the American literary ex-patriots hung out, Hemingway and all the rest - half the story. It worked well enough. He asked me if I knew of Godel. I said yes, and talked with him of Einstein, Princeton, Mercer Street, Einstein's house there, Godel's Princeton relationship with Einstein, their work together, their little rivalries, blah, blah. I said "not sure what I'd call him though - physicist, mathematician...". He piped up and said what I thought was a muttered "magician." I said "what did you say he was, a MAGICIAN!?". Aghast, my voice was. Sheepishly, he looked at me and said "No, no. I said 'Logician." Suddenly it all made sense.

We walked over to Grover Cleveland's grave - which they had requested seeing. He was surprised by the fact, as most people are, that there's not even a MENTION on his stone of the Presidency or his tenure there. I said "pre-media age; no one cared". They smiled. We said our goodbyes, it was nice meeting you, glad to help, etc.

I walked away. For all I know, they're still there. She's sneaking a smoke. He's staring at graves. Just like me. So logical, that is.

9239. I WAS HOPING YOU'D BE HERE

I WAS HOPING 

YOU'D BE HERE

"And, yes, just like that; been an admirer

of yours for years and though we never 

spoke I'd often go over my lines. It would

always remind me of being a kid again,

back in 11th grade when I had roles

in school plays  - memory and rote,

knowing what to say. All that  stuff

is so important when the stage lights

are on. But, no matter, we never spoke.

-

Before today, that is, and now I'm glad it's

you. You look a bit different than I'd expected.

But so what, what matter is that? I don't care.

Vampire blue-bloods and wild forest animals,

when they finally meet, never respond to

how they look. As e. e. cummings put it

once : "myself, walking in Dragon st.

one fine fine day August night, i just

happened to me 'how do you so' she

smiling said 'thought you were earning

your living or probably dead' so Jones

was murdered by a man named Smith

and we sail on the Leviathan."

-

I'm not sure, of course, that gets it

across at all, what I'm meaning to say.

But it will have to do. One day, another

time, I remember, in a car, stopping at some

guys house I never knew, just because he

lived in a small house my wife's uncle

once lived in. We'd often visited; he lived

right there at Deal Beach  -  in a seaside

cottage, though not at the sea, which was

about fifteen blocks off. No matter. The

guy was outside, and came over to talk.

-

It was all a long time ago. We told him

what was up, and he asked what I remembered.

Well, all I could think to say was, 'The streets

in April turn young with rain.' At that we

shook hands, and he walked away."

9238. NORWEGIAN FILBERT

NORWEGIAN FILBERT

Now here's a nice piece of something.

But everything goes so slowly. This

shroud, Henry, this shroud really

draws me down.

9237. OH I ROSE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING

9237. OH I ROSE UP EARLY IN THE MORNING:
Well there's a fidget for you and that's me carrying that heavy Bible forward - yes - the same one I was born with the one with the glossy inset pages with little maps of the caves of Qum'ran and the places where those kids had found the Dead Sea Scrolls and whatever any of that was ever all about  - before TV before skateboards before frozen pizza too I took it all in understanding only the most basic precepts of what I'd see and then along came all those Muslims wither their over-layment of story and gracefulness on the same story and  -  you knew really  -  they're a pretty passionate and sensuous people I found out  -  so just let me go on : "I'm sorry Mohammed had a mean left hook and it's all about the fingers as I see it and there's not that much difference between Mohammed and girls - they both lie resplendent in their garments of flesh - one enticing to passion and the other with a passion to entice and the really committed acolyte of Mohammed will use his fingers to kill and defend what he sees as Truth while the female lusts for the passion of her fingers and WELL so do I ! but I can't get anywhere sideways now can I?" I was wishing that what I'd just heard was garbled and I hadn't heard it because it already in an instant sounded like trouble to me and these religious people are crazy from the get-go and sometimes all they have to hear are your intentions and they're off - ready to go to the rafters to make something right but never ready to explain what right is BUT sometimes I myself am a freak of nature so I'm probably no different in that I abhor meeting people like others claim to abhor blasphemy and its evidences - HOWEVER the outside world's a lie too although of a different nature and all reality spins in illusion as NOTHING is ever to be what it seems and if I told you the Pope played poker with virgins would you believe me then ? no probably not ('and down by the old not the new but old mill stream not a river but a stream....') and then I heard again "I met my first love at the library standing by the bust of Cincinnatus and although she hadn't a clue about who that was I knew in an instant that she was the one and I followed her home like a dummy in uncertain fashion - weaving and ducking whenever she looked - and then JUST LIKE THAT our eyes met on the corner and the next thing I knew we were exchanging names and dates and pleasantries and circumnavigations of the whole entire globe and I looked at her one day and just simply said 'did you know that Socrates said only the dead are truly happy?' and she nodded and showed me her palm where she'd already written it down in blue ink so as not to forget and I wondered what that meant for a future with her" and then he said "and the next thing the Sun was rising and it was morning and I thought to myself - 'Early Rising! a Habit of the Ancients! : Abraham rose up early in the morning Abimelech rose up early in the morning Jacob rose up early in the morning and early in the morning Laban arose and the Lord said to Moses 'Rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharoah' and Moses rose...early in the morning Joshua rose up early in the morning Gideon rose up early in the morning Elkanah and Hannah rose up in the morning early and David rose up early in the morning Job rose up early in the morning Darius rose up very early in the morning and 'I taught them - rising up early and teaching them' AND IN THE MORNING a great while before the day He (Christ) ROSE UP and went out.'"

9236. LEANING THIS WAY

LEANING THIS WAY

The tiger in the basement just

yawned  - I'm think about

leaving town. It has eyes like

charcoal red-spots, screaming

back in silent fury : I can read

but I can't always understand.

-

Now I sit me down, in my idle

flop-hat to make chit-chat at the

surface-rail station in Jersey City

New Jersey. Here, where the 'crook

of the day award' always goes to

the local Senator   - whether it's

Robert Menendez or Cory Booker 

or once, even, Robert Torricelli.

Ha! That lasted about two weeks.

-

Let's not forget Frank Lautenberg.

Let's not forget Harrison Williams.

The Metropark Train Station was

once named after him  -  that last 

about two. weeks too! Ha!

-

Indictments have a way 

of changing  things.

9235. WHIP TO THRIVE

WHIP TO THRIVE

And may the tomato whistle endeavor

to bring you home once again, here,

where the covers have no lids and the

lids remain uncovered; where the

maestro enters songs unknown and

forgets the words to what's being

directed; where the new garage 

replaces the old but nothing 

fits inside. And where all I

hear is a rumble, some

new theory to deride.

9234. HAZARD THE GUESS

HAZARD THE GUESS

I had your wampum belt around my

face, drinking Kentucky bourbon in a

palace of chiefs and kings. I noticed

no plural for glee, so got by as just

happy for me. The car was parked

in the car park and the rest of the

way I reckoned to walk. I guess

I walked on the walkway. Or

what else, then would it be?

9233. HEDGEBET

HEDGEBET

Just a few fine stairs down. The

young girl with the Jewish candle

was holding her hands over the

tray full of cakes. Not to say why,

the mystery goes on. The yellowed

light from over the doorway came

in from outside, shining a chosen 

gold on all things. 

-

I sometimes try to wonder and gauge,

or to see what it is I know : why the

old act sometimes young, and the

young act perilously silly. Perhaps

none of it really matters, but the

factor of annoyance  -  to me  -

cuts in. I must move on.

-

On the streets, just so simple, I

have seen it all  -  I have watched

people cry, and seen others scream.

Death and its circumference, covering

over debt and its reluctance. 'Stay in

one place', the man says, 'for it's 
always the cheapest way.'

9232. LIVING ON BORROWED TIME

9232. LIVING ON BORROWED TIME:
Some of us live on borrowed time some of us borrow the time to live and some of us time the borrowing just right - perfect timing is dying broke or so it is said - and I'll never know the difference between wealth and riches anyway (only one has a stench?) so people line up for what they want and say to hell with all the rest ? is that correct ? I think not but whichever verdict comes in that's the one we live with - and just like how the guy farming tomatoes in prison on a 2 by 4 lot the authorities allow him doesn't know the difference between Freedom and Anarchy yet somehow wishes for both so we too turn our backs to what motivates others and say 'it's different for me' but it's not - and they line up for salad and they line up for meat and the constable comes and takes them away for criticizing TASTE and there's no satirizing the State and no cursing to God so let's get that straight and then one day just like that I was taking a ride to Harlem trying to find Striver's Row and see what made it go and the yellow taxi let me out at 125th because I didn't care and it seemed right [I exited and paid he nodded and left while I stayed] and I looked around me and liked what I saw and started walking west towards the river or at least to 8th Avenue and then up to 138th Street to see what was there and what the places looked like and mind you on foot I looked like a killer - unwashed disheveled and probably hungry and lost just as well - but I figured because of that I'd be left alone but you never know what grows in climates not home but nothing ever happened and I was taken in as one of their own and so left unbothered I sort of thrived in the climate and the place - well-being and wild with people all over the streets and music in storefronts and excitement along each street : folks on their brownstone stoops in three and four grouped clumps looking out and talking loudly while they smoked or played cards or threw dominos or whatever it is they do with those things and scarcely looking up they'd always let me pass - the side streets much quieter than the avenues but quainter and more pleasant too and I knew I was somewhere else don't get me wrong but I felt it was a place I could dig just as much and already I felt I prospered and already I felt well enough off to stay and so I stayed and walked around and looked at trees and poplars and azaleas and all the rest and every so often some window sill had sprouted a basket or a porch or something would hold a small planting and oftentimes - in the bleak midst of what as not - the beauty was lyrical and stunning and some men whistled as they worked - I noticed - and the fellow with the broom outside some rooming house was busy cleaning the concrete and another with a hose was whistling while he sprayed and the old windows were dirtied and gray from endless grime and rain but pride itself grew in the shade and just as much or more in light - and the old cool air of subway gratings blew up with noise as trains below me passed and here and there I watched people coming or going - some destination A to destination B - valise and briefcase handbag or bicycle a doctor's appointment or a maid's afternoon work all things I'd never know for no one told me what was so and the nearest I'd come to pleasure in a long time then was browsing at Hotaling's - the vast newsstand on 42nd Street which had newspapers and magazines from literally everywhere - Dubuque to El Paso to China to Maine Italy France and El Alamein - gone now long ago as I write this but still a vivid memory to me and the place teemed with visitors looking for THEIR hometown something in the middle of a 1960's New York City and that's how different the world really is now when NO NEED of any of that is had because the entire world and everything else always is on tap anywhere like some huge vibrant tavern of information where everyone's allowed to drink - but whatever - Harlem had a different odor and ethos all its own and it was still a place where people LIVED and found a domain to stay in and wanted it to be their 'there' and so it was - the dark corridors of hallways and the level street-faces of small shop after small shop with people milling around and the uniform stairs and stoops of the low sorrowful brownstones and the ancient armaments and traditional luster of Striver's Row where one after the other of proud street-face lineages fronted building after building still graceful and strong and Harlem had its Renaissance a long time ago but now it had another - between pauses so to speak - and there I was within it and I could smell the gravies and the cooking and the breads and the donuts and the crackling of the fried-heat and all the crazy foods it made and everywhere too was a certain joy even if mixed with a sadness and it was ALL authentic and that's what made even the sadness joyous and the joyousness too just as sad and it was a funny place sorrowful and slow and happy and jumping and everything in between : ask any bicycle messenger or anyone else for the coolest scene they have seen and you'll find out yourself what I'm saying.