13,564. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,168

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,168

(art, pt. 2)

"It seems that the fundamental

experience of being alive is a

gothic and grotesque experience.

It really is a frightening place.

None of us feels that we are

entirely normal." I guess that

summation is one for the record 

books, and I know that when I

read it it scored deeply. Certain

things do. One time I had two

friends, in a relationship for a

really long time. Motorcycle

people. (I'm trying to tie this

all in, and maybe I'll succeed,

maybe not, shortly, with the

same 'Art' theme as the previous

chapter. Also, let me point out

that, even though it's in quotes,

I altered that quotation by 

leaving out 'on Earth'  -  as in 

"...the fundamental experience

of being alive on Earth." It

struck me as being needlessly 

redundant). They had finally

decided to get married, and

went on a motorcycle trip to

Las Vegas, to be married there.

While there, on the motorcycle,

they had a road accident wherein

they ran broadside into a screaming

ambulance that was crossing their

path. She was killed. He was banged

up, but fine. Who was at fault, if

alcohol or speeding was involved,

I never found out, but the tragic

aspects remained and it was all

eventually taken care of too.

-

My point is, (I think), artfully if 

that episode was the premise of a

book or an adventure film or an

episode of some cop show or 

somesuch, it could possible have

been construed as 'artfully' perfect.

Art and creativity have always had a

way of subsuming the human aspects

of sadness or tragedy into the more

vast premises which they deal with

in relating or telling tales. In the

late 1700's, I guess, many a widow

or survivor was able to (perhaps)

recognize their husband or family

member in those tableauxs of

battle, shipwreck, or disaster?

-

As the turtle who had been 

attacked by a gang of snails said, 

'It all happened so fast.' Once the

triumphal vale of psychology and

self-awareness took over  -  as I see

it  -  Art lost all those old designations.

It was no longer necessary at all to be

able to see, say, any Heinrich Bloch

in a battle scene, or the grimace of

Amelia Avellina in  the approaching

storm  -  photography and all the

new ways of visual messaging had

taken all that over. Art went inside.

The great maw of the individual 

psyche surpassed, for a 'modern'

man, any necessity for true, accurate,

and detail-oriented representation.

Even things recognizable had changed

their appearances and somehow all

doors had opened to the artful play

and flow of a sort of interpretative

dance within the world of color and

line and space. I've often believed

that sort of joyousness was why

Humankind was created anyway,

in Eden, a total Republic of Creation.

In the Blakean sense (William Blake,

1757-1827) it was all again lost

at the Fall and replaced by his

imposing Gods 'Nobodaddy' and

'Urizen' ('Your Reason') who then

shackled Mankind within the pearly

limit of guilt, doubt, repetition,

rules, order, measurement and

limitation. Art was the escape.

-

Wars and rumors of war, of course,

by day and night frittered away the

'good' inherent in all recouping of

those old possibilities, and the world

was encased by the same systems and

logic we have to day. 'Scrabble players

don't suppose that spelling words is

significant; what's significant is the 

assembling of words from a limited

array of letters. Chess players don't

think about capturing kings and rooks;

they think about strategies for capturing

kings and rooks.' No painter, on the

same level, imagined that eliminating

perspective, instead of re-telling the 

story of a battle or flood, was inherently

virtuous. No one really thought the

picture plane was a prime place in

itself. They were, instead, drawn to

the game of eliminating everything

else and then finding out what was

left and how to communicate it. The

'dignity' of an abstracted art lies in

the intersection of the obviousness

of its motifs and the complexity of

its motives. What I here call the

'psychology;' of the art   -  which

brings out the endless possibilities

of the truer Humanity of the artist,

who punches now his or her way

outward from the encroaching 

shroud of dark reason and negative

expectation by which the rest  of

life has been overtaken.

-

We are everywhere else locked in

place. Art becomes both the key

AND the exiting. Past a certain 

point  -  a a difficult point to achieve,

yes  -  it hardly matters what is done,

as long as 'something' is done.

13,563. WEATHER REPORT

WEATHER REPORT

I have a makeshift campsite tent-post

for a shelter that will never hold up.

-

You cannot hear my words because

your ears are plugged? No. Not that.

-

It is all the wind in the trees blocking

the sounds of everything else. 

-

This lean-to will not last another storm.

13,582. KINDLING

KINDLING

As much as I remain determined, 

I  cannot any longer hold twigs 

in my hands. Only fiercer flames

from larger wood are in my future 

forest. There's no manipulation

like the movement of flames.

-

Coke bottle glasses and revolving

doors. Women with handbags made

of fake leather. Kids running street

games in the middle of a highway

lanes. Who knows how things go?

13,561. DON'T BE DELICIOUS, BE DETERMINED

 DON'T BE DELICIOUS, 

BE DETERMINED

The curtain comes down on the ladle;

something spells soup on the alphabet

floor. I can't determine what is anymore.

-

Here is the cracker you'd left on the chair;

for me? I wondered, and then I wondered

anew  -  why was it there?

13,560. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,167

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,167

(art, pt. 1)

More thought than anything else,

my own exclusive intrusion into

this enchanter's domain has always

had something to do with mesmerizing

others. Maybe. In the long history of

what's been done, 'Art' has traveled,

and transcended. We have now entered,

in a seeming lockstep, a realm where

Art has degenerated to trash; to forms

of 'behavioral therapy'; and to such

momentous decline that today (honestly)

I saw an ad for 'the first music done by

an infant in utero.' (I want to ask, 'If it

was twins, would it be a cast album?).

-

The world has succumbed to trash; it

used to be within only our waterways

and along highways. Then it went to

audacious roadside billboards, shopping

plazas and parking lots. Now it's just 

everywhere and graffiti itself has

been re-termed 'Art'  -  and, of course,

that has somehow been done by the

usual forms of 'social engineers' who 

plan and categorize and label the

acceptable things, which are then 

allowed to wend their way into the

fabric of everyday life. That doesn't

advance 'graffiti' into any higher

realm of art status, of course, but

it does bring art down to the scabbier

levels of the social fabric. Which

then takes it to the streets, to babble

and bleed right where they live, and

gains acceptance by those who, as 

agents, inspect and grant acceptance

to poverty, degradation, sexual

perversity, mind-numbing subtraction

from quality-of-the-essence wellness

and the least admirable qualities of

post-intellectual lifestyles.

-

It has been said, and I learned it thusly,

that the best Art is done by those under

conditions of adversity. I question that,

now, totally. I remember once going to

an art exhibit, in about 1970, at the Met

or somewhere, and a friend, along with

us, with very little art consciousness,

went through the rooms with us  -  all

those Vermeers and Giottos and Monets

and Manets and Valezquezes and the rest.

We then went to another floor, where the

featured art was titled as 'Nazi War Drawings.'

Meaning 'Art' done by camp inmates.

He was enthralled, and thought it was

great  -  and only later did we tell him

that it had been a special 'side' exhibit

of camp-prisoner art. He was under the

impression that it was part of the more

general canon of traditional, accepted,

art. Of the sort people swoon over.

That always stuck with me. Curiously.

-

One thing about 'Art' as it is taught,

in Art History anyway, is that it's often

encoded, instead of as just Art, as an

'encoded political cartooning or as

social history in pictures.' It ought to

be viewed as by a person 'moved'

by it, rather than by someone who

encapsulates what he or she sees into

a pre-ordained format of category,

style, or scene. That's very difficult

to do. I've never really known what

a 'philistine' was, or what was meant 

by it, derogatorily, when addresses to

someone who partakes of art as a

'part-time' or Sunday endeavor. It

reeks of elitism, to be able to call

someone out for that.

-

Goya painted demons. Bosch and

Breughel painted oddities of fantastic

presence. Others painted battle scenes,

royal portraits, the vast and heavy

interiors -  Vuillard, Matisse. It was

all done, those old formats and now

encyclopedia-ized styles, in another

world and one that no longer exists.

The 'modern' idea, after TV, movies,

photography and the rest had superseded

much of the role painting once had,

was that, or became, that 'modern 

painting, having ceased to be

illustrative, ought to be decorative.'

(Instead, I guess, though that stark

word was left out). The old jobs

or portraying bank presidents,

battle scenes, landscapes, showing

off the manor house, and the

faint and bucolic forms of a 

dwindling 'Nature' with its

horses, farms, barns  and

windmills, having been turned

over to photography and the

movies, left to painting what

painting still did well, and that

was to paint.

-

I don't really wish to belabor

all of this, but I want to say that

the axis of 'Freud/Marx' did change

everything about painting and about 

art. Once the psychological angle

was introduced into the realm of

art and creativity, all the other aspects

fell away  -  or should have. The Left,

the political movement of Marx, we

can see, did also step in and agenda-ize

much of 'Art'  -  often enough just

turning into the social- realism of

WPA stuff as well as the theatrical

Soviet realism of collectives and

farms and military bumbling; red

sashes and furious coats of arms!

Now, almost a hundred years on

as well, we have even de-calculated

all that and ended up with piles

of bricks, or squats of dung, being

called art. Put into our own social

services of propaganda foolishness

and high-style, often gay as well,

frippery. It's a different world and

we are, surely, adrift in a different

and very de-centralized, place.

13,559. HIMMELFARB HITS HOME

HIMMELFARB HITS HOME 

The countertop was granite, and as

hard as the counter-argument he was

making: That there 'Was no element

of reality within the passing intensity

of a dream.' Well, OK, I guess not.

But I couldn't resist a barb, even

though it fell flat. My memory had

rescinded my own permission.

-

'Everything you've ever read by me

has had its basis within my reality.'

13,558. ON THE SATURDAY NOTEBOOK

 ON THE SATURDAY NOTEBOOK

There the wisdom sat; there all the

vast disclaimers originated; there the

world went starry-eyes astray. Two 

men with Bibles, just back from Africa, 

to tell of their mission, sat down and

prayed while the young crowd gathered.

'I didn't realize people still did this; and

so far out here, in the middle of nothing.'

The lady I was with said 'Yes. but the do,

and prayer meetings are not uncommon

at all.' Having nothing more to say, I

lingered  -  to wonder. Do people ever

realize their own import? Is this life 

made up of just missions and song?

-

The hymns were being sung and words

floated upwards, to the sky  -  as if, even

in the attempt, sacred angels singing

meant to try was worth the effort.

13,557. SHASTA DAISY

SHASTA DAISY

Sometimes I swear they all

just make things up : names

for flowers? Streets named

for whippoorwills and 

continents too? What is

this whole world coming

to? I better leave off right

here : Maddening nights and

extra-long days.

13,556. GONE

GONE

Still wise to the ways the

stop sign says 'you can't go 

anywhere past here,' I just

leave the shuffle to the muscle

and go on : Parkway. Turnpike.

Interstate. Gone

13,555. IT'S A DARE

IT'S A DARE

To take a running chance on

something ephemeral makes

little sense to me. Before we

know it, the seasons have 

changed or the lights go out.

My wallet holds nothing but

leftover ones  -  the small

change from the pieces I 

had thought. I paid with my

life, and now all that's done.

-

There's a man with a shovel,

nearby, getting ready to post

a fence, dig a hole, or  -  perhaps  -

see how far inward he can fly?

By digging a hole to the center

of something? Is this earth strong

enough for such intrusion? 

-

Dare I bet he'll never make it?

13,554. FROM TYRE TO RHODES

 FROM TYRE TO RHODES

There are many things that have never

happened. I think they pile up somewhere,

just waiting. A past that we 'think' we

know, holds them tightly to its storied

breast, while the future unfolds through

the 'present, which passes. Instantly.

-

You see, all this backlog of possibilities

becomes somehow our fabric from which

to weave. The empty, dead, pyramids may

ask us yet to make another story up about

them too. Before they come back alive.

-

Those stars and moons, and Olympus Gods,

the same runs through with them : Stories

afford thought, while we seek, endlessly, the

evidences of what we may have dreamed.

13,553. OH SO WE ARE EACH GOING TO VLADIVOSTOK

OH SO WE ARE EACH 

GOING TO VLADIVOSTOK

Maybe I can walk across the Bering Strait. 

Maybe I can't. It's sort of late for that type

of decision, water already at my elbows.

Both of my hands - I've decided - I'll keep

clear of these waters.

-

Mostly, I know nothing; geography's

not a strong suit, and I don't give a

hoot about that either. My sled dog's

running backwards? Is that what I 

heard you say? I'll probably be back

to Minnesota than, by later today.

-

I used to write comedy for funerals.

Now I write eulogies for comics.

It works. It's a living too.

13,552. WE ARE ALL MOVING TOGETHER

WE ARE ALL MOVING WHILE 

REMAINING IN PLACE 

And we are all moving together

but the illusion is of one standing

still. Nothing is true. Edges are

fuzzy. 

-

Illusion, again, like anything else,

is a mob scene we buy into. That

table-top is not solid. The science

guys tell us there are spaces and

movements everywhere. What we

perceive as solid is not and what

we understand as real is all false.

-

I cannot limit your understandings

to the candy store or the grocer, but I

can point out the differences between

this then and this now. All time too

moves together. We only think we

are seeing that which we see. (And

we only 'think' we are what we

might call 'me').

13,551. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,166

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,166

(the voice there of a multitude)

The other day I made mention

of Delmore Schwartz and a quote

of his. It's something I that often

do, but Schwartz has a personal

history with me, almost as if I'd

met him and known him. There

are connections, and things I revere.

I think writers do that; they grasp

certain particular things and never

let go  -  turning them instead into

icons of self, things by which to

further build one's own universe,

as the writer. Thus, with me,

Schwartz. His old apartment at

91 Bedford Street, near to the now

defunct 'Chumley's' was a spot

I often went to, just to stand

outside of it a bit, and stare.

[And, by the way, the New York

of today has become so brittle,

stupidly sacrosanct and embroiled,

that even Chumley's couldn't make,

literacy having probably left town

on a 2800-dollar bicycle pedaled

by a muffin-moron; the latest

breed]. Saul Bellow had a great

book all about the personage, in

the guise of fine fiction, called

'Humboldt's Gift.' Anyway, one

time, in my dense duty to the

personal history of Delmore, I

tracked his gravesite down , to

Emerson NJ or whatever that

town there is called. He died, by

the way, crazed and insane enough,

abandoned, unclaimed and forgotten, 

in midtown, sometime in 1966, [7/11]

and the body laid unclaimed for a

time until an uncle of his located

and claimed it, and had him buried

and duly taken mind of, in a vast,

Jewish cemetery. (Isaac Bashevis

Singer is also buried there). It

took me a long time, much walking,

and numerous false ends to finally

locate his grave  - I finally gave up

and walked my way to the office.

Asking at the desk, of the Hasidic

guys there, where I might find the

grave of Delmore Schwartz (they

knew nothing of him, nor the

name), they looked at me quizzically

and asked 'What tribe was he?' I

was floored, and almost, for comedy

wanted to say 'Pawnee? Cherokee?'

But, I later learned they meant, by

tribe, the very-important connotation

for Jews, like 'Cohen' or Levy' (Levi?).

That all means something important.

I did get a grave number, and a row

number and all that, and was able to

find it. Rather mundane, plain and

ordinary too. But the impulse was

there. I felt it. I guess we all, in our

ways, have our own funny stories

and endings, of things way past

our control and ordering.

-

It's the same way, funny enough,

for my big-deal, renegade, California

rebel brother-in-law, who blew his

brains out in his yard, at age 57, in

Vallejo. Back about 2004, I think it

was. For all his bravado and bluster,

everyone was so aghast at the suicide

that he was flown back, remnants anyway,

to NJ in a box, then as ashes buried,

to what have been his pure chagrin, in

some leftover gravesite the family had,

next to a grandmother, in a forlorn and

flat (no stones) Paramus NJ graveyard

abutting a vast suburban golf course.

The few times I've gone there I've

found errant golf balls that had been

shot over the high hedge and rolled

(the their momentum's death too) at

or near his spot. Pretty funny, and

he'd have been outraged. Eternity.

Next to a golf course!

-

Well no matter  -  goes to show how

nothing remains true, by its ending,

to its beginnings and origins. Every

thought about a future I ever had 

when I was 15 or 18 or 20 has come

nowhere near to the fruition I once

envisioned. A cartful of marbles or

a shipment of cracked mirrors would

closer to the mark. None of it bears

any tangible relationship to the

muck of my life, all these dwindling

years later. It's not even the sort of

thing one can talk big about. It

just is. It's all circumstance. I think

life is layers: in fact layer over layer

of time and reality, each with their

own veneer of occurrence and

reaction, and that is what existence

becomes made of  -  a stack of layers,

so different for each of us that it's

a wonder we can even talk to each 

other. (Which, by the way, has

now become more and more 

impossible. I notice that people,

the young anyway, now speak

totally differently than anything

I've ever heard or been able to

understand. I can't really any

longer, I just mostly bluff. The

ways by which words are uttered

now  -  swiftly and with weird

rises and turns at the ends of

sentences  -  sound more like 

an accent, of old, of distant place.

The way foreigners from far-off

used to come across  -  very 

differently and quite nearly

unintelligible unless one knew

the language. That's in real-voice.

Phone messages and voices are

far worse.

-

So, to bring this to its illogical

conclusion, as I stand next to these

old graves now  -  all those Melville

and Singer, Ginsberg and Schwartz,

locations, I try very deeply and  hard

to imagine the sound of THAT old

voice, were it to come to me, from

the grave  -  the timbre, the sound,

the pace, and the words. I vouchsafe

that it too would be so different as

to be unintelligible. Though I, of

course, would hope not. (I once

went to Walt Whitman's tomb, in

Camden, NJ, and swear to you

that the voice there was of 

a multitude)

13,550. ME AND THE MAGISTRATE

ME AND THE MAGISTRATE

Me and the Magistrate, see, we

went down to the landing to fetch

his Mary Lou. She was drenched

when we got there, the boats having

already let everyone off. It was only

raining around her, it seemed. He said,

'Boy, this is a curious sight. I left my

wife alone for two days, and her she

comes back drenched and holding

nothing but that poodle.'

-

What can be expected by such

surprising things? Not much really.

The shacks along the hogpaths were

called 'Melon Hollow,' and mostly

lived in by Negroes and servants. 

The kind that go home at evening.

They mostly didn't have even cars

of their own, so the horses were

tied and left watered for the night.

-

The Magistrate knew most of them

by name. I wondered why. I guess he'd

seen lots of them before the docket. His

wife, the wet lady, never reacted, and

the poodle seemed wary of horses.

Again, he spoke : 'I enjoy nonsense,

yes, but this sure beats all.'

13,549. GENERALLY WISE

GENERALLY WISE

Perhaps too little time is spent

picking the termites from out of

the wood. They ingratiate themselves,

soon enough anyway, in a sawdust

muddle. We really can't detour to

that. Do you hear me? Am I getting

through to you?

-

There's no distress like a sinking

ship that your loved ones are on,

You scan the papers, looking for

the names of those lost, like it 

was 1912 all over again. 'It's OK,

really; we'll just set one less place

at the table...'

13,548. IF THE POPE HAS CARDINALS

IF THE POPE HAS CARDINALS

I can't tell by recognition, for

the recognition is now all gone. 

My own Matterhorn has been

flattened and there's a hum in

the air. Something like a homing

pigeon, I grab it all on the fly yet

always manage returning home.

-

Hills and dales, boats and rails,

it manages to all be the same: One

fixed idea about 'movement' on a

surface too plain for contradiction.

'Holidays come and holidays go.'

-

The guy told me that when I asked

why his model-shop was closed. He

said 'Be patient, and it all comes back. I

no sooner close the door then I'm again

unlocking the same damned door.'

-

Pretty clever legerdemain, I suppose,

if it can be done by words. If the Pope 

has cardinals, does Batman not

have robins?

13,547. WRENS AND BEETLES

WRENS AND BEETLES

All the things of this world

run along. The glass of the 

window I am watching shows

reflections of a little town on

the move. Its own small version

anyway : men in rough caps,

ladies with bags and handles.

Two men exit the State Store:

hard liquor sold therein and

nowhere else. It's a pact made

with the Devil and the Government

together, but these men don't care.

-

Why am I standing here? Blades

and ornaments; piles of seeds, all

bagged of course. Just watching

people pass  -  they buy things in

a fruitless eddy of no constraint,

as if time twirling around them

made no difference now. A new

season to announce their triumph.

-

At the register, displays of oils

and lubricants, all those bolt

soakers and rust inhibitors, seem

to sink their eyes into mine, to

find where I am locked or seized

into place. A calendar with a little

girl atop a tractor shows the month.

It must be translatable, I figure,

in some farm-language I've not

yet mastered. Too quick the

tongue for this.

13,546. ONCE, IN THE WILDS

ONCE, IN THE WILD

And those fine city streets, fitting

as they may have been  -  with corners

fitting corners and tucks and trims  -

were once all they were said to be.

Like bedsheets matched to a proper

set, the streets and avenues and lanes

and alleys seemed to have been sent

from some glorious 'other' place; the

grease-fitter's locations, or the shed

of a wheel-spinner's space.

-

Now? All gone in a dastardly, wide

emptying of the slate. Tabula Rasa

of place. Time. Space. So little left,

all things erased. The monuments

once known are gone or covered.

The words replaced or stolen.

-

Once, in the wild spaces of such,

were the double-meanings and the

fractured stories that old men tell.

Ypres. Passchendaele. Verdun.

Omaha Beach. Saigon. Hell.

13,545. WILD PINS

WILD PINS

In certain forms of wilderness,

where paper kingdoms arise, there

are strong-armed men with paddles :

Think, think, what this may mean.

Don't be fooled, for they have by

now learned to wield that power

softly enough so that no one notices

the power being wielded. Far-off,

disclaimers are sworn.

-

'We fuse the medley into the single,' is

what they say, radio-wise. Propaganda,

like a Mussolini, sings over wires and

beneath the skies. All eyes are closed.

13,544. INCONGRUOUS

INCONGRUOUS 

What was I seeking in this

moving world? A library of 

time amidst a cosmos that

swirls? Yet everywhere I

turned solid objects were

dissembling and parts fell

away. The night sky, black

like black can be, stood on

watch, and high above rose

planets and stars. I made out

nothing clearly, but my faint

musing carried the day.

-

Checkerboards and filigrees;

stained nations and people all

on the move. Paralegals with

good intentions; clerks with

papers and orders but none

with finer pretensions than

keeping the cat in the house,

or tying the horse to the barn.

-

I learned long ago that all 

things are symbols and that 

the simple power of symbolizing 

is the one thing we all can do. 

An incongruous notion, but 

the way the world works.

13,543. EVEN EL PASO TALKS BACK

EVEN EL PASO TALKS BACK

The accordion plays while we

are swimming in blood. Like

some pale western movie, the

cowboys are edged along the

rooftops, where the saloons

hide their members behind

old swinging doors. Mexican 

music with a polka-dance 

beat? Something like that

shadows the heart.

-

Even El Paso talks back, I

am told  -  swarms of young

children, grasping the 

chain and the link.

13,542. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,165

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,165 

(for the grotesqueries)

I was never able to tell my

own differences between

anger and frustration, or

hate and disdain. It all

just went on, as I grew;

noticing near every small

thing that was pushed out

in front of me - the way it

happens when you're growing.

People just tell you things,

twisting it all up so that by

the time it ends they can

stick some sort of flat 

mortarboard and tassel on 

you, whether high school 

or college or whatever, and

expect that you'll then believe

and tout all that crap they've

plugged you with. It was

always different for me, and 

I need to admit that, here and

now. My late-life aging now

has merely enraged me all the

more, perhaps even unmoored

me. I had to leave before any

further engagement took its

next step. I have now the

power of God -  a silent and

forbearing power, which has

kept me from damage, and

from damaging others.

-

The market-place sucks. It's

endless, Godless bullshit, 

peddled by endless, Godless, 

bullshit people. End over 

end in their spiral to Hell; 

the hell of unreality, chimera

and illusion, and the dumb 

bastards won't even own up to

it. Endless machinations, piles

of pills and the self-diagnosed 

myopia of both a confusion 

and a trap. Let them all rot. 

Unbelievers can only marvel.

What it has produced for us - 

those others, those who believe - 

are lies and deceit, garbage and

rubble: Shabby-streets, fast-food

trash, broken plastic toys, unpainted

steps and stairways and porches

leftover and rotting  -  to crumble

in their dampness eternal. Windows

cracked and un-repaired, with 

danger signs and warnings and

commands at every turn. Cars

everywhere, left in gutters to sag

or kept up so as to be a nuisance

of the large and the loud. Garish

people in their half-pajamas,

never knowing all day if it's

sleep or not. Children crank on

talking endlessly, or staring at

screens, useless even to 

themselves as they wilt and 

are destroyed from within. 

Laziness becomes their

protest, with a lust 

for degradation.

-

I'm beginning to sound like 

a harping crank now, I suppose, 

but what's left of this land that's 

been taken from us as of, right 

now, demands, or calls for, some 

real response. Accountability is

a necessity, and there has been

none. This cannot just go on; it

must be pushed back. Part of

problem is the haughtiness of

the people running thing  -  the

educators and opinion molders

and the supposed giants of the day

who influence others. All that

'reverence' and worship at false

altars, they pose behind writers

and essayists who, to their uses,

get to be exalted while they are

betrayed as well. As Emerson

said about Death, 'At least you're

done with the dentist.' That was

saying something that mattered, 

but of course you'll never hear

that from the elite who squander

what they use. They pretend at

high-minded solidity with

thought  -  of which they really

have none. 

-

As I once lived, I'd be willing to

die, and  along those same streets.

But I cannot  -  all my early days

were from nothing, and the doorways

and higher floors of learning and

experience that I undertook, in

NYC and elsewhere, simply do not

any longer exist. The atmospheres

and the environments around me

have changed. Drastically. All

the artists are dead. All the writers

too. There's little left except the

pale granola of idiocy, like some

transvestite in a carnival scene.

George Grosz comes back, to

rescue the world? This one? I

think not. There are now far too

many grotesqueries. As Joshua

said, with Caleb, to the assembled,

'The Lord is with us; fear them not.

This a good land, let us not walk

away.' And the glory of the Lord

appeared in the tabernacle and

before the people assembled.

That was then? This is now?

-

"The guts of the men sag hugely

and the monstrous buttocks of the

women seesaw painfully as they

tread the boardwalk in swollen

sneakers. A few steps from death,

these American elders defy all

decorum and dress as toddlers."

13,541. HAND OF HEARTS, HEAD OF HEELS

HAND OF HEARTS, HEAD OF HEELS

Without realizing anything, I somehow lost

the technicolor aspects of this life too: The

cow skull, dried and brittle, on the old farm

fence now seems merely black and white.

I wondered how it's nailed in place, and for

how many years it's held its weathered trace.

Of time, and incidentals, ghosts and shadows.

-

Seeming to try too hard, my own mind wanders

into thinking what of cows? Do they realize the

lineage and the space they take part in; that one

measure of years they're marked in? The schedules

and seasons and patterns of milking, birth, death.

All ruthless, yet all (merely) human? Perhaps

they don't even understand the waiting?

-

Dried and brittle, one old skull now : whatever

once prevailed, whatever matter once filled

that cranial cap, all gone as animal fodder and

morning's fair matter. Empty in place, and

harpooned to the top of a fencepost brace. If

we must stand, we must stand in sorrow?

13,540. OF CYCLAMATES AND ARMS

OF CYCLAMATES AND 

GOOFBALL ARMS

'Turned out in the end I didn't know

nothing; the same bastards who blitzed

me on the way in got me on the way out.

I never feared for much, except this. The

feeling of an ending isn't so cool.' 

-

Well, it seemed he meant all he said but

I couldn't tell and, besides, when you're

at some grimy, nowhere train station

who can you believe? The creep who

sidles up to you and begins to tell his

life story?

-

That's no different than any daffy old

lady doing the same, in her female way.

About flowers, and grandkids and homes

handbags and grandkids again. Charming 

for sure, but the presence seems flat and

she smells like a cemetery too.

-

The plaque on the wall tells about

some 1957 test-train that ran by here

at 150 mph, clear to Trenton from the

New Brunswick flats; the only long

straightaway in Jersey  -  where they

could really turn it on. I guess that was

good, but useless too. Here in Jersey

every three miles is another damned

town.

-

 'Princeton Junction; transfer here

for downtown Princeton and Princeton

University. Wait time about 8 minutes.'