553. I HAVE A CADENCE I DO WANT TO KEEP

I HAVE A CADENCE
I DO WANT TO KEEP
I am stuck with James Joyce in Trieste
and we are awaiting a train - one that
runs the waterfront slowly. And Nora
Barnacle who too has been waiting
has just now heard of the arrest.
We'd been brawling in a canal-side
bar - nothing very close to nothing
quite far - a few punches thrown
among others (thankfully) held back.
We were apprehended and taken to
jail, released after a hearing, and all
that. She is apoplectic at all the
time lost. We laugh it off as
a moment past its prime, at no
real cost. A water-taxi passes,
headed for Miramar, as we
decide (only so reluctantly now)
to dart up towards the summit of
San Giusto's hillock on the
Karst - the old city center
on the summit atop the hill.
Carlo Morpurgo and Lloyd
Trestino await us up there;
already quite drunk, we figure,
they are biding their time as
the birds do the air : a wavering
flight, a sway of the hands,
a certain cadence they
do want to keep.

552. TRAINMAN

TRAINMAN
The African conductor,
who was standing tall,
I'd seen before at Limerick
or Bordeaux; somewhere.
One of those dumb and
paleful places where tourists
flock to eat. He stood straight
as a tree and - as I watched -
hardly moved a muscle
but to blink. I imagined
him at some Sahara stand,
idly watching the wind and
the weather blow.

551. RIDGEMONT

RIDGEMONT
Egalitarian humanity takes turns
hugging other people - one by one,
filled with love and cookies. Children
stare up at the prison on the hill.
Its granite and stone walls, ever-foreboding,
try speaking to them in code. Like lollipops
of cherry-flavored goo, they melt away,
smiling to hide their fear.
-
Near the top, where the guard still stands
sentry with an afternoon rifle and scope,
some wily hawk swoops down, and plucks
up a screaming squirrel. It's over in a flash -
a pluck of air, some noisy crunch, and,
falling back to the ground, a severed
leg or a broken-off claw. The
poor grey-squirrel never
had a chance.

550. SKIP TO MY LOU

SKIP TO MY LOU
I wanted to press you till I broke you,
bend back your back, crack your neck,
twist you until you were twisted. These
were all my secrets. And still are.
The new word, for something that both
'was' and 'is', is 'wais' - which I shall
use, from this point on.
-
It always wais that I could love
you like a sergeant-at-arms, pledging
fealty at the meeting to maintaining all
order at whatever possible cost.
-
I wanted to succor you breathless
leaning leaving frolic at your
minions of frappled desire.
-
Be that as it may,
I must now retire.

549. THE SEPTEMBRISTS

THE SEPTEMBRISTS
(the gallery plot)
Art and speed, speed and art, somehow put
together at Lothario's pace : the gliding slime
that comes from oil, the running colors, the
certainly-not-frugal drip of a cow-painter's
wild brush. We make for images like these,
while broiling in flaming heats, under broad
shades and wide-brimmed hats. Hipsters,
flying low so as to dip to the tips of trees.
-
A crippled reporter enters, dragging a leg.
Trying to speak, she talks instead with a
pencil piercing her forehead. 'Concept
Art I had no conception of,' she writes
as the red blood slowly trickles, forming
a crimson lick around her lips. 'I'm not
famous yet, y'see, but I soon will be.'
-
That was the young artist speaking.
He wants to buy the gallery, if he can.
'Easier that way to sell my work -
just that and nothing more.'
-
Here's the baker. Here's the
maid. Here's the clarion
clapper. Here's the late
artist, so recently
deceased.

548. THE UPPER ROOM

THE UPPER ROOM
At my entertaining entrance - all the things to
be made sure of for certain - they do go on.
The parties of endless people and their
effusive old songs, the sour smell of an
old dog's breath. Someone playing Mama
Cass on an old thirty-three and a third - some
rotating black disk of trouble wailing away -
and God I can hardly listen. Both sense and
sensibility, in its Jamesian way, all gone.
The threadbare attic waits for a dance.

547. MY DISMAL PORTRAYAL

MY DISMAL PORTRAYAL
I sometimes feel like I'm in prison, serving
a life or two, with the people doing infantile
things : a sister buying a cake, a padre with
a fedora, a Clem Henley drawing a doodle.
I can do nothing but witness, as pain rips
through my gut - the wrench of a stiletto,
or the grace of a perfect cut.

546. COMMINGLED MUSCLEMEN

COMMINGLED MUSCLEMEN
The haven of the elixir went south for the
season reading with the light off and reaching for
the stars while here and there the two old train guys
frolicked with some lithesome badger carrying a torch:
'I salved my regina on Saturday last. What about you?'
The entire place erupted in laughter, the kind the doorbell
sells - madman cat-crawler Buddy Brittanica himself steps
up just the to say 'Ah, hey, before we over-reach, let's have a
minute of silence for the men in blue' and nobody understands
a word - 'guys with the blues?, fishermen with their catch?,
whaddya' think he means?' they said, parodying Carlton
Faraday the old bootlegger of Kensington Road. A round
of lame applause ensues. 'I'm warning you, don't do that
again!' is heard once or twice from the carbine tower
wherein the switchhaggler lived. 'All is calm in Littleville,
all is calm here indeed.' That was the last thing I heard.

545. POCKET CHANGE FOR COLONEL MINGLER

POCKET CHANGE FOR
COLONEL MINGLER
Eggshell bullfight horsehair majorette.
Carmen paralegal doorman omelette.
Never luscious cape-coat flathead,
roving garment handheld hatchet.
(How I wish the charming reed
forever formed the circle -
aqueduct, azalea, alpaca).
We remove at our own
peril every hazard
in the way....
Landing strip
ozone,
low-zone,
tray.

544. MORNING

MORNING
There is (to be told) no glare in the
sky this morning. The gray man's
own dulcimer light shines, with only the
most faint and distant reddish tinge to the
clouds in the heavens above - which
aren't really that, you see, for it's always
been thought that 'Heaven' (and even
then at that) was always far above the sky.
But anyway, I give this sallow grayness
credit. The leaves of the paper birch -
still quite green, an upland tree - are heavy
before the morning sky and massive (it
seems)...right here, where someone is
dragging a broom. The new light tries
to come forth, with birds now
just beginning to sing.

543. SHED THE CHARADE

SHED THE CHARADE
The horses, two of them, have stayed
near the gate - far too long for the afternoon
it seems. Harry the Haymaster, or whatever
the name of that little Mexican guy with a bale is,
comes over to see what's occurred. He doesn't
speak much, English anyway, so I don't even bother
to talk. Another guy, Eduard, I know, walks from the
barn with two mesh pails filled carefully with new
brown eggs. Forty or so per pail, I guess, makes eighty;
sold by the dozen in the farm-store nearby. Sorted
and packed in the usual egg-crate, they don't stay
that very long. Pricey but good. Free-range chickens, or
somesuch crap. In the yard here are three of the
noisiest, meowiest, cats I've ever heard or saw.
They've waltzed around in little cat circles, meowling
and bumping into one another - it's absolutely crazy
to watch. What they want beats me. To my left - two
precious goats with the softest ears and noses, and some
ridiculous Shetland pony with too much mane bumps up
against his corral, almost in annoyance. 'Too bad pal,' I
say underneath my breath. Maple Ridge Farm, Colllier's
Orchard, Pierce Hill Dairy : whatever they call themselves
here works for what they sell. Poultry. Milk. Eggs. Meat.
The gravel parking lot, bare except for maybe two cars,
seems slim but steady all afternoon long. One customer, then
another. Down along the side, the old farmhouse beckons.
　

542. FLANEUR

FLANEUR
Reading Christopher Isherwood along the
city sidewalk - a cantilevered street, with
people overhead. The wide crowd pulses
around me. Highline. Lowline. The same
perverse junk. That man in the fedora,
thinking he's Henry Gold, walks by as a regal
scold. His woman, with him, scowls down from
some nagging height. Fifteen legions dense,
the people are watched by the ranger with
the clicker in her hand - carefully counting
heads. I walk up to her, smiling, and say -
'can you count me twice?' She smiles back,
and says, 'no problem, good as done.'
I swoop my hand over her neck, and plant
a kiss on her bureaucratic face.
'Please remember me, just this
way, forever,' I ask of her.
'I am a camera, looking
at you.'

541. ELEGY IN A CONCRETE GRAVEYARD

ELEGY IN A
CONCRETE GRAVEYARD
My name isn't written in the past -
neither is it written in the future.
I am enmeshed you see in a present
of sorts : one amazing tranquility, of
prospects and dreams quickly going
down the drain. Trying to sketch a
perfect bluebird, I end up with a
terrifying hawk. Water, flowing softly
beneath the petals, rushes suddenly to
a new torrent and buckles the pavement
upon which I stand. It is all so incongruously
true that it must be taken as fact. It
gets (simply) no simpler then that.
-
If you pass my grave in your wandering,
please think, perhaps, to tip your hat.

540. IN THE SAME SPELLBINDING BOX

IN THE SAME
SPELLBINDING BOX
'If you looked at the really big picture
you'd see you couldn't blame us.'

539. FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY

FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY
I dog the coastline, seeking whatever
arises - things sticking out of the mud,
broken wheels where once a carriage ran.
Silhouettes and noon-time shadows, both
indifferent to each other, spend each their
moments in the sun. Alike. Apart.
A wailing cat in a similitude of grief.
-
They say once a great liner foundered here.
Burned and tipped; dropped its bastard
cargo a mile from the shore. The blaze - seen
for miles around - scorched everything. Its people,
their bags, their pets and all cargo too.
Only the Captain and crew, walking somehow
on fiery water, managed to survive,
arriving onshore to tell their insane tale.
-
No one for a moment believed a word :
virgins with balls of fire on their hands,
starting fires with their eyes; timid
travelers, singing of Trieste and of
the Hapsburgs, tying things down with
strings; mountains of red mud,
falling down, straight, from the sky.
All fantastic, and all thought a lie.
-
The Captain died, a lonely man, some
twenty-five years later still huddled in
his grief. Fear was his only daughter,
and sorrow was her cloak. They'd
let him live, if only to suffer more.
-
A public story of such great import
gets told over and anew. We read it
in history's reports, as arrow-like, it
pierces our dreams - part of our
unconscious noise, still, a
hundred years on.

538. HAM-FISTED

HAM-FISTED
Arrested development of the sort they talk about
in journals and quarterlies : the man with the
infantile projection, the woman who thinks she's
three. Operative personalities which, usually
grown out of by nine years old, linger.
A fellow who pops his eyes, the lady who
whistles through her skin.
-
We let them live, it seems through our
own form of genuine kindness - just
as they, seemingly, allow us our own
time too. Time to go on and prosper,
time to make what we do.
-
Some heavy- handed, ham-fisted God
named Fred or Harvey, I'd suppose,
very busy with tedious work,
just let some things slip
through those elusive
faint-line cracks.

537. NEGATIVITY

NEGATIVITY
Yes, well, we hired a mourner for use,
but he didn't know what to mourn and
couldn't find any reason to search.
Yes, well, we hired a flower-cart for
blossoms and blooms, but when she
arrived with an empty cart, she explained
'That's just the way it always is.'
Yes, well, we hired moonlight for some
moon, but when it showed up 'twas but a
sliver to what we'd expected to see; a
slim crescent moon to our full degree.
We all shrugged and figured 'it had
to be better than the dark.'
Yes, well, we hired a gravedigger
to dig out a tomb, but he arrived with
a rubber mallet and a simple teaspoon.
'Well, there's nothing more to dig,' he said,
'or we'll all be expired soon.'
Yes, well, we wanted to hear something
special, the best, so we hired an orator

grand from the envied halls of Congress.
He wouldn't speak a word, and
was a dumb mute no less.

536. STEEL

STEEL
I walked past the old mill, the old palace, and
the old bowling alley - where everything now
had fallen in. A roof turned into a floor and seagulls
roaming freely, the less-than-distant splash
of the ocean frothing in. As if, in some demented
vacation scenario, the sea had moved ashore,
the cowboy hats on the horsemen, the horses
within the carousel, even the broken bulbs
once lighting the roof line, had corroded and
died in a sea-salt reverie. Doom dripped like
salt water from every metallic surface.
Was someone screaming, or just
the gulls along the shore?

535. ARCHIPELAGO

ARCHIPELAGO
I broke my ten fingers on an over-arching
rock, shimmying up the mountain from bottom
to top. I never looked back - since I was
unable to - or had I not mentioned, my
eyes were gone too. I later lost my hearing
when I realized there was no noise - nothing to
listen for, little to avoid. It seems, somehow
now, as I stop and think back, it was an
Evolution in reverse - I gave it all back.

534. INVESTITURE

INVESTITURE

(pour 'A')
'How my high-toned repertoire takes in
so many lying friends baffles even me.
They've made stories up - under-handed
and stupid - about lives they've never led,
sequestered as they are instead in squalid
little rooms of no real conversation. And with,
then, no one to talk to, they have to make things up.'
-
I'd known all that before, but thought to
go with the joke to be in at the punchline.
'Denouement.' You'd see, I'd see.
-
A dirigible, scaling the sky.
Nothing floats like that, nothing,
except a big, floating lie.

533. THE HANDS OF MICHAEL FRIDLY

THE HANDS OF
MICHAEL FRIDLY
I saw the hands of Michael Fridly as they
were digging dirt with a spoon. A few feet deep,
he thought, would do the trick; 'I have these
memories to bury.' He said that, looking back,
to where the monstrous elm tree, still deep in life,
spreads its spangly branches overhead. A few
gracious squirrels cavorted for space, and they
tripped both up and down that giant trunk.
Michael was nonplussed by all - 'there's only one
thing I need to do and I'm doing it.' Dedicated to
devotion, managing to get it done.
-
As if an angel had descended, a new strange
light was present - casting bright powers on
leaf and on limb. Michael kept digging, with his
silly spoon. The more his head was down, the more
his face would frown. 'But Michael,' I said, 'look
up now and then. A wonderful light is around.'

532. WHITSUNDAY

WHITSUNDAY
They are amassing at the border,
all those puddle-jumpers and disenfranchised
slackers refusing to budge. The lights are
down in the canyon, and (they've suddenly
realized that) not a one among them can
read. Papers fly about and a few laggard
mothers scream. 'My child will be paying
for this forever!' The fat Russian lady
holding the tupperware cake falls
over in a swoon.
-
A man from the Central Bureau stops by
to see how (any) progress is going.
'Aleck', he asks, 'has anyone
here seen Aleck?'...of course,
no one answers him back.
-
The tar is still soft 'neath the feet.
That odd guy from Pennsylvania
is singing alone. 'Has anybody
seen my gal, has anybody
seen my gal?'
-
He gets it all right,
then he gets it
all wrong.
(A curious partaker of melody, he).

531. WHAT DID HE MEAN?

WHAT DID HE MEAN?
When the river was Scotch was the river
in Scotland? I couldn't figure what he meant:
'Him, with his foot in his mouth'...remember
that one? Riverrun. Remember that?
Escarpment over the fox terrier, the full moon
over the glade. I was watching them dance, all
those weird country people. Banjos and fiddles
and guitars, gaps between teeth, and other teeth
missing. The little kid in the 'foyer' (they called it)
standing there in his pajamas watching two people
kiss. Someone flicked the lights on and off, on and
off. Everyone laughed...for no real reason at all.

530. DELIVERENCE

DELIVERENCE
What hands have grabbed the sky tonight?
I walk in the dark where it used to be light.
-
Xavier and Quentin, whatever the names,
they each bequeath me something -
starry and bright, glowing and round.
High overhead, swirling millions of stars
and planets, as testaments to what should
be. Dark, deep sky. Heavens open high.
-
There was a time I entered Paradise alone -
walking hunched, heavily burdened and
sad. I sat down where I could and watched -
endless, squirming people realizing, suddenly
they were free - every assumption and attribution
they'd once given to the world was now gone.
-
It didn't last; it couldn't.
Now, I looked forward to
seeing a morning light I'm
rather more familiar with -
a man with a rake, seeding
old grass, putting down sod
where only brown dirt used to be.
-
What hands have grabbed the sky tonight?
I walk in the dark where it used to be light.

529. WITH ALL MY DREAMS IN FLIGHT

WITH ALL MY DREAMS
IN FLIGHT
In the confessional mode I'm at my best -
rushing home to check out the mail,
examining the sky for its passing fleece of
shapes in clouds, or just worrying about the
weather - casting all that as the fading
movie-background of the thing I call a
life. All the items I live to tell about.
I lose nothing in this matter-of-fact deal,
you see - let me tell you that.
Like shredding the fabric of wheat
or like some of my father's old faded
upholstery cuttings - items left over after
death has come and gone...all these
transformed things, yes, they may suffice
but can they make it sensible? All these chance
encounters and the meetings of beings and souls?
Our automatic bodies bob and weave, nod and
function and bend - we are the sum, here, of oh
so many parts. Everything, within a mystery without
a plot, within a puzzle without a solution. In the
confessional mode I'm most comfortable with,
the mystery stays, but it lessens a bit.

528. BRING ME SOMETHING NICE

BRING ME SOMETHING NICE
The high plains are interesting -
a place where birds seem to swim in the
air and only the most reverential moments
survive. We remember only what we want.
I shan't bother to relate again all those stories
and tales : that sharpshooter who lost his
lunch and got sick on the balcony roof,
the country squire dandy with some regal
but local whore wrapped around his arm.
Ah, but, lest I go on and do exactly what
I said I wouldn't do, I'll stop.
I must forget you too.

527. DO YOU KNOW WHAT? "!!"

DO YOU KNOW WHAT?
"

(It was Marcel Duchamp who said
'Art is the forgetting of the hand.'
I'd like to believe that Art, instead, is
the Word - and not much else.
Put all that mannered bullshit aside
and listen : !! : I can iconically say
the image is crass and representation
sucks. Don't you see? Can't you?
-
[The Helen Keller School For the Blind
had an Art Show in kind. No one arrived,
but then again no one stayed late. And
the art to be seen was so out of date.]
-
I am enamored of you Jillian Weaver.
I watch your trembly eyes in the movie
of my mind. I paint you secretly in
the dark while my dreams take flight.
In a (very true) painterly fashion
your cloak and your colors shine.)
"

526. INTENSIFY THE PROPOSITION

INTENSIFY THE PROPOSITION
This morbid semblance of life and death has
got me scratching heads : yours, mine and
ours, as we're all about this in together. No man
whistle-stops this treasure-train, and no
whistle-stop does it pass. We're all
in this about together.
-
I sat by the window, almost to cry.
I rolled back my eyes, to treasure the sky.
Moonlight becomes me and so does the
effort, the push, the effrontery.
I wonder, why?
-
Can I find not a language to squeeze
out the truth? In the words of Nepali,
perhaps : 'sas pherna sakdina' means
'I'm having trouble breathing' - and
'malai chahina' still simply means
'I don't need it.'

525. THERE IS NO THADDEUS MEDIVARKIS

THERE IS NO
THADDEUS MEDIVARKIS
I have come here humbly; bearing
rags and a pail filled with water. For two
days I have kept vigil with the Sun in
its risings and settings. If it can be
that you believe in something, it must
only be to believe in the Sun. We are,
in that respect, all primitives seeking
solace in light. Every mythology since
that beginning ends up at the same point:
whatever God you would call it,
it is the reborn Sun each day you seek.
-
Without that, this Life would be as water.
A passing flush, a useless flow.
-
I have heard the many words before.
I have seen the tall ones and the short
bow down or genuflect before their lucre
or power or wisdom or strength.
Everything fades, my foolish cherry,
everything passes away.

524. HEAVEN

HEAVEN
Align a dutiful heart to a
heavy hand and the result is
a profusion of chains and trouble:
the list of 'cannots' is awesome -
and one wonders 'why live at all?'
It's was always like that, the sparse
story goes : 'don't touch, don't look,
especially, damn, don't eat of this!'
-
Adam's first wife was named Lilith.
I wonder what she had in mind, to
disappear just like that. Go ahead,
precocious one, you can look it up.

523. ON SICKMAN'S MILL ROAD

ON SICKMAN'S MILL ROAD
That time in Lancaster County was spent wisely;
a little engaging of the locals and a run at the
Constabulary. The tobacco barn shuddered to
think, rolling onto its side with a ear-splitting
shriek. Two doctors and cow, nearby.
From over the top of the hill, another fellow
with an old Dutch name slowly sauntered over:
'What's gone on to here?' he said - and we
laughed and answered back, 'Not much yet,
but we're sure this will right itself soon.'
By three pm the sunlight was already angled -
set to the pitch and as good as movie-lights
themselves would be. 'Start shooting, let's go,
roll it now!' The miasmic Director himself
was speaking, 'I want no noise except for
that cow!' Slim the Slender he soon came by.
'That'll be enough; sun's goin' down,
we'll cut for the day.'

522. ALL OUR WINDSPENT LABORS

ALL OUR ABSURD
WINDSPENT LABORS
You cannot reach me, willpower baffle,
overspent crusader, darling fluorescent.
My absurdity has (long ago) been acquitted
of any crime. Letter-writing, that ancient craft,
itself seems over for now. Ten times ten the
years must change - and only then will things
return...to what they, as they, were, whenever.
Outside, the high clock tower rings its tone,
Trying to tell me something. We all turn deaf.

521. HANK THE BUCKLE

HANK THE BUCKLE
(at the Hudson Street pier, 1968)
And then there was all that:
folderol, the bridge at the river,
the lamp on the corner, the strange
door on the shed overlooking the harbor.
Inside lived one Henry Hyde, know as
'Hank the Buckle' to those who knew.
It had something to do with his
stripped-down manner, that name did.
Not a rifle, but a pistol, often near his
waist - belt and buckle together. All that
made for a mysterious name.
-
No one ever really knew what he did.
Card-shark, looter, car-thief, shooter.
It hardly ever mattered, for where Henry
went, there Henry was. Good for the
goose and good for the gander.
All that crap you hear.
-
He left one afternoon about 4pm,
and was simply just never
heard from again.

520. LEONARD THOR

LEONARD THOR
'I will make your moments glisten with
the sweats of your doom and death. No
Hammer of the Witches this is - instead
a pale shadow on a paisley wall. It's enough
to make one sick. An electric bridge in
Idaho, and someone bestial - like Kim
Carnes - locked in a freezing cellar.
That's what I call the comforts
of home.'
-
He was clearly crazy; sending me
pictures of re-touched women
from magazines or cut-outs pasted
like kidnap and ransom notes.
I just couldn't find time to
find time to care.
-
When a liar lies, he lies forever.
When a dead man dies he's
dead forever. Either way,
there's really nothing to
redeem - whether time
or spirit or soul or
mind.

519. TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

TWO SIDES OF
THE SAME COIN
You came to the tree of my
crucifixion and gently let me
down. I took you to the place
of my resurrection but - alas -
I clearly saw you frown.

518. LARIMOOR

LARIMOOR
The shrouded oasis on those
sudden shoulders rose - up to
heights not seen before. The
thin air of a mountain ascent,
the struggling forced breath
of an expiring man.
-
As bad as it all was, the startling
light of the next morning's glare
brought all such feelings crashing
to a halt. Life and love, never
better than in this rarefied place,
seemed just to go on and on.

517. MY MR. SAWTOOTH

MY MR. SAWTOOTH
One seemingly forthright Sawtooth Titus, a grand
old man I knew from 17th Street, wore a heritage
like a halo for me. He was from the 'Revolutionary
Titus's - of Grand Falls, Maine' and claimed his
family had settled there in the 1600's. He never
ate meat and yet took the cake, as far as I
was ever concerned, at never batting an eyelash
if something was free. 'Meat, fish or fowl, I'll
go by the price, thank ye.' That's all he'd say.
like you were supposed to understand.
-
He'd walk the street and - seeming to know everyone -
never come home empty handed. Pastry, pudding,
soup or gruel, he'd manage to get something.
Introducing me often as his 'Nephew Aurelius',
he'd never flinch at adding me in for his take.
'I figg'er, the more they'd see us together, they
more they'd think our needs.' I gleefully
acted as 'Aurelius' for near one year.
-
The Baxters of Merian, and the Sawtooths
of Grand Falls. Some durable duo betting
on a lifelong feud or an anxiety over something.
They never met, that I knew of, but he
sure talked of them a lot. I'd say 'but this
is New York, now who cares and why?'
He'd laugh and rear back his head, and
just say 'someday you'll see, my boy,
someday you'll see for sure.'
-
Mr. Sawtooth Titus sure could endure.

516. MY FULL-TILT BOOGIE

MY FULL-TILT BOOGIE
(Philadelphia, 8/29)
'I may have mis-represented something unlikely and
that shouldn't concern you anyway because shit such
as that doesn't always fly and anyway you said the
guy was drunk and as it was I was more interested in
the girl he was with. I'd known her from Pendelton and
was hoping she wouldn't blab.'
-
Well, wouldn't that have to do?
The waterfront had been turned into
a carnival anyway, and now all these
freshened people were boozing about -
I faced nothing but crap-talk like that I'd
just heard. What I wanted to say was, precisely,
impolite: 'The hands on this clock have turned ugly.'
-
I wasn't sure anyone would get the message, and what
it meant wasn't really positive anyway. I was drowning in
negativity, and this real estate was ranch enough for my bile.
-
'I remember one day, she took off her robe and there
was nothing underneath! And there we were, on the front porch
where she lived. What was I supposed to do? Scatter off and
run home? After that, we hardly talked - and that afternoon was
never brought up again. Hand me another beer, will you.'
-
McKracken gauge-face butterball ice.
Torrid myopic meander portion.
Nascent pneumatic fist-pummel tunic.
Anything like that would be better
than firing a gun...
-
The hands on this clock have turned ugly.
This real estate was ranch enough for my bile.

515. DAGLESH AND HENDORAN

DAGLESH AND HENDORAN
'Down by the water, there you can lump
things together' - Daglesh said that, talking
like a stringbean, river-shavers for teeth and
the oily carp were biting. 'I'd rather bring back
nothing than something' - Hendoran tried a response,
failing miserably. Together (thought I) these two
couldn't tie string. It was always a struggle to stay put.
-
Serene like disease, wild like a badger, overdone and
to a fault : they'd each together arrived, playing games,
filtering silt, and trying to get by. Stealing boxcars
in the night. Waxing apples with a carbide cloth.
These two got everything twice, but never what
they sought. Vaudeville paid their wages, and the
silly crowd yelled out their lame support.
-
By four the next afternoon it was all over.
The entryway was down, the tent was closed.
'I had to take care of my mother's cat and bring
her some tea' - Daglesh said that, making me ill.
'See that guy in the corner? Before he was the
coroner he was a crooner' - Hendoran said that,
and I was suddenly sorry I hadn't left sooner.

514. ECTOPLASM

ECTOPLASM
Sweltering heat made my blood run cold.
The contradiction and error of the format I
inhabited took its toll : forehead sweat, heavy,
ponderous weight, trouble breathing Earth air.
I'd never been this bogged down.
-
It was only my other place
which kept me going.

513. MISTRAL

MISTRAL
Yes, yes I have often touched the sky:
when the cool winds were blowing,
when the geese were in flight. When
the dark sky was falling and the distant
breezes rolled. Something there is
of the night in the day, and each lunar
phase, like a heart wanes and waxes.
We grow as bright, in the same way,
as that light which we reflect.

512. THE DAY MY FATHER

THE DAY MY FATHER...
The day my father came back from the
Navy, he was white as a ghost. I'd already
known him before I was born : he was out
at sea, in the South Pacific, and fighting WWII.
Sewing body bags, with his big, curved needles,
for burial at sea. Over the side, with a little
ceremony. Dead guys. Dead buddies. Dead
sailors on that selfsame ship.
-
He never got over the places he'd been.
Rocking slowly for days on a sickening
ocean - rising and falling with a salt-berth
and a fan; some crazy white hat for his head.
-
He was smoking endless cigarettes too.
It was nothing then, those Camels, inhaled
like the very stark freedom of home.
Old Bayonne. He was exhausted,
and seeing me, froze. I said,
in my way, 'Dad, relax; it's
just the way it goes.'
-
I knew my father before he knew me.
Sewing dead bodies for their
burial at sea.

511. WILFERIZE THAT PUSILEER

WILFERIZE THAT PUSILEER
I chant. They sing. The snug nettles
bring back memories of other things.
The day I met James Baldwin, at
Fordham. We were carrying on, like
kids, about Sartre and degrees of
alienation - nothing ever so insipid
has ever occurred again. He had big, fat
eyes. You can go look at his picture.

510. GRESHAM'S LAW II

GRESHAM'S LAW II
(Music Again)
It's a certain sadness that breaks the heart -
all that motion and nothing more.
We too are broken - like the modal
tenant when the metronome's click
breaks the silence of his urban night.
All that feeling and sadness and sorrow.
All the world's poor and all the world's
hungry, huddled together in a great
big room. 'To shatter the silence,' it's
been said, 'music can't come too soon.'

509. GRESHAM'S LAW (the 'Music' Industry)

GRESHAM'S LAW
(the 'Music' industry)
"Gresham's Law set to music makes me wince.
Just what we need - another whiny Jewish singer
with no real life experience strumming away on a
lame guitar about all his wants and feelings. Isn't it about
time we upturned those tables and did away with
the noise? The undertone of need and the squirming
array of guilt and desire? Jeez (I can say that)
I'm so tired of all that. If Bad drives out Good,
as it most certainly does, (and forget the money)
then we're all in line for a doozy.
-
It's those with the blinders on who claim to
see the most : 'my heart, my love, my
aching feelings and needs.' Oh, stuff it
and alter the simple chords. Or at
least learn to play music first that you
can read - a mathematical premise,
a march towards a solvable pattern,
a progression of notes on a
colorful scale. We all can't be
let's say, Scriabin."

508. THESE FLAGRANT WORDS

THESE FLAGRANT WORDS
For some sort of ragtag protest they
brought you home - tattered, and in chains,
and in rags. They stapled your face to the
posters all along the town - each way in and
out. Majestic as you were you were still 'depicted'
as a common scold, the criminal of the month, and
the 'one who wouldn't get away.' Chief Carmine
DesPais himself had said it.
-
In retrospect, out riot made little sense.
Or none. Three dead - one a child,
killed obviously by accident.
For that now we all
must burn.
-
'I'd rather raise Cain than be Abel.'
I heard someone from the other
end of the jail shouting that just
yesterday. Of course, from
where I was, I didn't really know
what he said - phonetics being
what they are. Being locked up,
perhaps all he said was 'I'd rather
raise cane than be able'. Meaning,
I think, he'd rather be proud of
being in jail for rioting than to
be out 'there', free.
-
For myself, I'm still really not sure.

507. HOMO HABILIS

HOMO HABILIS
(‘man the maker’)
There’s something changed in the manner of the wheel,
things once turned which now remain. A fixed maneuver
of ever-broken time, like the lime-box or the bucket,
running over. We thwart our manner by refusing to
budge: Man the Maker, with his carnival hat and
swagger-stick, imagery of the fantastic, and the
awesome light-brigade of what was gone before.
No cantilevered rainbow, this midtown slut
stares back, as certain of her giving as
of the taking she’s already done.
We’ve had it with all that.

506. CRUSADER

CRUSADER
We manned the barricades with fortunate guile,
having spent four months at least in preparing
the grounds for this stupid defense. Everyone
was already in pain : an old, grueling pain
of the sort that stops all other action.
The crippled monk, with his withered
leg, came around with the parchment
he’d scrawled for our oaths.
We had – yet again – to swear
allegiance to some crazed Man-God,
somehow stuck between two worlds.
None of it made any sense to us;
we wanted our pay, and some food.
Forced to dig still more holes for our
shit, we basked in the horrid stink
of ourselves no matter what we did.
It was a horrible situation – one so
delicately ‘human’ as to be inhumane.
(I wondered of this Man-God
again and again).

505. AND SO THEY TOLD ME

AND SO THEY TOLD ME
(At the Bowery Beer Garden, 1968)
Richly attired, like gentlemen in rags would be,
regency and chivalry and royalty all mixed together
(in a mad-man's idle dream), they stepped forward
and - as one - together all fell down the steps.
Yes, yes, a laughing roar ensued. The crowd was
wild with itself - engorging sacred beers and
clapping in a trance : something horrid and as
horse-whipped as a dance by some leprous
dope. Candles flickered from the so-active
air. All the idiot voices and hands a'fire.
-
Someone stepped forward to calm down
the crowd: 'And now ladies and germs,
the moment you've not been waiting
for! Matilda Malloy and her Far-East
Snakedance' (His words, exact). She
stepped out - some not-so-glamorous
specimen of lust. A few rags, a sheer
garment, and the rest taken on trust.
-
Oh how the selfsame hammer blew!
Oh how the skinny dance happened!
Un-clothed in as an instant and as
un-apprehensive as could be.
'She is naked, my friends!!
For you and for me!'
-
And the stupid crowd
roared, all over again.

504. THE TREMOR DOCTOR

THE TREMOR DOCTOR
They will take you, learned hand,
into their legal soup. Boiled with
the rest, you will indistinguishable
be. If that's okay for you, it's
not okay for me.

503. AT THE PLANT:IN THE PLANT

AT THE PLANT:IN THE PLANT
It was nothing said it was nothing
ventured and the same game remained.
We stood like dead lions propped up,
leaning just a bit, to merely pretend at
a continued existence. I never knew you,
you never knew me. Reading Uncle Wiggly
down by the sea. Ten Father Guidos and a
gilded church : Most Holy Mother of the
Reckoning Sea. Bells tolled for sailors.
Bells tolled for Thee.

502. AUDIOTONE

AUDIOTONE
Here it was the rueful ending :
We sourced the sound and found the rumor.
What it was, a glistening morning, meant more
to the squirrels than me. At every turn something
like light burst out from behind the trees, limbs,
branches, leaves. As one, and everything once,
together sang. I flew to that far oasis. A gentler
mind, on top of thinking, soaring upward in
fabulous forms of love and honor.

501. KOSTELANZ AT 4

KOSTELANZ AT 4
(Road Crew, 1972)
'I have been leaning on this life for so long even my
cane is bent. All the fructation of time has seasoned
me well. I am, to be sure, bested no longer by anything.'
-
Of course, no one know the meaning of his words
and we merely stared back without engaging.
Off to the side, tree limbs bore apples and peaches,
as they should. It was bestride this orchard his
house climbed - a wide, old white board farm;
left here from 1872, it was exactly stated.
-
Here together, five of us there were.
We'd come to mark the lanes for paving.
Working for the state, road-men, adept at tar and
pavement were we, and his story seemed like all the
others. We'd done this a hundred times or more.
-
The old Pennsylvania countryside, now just
dying to die, was still to be paved. And everywhere
we went, the markings for that we brought and left.
No more mud and ooze, no more cars and trucks
bogged down in mire. We said the same things
everywhere: 'State improvements' or 'Government
mandate.' Didn't matter. No one knew what we
were talking about. And we certainly didn't care.

500. THE SEMINOLE CAMPFIRE

THE SEMINOLE CAMPFIRE
A thousand pieces of matter, flitting away -
all sparks and ash and soot today.
That ladle with the spoonfit ending, it
too is made of wood and it will burn,
(if they feel it should). 'All creation
trembles at the thought of burning.'
Only the vile race, of seditious mind,
would think up flames like this and determine
its Hell to be within the nature of the Man.
It simply cannot be, oh lucky one, of
Stallion Dawn Speeding Spitfire Brother clan.
We will all howl beneath this fat and rising moon.
(Another life will come, but not too soon).

499. LOVE LOVE LOVE WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?

LOVE LOVE LOVE
WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?
It's all travail and effort, some sturdy
work where the tall beams stand. It wasn't
easy to construct this edifice, and now I
dare you to say it's not real. Authentic are the
accolades in my attic - high and high-strung
together. It was never easy becoming what I am
- the two-fisted hammock master, the painter of
ridiculed edges, the counter-snark with this
twisted, soiled dictionary. On that ledge nearby,
see that man about to jump? His name is Henry Coates,
and you've really led him on. Like Billy Pepper (my
rural mailman once) you drive the same sad route
each day...entice, pull back, entice again. And Laugh.
My God, it's the laugh that kills them. It's the
laugh that gets them every time.

498. DORIMAR THE DOMINION

DORIMAR THE DOMINIAN
I covered your housepaint in pimples,
wrote notes all over your jars, and then
left that night (Tuesday last) to have
dinner with that fellow, as you said,
'from Mars'. Not really an abject gent,
he showered the table with favors - some
fifty-dollar tip and money for a bet, took an
extra drink for his 'steadfast constitution' and
then left me there while he ran out to 'rob a bank'.
These are all the things he said : he spoke funny,
in awkward ways, and blurted things out you'd
never expect. 'That peacock has a belly like an
antelope', for instance. Now what is anyone, I ask
you, supposed to make of that? I don't think he's
ever read a book. Another curious quirk of character.
Now look, I don't begrudge a man anything: the creep
with the loud awful music ruining my space, the girl
with the skirt too tight for her waist, the tall, lanky
lady wearing nothing beneath her blouse. It's
all the same to me, if that's what someone
wishes to do. I can catch what I catch
and, sometimes, enjoy the view.
Life has, after all, its very
simple pleasures,
does it not?

497. DOUBLE THEME SONG

DOUBLE THEME SONG
(Someone Downstairs Was Calling)
He'd put his feet up on your 116th Street
footstool like it was a mushroom and he was
a fly. Outside the window, some mad gymnast
was contorting with a sign - 'Amin's Flint Elixir -
Gone For Good! What Ails You!' - such a sign
I'd never seen before. You had tried the classical
music channel, but all the radio was doing was barfing
ads and news; everything of a captive nation soiled
and stinking foul. On the chipped wooden shelf,
anyway, nothing could look good, let alone work;
not even your bare, naked ass, powdered and petal'd.
I'd seen your breasts in a book before, so I knew
the game you played. Patsy's Pizza, let me say,
never had such toppings. Just then, the buzzer
rang - someone downstairs was calling.

496. DEAD OTIS

DEAD OTIS
They spilled blood in the wagoner's cabin;
just as he was entering the shed. Two errant
bullets ricocheted from somewhere and entered
his chest. No Civil War malfeasance this - since
the borders had been cleared and hostilities
(we'd thought) were over. Never put it past
some drunken Arkansan shithead to spoil
the pot with bad vengeance. Hillbillies from the
distant mountain still reckoning with a grudge.
A dying man's blood can drown him in his
own lungs. We never figured for that,
and there was nothing we could do.

495. CARRINA MONTEFIORE

CARRINA MONTEFIORE
I shed olympic pounds after I first
met you. You were the darling of
my spring, the rigor in my mortis,
and - in a never-ending fashion -
the erotic dough of my bread-loaf
frolics. In all, it was as magical as
a monsoon in the desert, or of a
Heaven found deep within some
Hell. We wore our military cloaks
like Nazi footsoldiers : hemming
and hawing, bowing to salute,
sniping with a rapier, kissing the
concrete ledges. Ships, unfurled
at sea, never teemed with more
wild turbulence as you - and me.
I remember all this, and so much
much more, oh my darling,
Carrina Montefiore.

494. ALONZO, THIS AIN'T NO MAGNA CARTA

ALONZO, THIS AIN'T
NO MAGNA CARTA
'You can take your papers and put them
where you want - I'm not signing nothing.
This magnificent shoreline most certainly
doesn't need you around.'
-
A dulcimer baffle arose with the sun.
Big grey clouds, loud and fluffy and
broad, sequestered themselves all
along the horizon. No orange morning
was ever anything like this before.
-
Two hundred peasants let out a roar.
They wanted food and lodging.
They wanted no more war.
-
That's when I saw you and
our eye-sights met. From
that day forward, all I
wanted I could never get.
'Alonzo, this ain't no
Magna Carta.'

493. IT IS ALL BEYOND ME

IT IS ALL BEYOND ME
As each night I fall by the wayside and
only you are there, so too I awake distant
and starry-eyed from places I'd only dare
imagine : the farthest rim of stars and planets,
the place where the Heavens touch; a grand and
circular profusion of wonderment and possibility.
Sometimes, I swear, I awake only to say 'it is all
too much.' Earth has its moments and places
and things - the hard boiled-ridges of both
dirt and doubt, with rock and water and
fire and heat. Everything mixed, some
crazed elixir to stir, some ribald
concoction to eat.
-
I look at the distant skies and
notice the motion and curve :
a planet of possibilities at
each starry turn. Beneath all
of that, assured of only
myself, I know I have
so much to learn.
-
But still it is all beyond me.
It is all yet so far away.

492. ON GUNNISON BEACH

ON GUNNISON BEACH
I can't begrudge the frog its lily pad.
Sandy Hook to Sea Bright walking -
everything I saw was bad : token
remnants of old-years ago, sentinel
ships along the coast, dead Revolutionary
War soldiers marked and buried in the
sands. All this behind us, and now
the future - out of hand. 19-year olds
naked as they came, and ashen old
women looking the same.

491. OLD MEN

OLD MEN
'Dirigibles were flying low and cutting
the aproned sky - some light blue oasis
of nothing bantering within space to
fly - all words of their own, these new
things were, without a recourse to
meanings of old. We watched,
squinting our eyes, trying to discern
the lightning, the fire, the reasons for
these new things in the skies.
What was that above us, anyway,
some vague new future flying?'

490. YOU YOURSELF HAVE SAID IT (I AM?)

YOU YOURSELF

HAVE SAID IT

(I AM?)
The worst question ever asked, I figure,
was : 'I adjure you by the living God,
are You the Messiah?' Either way, whatever
answer, the responder is bound for trouble.
Pilate never had the nerve to question,
yet the High Priest directly asked!
(Just think, if that story is true,
how much he set to task).

489. THE TECHNIQUE OF ZEN

THE TECHNIQUE OF ZEN
'He's got some habits I frown upon.
The warrior class comes home early
and stays late - or leaves home early
and stays out late - something I now
forget. It's a winsome world truly, all
this toil and strife (and nothing I'd want
to repeat). With everyone so sold on the
good, I too wonder how evil gets done.
-
Graffiti with white paint covers the delinquent
fence - 'bury my heart on the lone prairie' -
and then the names, perversely, make
the handles : 'Solinquen' and 'Olyminiade';
whatever God-awful meanings they have.
Two wild horsemen, drunk on success?
Two frothy madmen, riding towards death?
-
We needn't agree on everything.
The pencil has lost its edge, and
we've mostly got nothing to say.
All things are won. All things
are one.'

488. THE GIRL WHO NAMED PLUTO IS DEAD

THE GIRL WHO
NAMED PLUTO IS DEAD
(Venetia Burney, 1919)
Eleven years old, nineteen, thirty-one,
forty-seven, fifty-six, seventy, seventy-seven,
eighty-four, eighty-eight, eighty-nine,
ninety - like the sun in the sky, the
black -globe-darkness distant-flash
planet passing; named after the
Roman God of the Underworld:
Pluto. The old woman who named
Pluto is dead.

487. ABSTRACT #7

ABSTRACT #7
Smutter the cling of that sour oasis
for there is nothing there but dire want.
The shoes are brown, seemingly forever.
Having walked an entire globe, they
hunger for more, with their tongues
hanging out. Surcease of violent
commitment, the awkward man
nearby is shadow boxing with
his own Hell - another epitome
outfoxed by marvel, a new
set of boxing gloves, all
glossy and laced, set to
pounce once more on
enigma and doubt. A
twenty-second century
hearse rolls by.Yellow,
like a taxi, it is now
filled with passengers,
yet driven by a
rat.

486. UNFREEZING THE MALLEABLE MAN

UNFREEZING THE
MALLEABLE MAN
He walks with a chisel in his
head, that old man bearing down on
death. Nothing can stop him now - those
ruins, those ruins you see were all his factories.
Piles of beautiful red brick, ringed by walls
with entrances for both trucks and employees.
The guardhouse, furrowed and lovely like
a brow, where each man checked in and
did his obsequious bows. Bossman. Owner.
Ruler. King. It's all a riddled rhyme, something
twisted around the circular tongue. Now at
his hole in the ground - we grasp together a
wrinkled bible, something with thin pages
and a gold-edged binding. Muttering prayers
that no one hears, muttering prayers
that no one hears.

485. THE HESITANT BURDEN

THE HESITANT BURDEN
Burned like fire which fused the glass,
we carry that fragile heart to breaking.
Pieces of things and fragments and shards,
broken items littering yards - such as they
are, these patterns have cluttered our
lives. That old green car is still running,
but it's been left like that for years.
Soft tires and a wide, thin wheel.
A thousand looks but too few cares.
Simply shrugging seems the way to go :
carry the force that carries the garden.
Let it take its own, sweet time.

484. PARADISE

PARADISE
Pottery and silverware; claimants to
a poor man's throne. Steps running
slightly a'tilt, yet leading to something
someone called Heaven once : an
enraptured fever, a hut where the
stevedore lives, a footstool
for your forgotten oasis.
We deem 'rest' as no
movement at all.
Somehow, it's
Paradise
we call.

483. FALSTAFF

FALSTAFF
Falstaff wanted things and got
very little back for his efforts.
If you want speed, hook up
to the swiftest horse you
can find and hang on:
for dear life, but forget
the dear. 'Ain't nothing but
jangling nerves,' in fact, is
what the horseman said,
lighting a fire beneath the
panting beast's belly.

482. DIMANCHE

DIMANCHE
I held the teller in my arms;
kissing briefly, I asked about
the interest rate. 'Very high,' she
said - but I knew she was lying.
It was posted on the wall for
all to see; not worth a damn
and less than three: percent
that is. I wanted to ask
her opinion of 'premature
withdrawal' but found
I hadn't the
nerve.

481. THOSE GIRLS FROM NORWAY

THOSE GIRLS FROM NORWAY
Midnight forever sky makes daylight
in Summer last as the Sun doesn't set
nor rise, just moseys around with
time on its hands while the people
everywhere eat fish. I told her
'I like Grieg', but she didn't
hear me, just kept right on
talking.

480. THE OATHS OF MAGELLAN

THE OATHS OF MAGELLAN
'I swear the following are true :
To circumnavigate the globe, wear gloves.
White is not good in white outs or storms
at sea; wear black seal or gray canvas.
Boots are as good as their last salty shrink.
Scan the Heavens only with caution - astrolabe,
compass, and chore-boy will have to do.
Bring dogs on board only at your own peril.
They slip off deck eventually, and simply
cannot be retrieved. Thus, plan to grieve.
Everything you think is flat, is round.
Everything you think is round, is, in its
way, just as flat as that which is round.
God flies through the Heavens in a
chariot, knowing nothing of
water all the while.'

479. BLOATED RHETORIC LIKE INKY DOO

BLOATED RHETORIC
LIKE INKY DOO
This is a very vibrating life,
here where they stay, like
fiddler crabs in their
silly orchestra. Death Valley
to all who come here.
An aerie of figments
jesting as eagles.
-
The Vast Intensity Chemical
Club dips their fingers in
bloodied ink - a coagulated
goo from the Crimea, a mash
made of Russian saints.
-
That fourteenth kid on the
overhanging left: his name is
Fred and his mother's dead.
He said he was watching
baseball yet again the other
day and had to turn it off.
He suddenly realized, what he
said, was the following :
Every game, any, had all
been played before.
-
'No more, no more.'

478. KATE CAPESHAW : THE HANDLE ON MY PITCHER

KATE CAPESHAW:
THE HANDLE ON MY PITCHER
No one ever said you had to know
(dear reader see) what the Hell I
was talking about. The wind
blows the willows, the willows
blow what? This is (after all)
the shoreline where (it's said)
where some Jesus walked upon
the water. Peg-legged I guess he
wasn't. But, for a true believer,
(no?) that would just add to the
MIRACLE - mystery momentous
event. Oh, by the way, that
description just then ain't me.
-
Handstands in the air.
Cartwheels in a fire.
Sitting still at the very
end of the world - while
it crumbles, while it burns.
That's more my style.

477. THAT TROGLODYTE VINCENT VAN GOGH

THAT TROGLODYTE
VINCENT VAN GOGH
Cameron I can't tell you
how I tire so, of looking
at pictures by that troglodyte
Vincent Van Gogh. I tell you
this in confidence, of course,
and just so you know - they
really do, they bore me so.
All those tired swirly greens and
blues; what was he seeking to
say, trying to do?
-
The 'so-pathetic' individual
stance, by anyone, sends me
off. A fiery sky, that
starry, starry night.
What to do?
Where to go?
-
Oh, that troglodyte,
Vincent Van Gogh.

476. SPOONING

SPOONING:
I wouldn’t be spooning you huddling me

as we stretched between fabrics of

lightness and glee; and we find the gauze and

the businessman wise - with his silver delivery

bringing forth the book with the answers and

all of the notes that he took but his presentation

WE FIND lacks something special so there’s

nothing unique - and ‘we can buy windows

anywhere’ we reply sounding sleek and so

with that he leaves and we’re left feeling meek.

475. MONUMENTAL URGENCY

MONUMENTAL URGENCY
At a certain point. We
all listen. The mice are
within the wall.
-
Transubstantiation
itself was never like
this. Innocent III,
1215. Proclaims
'Transubstantiation'.
The word itself is
the key : 'Across
Substance'. Things
pass over, are not
what they seem.
-
Those mice again,
within the wall, with
a monumental urgency.

474. STALWART

STALWART
At the cookstove is my avenging angel, concocting
a rubble of stew; something, anything to serve
to the wayfaring stranger bound to show soon.
Washing tense silverware in the old oaken
bucket, she stands sideways to the light
and straight out to the wall. It's a picture-
perfect cave painting from some
filthy Lascaux of my mind.
-
Never more than tiny additions of dirt,
the piled-up mounds in the corner
led me to believe in the succor
to come. As if I could wait
forever, I stood in place
and just watched.

473. SEDGEWICK THE CRANIUM

SEDGEWICK THE CRANIUM
I have a head filled with something,
but ideas make me sick. Tossing and turning
like this tends to weaken my resistance. I
was thinking of you just this morning,
what a legend you'd become.
The face I saw on the postage stamp -
or was I perhaps dreaming?
-
There wasn't any malfeasance involved -
like the tree with its toner of shade and
the ripple of its leaves. I noticed something
amiss. A certain sadness or loss. It
was just for a moment, but there were
people too - lying about on the thick grass.
-
I don't like leisure crowds either.
All that hemming and hawing about nothing.
Shades and shadows, people and their drinks.
Everywhere something. Nobody thinks.

472. AS IF ALL OF ANOTHER LIFETIME

AS IF ALL OF
ANOTHER LIFETIME
My bonafide incidentals could never compensate
for the places you've gone : hammerhead sharks
'midst the logorrhea of doubt and desire,
storm-front passages and pages of fire.
Barcelona, Madrid and Mauritania too.
('that girl from Mauritania, I love her with a
mania'). All those shoes, and so well-polished.
-
I took a vacation in my mind, and let it all
blow away : into pages of clouds and dust,
with the blue sky breaking. I watched all the
moons and planets of my soul's imagining
linger until they were spent. I made love
under untold seasons with women I'd
only heard of. I ticketed the skies
with my own brands of fire.
-
It went on this way for (what seemed like)
eons - time, at that level, turns to a
watery film and just slips between
the fingers. Yes, just slips between
the fingers...as if all of
another lifetime.

471. ARTIFICIAL FIGURES AND FINGERS OF CURVES

ARTIFICIAL FIGURES AND
FINGERS OF CURVES
Some Anabaptist monster singing
orange songs was holding off the
water by the quay. His tipsy hat
was crooked, rakish as a raft, and he
leaned sideways just to try and stay
straight. Walking on ahead, he found
himself a'tizzy, falling backward, and
landing on his head. Getting back
up, with a quizzical leap, he fingered
his coat and said 'I'm the most int'risting
character you'll ever will meet. 'If I
fukkin' say so m'self, that it be!'
Yes, yes, but that was a long time ago,
and that episode is long ago gone.

470. KINETESCOPE

KINETESCOPE
The old doll was shaking her hands violently,
peeling the coating off the floorboards. Her
eyes raged, wide-opened and glaring.
For one brief instant I was certain I glimpsed
a nativity of sureness, the arrival of some
new form of Grace. Just then, someone
brought a dog in, on a chain. Its snaggly
face both growled and barked at the
same time. Lifting the gauze of Heaven,
like a wastrel child in a very old film,
both man and dog and woman
plunged into the depths of the
river - over the bulkhead, into
the deep. Some ancient East
River tugboat slowly
sliced by.

469. CHRIST THE STONE THAT SMITES THE IMAGE

CHRIST THE STONE
THAT SMITES THE IMAGE
I wasn't sure of any of this :
I'd read that phrase in a little book,
handed out by Man, or a man I
mistook for one, as if the one
could equal the many (or aren't
we all one race?). It said I 'COULD
be saved' but 'only by God's Grace' -
acceptable enough, as it went.
I sat down some more, to see if
this meant something special or
particular for me. It said 'Christ was a
Man in a hurry; He always spoke fast
and was always on His way - never staying,
never to tarry' - (in fact, I figured, never
to marry). I took a moment to gaze at the
sky - any clouds in the shape of some God,
a cross, a special shaft of light (perhaps
spelling 'Gary'). I saw nothing, stood up and,
sort in a hurry of my own, went along on my way.

468. GRANULATED OCEAN SANDS

GRANULATED OCEAN SANDS
Wedging the marsh flowers into a
crevice, two children ran sideways
along the beach. Sun in their eyes
was sand in their hair - all the same,
and awful as ever. They reveled on
their Earth like new starlings from a
tree; reasonably sure this would all
go on forever while endless waves
kept hitting the shore.

467. THE NEW NOTE OF TERTULLIAN

THE NEW NOTE
OF TERTULLIAN
I wrote two songs before the door
even opened - one about angels and
one about bears. The man with the hair
went to the bridge to sing them.
-
'Aria cantalava' was all I heard.
It was all really loud, but it went
over well and the crowd, restless as
usual, summoned me up for more.
-
I waved them off, with robes and
a dagger held high. From this perch
probably thousands could see me.

466. STARLETTO MONGRETTO

STARLETTO MONGRETTO
I salivated at your thought; took
the wrong turn right, left after going.
It was a canine, not an incisor, the dentist
said, laughing. He suddenly remembered me
from once before, swarming him with
leftover dollar bills and asking for more.
'The whole thing never left my mind' - he
said that grinning in a winning way.
I shuddered to think of his age and
his manners - all this tools and implements,
and no reason not to. Outside, a dusky
starlight was entering my mind.
Inside, I was looking for
whatever I could
find.

465. SOME SORT OF NEW (How a Writer Lives)

SOME SORT OF NEW...
Pummel the waters with your wave,
stinking crew of the old leaky scow -
you've been known to leave like this
before. Once becomes twice, the same
way as nothing soon becomes something.
And the story lines always lie. At every stop,
an inkwell is pressured to burst - gangly words
all drippy and wet, debark from the planks of
the deck. We squeeze out whatever we can,
eking this or stomping that. Ribald fun at
every shore-leave stop. They leave the lights
on, just for us, and all the willowy things are
waiting. Isn't this a charming life? Some
sort of new endeavor? It's like
that, how a writer lives.

464. SCAVENGER HUNT

SCAVENGER HUNT
Beastly portability, extravagant claims.
Such are the dreams of the huntsman at night :
deep, dark woods wherein the ogres reside,
coaxing dreams from daylight and extremes
from twilight; anxious animals hover near the
grate. I am listening with one ear to something
Sibelius wrote - a great northern suite, a tune
of Karelia, marked much without rhythm yet
harnessing a beat. It reminds me of evil and Hell.
All together, like this, some nightmare gathers
within the folds of my cloak.

463. I TINKERED WITH THE FORMULA

I TINKERED WITH
THE FORMULA
'I'd really like to break your head in two.'
Things like that disconcert old people, you know.
It's difficult, under the cover of living,
to tolerate force and remonstrance - especially
when every living moment can seem as if
it's your last. Last days upon the lordly Earth.
Final moments in the anteroom of whatever.
Hearing things, words and conversations, thrown
about carelessly, sometimes becomes rather
strange. The other morning I heard some
old coot saying 'I am still the full custodian
of my own rights.' And then, right after that,
one girl was telling another 'so here I am,
riding in the car with Pinocchio! Something
kept getting bigger, and it wasn't his nose!'
I guess she could have said 'but it wasn't his
nose' (instead of 'and'), but she didn't.

462. NOTHING I WOULD HAVE IMAGINED

NOTHING I WOULD

HAVE IMAGINED
A penchant for pain - such as it is - permeates
my space like the old candle-woman talking
harsh in my face : her cigarette smoke upon
garish yellow teeth, a haphazard manner of
posture and a wave of the hands. She has
nothing to say, of course, though attempting
to say - something and wherever and how.
-
I bow, at the last, to the least of her
good intentions. While reading a
book on absurdity (a notion all to
itself), I am brought to a halt.
Italian Futurists and avant-garde art -
all things we call by concept, though
nothing is really real. And then
I am brought to a start:
-
On this train, a conductor I always
see - working for the union,
to promote the citizenry's weal -
has tucked into his belt the book
he currently reads. Nothing I
would have imagined; it didn't
seem his mate. A book by V. I.
Lenin - 'Rebellion and the State.'

461. THE DEVIL IS SWEET

THE DEVIL IS SWEET
So it's a fine line we're given to walk,
one that's brokered by double hands on
the wheel : tokens of trade, sellers of solace.
The rub is the connection (whichever we feel)
of which hands are on the tiller and who's
steering that wheel.
-
And then I watch you walk in -
holding something hard, with an
infant strapped across your front.
I try to make my syllables work,
with the lining, the pure reason,
the thought of what we take.
-
Instead, I find myself once
more thinking of things to attach,
strap to my chest, haul on my back,
or drag by a chord.
-
(The Devil is hungry, the devil is sweet.
Gets you down on your back,
gets you back on your feet).

460. MY BRIGHT WHITE MORNING

MY BRIGHT WHITE MORNING
It seemed as if every tree was upside down:
reflecting a new sunlight somewhere. The angles,
the tone of each thing I saw, seemed different.
Holocaust charnel. Workmen smoking yellow
cigarettes, standing around, butts in their
mouths, contorted with laughter under
brand new skies. Someone kept a
tractor so sadly under control,
digging the earth for all it
was worth.

459. UNCLE JOSA

UNCLE JOSA
A World War I jacket hanging on the
wall might have been his - anyway, he
pointed as if it were. To be truth-seeking,
he'd have to be about 110 years old for that to
be so, and he wasn't. All along the mantle were
displayed old farm tools - hand implements, hammers,
chisels, mallets, even discs from a plow ('the only
kind they used to know'). He laughed at that -
a crusty, backspin laugh filled with ancient phlegm.
I watched it all cough up as he cupped it quickly
with a yellowed handkerchief. Truly, I wanted
to say, truly what a guy.

458. ANY GREAT RETURNS

ANY GREAT RETURNS
'We have to end the factotum and stop the
assault. I use lots of names anyway: one week
I'm Chloe Yarmulke and another maybe I'm
Celeste Murphy. Who matters, and who cares?'
With that, she heaved a fence around her shoulders
and walked off down the lane. I was certainly taken
by surprise by this one : a simple laundromat girl
doing someone else's laundry, or some coal-miner's
daughter (she'd said) seeking terms for a major
settlement - emphysema, black-lung, pleurisy
or something running in her family, but she'd been
thinking she could successfully blame the coal companies
for it and win some big money. I told her I really
wasn't that sure of anything and that my specialty
of late was complete Absurdity - and that it
really didn't bring forth any great returns.

457. ALL THE ACTIONS OF MY LIFE

ALL THE ACTIONS OF MY LIFE
Having reached your new place -
called Wit's End - I stepped inside.
Your previous decor was not so
attractive: the collection of samovars
on the light blue wall, with the antique
knives you showed in a bevelled
glass case, a tube full of oranges
and a map of old France
(as seen by mariners coming
in from the sea).

456. MY HERB RITTS PHOTOGRAPH

MY HERB RITTS PHOTOGRAPH
I want it.
Your impersonal momentary excellence
is like swinging from a guardrail over
the highway below. Yes, the bridge
would welcome a jump but - like
anything else - it is far beneath you.
-
I swear that crenelated steel and
the iron-bound I-beam together
make nothing; sports and a ball-field
stadium are a really dismal arena for
any thoughts to pass through.
-
Mind that, Porfirio.
Some nightmare like this
would have such markings
on the doorway, scraped -
in fact - into the very wood.

455. WE WANT/DO NOTHING

WE WANT/DO NOTHING
We grade the land, destroying its crop.
All I ever do is send these signals off to you -
while even the translator snoozes, getting each
word nearly incorrect in its retelling of each idea.
This old and brown land is flattened again.

454. FIRE IN THE LANCE

FIRE IN THE LANCE
Prolific how the many flowers bloom -
like decay after growth, their own future
beckons. We all must welcome something.
The tincture of the weed - a sadder sight indeed -
is measured only by the value the blooming
of precious flowers give it. High contrast, this
realization of seeing both ends of the very same
channel. I want to bow to Nature; Natura, the
crazed mistress of parks and boulevards and
graveyards and lakeside pavilions. All the same.
The power, the glory, the sadness, the pain.
Earthly glory, enraptured beauty, a passing
and momentary rapture we can feel.