767. IN THE DARK

IN THE DARK
DON'T MAKE ME LOOK
(to be played at top volume).
You are the craziest kicker I know.
DON'T let me down - take the capstone
from the monument and turn it into bread.
Here's the way it goes : 'ta-da-ta-da bar-ump-ba'.
Something like that. DON'T MAKE me look it up
(either). Now, for the moment, sit back down
and take this in : 'I was the little one, hiding still,
and the one in the back of the dark room
was watching. DON'T MAKE ME have to repeat
this. I left the glass when Glenn came in, and at
that point there was still wine in it. I DON'T know
what happened next. SHE SAYS he got drunk and
lunged at her. Maybe so. I don't know.
They turn the lights out at ten.
So, by then, DON'T MAKE
me have to look for things,
please, in the dark.

766. THE WALKING OF MATTHEW DUPRE

THE WALKING OF
MATTHEW DUPRE
Matthew Dupre was a cripple from age nine.
His father had run him over with the family's
farm tractor and he'd broken both legs and a hip.
Just like that, cracked like a pretzel, but (as the
country doctor had said) 'with a whole life to recover.'
When he told me that story, I laughed, thinking
it had unforeseen, double meaning. I doubted those
country folk ever got it : a whole life to recover
can mean many things. I guess Matthew never
got the point, or never mentioned it anyway.
-
Hell, like so many others back there, he walked
with a decided limp, a gimp, his every ordinary day.
Never played the sports or the baseball and things
that others did, or tried. he stayed within, morose -
I always thought 'trying to recover that whole life
of his.' But, in that way, I guess I never got the point
either. Matthew went on to preach, and teach.
-
Country boy lesson master and all that stuff
I hated. Though he never really left his village -
farm country anyway, not like a 'town' -
he somehow had become of 'Minister' of
something, and people would call him Reverend
That was a whole lot to recover, and was
always something I hated.

765. LIVING BEYOND REPROACH

LIVING BEYOND REPROACH
('he spoke like a man of the world')
It was almost comical how he swallowed his
words - some sort of ersatz fragmented accent
from between France and Mars, with Benelux thrown
in too. He walked like Marlon Brando chasing flies.
Living beyond reproach is like that : one can't be too
careful about the ways and means.
-
The one time I visited Carpathia, I was stuffed
in a frozen carriage with three Gypsy souls.
We rode through the cold in a bevy of blankets -
chasing vampires and werewolves and ghouls.
There was (really) something special about
that place.
-
I'd been, of course, to Sofia already - the soft,
wayward city beyond this continental divide -
(I'd divided this part of Europe up for spoils
already, in my mind, just as if I was Stalin
and Roosevelt and Churchill combined), but
it was nothing like this. The Chancellery silver
shone, and the icicles of the morning, I was
told, had already been there forever. There
was nothing between their now and their then.
-
But, these are places today outside my control.
Living beyond reproach, as I must here do,
I can only watch from a distance. My own time,
sadly, slides slowly off its platter, and the only
gruel I get to eat are the words of surly masters.
'One can't be too careful about the ways and the
means'...I'll always remember him telling me
that. (He spoke like a man of the world).

764. NONCHALANT

NONCHALANT
Nonchalant, I walk along the barriers where
the rifles point at me, knowing none of them
can do me harm. I am bulletproof in my way.
This is no incognito moment : both they
and I know who we are. Their ragged
footprints have come from blood and death,
and no mirror exists to reflect them yet.
At the same time, I have no real substance
into which their harm can take root and injure
me. I was there at their beginning and I'll
be there at their ends. All together, one big
exemplary moment in an overlap of time.
No babies sing such a tune as this.
No starling noises these ideas.
-
We come from nothing,
and we are, and
then we are not.

763. THE LECTURE

THE LECTURE
'The third tier of your tiara made me tired'
those were the words I awoke with, a ringing
in my head, an echo-canyon of something I could
not place. I awoke then and went on. Towards
you. Towards an image, an oddly amorphous
form of clout and power, and, without reasoning
about it, I entered another day. Hands bandaged by
crisis and desire, eyes slanted backwards by the
pressures of reality forming itself anew around me.
That is what a day is after all - time piercing essence
and making a material physicality which manifests
the very thought stream before it. So, watch your
ways, young men of the jury, for you are
more powerful than you think, truly,
more powerful than you think.

762. INCANTATION

INCANTATION
(not at all)
My time and its intentions are of
a momentary infraction - I lose things,
and they reappear later on, I put things
away and they become hopelessly lost.
Like the ship, floundering or lost at sea,
whose Captain knows it should be headed
somewhere but cannot find that place - nor the
means to reach it - I stand a'watch over this
buckling plain, wondering what to do.
-
The wood shines, a wicked veneer.
The water pools, making puddles on
the shiny surface. I see nothing but
the reflections before me. The entire
world thereby is rippled and alluded to,
but just as much as that - unreal.
What shines is only light
from other light.
-
Parade my monsters before your cloth.
Let us examine what we see, and how
we see it. All that moves is what's
before. All that moves is holy...
No, rather, all that moves
is what is moving.

761. ST. ANSELM'S SEASIDE CEMETERY

ST. ANSELM'S

SEASIDE CEMETERY
(Portland, Maine)
Ah! The moon and the tomb, they both
have struck again! Beneath the pale, weak
moonlight nothing else comes through.
I am hearing the messages from afar!
Distant Heavens. Distant star.
-
The tempest-trees partake of what they will -
willow, hemlock, ash and oak - and the elm
trees, I note, are right now burrowing down.
-
None of these, I know, are the long-sought
woods of ancient sailing vessels. The
salt sea faces back, without a blink,
these acres of unfam'd dead.
-
They say the eyes are windows of the soul.
Here? Where? What is left but nothing
when the dead are all we have. The
eyes, for sure, are gone. And, too,
the soul has already fled.

760. A SABOTAGE

A SABOTAGE
The parsimonious fault that comes with the
wielding : hammer and sickle, and the rest.
Five hundred thousand lost in the mists of
time and history, the vagaries of all the words
of worlds all lost. 'We've buried the stinkers
where they'll ne'er be found. The rebels and
the rabble together.' That's how the authorities
talked. Nomenklatura, to be sure.
-
I was heavy with the sheaves of my work.
Bent by my back, my bones creaked for
want of solution. Each day another struggle
ensued. I ate the leather of my shoes
and the bark of trees.
-
An entire other side to the story.
We tried bringing it all into the
light of day. But Stalin, the henchmen
who waded through filth for him,
and the hunger of paupers did the
job for us, and better than
we ever could. Now, it
is, everywhere, over
and silent.

759. CONCLUSION SEVENTY-ONE

CONCLUSION SEVENTY-ONE
Having walked a divergent path - twenty miles
of a sideways trek - this ending, this destination
looms nearer than before. One would hope
it's been worth it. Clouds in the sky are
midway between hope and despair.
And so am I.
-
Lethal doses of everything eventually
take their toll. Lethargy and languishing
together make this Jack a dull boy...
or whatever that saying is.
The baker has stopped
baking. The cow no
longer gives milk.
-
Thereby, (isn't it to be said),
we have reached the end
of all deliverance? A very
self-apparent conclusion
looms before us :
-
We've been duped into
believing there's
something
to come.

758. OH, JESUS

OH, JESUS
Oh Jesus, my feet are up on your couch.
I am listening to Appalachian folk songs
from a hundred years ago. The words are distant
and the melodies just aren't like that any more.
They're saying you flew through their skies
like a raging wind chasing the flooding river.
I don't know much about that, but I can
certainly get the gist. Old Mama Muffin,
and that guy with the corncob pipe.

757. AMONG THE WITHERING DEAD

AMONG THE

WITHERING DEAD
Down by the park they marked up the bodies :
12 in a row went down at the stream. All
those household pests and termites together,
things held in memory but things never seen.
-
I never knew what the magic number was.
Now old Jimmy Baldwin AND old Al Haig are dead.
Two together, so different and far apart, bumping
heads in their great hereafter. Like music in a
more-than-distant background, it's only something
I may have heard. Leave it to me to forget.
-
My dear mother, my God I forgot, the two of
you are also dead! Mom and Pop. Dad and Mom.
However one puts it, you too are both gone.
I just don't know what to do. All these names
a'jumble'd, one thing as dead as the other.
I have come to the conclusion - I may as
well here tell you - that 'Life' is good for shit
and that such shit is in large profusion.
Jimmy Baldwin, Al Haig, and you.

756. TIME'S PASSIVE PASSAGE

TIME'S PASSIVE PASSAGE
Amidst all this turmoil, it is a mere bruise. I did lose
an arm at Salamanca, I'll admit, but that pain passed,
and I've moved on from that. I read your letters
in my jail cell, but only when they pass them
through. What you state is obvious : I
really am stuck, and stuck on you.
-
Ten years ago, you could never have convinced
me things would come to this. Drudgery for
the King (a ruler I've never even met), a distant
posting for his obscene Holy War, injury,
maiming, and now this. Most of of my
friends are gone. Hiltard Rayo, my
closest friend, (remember him?)
is blind, but gets on quite well -
and he knows his wife and children
are gone. No matter to tell.
-
We two, you and I, are very lucky.
If what you say is true - that there
is no other man (which I actually
doubt) and that you still will wait
for me - we show fidelity like no others.
I, in love with the moon as seen from
my cell, and you claiming to love me,
stuck in my Hell. What's a mere
soldier to do? I can wait as well.

755. WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU

WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU
You'll want to know something - name, address, age, weight.
You'll not get anything from the scenery. High-hatted,
the drumroll pounces. I was born in a cage and
never have left : witness the destruction and
unleash the force. Walking on the water
makes one incomplete. The ghost
marks time - his wicked cadence
on his painted drum.
-
In the basement of the American Legion Hall,
the marching band, practicing, walks
round and round in circles on
the floor.
-
What echoes down this hallway?
The words of a man explaining himself:
how he spends his money, where the mission
shall be, how he needs to find a forum. By my
overhearing, I am forced to listen. Adjoining tables.
I am not amused. Lifestyle. Courses. Mission. Reflect.
All hideous words, from an enormous mouth. Yet, I
want to wish him well. May he populate the world with
Spirit. Out of place? No, no. What is out of place is
what is missing - the reporter, I am finding, seeks
perfection through other people's words, not his own.

754. THE ANGER SEED

THE ANGER SEED
(I Think To Myself)
They all have their Klaus Voormann moments,
the rattlers, the singers, the killers, the dingers.
Imagination flies its stringed loops all over this sky.
I am watching from a distance, as two fellows emerge:
they are eating fire, blowing down the black smoke
between their flaming lips. I shoulder no burden that
would ever equal this (I think to myself). Then, just
aside, two swaggering Lebanese elephant handlers
enter from beyond the curtain, leading three broad
elephants swaying. One has a saddle, upon which sits,
nearly naked, a quite voluptuous woman. She stretches
outward with her arms and - of course, of course, one
sees the shape of her breasts. Guaranteed to get a rise,
the move awes the small tented crowd. This audience
erupts. I think again, to myself, 'where am I?'
-
I answer to no one; but I answer to you -
I am in Swinton Station, Indiana, at the yearly state fair,
where - in order to see these things - the county farmers
come far and wide, witnessing this fleshy cavalcade
behind the tented doors, as if it were some 1930's
sexy sideshow today. This is incredible, and how
can it be? I think to myself - these are the very same
men who shoulder rifles and bear grudges like I
carry pennies. Watch out, therefore, the unsatisfied
urge : the urge to lust and violence, one unfulfilled
leading to the other enacted. All those crazy
Summer gunmen, going home to take
out the family.

753. MOUNT HALOGEN

MOUNT HALOGEN
So tired I can't blink.
No bright lights up here,
only the glare, only the glare.
-
Keep me waiting half the night -
spindly shadows made for fright.
No one to talk to for sure.
-
Man comes by in a coonskin hat,
carrying a helicopter and a hammer
and some kind of corny thought :
His rotors look funny to me.
-
Up here, everything is illusion,
at best - volcanic dust or just
a hoary fog. One way or the other
everything remains dark and shady.
-
The only bright spot was when I saw
I saw your footprints in the volcanic
ash; some kind of fallout it was,
from long ago and the stormy past.
-
Now, only the glare, only the glare.

752. LOCAL SPIRIT AND DOUBLE SWAP

LOCAL SPIRIT AND
DOUBLE SWAP
You can have your old-time country music by
the bowl-ful. I've not seen a hog nor a hollow
around here for ages. The little girls are
splendiferous as they like what they hear.
Vacationland! Fat thinking in the sun!
But everywhere, the incongruities abound:
that stranger, with his dump truck, snoozing;
that worker, hauling his load. Two gentlemen
from Verona, you might say, kickin'
and strummin' their own.

751. AT LEAST WE EXIST

AT LEAST WE EXIST
'And the doors shall be shut in the street';
(Eccles. 12). The man who possesses no
reality, like a scarecrow, rules over his
(barren) field. Let me also wear such
deliberate disguises...in a field, behaving
as the wind behaves. And into the mirror now
there shines a light - 'Moon Castro Eventual
Comfort Eternal Rest Sofa'. The teas and coffees
steam their little smokes as we, at rest on the
precipice, detract our blank attentions from
their day. 'It was on Tuesday I worked, and
then all those snows came; the wild, windy
morning, and, though tired, I still had quite a day.'
They are lined up at the corner, all these people
now, waiting for the slushy light. Behind old
Nassau Hall, to my right, some kind of a Sun is
rising. I do not know why the gardeners are yet
at work, why the snowfall is being moved by
machinery of a great production...
-
'She has eyes, eyes of a bold brown Spanish
face that oh! if I only knew! (The space between
us grows, where that space should only close).
-
And thus the prophet said, 'if all things are vanity
'midst this colloquial divide, then such things as
meaning and moment deride every moment we live
and I and we are living for nothing.' I am living on
Dante's broken shelf, living without promise or
blame, and what this is, a boring life this is, it
can surely bring me to shame. ('We do not wish
anything to happen; seven years we have
lived quietly, succeeding in avoiding notice,
living by only partly living').
-
The signpost on Lattimore Way, I noticed,
was writ by a broken hand - some twenty years
back and more. The letters had dissolved to a
pale, painted fade : 'So far as we do Evil or
Good, we are Human - and it is better, in a
paradoxical way, to do Evil than to do
nothing at all. At least we exist, at least
we exist, at least we exist, at
least we exist...'

750. SPACEMAN

SPACEMAN
In the cavalcade of your ways I see starlight.
Truly, it appears as a glimmer from the Heavens
to me. The distant planet Ner/Stra, unknown yet
to Earthlings, sings with a light, through sounds
and colors. All that is yet within me - I may
have traveled, (though it was but as sleep)
but that has never left me. We shoulder this
illumination much as you carry water or weight.

749. EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE
To demonstrate a candle, the flame is lit.
We sit in the corner, idly talking, while
that flame consumes the houses all around us.
Experience, then, is the suture which closes
up the wound : we watch, but do not burn,
we are cut, but do not bleed. It is like that,
simply put, and forthrightly so. There is
nothing else we can do. Fluttering by me,
the hawk is but the hawk, the owl is but
the owl - no matter darkness or light.
They, so consumed 'midst 'self' as are
we, whatever the designation, do what
they do without thinking, just doing.
-
I walked to the water's edge,
and only then realized
my pail had already
been filled.

748. REWARD

REWARD
I posted a reward for my soul on the town-square
wall, and got such a response that I was overwhelmed
and couldn't even talk. So many common people had
claimed to have seen it, in every kind of place I
myself had never been. It got confusing very
quickly, and I was left doubting my own
very presence. I looked for my soul
myself, and couldn't find it.

747. CARNEVAL

CARNEVAL
Is for suckers.
All those who believe
in the frenzy of atonement.
All that 'life, death, and make
up for it all' stuff. On the other
hand, I did what I wanted and walked
away. No Rio beachfront revelry for me.
-
I used to summer in New Orleans before
I was banned. Mardi Gras always just started
the revolt : by three months later we all were
crazy. Laughter and loving, shacking up in a
shotgun shack, getting the names straight only
the next morning. It went on like that, I tell you,
a long, long time. Six weeks of Lent, a poor joke.
We made up for all that doing without in a mere day.
-
Nobody ever died. Nobody got too sick.
A few girls probably regretted it, but had time
to amend their ways later on. Salvation is easy
like that. Beads, beer, babes and booze.
That was all our motto said.

746. MY WINTER BLINDNESS FADES

MY WINTER BLINDNESS

FADES WHEN I SEE YOUR

BLEEDING HEART
This is no sample kit - everything in it is real.
The rapture, the fire, the intense feel of love
itself. Some marvel at a burning bush, I marvel
at the marvelous. A Valentine's Day spent in
mourning could make no more sense than this.
-
We walked together hand in hand. It really
was like a storybook picture. You muttered my
name, I mumbled something back - not really
knowing what to say. Then, at long last, we sat
down together in our warm and cozy space.
They brought us coffee and a platter,
things we'd never really asked for
but nonetheless kept in place.
-
It was all new to me : those Greek guys
with their baklava, the hoary dark drinks
they pounded, that crazy guy playing
his little guitar (or whatever it was).
Before I knew it, everything was over -
you'd said your prayers and spread
your cloth. It was the first of many
such engagements. We stayed
together longer than we've been
apart. My winter blindness fades
when I see your bleeding heart.

745. SEMAPHORES AND DESTINY

SEMAPHORES AND DESTINY
In that small place where my uncle once lived,
there was a carbine on the wall. His closets were
stuffed with music - and the wonder of it all:
photo albums of Alsace-Lorraine, where he
spent three long years, he said, teaching English
to miners, or minors, I never got that straight.
I was but twelve at that time, and always wished
to own that prison-painting he had hanging.
He said it was done by a guy serving life
for murder. It was about 12X15 inches, I'm
guessing, but was a wonderful three-dimensional
farmhouse, with a fence and a distant vista
and some trees and a stream or a river.
What struck me about it, always, was that
it wasn't simply flat. It had a third dimension,
pushed out where the mountains and trees were,
recessed for the river and water. I hope you
can get what I mean. I marvelled always:
this prisoner in some distant land, spared
of death, I'd suppose, but doing life (not
so unlike us, after all, I'd think), finding a way,
in mostly greens and blues and browns, to show
some fuller extent of Life as known than one
would normally see. A super-realism behind bars!
An optic intensity missed forever! Some kindred
surrealist lost by an escaping death sentence!
I never really knew, but, alas - now all gone.
My uncle's long dead, the prisoner too, I guess,
has gone to meet some final judge, and the painting
itself, why - now, when I ask about it - none who
should know know a thing at all. It's as if it never existed!
(I hope that final judge appreciates art).

744. EUREKA BREAKS DOWN

EUREKA BREAKS DOWN

(Madame Exhilia singing her aria!)
I can't want for totality or grace.

The snow is three feet high and more

where they plowed the piles and left it.

People will walk through anything at all,

and now that everything is essential

- or made to be seen as essential -

there are no questions asked.

The world has become a necessity,

and such a necessity we have to deal with,

not like days of old where people only

did one or two things their entire lives.

Now everyone is all at the point where they

each want to do everything, experience it all,

and be part of the whole entire thing:

bullshit mavens at the market selling trinkets

to whomever, story lines of carpet baggers,

rock and roll hee-haws screaming their shit,

opera ladies singing their swoon, while the

pince-nez guy (12th row, I'm watching) jerks off into

her kerchief and gives it back to Madame Exhilia

singing her aria - and no one notices a thing.

Meanwhile, the room explodes in a darkness of

Napoleanic proportion, or Neo-Napoleanic as
they'd say now. Everything's bigger, everything's

smaller. I don't know the difference here,

and anyway anymore everything's

accessible and everybody wants a piece.

743. OVER HERE

OVER HERE
It is said : this man killed his God
for thirty pieces of silver; about the
price of the Sunday Times today.
I wonder if it could have been worth it.
What bank accepted such money,
what interest was paid? How much
cost the wood for the cross?

(And what could such money buy)?
-
I wallow in this stuff like dirt :
all this myth making and story.
As Anne Sexton said (I paraphrase) -
the New Testament is so small;
its mouth opens four times, as
out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
yet somehow man-made, held together
by pulleys, like the stone-jaw of a backhoe.
-
Anyway, why bother? It's a long one-act play
without any intermission. The swooning, the swords,
the blood and the crying - along with Death -
play character roles that somehow
just cannot hold (any longer)

my full attention.

742. ODER AND NEISS

ODER AND NEISS
(or else)
Don't take the key from the doorway,
don't write your name on the ledge.
Right there, where the cat sleeps, that's
from where Jezebel jumped. She landed
the three floors down, right to the
pavement below. Two broken legs
and all painful as Hell.
-
But that was long ago. When Berlin
had two sides. When Regensburg was
new. When the girls in Bonn were still
speaking 'Bonn' - which is not German
at all. I remember laughing at that when
someone asked Gertag what people spoke
in Bonn. 'They speak Bonn!' she said -
something of the equivalent of a southern,
country, hick town local dialect in Amerika.
I said 'I thought you all spoke Kafka.'
-
I make tricks. I can put a cigarette through
a quarter. But what I cannot do, Goddamn it,
is make your memory disappear.

741. MY PALEST VARIATIONS

MY PALEST VARIATIONS
Rimbaud and Verlaine, the Buggery Brothers,
still bother me like snot. Two atrocious
characters wrapped up in mythmaking and
romance - the same dour surge that makes
pus run or blood trickle. Young romantic
children of today - every Patti Smith and
Bob Dylan of the configured world - can
still run out of their way to praise the
effrontery of these two characterless swans.
-
I'd hate to be around their table.
Flamboyant blowhards, flaming pistols,
running hordes and overly-sensitive puffs
crowd it from end to end. Servings of
pink potatoes and purple jellies would be
their fare. Why do we listen? Why do we care?
-
Up high, the height of Gods, up high, the Heavens
of all the worlds - that's where the true poet's
mind dwells. Not in devilment, not in Hells.
Oh, why do we even bother?

740. A FEW THUGS BEATING ON A GIMP

A FEW THUGS
BEATING ON A GIMP

(509 e11th st.)
I don't always have the time for great panes of glass;
the city-streets soldered with glamor and taste. It's
all I can do to stay slow, walk without haste, understand
what's before me, and stay - in my way - in place.
-
The doodle-meister paintman, running between garages,
I've seen him before - with his murderously sullen girlfriend
laughing about something while she put on her high
black boots. They were sitting at a bench in front of
some old parking lot. Behind it, a row of tenements
showed their nasty backsides. Sneakers on a clothesline,
thrown over it, as if for spite. Someone once told me
that was a signal meaning drugs are traded there, dealt,
sold, whatever. 'The Trade', in street lingo.
-
Things like that are beyond me. Graffiti, spray paint,
dealing drugs in tenement yards, under clothes of grime
and basements of filth. Wherever we go, it seems, there's
a story line that follows : regimented gruffness, power-play
in the alley, a few thugs beating on a gimp.

739. ALL OF TODAY

ALL OF TODAY
Though nice, the constant beauty of
ice, wind and snow I wouldn't want
to live with. When transient, it comes
and goes, when permanent, it really blows.

738. MATTER OF FACT

MATTER OF FACT
Atoms are indivisible
sounds run in waves
light is a quality
energy is mass and
essence combined
all things relate to
one another.
-
Indivisibility is not
invisibility NOR
divisibility - and
the quality of
mercy is not
strained.

-

Depending on what you depend on
is depending upon what you depend upon
and whether or not you go off the deep end
is dependent on what you depend.
More than that I cannot say.

737. FRAMEWORK

FRAMEWORK
I have a skeleton under my skin. I can
feel the jawbones and the knees, for
instance, quite freely. Yet, I wonder,
what will I be when it vacates me?
Shall I wander, loose and flaccid,
flopping around without a form
or a frame - in a spiritual guise
all airy and breathless, something
there with no name? Will I be
able to see....something?
Anything?

736. MASTER HENRY (now what?)

MASTER HENRY

(now what?)
It was fitful to throw a hum into the snowbank
like that, Master Henry. What in the world were
you thinking? That guy's new Audi was but
four days his. I'm sure he was as nervous
as could be : your frenzied, crazed behavior
must have made him wince -
so close to his new car.
-

It was (also) pitiful to throw that bum into
the snowbank, Master Henry, but that's
another story and he did probably have
it coming. I saw how he was going through
your pockets when you left your coat
on the bench. Yet, kicking him in the
face when he was down was probably
a breach of etiquette.
-

All in all, you've done a fine
day's work in less than
twenty minutes. What's
next to do?
Now what?

735. CALL ME WHEN THE REVOLUTION ARRIVES

CALL ME WHEN THE
REVOLUTION ARRIVES
Do not hesitate to chase down what you
see - a fleeing preserve, an idea running
away from you. By such means are revolutions
begun. One man, clamoring over something,
shouting high from a leafy perch, can caterwaul
the masses to prime their quick revolt.
-
We, in shackles, huddle over pain and want.
Blankets of bad philosophy and the lies of
schemers attempt to cover us from their own
prescribed cold. Following such orders, the
wise Captain says, will bring peace and happiness.
-
Instead, this compost heap of old ideas is riddled
with enforced rigor. Compulsory order keeps chaos
away : yet it is their order which shackles us,
and our chaos they most fear. Their own frightful
conundrum keeps them in fear just as our own
fear of them keeps us from chaos.
-
I have to lay my cards down with Chaos.
It is the more creative way to die.

734. NEGATIVE VACATION

NEGATIVE VACATION
Underfoot the ice barks - a resounding crack
of 'where not to be'. I'd much rather not understand
The darkness is thick like a brush - a harsh scrub
on a dirty scalp. There is so much not to be seen.
At this time of morning, no shadows even try
leading you on. Such quiet becomes me.
-
Were I to sink in this brash disdain, I think
I could only perish once. A singularity such as
that is gladly accepted; a peril undergone
willingly. My winsome spirit seeks to fly,
in this manner finding its own distant sky.
-
I've not lingered here for nothing. Breadloaf Mountain,
Scalinger's Hill, North Pomay Point. Each of these
places hold memories, but things I'd rather forget.
Who cares of that listing boat sinking in the sound,
the cave at the bottom of Aubrey's Meadow, the
old cabin where Lentinon stayed for the Winter?

733. CHARLTON STREET

CHARLTON STREET
Nothing but a crazy fucking silence.
2314 and the 3rd floor freight elevator
13th Street where they made porn flicks.
Now there's nothing. From uptown to down
only the crackle of money : ornamentation
stricken with sledge-hammer angst, all
those gargoyles of a true old decoration now
either dead and/or buried. Far away and long
ago, I can't even remember how it was
done.
-
'Surround yourself with your own ideas,
yet place them in a tradition of yore' -
though he never said that, those words
were used against T.S. Eliot in a court of
law; well, literary law anyway. What he'd really
said was : 'the entire world has fallen away.
Instead of pillaging, take what you can from
the past to advance the present.' The only
reason I know all this is that he used to
live right next to me at 87 Charlton.
-
He used to cook feathery eggs on Thursdays.
His ex-wife would sit in a chair, crying.
He spoke of tea as if it was gold.
He was really from Missouri,
I was told.
-
He used to say cool things:
'the door opens on her like a grin,
and the corner of her eye twists
like a crooked pin.'

732. AT PIPPIN SOUND

AT PIPPIN SOUND
The water runs like water runs.
The mountains rise like mountains rise.
The highway drives like highways drive.
There's no sign of the settlers left.
-
This Park Ranger babe tries to tell me
how things were. Where they slept and how
they cooked. I know (and she knows) she's full
of shit. As if it was all about home decor back
then, she's going on about chairs and windows.
-
I simply decide, like a wildman from back then,
I'd much rather throw her down and strip her bare.
That's what she'd remember about the past.
'He came in quick and he pulled out fast.
Ugh, I think anyway. That's how it was.'
-
There's never any justice to things that can be said.
If it can fit into words, it's a lie instead.
The water runs like water runs.
The highway hums like
highways hum.

731. COUNTING UPON REDEMPTION

COUNTING UPON REDEMPTION
1. Someone hard and fast and soft
and stern and demanding and sour too.
All so defined; as it had been, by the
legendary Cloud-Maker Firebush
Original Burning-Man - that old
volcanic deity of dumbness, God.
Be-Bop-Ba-Diddley-Bop. Him
groweth home-grown bloweth
blown, Jazz-King morning sunlight
movie-man marquee moon mash.

2. Swing low Sweet Harriet coming for
to carry my bone, swing low sweet
chariot, coming for to carry me home.
I - bop be diddly pe-dad dah! - looked
over - be dum bop! - Jordan and
what did I see? A band of angels coming
for me - wha-za-sha-bomp-wa! -
coming for to carry me home.

3. The morning sunlight pales itself along
and crying on past the horizon old moon
new moon hanging ring-in-white while the
smoke a million mornings rises - one million
mornings, man! - and lingers its mark like a
broad medallion in a long and lazy-lit sky.
If we are the birds, we sing; we do that very
bird-like thing without thinking at all and
all of that goes just goes and all and all
be-bop-a-diddley-lu-a-baby, yeah!

730. FOR THE DURATION

FOR THE DURATION
It's too simple to see with these eyes
how I love everyone I meet and yet
hate to go on living. The reverse side
of this dance-card was apparently
marked by Death itself. Stamped
with something that reads
'For the Duration'

729. BROKEN

BROKEN
My hands were broken at the bank,
my mind went sideways at the church,
my eyes gave out in prison, and
- only later - my lungs failed
until - at the end - I realized
I had prophesied and
rehearsed my own
unending death.

728. INDEPENDENCE DAY

INDEPENDENCE DAY
Independence Day came and went
and brought forth in its own way
that posse fielding forces on the lawn.
Horses with their bowed heads,
tentgrounds and fireworks; everything
filled with that unsorted frenzy of Love.

727. DREADNAUGHT

DREADNAUGHT
Something mingles my blood with Charlemagne.
I don't care which or what : there are no streetlamps
on this corner, the sky is falling dark fast, and all
I can see are these shadows...of the past.
I was once a youth armed with lusty fever,
playful antic and the joy of a magical spree.
It turned out very costly - as nothing was
for free. Beating me at my own game,
the lineage of blood said I came
from Charlemagne.
-
Eagle tarnish fuel temper
flame volcano wood-beam
ceiling tempo toolshed manger
chapel fury iceman rehearse.
-
We are the failings of everything
that has come before us, and the
victors, it always seems, are the
ones who get to write History.

726. CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION

CONTRACTUAL
OBLIGATION
There's no cast to the angle :
the men who build bridges don't
care, and the others don't notice.
I'm sitting up in a leather chair,
my feet straight down. Reading, I'm
trying to beat my own slouch, or
slump, by consciously sitting up
straight (in that leather chair).
I may have said all this before.
-
Somewhere I've heard that
tonight is Chinese New Year.
Year of the dog rat snake,
whichever. It hardly matters,
never in fact, to me. I surmise,
like some dumb old horoscope,
that it's all meaningless drivel,
borne of ages, carried aloft and
then forgotten by modernity. Except
in glee, the glee of greetings and
greeting cards.
-
The man I used to know -
over there - Freddy or Frank,
is smoking a menthol cigarette.
He's looking out over the porch,
gazing at nothing. As I remember,
he was as dumb as an ox and a
pain in the ass too. I'm glad
he's alone. Smoking, these
days, is a very lonely gig.
-
There's no cast to the angle.
The men who build bridges
don't care, and the others
don't notice (a thing).

725. MY COMFORT

MY COMFORT
(Life Without Limits)
A community of holidays wrapped in
nothing special - ice rolling off a cliff
along a distant roadway, two signs - without
meaning - spinning wildly in the wind, that
Winter hare, momentarily stunned, just staring
out. My silence is a comfort too - white
wires of an old telephone line, poles and brackets
now all white, covered by new-fallen snow.
Community gardens inside glass globes.
Alligator sewers 'midst a mishmash of time.
Everywhere I turn to look, there is, (it
seems), something 'other' beckoning.
I am outside the picture yet
within the frame.
-
Steamed-over windows dripping with dew,
an enormous shelf, bought in New London,
and now suffering in an early Spring.
I live within the anomalies,
if I live at all.

724. EXPERIMENTAL

EXPERIMENTAL
I'm thinking of being taunted.
Notwithstanding. Effect.
The long dawn of a lumberjack -
trudging up the village hillside in
the dark, with an ax and a saw and
nothing more. What do they want
from him? Five trees, big, cut and
sundered and chopped in a day.
Let alone. The. Bringing of it. Down.
-
All those measly peasants
and their damned fireplaces.
Cinder-pots for the practice-flames
of their storybook Hell. Big Bad Wolf.
Cat in the Hat (ain't no lumba-Jack).
-
If you say a prayer before morning
I can guarantee you there won't be
no mourning. Everything will
F A L L
into place perfectly; the
lumberjack will get his trees
and the peasants will get
their fires for the hearth
through the Wood
HE bringeth. Like
God again; someone
else JUST LIKE A
GOD.

723. THAT OLD RUSSIAN CITY

THAT OLD
RUSSIAN CITY
Where Chagall kept painting his
dreams; oxen and carts flying over
the sky, past moons and rooftops
and stars. I guess he wasn't really there,
so to speak, but that's what dreams
are about anyway. Interiors of exteriors,
maybe, or the other way around.
-
Like a mirror able nothing to reflect,
that too is an achievement. Something,
after all, to be noted or remarked upon.
Vitesk or Vitebsk, or whatever it was.

722. I'D MET ANNE SEXTON ONCE BEFORE SHE DIED

I'D MET ANNE SEXTON
ONCE BEFORE SHE DIED
By her own hand, of course. That's
the way it always happens. Nothing sparkles like
death-as-dessert. I'd just been getting used to her,
liked her looks, loved her smile, and really dug
her work. And then, out of the blue, somehow,
she decides to take her own life. All that
confessional poetry crap had just worn her
down. The letter she left me said simply :
'I could have told you sooner, but
I'd already forgotten the words.'

721. LEGENDARY APPREHENSION

LEGENDARY
APPREHENSION
They put the highway right through my head :
things winging, flying by, high rates of speed,
everything a blur. Not that I minded, mind you.
It's all the same to me. The sharpshooter named
Raymond, the one from Desert Storm, showed
me long ago where a sniper should hide.
-
We were in Jersey City, sitting out front of old
Captain Al's, a now-gone beer joint all creepy and
run down. Right across from it, they'd built new condos,
and at the very top, some strange-looking pinnacle
stood out. I said 'a great place for a sniper, no?' -
and he, momentarily startled, blinked back and said
'yes, actually yes it is. That's the very sort of space they
taught us to find in sniper school, for urban warfare.
I spent many an hour, fully armed, in just such places.
Funny you should notice.' I laughed, and smiled back.
-
Sometimes such coincidences just seem to come together.
His erstwhile girlfriend, also there, Laura or Brenda or
some sort of name like that, had no clue what we'd
said. She was too busy enjoying the others enjoying
her. The whole scene was funny - she was showing
off as best she could, we were talking about killing
people, and right down at the end of the street,
a perfect and near view of Lady Liberty's backside
was present - the whole statue, in the harbor,
framed by the street - the Statue of Liberty
I'd had yet to meet.

720. THOSE FUNNY SITUATIONS

THOSE FUNNY SITUATIONS
I can take the brutality of both silence and
science together; they amount to nothing.
One has no words and the other has too many.
Theorems and postulates never did anything
for me. All that definitive certainty, that
left-brain theorizing of lines and formulations,
left little room for concept and no room for
the free grace of creative re-alignment. So,
you can have it all. I'll take the atom, after
it is gone. I'll conceptualize space without me
in it. Time and situations, all put together,
seem only to amount to songs and ditties
sung by weakened men and women.

719. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?

MISSION

ACCOMPLISHED?
"I state unequivocally - I can skate to
the end of the ice - which is not, definitely,
the end of the pond. It is where I hear people
are talking. The end of the pond, on the other
hand, has a very nice bonfire keeping people
warm on solid ground. What are they saying,
however, at the end of the ice? I wonder,
has someone gone over the edge?"

718. MY BIG FINAL LETTER TO THE WORLD AT LARGE

MY BIG FINAL LETTER
TO THE WORLD AT LARGE
(to one Doctor Shamek)
You can enter at will, stay as long as you wish,
and leave at your own choosing. I don't care.
Wherever the metallic mountains are, I will remember
the location in time; magma and heavy elements,
all the iron at the core. It's been a long, dismal season,
this time of history and riot. But nothing has happened.
Same-sex couples leaving notes on the door, single boys
looking for more, unwarranted men and prelates of all
stripes pretending to be alert, more for what they are than
what they aren't. In the museum, a few yawns and a dagger;
small moments of great elation. The music man plays yet
his rainbow calliope but - as is apparent - no one listens.
-
'So,' the analyst said, 'why don't you just sit down
and we'll continue this talk.' I nodded, more in
appreciation of his gall than of anything else.
Certainly not tact. And I had even less.
-
'You bum-fucked misogynist, you make me puke.'
Well, anyway, that's what I wanted to say, but didn't.

717. AMBIGUITY

AMBIGUITY
I noticed a great ambiguity running
around my house. In trying to catch
it, to apprehend its fleeting presence,
I found myself catching nothing at
all - though something was present
in my hands, I was never sure what it
was at all. Nonetheless, I kept seeking.
Running 'round and 'round till, tired
and weary, I sat down and simply
let it be, this ambiguity.

716. FIR TREES AND WIND

FIR TREES AND WIND
A dark crutch of doubt holds nothing up -
the flavored shadings of indecision, well,
they too taste like nothing at all -
acidic bile, biting the tongue.
-
I am watching fir trees bend in the wind.
They seem to do it so well, plus they
have found the perfect sound by
which to do it - a gentle swoosh
of an almost white noise, a
sound that never wavers,
always sounds the same.
-
Certain far fields, it seem, never
have a farmer - nothing to sew
so nothing to reap. We go as we
come (a white noise, always the
same) - dense heavy coat, hands
and head protected from the cold,
some scarf around the mouth and
neck, to filter the cold air in.
-
Candles, like this, go out.

715. ALSACE-LORRAINE

ALSACE-LORRAINE
Those aren't hills you see, they're
clobbering infidels of rising meadows.
Things unknown and unseen, collaborators
with the wrong crowd, sketchers of daisies.
Everything's a mess, really and likely and sure.

714. MADS

MADS
Ten little mads,
with contorted faces,
twist and squirm
to run out their races.

713. WAR

WAR
Of the soldiers and the semblance
of Death - Yes, I say, Yes.
Of the smoke and 'collateral' damage -
limbs legs moaning fire - Yes, I say, Yes.
Of the burial mounds where they be...
last place been last place seen last thing heard,
Yes - I say - Yes ! Please let it be - Yes!

712. AS IT ENCOMPASSES POPEYE

AS IT ENCOMPASSES POPEYE
As it encompasses Popeye
sans serif nay the sharif
in 1945 Marcel Duchamp
had a window at the
Gotham Book Mart - his own
display Frances Stellof gave it away.
Alas gone gone alas enog sala
Mesmerize me memorized dazed em
emulate desire reside in me
It is it is (sit(please)) Rose C'est La Vie
Sore Selavy is sit ting in gin in Gin
of the Frances Stell of scene.

711. 100 LADDERS

100 LADDERS
(Forethought and Malice)
Foster kids' group growing up.
Seeded apple fields with rows of
fenceposts and the footings for 100
ladders. The splash of such large
undertakings is yet here and about.
'One time we gave the kids a choice,
and it only turned to baseball - my
God, a five-hour game with little to
show. But they had fun.'
-
'Could you once bring me something
from another clime?' Chance words
encountered sideways between
two walls. Duffel bags filled
with old equipment.
-
I'm watching the girls with cameras;
they're trying to take pictures of something.
I don't see much. The room seems too dark,
and the one in the green shirt is standing
on a chair. Forethought and Malice, I name them.
No, nothing like that really - and hangings
sell better postcards anyway.
-
I have often, far too much, paraded
down the street with witless gendarmes,
rulers of doctrine and the keepers of
philosophy's key. I know my scene has
changed. The entire world altered.
Ballet Russe, some Diaghilev fusion.
'Perfect ballet, you know, can only be
created by the fusion of three elements -
dancing, painting and music.'
-
Those baseball kids should know that.
Yet now - and standing alone between two
forces - I can only witness : from someplace
between late Wittgenstein and early Pynchon.
A Siege of Malta and the hard, logical Must,
so recently discredited and now left, largely
forgotten and abandoned.
-
100 ladders in the rain and snow.
100 ladders in the apple trees.
They died for being rather than
professing to be. Forethought
and Malice seemed their
names to me.

710. SIMONIZE SHOES

SIMONIZE SHOES
Walking this hard can kill.
Dreaming, like a sword without a
scabbard, cuts as well - nothing
between the two makes any sense.
I have destroyed my life. I am entered now
in a great unreality - a place where nothing
exists. Callous disregard of the essential
essences would cause anyone to blanch.
-
You can ask me anything,
because nothing is. When
Wittgenstein said 'the World is
all that is' he may have (for a moment)
known what he meant to say. But it didn't
last, and the repudiation was sweet.
Now he says nothing, and people
are still agreeing. How strange is
all that? I have no range, nor reach.
I am alone, without arms and legs,
without anything so reasonable
as reason.

709. VASE

VASE
The moment is porcelain.
Lines run through it, a pale
streak of darker color, a tint,
a mistake, a flaw. It costs so
many dollars, just thinking
of buying it gives me a
headache. Bird-like,
a spot on the right
draws my eye.
The artist's
rendition
of a
feathery
something
flying?

708. SHE MIGHT BE CHINESE

SHE MIGHT BE CHINESE
She might be Chinese, I can't tell.
The way she holds the hammer is awesome.
The manner by which she makes her points,
the words and the gestures, seem the same -
though perhaps vaguely a bit too European.
Nothing much to be gained from asking,
so I'll just let it go. Enjoyment, nonetheless.
-
I ask the King, and he says he knows.
'Put her hands on her hips,' he said,
and see how she moves.' Whatever that
was meant to impart, it didn't follow through.
Leave it to some mixed-ass King to not speak
precisely, let's say, clearly. But then, that's
what 'King' is all about. Someone gets your
water and someone gives you the fork -
so what practical knowledge can you get?
-
I'd never criticize like that directly.
His options include, of course,
chopping my head, or the dungeon.
Place of slaves. The dung-heap of a
life-in-prison. I'll leave it to Him to
ask this lady where she's from.
On balance, he can have her forever,
whereas I'd probably never see her again.

707. GOOD MORNING SIGOURNEY

GOOD MORNING SIGOURNEY
Shimmering substance and good morning
Sigourney. We have now moved to the light.
-
Those April afternoons, (perhaps you remember),
when the pale yellow wash of new sunlight played
over the sandy dunes. The gulls from the east
whipped and played above the surf, beguiling
then both the mind and the eye. A windblown sky,
though severe, seemed settled into its steady and
strange verticality, while somewhere off to the
right, along a waterfront porch, a nautical bell
went singing. For two moments we beseeched
each other to listen.
-
In the ramshackle shack of the fisherman
'Wallace', his own lamplight sketched a
scene, and two cars rotted in his
sandy lot. Across the way,
the surf was running.

706. MADELAINE LANE

MADELAINE LANE

(Nascent Fray/Secret Vice)

Fort Lee, NJ
On Madelaine Lane the ply the barriers freely -
a line of Asian people waiting for tea and coffee.
Rows and rows of little books for sale. On the
western back lots of where the film industry
used to be - a nascent fray, a secret vice -
they're still building the fake houses of
movie-set fantasy. Chandeliers and third floor
landings, great stairways where dancers
can wait to enter. On the blistered horizon,
a great, white smoke lays low the trebled land.
Rain falls in buckets, as is said, with but
nowhere to go but down, down, down.
In the foyer, in the step-up room, along
the very ground's hallway, everything
leads to descent. They are yet building
the enormous, vast rooms.

705. DUALITY

DUALITY
In the double house where nothing is;
in the double house where everything is.
Walls asunder, beckoning back and
all things moving, in a roundness, return
to their start. The cupboard, though bare,
is seemingly rich - loaded as it is with
imaginative things and imagined richness.

704. VEGETABLE MATTER

VEGETABLE MATTER
It wouldn't matter the hem and the haw,
if only the fenceline ran off to the horizon.
For 24 years, it seems, we've watched at
night with rifles in hand for anything suspect
to come out of the woods. At first it was 'Martians'
and 'aliens' - all those silly things of youth and
fantasy, but of late it's become neighbors, 'guests'
from the other side of the woods, or agents and
collectors of the Government which claims this land.
They're the easiest; we'd blast them dead.
-
I'd rather rot in their fetid pens than live like
what they call a 'Freeman'. Reconstituted
servitude, I call it. Causes for this and causes
for that, communal monies thrown into a
military pit. Fake answers, lies and distortions
too. The fiftieth anniversary, I assure you, of
nothing at all. So raise high the flag, you
carpenters; reach the roof with your
sickening pride. The land you're so
proud of is dying. The principles
that made it have died.

703. ALECK

ALECK
Here's what I maintain:
'that there are more stars in the
Heavens than yachts on your pier;
that men who come and go with
riches eventually die as naked as
they came; that the false rubble they
leave behind them withers and melts
away as easily as do infractions on the
tongue of a judge; that floral bouquets
do not a woman make; that icing of
such sweetness is not always on a cake.
-
That friendship and affection between
two men is not always a bad thing,
even when 3000 miles apart. Why
then do you fight me, like a mule
digesting a lemon? Both,
we shall soon enough,
be dead.

702. 'YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT'

'YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET
WHAT YOU WANT'
My mind went white as a ghost.
Why are they playing this crap
at the site of revolutionary deeds?
Carpenter's Hall, the old Second Bank.
Where men involved in passage actually
died for the things they'd planned. All
gone now, of course, like the virgin's skin
on the morning after - bloodied, forgotten,
useless and stupid. Yet, freshly entered as
a once-Paradise of new ideas. Now the
endless fat kids with their wrappers of corn,
go waddling by, as loudly raucous as they
choose. Two nitwits are somehow playing
their sidewalk-mounted sound-wand, loud.
Sickening for me to hear (but I am of another
age, and have come here from afar to witness):
This is what they're playing, witless...
'I saw her today at the reception,
a glass of wine in her hand...'

701. AT CHRISTCHURCH

AT CHRISTCHURCH
Philadelphia, 2010
There was no cold in the lining :
the three Quakers nearby, having just
left their Meeting House, were nibbling
on some cracker-like crumbs. Atop the
adjacent spire, not theirs but belonging
to some other congregation entire, the old
bell was pealing. Christ Church, or near;
right by where Ben Franklin is buried. I
walked over there, slowly, and with intent.
People, even today, throw pennies on the
grave site like confetti. A big marble slab,
intriguingly, it lies flat on the old, hard soil.
No one knows anything really, of that I
remain aware; yet they throw something,
anything, pennies and dimes, as fans do
to show they revere. Whatever it is, some
mysterious, tribal thing we do within us
so as to accommodate the space in which we
live. Two girls, I swear, from Oklahoma,
were somehow singing aloud 'Mine Eyes
Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of
the Lord.' Their little car, with OK plates,
was parked along the curb.

700. MORDECHAI

MORDECHAI
'I walked through doors for the first third
of my life - passing through both wood
and glass as if nothing. No miracle was involved,
mind you, just an attendant grace of G-d within me.
Having need to pause, a genuflection always hard
to do, I bent at the waist to the morning Lords of
light and air and Nature. Since time immemorial
Jahweh Himself had been a volcanic God - a
steaming hiss of fire and flame pouring down
from a mountain. We begged Him to speak,
He spit back at us with fire and rocks and torment.
As we really meant nothing to Him - just beggar bastards
meant for His hands - it little mattered what we did.
Incredible, stinking meat sacrifices. Bloody
throat-slittings of screaming livestock. Even
the sacrifices of each other - daughters and
sons on despicable stone slabs. Screaming of
death and the smokes of sacrificial fires!
What the Hell was it all for? He, above us,
did nothing - complained of our stench,
grew bored with our clamor. Rivers of
blood running through platforms of
dead bodies. And finally, this G-d, this
cursed, bastardized Numen of our
own creation, paced us off, left
His garden, cut us loose, and
simply disappeared, leaving
somehow no trace behind.'

699. GLASS-HARP HARMONICA

GLASS-HARP HARMONICA
A glass-harp harmonica elicits response
by a form of echo - the nonce and the
noun of the moment. Turn away! Okay!
But re-engage at your peril. Those really
are shadows loose upon the lawn.
-
When I was twelve, I was determined not
to be a nothing forever. My days, they
were mapped with elan. But that was
before the farm and the fodder -
in simpler days to be sure.
-
Having (instead) become a marksman
by accident, I still determine new targets
each day - that bear upon the nearby
parkland, that bison on the hill.
-
You may not understand, but -
believe me - I see these things
because they really do exist.

698. MR. BENTLEY AND THOSE TWO BEAUTIFUL KIDS

MR. BENTLEY AND THOSE
TWO BEAUTIFUL KIDS
He never chokes I bet.
He grabs a wand, spinning and
wandering like a dog chasing wind and
and flowers, or a frantic kitten freely jumping.
Any twisting sentinel watching this daily
scene would be wasting time in warning.
There's too much light in his day,
not much weight in his morning.
Hulkingly rich, his two children
settle for nothing less.

697. TAUNTS

TAUNTS
No one has muffled the sound of that
worldwide explosion being put
forth by dragons of logical lore :
candy-store fat ladies standing
around, cigarette-sucking sharpies
in dinner jackets and lapels.
The fag with the Pentel in his
front pocket, proclaiming
gladly how lustful he gets.
I want to wear their collar.
I want to eschew their
corollary conversions.
I wish to take part
in their (always
maniacal)
taunts.

696. PARADOX/SUPERIMPOSED

PARADOX/SUPERIMPOSED
I have somehow superimposed time
over speed - a sensation over a blur.
Moving along in blackness, I sense
the trees around me. A Winter's morn
as this - hoar frost, a trace on every
window glass - brings with it a
feeling of all things being stopped.
I would not have learned the ceasing
but by the going, the doing but by
the not doing, the life but by the
death. This mad farmer, Time,
harrows on. I glimpse his world
through this icicular globe.
　

695. INAUTHENTIC

INAUTHENTIC
Vacuous tenacity, of the sort which
travels through cities - the men off the
streetcar, swept aside from some
antediluvial fall of a rank proportion;
the girl singing her simple pop song,
walking along, knowing each word in
the spin of her lucky web - encasing
her in a simple tune of glitter. Its own
dead-end beckons. Neither her own tune
nor her own words does she recite. Only
those of someone else, with nothing
authentic left. Well than, if that's the case,
what does anything else matter?

694. GLASS SKIN

GLASS SKIN
Awake like the dead from the suffering ground;
encased in their ages, soiled in their winding
cloths. Break down the barriers of which
you've been heard talking and speaking.
Belittle the mourners.

Roll back the stone.
-
Before real light is ever to
appear, the Magic Juggler
first needs to take
the stage.
-
His home is an oasis of fragments,
a distant place of martyrs and bones.
Some cloth of faith - it is to be
supposed - would be covering
his face until that very
final moment.

693. AGGRAVATION

AGGRAVATION
Unfold the illumination,
rotate the view. Watch as
it all flutters above. It is true,
and quiet, here in Almaville.
The two boys, below the bridge,
are comparing their catch - a few
wriggling fish, already near death.
Life is pretty miserable, no matter what
else may be said. The master mechanic
from the old garage across the alley -
his hands are blackened with grease,
and his coveralls look pretty much the
same. He wants to light a cigarette, he
says, but can't even reach into his 'good'
pants pocket to get them. 'Life is full of
shit,' he says, 'one damn thing after another.'

692. BUTTERFLY

BUTTERFLY
Two doorways into the sky -
one swinging open, the other loosed.
Beautiful blue sequential illumination:
shimmering and floating, darting, in fact,
across the open grassy lawn. No
part of Heaven's spray has ever
landed, wet, like this, before.

691. MONSTER

MONSTER
'You lose a lot of people being civil;
all those ones that should be gone,
the ones who pester others with the
ceaseless whining and cavorting.
We should just take the time to do
some sorting. Others may speak
of the brutal means, the cleansing
and the separating, but I would
say, instead, look at the good
we'd be creating.'

690. AREYAVIEW

AREYAVIEW
No one (it seems) listens.
I'm tired of being alone.
This is the meandering corpse
of an old sailor, at sea on the waste
of a dock - all that's left is the motive
without reason. He sits. Tired tears glisten.
-
'I, I want to tell you this -
there's no money for mankind
in a wasted land.' Whatever he meant,
I (merely) pretended to understand.
-
His shoes it would seem had prevailed
in this scene to help him by not walking
away. Trousers three sizes too big, secured
with a rope, were fluffed upon his legs. He
looked bedraggled, and as stupid as one
could look. But, having asked for nothing,
I figured he'd keep what he took and ask
questions only later.
-
I walked away, wondering to myself
how anyone like this could survive. Go on.
Why, in any case, do we let them exist?
A world gone away is a world over.
We ought just forget the old language,
unlearn the words and emotions,
and get on with our newer day.
I thought for sure he'd understand.
(But I was afraid to say).

689. HABITAT (all activity is forced activity)

HABITAT
(all activity is forced activity)
Once they moved the fences,
we realized there would be no more.
The fields were hungry, and even what
the birds dropped for them was never
enough. The 'muppets-to-brains' (or however
it was put) ran wild across the grass - like those
kindergarten kids from the old German school
in Merloch. One custodian - the one holding
the keychain and lock - seemed to be yelling wildly.
Seen without ending, in the guise of a surly dog,
he was shouting something at someone in the group -
perhaps, even, at a thing.
-
It is never expected, watching a star explode,
that the great fiery scene above was once
shining, placidly lit, within a midnight sky.

688. 1910

1910
..('I don't care what the Bible says')..
I may have wanted you to be Sergeant
Major Monohead Delinquent Vespasian
and every part of all the rest. Milk-white
sky. Raven diving, skimming new lands.
I shook the canister the old man was
holding. It was filled with coins from
nineteen hundred and ten.

687. PLINY THE ELDER

PLINY THE ELDER

Plymouth Rock befouled the
mind of everyone - think future
thoughts from the vantage of a
past. So much vintage labor, a
camouflage of good intentions,
brought all that water to the keel,
all the slapping of waves on wood;
kelp-stream, fields of seaweed, and
a few broken barrels of ale to drink.
Shipboard cowards, always drunk,
went sailing around the world.
Before that, an ancient man in a
garb-less hat, wearing not much
of anything but ideals and intentions,
talked the years backward from his
primitive parapet. The sky was loosed,
the stars rang down, and the favored
wanderings of all those ancient tribes
came, screechingly, to a slow yet
sudden halt. In their own faltering
way, they too heard the 'future' calling,
but could not yet recognize the sound.
Perhaps Pliny the Elder brought
them around (to a better
way of thought)...

686. THE WINTER BOOTLACE MILITIA

THE WINTER

BOOTLACE MILITIA
There was a broad army, once, which inhabited
these gray lands. Frozen to a beam, the
torn leggings and the broken leathers of
their shoes exposed frozen toes to the
elements. So rude was that. Men died
for lack. The chiseled features now
of three men on a monument seem
as disgruntled as a wayfarer being
dunned for taxes, or a miller learning
he's lost his permit to mill. Say what
you will, but the land that we've
built (on the backs of these brutes)
has its own fair shortcomings still.

685. MOZART WENT CRAZY EATING BETEL NUTS

MOZART WENT CRAZY
EATING BETEL NUTS.
Didn't really but so what.
You never stop talking.
That phone is a device
now within your plastered
head. Like the rest, you too
should be buried sideways -
wired to the Heavens (no need
to really be there), a virtual dish
of spinal dead-flesh. You'd be
a real attraction wherever you
go. Hell would love your news -
hearing all that constant jabber
about where you've just been and
what you've done.

684. CARDIO-VASCULAR - (Broadcast 21)

CARDIO-VASCULAR
The monkey-man shines in his armor
all sparkling with new-found sweat.
Through his famous exertion, his
skin glistens and the strain of his
face, contorting, is shown for all.
Lighthouse, billboard blinking sign.
Burma-Shave this old oaken bucket
broadcasts tension within a world
at war with itself. If we ever leave
things alone, will we - finally - be left
alone ourselves? Mankind makes
bridges which bridge nothing
but muscular space in a
tautology of blind rage.

683. THE MOMENT

THE MOMENT
(a Harvard In a Hat)
Amen! Romana! Are not
cars not art?! Take heart!
-
Though we (may) finish -
these are the means by which
we make : salamander figurines
lining the wall. (Even) the cat
snaps back - by an intrusive,
instinctual nerve.
-
Like running a dream in the
opposite direction from dreaming,
all that it could be was left
behind and already forgotten.
So fiercely nervous, in a
simple teacup of time.

682. IMOGENE COCA

IMOGENE COCA
'Once we incarcerate the contaminated gene
we'll all feel better for a spell.' The audience went
crazy with that one. Maybe 1956, I really can't
recall. Some boffo boxers duking it out on
a tiny TV in black and white. Antenna atop
the wooden set. The laughter sounded real.
-
Not long after that, as I remember, some
Sputnik spooking put a grand hesitancy into
looking skyward. Dark night of the soul, an
American two-step backwards into a new welter
of despair and bad tidings. Out on our lawn,
my father, smoking, looking up, said 'just watch
for the blinking light as it's moving by, son.'
I had no idea what he meant by that.
-
Back indoors, another raft of laughter
peppered the living room sky. More like
a bad sea of crummy water, I thought to myself.
No blinking lights, nothing moving along the
ceiling. Just Imogene Coca, or someone,
and those reams of laughter pealing.

681. LARKSPUR HAMLET MONTEVERDI

LARKSPUR HAMLET MONTEVERDI
Whatever your name determines to be, let it be known that
I can see these following things (gladly): Ice, as it
patterns on old window glass, and the water as it turns
back to melting; Mud in seamless array underfoot, first
frozen then thawed and stepped through and then
frozen again with all the marks of those steps; The
small men from the tropics, as they crouch in the
wintry woods, baffled by both trees and the patterns
and vagaries of cold weather; Women, how they smile
towards each other in the presence of another's man;
The noise and reports of gunfire, with the little tuft of
smoke it leaves floating in the air; The ice age, as it returns
to us anew - frozen thighbones in high, rocky places.

680. SANDMAN

SANDMAN
(the jazz loft project, 1966)

Every disease in the book thrown

face-forward down to the ground :

a worming boring come-uppance digging its way downward
towards a vital truth. We all know nothing. Bones of long ago.
The forest's own wood, all unchanging and serving the purpose.
Swaddled in ice and chill. Black Forest density with the
buckling intentions of enigma and feint. We each know
nothing. Balsa, pine, maple, cherry - everything
the forest can make. Like arms and the man.
Unsettled. Weeds on the edge of the swamp.
(I need to tell you a story. My mind is so
confused it cannot speak). The air is
adrift with distant vistas. Someone
is walking a dog, asleep.
Blow, daddy blow.

679. SKIPPER, SKIPPER, WHAT OF THE SEA?

SKIPPER, SKIPPER,
WHAT OF THE SEA?
[Like busloads of Crimeans writhing – the horrid fat horrid
rushing of the street - like horses suddenly aroused.
I see ropes, containment, impatience, need.
The world, being this magical place, needs
something new for definition. 'It was actually
very enjoyable,' the round one with the hand-etched
glasses says. There are literally hundreds of them
crowding the street after the plays’ matinees – distant
people, from close or near, wondering what to do next.
Bewildered, they look about. Having just tasted the
theater, perhaps they are still stunned by something
newly recognized about themselves. Or, perhaps, just
looking for their stupid bus. Or, perhaps, it is NOW
that their own waste astounds them, into action.
Outstretched hands manage an applause:
‘Spare any change?’ the accolade.

-
Just a short ounce of whiskers, all it was.
That in weight and circumference, volume,
area, load. Everything that you’d want in a
simple mathematics of both place and time.
Oh indeterminate! Oh imprecise! Oh unknown!
I have managed to pound you to death with uncertainty,
while watching your mass absorb all the light and
the essence any strange astronomy could bring. Like
the distant orb above us – it is something which is
talked about but still severely unknown.

-

Broderick Kimmel, at the lodestone of goodness, is also
at the point of man’s departure from this world – that
long kitchen of all his preparation, where, yes, the ideas
are boiling but the conclusions seem overdone.
And he turns once about, and asks:
-

‘Skipper, skipper
What of the sea, and to
where are we going now?’]

678. SLIPSTREAM

SLIPSTREAM
Now and again a moment happens which
(seems to) change(s) the world. A deck of
cards with an obscure hole in the middle.
Two men, walking the Brooklyn Bridge, singing
Irish songs across the sky and traffic - while
below them a few large boats float by.
Those craft are powered by a Diesel fuel so
rich that one can smell the odor as it wafts
past those two, quite drunk and happy, men.
In noodles and doodles both, like children, we
let these things happen. Objects seem to float,
yet actually have a massive power and pull of
their own. In the course of our days, it is
our responsibility to find those things out:
those things which float, and those
things which need an outside power.
(Find the slipstream, and ride it through).

677. MY LIFE IS A FUNERAL

MY LIFE IS A FUNERAL
I am writing a letter to Harold, who has just
died. Something like the Sixth of January, some
year or another. Twelfth Night. Epiphany, near
to anything of that sort. Faint holidays in which
those who revel find means to revel while others
abstain. Care less. Couldn't. I know that he won't
read it. I know that he won't respond. His body is,
in fact, probably still warm, or would be had they
let it. Nothing like that occurs these days.
-
Parsifal. Oasis. Morgan Le Fey.
-
Into a great dudgeon some people fly.
There are things on their counter-tops and
bookshelves which cannot stay still. Haverford lamps.
Waterford crystal. Pingree-dot paintings. Postcards
from Brasilia. In an orb-like standing, the great gash
of the world soils the globe. The tattered photo of a
half-naked woman on the wall of an old garage.
We are meant to be, in our way, only what we are.
Or were. We are meant to be what we were
meant to be. I am writing a letter to Harold.
Who has just died.

676. THE HORN AT THE HOUSE

THE HORN AT THE HOUSE
('a broken English')
We wheedled a large dishevelled mess
out of the garage store nursemaid as she
was standing by eating candy corn beneath
the eaves. It was all too weird, how the half-light
refracted in spite of itself into a rainbow'd distraction.
No dilemma, there. She turned about, and said:
'From Istanbul I told you this was coming. You tried
to ignore my plight, but I wouldn't let you off. Remember?'
I certainly did, and let her know. She was the little sister
of Orhan Pamuk, and I'd known her before I knew him,
yet I'm older than both. 'Go to figure at that out' - as they
would say in their stupid broken-English. Before Istanbul,
it had been Bombay, and before that, Beirut. Funny too,
how now they're all places which no longer exist by those
names or have been splintered to smithereens in some form
of modern, political death. Not to matter. Eagles still soar.
Politicians still puke, and even the lowly guys and girls from
the United Nations, in their lovely blue jumpsuits, can live
and laugh and love and die just like any of all the rest.

675. AXIOMS OF THE THEATER

AXIOMS OF THE THEATER
That gun shown in the first act, yes, must
be fired by the third. Not necessary that
someone dies. The scrim behind the secondary
emoter, it should reflect a clouded sky running
over with a certain form of the moral mirth of
small-town virtue - even in the darkest of
existential scenes. Shadows lining a wall must
not move; rather, remain in place despite
any action. The mis en scene will set the scene.
The doctor should always be sentimental. The
parson naive. The local businessman - rapacious
to a fault and filled with longing for his mother
and reflective of nothing so much as an outlandish
youth filled with parental conflict and a sense of loss.
Compensate for this with energetic, over-the-top
obsessiveness and a business acumen and drive.
Always, an ingenue should appear waifish and
sexually acute though naive. This can be done by
body language and dress - or by personal characteristics
bespeaking a loneliness of dreamy desire. Make it work.
By the close, a complete summation of each of these
theatrical characteristics must have occurred cast-wise.
Leave nothing hanging. Tidy up loose ends.

674. LION OF JUDAH

LION OF JUDAH
I'd always wondered why that African guy
refused to settle - always holding out for
Deliverance and his Messianic rage. They
leveled acres, cut of hands and arms, raped
women and pillaged villages - all in the name
of some unsettled God whose cauldron somehow
even in this modern day was still bubbling with
a boiling fury. Never understood by Mankind
anyway, it left instead upon our doorsteps
ten-thousands of street-side merchants selling
scarves and watches and doilies and hats. This
itinerant babble gathers - along the 20th Street lofts
gathering their goods and jewelry and watches. Suitcases
filled with stuff to sell, wrapped in blankets and sheets,
tables on wheels, banter and chatter balanced with
an ancient form of African silence. Deemed to think
to themselves, 'we are what you have never been', they
nonetheless step right in and take our commerce and
contraband together, making the change and the
small-talk of a livid curbside conversations. Handbags.
Watches. Woolens. Glasses. He will come again!
He is coming once more, to take us back!
That Lion of Judah, fear not, will roar!

673. INTAGLIO

INTAGLIO
I level with you like new marks in
old concrete - which means not at all.
Shouldering heavy burdens all your life, I
hoisted heavy matter up, for you. That was
me, understand, shouldering those heavy burdens.
At the risk of sounding stupid I rose to your defense
more times than you could imagine. I took that punch
for you - more than once. I spoke like a committed
fool. Why? To be sure to remain in your graces, as if
I'd had something to gain. You were stone, you were
granite. An idol, worth nothing at all. Now the smart ones
come walking around - they talk of indecent things and
ask questions of what we've done. Impervious imposters,
idiotic imps, workers for the State Police. Book burners
for God and country...or something like that anyway.
Cat o'nine tails, the whip which should cut,
every means of causing injury; that is
really all you're worth.