2066. INTERREGNUMS OF THIS, INTERREGNUMS OF THAT

INTERREGNUMS OF THIS,

INTERREGNUMS OF THAT

The parlor was filled with ice, clear cubes of frozen water,

like crystals awaiting drink. Two dwarfs lounged, in

an irreconcilable frenzy of papered animation.

Board games and cigar smoke. Golden drinks in

golden glasses. I sat alone, in a velvet chair.

-

Feeling very much the flush freak myself, I

decided leaning back to sleep could work. I drifted

away, like container cork on a sea-foam of brine,

turning this way and that in a dream. I couldn't

make surrender, I couldn't make it seem.

Nothing that well worked. A dark red corduroy

curtain came down, shutting out the light.

Laughter too subsided.

-

My mechanical invention had here cost me

dearly - an automated looking glass that

sucked one into the scene. Everyone fell

for it...and now they all were gone. Which

side of that mirror was I now on?

2065. ALL THESE REMARKABLE ALLOYS

ALL THESE

REMARKABLE ALLOYS

I am listening while I watch the Sun - hearing

its noise, a steady thermal hiss, a large cosmic

hum thrumming. It colors the spaceship I'm on;

stark blues ands raving mad reds. Elliptical shadows

thwarting each other, and the deep blackness of

Space as I see it. There is no end in this sight,

nor can this ending see. Ethereal as some leaden

mouse hiding frightened in a large room's corner,

I too hover and shake. I do not know where it is

I am, and my wandering eyes - to behold something

at all - look about and see only the ages before me,

and behind, stretched. Time in becoming, or matter in

decay. You know how it is said the 'past is proloque';

well it happens the other way too. 'Life', Samuel

Butler said, 'is like giving a violin concert while learning

to play the instrument.' I'd imagine he meant all at once,

at the very same time, learning and doing, in public.

Somehow I find a meaning there, and here - beneath an

obtrusive and settling Sun that wants to burn my face

but cannot. Instead, I swelter in the heat of thought,

realizing only faintly where I am, and where it is I

am perhaps going, and, alas, where it is - all - that

I have already been. I am listening while I stare at the

Sun; hearing its noise, all its steady thermal hiss.

2064. METAPHYSICS ANTI-TERRESTRIAL

METAPHYSICS

ANTI-TERRESTRIAL

I am going blind. It's fairly simple. An effect

of overuse, visionary over-reach, what you will.

I can still see horizons, and the ends of big things,

mind you, but the fine print, the small things,

the substance of what passes for detail...no.

It's all over, diminished, occluded and accompanied -

as this Dr. Mariento says - by clouds of effusion

amid notions of doubt. Whatever. I asked him,

'can I still see Reading?', meaning, of course, the

Pennsylvania town, and he answered (like a jerk)

'Reading? No, it's the reading that's done this!'

No sense going any further than roadblock #1,

I thought to myself. And anyway, if I'm blind,

he's obviously his own Helen Keller already.

-

You see, the trick of vision is the visionary life.

None of this idle bullshit back and forth for me,

no grave matters about finding fault and who's at

wrong or right. I live cleanly and pure - straight

ahead, telling the truth and seeing the truth the

same. Which it all is, after all. No shadings of

matter to color what is. That's where the blindness

comes in. Staggeringly dense and stupid, what is

after all, darkness but a stubbornness of not finding

truth in all matters. We should cut the trim of

that fabric with a very sharp knife.

-

Anyway, Mariento says it's soon over for me -

all those lights and the glee and the fun. Maybe

so, but...ah...who really cares? Not me. I've

seen the future, and I'm not in it.

2063. EPISTEMOLOGY AND GANGRENE

EPISTEMOLOGY

AND GANGRENE

And this devil has a way with words : those

cantilevered and spinning, wavering or about

to fall. He knows a few things about cause and

effect, guile and guilt, and the rest of that all.

-

Today is nearly February's end, and, in one

fell swoop, I am walking along 53rd and all those

other interior blocks which rest in this city's

crazed middle. Lights, camera, action. I

think of the people from a few years back -

those whose names are on walls and such -

and remember them now as, only alas, gone.

-

I've been called in once more to watch some films,

a few things by Warhol and one by Cornell. My
ancient friends, I listened to, and showed up with

dispatch. We sat and watched. Others, to whom

this was new, I found them laughing in the strangest

of places. Each spot in the films, evidently, we saw

differently. Two old people next to me stared steady

and straight ahead. The man had a walker, and the

woman guided him in, carefully - even though it

took him ten minutes to get settled in place.

Like watching a lamplight light.

-

Then I decided, in effect, that - all my life -

movies have bored me. Any movies at all.

I can't watch what I'm watching, can't

stop my mind from working, and can't

force myself to believe what they're

telling me I should be believing with

each scene. Somewhere else and far

away, I'm hanging, so to speak, instead

clouds on trees. Even these, sorry.

are better to see.

2062. AFTER BEING TURNED OUT AT WICK HOUSE

AFTER BEING TURNED

OUT AT WICK HOUSE

The gears that run the gearwheel turning are

seen to be always in motion. A grease, like a

spittle, is shagged about - leaking down,

running over, loosening its viscous hold.

All things run loosely, slobbering with

stealth before breaking down.

-

The grand foyer held a portrait of Lafayette.

Why him? I'll never really know that. I

think it's more as decor than anything else.

No chamberpot in the erstwhile bath

ever held his water or waste. The

chubby girl with whom I talked

pronounced his name, oddly,

'Lafiatte'. Who really knows?

-

He's never been heard on recording,

never spoken on a phone, never watched

movies in mourning, 'Gone With the Wind'

'Revolutionary Road'. This whole modern

jangle of nervous things would have

broken him down anyway.

-

I asked a few questions, and they

turned me out as 'profane and

rude.' It was quite alright with

me, I was late anyway. Checking

my George Washington-faced watch,

I saw it was 4pm and they wanted

to leave for the day.

2061. THIS GOD IN HEAVEN BEARS WATCHING

THIS GOD IN HEAVEN

BEARS WATCHING

It's really pretty simple if you think it over :

how, once, before you die, you should take

a moment to put things in order. That's all.

Put the pens back in the jar, the paints in the

paintbox. After all, it's true, is it not, you're

done with the making, you're done with

the paints? That long wheel of time can

be elongated no more. Turning back on itself,

it has somehow (Yes!) found your name. Go

then, get settled, and back whence you came.

2060. THE HEART DEVOURS WHAT IT CAN'T UNDERSTAND

THE HEART DEVOURS

WHAT IT CAN'T UNDERSTAND

I am far and away from Brooklyn where the climbing vine

climbs and seduces the sky. Standing next to one or another

glass building, I can only wonder why. Examination of the

particulars would afford me little : you are already far and

away from all that. Just like me. Two taps, and a selfsame

faucet. I really want to talk. I am up all night, from outrageous

dreams, and you are far and away the best thing I've seen.

Window panes reflect the sunlight above, strands of shading,

broken into filigrees of color and light. I shield even these -

my eyes - from some glory, something blistering, blastingly

bright. The father behind me is telling his stories : the usual

wartime hits, days of old glories, the things he never got over.

Wearing it now, like an old, worn coat, it's obvious to anyone

that no one cares, gives a shit, gives a hoot. But, alas, that's

how old men die, telling war stories beneath a wartime sky.

Some things just never change. The heart devours what it

can't arrange. Your fingers, I am seeing, are blessed and

lovely; not with jewels, but with the polish of a skin ivory

white - a porcelain charade of trim, translucent beauty.

How it's done is always beyond reason and I

surrender my arms to your charms.

-

I am duplicated at once by the shadow you cast - in the

background, that bridge, with all its wild graffiti. And that

makes two. Of us. As one. High over the water, where tugs

and fishers swarm. Nothing worthwhile there but water taxis

with all their dead people, skimming back and forth as if

to Hades. Ladies, take it from me. There is no better there.

The heart devours what it can't make disappear; and I

am probably lonely forever. A paltry charm 'neath a

gimmicky, festive sky.

2059. DR. DOOLITTLE AND MR. WEDGEWORTH

DR. DOOLITTLE AND
MR. WEDGEWORTH
He entered the room wearing plastic rain boots
and a safari hat - green khaki pants and a face
fell of glee. Saying 'I love the rain, always!' he
moved along. I liked his manner, but couldn't
place the song. At the other end of the room, a
dour Mr. Wedgeworth sat.
-
There are always funny things to remember -
how misinterpretations color the memory, how
information gets misconstrued. Like Thoreau
saying 'know your own bone' in his nineteenth
century manner, meaning - as Anne Truitt put it -
a writer should 'force himself to work steadfastly
along the nerve of one's most intimate sensitivity' -
now being pointed to as a secret masturbator,
these things are usually stupid and dumb.
-
It meant more about 'write what you know' than
anything else. The varied 'Self' we each are.
'Know your own bone, gnaw at it, bury it,
unearth it, and gnaw at it still.' What the hell,
I always understood.
-
Now Dr. Doolittle and Mr. Wedgeworth, I notice,
are sitting together. The newspaper between them
carries a dense crossword puzzle they seem to
love doing - together, in tandem, as one.
The usual harmonies of unity and oneness -
know your own scene, do what you mean.
It can't be more simple than that.

2058. IN SUFFOCATING THE LINDSTROM

IN SUFFOCATING

THE LINDSTROM

(a vignette)

There are one million varieties of the spoken word :

the singsong, the chatter, the ideal and the real.

None of them alike, they all can be made to work.

I watch carefully as I climb. I present my membership

card to the wild girl at DIA Beacon, and she accepts

with a smile that lingers. Two men nearby are suffering

the mood of the bookshelves nearby. Art books on

Joseph Beuys and Blinky Palermo. Imagine!

-

I enter the room where the Chamberlains are -

old twisted clumps of colored steel. Nearby, a broad

room of repeated Warhol motifs, like bringing forth

the Aladdin from its pedigree of damage - all things

sourced and frothy. I seek only Michael Heizer. I seek

only Smithson and Beuys. Myself, I suffocate

in the Lindstrom.

-

A few hours later, I am having some food at the

Homespun Cafe. I never eat alone, as I always have

a companion and she is always with me. We do tricks

with money. We drink coffee alike, sitting shuttered

like art in a crate, in this 10 degree cold.

Everything just seems right.

-

I've written before of these moments, so watch

and you'll see the repeat. The girls of the town

are strolling in. They whip out their breasts and

start feeding all those daddy-less kids. There are

one million varieties of the spoken word :

the singsong, the chatter, the ideal and the real.
I am left with these endless variations, these
modern Madonnas, adrift in this world.

2057. TOMORROW AND THEN

TOMORROW AND THEN

I am aghast at the things of Man : the sepulchres

that make the sadness, and the sadness that

makes the sepulchres. The outright lies and

posturings that go into the rooting of the

false pretense of inconstancy, of being without

control or limit. Here, here...it is all here.

2056. ATLANTIS CAPSIZED

ATLANTIS CAPSIZED

I bet you've got money to burn, like the exalted
captain of some wheezy ship adrift on a wine-dark
sea; you look about, scouting wives and warriors
all together alike. And, by the way, those islands
in the distance disappeared a long, long time ago.
Atlantis capsized; the world turned upside down.

2055. HART CRANE PARTIALLY

HART CRANE PARTIALLY

When I was a young man in the dark New

York cold, I read my Hart Crane and swore

I'd never get old.

-

Now, windows have been shuttered with the

planks of indecision. Reason itself mars the

table with its jagged knife marks gouging.

The swooning sun, the sunning moon,

everything out of kilter, fading soon.

-

I make my meek adjustments to the

world beyond my window. I do nothing

to disturb the frost and the cold. I remember

Jack Frost, when that name was given to

the spindly ice lines along the glass.

I caress the lost kitten found on the curb.

-

My poetry slams doors, opens doors, and

shatters walls and windows - all things

at once. I want nothing more than to be that

which best I can be : listen up! : 'Thy face

from charred and riven stakes, O Dionysus,

thy unmangled target smile.'

2054. WITH THAT, MIRABELLE

WITH THAT, MIRABELLE
There is, for whatever reason, a
new snow on the ground today -
and someone is telling me of it,
as if it wasn't self-evident already.
Curious, how the jumble swarms.
I live in a castle of glass, a pure
place, one where no salt stains
the glass nor discolors the mirrors.
There are (I must only admit),
so many things I see thus - with
a gentle backing, a silver like
that mirror - only by reflection.
Such light wavers and distorts?
-
An old, carbuncular man is looking
down at me, attempting to make
sense of my ways and means. He
does not understand poverty or
paucity, or - for that matter -
particles of any granular reasoning.
By the very same token, I don't
wish to explain, and, with that,
Mirabelle, I leave.

2053. ONE VERY PRETTY CAT-LIKE FACE

ONE VERY PRETTY
CAT-LIKE FACE
(three globes/Hudson Street)
'I'm not hankering for that moment -
as well as anything else that in itself
can keep my mind afloat. She's got
a tincture of innocence swabbed on
that smile, and I'm thinking back,
eagerly, to where I was when I
first saw that style.'
-
Three globes somehow pressed into
the surface, a roadway glistens nearby.
Yes, he is eccentric, and I cannot
stop him. Won't even try. She, on
the other hand, whets my interest
like butter on a well-tossed loaf.
-
The blue sleeve of a newspaper bag
reminds me where I am, where I sit
to sunder my means. All this pawnshop
stuff, and here comes Little Miss Broadway.

2052. BLACKFRIAR'S BRIDGE

BLACKFRIAR'S BRIDGE
Saint Camilla and her Dancing Cups
are seen standing as they laugh and
smile. Holding markers in their
only hands - and so different
each from the other. Scarf-dance.
Ritual enticement. A fantasy beat.
The enhanced band plays for the man.
Lights go down at Brickfriar's Bridge.

2051. TOURIST

TOURIST
...Does everything thus then need be
a jumble of words : the broad, the sad,
and the funny? They've been inclined
since day one to travel. Happiness,
sensation and glee.

2050. CHICKEN WITHOUT A HEAD

CHICKEN WITHOUT A HEAD
Or like at least the farmers would say -
'running around like a chicken with its head
cut off'...I heard that stuff a million times; never
did want to visualize that, or ever see it happen.

Like blood and thunder, far enough away is

close enough for me. I always understood - on

the other hand - happenstance to be something

that could just occur, could just hit one when

one was not even thinking about it. Like a meteor

from the Heavens, one that takes out a town,

or a ballfield full of people. Smish-smash-splatter.

-

I grew up under the eaves of a garage, watching

big men argue while fixing cars. Drinking hard

whiskey from bottles in their hands, while the

other held a wrench - sometimes too with women

at their sides, they'd be feeling this or squeezing that,

and it had little to do with cars. But things got

fixed, all the time, nonetheless. One or twice, in fact,

I heard them say even LulaMae 'got fixed.' No matter.

I was just a country boy, and that's the I learned how

you learn. Like that chicken, running around without

a head - you never keep what you don't first earn .

2049. A MARKER OF FLESH

A MARKER OF FLESH

I am honing in on something I know I can

never buy : a perfect reason for biding my

time, standing still, staying in place. Wasn't

it Socrates, I just learned today, who said -

'I go to die and you to live; who knows

which is the better journey.' Curious

to have to know that anyway.

-

There are willow limbs in the swampy

alley. They are awaiting a Spring which

will boost them back to Life. If only the

moisture holds, and the swamp stays

wet, and no drought again ensues. Yes,

these are all, then, conditional things,

much as is Life itself to us.

-

I think today I will wear a yellow

sweater. A scarf, perhaps, around

my open neck. Be a dandy, brash

and bold. Live like forever,

what the heck.

2048. BROKEN GLASS ON THE AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS

BROKEN GLASS ON THE

AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS

Only the pitfalls of other men and the wind that

cuts like a knife can bring me back from this edge.

I am walking sideways, beneath tall buildings and

overhanging ledges. Never knowing why, I move

along evermore. Clouds like inflatable balloons

skitter past my eyes, shapes and curls advancing

in an open sky. I'm looking for comedy, but it has

long ago left this tired and distasteful town.

Broken glass on the Avenue of the Americas,

what they still try calling it anyway - shards

and razor points flying through air.

2047. I LANDED IN THE SOFTNESS OF ANGELS

I LANDED IN THE

SOFTNESS OF ANGELS

Like dense down, like the feathers of a God,

someone or something who'd made all this

stuff - soft needles and luscious pins - I'd just

looked back to see the highway disappearing

when I happened on your presence. Glittering

appearance, like the suns of a million stars.

I took a moment to stop : stunned as I was

at this science. 'Never let me go,' I muttered

and then stopped still, realizing it was all but

a painting on the wall. White horse. Yellow sun.

Old brick walls with that drooping flag. And

there, in the lifeless corner itself, the ragged

girl whose image had just caught my eyes.

I felt myself bedraggled, crazy. You were

then but an echo - of something far away.

2046. OK SO WHAT?

OK SO WHAT?

So, what they're saying is that I am dead.

I've found my name in a newspaper of the

future and - yes - they're mostly right. 2019,

or somesuch date. Like Albert Pinkham Ryder

himself, I've passed the fig-leaf of life and gone on.

-

Death rides a pale horse? I've heard that before and,

lustrous as some cracked enamel with a shine,

my surface is now marred by disbelief. I am nothing

at all, and have never really aspired past that.

Anyway. Nothing. New. OK? So what?

2045. SPONTANEOUS ERUPTION

SPONTANEOUS ERUPTION

Oh the heave and oh the ho of it all!

Silly and simple, things meander. Getting

to nowhere, like getting to know you.

What sort of leather is that chair? You

are bent down, in it, as it seems to swallow

you up. Looking for a pen, or what?

-

The sign on the wall, some self-made

paper, says something like 'Things are

looking up for me - after the fire burned

down my house, I found I had a wonderful

view of the valley below!' Effusive optimism

and motivational placement - have I ever

told you? - really makes me sick.

-

The other morning, in the waning of the dark,

I was startled while thinking about dreams and

the world around me, by the rapid crossing of

three ghostly deer - bounding high above a

roadway as they silently passed. I was astounded

by their eerie grayness in the smoky thin light.

I really wasn't sure I was present, or - if I was -

where it was I was present at. I know it all sounds

confusing now, but at the moment the thought was

crystal clear, and I knew where I 'might' have been.

2044. MORNING GLORY

MORNING GLORY
She is there having her tea.
A mulatto blemish, a secret blend,
some mix of the herbal and the
maladroit. By the glass, at the
window, arms crossed - only
something Sphinx-like, that
makes me think - sonorously
I suppose - of mystery.
-
JoJo wears suspenders and is
whistling his happy tune. I hear
the talk of the town, going
his way soon.

2043. FURY THROUGH THE FAMILY

FURY THROUGH THE FAMILY
There is not a public policy
statement to be made : I have none.
She perished in 1931; some form of
plague and fever - and she was
not alone. This is not as bad as
1917's influenza epidemic. People
died there in droves. There is an
old, neglected cemetery alongside
Tonnelle Avenue at Jersey City -
now vastly under construction right
there - where stone after stone
denotes family burials, each within
10 days of each other. Fathers. Sons.
Daughters. Mothers. The fury
swept right through the family.

2033. VOUCH FOR THE CHAIN

VOUCH FOR THE CHAIN

(very fast)

That thing is finally over and good

tidings for that - maple tree and willow

both down by the pond. I can't remember

a thing except what I was wearing - those

same dreary clothes I wore everyday for weeks

and the shoes from under the pew and that jacket

with darning for holes and no pockets. I called it

my lucky one, for all the good it did me.

-

Overabundance never killed anyone - least alone

not me. And I never had it to know. Your cigarette

racer and your devil cabana. I slept for days in your

'hood. The old lagoon, where once grandma and

Aunt Mill had lived, that shambles of a shed, and

those boys with nothing in their heads but ill will.

Never got tired of that one - violence and adventure,

hand to hand. Like a dog's leash, tied at the neck.

-

We finally swam away - as I recall , swearing to reach

Brisbane or Canberra or one of those joints on a

good Australian current. How much more stupid

could we have been? Not much, Charlie, not much.

2032. EXPERIMENTAL #3. 'And To the Wife of Bath'

'AND TO THE WIFE OF BATH'

(part 1)

This battalion loves you, this entire army of subterfuge

is here at your feet. The fir trees are waving in the wind,

for you. Let's not pretend (any more) that you do not see.

All this love amasses at the silliest of borders : where the

rivers twist and the men decide who owns what, or shall.

We may decamp for the night, our little entourage. But I

cannot, by myself, think of other than you. I cannot see

without you. I want to suck your toes, caress your limbs.

Oh God above us, how has it come to this?

-

I am not alone, mind you. There are fourteen men right now,

just like me, under darkness and night, thinking of just you.

Granted, all this is crazy, but so what. Listen! Listen, as I

spoof to be a contender in some future, modern age. How

different all things will be: I shall see you (naked) on the

back of decks of cards. Somehow, this occurs, as men hold

the cards, sitting around strange tables. Others, it seems,

are viewing you in pictures that really do seem to be moving.

How time elapses whatever may have occurred, I'm afraid

I simply do not know - nor the time or place I find myself.

-

We had no schooling, remember; everything we did we did

ourselves, lance and hammer. Sword and driver. Whatever

did not die, we bludgeoned until it did. Oh, Wife of Bath, now

please can you here help me? I am rigid, and alone.

2031. 'THEY'RE EXTREMELY INTERESTING'

'THEY'RE EXTREMELY

INTERESTING'

I've seen them before and my imagination is kept.

Not knowing where, I must abstain from telling more.

I look. I look about me - watching the morning arise,

the ice pass from sidewalks and the thin crusts of

graveyard snow fall from stones and markers.

It's all I can do to keep from laughing.

-

Time is such a tendentious thing : gravel in the

throat, bad air in yellow'd lungs, succor at the

sight of disaster. I can't translate the cards

into any winning message. As interesting

as they are, hangman, urn, trickster, all

the rest just fades away. I realize, truly,

that there are no 'things' anywhere to

behold. Life has its answers, and keeps

them, damningly, to itself. We stand

aside, and must let things pass.

2030. FOR THIS MOMENT I OWNED THAT DREAM

FOR THIS MOMENT

I OWNED THAT DREAM

(non-existence, again)

(Inconsequence : like jail, like a fixation on counting

days down. No meaning at all. I pale by comparison.

-

Now there is nothing less than that famed 'zero' - the

piper's own ticket to the flute factory, a one-way ride

back to oblivion, steerage in the schooner Mayhem,

pants with the legs sewn shut. I am lost in a thicket

of everything with a 'de' - delusion, despair, despondency,

desperation, you know all the rest. It's demeaning to me.

-

I walked the ice-clogged river, listening to the groan

and croak of every slab. I want to find one, to ride, to

ride, far, far out to sea. Somewhere I will never be.

-

No more, no more, no more, for me.

Yes, for this moment I owned that dream).

2029. MANDIBLE

MANDIBLE

I was once there. I was not. Gone. Looking

out for anything - long since past and done.

-

The service revolution seemed most certainly

'over.' All kindness had already left. The table

of girls, they filled with babies. A lot.

-

Every girl smiled at everyone. I kept watch and,

sure enough, soon my turn. They haggled and

they laughed. Beauty wears a human face.

-

Coffee and some grapes.

Water in a pitcher. Sweating

bottles of beer. All these things,

in one place. It seemed, I swear,

a total human party.

2028. SAVAGE DELIGHTS

SAVAGE DELIGHTS

And they make them welcome too. I am the

in-between man, standing at the corner of

17th. My brim hat, wide-floppy, seems right

to protect me from the rain. It falls around me,

and puddles beneath the building. I am just under

an old window-eave. Something from 1917.

Curious is that, no? Men say on this site one

hundred fifty years ago was a thriving brothel.

A whorehouse to the stars, in effect, of its day.

The rich, the fat, brocaded men with diamond

stick-pins in their lapels, standing about for their

cherry delights. A hundred choices in a velvet lobby.

-

It's all, of course, nothing now, and all those men

long gone. They died, at least one would hope -

just to give them a gentlemanly break - with their

dicks in their hands and a girl beside them. But

probably not. Counting-thieves, like pennies these

men encumbered nothing; small-change nonentities

in a far-larger war. The thriving might of Manufacture,

and the throbbing pulse of War and its productions,

led them on to the rich and comfortable life.

And then dropped them like Death's very own

hag herself would be dropped by them.

-

I am standing under this building, still and steady.

It's the site of a million past emotional couplings.

Now, the rain falls without even a blink,

and the gentle, wet world goes on.

2027. EDITOR (Very Orange Indeed)

EDITOR

(Very Orange Indeed)

"This goes on for a very long time seemingly

forever without any pause and without any

punctuation as well - and we gather around

to make sure it all gets talked and heard. These

voices, having visited other places, now come

back to tell us where they've been. Matthew,

headed for Vermont, tells me first of his two

years just finished in Turkmenistan, where

he 'dispensed pharmaceuticals' to the local

Turkmenis. And then in the background and,

for whatever reason, the second time today, I

am hearing 'Orpheus In the Underworld' being

played on some classical channel. Not the jingle

we know from the media, mind you, but the

real tune itself. And then, just to my right,

someone only recently met tells me how much

she likes my artworks on the walls. Paintings.

Collages. No one ever seems sure what they are.

I should be as rich as my heart is in the wealth

of hearing kind words. Magnificent compositions;

and the sun is going down, just outside this window.

Very orange tonight; very orange indeed."

2026. MY COUSIN, AT THE TABLE

MY COUSIN,

AT THE TABLE

Yet only now I chastise these intentions :

my cousin, sitting at a table, drinking wine

and listening to nothing in particular.

2025. INTENTIONS

INTENTIONS

Not to delve too deeply, but I am caught at this

moment within the cave of a dream of my making :

tendrils and vines of wish and intent, twisting and

gripping my every exposure. Light itself furrows my

arguable brow. I wince at distant things, ignoring

what is close be me. The sound of the yellow canary,

at home in its cage, breeds such familiar intention.

I know precisely what is meant. I understand each note.

2024. HART AND REINSTEIN

HART AND REINSTEIN

'Wish I knew what to do. Love to hear people

say this is good. Can't seem to exit my mind.

Thinking always of you.'

-

There was nothing more on the back of the card.

A picture of Albert Einstein wearing a very funny

grin. As if 'King of the World' knew all things of

the world. Unified Field Theory, the hell with that.

-

I remembered you (I'd thought) years back

wearing white linen and sitting in the very rear

of that little room. You never spoke, and we only

loved from afar. Oh well. Unified Field gone to Hell.

2023. THOR HAMMER GODS

THOR HAMMER GODS
Just like that; the long stretch of
possibilities, the summoning of endings.
Watching (once) the guy with silver hair,
spray-painting iconic images of Jesus
onto canvas, I was reminded of a play:
the long-lost sailor, now home from the
sea, cannot get the image out of his mind -
five maidens cast on a rock, illusions to be
sure, yet singing in very beautiful voices
the praises of all creation. And now, the
sailor on land, weak with his own diminished
mind, seeks them out once more - every
corner bar, every alley, every warehouse
entry. He leans on buildings, captivated.
He smokes away his time, lost in reverie.
And then, just once, he sees a glimmer:
somewhere, rounding a corner, he sees
them. Then they are gone. Nothing left,
he knows, but the guy with silver hair.

2022. GILGAMESH

GILGAMESH

I am reading my fingers where they enter the womb,

catching the sunlit rays of glory from far-off ancient

days. We roam the Earth this way, together - building

walls and breaking clay, running with a brother and fighting

bulls. Wild things abhor us, and we sanction all the earth.

Encompassed by such, I hug the Earth while scanning

the sky. Cedars roar back at me, and, all over, the gate

to another world is opening wide. Not walking on water,

I instead slog beneath it, peeling mud from angry faces,

realizing Mankind in my ways, seeing Death and finding

an end. I cannot escape what it is I am. I go forward,

unto Death, and then I, passing, die. With my one

final breath I say 'I want to live forever!' And in

this way only - by my works living on -

do I myself so live forever.

2021. ANABASIS

ANABASIS

Marvelous, this nomenclature, like science and grit :

words tied together, supple and sound. One word

suffices. This high up, I see the entire valley as it

is spread before me. All those old, shuttered mills,

the factories, where once the water-wheels churned.

Everything now shuttered and forgotten. Looms to

no end, spinners, tanneries, acid pools of runoff.

The strange figure eight far below? Nothing more

than a tangle of roads, leading 'round in circles so

shoppers can park.

2020. HOMETOWN SUBMARINES

HOMETOWN SUBMARINES

They came through here picking at the small

things, those fiery men in jackets. Toothpick

tassles and wire-rope bales; with their faces

aligned, they all looked like toy soldiers to me.

Gadabouts singing their singsong lines :

cadets on an abbreviated, quite local patrol.

2019. GHOSTS (a very true story)

GHOSTS

(a very true story)

I call it like I want it and leave the pickings for

the others - the ones who scratch and save, snare

and wonder, watch and remark. Journalists and men

with pens and snark. Disease filters through the

aisles where hundreds of others have sat. A

pilgrimage to a sacrilege, and that, my son, is that.

-

Today I was snug in Chelsea and left for dead in

the Village. On Perry Street, and then Charles, I

took it upon myself to saunter in where I chose.

An old lady had died, and left me all her clothes.

Her acting jewels, from 1967 and before, all still

arrayed upon her Broadway bed. Robert Preston,

Ed Gwynne, and more. I sat at her piano. Its

sickening sound made me abhor all else:

old, tired keys, so out of tune to be fired.

-

When I turned to see, there were only ghosts,

dragging through the kitchen, pretending to

play in the parlour, and, there, on her outsized

walls, all the posters and kettles and pictures

and rings of her eighty oldtime years. Those

ghosts were just staring to space.

2018(a). SHEEPS AND SHEPHERDS

SHEEPS AND SHEPHERDS

Just as I heard it I report back to you : 'the state of

health care today is a media medicare entertainment

frolic; some sidweays squankling over nothing at all.

The dead stand in place and the living willingly die.

It's that simple so very simple.' OK then, we leave it

at that. Scalpel, knife, blade and suture.

'Sheeps and Shepherds, head to the future.'

2018. MY MINDS ARE BROKEN

MY MINDS ARE BROKEN

I'm at the point where I've reached astral ends,

my minds are broken and my heart amends.

These are quality things, of which I must be aware:

the signification, the edification, the purpose I wear.

Looking up, the false full moon I notice it throws its

cloak over doom - the light and its shadow, the halves

of each other, duality soon. I shrug and I wander.

I've left that room.

-

Place my hand in the ether - a wide-open sky,

darkness and blemish. I wonder not why.

2017. POET MAN

POET MAN

(Joseph Stalin was a people person)

I sat down with the poet man and a major one

at that; knew his name, he doffed his hat. Had

rim-shackle hair and an ice cream cone face. Said

his 'name be Paul' and said it in haste. The point

he made 'a poem shouldn't be long. Who wants to

hear or read all that stuff?' Then, quizzically, he

turned and said - 'at least that's the way I feel

about it. What about you?' I laughed and said

'well, yeah, sometimes maybe but on the other

hand I like to think 'let it splurge' just throw it all

out there, line after line, grow run and sputter

until you're done.' We left it at that. He said 'later'

and took the stage. Everything was fine, except

I couldn't hear a word he said after that.

That crowd never did shut up. Only

thing I remember, he said, 'Joseph

Stalin was a people-person'.

2016. MY LIFE IS A DOSE OF SICK

MY LIFE IS A DOSE OF SICK
I'm getting crumbly around the edges, and
I don't know what to do. Eyes well up with
tears just thinking. Cosmic infanticide. Eternal
euthanasia. Selective breeding, dogs, cats,
angels, turtles and all the rest of that
bio-structured crap. I'm looking at pictures
of the Cassady family - Carolyn and her
daughter, the one in ballet form. I can't
fucking stop from crying. Good God,
I'm so measly gone. It's not as if I
haven't lived myself; I've done all the
rest of that matter. It's more like the
pregnant pause that's about to explode.
In sirens. In fury. In fire.

2015 YOU'RE GETTNG FAT

YOU'RE GETTING FAT
(live from Duryea House)
Better be satisfied with a brick.
Happenstance has its own constellations.
The essence of of all things is a certain
form of Love. (Valerie wears no hat).
-
I took a jimbro to the Brothers Four.
Max and Mike and Evan and Steven.
Their sound together was - it is true -
harmonic, sensating, sweet. Satisfying too.
What God has joined together, let no man
take apart? I think that's how that went.
-
Reading a Shakespeare under a limb.
Bare, ruined choirs, where once the
sweet birds sang.

2014. THE SHIP MAY YET SINK

THE SHIP MAY YET SINK
(but at least there are no passengers
in the lower compartments)
Which of course makes no difference at all,
has no bearing on the end. The ship goes
down, and everyone, to be sure, goes with
it - topside or bottom, no care.

2013. AFTER THE FIRST OF THE COFFEE

AFTER THE FIRST
OF THE COFFEE
Once the tree limb fell down onto the black
Mercedes, I looked up to see : the crack
and sizzle had caught my attention, all that
ice and its sound descending. The wide fan
of the very big branch kept it from thudding,
but it landed on the car nonetheless. Slap. Crash.
-
A few minutes before, I myself had driven right
over a branch large enough to cause me woe.
The car swallowed it as an ant swallows a dog.
You get the gist. No damage, I don't think. A
bump, and a scratch. All the crazy ice again.
Everything coated as if by glass, and I want to
list my mentions : doorways glazed, sidewalks
as killers, roadways lit like ice rinks in the early
morning streelamp glow. In all, lots of fun to be
had but only if one sought it out.
-
I mostly ignored the adventure. Everyone else, it
seemed, was scurrying. Running to the window to
see what they could see, ('My God! There are two
people in that car! You sure they're OK!). Then the
cops came, those message radios blaring. Down the
street - but from other places and on other cases -
the Princeton ambulances ran their long, loud run.
Sirens and lights, tight, fast turns in slush and ice.
What a morning, and wasn't it nice!

2012. I REALLY THINK I'M MOVING IN (Feltville)

I REALLY THINK

I'M MOVING IN

(Feltville)

I have lost many things over the edge of fear and

panic. Like the dental-phobic patient screaming in

the chair, I want to run and disappear. There is

little more that I can do, having to stay, and live,

for you. Thirty years of schooling, and a union-card

to show the devils I exist, can keep me, no matter,

back from nothing and just returned. Go figure.

-

I ate my own nascent children, swallowed my

cat-gut fire, doused the flames in lemon-lust

before realizing it was merely desire. I played

cowboy at the fenceline just to keep you sunny.

A million magic spaces, a hundred thousand times.

I finally learned silence, but only after I'd lost

my voice. I used my hands in a pantomime,

and it was, always, all by choice. I have lost

many things I've forgotten about, and now

all I can do is aimlessly walk, thinking of you.

-

There really is an abandoned town I've found,

called Feltville. I think I'm moving in,

I really think I'm moving in.

2111. INSTRUCTION

INSTRUCTION

You can't push, you can't prod.

You can't pull. Like snow, you

must just let it fall, let it come

to you. It's the only way

anything ever happens.

2110. PASSANTINO

PASSANTINO

The blur is what I most imagined, I remembered it

well, as if it had just occurred. Flowers on a shady

mantle, Grandma in the kitchen, and - outside -

my father holding the hose while, in his other hand,

he also held a can of beer. Life was funny then.

-

Like curdled milk, or something left out on a table,

things slowly discolored and curled as dryness set in.

It wasn't as if I really minded; everything seemed

always OK by me. I guess I'm easy that way.

-

I never really had words with anyone.

I did hear people yell, or erupt, as my

father often did, into loud, strange quarrels

over things of, really, little substance. Now

and then, neighbors, cousins, mothers and

fathers, fathers and sons. Living like that,

it all seemed a ghetto to me. Most like

any other : Italian, Spanish, Jewish, Irish,

whatever. Every form has its thug-form,

made from the very same matter as the best,

but just different. Sometimes I really wished

I was gone early on.

2109. THE WORLD IS CHAOS

THE WORLD IS CHAOS

The world is a chaos and it will not end.

The simple whirl of matter and the complex

swirl of mind : brushed together with a

seeming abandon, the forms we take are

seen as forms we make. Everything else,

reflected around us, stands still as it climbs.

-

Starry matter precipitates, our dreams and

even our doubts come together in the haze

produced : commingled matter and mind,

a growling universe, one displaced and then

duplicated, over and again, by the hand of

mind and the tyranny of - yes - a thought.

-

The world is chaos and neither will end -

the world or the chaos, neither will bend.

2108. GLASS FEVER

GLASS FEVER

That which stretches the moment can lead

to another ideal : crumbs at the table, where

you'd just been sitting. Your coffee cup, slightly

off the edge. A mention of smoke from someone's

last light. We'd already left by then.

-

Through the glass, slanted, the light from

outside's morning throws back the ghosts

we've been. 'I feel so insubstantial,' I

heard you say. And 'yes,' and 'correct,' and

'right you are' I wanted to reply. Over in that

instant was everything essential to living.

Our patterned lives, like shadows, were

somehow left there, to remain on the wall;

a forever space where something else had been.

2107. MY OWN UPDATE

MY OWN UPDATE

The surface of the sky is black tonight.

Perpendicular to me somehow - north

by northwest, was it I remembered?

Something about being young, a little

boy in fact, and looking up. Black sky,

ever so high and, out back, in the darkness,

that giant old oak tree I used to climb.

I knew it was there, and all that above it.

I'd look, creamy like an Oreo filling,

something to remember, gazing high

at Little Dipper, Ursa Minor, Big Dipper,

Ursa Major - and such logic these crazy

names had, as if Science could think! If the

smaller was Minor, I'd bet clearly the

larger was Major. Before I started, I'd

already won. Yet, now, so far along and

down the line myself, the cold sky is black

but still above me. A minor difference,

perhaps, that, but a major one for me.

2106. WE CANNIBALIZE THE CONSTITUENTS

WE CANNIBILIZE

THE CONSTITUENTS

('no, Zorro, that's a 'Z')

Whatever that meant, they said it twice. I love

politicians - walking high, suit and tie. They have

a head in the clouds and a head full of shit; all

the same. The ball they were given is the one

they run with. We 'think' we think but we

all think of nothing at all.

-

'Can you make any conceptual grasp from what the

trending motivations show from the varied levels

of income and education of folks in the fifth ward?

And if I decide run again, how should I play it? Are

they fed up, or pretty happy with the way things

locally are going? As for me, of course, you understand

I am NOT to have an opinion, until later. First I must

get the vote and let them understand my opinions are

theirs, entirely.' Yeah, right. Which makes no sense

at all, but what a way to govern. Just mark 'X'.

2105. THE JUICE MADE THE NEW GIRL WINCE

THE JUICE MADE
THE NEW GIRL WINCE
'It's been twelve centuries now since anyone's
walked over the Asian mountains.' She mentioned
that twice and I was no longer sure even of what it
referred to. Hannibal? Himalayas? Alps? Urals?
Carpathians? All those mountain ranges like names
of strangers. I knew, I think I know, I heard, well,
maybe. I think, therefore I...climb? Rode horses?
Carry my own baggage over to Kilimanjaro?
Whew! Beats me, all of this does. I want,
much more instead, to be inverted like a comma,
twisted like a frank, salted like a peanut and,
for secular-vast God's sake, be taken away
in chains. I thought I knew history well.
Now she's broken it all to Hell.

2104. IMBROGLIO AT MCFADDEN'S

IMBROGLIO AT MCFADDENS
The fat-waisted middle-man held me down for the
count while the champ went on pounding my head.
I screamed for his mercy. He laughed louder than
that: 'you old fart!' I thought he said; something
like that. Why I had come here? I'd already
forgotten. The blood tasted better than the
chilly food, and the drinks were no better than
the rotten girls who served them. I thought, for
just merely a moment, I'd rather be down for the
cunt, but figured not to say for it wouldn't work
and he'd probably pound my head all the harder.
I was not, decidedly, here, any champ of my own,
nor material to be one now. A few missing teeth.
A swell where my nose might have been. That arm,
now twisted and pinned like wire behind an old TV's
back, would - I was certain - never hammer a nail
again. Were I to roll over, he'd probably just kick my
butt anew. Pound my kidney down, browbeat the
back of my - already well-beaten - brow. Do you
see the conundrum this causes? I'm in trouble at
McFaddens, for no ostensible reason at all.

2103. PRELIMINARIES OF JILL

PRELIMINARIES OF JILL
I sense I'll get through January OK,
for anyway what it's worth : crenelated
icetops, roofs and gutters, icicle hangings
and that decrepit drugstore awning which
finally collapsed under its load of snow.
Your big box of oranges, some special kind,
flown in from a distant place - Timbuktu or
Samarkand. Delicious you claim to taste and
oh so sweet on the tongue. I'd bet. You yet.
-
Disappear me from this absence, make me one
with joy. I life out my hand from the sticky matter
it's been caught in, and realize I'm hindered
by its ooze and weight. Nothing slows down,
except, s0 it's been said - that which slows down.
Make it past the shackles, brother, and you're
free. Free. Free again like that Allman bird
or whatever from way back when - when the rafters
rang with laughter, when the Beacon wasn't peakin'.
-
Now like litter after a catfight, dogfight, ticker-tape
parade for vandals and sportsmen and astronauts
both dead and weightless and alive and floating,
I can't figure a thing. Why you're here, and I'm not.
Or vice-versa. For the crowd, swelling and frolicking
all along the sidelines, we are nothing but some geeks
in a car on parade. Go ahead then, convertible girl,
you do your royal wave, and I'll do the gaze.

2102(a). I HYMN THE PALAVER

I HYMN THE PALAVER

Left my jacket in the furnace where the cold was

finally overtaken by flames, as was the jacket. Now

is not never, nor ever was. Flames and smoke, take

all things away. I went to the Sermon on the Mount

on purpose, to be sure of what I heard. The crowd,

unblemished by any success at all, stayed in place

and listened well. Well enough, anyway. We walked

around, just to see. Was that marmalade I saw those

few kids eating on stony loves of bread?

-

Never underestimate understanding, or what the

vast herd hears. They get it all wrong anyway,

after so many years. Someone just today said to

me: 'Air Power could have won the Civil War, if

only the South was wise.' I laughed it off, thinking

it was nothing to what the kid eating the jelly-bread

at the Sermon said: 'Is this a film by Cecil B. DeMille?'

2102. FREEDOM

FREEDOM

We have parachuted into thin air and found

there is no air there. We free fall tendentiously,

looking all around us. Things seem rising up

so swiftly. And, oh dear, where shall we land?

And what lessons will be learned by the landing?

2101. WHAT'S ON TAP?

WHAT'S ON TAP?
Sitting still lonely, trying to
remain pleasant - as sure of
myself as nothing. Merely counting
things doesn't always work, isn't enough.
Taking all that New Age personal inventory
schlock for what it is. An always-on-tap
Propaganda message. Well, maybe sometimes
there are exceptions : the jury-rigged phone
call in the middle of the night that brings
nothing forth but more mystery. The
unrecognized voice. The strange yet dull
urgency. What does that mean?
-
Alone, it stands for nothing; like a
speed-bump stands for speed. Or
a 'slow-down' demand? I can't think
of anything anyway, now that you're gone.

2100. THIS AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT CAKE

THIS AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT CAKE

(buttonwood manor, elizabeth, NJ, 1995)

Buttonwood Manor nutcase incense

the way the morsels carry weight the

way the Mayor walks along the boulevard,

carrying a swagger, parading through

open yards and streets. I should so staccato

be and talk like a machine gun. Me!

-

Instead, in the bare, dark green room where

once the Jays and Hamiltons fought, I am

sitting down amidst fat ladies and two black

girls with transparent shirts. Not very comfortable,

any of this, for me - let alone to think of the

ghosts of old Elizabethtown past. If they

every got a load of this, they'd die all over

again. The Hell with the Revolution.

This would be it.

-

There weren't no swank hills coming up

from the swampy rivers. The rafts couldn't

make it through the reeds. Right here, right

here, Washington and his boys stayed for

a while. Now, nothing. Oil tanks, grease

in the fronds, rainbow stains on soiled

waters. Rainbow stains on water.

2099. ONE ROBERT GALEN

ONE ROBERT GALEN

A dredging of ice and a particle of steel;

just but one moment, one place to anneal.

The dim stretch of leavings, the want of

a place - to go is but nothing, the trick is

to stay. I raise my arms skyward

and all I feel are chains.

2098. ABSTRACT 22 : HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN?

ABSTRACT 22 :

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN?

How can we light the gargoyle, how can we fire up the flames?

And the mad monk shall rile the crowd, throwing those flames

right back, shouting with joy the scenes of his manger and the

heavenly fire of crack-addled nuns and angels from high.

Every building made from blocks shall disassemble itself

in play, and the joy from the highlands will take root in the

swamps - all those clouds scudding away.

-

I am low in self-esteem and sick as well with grief.

There is really nothing I can hold, as the sands of

time have slipped from me, and the only course left

to take is learning and labor. My personal Revolution?

It left the town on Saturday, bearing scars from a

little skirmish. The stagecoach went limping away

- one wheel already in the gutter and the other

already crooked and loose. I want for nothing.

I cooked the goose. How long can you stay?

The postman's in the attic. He is reading

stories of starlings and the pentangles

of rhyme that Ovid left behind.

2097. THE INTANGIBLE EFFECTS OF A DAYLIGHT DREAMING

THE INTANGIBLE EFFECTS

OF A DAYLIGHT DREAMING

(3 prayers)

To begin: we simply put ash into the code and reverse it all -

Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Maryland, Pennsylvania, together

as one. A big place of intense ideas. A plowman's paradise

of open space and careworn soils. All the same, ever.

Smoke of factories toils and creeps, low and thick

where it should not be. All the men, smoking their

cigarettes in the dark November gloom, punch

their cards and go home. The low sky smolders

gray above their tired heads and hands.

Those rivers which still remain undam'd

now run turgid and filthy and thick with

the dead. Tires and metal in mud, where

rags stiffen and cling to dry out.

-

I have not come for nothing.

I have come for anything and

all - each item in a day of new

sun and yellow light. I want

to be strong, and run silent,

as a deep-sky eagle or a hawk,

making haste to drop and catch

a land-locked prey stuck still

harsh to the tired ground.

Life, as it is, or was, is so

often over in an instant.

-

My third prayer for you is

that you will live for a very,

very long time and see

all things.

2096. SHADOWS ON ICE

SHADOWS ON ICE

I'm tenuous in what I hold. The brown branches

are broken off the tree, and they lie upon

the ground like the arms and legs of some

furious manikin or a doll perhaps losing

limbs. A cold, bright sunlight overhead

shines without heat, leaving but

shadows on ice.

2095. WHEN BROWN TURNS TO BLACK

WHEN BROWN
TURNS TO BLACK
Fickle moments that arrive entire,
at once, as altogether. I stand back -
vaguely, and just for the moment - to
look at a Pollock. Number 1, 1950, to be
precise, later re-named as 'Lavender Mist'.
It's the one Vogue magazine ran with in
March '51 for their trendy fashion shoot.
What a different world it must have been.
Lightning streaks, and grease marks, new
jet planes enticing the sky, fears of great
Red Commies everywhere, and why?

-
And now, the red dawn says it's too late

to just sit back and draw lightning and

mushrooms high in the sky. Jets pierce

the distance, radar drones level the field.

I hide behind cameras that are hiding from

me. What a dishevelled mess we've become.

-

Small words and small talk, liars and geeks,

fat muscles and steamy malcontents, coast

to coast exchanging notes. Look at that old

picture, the photo right there. I'd trade it

for one peek of what you really are.

2094. GREAT HARBINGER

GREAT HARBINGER

Having been done up by degrees into the

monster now present - image, chimera, isolated

demon, the one with all eyes - I seek nothing

but to be brought back to a more normal

state of earthly decay. I will sag and droop.

I will walk thus, hunchbacked and broken,

through a hundred bedraggled city streets

while the harp man plays a Bolero or something

akin. A circus tune, a riff from West Side Story.

Oh, anything really, just to pierce the gloom.

-

It shouldn't matter whether I hold a broom or

a shovel, for that matter, of gold or straw or

fire or power. I shall walk with my raiment

those thin walkways atop roofs and buildings

which link things to each other. One bare bath

after the next - right past windows of a naked

fury wherein people are deaf or screaming at

each other. I can balance on a beam of string.

-

Like lies and deceit and no candor, all the evasions

I've ever witnessed will gather to haunt me. I will

truly have nowhere to go. But watch me, I ask you,

watch. I can be a great harbinger to things to come.

2093. IN A NEW REALM OF TIME

IN A NEW REALM OF TIME

Wheedle me the sinecure if you can. I will

sit here waiting, as I once more read 'The

Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.'

-

I have broken this book into 60 separate

sections by my pen - titleing and naming

each so I can more easily find what I

wish to review. Death, lace, girls, women,

finery, lancers, song, ghosts, Avignon, Paris,

family, wealth, tapestries...and all the rest.

It just goes on, perhaps a bit too 'sensitive'

and feeling for my own taste, but magical

nonetheless, in its own way.

-

I do not like, really, the manner in which

the eye is seen seeing, the piner to pine

forevermore without his satisfaction

ever be secured. It's almost sad and

psychotic, the way it runs on and about.

And then to end, first with all the Avignon

material and then - at conculsion - the

Prodigal Son seen through drooping eyes

and a very sad hand, a very sad hand indeed.

2092. MY RUN-ON DISTEMPER

MY RUN-ON DISTEMPER

In using words like private carriages, I ride on

every one. My Oldsmobile of a mind traipses

jauntily over ice and snow, gets delirious in

mud and rain, and skims sunningly over tropical

heat and the sweat and the juices produced. I

clamor for doctors where no doctors exist, for

illnesses imagined that nonetheless persist.

Is there any help for such a wanton soul?

-

I've sought madness in the flowers of a hillside

while others were chasing dreams on the same

hillside surface. One way travel in a two-way

moment : watch the magnificent wren and listen

to the woodpecker sour on the wood. Higher

than the balcony, but no higher than the roof,

that's where I saw the man saluting. Life.

Perplexity. Power. Violence. Madness again.

-

Let us close now, children, with a prayer.

Give thanks to something for something,

or - if you'd prefer - give thanks to

anything for everything, something for

anything, however you'd prefer. The oasis

is as yet unpopulated and bare, and we

are still making our way to there.

2091. AUTOMATIC INFILTRATION

AUTOMATIC INFILTRATION

Only once your automatic infiltration took my heart

by storm. I broke my arms trying to get them around

you; like love letters of steam to water, everything had

changed in an instant. Clear had turned to fog.

The enemy of lust, I'd found, was love.

-

If I had a million more chances to change the world,

I'd still pick the one that involved you. Moving the

very equator itself would be no more difficult than

breaking this bond. Outside, as I write, people

are looking up to realize time, and the dark, and

the limitless sky - or so they think. But, alas,

everything ends, everything. Do you understand

that automatic infiltration which took my heart?

-

Pain is like the fire that consumes the good -

forests and worlds within, pygmies and rainforest

creatures, all of them, running hard to escape the

flames. Yet, they do overtake us, those flames,

eventually. It is all we can do to keep running, let

alone outrun, the flames - as impossible as all that is.

Your automatic infiltration took my heart.

2090. OH SO GARISHLY GRACEFUL

OH SO GARISHLY GRACEFUL

Gotta' go, gotta' go now. Watch the mask

re-cover my face. These are not cartoons,

but instead the real semblances of reality

and strife. Listen to the man from the

distant past as he tries to tell us something

that never was. Padding and the paddock,

portmanteau and the magic hide.

-

I awake ready for the day.

I look outside and it's still dark,

which I already knew, but getting

lighter as I watch. All this Winter

idleness, soon to be over soon? No,

no, don't think so. Gotta' go, gotta' go.

2089. NEXT DOOR TO HELL

NEXT DOOR TO HELL

(23rd street, 1972)

Next door to Hell at the Chelsea Hotel,

I was standing with my foot at the curb.

Just behind me, McMaster and Jermine, the

two jerks with the Beatleboard, kept yelling

out songs. The Quixote, alongside them, had

drunks going in and out. It seemed always like

this - a whiteout of shame and a blackout of sense.

-

I never entered without my Mabou Mines elixir:

gasoline in a jug and two donuts to boot. People

looked around, but without even of modicum of

good sense, no one was ever able to connect the

dots. Ogden Nash and his turltedove, James

McNeil and his sister Pearl. My hands were

dotted with fever. Blisters on the soles of

my feet. Outside the paint store, by the fish-bait

and tackle, a dark green police car, it seemed,

was always posted with 1972 eyes. The two guys

inside seemed always, just always, staring out.

2088. SESQUICENTENNIAL

SESQUICENTENNIAL

I was a small boy never knowing what that meant ;

'sesquicentennial.' It seemed to be the same year

my town was named 'Tree City' as well. Something

about all that faux history, "Small Town USA' stuff.

Led me to believe mostly in nothing at all. Accolades,

after all, can be bought; accolades sure can be bought.

2087. JOHNNY'S SO LONG AT THE FAIR

JOHNNY'S SO LONG
AT THE FAIR
(Tycho Brahe)
Bring in the capstans and all the happenstance of
random occurrence; the universe is spinning madly
as we fall. We are suspended - seemingly - in a
space of no space, in a liquid all our own, hanging
tenuously in a dark-matter space (listen to me) of
our own dire imagining. All your Science now, Tycho
Brahe has gone to naught. The wonder is that
we are yet here.
-
I look at the shapes of things and I see a jar. The shape
of matter varies, but my certainties abound. They each
keep their shape, and remain the same. So then, I have
no doubts, I am not a doubting man. Should you but
need to imagine, know that I was fixed by nose-in-place
Johnson - some quack from the broad Venus plains.
I suggest nothing and nothing is thereby suggested
back. So I need not even listen : except to the Spring
and the air and the sunlight and all the mottled lands
and waters of this world. Nature is my cuff link, worn
boldly in my broadly-patterned shirt.
-
I want to find the world right where it is.
I want to find a Nature - as well - in place.
My lead pencils and exercise books, (remember
them?), are kept yet under lock and key in the
library closet, beneath the stairway at the third-floor
landing. Hardly anyone goes and no one sees.
Only a rich man, carrying candle and light in the
deepest of night, would even know this all existed.
-
I am kept like silk in a madman's harem.
I am Johnny, so long at the fair.