3063. VAGARIES OF AWESOME

VAGARIES OF AWESOME

This is as if nothing as this should be this is.
I walk the vague abstract - the line where
the line should not be, the mark where there
is no mark at all. I negate the negation of things
that are absent : the curve of the curvature,
the mathematics of simple numbers. I am,
after all, all that ever was and all that never
will be. My dark-line profile only shades the
shadows and takes light from distant corners.

3062. WATCH THEM DIE

WATCH THEM DIE

I went home holding the palms from my heavy heart
open like leaves of green lettuce spread out for a feast.
It was another Sunday in May - one coming through
with a message. The castle at the edge of the forest,
right near where the three-ring king had settled in,
was lit by fires and circling domes. Small men were
coming out of the sky, crawling about backwards
where they'd land. I felt somehow out of place.
-
Without any meaning, all this withers.
The cacophony you hear is like some music
of the spheres gone quite maddeningly crazy -
all tympani and gong and racket.
Yes, planets yet hang in a wide,
distended sky, but they long
ago have lost all meaning,
and now we watch
them die.

3062. POST-EXALT THE EXALTED ONE

POST-EXALT THE

EXALTED ONE
I see the CaMeRa was left running; your
lights were on, sex-goddess working late,
with all those reflections on the silver-glass
wall behind you. Oh how you must tire!
-
The little guy, the one with the weasel face
and broken thumb (I saw you writing curses
on that little cast), he looked about 15 and I
wondered what he did. Or what he'd done
already to get this job of glory with you.
-
Pale blue paint on a large room wall.
A mirror above the counter. Three
people sitting around to talk. Really,
what sort of philosophy is that?

3061. HOME LIFE

HOME LIFE
Sweetheart I'm not finding much except
your death behind this curtain. 'I love
my house,' I hear you say. Gedding and
Bagger sit like two brand names on the
shelf of malarkey you keep. Even the
dog makes a soiled motion towards
both finish and ending - an otherwise
dull commotion towards a finish we
all face and each can see. There is a
lethal dose in the cabinet - 'always,'
you tell me, 'always and always kept
at the ready.' Odd, how, like some
cold-war spy of a LeCarre novel, you
live your life secret and sly. Occam's
Razor, however, (you must remember),
isn't something you shave with or use
to cut your wrists. Oh well, I digress, and
- I need here to admit - you are otherwise
quite sweet. What faces your wall is a
mirror, turned wrong way over, sweet
one, for sure. There's nothing to reflect;
just an otherwise dull commotion.

3060. PERHAPS IN BETWEEN THEM, LIVING IN A DREAM THEN.

PERHAPS IN BETWEEN THEM,
LIVING IN A DREAM THEN
(April)
All the things we seem to have found
are somehow still here, yet time better
defines them passing. The sky, like a
soup, covers deeply the most defining
edges. Shapes and forms together
avoid reason and names. Avoidance
can no more advance then can dead
landscape and dormant flower.
Everything has possibilities now,
and we will start out again.

3059. THE HARBOR AT SONG

THE HARBOR AT SONG
Don't say unfortunately unless you
mean it... and only then shall they
ask me what I want - a dew drop
glistening on each blade of grass, a
morning's new light and awakening.
No, no, I want for nothing more.
-
And oh thus forever I structured
my time near where only the lyre
bird would sing : high buildings are
all gone where nothing left exists.
I am thy humble wand.
-
Look out, as desperate eyes encircle
the view, and see all things, variant,
fixtured and vast. It is the very heart
of one, of me, of you, that shall possibly
last. And here we are then looking, alas,
at our own and only peril. I want for
nothing more. I am thy humble wand.

3058. NOT MY ETHER WINGS

NOT MY ETHER WINGS

You've brought me no satisfaction like the
lilting toil of struggle and work. Just outside
my face this morning, perceiving a hundred
new things, I perfectly picked out your visage
among the monk-flowers and new rose bushes.
The tall sky loomed, breaking off only where two
perpendicular jets made their smooth and
effective ascents; passing each other, it seemed,
so close but really miles apart; and all those
comfortable people, just sitting. But where
can you stare in the sky, and why?
-
Therefore I list my things : a paucity of
rainbows and ice, an amassed predilection
for duty self-chosen, a nightmare trickle that
won't go away. I close my eyes and try dreaming
once more. It works. I am soon far away.

3057. WHAT DOES MAN WANT

WHAT DOES MAN WANT?

Daylight prelude skytop premonition.
What does man want? Wist-gray,
blue-sky, early morning break to blue.
All the birdies springtime sing. What does
man want? Taut blossom, leaf and water,
all things together, brought as one to new
fruition. We speak the same words.
What does man want?

3056. ASPECTS

ASPECTS
Only in my other aspects were there great things to
move : the crumbling train stop, the broken rails,
the powdered and cast-off red bricks of another
industrial day. My backdrop was a broad, fat
mountain, more like a hillock than an alpine
shaft. Below my feet, just realizing itself,
roared a meager, yet thrusting and swollen,
small river. Any sexual doubt in this world
was taken over by a terrestrial and vital lust.

3055. CHELSEA ART

Chelsea Art -
with Felicity Goins:
I was the odd man out. I was
the man in the postdated middle
of turmoil and time, the one
spinning in his grave, the onerous
marker of all this percussion.
-
He watches as they all line up to see.
'It's all for you, and it's all for me. There's
nothing to be had from being here, and
nothing to be gained by going : your
bullet to the brain, in fact, having
been quite inconsequential, leaves
you nothing but a standing potted
plant, a stupid lamp, a shade
above your fading head.'
-
And still I've got the magic for you :
the one who peels, the singer who kneels,
the perfidious actor in charge of all those lines,
with his keening and his cries. Really, I want
to hear nothing more at all. Nothing.
-
High above the street, atop heads
of those who speak, the raining
lament falls down to its own and
a silent fate.

3054. JONGLEUR

JONGLEUR
I once shared a space with a man
who thought he was God. We shuffled
and shoved each other mercilessly.
He eventually did win out - I ceded
the space he claimed,
and moved away.

3053. FAR TOO HARMONIOUS FOR THAT

FAR TOO HARMONIOUS
FOR THAT
As if seeing misplaced things,
there would be an understanding -
of place, and time, of location and
space. After all, we do move about
yet keep our bearings - learning
our own coordinates before we
finish the race. I am not of the
opinion that we 'wander' this
Earth. It seems far too
harmonious for that.

3052. AND FURTHERMORE (ABSTRACT)

AND FURTHERMORE
(ABSTRACT)

Not the pleasant value of the dumb oasis,
nor the leaving lane of some wide thrush
highway; safeway to the stars? I don't know.
Winkle-green, the mordant verity of morning.
Just today : the spangled meadowlark swooped in
from somewhere south, sat on a limb, and proceeded
to pace. T'weren't nothin' no better than that!
-
All the signs say 'Spring!' In the same morning :
two fellows within one briefcase, and the lovely
lady with the bag of silk. The little guy with the
audience jumps in his Audi TT and takes off,
not even looking up or down. How can one
live with neither smile not frown?
Well, again, I wouldn't know.
T'weren't nothin' no better
than that!

3051. THE BELLS OF ST. GENEVIEVE

THE BELLS OF ST. GENEVIEVE

It's five a.m. somewhere again.
Nothing sounds but dark birdcalls
and the failing moon - sunk low
now on a crooked dawn horizon.
Soon to be - light, and another
brand new day. An hour or so off,
I know the bells will ring as I am
walking by. I'll try to listen smartly,
but, as usual, I'll be captured by the
attention of something else - a new
bird on the wing, some seam of light
forking over the arch where the
cemetery bends, or the lowly roar
of some slowly departing truck.
It always seems I am so alone :
no one listens, no one talks.
I live in a brazen solitude of
the sad with the quiet.
Everyday, almost
the same.

3050. BUT FREDDY, THE LEAVING IS DRY

BUT FREDDY,
THE LEAVING IS DRY

Barnyard, cardyard, shovel shed.
The place where the suffering
animals frothed and shimmered.
I always stayed aware of the gleam,
even as a boy, watching the calf waste
away, eating the gloam from the ribbons
of whey. My Coleman Lantern, as I
remember it, I kept it lit for what seemed
like endless hours of days, as the animals
groaned, the Spring birthings went on, and
those who wouldn't make it prepared themselves
for death. It was like that then, even two hundred
miles away, at my Bradford County home. Dry as a
hat, Warren's barn, burning, just toppled and fell
with a fiery crash - everything streaming out
at once. Flames and animals, the women and men,
all those Pennsylvania people with pails and buckets.
They looked in wide-eyed awe, as everything around
them, everything they'd ever known, burned away
before them, finally, to an absolute nothing at all.

3049. THE SELVAGE EDGE

THE SELVAGE EDGE

What have I managed to save, in my mannered
way of means and wishes, shredding imposition
as the impulses waned? I stood so idly by as
this numbered world passed by.
-
The yellow lights at midnight, seemingly
alive, standing pat in darkness and shadow;
the leftover parts and pieces of everything once
said or spoken of. Nothing matters now. It's all

over and long gone. I was once impressed by
the spectacle, now I can only marvel at the
indifference the absence brings.

3048. AT THE GRAVE OF HERMAN MELVILLE

AT THE GRAVE OF
HERMAN MELVILLE
They have fractured the time I am living through;
though I came with nothing, I am leaving with a
million memories of time and life and objects.
In solace, like a broken dog at the end of a leash,
I stand soaking wet, looking down. At my feet,
in the marsh, lies a space. Something I myself
should fill? Never knowing, never sure, I take
instead one hard step back. Solid ground
still holds me. I am part of another race.
-
Yes, I felt a void and I felt a space.
The fierce, wet wind was blowing
rain across my face.

3047. 'SENTIMENTAL HATTER, BROKEN HOURGLASS IN HIS HAND'

SENTIMENTAL HATTER,
BROKEN HOURGLASS
IN HIS HAND
I am hearing things that make no sound.
I am seeing things that do not exist.
The dark and spectral, that ghost
in town, is making me nervous with being.
I should have left here long ago.
A curlicue of cigarette smoke wrangles
its way past my face. I want for nothing,
I settle for less.
-
There are old pictures on the wall -
some crummy, stub of building and bricks,
which used to be the post office, an old
hardware store, shown here on a dirt-
covered road with square, dainty cars.
It's all labeled as 'used to be here' -
whatever such a foolish phrase would
mean. Like God, Uncle Charley, or me.
I should have left here long ago.

3046. LOVE, DISTANCE, NONCHALANCE

LOVE, DISTANCE, NONCHALANCE
Of all the noble young women I've seen, this
was the finery's best : a Mogen-David doubter,
a chickadee of the highest array. She'd only
sat down once, I saw. Bare-feet cresting on the

wooden railing, near where the white porch
crossed the stairway; some crazy magazine in
her hand. No slouch, more a crouch of an overtly
determined stance - love, distance, nonchalance.
-
I quickly remembered a Christmas Eve, long
ago, when three at-lunch postal workers, off
their routes, had sat together for a pizza lunch
at their local Italian counter. They talked of
nothing, really, two guys and a girl; squiring
back and their jovial talk, surmising meanings
from nothing and mirth, joke and froth, back
and forth. Yes, yes, it was their noonday Christmas
Eve, but so what and 'yeah, glad now that it's over.'
All that Christmas rush and traffic,
I guess; cards and mail, one real mess.
-
I would have thought they'd have all given it up.
But (back to today) this presence astounded.
Blue eyes like tarnished gold, set back and
distant, small and sharp. A birdlike wren,
stabbing at my heart.

3045. A GARBLED LOCATION MESSAGE

A GARBLED
LOCATION MESSAGE

Intending nothing but entering all:
the wave of high grass already grown,
the templed sunlight of a midday sun.
Ancient messages on a frieze of stone.
Two forms, like shadows fit together,
are bending now over the new landscape.
There is nothing to be gained from watching,
nor anything to be gained from the sight.
Words fail where the picture enters.
-
This small place, this hieroglyph - an
ingrown message from a deadening heart.
Winsome, heavy, and embroiled in all,
this location but sanctified by its part.

3044. MY ELEVEN CAVENDISH MUSCLES

MY ELEVEN
CAVENDISH MUSCLES

I strengthened my hand with the play of
erasure: Shoshone ribaldry and captains
by a campfire of gold. Dry and tawdry,
even the tent flaps cracked and split.

3043. THE FIVE DOYLES OF CRENSHAW

THE FIVE DOYLES OF CRENSHAW

(my abstract loom)
The paint was sequestered where the pail
was held. Five story buildings, painted a
midwestern green, showed only numbers
and glass. Traffic ran by like a nozzle-nosed
faucet with a running stream. Those eating
cakes ate their cakes. Fighter-planes screamed.
-
Battleship gray and tarnished with walloping
steel, a pale midshipman - I was watching - held
his ears while his heart plugged away. Two
banjo guys played something on the fo'castle.
-
I was quizzical. It meant nothing. Across the
portal, the sandcastle held the roadway's daunting
edge in check, and someone had (already)
put up some new monument to the dead, or
those who had died at that scene, or someone
alone at that particular intersection. Sheila
or Krysta, like, on the ground. Bunnies and
bears, and some crude hand-written sign.
-
No one knew from nothing, whatever had
really gone on. The sweet-faced cop garbled
his talk with a lemonade ice. Just near the
bicycle store, where two girls stood giggling,
two boys were stood up. Springtime turning
their minds to fancy and their fancies to love,
both their lush purple pants bulged.
-
I meandered the creek at the bottom.
In this rural land, the cities loomed large -
while, in this city place, all that country stuff
as well seemed so huge and so daunting.

3042. AND UPWARDS THEY FALL

AND UPWARDS THEY FALL
I am reading Robert Lowell before the lamp goes out;
this is, after all, our rather astringent age and he was
of it still. He saw the cars - 'ten thousand Fords are
idle here in search of a tradition' - with echoes
girdling this imperfect globe. It is, I say without
my usual circumspection, the luckless world we
both inhabit and run from, together. These are
not simple clothes hung out on our line - no shirts
and jackets or pants and skirts - but rather the
thin glimmerings of the textures of our lives and
all their days, the things we talk of and the words
we save; all the items, left limp in the trav'ling
wind, by which we manner our simple ways.
Philosophies and edicts take a second seat to
that. All those deadly Popes and Kings, long
now gone away, never meaning a thing.
-
We've scooted our royalty long away, and - even -
no longer understand the things they once were
wont to say : all those fearsome, land-locked
medieval minds, their concepts of God and Duty,
the kingships once fought for, the dark, narrowing
minions of their dreary and secular ways.
A din of dark-world duties done in the
names of their feckless God.
-
Even, as well, now Lowell lives on far past this
point. His death may have been mannered, but his
grave bespeaks a revolving door, one which never closes,
and one which never - in the same way - opens. He
long before us bought some words with blood and owns
them still. I am reading Lowell; leaning back on a
pale-green wall, window behind me, my feet up on the
sill. There is nothing much more to be said. The past
is the past, and prologue as well.

3041. FLAWLESS

FLAWLESS

My words are edging towards your own fruition;
so many things go into the making of this fuse.
Myself, and you, the little red wagon at the
side of the house, the tall glass with the cold
iced tea - small items of the sort which
make this life connected to something
with strength. The lineaments of vision
and the sight of a hundred moments,
all together, as one. If you can't
take the small, you'll never
get the large. Men have
died for less.

3040. YOU'RE PRETTY MAGICAL SWEETHEART

YOU'RE PRETTY

MAGICAL SWEETHEART
If I had the planar motion of the stars, I'd
tell you how I really feel. As it is, you're
pretty magical sweetheart. Leonine eyes,
pursed lips, a shanty face like a lover's
own warrant. Everything I'd want in food
or spice - all in one place, and
wrapped up nice.

3039. I'M TAKING A BEATING BY TAKING THIS RISK

I'M TAKING A BEATING

BY TALKING THIS RISK
Your long, supple Hedgemont looks good underfoot.
I soil the shally for the times to come : in outlandish
scenes where the bed-whacker lies. Two red birdhouses,
and a cage for whatever comes by. I've taken these
interests into consideration, and also I've understood
the procedures : the names and the colors, the bricks
and the mortar - both, you see, of some equal
importance. And now, as the raw day arises, a sunlight
of yellow-blue awakens my hope. Fervid desires for you,
ideas to kindle in full view of whichever crowd will
amble by. And, just now, some silly guy in his red
Mustang convertible pulls into the lot at too much of
a speed and then runs out for his donut and drink.
Yes, I could have stolen that car twice in the time
it took him to pay for his stuff. No more than that,
'stuff', was it worth; junk words for junky food.
How's that, Mr. red low-boy mid-life crisis
Mustang dude? I'm so over you. I'm so settled
and rude. He backs out, looking straight ahead.

3038. THIS DAY OF THE LOCUST

THIS DAY OF THE LOCUST

The wind was wailing. I interviewed the vampire; he looked
down my shirt gripping tight my wrists. I knew not what
was coming nor what to do. Just like that, in the essential
moment of a tyrannical dream, I escaped from myself -
for that moment - in lieu of a scream.
-
Escarpment and all those treacherous rocks.
We fell together, it seemed in one momentous
leap, dashing ourselves on the rocks below;
but never, in reality, hitting the bottom.
-
Life. This life. It twinkles like a starlet,
and is over in an instant - like a bad
movie role in a film that should never
have been started, by a girl who really
should just have stayed at home.

3037. INQUIRY STREET

INQUIRY STREET

Amended to nothing at all, deleted and taken away,
that junkyard along the hill always looked special
to me; now it's gone and I'm still here. Water-barrel
rain-spout dripping rooftop mind. Over-covered
rusty metal, paint and peel, glass and steel.
Everything from so long before,
disappeared like an open door.
-
You can scribble in your open book, write
notes to the very environment itself. It
won't matter, here now on Inquiry Street.
Where the trailer park is, the junk yard was,
and the old poison mill (we called it) that
made bug spray and insecticide gel. Their
lake of cobalt blue water? Who really ever
knew. Water that color, too blue to be true.
-
Yet, no matter, Wednesdays to death, I lived
my life athwart those tracks. Train whistle
locomotion black smoke turned electric
whiz-kid fastball gopher trains heading south
to nowhere and north to Hell. Nothing really
made sense. I lived there nonetheless.

3036. ADVERTISEMENTS FOR CONDITIONS

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR

THESE CONDITIONS
In a manner of speaking, silence is better.
A grueling smokestack of blinding grime will
never blot the landscape or cover with smoke
this valley of hope. With magical keys and
miraculous cards I have climbed this mountain,
lived and remembered, so as to tell about all
I have seen. Sit, my friend, sit. The waitress
is soon bringing a tray.

3035. TRUCKLOADS OF STUPID GRIEF

TRUCKLOADS OF

STUPID GRIEF
Constable, police chief, master rabbi,
teacher, leader, dupe or clown : each of
these are mere conditions of Man. Some
without a meaning and others with nothing
to do. See the foolish one over there, singing
before guitar and heater, mouth on a harmonica
like a stupid, lethal greeter, or a canary in some
closed-down coal mine no one ever cared about
anyway. Watch the truck go by; look at that,
it's rolled right off the cliff. And, up there, in
the sky, I swear that plane just blew apart.
-
My mid-air vanishing act, my roadway wreck;
these are the same as all of your illicit dreams
and lies. Fellow, man, friend, pal - once a
something or other to me, a kiddie's pal, a
nothing now. So filled with bile and puke as
to make me sick myself. These are roles,
of the sort that men play. Harmless
tomorrow, but lethal today.
-
By those standards it doesn't matter,
for there is no tomorrow anyway.

3034. I YET DON'T SEE

I YET DON'T SEE

I don't want to make a rude remark or leave a
posting in the dark but all this really should
come as no surprise, why not? It isn't as if
I've killed an eagle or speared a native or
anything like that. Instead, with a particular
ease, I've painted meadows with my dreams
and tinted skies with shades of lighter blue.
It's just my way - seeing things lightly, with
a different hue. I just can't walk off angry.
-
Is that, or can it be, ever enough for you?
A wise man runs and hides ahead of the
danger he sees - I think I've read that
right - and, by contrast, someone like me,
apparently, just walks in from behind on a
broadly covered field of trouble and danger
and angst. A dandelion field, so heavily
populated as it might be.
-
With all these eyes, I still cannot see.
With all these eyes, I yet don't see.

3033. YOU ARE DOWSING THE BONES

YOU ARE DOWSING THE BONES
Charlemagne or Albertus Magnus,
take your pick, neither would do it better.
There's a magic seam running through
the spine of this world, and it's
always trying to run things out,
exhaust us, make us flee, end it all.

3032. MILLIONS OF DREAMS

MILLIONS OF DREAMS

I caught the image running a horizon of
gold : spaced and swift, forging ahead,
a vast alliance of angular thought.
This, this is was. All in one place, the
light-blinded rabble in a hundred
different tongues, all speaking, all
seeking, the very same things.

3031. WHO IS THE MAN

WHO IS THE MAN

The one who chisels,
the one who sings. Plays
cats and cards, divines all
things. We do not know,
and never will. I rest
assured, by goodness,
nonetheless of his
presence. Who is
the man?

3030.TOO MUCH AT THE GLEN

TOO MUCH AT THE GLEN

Well we may have stayed too much at the
glen; shades of falling waters, distaff sides
of wooded lands and all those fertile trees.
Things grew to abandon, all while we
tried to live. No one ever said 'stop'.
We gained nothing from the forcefield
but a mind's eye acre of ideas.
-
Some delicate artist, crowing and crowned
like a rooster, came by to stay. His stupid
open-air paintings and all those ideas of
goodness and right did nothing for me.
I tried talking him away, but more than
that he stayed. Libidinous, fruitless and
faithless as well, he painted all day
by the old brick well.
-
I wanted to run him aground with ice and
a pick, saying 'too much at the glen, too
much at the glen.' But, as it always goes,
I simply had not nerve enough.
-
'Open wide your eager eyes! Look about
you, all the things you see!'. I shouted that
from a nearby rooftop, both to keep him
annoyed and awake. If he was not tired,
he'd sure tired me. 'Open wide your eager
eyes. Look about you, all the things you see;
too much at the glen, too much.'

3029. TRISTE

TRISTE

Yo no me senti triste.
Ella se habia ido definitivamente.
Por muchas diasnp puse nada en mi boca,
solo unas sorbos de aqua.
-
I was not sad now.
She was gone.
For many days I took nothing in
my mouth except a few sips of water.

3028. WEAVERS AND COAXERS

WEAVERS AND COAXERS
(In Progress : 'Stouver's Gold')
I awoke already walking the ridge,
called, somehow, 'Firefly Casement'
by the locals. I never have known at
all what that means. Yet, I knew
(always) what I didn't wish to hear :
'You have mistaken me for something
that once was. My sleight of hand, let's
say, is your Reality. It's fairly simple,
when you think of time just folding in
over itself, mixing idea and image, then,
with consciousness - always changing.
I am that which you guard.'
-
Now, by contrast, this soft Meadowlark
bows, the fleet Robin, seen running, escapes.
Their trapped reality, the very same as mine,
gently enfolds whatever they are. As for me, the
same holds. Blue, speechless skies, the sinews
of grasp and construction, the place of new matter
on a world made of Gold. All true, this, and would
that it could last forever and more.
I really want to be with you.

3027. TO HEATHER THE MOTHBALLS

TO HEATHER
THE MOTHBALLS
(Spring)
This Spring is arriving like marbles on a glossy
slab. The low hand of the horizon rests, and upon
it sets a new Sun and Moon and the planets.
The stars commingle at dawn; watch them,
brother, to tell me what you see. Before I
speak, the birds of daybreak have already met.

3026. I AM VERY SIMPLE

I AM VERY SIMPLE

Not much there, I've heard it said.
My father, not a boaster, was born an
orphan and sent away - just that quickly -
foster home and orphanage and healthcamps
he abhorred. At 16, running off to join the Navy,
he enlisted with a very false given age. No
one seemed to care. Next stop : Solomon Islands,
but not before, as he always put it, a few trips
to 'the biggest whorehouse in the east' - that
would be, according to him, Scranton, Pennsylvania;
from sea to shining sea. 'A real navy town, that
was, inland as hell, but the ladies was swell.'
Anyway, that's all I really remember of what
he said. Later, he learned a trade, upholstery,
after sewing up body bags for three years on
board a battleship-tender; that's a ship that
brings supplies to the larger ships at sea.
Battleships, which needed 'tending'. So
much fun I could hardly remain.
-
There's a lot more to tell, but, suffice
it to say he was simple as Hell,
and, then, so am I.

3025. SOME MEN

SOME MEN
Some men are fond of their cigars :
here, at evening, I watch them sitting
out at cafe and restaurant tables -
eating while they smoke, it just seems
ill-kempt. Or distasteful anyway. Who
would want that? Portraying a drink
as a mistress to a fat cigar? Where
are they going with all this anyway?
Or should I ask about?

3024. THE HOW AND WHY

THE HOW AND WHY

I never made it to the galley-post, I never
walked along the plank. The shoestring,
bushel-bale sailboys never even looked my
way. The men with the hammers, they just
kept busy as I passed; young construction
guys boringly infatuated with their work.
-
I brought my crayons to the match-play;
coloring on paper, writing black lines
over posterboard and tarp. Everyone
seemed happy, and so much got done :
a regular finished Archimede's wedge of
form and shape and color. But, has
anyone really heard me? My shallow
roots try hard to cling to something,
yet everyone seems a gardener with
their ever-clipping shears.

3023. ARMED TO THE HILT

ARMED TO THE HILT

Someone was telling me something vague:
'Air power could have won the Civil War',
or words to that end. The effect was of
wind on reeds, or a fire over marshland.
Steady, but unsure nonetheless. I sat down,
to feature the listen. He was now talking to
his companion, a wonderful girl whose lips
seemed to glisten. I thought of my own
Shakespearean bliss at witnessing drama,
at witnessing this. Sensation like the
unfolding of a deep-written script.
-
She said: 'But then, why would they want
to win if that's all they'd needed to do? And,
anyway, they hadn't those airplanes yet
back then. You're just being foolish again.'
-
I laughed uproariously to myself, behind
my gilded pillar. The sign nearby said that
these hedges had been planted first in 1881.
They had prospered well. It was late Winter
now, early Spring, whatever, and they really
were raring to grow - all buds at the ready.
-
Such strength pushes even the most
beleaguered among us into new life. Ideas,
moments, actions, regrets. All the same
when the hammer comes down. Air power
could have won the Civil War? Oh
but with what a fearsome sound.

3022. AND THEN THE ARYAN MAN

AND THEN THE ARYAN MAN

And then the Aryan man, the strict one, the

white one, the original one, he came through
on a yellow steed, holding nothing in
his hands but a rigid form of death -
all passive and forlorn. 'I used to
own all this,' he said, 'then I
gave it all up.'

3121. POTENTATE

POTENTATE

The one who zooms in
on a cloud, stealing the scene,
thundering loud. And, really,
who cares for that?

3020. ELECTRICITY BREAKTHROUGH

ELECTRICITY BREAKTHROUGH

You have broken my hand with your coiled
force and torn at my heart with your fury.
Oh wild and electric one, how I could love
you best! Wired to emotions, flamed and
fiery with the force of current fusing.
Bond and binding, all things together.

3019. PASSAGE

PASSAGE

I am listening to night voices, and the dwindling
moon settles in on my left, over the water, beyond
the lake, past where the oar-crew practices.
Even this early, splitting the daybreak with a
megaphone, nothing seems to make sense. The
moon falls over the daylight cliff, and the world
rises, light with its new-day's energy and heat.
-
Solar-powered luminescence, like a fire from the heart.

-

I am seeing the girls with the backpacks dissemble.
They count their eyes and arms as I watch. I sense
their feelings completely : an odd mix of self-awareness,
curiosity, and a certain, happy form of human lust.
All things to love; all things, every. Warmer than Sun.

-

Fifteen or twenty geese traverse the dirt-path
corridor; their crazy academic catalogue seems rigid
even here, on the ground. They look askance, and
cackle that cackle - whatever it is geese do. No
understanding can surpass their instinct to graze.
-
Winged flower, empty nightmare creature, broad
stroke of all that is; dim dawn of another day,
dim dawn of another day.

3018. ROPE

ROPE
The rope was wide, the rope was narrow,
the rope was greased, the rope was tied
to a tree, the horse was holding back, the
horse ran forward, I stayed in place.
At one instant, I was there, and I was
here. Two parts to displace the whole.
The rope was wide, the rope was narrow.

3017. TO APRIL

TO APRIL
All the things we seem to have found
are somehow still here, yet time passing
now better defines them. The sky like a
soup covers deeply the most particular
edgings; shapes and forms together avoid
both reasons and names, but such avoidance
can no more advance than can dead landscape
and dormant flower stop from transforming.
Everything has possibilities now; we will
all start out all over again.

3016. POINTILISM

POINTILISM
A certain light intrudes,
in spite of the touch.
No lines, but no definition either.
All things, wavering, merge.

3015. REGARDING THE FITZGIBBONS

REGARDING THE
FITZGIBBONS

Outside in the wind, right where the pigeons were,
the dirt and debris was kicking up in funnels.

Through all this the birds stayed put - steadfast
in a posed resistance, feathers upturned, heads

unsettled. It appeared to be war, of a sort.
-

Never before had I aced the moment so well.
I felt for them as I decided for myself where

not to be. Life leaves little choice, yes, but even
less for the creatures of gutter and wall.

-
This was the gate of a simple hotel; citified

blindness, urban maladroitness, a doorman
with only an evil, small smirk. Even he,

I realized, was better able to withstand the
shiver and wind. Just past my eyes, well

beyond him, a few girls loitered within.
If a cash register were upon each of their

backs, their presence for business would
be no clearer. Outside, the pigeons

yet hunkered down for another blast.

3014. NARROWOOD

NARROWOOD
I live in a half-world of shadow and
feint, where false messages of an
inherent trait keep breaking through.
My horizon thus - though suffering -
has little to give back to other men.
-
I know all about their lamp-lit harbors
and day-light cruises, but I do not care.
My out-of-control craft by contrast careens.
-
Most of the time, I don't know where
it is that I am. I sleep and then awake and
- only then for an instant - the two get
interesting : the lamplight and the darkness,
the cowboy meshing with his horse and hat;
while, at the other end of that spectrum,
the indigenous native respects his world,
'every little bit of it', as the spirit guide says.
-
Perhaps, in between them, living
in a dream then, am I.

3013. PRACTICING ON THE TARGET

PRACTICING ON THE TARGET
To be forgotten, per se, as it is, exactly,

isn't so bad. Liking pilasters of gold
hasn't much good to be said for it.
That old Springsteen bungalow down
at West Long Branch, Number Seven
and a half, I think it is, it just sits there
lanky and dull now; and the people
living within, they 'ain't got a care.'
-
'I go to work on Tuesdays and come
back for Saturday nights. Wish I had
his money though. Wann'a see the old
old toilet?' Reluctantly, I passed.
-
There's always a hankering from
something of glory - all that crap
from other days, and now the franchise
people and the local fiscal hoodlums
want in too. The man from the magazine
says 'there's too much to be lost by
waiting; too much now to be lost.'
-
Anyway, it's most all bullshit from there;
you can't see the surf, the screen door
never slams, and Mary's long gone.
Like a vision she dances? I think not.

3012. SEMBLANCE OF THE REAL

SEMBLANCE OF THE REAL
(still-life to vendors to vegetables)
I remembered right then what it was I had
said to you : your cigarette ash like an artist's
brush dangling so low over the coffee, I had
looked you over and uttered 'God! You have
such a semblance of the real!' Startled, you
laughed and then gagged, right then almost
coughing yourself to death. Then we got
over that and finally embraced.
-
It was a November moon, Judy, way back
then and long before you'd changed your
name. Tenenbaum to Rifka to, Jesus, Smith!
I could never believe you were there, in
any of them : pallet-faced artist-hounded,
always running forager that you were.
Success, as I saw it, should always
elude the best of us. And then, just
like that, it hit you. There was more.
-
Some other guy, named Reed, draft-evasion,
prison time, wasn't it all of that? I still forget
and it really doesn't matter. Now, I'm looking
at your painted flowers on some broken down
matte of a wall. The piece itself still looks good
enough, but I can't recall it at all. I remember
something else instead : our bicycles, and
how you were always stealing the vendors'
vegetables along the way as we passed.
Funny how these things stay
planted in the mind.

3011. MY LEGERDEMAIN

LEGERDEMAIN
The cat turns into a cheetah; the fly
an eagle becomes. I am awash in wonder
and awe. My dream becomes a person.
-
Outside on the grimy sidewalk, the opposition
arrives. The ugliest oilman I've ever seen -
dense, voracious and vile I sense. He
sticks his awkward hose into the ground
as fuel oil spills - a sickening black slag
running over concrete and wood.
-
There is no magic there. Where
every dreary moment demands that
it is real and of substance, and dragging
everything else down with it. I will
flee. I will transform : the curtain
now becomes an angel, as this
exception becomes my norm.

3010. FREEDOM

FREEDOM
On the painter's wall was a still life of
Freedom - all static and steady, replete
with dead colors; more frame than picture,
I felt. Trompe l'oeil is what I thought of as
well - all those hanging dead rabbits and
powderhorns and feathers and caps. I'd
seen them once, on a museum wall, trying
of course to fool the viewer as to what
was real and what was not. Present and
real, or just the illusion you've got.
-
Maybe apples and oranges together,
in some polished silver bowl, would
represent better whatever meaning
was meant to be imparted - though
I think not. Good grief, what have I
started? On the painter's wall
was a still life of Freedom.

3009. ALHAMBRA

ALHAMBRA

Fifteen men at the castle door,
seeking what they could,
and not one thing more.
The yellow sun,
unmanageable as ever,
beat down mercilessly
upon their heads.

3008. MOVES WITH THE TIDE

MOVES WITH THE TIDE
(flagellants and mendicants)
Goes where it will go, goes where it
wishes to go, does what it is told,
disappears upon command. All those
things at once. A killer unemployed.
-
She is at the stove, now I see, cooking
eggs. Standing by the burner, little
in a robe, staring out the window while
things simmer. It must be morning again.
Nothing new, that. They do seem to recur.
-
There is not much, really, we can salvage from
our own lives, at the ends of our days. It all
has just already happened, seemingly vague,
yet real - and that is, simply, that. We may
remember a few things; or may not. Old
memory falters; that's all they say now.
-
Ages ago Flagellants used to roam the
land. In Europe, anyway; from place to place
they'd walk, berating themselves and, everywhere,
seeking Penance. Weirdly enough, not for any
specific things they'd done, more just for being
alive. Or having been. Such an obfuscating presence,
this crazy, stupid trait - beseeching God's forgiveness
for things you had nothing, really, to do with. An odd
and concrete perversion of all Creation. Many men
died, of their own lonely intentions. Leaving children
and wives, and all the rest. Yet leaving , it was
understood as well, one happy and satisfied God.

3007. RAPIDFIRE CARLOS FIORE

RAPIDFIRE CARLOS FIORE

Books on the shelf, my own books :

Roth, Bellow, Pessoa, Updike, a few,

what the hell. Isiah Berlin, Hart Crane,

Bret Harte, Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti

too. I won't divulge the excess because

this is only a few. My life in idle pages

driving nothing home at all. Purloined

clockwork dickweed verbiage, and

poisoned papers too. I undertook

it all. Killed a King; made him fall.

-

St. Marks Place, 1967. A few dead

kids, a few raw stories, and me.

Cycling the cytronic, fishing

off the pier. Watching the

Normandie sink. Recalling

the Slocum Disaster from

Tompkins Square Park.

That bench where the

queer men all sat.

-

I never was really myself

at all. My life was a fictive

adventure, a story of

dearth, a tale to recall.

I am not from this

Earth. I am yours,

that is all.

3006. LET ME TELL YOU A FEW THINGS

LET ME TELL YOU

A FEW THINGS

Planting trees along an oasis does not ever work:

dry heaves, Dry Tortugas, any of that misplaced,

misreckoned, swank geography of the journeyer's

mind. It's so far and apart different from anything

else; like shaving with Capatain Elster's sabre.

-

Afternoons never linger; they disappear like

have-nots, and girls who die in one's arms.

Put the toast in the broiler. Watch it burn

and curl. If you object, oh Sainted Theresa,

then simply don't do it. Bless first the

God-damned bread and call it holy.

-

I left you a fifty dollar bill for your

services rendered. All was done in

kindness and remembered.

3005. SALACIOUS

SALACIOUS

Once, when Neanderthal Man was

Meandering Man, the globe was a

stepfoot oasis. And this Man didn't

know a thing. He went to kicking
and crying for what could be results.

The sequence was always unclear.

-

Now, in a much different daylight, I

see reflected the Sunlight preening

down on naked pictures on some guy's

screen. He sits perpendicular to me,

and the glare from window B only

obscures the vision from me. Why is

that, I wonder. Some Godless hand

in the wide open sky finally took

an interest in something?

-

Some Reverend Minister Mister something

lackadaisically calls me in. His proud seat

on a humble altar? No, for sure, no.

He's suffering from Pride, the kind I've

never seen before : bring forth remaindered

glory on clouds of same. I'm bored, already.

-

Hi-Hat, Trinity, beautiful bumpkin babies,

non-judgmental rectifiers of all God's

dreary dread. I'm so tired of these

things. I wish I was dead, or at least

in some somnolent way like a

baby in a nursery window.

3004. MADDENING PATTERNS OF ILLUSTRIOUS LORE

MADDENING PATTERNS
OF ILLUSTRIOUS LORE
Never mind; I rode the horse until it tired.
Of me, or the ride, I never could tell.
The flat-iron steamer from the Scranton
Museum, I was looking straight at it, just
watching it plume. All these stupid
Pennsylvania people, riding an old train
like some Lionel wafer at a Christian
celebration. The tracks, they were laid
down right through the wood and vale;
no one ever cared a whit what they were
doing. 'This was Commerce, buddy, the
kind with the capital 'C'. It had to be.'
Something different from what Ezra Pound
had said : 'Kommerz, damned Kommerz!'.
Or something. If there wasn't a that there
couldn't be a this. I know such was the
landlord's thinking every month on the 28th.
I may have had it backward, or I may
have had it straight. Never mind.

3003. I HAVE MADE IT PAST THE POST

I HAVE MADE IT
PAST THE POST
New South Wales, and me. In a tri-corner hat,
plumed with a feather. I stood starboard on a
big, flattering ship, heading west somehow
until we got to 'it'. The remainder of my days.
Where I would go to die and stay.
-
There was never anything past a medical malfeasance
that I wasn't able to handle : that guy with five guns,
that day in Borstal, even the time, at the end of the
Thames, when I ravaged your sister for hours - who
by the way went quite willingly into that dark, dark
night. The only resistance she ever knew was in
the snaps and the stays. So many things are
so forever funny. New South Wales? Now?
-
How far afield am I dreaming? How many miles
does a man's mind travel? 'Simplicity patterns,' I
remember my Mama muttering, were the 'easiest
ones to follow.' She tried to make all my sisters'
dresses, but everything ended up as a pillowcase
instead. Now, the hardtack is on the table and
I'm sitting here alone. I sometimes think of
you but mostly think of, really, nothing at all.

3002. AT CHASEN'S

AT CHASEN'S

Like debutante air at a lightning ball, everyone

here was decked out for murder. Enthralled with

emotion - lights, candles, flares and stars. Motion

picture photographs and long, black cars.

Twenty men to a woman, with each a cigar.

What fragrant and flagrant emotion.

3001. O'HANLON'S GROVE (Andrew Marvell)

O'HANLON'S GROVE

(Andrew Marvell)

'More standard lap of luxury shit.

Isobar, and a real nice car - call him

Joe at any hour. Magisterial front porches

and a large porte cochere. Dinner by bells,

announced at the hour. 'I've got a big car;

they can all fit in.' I hear them talk about

the swimming trophies and new trunks

for the season. 'This one is really hard

to stir; I might add more sugar.'

-

When the light comes in to these walls, it's

all and always so very nice. False idols.

Saints at their grottos. All those imperfections

of man. I really just want to stay.'

3000. YET ONLY THE NORTH STAR STAYS

YET ONLY THE

NORTH STAR STAYS

True faces, and you have no source.

I write white paper. The single manner

of your scarf, it rises like a sign to me.

At end, all things rest; even the

Tenth Street light.

-

I once viewed a movie from behind

the screen. Yes, watching all things in

a backward reflection of one projection.

Not much sense. I couldn't tell. To the

action, no real story; like a shale fossil

found in a stream, etchings and markings,

though not as they seem.

-

Gretchen Virginia Valerie White.

She was watching me from across the

room. I saw, I saw, I saw. (True faces,

and you have no source).

2099. MY PENULTIMATE EMBRACE

MY PENULTIMATE EMBRACE

No, really; the roadway seems determined to

ease my way to Nothingness. Bending and

twisting around obstacles and trees, it will,

soon enough lead me to that revered small

place I left so long ago. The town square,

centered with its Civil War Memorial and

the list of places and names. Atop it all, some

poor-boy soldier, like a squire, staring out

and holding a rifle and a sword.

-

The center of town is rimmed with an old

filling station; two glass bays on a concrete

isle of steel and light. Oil cans and a hose.

Battery water in a spouted pail. Here and

there still stand a few hitching posts, with

iron rings, from one hundred years ago.

Can't get any more lazy than that.

-

I was born nearby, and raised, it seems,

in a well; the town well - everyone came

to draw from me, to take away, and no

no one ever left a thing, 'cept

words and idle chatter.

2098. THE CANTILEVERED RAINBOW

CANTILEVERED RAINBOW

You have no time and all the boundaries are gone;

troops are massed at the border. The skirmish you

last read of, it has already happened, a long time

ago. The posters are up and your name - though

quaintly misspelled - features prominently in

this morning's mission. No one really knows a

thing - but that's never stopped fervor before.

-

All the things that never were, have already

happened; and all the things happening now

never were before. It's that simple game of

fetch and truth - making things up under great

silver moons and skies of many suns. Look about

you, even the ripples on the water and the leaves

on the trees - some stupid prophet has said - are

numbered with the loves of all the Gods. I count

my fingers again, just to be sure. So many things

change so quickly that one should never be

complacent about anything at all.

2097. CAHIERS DU CINEMA

CAHIERS DU CINEMA

Android tabloid headline fixation.

Marquee overhead, blinking lights

like a crazy man singing dirges to

entreat a full moon. Nothing later than

this comes soon. 'Don't 'cha unnerstan,

Chuckie, don'tcha?' Then, the yellow

man put down his paper. It was

something from two weeks back.

What a difference already! I suspected

he knew that. The clock-tower struck

twenty-three. A few lush girls walked by,

staring at me. If I only had hands where

my sockets should be. In the background,

some twerp in his Chevy was loudly playing

'Full Moon Fever' on his cheap-shit radio.

Oh Tom Petty better get ready, the goon

squads are shaking their sticks.

-

Like a dope trying to learn his lines, I

read the same script over and over again:

Desert sands, the cowboy comes over the

ridge, shouting and hollering about something.

The love intererest, whom he's left behind in

Calico Falls, was just found out to be fucking

his brother all this time. She never let on, and

he never knew. The horse goes lame, falls and

drops the crazed rider. He passes out in the raw

desert heat - reciting Keats, absurdly enough.

A flying saucer is shown landing swiftly. Out come

android-geek-hairless aliens. They gather him up

and the take him away. No lines to learn. Nothing

to say. Everything else should be just like that too.

(Cahiers du Cinema for me and for you).

2096. ON SOLACE FIELD

ON SOLACE FIELD

The red barn, in the middle of that field,

it's leaning a bit too precariously for my taste.

I went out there, just to see. A stinging of stars,

the cry of cattle, the whiz-bang of hungry

birds. All that, and evening coming on.

2095. RADIO WAVES

RADIO WAVES

There's a riot in time going on in my mind,

with no ways to placate the things that I see :

the last bastion of the type that grows. Large

letter A, small letter b; things I just don't know.

-

I went to the doctor and he took a look at me.

'It's wise to be unsure.' He wrote that down

on my chart as well. No more than that would

he ever tell. He gave me a prescription for a

swollen lumber yard. That, and two

guys driving a bright green truck.

-

I went home early, but got there late.

Thinking about all that, like statements

of relativity, or something equally harsh,

I took my chances at the Pink Flamingo.

I won the entire chart.

2094. I AM THE OTHER

I AM THE OTHER
'I am the other but I wasn't always the other
some days I was just me and great at that too
though it never was worth much and amounted
to less and I was talking to Evan this guy I know
about his new hat I called it a fedora and then
we realized we weren't sure what it was called -
felt finish with a little feather thing or something
attached at the strip of shiny cloth which wrapped
around the brim and we decided together we'd
both need to look that up for later and what do
you call a hat by style anyway ? tophat fedora
borsalino porkpie all that stuff I never know and
men don't much wear those formal sorts of hats
anymore except like hipsters and the urban hip
and young and chic and all those trying for that
but that isn't Evan's effect at all - more like just
pleasant formality and a certain gravitas or the
likes of that and he said anyway he'd 'gotten it
for trips to New York' so I guess it's pretty much
all the same and a'propos and all that but I sat
down anyway and couldn't get much past just
thinking about all that and - yes yes to get back
to the point : I am the other but sometimes I'm
just me and never really very good at that either.'

2093. DOCILE

DOCILE

(Princeton University campus)

Limitless adventure - I am leaning back into the

sunlight and thinking only thoughts of light and

air. Why this is, I do not know. To my left, two

squirrels scurry, tending to duplicate, it seems,

each other's movement. What a strange and cheery

way to play. The yellow house behind me, with its

history and benches marked, still adheres to its

wily tradition : that of never changing and always

only being what it ever was. A place that had

another time, and now refuses to leave it.

The privet behind me, also with the house,

was started with cuttings from Mt. Vernon.

It is here labeled 'George Washington Privet.'

Purloined cuttings at the dawn of some

revolutionary era. How strange that all

here sounds. There is no revolution here

at all. We are used, and suffer things

lightly. We are cordial to all, docile

to an American fault. Almost a

waste, all this past glory.

2092. REVERIE

REVERIE

The stretch of new section, right there, along the

graveyard I pass each day. Footloose me, walking

by, watching the dawn cut the sky. Stone

after stone, enscribed, names and dates, places,

references. Everything one needs but doors.

Wasn't it Sartre who wrote 'Hui Clos' - No Exit?

There but for the grave of God go I; there but

for fortune...and all the rest. I (really) just can't

stop to care. Life is going, Life is here.

-

I heard an owl once, perched and single.

It looked down and spat mice bones at

me. Nothing good about that. I figured

for nothing at all. By then the shadows

were gone, the lamp-lit sky was over

by sun-up, and so was I.

2091. MAINSTREAM LOCKOUT

MAINSTREAM LOCKOUT

I have challenged the force of balance to

keel over; listening to no voices, hearing

nothing. I found Evil in its place, sitting

straight and steady. The decrepitude of

sky and water mixed - some form of

clay, a human-blend, came forth.

Amazed, I relived this Genesis.

-

Witness none. Crowds all gone. Old taped

voices running on. There is a candle

burning in the other room : a vigil light

for something other, a marker for

the scent of death and offal, all

those things coming soon.

-

'Are you writing in code?' - an

outside voice has asked me this.

I answer with a nod, 'as long as

you wear it, this shoe fits.'

2090. WHY WOULD YOU DO IT?

WHY WOULD YOU DO IT?

Arthur Rimbaud, it was - lugging armaments and

ammo over African hills and distant Mideast places.

One leg rotted, on its way to gone, complaining of the

ragged one left living. What was it, all, I wonder :

camels, elephants, tigers, leopards, cheetahs,

and all that? Or something else instead :

the calm of palm-frond evenings,

the shimmering, silent sound of night

over desert, savanna and plain? I

find I have so very much to wonder

about. I have so very much for sure.

2089. ON POINT

ON POINT

I am on point with my dirge, with my memory, with

my all-too-many-witnessed things. I am (and, yes)

already an old man. And these are distant, dallianced

days : my fights with men, the sad surpluses of Alecks

and Mirandas, the severe routs of magisterial decorum

making up mind and manners. All gone, and all, as well

insipid as Hell. The page I turn is already torn from

a Book of Life long tarnished and re-bound by

amateur craftsmen; to be sure, not mine.

-

I walk away on desert sands and shifting packs

of wind-blown soils. No foundation 'neath the

castle, no moat to embroil. I look straight

ahead, and only see - on point, on point

again, the farther goal I've sought for,

now suddenly so near, still dear.

2088. OBLIVION

OBLIVION

My forces of night are sullen and solemn,

like the black locomotive that wisely leaves

the tracks - frightfully meandering, at

one with only itself, striking where it may

go. The edges of reason, sanity, gloom -

they are but selected way stations on new

stops along the way. This mountain

tunnel has cuts, already set, for oblivion.

2087. OUTSIDE OF ENDINGS

OUTSIDE OF ENDINGS

Someone just told me I looked like Archimedes.

Yeah, right. Outside of endings, I like that one

best. I also like beginnings; but you know where

they can lead. Gustatory overindulgence - I

think that probably means over-eating. And

not only humans alone are so prone :

I've seen aliens too get sick on the road.

Well, their road - space, darkness, cold,

and all the rest. Outside of endings,

I like beginnings best.

-

They fill me with happiness, centeredness, and joy.

They bring forth all good intentions and expectations.

They live up to (I always hope) my own potential -

to be where the action is, to have gravitas and

influence, to be present when the best things occur.

-

Today on Sansome Street, I saw a very old man

take out his teeth. He rinsed them in a fountain

nearby. It was blowing water, at the same time,

into his face, wind-driven. He didn't seem to mind.

I wondered if I could ever be like him. I too am now

an 'old enough' man to be considered either ancient or

a pest and, though I still have all my teeth, well, anything

can happen. Decay sets in, and then neglect. Next you

know I'm spitting out teeth like phlegm. And - though

I don't want to be there when any of this occurs, I

actually do. I don't yet want to die.

-

Yet, I wondered still if - when alive - I could ever

be like that: hitching up my pants by tugging with

my hands, washing out my teeth in a fountain,

wearing wrinkled clothes, seemingly slept in, for

any extended period of time. But it's only good

fortune that keeps me this way, and not that.

It all could fall apart at any moment. And then

well, then I'd be happy to be anywhere at all.

I guess. Anywhere at all. Outside of

endings, I like beginnings best.

2086. STAFFORDSHIRE CONFESSIONS

STAFFORDSHIRE CONFESSIONS

Celebrity rate sheets and corporate dog chews?

The hammerhead of cereals, the underwriter of

all these memorial things? Whenever I think

back on Grandma, all I see are steamed-up

windows from another Winter's night of

cooking tomorrow's food. Food. Food.

(All I ever heard about).

-

Fifty years back, I was an orphan, at the

ready in a stultified city orphanage, just

waiting to be farmed out. Grandma did come

to get me, and I got out - but oh all those

long days in her measly hovel on Avenue

this or that. I really don't remember much.

Next door, a basketball court and a parking lot,

even way back then, when I was ten. Then,

they came again and took me away.

-

I escaped on a dark, rainy night, and was never

heard from again. Grandma died in 1980. I did

attend, surreptitiously, her service at graveside.

One of my crazy cousins, I remember her raving

and fainting. No one recognized me. I came in a

rented military uniform and feigned a wicked

war-wound limp. It allowed me to stay in the

background, and no one really caught on.

-

That too was long ago. Then I found a family,

yes, but only to make it with their daughter.

It all lasted a while and then it too faded away.

My life, awkward, wasted, wicked and vile,

has pretty much always been like that,

pretty much been the same.

2085. AND BEFORE I GO

AND BEFORE I GO

Will you oscilloscope my radar-finder and send

the jackal into May? Can you obfuscate this

endive and bring forth healthy motion? Seas

and swings, party planks and outdoor grills?

Anything to this you wish to add you may append.

-

At that point, even I myself - watching the screen

in rapt attention - looked away; for right here

they were killing a chicken. Twisting sternly the

ringing neck - a squawk ungodly, a shriek, and

death. Even at that, unsightly still.

-

I am always enamored of waiters in tails and

hostesses in tiny dresses. It simply makes my day.

Of course, if you had noticed, you would have seen

how I winked first, and crossed my fingers as I

spoke, and did any of those ironic things to

show I really meant nothing

of what I said at all.

-

The poor boy rubs his shoulders with the rich.

The rich girl sits down with the poor wretch.

All in all, things have a way of working out -

and all manner of lively living goes on.

2084. SO NO I STUTTERED AT THE END

SO NO I STUTTERED
AT THE END
(Speedship)
'A wife, a two-year old, a one-year old' -
the guy was saying that as he walked
away - two construction workers in
Carharts, headed out to their jobsite.
Setting up for a game of 'Family'; I thought
perhaps he meant it all for real. Didn't know.
Can't cover the contingency here; constabulary
re-constriction, life's a prison and all the rest.
Anyway, not my problem, raw-deal boy-man.
-
When Franklin Roosevelt died, he was kept
standing up, strapped to an ice-board for three
days. Why? Who knows? In case he came back to life?
When Joseph Stalin died, he was pasted to the
Kremlin Wall and bolstered there with darts and
brackets. They kept two armed-guards there
every hour of the day. That lasted two years,
and then they gave it up. They wanted to see
how the ideology developed, and what sort.
-
There are always ghosts resting on mantelpieces
and spirits in the parlor air. It just goes without
saying - we shouldn't talk so fast, and we should
first learn what we really wish to say. It's very
dangerous for a person to waste all those years.

2083. THE MINISTRY OF ARCHENEMIES

THE MINISTRY

OF ARCHENEMIES

Why would anyone do something that would just make them

uncomfortable? I really don't know. Yes, true, birds fly into

skyscraper glass and die, but they have really no clue what's

up - broken neck, crushed chest, and all that. Those are

our concepts, to be fair. Race car drivers going 220 miles

per hour around hairpin curves are sure to die eventually

...and they know that and accept it, but, still, why?

The addict piercing skin with needles day after day,

merely to stay alive and high so as to need more?

What's with that anyway? That's all discomfort.

When it's easier to stare into the Sun, walk straight

into the waves, or simply stop moving at all. Those

things, by their realization, are more apt to have

true consequences. It's the love of a life that

really matters; that, and the things one can

hold in one's hands. Objects we can understand.

Not water or powder, no, I mean real things

in the hand, stuff we can touch. That's

the comfort of knowing that Life's

being shared with others in the

same form of habit. Misery. Joy.

Integrity. Relief. Or all those

things anyway the same?

2082. AT MECKLENBERG

AT MECKLENBERG
It seemed this one time the water-wheel was turning,
throwing great gushes of water over some municipal
lawn where a police driver just sat staring from an
overly shiny car. I watched him. He steadily smoked
some awkwardly bent cigar, as if detailing to himself
the varied reasons for doing or not doing something
else. No way of knowing, just what I felt.
-
The door did finally open, and out he stepped.
Walking away, towards the plaza and some
big doorway, he waltzed right in - as if
uniform did bring privilege, as if badge meant
free entry. He was, I guess and after all, Police.
The little town of Mecklenberg likes things like that.
-
Maintaining order, even on a shoestring, gets
progressively easier each day, I would think.
These towns run out of money, no one can do
a thing, services run down, and eventually the
locals just give up on everything and stay distant
and removed all the time. It takes energy to do
crime. You can see it in the kids' eyes - they
stand around with skateboards or phones, just
continuing the idle matter that's stuffed up their
brains already. Just no room to move, or not.
-
The modern world, in itself, becomes the killer.
Cigar-smoking police guys can do nothing for
that. Sit in the shiny car. Smoke that strange
cigar. Wear that funny hat, and let it go at that.

2081. OBSERVATORY

OBSERVATORY

I have decided I want to be at the observatory

with you; settled on the hillside, standing as one,

looking through that strange lens at the far and

open sky before us. You wanted, as I recall, to

guess a number for the stars you could see -

'70, 303', was the number you said, while I laughed.

'They all look the same to me', I said, questioning

instead if they were really there at all. 'I truly

think you've imagined just what you wish to see.'

No better gesture than shrugging could there have

been. You took your hand and put it on my arm.

We stayed like that together, for a few moments,

as you looked high to the forward sky. 'I've never,

I've never really imagined anything like this at all',

you said. 'Funny, I guess neither have I', I replied.

2080. JUST OUTSIDE OF EL DORADO

JUST OUTSIDE OF EL DORADO

The Moon is at my level side, best in the sky,

and partnered in the dawn today with a planet

I really do not know. Morning star, one of those

things. They ride the sky together, in tandem.

-

The morning light breaks, across the water, and

geese are standing at idle, looking so much at

nothing as anything at all. Still too dark or dim

to really see anything; shadows and the weaving

glimmer of light on a rippling surface.

-

It's like this when I want to stay in place.

This summation of the best of times could

only be right now and right here. I try

to listen, but there's nothing to hear.

Goodness is always silent.

2079. MEGA BOYS

MEGA BOYS

Oh yeah, they're all over the place now - those

big, sweaty guys with pumpernickle faces and

hand-held gout. Swinging bootstrap boots and

boxing gloves while they whistle the Marine Hymn

on a motorcycle-guitar drumkit. I don't know where

it all came from, but it started long ago : they drip like

shellac down an old, dried-out wallboard. They change

their oil on kit-cars from the lower domain. Weasel

and Wetzel, names like that; charmed in paint on the

flat sides of open doors. Eating plain bread from large,

open wrappers, discussing Cuban cigars while

hoping their dread will end by the morning

whilst running for home. Oh yeah,

those Mega-Boys do roam.

2078. THIS HEAP (a Dalliance)

THIS HEAP

Does anyone know where the ramps are kept,

the rages, the ridges, the foils of this life? Man juggling

fenceposts on the opposite corner from me; watch him

move, struggling free. Behind him, two cats on a ledge,

tails curled like lions, just staring. Outside of that, nothing.

-

Outside of that, nothing? The mailbox, where the two

Chinese guys just dropped their notes. They are both

walking, with maps, referring. One dangles a small

camera from a small neck. He wears an ill-fitting

carcoat I've never seen before. Talk is cheap. He talks.

-

He talks? Says something about something.

Call that talk? Talk is cheap. Outside of that, nothing.