3510. JUST FULL OF GOOD WISHES, THIS SCURVEY

JUST FULL OF

GOOD WISHES,

THIS SCURVY

I can write you to death and probably will,

I can cut through your pantaloons with my

Xavier Cugat knife and my sharp stiletto wit.

I can grab your junk with my pliers and squeeze.

If that's what you want, tell me please.

-

Duracell is a battery, and you are an anode.

I think. Endless and pointless, this awkward

energy spews its mawkish ham-juice all over

my pudding pie. So, to make my kindling wood,

let's us go over things again, you and I.

A new start is a new beginning.

-

I waste the Wamsutta you sleep upon.

I recoil, as much as anyone, from the old,

Frankish standards of a Charlemagne mouse.

The bell tower calls. The chanting is all

in the attic. The chanting is all from on high.

3509. NOT COURTLY LOVE

NOT COURTLY LOVE

...which brings tradition through a

sort of mystical precision, underlying

elements of music bringing us home

to ourselves again. This feeling, at

the very same time, drives me out.

-

The pianist was telling me a story,

and I did listen well. His point was -

a true music master, while playing 

a note, is never only there. He is,

instead, always already ahead,

thinking the next note and phrase.

-

I see the notes, and I play them.

3508. YOU'VE GOT NO TINTERN ABBEY

YOU'VE GOT 

NO TINTERN ABBEY

You've got no Tintern Abbey and now

you've stolen my land for your lordly

vineyards. There is no exceptionalism here,

and I would be amiss not to mention: I don't

drink your stuff, and my children drink but

milk. These quiet, mandolin ways have kept

us for years, just like this, though now

that you've moved in with your shovels,

what else will come? My place in that

graveyard on Titlehurst Hill is already

assured; it matters not to me. I shall

not dawdle to go, to be sure, though,

as well, I will not rush - certain things

do take time, after all. This all shames

me as well, to my center fall, yet I must

now let it be. You've got no Tintern

Abbey here, hanging over me.

3507. THEY GAVE KAFKA TO THE TROOPS

THEY GAVE KAFKA 

TO THE TROOPS

'On the front lines of nothingness,

we ate corn flakes dry, beneath the

mortar rounds and flak. Those

bombed-out hulks of bunkers and

homes - things we'd already twice

destroyed  -  were still tinged and

blazing by the terror we'd inflicted:

our terror was in response to their

terror, but was a terror nonetheless,

a reverse terror twice inflicted as

response still burns. A few bodies

littered the sand field between us - 

I swear one still moved.

-

This was four months now, the

same enshrined bullshit rewarded

with the littler of shrapnel and

shell casings, the laser lines light

lofts the center-arc blaze of each

explosive we send forth  -  count the

time, to seven or eight, and listen for

the thud and then the blast. And, oh,

fear not, one or the other of them is

death, and the other destruction.

Sarge says 'leave the bastard bodies 

fallen where they fucking fell.'

-

Streams? There are none really. This

is a blasted desert oasis  -  pretty much

all that runs in rivulets here is blood. We

are rude enough to notice  -  remains and

bones, skulls or an arm. And, yeah, they're

used to be mangy, angry dogs around here,

but they're all gone. Would you wonder how?

Target marksmen at practice under a perfect moon.

-

When I get back to the states, I'm gonna' open

a restaurant, call it 'Mesopotamia Mombookay.'

It don't mean nothing, it's just fun to say  -  and I

don't care, nobody knows me, I've been trained

to kill anyway  -  so what the fuck. They can eat

my slop and like it or die. I'm living on my Uncle

Sam for the rest of my time  -  that's one, long,

happy life and they all should know it. Jesus

almighty, watch the wall! It's coming down!

-

Under this Hellfire sky, I swear to say,

there must be ten thousand stars  -  blazing,

beautiful, high light. Like fucking Heaven lives

there, right? Occasionally something moves,

a flash of light, fiery star, blazing earth-moon

celestial torch. So cool, and amazing, and on

this sand, like glass, and hot. Looking up, I

can sometimes see for a million miles and a

thousand years  -  but back or forwards I

can never say, 'cause I never know.'

3506. DIDN'T DIE BY TRYING

DIDN'T DIE BY TRYING

It's the dirty side of rain in London, piles of it

all falling down. Umbrellas, no help at all, as

the North Sea itself comes home. You can

take all the silver in Britain and throw it

into your lake of lies, for all I care. Upstairs

where the haberdasher guy lives, the steam

is smoking off the radiators, while he tries

to dry his clothes; still wet-soaked from

walking home. I never came this far for

so little at all. Like a wartime style with

bread and jelly, the sweet-treacle story

you peddle sticks to my hands.

-

Outside, at the curb, some twisty little

London cab sits waiting at rest for

me to come aboard. I will and I

shall, and I'm gone now as well.

Never let it be said I didn't

die by trying.

3505. TEA TIME I FATHOM

TEA TIME I FATHOM

Just like the man before me, the old one,
with his ever-stiff arm somehow supporting
a flag, I stood at allegiance to hundreds of
sour things. Reason that peeled, like the
paint off the old man's solid garage, tried
to keep me straight  -  those million patriotic
lies we are fed to keep us sated. No, I
thought, I bowed to no one, I thought.
I 'raised high the roofbeams, carpenters'.
I went to the amusing town of Bemidji with
Aaron Copland and Victor Kraft, I walked the
Mesabi, I sang with Pete Seeger. I did
everything I could to be a good Communist.
It all failed, and everything crumbled down
around me. God damn it all, I'm done
for good. And what is left? Nothing.
They are mostly gone now, or soon
shall be, and all that has been left
behind are their baskets of sour apples
and bad excuses, reasons for the
diminution of everything around us.
Salute not, whatever it is you are saluting;
it was all for naught and worthwhile of
nothing at all, or at least nothing in any
way exemplary. Yes, yes, then, I shall
indict an entire generation. My paradoxical
elders have brought me nothing really.
In fact, the larger void they left is bigger
than I will ever be, and it is filled with
nothing so much as irrepressible urges,
lines of fault, and charged particles of
creative doubt and effort.
Oh well. I suppose.

3504. AT WINLSOW'S MANOR

AT WINSLOW'S MANOR

I put a colorful saddle on your

Palomino pony, and ran through

the woods like a dagger through a

heart. I searched every tree-trunk for

the names we'd carved in long ago,

but found nothing had grown over but

the moss and all our wounds.

-

Having tea at Winslow's Manor, I

wondering who'd named it thus  - 

one cannot win by being slow, if

that was what was meant. If there

was ever even a race at all, if there

were ever a place to call. Our scar

tissue healed way back there, when

the newer trees were yet saplings, and

the pond was yet a brook; before all

the silt and baggage backed it up.

-

I do not ever know how people can

talk so much about things they know

little of. Or how they can spout on

about things they know nothing of.

I put a colorful saddle on your pony.

3503. VANISHING PONT

VANISHING POINT

The presentation of the world becomes

a view to which we assume ourselves :

the great wind, dynamic, that blows

wherever it may. Choosing situations,

we wear the robes so selected. It is

not true that things change  -  as they

are, all things remain the same, just as

they have ever been. This paradox, 

in the midst of our great turmoil,

should calm us best.

3502. THE MYTH OF NATTY BUMPO

THE MYTH OF NATTY BUMPO

There never were so many things as we

were taught, and the natives in the

Allegheny forests were slaughtered at

will  by the forerunners of all we are

today  -  this was death, suffering,

a wanton violence and a greed for

establishing myth. A myth of place and

oneness and singularity and specialness.

But it never was to be, as it was grounded

in fear, violence and death; all of the Devil's 

standing, now standing, as well, 

athwart all of this land today.

3501. NEGOTIATING IN LEBANON

NEGOTIATING IN LEBANON

(no more than Gilgamesh)
Everything is down to nothing and you

have hung your hat the way men of old

used to hang their hats. Both hands are

on the cluttered table. Near to the small

window, the cauldron is boiling as we look

away. I have noticed  -  much as it was in

Mesopotamia too  -  hanging low, seemingly

backwards or upside down, the March moon

fading off above the marshes.

-

I do not really know how much more of this

I can take, though I will take all I can for as

long as I can or as long as it takes. I am

nothing really but a scribe, taking these

illicit notes as swift they come to me. And

now, in this little pinewoods cabin near the

border, we are sitting in near dark working

out a deal for time and money. No odor

here, just the filthy, passing smell of

lucre, and you, insisting it's perfume.

-

Every door, I've noticed, has a variable

swing, steady, and built within its hinging.

This one, I wish, would hit you on the

ass as you are leaving. Though it is not

to be, it seems we both will sit here wishing.

-

You forget that I have lived a thousand years, with

a thousand more to come. While you, alas, cannot

now leave, nor do you have a chance of ever staying.

3500. CHIVALRY

CHIVALRY

Punching the anonymous donor.

Smacking the doorman with a mallet.

Each of these things, as I find them,

are very satisfying for a rich man to do.

Taking that assisted elevator up to the

fourteenth floor? Riding the Otis in the

Chandler Arms? I can do it all myself,

thank you. Now get out of my way please.

Here comes that fancy woman with her

lap-dog and jewelry. Chivalry? I'll let her

in first, press the new button for 'free fall',

and just as quickly step myself out as the

doors close swiftly around her. Bye-bye.

3499. ARE YOU THE ONE

ARE YOU THE ONE?

Who maketh me lie down in still waters?

Or waters of the still? Whatever. I never

get drunk on an empty stomach. And then,

together when we sit, will I have to be the one

who gets the torch and holds the bill? The three

crayons you always carry around? I never understood

your mad intentions, restoreth-ing my soul and all the rest.

3498. BRIBE MY HASSLES AND HOLD MY HEART

BRIBE MY HASSLES

AND HOLD MY HEART

Here's where it goes : good God and

never again. The toy chest holding the

plastic cowboys is overflowing, and your

kid's the one in charge. 'Clean it up!' I

hear a latter-day voice saying. That radio

blaring, it has a tune from 1985. Whoa!

-

I'd just barely arrived when the nick-of-time

was called on me : Rialto spinning madly and

an old movie playing. Nothing like this day and age

at all, and I'd not know from where I came anyway.

I entered through the door marked 'Straw Man Digest'.

-

The stage guy with the wagon was also pushing a

cattle car along. It looked like nothing at all, except

perhaps if Ford or Chevy had made a shit-cart, a

'honey-wagon' as the farmers used to say. All that

glamor, and the lowboys still have to work like hell.

-

Here they brought in the animals and all the midgets.

Little-people, you say? What difference; they still need

lifts, and lizards, and leather and lace. Luminous things

from the leftover list, the pile of clothes in the corner.

I was frenzied and tired. I sat down and dozed off.

Bribe my hassles and hold my heart, while I sleep.

3497. BRESCIA (and that is that)

BRESCIA

(and that is that)

I wander, and then I stop. 

This preening wind blows through

the willows as the water runs below.

Everywhere  -  all around me  -  things

are signed and signified alike: the infinite

yet false sign of the deep blue sky, the

certainty of rocks within the water. All

the Earth is heavy, as people try acting kind.

-

There is a noble kind of blue that

brings no human matter: a startling place,

instead, a distant planet now claiming ownership

of each and all and over every one of us. A

God lives there  - not 'the' but 'a' - and one

of those many things to which we still aspire.

-

I am jungle-uncomfortable in this strange

place, where things and people die alike

in droves, where lies are kept in chimneys

and cameras, where all things are illusion

and nothing really makes any sense at all.

3496. HANGING BY THE JIMRO TREE

HANGING BY 

THE JIMRO TREE

I might have wished to dodge you, I may

have tried to run. But, over there, near

where the carport sits, there wasn't really

any place to hide. So many olives on the

olive tree. No Jesus ever withered that one.

-

I caught my fishing line on an overhead

wire. How weird was that? Someone from

the local paper, after being called, actually

ran over to photograph my predicament.

'Photograph this!' I exclaimed as he left.

-

The harlot of Cambamber County, the one

with the yellow hair, she was just here. I

paid her five dollars to listen to my story

and just let me touch. It was a rough outing,

I agree, but I managed to stay within bounds.

Sometimes, often, girls just drive me crazy.

-

So many things cannot be helped, so why

then do we bother? I climbed to seventy stairs

at the memorial, and what did it get me?

Nothing much, just another view of an oily,

stinking harbor, and a bunch of cars seen

waiting in line, all needlessly running at idle.

-

I cannot ever seem to figure things out.

3495. LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE, EMBRACING

LOVERS ON THE 

BRIDGE, EMBRACING

And so, lovers on the bridge, embrace 

for all things and for all time. And I am

so lonely. And I am wistful for you.

That slow, old curvature of brick and

iron  -  the gentle mathematics making

up his bridge, this arc; I fall for all these

things as I fall for Love itself, and you.

-

This is, after all, but the path of a footbridge.

We, the people, pass as harmlessly by through

time as the pages of a calendar that have now

fallen to the floor. Yet, no, for I remember both

you and your voice. It has become, instead, the

harm of your absence which hurts me now.

-

Down below, a few gents row their rented

watercraft  -  hobbled green rowboats,

painted with a star on the side, reading:

'Star Rentals at Riverkeep Basin'. Now

girlfriends riding shotgun seem ready to

dive; and I am sad and sorry and lonely,

all over you again, all over you again.

-

And so, lovers on the bridge embrace,

for all things, over and over again,

clutching at each other's hearts for glue

and glory. And I am once again alone.

3494. RED ROSES, BLACK PEBBLE

RED ROSES, BLACK PEBBLE

But my friend what then is your

meaning now that you are gone?

The signifier and the signified - like

the sign and its cross - have met the

void now of a certain type of silence.

Something like an Easter approaches,

with its pagan rites of new birth and

growth, rabbits and eggs, a resurgence

of new born Man. Total rubbish, to be

sure, yes, but how so many enjoy the

blood : the blood of passion like the 

blood-red glow of roses  -  sacred roses,

carried on high  -  and ultimately lost.

-

For what other way does the fat wallet

of humankind's ways justify its dollars? 

Always, always, the outside and the

...the celestial signifyings of moon and

stars and Heaven and Life - such a

programmed course 'midst which 

we are so lost.

3493. PORTICO RELIGIOSO

PORTICO RELIGIOSO

Where were all the fiery men, and where have

they now all gone? We've missed them on the

mountaintops  -  flaming piles of stone and rock,

flames burning rules into the stone-slab tablets,

burned faces and crazed creatures coming down.

Where there were, once, oh such stories to tell,

now rolling parkland dithers and waits. Long lines

of streamers and Amero-tourists clog the land.

-

Whatever song they may once have sung, now even

Bernadette has run from that : Lourdes and Lareto,

Masada and Temple Mount  -  all of that has a faraway

groan and an echo of hate. And, anyway, why should

we wait for prepubescent girls to tell us what God's

Maiden speaks? It's all together, the old and the less old,

together now, all of it, in a sickening bundle of rubbish

we crave. No, I do not know why. Nor do I care.

-

Yet, tomorrow could bring another way of seeing  - 

another fiery land-break from the uber-vessel on high.

Words spoken, once more, in thunder and flame  -  all

that ancient, sickening stuff over and over again.

3492. MY FAINT TRANSGRESSION

MY FAINT 

TRANSGRESSION

I may have harbored ill feelings of worth,

non-sequitors entered through doorways

of mirth : like All Hallows Eve, all my shades

and shadows came from Death itself. I arose

at the break of day, and settled on struggling

forward. Alongside me, only the fence at the

graveyard stood in the light of the dawning day.

-

I figured that to be enough. Trees, and their

companions, birds, each rose upward to

greet the day : I heard the little cacophony,

running on, noisy in light, it kept a powerful

prayer within me going. I was alive, I knew,

alive enough to stand and come forth, be counted.

-

'One should never be surprised', the doctor said,

'to find oneself alone within a crowd. Take it as a

sign of strength that, at the least, you've finally

grown enough to recognize the singularity of self.'

3491. FIVE MOUNTAINS LATER

FIVE MOUNTAINS LATER

I was lost in the city 'midst a forest of gold;

hundreds of people passing  -  skirts on the

High Line, the gallery girl in her pleated

brown crepe, showing off somehow a

too-splendid ass for my taste. I sat

back and wondered where to go.

Tallman Mountain beckoned.

-

About ten miles away, perhaps,

off the city's rim, astride the Hudson's

banks, on the other side. Hikers had

been lost there, once or twice, as well,

someone had been killed or raped. Never

matter, that, outside my, let's say, zone

of interest. I moved on like the dross I was.

-

My whole point in being here was to see the

heights of achievement and the fame of

renown. Artists, those guys over there,

with the bent wrists and champagne glasses,

they were the new ones now with the money.

Talking of 'Art', they pointed and signified.

-

What finally broke me was the wedge;

you know 'beware the wedge' itself  -  the

littlest thing that beckons the decline, the

pebble that begins that avalanche the kills.

3490. MING

MING

As only the Ming Dynasty would

know, my name has been insecurely

etched and painted - a long time ago - 

on some blue vases in a period way.

A piece of the past, beneath now my

wings, still smolders. For now, I too

must let it be. A crane (in those days,

yes, still but a bird), I see, lingers at

the waterside, near some awesome 

Chinese clouds and reeds. All the

same, it's me I recognize within the

solid matter of this picture and setting.

3489. HERE WHERE IT IS

HERE WHERE IT IS

Money flies in the wake of action,

like gulls behind a ferryboat's wake :

chasing froth and foam, diving in hope

for fish or food, the warrant for an

errant pretzel scrap unfulfilled.

-

Those who would laugh at this life

are lining the benches, laughing back.

-

I excuse, don't you see, nothing as

I excuse all things : people who are

too nice, the ones who eat too much,

the junk, the crap, the very puke of

excess. Like some men there, I

am too long at the fair.

-

Those who would laugh at this life

are lining the benches, laughing back.

-

In 1948 the cityscapes seemed covered

with smokestacks and all dark things;

an emanation, a charcoal, a black and

white chiascuro of what Man could do,

or would. Even the shapes and forms

were serious and stern.

-

Now, by a contrast of some contrast,

everything has grown pastel  -  light and

hopeful, although somehow false as well.

Spilling over the landscape like a light new

confetti, things just will not stay down or

stay put. (Today, today, where is my

Hart Crane today)?

-

Those who would laugh at this life

are lining the benches, laughing back.

3488. SUPPORT PEOPLE EVERYWHERE

SUPPORT PEOPLE 

EVERYWHERE

(Outside Orly Airport, Paris)

 'He called me up, holy Christ, in

 the fucking Orly Airport no less,

about some dividend shit I didn't

even understand.' 

-

People still smoke. I watch

the ash fall. At the little airport

bar, nine people, assorted, with

their daiquiris and beers they sit.

-

If you try to read a book with

anger, you will always fail. Thrown

along, on this side of the road, as

oddly incongruous as it looked,

I spied a 40-year old Citroen,

dumped on its side in the weeds.

3487. HOW WELL I CAN CHANGE TIME

HOW WELL I 

CAN CHANGE TIME

(Spanish Witches)

Soldiers fell, and all the waters ran.

There was a fulcrum  -  of blood and

time and the river too. What arose

from all those dead before me?

Souls out of time, and all those

daughters of Toledo. I listen. 

I listen. I listen. Beneath my

own cabana I can change

all time  -  and no 

history exists.

3486. ALL THINGS ELSE

 ALL THINGS ELSE

A magisterial tree of life that has

kept us running  -  we had the

garden with its crazy storyline

and that fiction of bad events.

We've made, by all of that, the

nation-state wince; borderlines

and fashions all together. Yet now,

still, fools are slaughtering

each other anew.

-

We can watch events unfold, and

stay away. Memories of the flood,

or of riding the dinosaur one

time or another. The nightmare

we wish to imagine will - if

we let it - sluice its slice of

film well into our reality. Are

we brave enough  -  or too

sensitive  -  for any of that?

-

Peter Male will come alive.

He makes the Earth, as he

has made all things else.

3485. OFIL'S RENOIR

OFIL'S RENOIR

I own nothing, as I stand here beneath the

Brooklyn Bridge. I am on the Brooklyn side,

in fact, and  -  to my side  -  the rounded pells

of the old tobacco warehouse, armaments of

two-hundred years ago, call to me as if today.

Ah, when a port was a port and a harbor a

harbor  -  the spittle of men and the piss of

the hordes, accepted everywhere.

-

This place tries a comeback now with

stupid people. The young couples who

saunter the clubs bereft of a reference but

slick in their style and preference. The livery

car driver  -  I watch  -  some Lebanese fucker,

is banging out his dented door on a cobbled

sidestreet near the watery shore. He seems

as angry as Hell. All this, all this, is a harbinger 

of  all the pity to come.

-

Pity to come : the Lord from the sky is an

artist with a perfect eye, sublimatingly fiendish

and something strange, a writer of necessity

in a world to change. Like an Ofil's Renoir

or someone's Piss Christ, this art of new living

seems an ultra-hip shark in its tankful of Death.

3484. OH TOO LOVELY CATHERINE HEMINGWAY (1934)

OH TOO LOVELY 

CATHERINE HEMINGWAY

(1934)

They weigh the zoot suit running wild

on stage; all that Cab Calloway excess

over and on. Minnie the Moocher never had

anything on Mabel Mercer. This liquid crowd

drops flowers and applause - old, grand sticks

of chivalry sopping wet. And then the girls come

out : those Catherine Hemingway strapless gowns

bowing low bare the breasts to stop the show and

more and more. This exclusive crowd will roar!

Wisdom and memory and passion and lust!

While there, outside on Harlem's dark streets, those

trolling cars trump the oasis. Old men, tired, are now

wilting themselves on porches and stoops, while all

the old buildings come down. All the old wooden

buildings are now coming down.

3483. SANTA FE STATION

SANTA FE STATION

My girlfriend is riding The Coaster

out of Santa Fe Station, complaining

all the way : 'Two-decker train, runs slow

as ever, takes ten minutes to go half a mile.'

She adds as an afterthought : 'It is a historic

station station, very, anyway, with those big

letters on top spelling Santa Fe.' She signs

off with a few X's as kisses and 'I love you,

too.' Then she adds at the bottom, in her

own form of a promiscuous PS : 'If you're

ever going to Hell, take this train for sure;

it'll take forever to bring you there.'

3481.THIS THE CAMERA EYES

THIS THE CAMERA EYES

Nothing wavers, the wide wind wails. The stems

and branches of everything else, bent and taunted,

seem happy in submission. I am watching the old wood

on the sides of houses, old paint peeled, glass and

edgings broken and rotted. What yet sings are only

the tunes of other years  -  some nasty hit-parade

of memory. No one has lived here for twenty years.

-

It seems as if everyone has long ago died.

Stuck in old hedges, a dried-out, discolored

old toy, a child's bike, rusted, and a yellow ball.

3482. MY MISRULE

 MY MISRULE

I am made of sterner stuff or will be anyway :

going up-river, what they say is fair. The stateside

mountaintop clinic will call me back. I am not to

be writing any longer for communication; this

will be, instead, the unrivaled marvel of all words

and feats : magical incantations thrown straight

down for living to be read by those dying. There

are none exempt from this rule.

-

I will count your six yellow cups, your daughter's

better courage, the vestigial violence of each one of

your sons. They have parked their motorcycles in

the shed, but I have marked the doorways with some

paschal blood. And they will never leave again.

-

I am a mysterious monster, made up so as to play

to the crowd, squirming seat-sitters in an audience

before me  -  all of flesh and blood. No one is

exempt from this rule.

-

Everything is so powerfully unhinged; a misrule

of catastrophic proportions which pulls down even

the sun and the moon and breaks the arch of Nature's

back on tractioned rack of circumstance. Over and again

we do nothing but run from our shadows, which are chasing us.

Before us, the others, running on ahead, have already been

absorbed, right back in, by their own shadows which were

stretched out before them and which absorbed them back in.

It is all calamity in a devil's fool kingdom of disaster and strife.

-

Your daughters will be robbed of all their virginal matter

and I shall stuff them full with mine : the very legend of

the Earth and the Moon will carry them off, in a swoon - 

we will bring forth our giant children again, and they

too shall marry the earth; they too shall marry the earth.

-

I am a mysterious monster, made up so as to play

to the crowd, squirming seat-sitters in an audience

before me  -  all of flesh and blood. No one is

exempt from this rule, and they shall

never leave again.

3480. AURA

AURA

Sitting back at Manitoga : one

lark and a house in the woods,

with a pond, with elongated stone.

The time-warped features relegate

(already) the future to a past. I

cannot tell you what I drink. It

is now all past the party. My grand

quaff is over. Up ahead of me,

the long and hilly incline roves me, 

leads me on  -  by some strange

gravity pushed forward onto

something else. I am kept away

from that to which I was drawn.

3479. NOTHING AT ALL

NOTHING AT ALL

Perambulate thou the hustings then  -  

holding hands with circumstance.

Energy is the higher power which

will hold you  -  all the rowboat men

together, and that funny-sounding

music guy alone and holed away

in some Alaskan cabin 'to mourn

his father's death.' I don't believe

in a nothing at all; winnowing those

wastrel people, we goad like Gods

the coastal shelf : look out and

see! Look out! Twelve battleships

and a tanker of oil  -  all I see.

I don't believe in anything at all,

afloat on that wide, deep sea.

3478. FOR DANIIL KHARMS

FOR DANIIL KHARMS

'This guy sponsored his own beheading. 
Forgot to wear a hat; everything

 was cancelled at the last minute.
 He'd sold sponsorships and

everything, the whole deal. 
All the deals later fell through.'

3477. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS (AGAIN)

THE MILL ON 

THE FLOSS (AGAIN)

(blank man on a 

withering oasis)

One times one times two : we make our

meek adjustments, we are sure of that.

Outside this distinct overture, the black

parking lot holds few cars : a man and his

companion sweetly walking hand in hand,

and a ten-year old Cadillac, waiting. It is

a courthouse, behind them, or so it seems.

-

A newspaper stand out front, so old as to be

over, holds a black man with a coin apron  -

just another thing I have not seen for fifteen

years. No one wants the news these days,

nor reads it either, whether paper or not.

Mouths talk and grumble far better than

do printed words. Everyone rushes on.

-

It is a month supposed to be cold, but not.

A black mark on the calendar, something

that didn't work, never came to be : no white

cover of snow, no pale mantle of ice and water.

'A very calm February, we've had, sir.' I nod,

and notice that kid looking back at me, as if to

whistle or sing. I realize he's holding a broom.

-

Life is like that  -  a slow and long decline into

darkness, into bleak black from brighter white.

I never knew why, but knew it, sensed it all

coming on. This day feels like Tuesday, though

it's not. And now, as well, this time feels like

another time, and well it is. I am past all that:

a blank man on a withering oasis.

3476. THEY MAKE PRIZE COPY

THEY MAKE PRIZE COPY

She is talking about the cherry blossoms

again  -  and it isn't even Spring. What

have you is totally running on. Yes, I do

suppose we can debate Time and its many 

things, but we cannot erase those marks and

lines which bring us forth. Back from Death,

past the last participle of becoming. Forgetting

her calendar, she is talking cherry blossoms again.

Music plays behind her  -  the high sounds of light.

Alongside the Beltway in this city of Death, this

Capitol of deceit, this lily-basket of filth and

corruption, this den of the beast, I am listening

to all the lost and laggard men, while she

talks cherry blossoms again.

3475. DEVERAH

DEVERAH

I have counted my time  -  it

comes up to now. Appolyon 

and myself  -  beast fighting

beast fighting beat. Let us

now walk together.

-

This mountain that reaches the sea,

it walks its own shoreline, it covers

its coast; most assuredly too. Now

the great monster harvests his fields.

-

Deverah, we are but kindling for

the great human fire to come, 

about to be, nearing, now.

3474. ALL THE RAMIFICATIONS OF POLLARD BAY

ALL THE RAMIFICATIONS 

OF POLLARD BAY

Standing atop this little hill, the road before me spreads,

winding its way down to Pollard Bay. I recognize that scene.

I have been here many times before. Yet, now, in this late

time, all the ramifications of Pollard Bay seem different,

seem broader, seem heavy with new meaning. 

-

I read nothing more than what is : into this place come

all the natural elements, everything one would so plainly

expect. I have light and matter and air and water and

view and visitation. I have angels on the wing, things

hovering on limb and branch. Watchers watch with

me, alongside that same place, walking my same pace.

Birds and wisdom, light and air, all of morning and

matter together. To be this specific is to realize

how general all things truly are. I manifest the

fact that I may be, perhaps, and nothing more.

-

Far off, enough of a distance anyway to be 'there',

the white and blue of the water sings its tune and roils

in sunlight all its happy fare. I watch gulls as they

turn in the air, and I see the few boats as they are

rocking there. And  -  farther off yet   -  the 

beginnings of land rise up again; summer homes,

cabins, a distant lighthouse and an inn. I know

these things, not readily seen, as they exist.

-

So much like all the rest of life is that: knowing

things unseen, surmising the map of place and

understanding the graphic fragment which

outlines the remainders of all that we live.

I know, I know, I must be content with

this : for there is no magic in the land,

there is no magic in the world. Nothing 

to really take me from here. All the

ramifications of Pollard Bay? 'Accept

what you have' they seem to say.

3473. CHALICE

 CHALICE

This chalice has a title, and it is spinning

'round its name : Anti-climax, ambidextrous,

ancient roto-gravure. Nothing of this at all

exists, as we too  -  in the same graft  -  are

found to be present and yet gone. There

is a message in the gravel beneath my

fee. I notice it is written by a holy paw :

'I am writing scripture for you all, that you

may see and recognize the moments as they

pass, the srings of circumstance and matter

which bring together in one pass the simple

factor of the real, which you all see. In fact,

nothing at all exists. We, simple fools all, are

reliving this drama from memory whilst

imagining all which it is that we see.'

3472. ON SPOON-BIRD HILL

ON SPOON-BIRD HILL

'I don't have no money' said the

man on the street, holding a sign

which read 'Give me a dime.' Burning

up the thoroughfare like it was a simple 

fact  -  in such a way as this! 'In fact,'

 he reiterated, 'I don't got anything at

all, 'cept this rancid guitar which, if ya' 

don't watch out, I'll start playing again!' 

Could have been, instead, quite the comedian.

-

I'd been watching this bird since long before

now  -  I almost knew his every move : the

bounce-inflected, come-hither voice, so 

perfect for jack-hammering passersby into

a submission  -  finding money where they'd

forgotten it was before. This life, being a

realistic illusion anyway, I well can understand.

-

A mile from here, the foggy bay bells bristled;

distorted tones, twisted by the wind and the hills.

I took a moment to listen, on Spoon-Bird Hill.

3471. PINK

PINK

The pink of the Earth has been

holding me forward. Old times,

new times, so many things forever.

Like a newly-formed blossom in

Spring  -  all expectation opens.

3470. FATHER MALTHUS

FATHER MALTHUS

In those days, we were all supposed to die : fever, plague, dengue.

Then someone came by and washed my house, whitened the walls,

cleared the well of filthy water, and opened even my own eyes.

To all that was going on, to the world of filth wherein we dwelt.

-

I knew very little. You searched my soul without a warrant,

even then  -  walking off with things you took, stripping my

moments of any moment or meaning alike. You called

yourself a Cardinal and a Priest among men. All that

balderdash and the village let you be  -  big stupid hat,

vestments like a King, and a know-nothing brain with

a mouth that wouldn't stop. Horses should have 

torn you apart. And everyone knew it.

-

There was no allegiance to peace or to love,

and everything you did was evil. Killing the

blacksmith and taking his wife. Burning the

commons in the guise of removing a Devil.

Something had to give. Us or you. So many

simply wished you were dead.