tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4808103116648516072024-03-13T04:34:26.129-07:00mopesLarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-16158632167935001602009-09-08T08:48:00.000-07:002009-09-08T08:49:27.010-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SqZ84RVfaYI/AAAAAAAAACU/N3C2S22QN8M/s1600-h/the+day2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 254px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SqZ84RVfaYI/AAAAAAAAACU/N3C2S22QN8M/s320/the+day2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379124111108696450" /></a>Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com55tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-69799506309207955062009-09-07T12:51:00.000-07:002009-09-07T12:53:17.514-07:00everything crosses over[to be read quickly, if at all<br /><br />touching one thing other. <br />the gap in the mind and the undone button. <br />where the hand once touches the old door flatly and suddenly words.<br />the olly olly oxen free and jeez<br />I’d die right here where hand is star and sign I <br />therefore ask <br />you all to nowhere.<br />fast. to think then feel then sleepwalk flashing <br />glassy in the alley transport <br />chalk of stars <br />on blackboard hand <br />from word a scrap <br />of meant a dying <br />child and ball of thought a mental <br />scrap of ice and fallen archway. this <br />alley pressed in white on black and trailing words and faintness high<br />resolve in fox-head crouched behind this piece of music flat <br />against the northern sky the funnels <br />sliding mass where mass <br />is all the numbers gone <br />to the church of the endless foam <br />and croon of what you think you know.<br />knew. in <br />the lines above there’s a mistake. <br />the letter killeth. the written letter<br />marks. the spoken letter falls.<br />and the imagined <br />letter brings her here<br />to old tint velvet sodden<br />garden body.<br />this is the book of the sudden falls and the pressed palms <br />on the plane. the turn to flow of stars that break <br />the hardest spine. the simple truth. <br />the place on the desk where the kid’s head is pressed<br />cheek to cheek of wood. <br />where the cow runs away with the streetcar <br />in wood. varnish. shine it up. <br />turn your head slowly. see the mark of the star. turn your palm<br />to give up. for god’s sake. <br />come to real and do what you can with it. nothing. <br />be what you are in the fall. the big stream. <br />the narrows. and who be you?<br />simple question. <br />the man at the edge of <br />the bridge looks around. the bridge goes away <br />and the cat. that which extends is the hope <br />of extension. as the eye sees and the hand<br />presses the wall. excuse me. as the hand presses<br />the blackboard. night sky. the wall. the one <br />fucking cat. the laughter of falling things<br />pick up sticks <br />lives.<br />so go back to the things that are wrong <br />and learn why. <br />perhaps there’s another stream entirely and <br />through it the animals pass and the bones.<br />in sleep. the cardplayers. the wiseguys.<br />the knowing glances. the readers of<br />the fat cities’ cutouts. you <br />again. I say to you that this <br />is a stream of you<br />and bits of mica. <br />flaming eyes<br />and dice. <br />that you are the heart of the world and a deaf<br />ear. too. my<br />head is very big tonight<br />from edge to edge a solid bite<br />of God. don’t <br />write at night. but here it is. <br />that’s the phrase now<br />here it is. go back and see<br />what doesn’t fit<br />and learn its pitted<br />landscape. <br />in the tyranny of images <br />the odd bruised thumb the cat the broken <br />line. should<br />stop now. hear that? you? over<br />there’s my bed with placement of legs as if running in stars. <br />a placement of dream as if. <br />if <br />and the fat words. find the glade<br />and the flowering quinces eros <br />of the lake of the seven <br />lost concentricities. is <br />it you<br />or is it me<br />or is it the night <br />place of the big drop? <br />with ankles tied together he<br />approached the night <br />as air shaft fell <br />to the table as eight of clubs. burra<br />the woman said. and the talk <br />went round about. if each of these fingernails <br />were its own street <br />the roads would fan from me and grow <br />apace the wheel of phantoms open<br />prayer of the open<br />roads. you. <br />again. <br />I’ll<br />tell you what happened here.<br />in the night was a solitary<br />dark moth on the far white wall.<br />and as I sat and tried to place <br />the things of the air in the line<br />the line came. came anyway. <br />burra <br />the woman said.<br />and then in early morning looking<br />for burra <br />there again it in scottish <br />book my liege <br />dictionary <br />thus — <br />burra, n. a large night-moth. <br />From eng. burr, to make a buzzing or whizzing noise, of onomat. orig.<br />let me tell you about<br />the moth. it was dark and open-winged <br />two-and-a-half<br />inches across. <br />it had a mind of sorts<br />and I <br />could infeel <br />it velvet-like. <br /> my rage <br /> is older than the hill in which<br />it lies.<br />it’s mine I have<br />to love it tied <br />as is to the lay of the land. the morning-glory. morphography<br />and my dead love. I think about my friends and there<br />I find the one or two <br />with eyes. <br />do you know <br />there’s a woman<br />whose face is never the same and whose body <br />is arched in shining a slick run home of <br />autumn breath and legs like god<br />damn racehorse? <br />her world is mine.<br />too. <br />her world knows everything.<br />where the lilies <br />grow in strait profusion <br />and fail to be distinguished from<br />ourselves. <br />oh what a bed<br />oh what a house. anguish is.<br />and so are you. two irishmen<br />were digging a ditch <br />and the road went on blithely<br />in either direction. <br />forgot about bowling green, didn’t you?<br />the legs of lamb<br />are all gone now<br />and so too the hymnals <br />and bounce of the knee <br />for the infant. <br />every which way you look<br />there’s a guy with a gun and a deep grievance. every doubled image has<br />a murder of its own. I’d love to touch you<br />say the lost. the abandoned <br />fall flat to the floor where the decals<br />live. the star in the palm and the dwindling mice. the cartoon<br />history. the anguish in cardboard and muslin the paper<br />moon.<br />the rider.<br />the shepherd stands<br />in perfect light<br />around him there’s a touch<br />of wind in the golded<br />leaves. in front at the foot [the foot]<br />is the dead lamb with throat of the torn<br />and the blood. there are other<br />sheep. the shepherd<br />knows but considers.<br />anyway. it’s all in the pause. this dead thing<br />was that live thing<br />in god. is<br />god.<br />the wind in the painting too<br />is holding its breath. do<br />you know how you moved me?<br />your pain in the unsurprised<br />mind as is coming<br />from nowhere? there is no <br />understanding.<br />merely <br />god in a fanning of particles the words<br />were the music. you hear? there is the sense<br />of loss you know. there is that sense and all around it<br />landscapes build themselves and come<br />to sweet flow death <br />its folds and hidden<br />dwellings. spell out <br />your name with stones on the floor. the earth. the grass. the touch of foot <br />[foot]. Richard loved<br />Antaeus you<br />could tell. how he walked. far afield. the poem is never<br />that. the poem touches itself as the field<br />curves in twilight. and the dancers come. and the big fucking<br />cat-head. you hear me playing jacks along<br />the empty hall <br />and all there is <br />is you. must be sunday.<br />alone then like hell and the smell of the sunday<br />dinners. sure [shore]. Jack Sprat rests his chin on plate<br />and the kids are all sorry <br />for something. fat fat the water rat. who lives<br />down the years? you do. of course<br />you do.<br />how it goes how<br />it works the way<br />things are. the cat is a mistake I guess.<br />but the cat insists. it does. <br />the consciousness riffles through all in a great shift<br />of brightness moving embers curling<br />with choice as the muscles ripple<br />long and flutter.<br />coffin, n. Add Sc. usage: 5. A live coal falling from a fire and thought to presage the death of the person nearest to it.<br /> <br />stroke of the evening the lovely<br />surprise of the bright dead hope.<br />as I sit I have before<br />sat still <br />feeling the real and silver<br />feet [foot]. as the crow<br />flies.<br />as the brittle is not. and will not. and falls to words apart their breathless.<br />the unbreathing poem is hell where it is.<br />and so it always<br />was. <br />Abraham Lincoln<br />his hand and pen.<br />He will be good but<br />God knows When. <br />wrestle me now<br />to the floor of the mind.<br />the wash on the broken timbers <br />afar off the shore which is tenuous. <br />wash on the valleys<br />and pepper spray<br />on sea-stretched eyes. <br />as you are you again the rain<br />is just as should be<br />and I open the book to the page of the old station. ain’t it strange <br />the way the way <br />goes crooked through<br />then comes out flat on<br />sure. of course. [shore]. arcturus.<br />orion. a child’s garden<br />of stars. trouble in mind<br />and finally the grace of the mist. <br />which is electric. <br />which rises up in giving up. <br />so now there’s a donkey too.<br />the Bremen town musicians<br />take their places. <br />and in the last house in town there’s a silent globe. <br />out there by the trolley-end. out there where<br />the dead guy crumples <br />paper. and throws it. <br />there was a great crouch by the fireplace of 1969.<br />throwing all the old paper. poems in cages .<br />and clusters. <br />don’t remember a goddamn thing but the coast. <br />felt like we were moving past but no. <br />it and they were moving <br />past. <br />and the pumpkin spiders<br />too. and the teeth. dentition. this was before <br />the music went fat <br />with the heads.<br />it was new moon and knife in the back. beautiful.<br />sure [shore foot] <br />the wings of the owl.<br />enormous fucking. drift on down in streetlamp mist<br />in heart and cat in eye. what it sees with. <br />tumbling <br />mice and new moon[mown]<br />teeth. dentition.<br />bounced a piece of paper went<br />straight up crumpled<br />moon came down so how I knew then <br />breath. the night was clean<br />and bones in me <br />tight and smooth and white <br />and doing their job<br />as coast rolled by <br />in faint machinery. <br />big sea making noises<br />always tracks.<br />dentition: the character of a set of teeth especially with regard to their number, kind, and arrangement — see TOOTH illustration.<br /><br />everything seen is the one<br />thing. come<br />to understand<br />this morning come <br />to fall. the fall. the elegance<br />of slapstick face <br />in the hamburger.<br />old horse white<br />in the penned rectangle god<br />the hills are smooth around <br />in text-book<br />reclinings. sway back watching <br />out the tapered<br />skull. look at ne now, ma. <br />I am a horse, am I not? have I not come to the accurate<br />substance? what is there to say? huh?<br />reclension.<br />when I come through glass to grass my long long mind<br />is sweet as huckeleberry. down the path. where we all were trying<br />then.<br />and so we are still<br />in the dead and alive <br />by the fountain of goldenrod <br />my love.<br />my loves. <br />my furling<br />acquiescences. in <br />Brementown<br />where I was born<br />there was a fair maid<br />dwelling. and there I lived<br />for years of days<br />and none the less<br />for telling. I <br />foretell a great wave of nonsense to come <br />from the compass points jiggling. three dogs<br />and four paws. chicken little’s<br />got tenure at last.<br />a falling noise all over this country<br />and that country.<br />country is stamped.<br />a stencil. <br />which twin has <br />the dick? my twin cousins <br />Ronnie and Norma were last-named<br />Dick. which must have been hard<br />for her. no joke. what the language<br />does by itself<br />is the image of god.<br />see what a slough of despond<br />looks like? looks back like? have some place<br />to die? yet? sure [shore]. I have my endlessness<br />of head<br />and pearly morning <br />gray by sea but pearl. Bill <br />didn’t want to die in a furnished<br />room. but I don’t know. depends what hangs<br />from the ceiling. is it whimsy? god<br />no. don’t know what<br />the fuck it is. but I have pearl of light as rolls<br />the heaven. from out the sketchy dead things <br />the light within. the light without’s<br />just Tommy’s rot <br />and light within <br />the purest rot. we gleam. god <br />do we gleam. <br />we waver and shine like the fish in the stars.<br />me for you, honey. they for it<br />as Richard <br />used to say. <br />there is no up<br />there is no down<br />but all for you<br />I make the effort. big<br />fucking deal. that’s what the kid on the bike on third and eighty-<br />seventh says. not really. what he really says is <br />merry christmas Huey <br />hitting me high dead center with streaming <br />left hand fist.<br />so down I go and really wounded <br />imprint of star in the afternoon sky. <br />flake-chalk hears my prayer and flakes. <br />colored chalk is okay too. <br />marks our land with glyphs<br />and branded soles. Brementown <br />and everyman. <br />steadfast tin soldier and the girl with the red shoes.<br />sudden eyes in the city of brass and blood smeared<br />on stump of neck. the locked glass tower trinity<br />and simpleton identity. the rubber ball. time<br />is the great healer<br />my father says at night. <br />in the dark. it is<br />the snake says from under the bed. <br />read the other stuff. find out what they’re reading<br />and read the other stuff. have a few things <br />you live by. <br />as if there were a dark square pond in nowhere hills<br />of grass. put a few coins on the blind man’s feet<br />for light. come to me wet from out<br />the rolling edges <br />the barely fitted<br />parts of us. my rage is made<br />of all those simple<br />joys the mailman<br />takes to hell. there<br />is no hell. on the scenic railroad<br />we sit in one place and the art<br />moves all the painted stuff the hills<br />and dales. when we get out we’re<br />enormous.<br />we walk over the machinery and through the town<br />and out on the cut-outs<br />the stars.<br />bowling green <br />sewin machine. green<br />is the night green <br />kindled and appareled. green <br />kindling. time<br />of your life. <br />colors <br />in the soaked logs. death in a small place<br />is large as needs be. <br />for the breathing space. for the sudden access<br />to other. for everything remembered in<br />the lights of coming light. who<br />would deny the snake his simple<br />musicality? on the green green grass<br />the brass shines curved and potent. on the green green grass<br />the bandshell flutters <br />white wood. in<br />the hearts of the kids and the agèd<br />god flutters too. one great rolling<br />ripple through the flesh of minds. daisy daisy.<br />real as hell gone home. know what that’s like<br />in the twilight when you know<br />that all the things as hell<br />are pictured<br />right there up the stairs<br />in re-<br />arrangement? it’s all bloody nothing<br />but better wade through. it’s<br />the beast that eats your head in little<br />cakes. get smart<br />the refrigerator says. I open I close<br />says the door. the bedroom is full<br />of empty hats<br />and outside the fire engines idle. that light.<br />summer night. <br />all your stuff<br />is pasted on. piss on it. <br />walkin away so cool.<br />if there were a bridge to nowhere<br />where would it attach? this is a monday morning <br />in the year of our lord<br />Ə.<br />the numbers mean nothing. the scaffolding<br />means nothing. wheat means something <br />what? wheat? wheat <br />means nothing. <br />so all these things inside have names<br />and not one means <br />a goddamn thing. good<br />place to start. can give<br />to a mute fish the voice of<br />an angel. nightingale. the voice of the angel. ngale. <br />shatters the gorgon’s head in her dripping<br />courtyard. any head. <br />in the furnished room<br />are the gorgon’s head and a long silence. the muteness<br />of the fish. as if one snapped fingers<br />the papier maché rises. <br />fuck it then. <br />it ain’t no head it’s just<br />for scaring the kids. one two three and fall to knee. four five six<br />and tock tick tock. the voice of the angel<br />freezes the tracks<br />and the green grass grows<br />all around all around. <br />endgame. no? kind of like something<br />remembered. <br />the mistake is at <br />any head. also<br />the green grass<br />is a mistake. kind of like <br />maybe not. the card with the great<br />circus fire on it<br />flips neatly through the air to ground. to ground a system<br />is to provide it with roots. the terrible fucking thing<br />is the ball lightning. hold<br />my hand. I’ll go back and look now<br />and notice. the cat’s gone away on<br />his own.<br />seven go-ahead places between the neck<br />and the body. grow ahead<br />why don’t you? I can’t. <br />sit down and say that<br />and understand it. you can’t. <br />makes no difference<br />sit there.<br />there are some guys when<br />they die it’s like<br />they leaned too far back in the chair and then there’s<br />that feeling. this is in the room where the floor<br />sheers off. up on the fourth floor. <br />in the dark all the border<br />flowers nod in the breeze. which two <br />eyes see? <br />the ones with the marbles <br />are fat as cheese<br />ghost eyes. the light bandits.<br />the overcoat twirling <br />its dead feet. the alcohol. oh<br />for the pleasures of the harbor. tangy<br />port<br />and Willie dead<br />and all our dreams<br />remembered. <br />the snow came just in time<br />in great shapes. I touched it and the edges of the shapes<br />changed. how it fell on my life<br />at the edge of everything. beyond this snow<br />is mercy. mercy is<br />the fact of this snow and its im-<br />placability. how the eye sees<br />the world is the place<br />of the knowledge. which<br />is of touch. and fall. and opening<br />distance made particle. drift<br />made dance. oh how we danced. did<br />we? seemed that maybe<br />we missed in the shift of the tracks. in the shine<br />of the tracks. <br />in the tracks of the tracks through the air to the place of<br />speech. <br />hear me haltingly say in the evening<br />that the fall of snow grows blue as evening<br />falls. a few words back and forth. they touch<br />too. each other. they<br />collide so that <br />this one<br />falls left <br />and that <br />one<br />falls right. <br />and the meaning<br />runs off between<br />dead Euclid’s eyes. more<br />watery now. more lakes<br />to fish in. everything everyone<br />has place. it’s a charm bracelet<br />thing. and the angel detaché <br />opens and closes the vaginal clam.<br />the power the grace and <br />the stupid poetry. <br />fucking stupid<br />pot of message. would they were all in<br />the air in the manner<br />of bees poke their holes and<br />are gone. brown and gold and sounding. of course of course. they<br />will be gone <br />as jupiter falls like a tumbling coin and the night breaks free<br />of glass and expectation. one fine swirl<br />of cape and nowhere dimension. <br />the cape is not this and then that. the cape <br />is a swirl and the rain. far afield <br />I came to words <br />as a vast open grave<br />in a meadow. or was it a ramp? <br />without the words the walls have nothing lighting<br />anymore. but where’s the harm<br />in that? the walls have light<br />as snow has fall<br />and meadows graves and bees the fine<br />particularity. snowflakes buzz<br />too. passing the looming<br />sign in the air. <br />I Am the <br />Electric Place. I am the place<br />in the meadow <br />raised high<br />to the mass of you. <br />press your hand<br />against the face<br />of falling snow. trace its features. stick<br />your tongue out. <br />I remember remember<br />Miriam’d never<br />seen snow and twirled in it.<br />long thick brown hair moving <br />like alive. like thought. <br />I remember the real and the unreal and their hands press one <br />to the other. my love. everything <br />has a place as everything<br />has a death. perfect <br />simplicity. in simple city<br />lives the man<br />who comes around at twilight lit<br />with death. <br />the most beautiful light. broken<br />to numbers and walking away from it all<br />so cool. one tight mind. the sprawling night. the palace<br />of memory<br />built of the streets and of<br />thought and of love. cold blue arches steel<br />and moon. blown paper. steam in the cold.<br />light of god.<br />never out of touch <br />never over touch<br />never short on cloud<br />in head. a bouquet of the luminous<br />miniscule. a loveliness beyond<br />the pale. a real.<br />a being. nerves <br />and light and broken <br />stairs. <br />if you’re in danger<br />listen hard <br />you’ll hear the tumbling tumbleweed in the ever<br />same. the route of ambling<br />easy final in the blue <br />blue shadows.<br />the great thing is<br />as dying goes<br />the fake is left<br />in the stable. where would I<br />of all bright things<br />have come to understand death<br />as an ambling<br />on horseback <br />away from the great stone skull [head]? <br />where are you? <br />in the big parade the dead guys march<br />along the rutted country lane. you see their eyes? you hear there [their]<br />hearts beating?<br />the sounds of the beating<br />hearts of the dead <br />is in Ripley. <br />everything moving<br />at once and the only<br />light is the light of<br />the eye. one big eye<br />is red and flat<br />and one is cold<br />and white and flat.<br />and all I care’s <br />the one that rolls<br />will get me home<br />for dinner. love<br />bade me eat in a place where people<br />laugh once in a while. if you want your kid to be a decent<br />human being laugh <br />once in a while. all<br />together now. <br />but they don’t care<br />don’t care and let them <br />at the tumbling keys they’ll turn <br />the world to metaphoric<br />shit surrounds the heart <br />like smothered hands. not Monk<br />though.<br />my old friend death says watch<br />me fucking run. off the planet. <br />out to the end where the whole thing <br />really fucking is. I’m death and my long hair streams blond<br />in the sunlight. I’m death and the world rolls away<br />under me. I make space<br />and in my hand<br />the bees creep. hi. <br />this is me and<br />this is my job. and <br />if I could<br />there would be none<br />of words misunder<br />stood or dark. <br />past the thin mirror. the eggshell. the leaping <br />blood that falls to <br />earth. the edge <br />of the fuschia. the heart of the dog<br />star. the pictures in that head in which<br />the buttons float. red and green in concave<br />pairs. off and on <br />and live and die and be<br />and flutter.<br />down to St. James<br />emporium. there’s a mistake<br />above. as above<br />so below. there’s a mistake in the matter<br />of buttons. I wouldn’t lead<br />you wrong. even if you are<br />green.<br />I wouldn’t do that. what <br />a right guy I am. hey.<br />here’s this small <br />tantric sermon.. give it to you<br />cheap. you can give it <br />to your girl. make her <br />stop and think in all <br />the clothes and stuff.<br />sure [ ].<br />what the hell. nobody<br />lives forever. <br />the men who haunt me are<br />not so bad. for the most part. <br />for the better part. <br />I give what’s due<br />it’s due. <br />Smart falls<br />in three parts. Melville<br />looks out the window at the harbor which is now<br />a great gray heart. Jay <br />Gatsby dies of a hole bleeding<br />Demeter slowly and Spicer <br />smiles and says hi. shyly. <br />the poem will <br />go on forever. blow<br />your nose and come to order. <br />we associate understanding <br />with tones of voice. we’re dumb<br />as dirt. the work assumes and contains and extends<br />over all and never<br />forget. one step twice<br />that’s all she wrote. in the air that was sweet as<br />the rose of the summer. in the long twilight<br />of her hand. in the train of her appleness nightgown went tremblingly <br />by and croaked as it went. croaked. <br />in the endless silence the black bird croaked<br />and the whole of creation came round in panels and lattices.<br />honeydew and thigh-bells. murderous hands and children<br />tucked behind vapors. here <br />you might drive a peg through my head <br />just for placement. here you might scrawl on the fence we<br />came this way before but didn’t <br />know but now we don’t<br />no more. <br />there isn’t a single thought from out<br />the high-toned crowd of fancy dan <br />poseurs I wouldn’t piss on. <br />my obligations are clear. <br />we need to follow through.<br />don’t we? <br />on Easter morning ‘62<br />with no one awake but me <br />so it seems <br />I in a three piece suit walking down eighty-sixth toward the corner’s <br />wire trash basket in it<br />a dead man <br />lying back with just his ass <br />wedged in the basket. <br />we look at each other. <br />when I come back<br />the other way.<br />he’s gone. tell me a story<br />daddy. Sergeant Preston<br />cuts the snow and Easter morning<br />falls like a tray of biscuits. <br />now.<br />what the hell is wrong and why? this is the weave<br />and it all must be here. <br />must it? <br />nah.<br />but hints must be here. though<br />the gleam is always<br />fugitive. <br />running away on a wednesday morning <br />never coming back.<br />take that as you will. <br />sadly. <br />there is no certainty of that. <br />may come back locked<br />in big old carriage <br />wheels with blackbirds at my face <br />and a sun of the morning<br />intacto.<br />the words are door and foot<br />and sure and glass. the errors are many and in them we find<br />the poem. the salted mine. the place by the side of the road<br />where the passing is all<br />accomplished. it’s always the side of the road or the banks<br />of the river. the unknown<br />can be known. the unsaid<br />can be said. <br />but mystery <br />is forever.<br />who was that guy? <br />one flat face comes leaping out on springs and trills the water<br />edge to edge. one new place is opened up and how the standing hats are smokestacks see<br />the silken women open up and twilight in a band of angels. the movement <br />is so slow from here that half the time goes by in shale <br />and fingernails. unreal undead<br />city gone by yesterday. <br />red <br />clay bank no child. not a one <br />in the long stress <br />of faces. <br />dead clue giveaway. <br />true-heart kid<br />gone down the sluice<br />and turned to gold<br />in pebbles. <br />none not a one<br />to be left to the long <br />line of birds. you see <br />how they turn as we pass and show<br />their beaks.<br />oh pay attention.<br />in the errors are all of the truths of the long<br />tracing. where the errors are the truth shows through.<br />J. Arthur Rank<br />and the dark of the wheel beaten gold.<br />this is a place<br />in the poem.<br />watch out.<br />I come down the stairs with<br />your hand. no.<br />with all of you.<br />the errors reach their hands the one<br />to the other and build the great passages between. the human<br />universe. I don’t care. we<br />were as we were<br />and we loved<br />it.<br />so [sew].<br />now then when.<br />inside you I was pulled to god<br />like an assembly. today the first bright song will be<br />the face of you in full<br />unknowing. the cloud of<br />the face of<br />the gasp.<br />the first will be<br />the next come<br />end. my particular end comes unconsciously.. <br />stop and slide and love. the woman in the elegance steps <br />from out the crowd and sliding<br />we mix on the floor<br />apart<br />but mixed<br />and step to the music unheard but<br />there. <br />okay. <br />I step on her foot and<br />she smiles <br />that smile with which the graceful knowing <br />take the un in grace.<br />there are no pasted<br />steps. <br />this is not metaphor. this<br />is life. <br />the self-willed is not<br />and the knife in the back<br />pulls the set to attention on <br />my desktop now <br />you’ll find a deep gray silver print of Navy Day<br />1946 the day<br />I was three and there. we were. my<br />father and I in the cold white cream and gray<br />of the river. the Hudson. <br />look at the size of it. in all that size<br />is a mind insisting no. <br />I am not here I will not<br />be here. but the loved ones will take you<br />where you would not go as the turning<br />planet carries them.<br />feel the breeze. the braided ladders<br />hang from the carrier.<br />here I am<br />and I was god <br />help me <br />whacha gonna do?<br />embrace death. the ease of it.<br />walkin away from it all<br />so cool. <br />the light coming down from out the broken.<br />the foot with a substance of leg.<br />as if there were somewhere<br />to go. nine<br />lives in one place are <br />one brain in nine places. <br />press your feet to the ground<br />and whistle through your lovely bones<br />the roses of picardy graveyards..<br />the moonlight serenades. the sprawled <br />and slippery entrail<br />falling viewmasters. <br />a bit of music and a slice <br />of flesh <br />and all the stuff we don’t<br />tell the kids. <br />see that city<br />down the valley<br />that’s the brightest<br />place there is. <br />and all the kids there<br />have no one at all. and all the food<br />is dragged by savage cats down long black alleys <br />you can’t stand up in. if you’re Irish<br />come into the parlor. we’ll pop your heart at the door<br />for the weasel. the cry of the ten cent<br />beauty. the feast in the house<br />of the dead barely <br />a face left to eat <br />came sailing through the foggy dew. <br />so [sew] and sew again. <br />do you hear in the back of my head the fine skirl<br />of the waltz? the way things are<br />we barely have <br />to finish the line. the damndest<br />thing. <br />everything that’s cant<br />we take seriously <br />and everything that’s true<br />we kick to the side of the road. <br />kick her head<br />down Regal Way<br />and fuck her dead<br />with lies. <br />the Hudson is a wide gray line<br />and on it move the ships that once<br />were burning. these<br />are not personal matters. <br />I stop where the outlines<br />are clearest then turn<br />and turn again. the poet<br />has no personal<br />if he’s doing his job. the poem<br />lifts and drags and sighs like<br />the snake of the world. <br />that’s just personal.<br />hell. <br />those be his eyes!<br />I<br />have no solitary. <br />get it?<br />for once and for all<br />in the staggering ballroom<br />the band plays the three<br />in the morning.<br />the waltz. <br />I <br />was born this way and find the errors<br />full of love and grief like carpet.<br />this is a different river <br />and maybe it runs<br />to the Laws of Large Numbers. <br />the flaming London.<br />this is a different poem and yet<br />and yet.<br />the problem with the flat<br />bike tire is<br />that something is always<br />missing. not for the spandex monsters<br />but the kids <br />this is for. lost at Clove Lake Park and suddenly <br />flat though the patch kit is there it’s just <br />the pump isn’t. or the wrench. or the eyes<br />of the belovèd. Carol<br />it was then. her face. lost<br />in the rowboats and tangle of snakes<br />in the reeds and the catkins pussy<br />willow. oh my love. can’t get back<br />without no tire. <br />walked the bike back<br />and when I got to nowhere then<br />I walked back home again<br />and left the words alone<br />for a while.<br />alive alive o. she died of a favor<br />and no one could save her. alive as I can be in this <br />the walking frame of likeminded monads. it’s all in the different<br />colors and sounds in the far valleys<br />the amygdala. I remember<br />you. you put your hand on mine against<br />the wall and then<br />the double. that gray day on the river there<br />your snowy muff was laid out over<br />79th. at the river. street. we came to die<br />but found the eye<br />of other. we<br />died anyway<br />but the ember in passing <br />breeze lived again.<br />and sang in orange.<br />not worth the paper<br />it’s written on. <br />the long gray line. <br />the plucking in<br />the chest. the eyes<br />on the river. the roar of the stack<br />of the clouds. the subwayed<br />river. the life<br />down there.<br />the inadequate<br />in sections.<br />the press of the thumb.<br />the waking to sleep and the glory<br />of it. raised up here where nothing is<br />its name and the pomegranate idea <br />bleeds in sections and is<br />not. the poemgranate<br />telephone. just between you<br />and me. the dyes come out of the sea in a fine<br />transparency. I wrap you in the being and<br />my brain goes down the stairs to flat<br />rock and cave. the colors eat me <br />and happy at last I find a new library with a new lamp<br />and a fluttery door. <br />and down to the path of<br />the ducks and their turn <br />of the pool. the municipal pool<br />is in Sunset Park<br />where late one night in dream I watched<br />from an apartment window. <br />and I was other.<br />with ruby lips. the curtain fucked<br />the breeze. the old crochet.<br />the breasts in lilac. many<br />things to say but how<br />the poem eats them.<br />puppy chow. <br />the breathing in the hall of the statues. museums<br />are like that. I have a museum in my head<br />and in it streaming runners pass<br />themselves in painted windows. <br />every painting shrugs a little skips<br />a frame. <br />just like that.<br />statuary<br />is just for creep. the deltoids<br />creep. the breath comes down the line <br />of fancy-ass cursive. <br />come on in. I’m<br />all the rage I’m<br />dead in squares laid out beneath me <br />like a picnic cloth. the ants coming out of the bloody statues. <br />all this stuff I thought in 19<br />55 or so. went places then<br />by myself. saw the women in their summer bodies. you.<br />make my heart a wreck. a ten cent cold Rilke and a two dollar trip<br />to the Jazz Gallery. <br />a city with skirt around hips<br />and hot stone fronts<br />with glass [glass]. glass between and glass between<br />faces. never thought I’d make it to<br />the dance. never thought I would. but<br />there we were and artifice<br />became the leg up. the speaking mechanicals.<br />the mystery scrawls. araby. the light in the air before<br />thunder the twist of the dark maple life in the little front yard the cold<br />of the hands of the rain. the voices. all the voices<br />come from out <br />the little boxes. and because they were flesh<br />they die with the down-winding<br />spring. machinery gathers itself into a huge<br />arrow. croak the hollow tense the spring and leap<br />the decal [decal]<br />campfire. see your mother’s eyes go up<br />and fade there big as moons.<br />because you were<br />a small thing held<br />in hands and can’t forget. make<br />the effort. any number <br />have forgotten. perhaps. any number say they have<br />forgotten. human beings will say<br />any damn thing to get you to stop<br />asking questions. but you <br />don’t really forget<br />do you? somewhere right around the edges of<br />the acorn there’s<br />the light of the afternoon<br />hill of the dreaming <br />hands.<br />with the fingers the head <br />that falls back<br />to be caught. <br />london bridge<br />and so on. <br />and for every broken hand that falls<br />away there will be grief passed out <br />like ration stamps. <br />here.<br />you’re still real. <br />you’re not crazy<br />you’re born. <br />there is no power there’s only<br />the hands that pick you up the smile<br />if you’re lucky.<br />walk<br />up the avenue. the Easter parade was never a thing worth<br />recounting. the fatuities of the rich are hinged<br />to what’s been denied them a glimpse <br />of the whole broken heart at<br />the boathouse filling.<br />debarkation for <br />Wackyland.<br />and all the buttons shine on all<br />the winter coats like <br />eyes of god.<br />ramps that go up<br />and ramps go down<br />and a band on the main deck <br />plays<br />Strawberry Blonde. we sing full<br />of grace we sing <br />we’re nine and ten <br />and so on <br />sing we<br />Casey got hit with<br />a bucket of shit and<br />the band played<br />on.<br />he waltzed through the door<br />and got hit with some more <br />as the band played<br />on.<br />the sins of the fathers<br />float for a while in the sway<br />of the music. <br />they hold to their wives <br />as if the gray<br />were pearl. <br />the mass of the riverboat <br />floats on clarinet<br />accordion<br />and snare drum. <br />the embedded machines<br />arrow themselves flawlessly<br />to the mystery. <br />what the faces they make<br />in the coming dark. the drawn <br />mechanical <br />arms move smooth the broken eyes <br />akimbo down <br />the underpass. the <br />oncoming wholeness<br />of cold but for friction. <br />orange<br />crush bobs its waxiness. dead-leg <br />stomp on the rivets. melancholy <br />babies early <br />on and too-late off<br />the avenue.<br />see how the winter takes hold and the poem skates.<br />I’d enter my own home justified.<br />where might that be, sonny?<br />where the caterpillars fall all green<br />and creep to the edge of the substance <br />where rising<br />they wave in the air.<br />jesus move it on then. the match game’s down<br />the way and so’s<br />the pussy. so<br />it is<br />bethankit. <br />some hae meat<br />and canna eat<br />and some wad eat<br />that want it.<br />but we hae meat<br />and we can eat<br />so let the lord<br />bethankit.<br />the laptop which<br />is dense as lead<br />would tell me that<br />the scottish <br />dictionary threatens<br />me with data with<br />which I should not<br />fuck around. <br />from the mouths<br />of babes. <br />these fucking bairns are lost in the woods see <br />and it’s fucking getting<br />dark and it’s really<br />cold. it’s really<br />fucking cold<br />and they can’t<br />believe it.<br />the light fantastic <br />down the stairs <br />that wind [whined]<br />the chimney. <br />watching the sun come up on the sprawled<br />deck of stone cards each<br />with a painting some guy made<br />in the warehouse under<br />talent and a broken window <br />painted<br />in the light off the river<br />the blizzard<br />at heart. <br />bring’em back alive<br />for Eddie the Pastrami King. <br />he is too. just that.<br />the King of Pastrami <br />in autumn by heave<br />of the river. down <br />the empty street <br />in the sketched <br />declivity. <br />the shorthand gouge <br />of thumb. erase <br />me please and leave no shine<br />of pressed-on words<br />or lunch. <br />see how the river<br />won’t go but keeps coming.<br />to the big<br />hint. <br />the place of the rollers. the narrative<br />of A. Gordon Pym. the monolith<br />knows everything<br />is being. <br />a big fucking pile<br />of art-deco flutings<br />and junk. so<br />beautiful. <br />suppose now you’re sitting in a fake railway car<br />and outside the fake countries are turning by on a continuous<br />sewn [sown] together screen with scenes<br />to which beauty has been added by<br />the snark and a retinue<br />of seaside proprietors the James<br />Boys. you look in the eyes across<br />the lady in the dark’s <br />and fold your legs at the ankle think <br />and think and<br />think.<br />the car isn’t moving the sown<br />screen is moving but going nowhere over and over<br />again in the night are the snow-lit<br />mountains <br />the moon<br />and the painted <br />haloesthe lamps. <br />could it be a between-decks<br />entertainment? a scar on the life’s<br />face? life <br />itself? <br />far to the north <br />is the south. far in the locks of the weir are the damned<br />barristers. <br />and the softening drowned girl. <br />so wear a colander<br />for the rays <br />and break a leg <br />for the praise.<br />and offer out your hand to that<br />one frightened child at edge of the great <br />ruffles of north and the southern <br />gills of the unwanted body and round mouth <br />DNA for sale<br />real cheep. Old <br />Macdonald<br />has a well full of terrible<br />things in the night. aeiou. black sound spaces and endless<br />hills of the great plain roll <br />it over.<br />play the empty organ touch<br />of the fake all.<br />I <br />stepped on her foot and<br />she smiled. of these things<br />my life is made. how<br />about you?<br />bethankit.<br />here from the ditch of the word. from the broken-<br />down sequence the big<br />handshake.<br />they came down from the hills with the eyes<br />of flashlight.<br />we came clambering out of the briars with hearts and with<br />tongues.<br />were there nothing else<br />there would still be you. pasted over there<br />with big fat head. <br />that’s me<br />in the painted world.<br />where’s the surprise? everyone knows<br />there are places that come<br />between sleep.<br />the mountain’s jugular.<br />the paste and the knowledge. <br />the butterfly bandages.<br />I lived briefly<br />between two rooms in a hallway<br />here and there lacy as if there were endless<br />erasures had finally <br />worn through the geography so that <br />in odd breezes I could sometimes feel<br />the touch of the fringes [fingers] <br />of what had been breathing <br />against me a mouth<br />its lips <br />making me turn <br />disconsolate and honored in the merging lost<br />pearls of the dappled light. through <br />the fringed [fingered] <br />places nothing <br />to see but dark <br />and the occasional<br />passing of hands <br />a conjuror’s say leaving<br />trails behind thin <br />clothes against the razor <br />cold.<br />notice. the well is a telescope.<br />our secret is<br />that everything known <br />comes from way outside.<br />great green gobs of<br />greasy grimy gopher guts. <br />music has it easy. fucking<br />big wigs. an owl<br />dog possum alligator and turtle<br />lend their risen voices <br />to Annie Laurie.<br />who eats them all<br />at sundown. <br />the forest trembles.<br />the words fall down to iodine <br />and band-aids red with sweet <br />by and by. <br />could this be magic?<br />no. <br />the real is simply.<br />not what you think.<br />and what you’ve been given<br />is the power to throw away<br />the notion of power. <br />fucking throw it away. <br />ah um.<br />I don’t know how<br />Dad. <br />but don’t be sad<br />I’ll learn.<br />of course. <br />I look in the windows and the people I see<br />are much like me. the songs they sing.<br />the pure breath. the pulse on the air <br />of the dying. to winter god I think<br />come get me now<br />as I<br />am done in the soup<br />of the loving those <br />dear sad wrecks who raised me when<br />my parents were away to work trying <br />hard as they could. I<br />belong to Glasgow going <br />roond and roond.<br />only<br />seems that way. never found the high road found<br />the low road made me ill. <br />never found a fucking thing <br />but something came<br />from out the thunder anyway.<br />the head. the thunderhead. <br />flak is the color<br />of my true love’s hair.<br />I think to god<br />and offer up <br />this life for turn <br />to green and a certain<br />merriment among those <br />who know in the high air. <br />the kids as always think there’s something<br />special in the timely yo-yo seasons<br />of words and their related <br />lies. I dust my feet [foot]<br />off and head for the place of the approaching<br />image not image. <br />all-wrapped man with feet and head that rocks<br />a bit. in the furrowed distance. in the fields of the jostling<br />for solid. a drink of water<br />through the map <br />life-like. the map is deep<br />so how to roll<br />it up?<br />with soft thumbs. the trick’s to find nowhere<br />and mark it with blood. one footprint. the bones<br />of a lost hand. the related<br />lies. the turn of the corner<br />to x street. how<br />cozy it is. how sudden and remembered. <br />yo yo season.<br />see the disks<br />go up and down. <br />so does One-Eye. so <br />does The Empty Duchess. <br />they are not real<br />who only come<br />to feint and bob<br />your life away. <br />it should tell you something<br />how powerful<br />the unreal are. have<br />access to power because<br />they aren’t real. only the loveless<br />go looking for love.<br />all we get’s<br />a fake name <br />and a pair of eyes go click. <br />see in the distance<br />how they approach <br />there are three now. dressed in russet. dressed<br />in Ruskin. the cypresses<br />make slides. the heat makes <br />images. the dead<br />make tracks. flippety flop<br />the Keystone Cops. <br />hi Susan. <br />remember you to death. the blue silk<br />with the high neck<br />and the silver. your fluttery eyes at twilight <br />in the House on the Borderland. seemed to me<br />we were quite alone. perhaps<br />not. in the lacquers and layers and peelings of the long<br />summers maybe<br />there were others. crossing Great South Bay in <br />your little outboard. who the hell<br />are we? anyway? <br />the flapping on the hull the spray <br />and the endless man-made depths the old<br />refrigerators and the new <br />flounders. the scallops and<br />evil-eye mackerels. the woman <br />up to her waist in money. <br />icelandic poppy<br />through a nervous glass. <br />three hundred thousand dead <br />do the Madison on the bay. <br />Dirty Old Town <br />is a ghost song. <br />the Jones Beach Water Tower is a forgotten<br />job. you came up once<br />breaking the water and between your toes <br />[hath sent me to sea for pearls <br />was a littleneck clam. see. you said. <br />I can still do it. <br />so you can. never should have brought you<br />to California. an act<br />of cruelty that was.<br />but who knew? you get to be<br />a certain being marked<br />with traceries of sun and leaves and failures.<br />then you stand naked in a clear light and look<br />and there’s no more sense<br />of what to do or where.<br />than when the silver rang on both sides <br />of the rockered horse oh <br />Rocking Horse Winner and oh what a good boy<br />am I.<br />the oldest autumn leaves keep watch<br />by the old furnace where there’s room<br />for everything.<br />and outside the rain falls in long drops sometimes. <br />streaky like the fat in the short ribs. <br />they once pulled by themselves. <br />see them in the rain?<br />you know you can you know.<br />remember?<br />you know you can you know<br />the snap of the rubber-band mountains the fold<br />of the bedspread tent the one<br />fucking hugeness.<br />you know you can. I’m sitting in the somewhat late <br />middle of 1948 and looking<br />at a matched pair of Scots terriers with magnets. <br />on their feet they fill the world now<br />and then you know the truth <br />but it won’t let <br />back you in <br />without you die with palms out as kite. as painted thing<br />for the air where the stitches roll like hills<br />and the voices come stumbling<br />and light. you know you can you know open <br />your eyes and stretch this <br />or that muscle. where<br />will you be now<br />the light’s out again? ambiguous at best. the light’s<br />always where it is. put<br />your feet on the floor. it’s better not<br />it’s better not<br />to lie in your own head as bed in the shifting<br />universe. the great mackerel<br />still-life <br />of brain in the moonlight <br />is false as the night <br />follows day is<br />the art of the possible living <br />the death of the cutie-pie<br />faces the carnival glass<br />moments. it’s better to rise<br />with the dawn. which is this or that and moving know<br />that in the hillside forest every<br />morning when the dawn is not<br />yet there’s a flat wind comes and cuts through the tops<br />of the trees and every<br />leaf feels it. yes. the name of the wind might be slake. <br />but every morning it rises and comes up out of nowhere and skrees through the tops of the trees<br />in a gesture. the hand palm down goes sweeping out ending. in the great. <br />you know you can you know in the rose. in the<br />future of past by the green where the village. <br />in the thought. in the momentary<br />rose of the wind and hand and star and the end of the whole was<br />the whole risen. is the whole. and the end of the light<br />was its finest place. its shell of light<br />with something out<br />as if there were a place<br />were there.<br />for in my nature I thirsted after beauty but God,<br />God hath sent me to see for pearls. <br />which seem <br />to contain light. rolling down the heavens smooth<br />as silk on flesh. and over there you are <br />as proof. and over there my eyes. and foot right here<br />and chest in the couch and heart bumping down<br />on the road to the road to the road. you in the distance <br />and wrapped in the light <br />of one more being. one more way<br />to be. dissolve<br />of course. resolve <br />of course. the course of the fabulous river is dug<br />with a thumbnail. <br />how intentional. <br />this is dissolved<br />and so is resolved<br />and that is the nearer<br />for all. and anguish and physical<br />pain and ugly <br />to eye and bent <br />and deranged and alone in the light<br />and the dark in the light <br />and twisted in lone <br />and lost in regret and visible <br />in misery and wrenched <br />from the womb and abandoned in bedclothes and lost<br />in the interlocked buildings choking<br />on grief and its stringiness wishing<br />for simple <br />dissolve. be <br />all resolved in one fell swoop <br />of the hand of the other. the light<br />of that which approaches<br />is not approached<br />and beneath that river to the sea <br />the cold ropes stream the bones and wave<br />the lace of fingers<br />flop of skull <br />and voice apart from flesh when first <br />I saw you on the village green <br />my life was over all again<br />for good.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-32035569674905634582009-03-13T09:38:00.000-07:002009-03-13T09:40:23.156-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SbqMY6vJoOI/AAAAAAAAACM/ZPtiBlkCtnA/s1600-h/the+rocking+horse.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SbqMY6vJoOI/AAAAAAAAACM/ZPtiBlkCtnA/s320/the+rocking+horse.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312713070148690146" /></a>Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-16730915650309831082009-02-19T12:15:00.000-08:002009-03-27T11:09:32.470-07:00in light of<br />the moon and venus <br />and jupiter faintly. there’s a big<br />hole in my head and it has ghostly<br />cylinder sides. high air all around. thumbs<br />of tomorrow today. it was tomorrow. <br />the little book I learn to love<br />says lie down now and<br />wait. and wait and wait.<br />this is the barrel<br />at the edge of the deadly<br />desert. nice and cool<br />it is except<br />for noon.<br />were there not several<br />versions of me there’d be no reasonable<br />horizon. and god knows I go there<br />to yell. but,<br />this is all so much<br />filler. <br />in light of<br />moon and venus faintly<br />jupiter, and there’s a big<br />hole in my head. it goes down and down<br />but nowhere fast. know what it is<br />directional mathematics? at peace I wait<br />the morning out, and love <br />as I do.<br /><br /><br /><br />not you. you.<br />is it a heap of broken stuff<br />or a crowd? is anyone<br />surprised to see<br />the giant face brooding lovely<br />on the hill? the face of the corpse lacks a certain<br />touchability. on<br />the other hand,<br />the ring won’t come off. <br />I wrote this morning that some lives<br />concentrate down to a<br />rosebud, like that. the center<br />of possibility. some lives<br />brood on the hillside having<br />nothing left but face. others die<br />justified, left and right. still<br />others are still. be still.<br />cold light stars and planets colored <br />inside the lines.<br /><br /><br /><br />was it Captain MacWhirr? really? the typhoon<br />of glass in the white night? got some nerve to pick a name<br />like that. when<br />Raoul Walsh needed a boat sucked up by a typhoon he put<br />the model in a big bucket of water. turned it over <br />with the camera running then<br />ran it in reverse. you need to think that way. all<br />the time now. slowly <br />turn my hand to light it does <br />its job. bounces back<br />the light. need to know<br />what you’re doing. what<br />you won’t know is what<br />it’s doing. never will.<br />anyway. the Captain<br />has his slicker on. it gleams through the gleam<br />as the sea rises hollow and cylinder endless<br />and smooth. jupiter is barely seen.<br />the green. electric<br />orangeade.<br /><br /><br /><br />in a sequence is noticed<br />beginning and end <br />and precarious. <br />moves. right along.<br />move it along johnny <br />or you’ll get my foot<br />up your ass. <br />move it along. orion is my god of moves<br />across the face of the earth be<br />holden. how it was and how it will<br />be once. in the great clutter<br />of things I’ve been given<br />an imagined arrangement of stars<br />hangs above and punctuates<br />mr. lincoln’s<br />hat. there’s nothing in this life at all<br />but for noticing, describing,<br />and coming whole <br />to grief with a swollen<br />appreciation. Holden<br />got out <br />of the black rain <br />trap. in The Dark<br />Past.<br /><br /><br /><br />every bit conscious. what do you have to say<br />with your pants down the lane with the Widow<br />Labyrinthina? ah, what have I done? there’s something simple here<br />and quite beyond the mind which fancies <br />itself, don’t it? get <br />the hook.<br />apply to the academy and note in your letter <br />your honors. note too<br />Mrs. Beaver’s elegant frock<br />and the death of the light<br />fantastic. blind man’s bluff. the classes fall<br />into categories easily<br />enough. easy as double-entry<br />bookkeeping. I’d break your heart <br />if I could find it. hit it hard <br />in your newborn <br />english department. <br />much as does the glue factory<br />the english department comes to being<br />faintly all the time. <br />then there it is. fuck it all. <br />in wide circle of pale starlight run <br />the bright swift fish the bits of life the monad<br />letters come dreamy came dreamy. damp day.<br />shorter life.<br />ecstasy.<br /><br /><br /><br />yeah, but,<br />is the answer the blind man<br />gets on the subway. playing his b<br />flat alto. <br />what does he see?<br />I think to myself.<br />but I’m young<br />and don’t know it’s not<br />a serious question.<br />if I stick the nose of a telescope in<br />the light from jupiter <br />do I really see the past? are there <br />transparencies bumping<br />their edges and department<br />store dummies and faint<br />saxophone? <br />not a single<br />child’s question <br />has ever<br />been answered <br />by anyone.<br /><br /><br /> <br /><br />welcome<br />to ghost island.<br />the big yellow key<br />and the starlight on the sea<br />wall. understand we don’t ascend<br />to god. god is not just a better<br />more-of-the-same. we<br />fall to god. ho ho the voices from<br />the center of the island echo.<br />they got caves<br />and they got combs<br />and they got towers and they <br />got money to burn. ho ho.<br />sky tonight and starlight on <br />the trail. the rails too.<br />big yellow key made of old and melted<br />yellow barrettes. will<br />you be on time?<br />will you be<br />in time?<br />will you be<br />under time? look.<br />a handful of dust is<br />a handful of life and the island of images<br />creaks on the sea like that boat.<br />the Sea Wolf’s.<br /><br /><br /><br />it is as if and<br />more. take me this handful of dust to the post<br />office <br />and send it to the fireflies. the occasional<br />suitcased, the decoder <br />rings in flight. we had a ring came by mail <br />and you put a square of paper in the top <br />and held it still in the sunlight <br />and lo was a picture of the Lone<br />Ranger. we take the big blank book<br />out on the big blank rock and lo,<br />history. serious as can be, smiling. the smile,<br />after all, is the only sign of knowledge. <br />did you see that kid in the street? a handful<br />of reasssembly in the bright of mind reflecting <br />the projected? the movie starts and where’s<br />time. if it<br />[what?<br />were nothing<br />but simplest feel of love <br />it were all. at the top of my head is the picture that grows<br />in the pinhole light. who is it this time? <br />Lawrence Kenneth Kearney<br />late of red dust filling cloud<br />and road. the pictures come out real, no name<br />attached. Red Cloud Jamie <br />used to call me. lovely<br />girl.<br /><br /><br /><br />writing up a storm. Storm<br />is a woman named Jameson had<br />these books on the shelf in the old<br />library. how I loved it there though not<br />for Storm Jameson never <br />read her. the storm <br />moved all across the sea<br />in a ball bearing. and it was silver <br />and rage and dull <br />and foam. <br />images down this coast the coast<br />of course <br />is elsewhere<br />and not. of course. the course of the blind<br />river. the storm on the blind<br />sea. was there a movie<br />called Captain China? there was.<br />and the big black heavy<br />crates slid side to side<br />to crush the human<br />flesh and bone. outside<br />the storm on a great<br />waste of sea. everywhere the spinning.<br />every where. <br /><br /><br /><br />odd scraps of death. <br />Storm Jameson: <br />hope is a talent like any other. <br />I never would have thought but for <br />the name and what else was there?<br />hear that?<br />in the first<br />wellness of spring<br />was always a smell <br />in the air never there <br />till then. it come <br />[a thaw; moisture in the air; sweat on ice when frost begins to yield <br />all sudden high electric. in the library<br />the doors would be open and by the gate<br />forsythia new bud. I stand in the aisles of the novels <br />and skip over Storm Jameson. fake name<br />I think. it isn’t. who should I turn to? <br />so many. hope was always<br />my real middle name. <br />and who’s to say<br />I was wrong? consider<br />the lilies, <br />fake the rest.<br /><br /><br /><br />Thair fell ane greit storme at Sanctandroisday of snaw;<br />the elegant diversions of<br />the stone voice brought to hill of light of white. <br />and dark. that hill<br />was right behind our house<br />and out in front the scribbled ocean.<br />so many voices <br />live in the hill,<br />and so many pepper <br />the sea.<br />I lifted my head up<br />and looked through the window<br />and light of the moon and <br />of venus were one<br />in the other. money in my pockets on<br />the floor but not<br />enough. hard day’s night. the library followed me<br />here to the edge of the thumbnail<br />planet. and I love yes I do <br />and god <br />the glass is a river <br />of window.<br /><br /><br /><br />flocks of snow and tender fingers,<br />broken lines of flight and<br />powder. <br />the snow is not never the moon but the moon<br />is on it. a relationship<br />passes in the night.<br />with crooked back<br />and sack of cloth<br />I wander in<br />this surging broth.<br />and ride the onion,<br />slide the grease,<br />portray the carrot,<br />ey the meese. see how they ran. calliope<br />on four stout legs<br />with pipes of silver. ane meese<br />distrubil. storm cloud hides<br />where you see the pussy<br />in the well.<br />i took meese for<br />Muse but's<br />muse. ah ha.<br />‡MEESE, n., v. ne.Sc. form of Eng. muse <br />Cf. meesic, Music, and P.L.D. §§ 35, 128. <br />Also reduplic. form meese-mose, to wonder, <br />be suspicious, imagine things. <br /> <br /><br /><br />I had a peg board. we had<br />an abacus. they had a gatling gun. learn <br />in sequence. be not chaste<br />but come with god. as over the hill<br />comes the coach and the runner. the starver.<br />the ghost with the big<br />eyes. the subway comes to town pre-drawn <br />and lays it’s body<br />down. do you know the stories? do<br />you care? if I<br />could find one open ear<br />I’d go to sleep there<br />just outside.<br />where all the birds and trees are pitched<br />their tents and drawn<br />attentions. take this language<br />break it up <br />and scatter meaning. <br />feed the trout. <br />I knew a girl<br />named Stephanie Trout.<br />and lovely she was <br />in the meadow where everything<br />opens. she had <br />she told me <br />a hole in her heart.<br /><br /><br /><br />as my son said,<br />poetic is to poetry <br />as jazzy is to jazz. <br />halfway up <br />the sideways slope<br />the ragged villain<br />ran to ground.<br />and burbled as he went. <br />unwilled exits. elevator temples. broken<br />hearted melody. we gave it a shot in the old days. <br />the sky looked down<br />and we looked up.<br />and kicking down the coffin street <br />there wasn’t one of us with life<br />expectancy. Nell Gwynn First National<br />held all the real money then. <br />lord take <br />this cup and down <br />the sky. <br />down the sky in a long <br />cool drink of water.<br /><br /><br /><br />did I scare my kids?<br />sometimes. <br />did I want to?<br />above all things, no. <br />above the grave and the rose<br />and the floating corpse. <br />no.<br />so what did you do? <br />I let slip the face of<br />history. mine and all<br />the other stuff <br />around it. we all do terrible things<br />and hardly notice. my effort has been<br />to notice and not<br />repeat..<br />how many times around? <br />A my name is Anna. <br />it only takes the fallen<br />syllable, you know? <br />it takes the razor wind across <br />the eye and voice in fenced<br />place. here and now<br />I say goodbye,<br />and bathe in the cold dim light.<br />the star fuck.<br /><br /><br /><br />I came to the end of the road and it flapped lazily<br />in a stiff highland breeze. <br />of course it was beautiful.<br />in the final landscape everything flutters<br />but beautiful. it’s as if.<br />let’s drop that. <br />hear it clank.<br />the way the paths were at shore road.<br />the way the broke-neck river ran<br />to muscle.<br />this is a difficult day in the world,<br />but I wouldn’t miss it. look forward<br />to nothin at all. look back to the series of<br />things that guy did. the jerk<br />when the breeze gets cold with razor as<br />it was that night rest<br />in the feel of it, the wonderful<br />disinterest. dismemberment.<br />empathetic fallacy.<br /><br /><br /><br />the other night the geometry went out again and just <br />around that curtain was something not the same.<br />a long hall not a door? a nest of beings <br />one right through<br />the other? a murmur <br />[mormor was typed first.<br />of boxed and ribboned<br />space? and through the door<br />a flat-out window? and out the window a great<br />eraser? you know how hard it is<br />to celebrate these empty<br />knots? hold<br />the little hook the question<br />mark it well. this child is want and that<br />ignorance. don’t matter much but the pain <br />is a monstrous staircase. but then.<br />to hear a voice in grace across<br />the flat revolve of old and black <br />revolver seventy-eight <br />rpm <br />is to point the weakened foot<br />in the right direction. see space<br />as a 78 turning<br />dragging gravity.<br />the compass sits in splattered grief<br />of rain beyond the pale. imagine<br />the sound <br />so you can tell <br />your kids. the leaning <br />night come sideways down.<br /><br /><br />the only present<br />we know is in <br />consciousness of consciousness. <br />which takes no time at all and isn’t<br />in the past the way <br />the card game is. sit back in your chair and take<br />your feet in both hands. notice the snake in your back. smile for the rushes and<br />the whispering lake and the old columns. rock forward<br />and fall forward<br />out of your chair to<br />the floor. let go of your feet. think.<br />how the cloud is growing now<br />and how the feeble spiders crawl<br />to mamma. no use picking on<br />the spiders. without a name<br />they’re same as goldfish.<br />unnamed. they <br />have no name.<br />no more do you. roll on your back. <br />the ceiling is the world. there’s<br />a pressure on your back<br />and a snake in your spine.<br />what’s the game today? whist?<br />when you play whist<br />on the post office loading docks<br />you slam each card to table. wimoweh<br />the radio chants. also<br />don’t they know<br />it’s the end of the world.<br />these are some of the things<br />getting done this side<br />of bleeding knowledge.<br /><br /><br /><br />self-canceling<br />is no accident. the letter had a self-canceling<br />stamp. it touched the paper<br />and zip it was blurred. <br />the touch of your hand<br />left a print.<br />and it came into visible<br />slowly. every once in a while<br />it happens that<br />the world puts up its hair and I<br />can see. were I more fool than I am<br />I’d take all the pictures for true.<br />the cheapjack <br />too. <br />the wine was a dollar ninety-nine a gallon and we’d carry it<br />every night after the bar <br />shut up. we carried the blood<br />in the jar up the hill<br />unsteadily. the leaning hill the flat black sky the<br />studded-belt stars. <br />sure I was there. but so was this other.<br />he paid better<br />attention. remember<br />your mouth in the night?<br />it was all we could feel [hear]<br />that toppling.<br /><br /><br /><br />Mr. Sludge<br />alive and out<br />of Browning’s syntax. saintly<br />and smirking and trapped like an honest<br />man. rolling the syllable<br />bones. Mr. Sludge of course is a sly <br />Irishman. Browning <br />is a great poet. who do you trust? <br />my money goes with Sludge. not because he’s Irish. god no.<br />but because he lives with the real <br />as it breaks like a wave breaking<br />plates. plate LXXII. Browning in<br />his study. a Brownian study. but hark.<br />does not the head of Browning hear<br />the voice of Sludge in per-<br />petuity? does he not write down<br />the phantom of honest<br />discourse? is it not the case that all those books<br />fall off the shelf in the autumn? the russet glass? <br />once the mayhem planned the peace<br />in that dear starving place<br />where mama <br />shined the skulls. <br />of the two<br />confidence men<br />Sludge is the more<br />reliable.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br />by jupiter<br />a number of the same old man<br />says. land<br />o’goshen<br />says the bright<br />child. <br />I took my harp to a party<br />but nobody asked me<br />to play.<br />as a good harper stricken far in years <br />into whose cunning hands the gout doth fall, <br />all his old crotchets in his brain he bears, <br />but on his harp plays ill or not at all.<br />the finest music coleman hawkins. dying. sirius.<br />crotchet: root unknown but perhaps connected to <br />Latin crepare, to crackle, crabro, a hornet; if so, <br />it originally meant loud-sounding. <br />at the endless birthday parties <br />we all turn slowly sepia.<br />and that’s that. the art of the traveler<br />is keeping his hands to himself. <br />tried a couple of times<br />to touch the unfeelable and<br />it didn’t work out.<br />by jupiter.<br />got me down to the store <br />by smokefall. <br />[the breath of the horses.<br />tell me again now<br />how the words go. <br />there was a crooked man<br />by golly.<br />euphemism for God, first recorded 1775; <br />a sort of jolly kind of oath, <br />or asseveration much in use among our carters,<br />& the lowest people.<br />the same old men are coming <br />one from the other. <br />as if from a mechanical<br />source. <br />[horse<br />I’d at ease be here among<br />the broken solids.<br />[solace<br />love <br />as the soul loves<br />is.<br />the privileged <br />moment.<br />potato chips moonlight<br />and motor trips.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-17883763423400995082009-01-24T12:40:00.000-08:002009-01-24T12:41:13.230-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SXt83_na5KI/AAAAAAAAABE/jAMuFP1h2W4/s1600-h/won%27t+go+there.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SXt83_na5KI/AAAAAAAAABE/jAMuFP1h2W4/s320/won%27t+go+there.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294963088315573410" border="0" /></a>Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-42704627301106994962009-01-17T09:49:00.000-08:002009-01-17T09:51:40.216-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SXIal3HcLVI/AAAAAAAAAA8/0MdzhqKMKYM/s1600-h/calliope.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mkbwliv3pIU/SXIal3HcLVI/AAAAAAAAAA8/0MdzhqKMKYM/s320/calliope.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292321749866392914" border="0" /></a>Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-83045439691348420142009-01-01T09:14:00.000-08:002009-01-03T10:40:15.953-08:00It's been called to my attention that the last line posted here of It Never Entered My Mind is actually the first line of a subsequent poem that I somehow gathered into the copy. It's been deleted. Thought I should mention it.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-9697133983109441102008-12-30T14:44:00.000-08:002009-01-01T09:25:28.065-08:00unsteady1<br /><br />the foot is unsteady in rain. so I say. <br />fallen garden<br />{I love<br />list of fallen things, wet in the path and the dapple<br />{I love<br />of real which the brain in the rain <br />builds. more to the sides than the up.<br />more to the sprawl. more.<br />{I love she who comes deeply in concert with real<br />an unweeded garden that grows to the wall,<br />splays and kisses and drops with the old rain.<br />{love<br />the foot is the foot of the life gone to rest.<br />the drag of the grace.<br /><br /><br />2<br /><br />I hear myself talking and sometimes the voice<br />is from elsewhere. I know it <br />but can’t say.<br />{certain<br />sometimes the voice is in place at the edge<br />of the room or the rose-<br />stained cheek or the meaning <br />in early and drifted<br />{certain<br />and knowing the fall of the foot is the sound<br />of the other I come to the place <br />{the certain<br />is just outside the gate the old<br />wood, the long road up<br />and down.<br /><br /><br />3<br /><br />who is it? the slight imbalance says. the tip to the side<br />of the light and the blocks and chunks and minds<br />and the falling roller coaster, eight pm <br />in the vastness. a still small voice in<br />{graced by fence<br />gilead, picardy, backyard.<br />the true real is a slope.<br />in the dark.<br />{grace me <br />now I lay me<br />down to sleep<br />and how I limp <br />this trying dream. <br />take a little more<br />off on the right. damn. <br />take<br />{again now <br />down the measure.<br /><br /><br />4<br /><br />it isn’t my foot lovely<br />in the rain light and speckle and slash<br />of the dripping garden it’s<br />{cold thump<br />the foot of the enormous<br />the tentative foot of the electron the foot<br />limping slightly and sponging<br />{gold heart static<br />in the dream of the movement the bauble<br />on ankle the columns of trees<br />at the gate in the dark coming<br />{bled heart pump<br />fitting the surface of everything <br />mapped<br />{rot beauty garden<br />to the limping no <br />fat thought will ever cover <br />all this jazz.<br /><br /><br />5<br /><br />grief is the way of things and the limp is the step<br />of the waltz. the way of things,<br />the place and weight and bump and slide<br />becomes the grief when mind<br />slips inside. take two minds<br />and stir. place the eyes<br />to rise and fall<br />to music.<br />halt foot<br />{rain<br />and flood of burnished light<br />is all now. all together now.<br />a children’s party<br />comes to grief<br />too.<br />{rain lovely<br />speak to me,<br />huh?<br /><br /><br />6<br /><br />light runs flood<br />to buttermilk dapple <br />mole fur jigsaw foot and lightfoot <br />tread and memory numbered <br />imaginaries<br />march to the real music autolite<br />sparkplugs on parade down <br />the little fake street.<br />{get up<br />my intent is the whole <br />thing in the one<br />being. <br />the trail of the lonesome pine pulling <br />itself into dawn.<br />{out of sharpness<br />all the mountains all the valleys all<br />the brass beds the pillows<br />the joinings.<br />{be gone<br /><br /><br /><br />7<br /><br />two three one <br />and back again. the granular light is <br />a fiction. how many fictions <br />to make one real? <br />maybe gets lost in the scatter of leaves <br />and of children. but abides. no?<br />{garden by the sea<br />every piece of paper rises<br />in the street.<br />and the street makes a line for itself. <br />new moon bounce the paper.<br />{the zone<br />last night I woke up and I was huge. <br />my head taking in the sky and feet <br />the trails. <br />and he and she<br />were real.<br />{comes and goes<br />white line cloud in ragged streak<br />across the deadly steel.<br />{break<br /><br /><br />8<br /><br />progressing on foot as by tongue. the baby <br />next to me practices sentences as<br />getting on a train. the little windows,<br />{tell us your name<br />the lurches. at the same time he learns<br />how to get his shoe off . this is the cusp<br />of human effort. without the shoe<br />he’ll limp. when he walks, that is.<br />{coming<br />the coruscating<br />effort of poetry<br />is much the same<br />which is to say<br />{fading<br />an act of most perfect attention in <br />an absence of words.<br />9<br />it is my left foot now <br />in the buttermilk sky. looks like rain. looks<br />like look. in the right light<br />everything looks. when we were<br />under the oak<br />{precog<br />on the big bright hill and the grass was green<br />and woodpile full of newts I fell<br />and never came to life again<br />but touching you. <br />what<br />{the pain of the mind is nothing<br />the hel. the hell. I<br />dreamed last night and jigsaw light<br />was everywhere as is. the rain<br />flares on the windows.<br />{bruised attention<br />bruise. bruit. to bruit about, to spread, or<br />a blowing sound heard over an aneurysm.<br />hel: Swed. helig ; from hel. <br />see whole; holi-ly; holi-ness.<br /><br /><br />9<br /><br />there is a glitter<br />knocks your eyes out. spread it is on window soft<br />it is in rot <br />of december. the garden. <br />hear the syntax call the bruisèd <br />sheep home. bruised drifters, winter soup.<br />‘I’m lame,’ the woman said and everything<br />made sense. which is to say <br />another context <br />came to be, <br />as was.<br />{and not above but all around<br />musically I call you to<br />the waltz.<br />brokenly<br />I call you to<br />the glue. dead<br />I call you out<br />of name. <br />{the break of the switch<br />all around these poems fly<br />the glit and gleam and glimmer<br />down<br />the soft mind fallen footfall in <br />the garden by the sea.<br />zone buzzer. <br />to hiss <br />like hot iron in water.<br />{oh what a good boy<br /><br /><br />10<br /><br />sometimes I catch the moment it<br />nestles in my hand between<br />my fingers see the light <br />the firefly. the way the light<br />comes through the fingers. so it is with you, honey.<br />{go away<br />the way it is the walk is through<br />the fade of cells the colors<br />taking the light to drift. take the light<br />and drift.<br />{go away<br />there’s a map of an odd country and<br />a blur of sodden and<br />striated toes and the shifting<br />of leaves above and slide<br />below<br />{numb<br />everything leans to the left in the garden.<br />depending.<br />left to right directional<br />galaxy. in which.<br />nova instep falling<br />down daisy. our first<br />place has gone <br />to the single drift<br />light in<br />the weather. gray man down.<br />{come back<br /><br /><br /><br />11<br /> <br />the problem is<br />the info is <br />all about me and I<br />couldn’t care less. except to the degree. the degree<br />is latitude, longitude,<br />and twilight. is there anyone else<br />out there? is the air so full? do sheep<br />bleat?<br />{a place to bed<br />I could handle now<br />an hour in a luncheonette maybe, up<br />on fifth. a clear voice in frost light <br />comes down the rolling street. tilted to the sky <br />is big place, big picture<br />garden with its feet in motion. one line <br />tow line,<br />stars in my feet in the wet of<br />the rot and the buttermilk <br />sky, old.<br />{place to walk <br />what’s his name<br />is down to what’s<br />my name?<br />who fucking cares?<br />{sorry<br /><br /><br />12<br /><br />a broken head rolls down the trees <br />the street. and branches brush. and winter <br />blinks in lake, for. gleam again? <br />where’s this coming from? got feet and a coat<br />and a broken head.<br />set of eyes <br />and tears and long <br />fucking way to go <br />if I want to get there tonight <br />that apple full of universe<br />and dark, and streaming juices rolling<br />down the street, too.<br />{snow and then<br />wind comes down in broom-stroke<br />after <br />glass rail evening sweep and wind <br />of the first-rate mind. <br />see it flatten the diagram <br />and ice the flowing.<br />cocktail<br />shaker blues.<br />{where?<br />you might think the morning is dark from the clouds,<br />or you might think the morning’s a come on..<br />or that maybe the city is buried coming<br />up through the rolling heads. <br />you might.<br />{lost in the starry goose<br />might might maybe <br />I limp too, sometimes,<br />left foot drag<br />varsity.<br />{precog<br /><br /><br />13<br /><br />out in the dark and the snow this morning I don’t move<br />slick on the ice I move careful and old <br />looking, surely, what a <br />drag, what a memory.<br />{west end avenue<br />from the instep where purple-edge galaxy something<br />jagged jigsaw winter light in dapple<br />autumn too and sycamore <br />shaped to the splayed <br />toes in boot, pussy, barely<br />living things drifting<br />in dead, muttering.<br />{alone in the city<br />what the intelligence demands<br />this morning,<br />is readiness for train <br />at the station white<br />smoke. arms of steel.<br />{the lovely lovely, the throb<br /><br /><br />14<br /><br />a numb foot like<br />a spondee. we all scream. in this light<br />the walk to distance is lacy <br />and fitted together<br />with dowels. ice and snow and dark and black<br />ocean, dull gray bowling alley<br />sky. roll the pearl in the huge channels. <br />how deep is the gouge of the river?<br />this is a madman’s landscape<br />{what’s it to you?<br />and it comes to a flight of stairs. that’s<br />the palladian version. the arcadian comes<br />to the opening ramp and the grove where the old<br />man sits and watches<br />the ghost horizon.<br />{all things come<br />if I’m sorry what does<br />it matter? all the world requires is<br />you die successfully. this is what I say<br />to the shadows<br />when they take the light and bleed it<br />toward me. left foot numb, a tri-<br />spondee. beautiful dreamer<br />waken to me<br />{all things feelLarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-22816487044920324022008-12-30T08:13:00.000-08:002008-12-30T08:17:55.138-08:00love poemslove poems<br /><br /><br />1. <br /><br />out here in the clear november center<br /><br />of etching and numeracy, dying sun and<br /><br />fleshly walking,<br /><br /> I light my own imagined heart<br /><br />and hold to sky in time and you,<br /><br /> in time and chime and fall<br /><br /> of bell<br /><br /> the wholemark, the <br /><br /> flaming sycamore<br /><br /> shirt from the laundry. <br /><br />pick it up, huh?<br /><br />my love my best my lost<br /><br /> bride? <br /><br /> the smoothing of empty<br /><br />clothes is the nature<br /><br /> of love understood <br /><br /> and talked to the self. located<br /><br /> among the trees we come to leafhood<br /><br />slowly enough. don’t you think? I myself<br /><br /> have found the poem<br /><br />in open world and the twist<br /><br /> of the oak. found it in your body thus. found it<br /><br /> on the stairs to the open,<br /><br />the night.<br /><br /> <br />2. <br /><br />there’s more space outside me than in, though the space is the almost<br /><br /> but death. and only when touched as by god as he comes<br /><br />am I open to sudden and endless. with you<br /><br /> I was given. not god but the sense of the <br /><br /> whole. came to me my melancholy. in you tumbled all the parts<br /><br /> made the one <br /><br /> where broken pieces aren’t,<br /><br />both hands rising up in sound<br /><br /> of all one flesh.<br /><br /><br /><br />3.<br /><br />it isn’t that I don’t know human<br /><br /> petulance and grief and rage<br /><br /> and cheap revenges raised to art. I do. I cringe<br /><br />in memory. I know I’m just a walker through. I know you’re sick<br /><br /> as hell. I know me too is not too well <br /><br />and marked up pretty bad. no illusions. but,<br /><br /> ah, <br /><br />look what the all of it<br /><br /> gave us. to do with as we would. and where<br /><br /> are we now in broken trance,<br /><br /> eyeless in useless as<br /><br /> zoo. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br />4.<br /><br />walking out at night across the lights, big ones small ones christmas kids<br /><br /> love them, me too. and <br /><br />god my feet are big and coat<br /><br />a swinging furl of manuscript and canvas high<br /><br /> moon looking down <br /><br />at my feet at the curves and curls and blocks <br /><br />of built stuff<br /><br /> lit up, <br /><br />all in stride. <br /><br />piano comes with me on edge <br /><br /> of polish.<br /><br />I got <br /><br /> rhythm, <br /><br /> wish it were <br /><br />you.<br /><br /><br />5.<br /><br />love poem love poem. shadow shadow.<br /><br />the Shadow had Margo at night in the silverware. my language is full<br /><br />of the sound of the real coming fake. it has to be gone through.<br /><br /><br />no way down the corner river, no way through the rye.<br /><br />here’s the sign:<br /><br />we were happy then and didn’t know it.<br /><br />what a sign, huh?<br /><br />it has to be gone through. its own<br /><br />mangle.<br /><br /><br />there isn’t a single thing missing but god how it’s jumbled.<br /><br />love poem. dead in the water with marble and cameras.<br /><br />all I want for christmas is<br /><br /><br />the best.<br /><br />you know how hard I try?<br /><br />that hard.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />6.<br /><br />my wonderful one<br /><br />is all I know<br /><br /><br />a waltz of<br /><br />course of course. <br /><br /><br />someone<br /><br />sings it in my head, this<br /><br /><br />morning, lost, ecstatic in the spread<br /><br />of vision, the trees the smoke the <br /><br /><br />sappy traffic lights my<br /><br />wonderful one.<br /><br /><br />one step two step<br /><br />twirl like a kid in<br /><br /><br />the world<br /><br />out of time.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-23852986785519580702008-12-12T16:43:00.000-08:002008-12-12T16:44:30.014-08:00it never entered my mind<em>it never entered my mind</em><br /><br />so there we were in paradise and in the morning with a slight pick-up head of roses out on the old deck with the red wood and the windows to our lives. of course it entered my mind. my mind is enterable.<br /><br />a wolf in the twilight half again the size of the pepper tree. an utter exposure to the grease fires of sunset. sometimes it’s so cold I can’t help it. what can I help? I can help with the thorns, and the hugely dismembered.<br /><br />it’s just the music, love. it’s just another wet november. remember the storms, and the frying pan full of the fireplace embers in bed, and the empty confidence? are you better off? it’s lurid tonight, and things encroach. <br /><br />the voices come down off the mountain on air. they creep in my son’s dreams. they flap at the windows at three and I pad to the old refrigerator, the place of the alcohol bedspread, dull red blood in cold glass.<br /><br />the idea of the bed is everywhere here, controlling. would take my son’s dreams for a walk? his three year old terror in the house of the fancy-dan poetics? would breathe in the night of the wave?<br /><br />how far in to the shale should I go, do you think? no, really, do you think? you and the night and the music, make me so sick I could die. I got the moon and took it down to town and rolled the bones. <br /><br />the rage is allowed now, I offer it room for the night. not much else. as the crow flies, as the lying bastard lies. as the end of the song is a sadness and traces its name. as the crunch is a cruel hunch.<br /><br /><br />I’m largely more honest, more gentle, and more reconciled. more bloody dangerous. discard this and discard that and come to the place where the gates to the prison are open as rain. the long slow creak to outer sanctum. <br /><br />was it raining when we went to sleep? it is now, love, and I’m the bookend, the doorstop, the gathering certainty. we have the bed now spread across the sky, and a coming of rain quite evenly, free-range.<br /><br />this is how I get from here to there. I have enormous experience with beating back insanity. twice. could do it again? thrice? I lay myself across the appalachians, waiting. I can sleep there, limbs arranged.<br /><br />when I leave I have no luggage at all. all around the water tank, waiting for a train. I have no guitar but I can sing, at odd times. I sing in the balcony watching the trains jockey in. I pull the white smoke.<br /><br />yeah your codes escape me. but my attention is perfect. and all the dense inventions scratch at the ground beneath the lilac. beneath the colored toys that eat the heart to advantage. and it’s good.<br /><br />change shape to advantages. the pale moon is rising, miss spider. I coming back with big sore feet of hollow gourds, and thumping heart in hand. notice how the addressee changes, but remains one. <br /><br />in the bed were the things of the day and the night. the clouds were involved, and the flatness of moon across the animal ocean. the ratchet and pawl of the barely arms and the hardly magnetism.<br /><br />there is no place my finger rests that heaven doesn’t know. the far of the wogglebug too, the place where tinfoil roars and each place I touch is both you and your death, me and my you on the morning of presence.<br /><br />the ball of dust goes gently under couch. and blue and rose are filtered through the shadow. the creep is down the hall to stately closet, the hands of hints of god are poking through the wall.<br /><br />see the eyes light in the night, my son, see the full measure of conscious. far from the edge of the ocean the spray comes in handfuls. the beast turns in its half-dug hole and the river is rising and pushing.<br /><br />getting older is this. the time becomes clear as the life edges closer together and shines like an oval mirror. in the tracks in the snow is the heart. I was trying. in the deep confusion of shock of hair. <br /><br />you have to sing it right. the most perfect keening . hit the note like Coleman Hawkins dying. hit the face in the mirror and bleed resignedly. once you told me, I was mistaken, that I’d awaken.<br /><br />every day in every way I’m getting better and deader. I always knew the trips to the old garden on 49th were trips to somehow death. Madison Square. the wrong one, but death nevertheless. palace of memories, lattice, and turning lights.<br /><br />you understand I understand the only grief is human and. little help there, but at least we’ve got the first step under foot. footfall. the only grief is human. and it lives where the memory lives, in the present. <br /><br />so wet november triggers me a walk in the park of the dead. through my own rows of fake ratty tombstones. there comes a time I’d never say a thing. but the bus driver wants to know where I’m going.<br /><br />the sun comes down like marble maze and bumps and clicks november head. I mention LeFanu because he knew the day he’d die was when the hulking building wet with november vertigo would fall on him, in dream. <br /><br />and right he was, right as rain. did you know that the largest number of children are scared and have nothing to hope for but their parents love? how does the road run? you’d think from glockamorra it would run both ways, no?<br /><br />fake ratty tombstones. we stand in the dumb of the great bell, and look at our mouths so expressive, so ritzy. Dante, Mozart, Freud and Joan Blondell. I’m sad about Joan Blondell, I truly am. <br /><br />Greenwood Brooklyn hands come out the ground as trees and catfish swim in hidden knowledge. nonsense nonsense. there is no hidden knowledge there is merely the human inability.<br /><br />how many poems would profit from the occasional authorial intrusion? hey, that’s bullshit. sorry about that. anything you do to fight the language is a good thing. they went into language with vanity, forks and a meatball. they came out with a receipt. <br /><br />in the matter of art here’s the deal. we’ll give you September Song or Lost in the Stars, but you’ve got to live it. which bowl of cold soup in andromeda? tough is a quality of leather, processed skin.<br /><br />in every nook and cranny see the faces, the blocks of the rising towers, the shadows of the soldiers, the rising wave of crushing grace. the path with the one little windmill. the shiny bend of waterpipe. <br /><br />new embers, old sun, fat chance hold on tight. all I ever wanted was my two front teeth. all I ever got was my own chance to be ugly, stupid and vile. the line forms on the left and snakes to the big stone headful of ugly, stupid and vile.<br /><br />the triple is preferred by the ballplayer because it’s a hell of a lot harder than the home run which is just an invite to the rubber chicken circuit. hit this sign and win a suit. what’s the big fella say? is this is a suit or what?<br /><br />sometimes you play fast and loose and you run the risk. sometimes it’s stupid and sometimes it’s look at this fucking world. look at it! use the eightball in a combo. notice it roll its blackness, angrily unique.<br /><br />but when I break I become more whole. as what there was of outside and inside diminishes. suddenly I’m more. and the tangle of roots feeds on my tangle of roots. and the morning glory rises through to morning.<br /><br />you want to know who you are? take a point at which you were most at home in the world, loving in a wide bright instant. that’s who you are. and all the rest is slipping ghost of real, tangle of lost and imagined losing.<br /><br />this is the same morning. I guess I am the street. it isn’t the lost marbles, it’s the son at the end of the white shroud drift. it’s the simple in place of the built out of nowhere. you came to me. from out of nowhere.<br /><br />every dot and every sparkle held in breath of wet. glue and glass again. the river of glass moves slowly down the swaying planet banks. the banks are made of marble with a guard at every door. <br /><br />the human universe is only real as consumed. and as the morning goes so goes the heart in the streets of laredo, brooklyn. shine on, harvest moon. you see it rise and nothing has happened. you see it bounce on the rim of hill.<br /><br />what you were when filled with light and good will, laughter, is what you are. would let it go? is there no grace in hunger of vine and wolf and ocean? mechanical has its hunger too, the twist of the lyric.<br /><br />see yourself are walking down the street in series. one to the other. wobbly bounce of ghosts in autumn. the light of the soul going a to b. nude pretending a staircase. my children moving light a pile of leaves.<br /><br />coats of autumn paint in bucket-light. the days grow longer, really. and god is not in the detail the wave or the song. god is the hole and the whole, ghost woman out on the island, the leaves in the gutter, floating <br /><br />insensible, I come down here to street. and hear my feet. and my feet are the feet of the shudder of being. sometimes. squish sometimes. does it matter? yeah. everything matters, footfall, this grout of thought.<br /><br />I would not organize to make me happy. or you. I’d point to our centers where god is and say, be what you are. in a life in the blur comes the fine edge of number of leaves, dead and dying.<br /><br />what there is to cherish, that which is always, and comes again, dying, in mind, too. but not really. in my pocket are papers and lint and change and two hands. I take them out and hold them up to fade. see?<br /><br />oh my son, see how beautiful, you.<br />and thank you, God.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-480810311664851607.post-68735085886452174192008-12-12T16:38:00.000-08:002008-12-30T15:07:33.334-08:00autumn hatoccasional postings of work not in print. deposit coin and open door quickly.Larryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00504704665561110463noreply@blogger.com0