Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
everything crosses over
[to be read quickly, if at all
touching one thing other.
the gap in the mind and the undone button.
where the hand once touches the old door flatly and suddenly words.
the olly olly oxen free and jeez
I’d die right here where hand is star and sign I
therefore ask
you all to nowhere.
fast. to think then feel then sleepwalk flashing
glassy in the alley transport
chalk of stars
on blackboard hand
from word a scrap
of meant a dying
child and ball of thought a mental
scrap of ice and fallen archway. this
alley pressed in white on black and trailing words and faintness high
resolve in fox-head crouched behind this piece of music flat
against the northern sky the funnels
sliding mass where mass
is all the numbers gone
to the church of the endless foam
and croon of what you think you know.
knew. in
the lines above there’s a mistake.
the letter killeth. the written letter
marks. the spoken letter falls.
and the imagined
letter brings her here
to old tint velvet sodden
garden body.
this is the book of the sudden falls and the pressed palms
on the plane. the turn to flow of stars that break
the hardest spine. the simple truth.
the place on the desk where the kid’s head is pressed
cheek to cheek of wood.
where the cow runs away with the streetcar
in wood. varnish. shine it up.
turn your head slowly. see the mark of the star. turn your palm
to give up. for god’s sake.
come to real and do what you can with it. nothing.
be what you are in the fall. the big stream.
the narrows. and who be you?
simple question.
the man at the edge of
the bridge looks around. the bridge goes away
and the cat. that which extends is the hope
of extension. as the eye sees and the hand
presses the wall. excuse me. as the hand presses
the blackboard. night sky. the wall. the one
fucking cat. the laughter of falling things
pick up sticks
lives.
so go back to the things that are wrong
and learn why.
perhaps there’s another stream entirely and
through it the animals pass and the bones.
in sleep. the cardplayers. the wiseguys.
the knowing glances. the readers of
the fat cities’ cutouts. you
again. I say to you that this
is a stream of you
and bits of mica.
flaming eyes
and dice.
that you are the heart of the world and a deaf
ear. too. my
head is very big tonight
from edge to edge a solid bite
of God. don’t
write at night. but here it is.
that’s the phrase now
here it is. go back and see
what doesn’t fit
and learn its pitted
landscape.
in the tyranny of images
the odd bruised thumb the cat the broken
line. should
stop now. hear that? you? over
there’s my bed with placement of legs as if running in stars.
a placement of dream as if.
if
and the fat words. find the glade
and the flowering quinces eros
of the lake of the seven
lost concentricities. is
it you
or is it me
or is it the night
place of the big drop?
with ankles tied together he
approached the night
as air shaft fell
to the table as eight of clubs. burra
the woman said. and the talk
went round about. if each of these fingernails
were its own street
the roads would fan from me and grow
apace the wheel of phantoms open
prayer of the open
roads. you.
again.
I’ll
tell you what happened here.
in the night was a solitary
dark moth on the far white wall.
and as I sat and tried to place
the things of the air in the line
the line came. came anyway.
burra
the woman said.
and then in early morning looking
for burra
there again it in scottish
book my liege
dictionary
thus —
burra, n. a large night-moth.
From eng. burr, to make a buzzing or whizzing noise, of onomat. orig.
let me tell you about
the moth. it was dark and open-winged
two-and-a-half
inches across.
it had a mind of sorts
and I
could infeel
it velvet-like.
my rage
is older than the hill in which
it lies.
it’s mine I have
to love it tied
as is to the lay of the land. the morning-glory. morphography
and my dead love. I think about my friends and there
I find the one or two
with eyes.
do you know
there’s a woman
whose face is never the same and whose body
is arched in shining a slick run home of
autumn breath and legs like god
damn racehorse?
her world is mine.
too.
her world knows everything.
where the lilies
grow in strait profusion
and fail to be distinguished from
ourselves.
oh what a bed
oh what a house. anguish is.
and so are you. two irishmen
were digging a ditch
and the road went on blithely
in either direction.
forgot about bowling green, didn’t you?
the legs of lamb
are all gone now
and so too the hymnals
and bounce of the knee
for the infant.
every which way you look
there’s a guy with a gun and a deep grievance. every doubled image has
a murder of its own. I’d love to touch you
say the lost. the abandoned
fall flat to the floor where the decals
live. the star in the palm and the dwindling mice. the cartoon
history. the anguish in cardboard and muslin the paper
moon.
the rider.
the shepherd stands
in perfect light
around him there’s a touch
of wind in the golded
leaves. in front at the foot [the foot]
is the dead lamb with throat of the torn
and the blood. there are other
sheep. the shepherd
knows but considers.
anyway. it’s all in the pause. this dead thing
was that live thing
in god. is
god.
the wind in the painting too
is holding its breath. do
you know how you moved me?
your pain in the unsurprised
mind as is coming
from nowhere? there is no
understanding.
merely
god in a fanning of particles the words
were the music. you hear? there is the sense
of loss you know. there is that sense and all around it
landscapes build themselves and come
to sweet flow death
its folds and hidden
dwellings. spell out
your name with stones on the floor. the earth. the grass. the touch of foot
[foot]. Richard loved
Antaeus you
could tell. how he walked. far afield. the poem is never
that. the poem touches itself as the field
curves in twilight. and the dancers come. and the big fucking
cat-head. you hear me playing jacks along
the empty hall
and all there is
is you. must be sunday.
alone then like hell and the smell of the sunday
dinners. sure [shore]. Jack Sprat rests his chin on plate
and the kids are all sorry
for something. fat fat the water rat. who lives
down the years? you do. of course
you do.
how it goes how
it works the way
things are. the cat is a mistake I guess.
but the cat insists. it does.
the consciousness riffles through all in a great shift
of brightness moving embers curling
with choice as the muscles ripple
long and flutter.
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.
stroke of the evening the lovely
surprise of the bright dead hope.
as I sit I have before
sat still
feeling the real and silver
feet [foot]. as the crow
flies.
as the brittle is not. and will not. and falls to words apart their breathless.
the unbreathing poem is hell where it is.
and so it always
was.
Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen.
He will be good but
God knows When.
wrestle me now
to the floor of the mind.
the wash on the broken timbers
afar off the shore which is tenuous.
wash on the valleys
and pepper spray
on sea-stretched eyes.
as you are you again the rain
is just as should be
and I open the book to the page of the old station. ain’t it strange
the way the way
goes crooked through
then comes out flat on
sure. of course. [shore]. arcturus.
orion. a child’s garden
of stars. trouble in mind
and finally the grace of the mist.
which is electric.
which rises up in giving up.
so now there’s a donkey too.
the Bremen town musicians
take their places.
and in the last house in town there’s a silent globe.
out there by the trolley-end. out there where
the dead guy crumples
paper. and throws it.
there was a great crouch by the fireplace of 1969.
throwing all the old paper. poems in cages .
and clusters.
don’t remember a goddamn thing but the coast.
felt like we were moving past but no.
it and they were moving
past.
and the pumpkin spiders
too. and the teeth. dentition. this was before
the music went fat
with the heads.
it was new moon and knife in the back. beautiful.
sure [shore foot]
the wings of the owl.
enormous fucking. drift on down in streetlamp mist
in heart and cat in eye. what it sees with.
tumbling
mice and new moon[mown]
teeth. dentition.
bounced a piece of paper went
straight up crumpled
moon came down so how I knew then
breath. the night was clean
and bones in me
tight and smooth and white
and doing their job
as coast rolled by
in faint machinery.
big sea making noises
always tracks.
dentition: the character of a set of teeth especially with regard to their number, kind, and arrangement — see TOOTH illustration.
everything seen is the one
thing. come
to understand
this morning come
to fall. the fall. the elegance
of slapstick face
in the hamburger.
old horse white
in the penned rectangle god
the hills are smooth around
in text-book
reclinings. sway back watching
out the tapered
skull. look at ne now, ma.
I am a horse, am I not? have I not come to the accurate
substance? what is there to say? huh?
reclension.
when I come through glass to grass my long long mind
is sweet as huckeleberry. down the path. where we all were trying
then.
and so we are still
in the dead and alive
by the fountain of goldenrod
my love.
my loves.
my furling
acquiescences. in
Brementown
where I was born
there was a fair maid
dwelling. and there I lived
for years of days
and none the less
for telling. I
foretell a great wave of nonsense to come
from the compass points jiggling. three dogs
and four paws. chicken little’s
got tenure at last.
a falling noise all over this country
and that country.
country is stamped.
a stencil.
which twin has
the dick? my twin cousins
Ronnie and Norma were last-named
Dick. which must have been hard
for her. no joke. what the language
does by itself
is the image of god.
see what a slough of despond
looks like? looks back like? have some place
to die? yet? sure [shore]. I have my endlessness
of head
and pearly morning
gray by sea but pearl. Bill
didn’t want to die in a furnished
room. but I don’t know. depends what hangs
from the ceiling. is it whimsy? god
no. don’t know what
the fuck it is. but I have pearl of light as rolls
the heaven. from out the sketchy dead things
the light within. the light without’s
just Tommy’s rot
and light within
the purest rot. we gleam. god
do we gleam.
we waver and shine like the fish in the stars.
me for you, honey. they for it
as Richard
used to say.
there is no up
there is no down
but all for you
I make the effort. big
fucking deal. that’s what the kid on the bike on third and eighty-
seventh says. not really. what he really says is
merry christmas Huey
hitting me high dead center with streaming
left hand fist.
so down I go and really wounded
imprint of star in the afternoon sky.
flake-chalk hears my prayer and flakes.
colored chalk is okay too.
marks our land with glyphs
and branded soles. Brementown
and everyman.
steadfast tin soldier and the girl with the red shoes.
sudden eyes in the city of brass and blood smeared
on stump of neck. the locked glass tower trinity
and simpleton identity. the rubber ball. time
is the great healer
my father says at night.
in the dark. it is
the snake says from under the bed.
read the other stuff. find out what they’re reading
and read the other stuff. have a few things
you live by.
as if there were a dark square pond in nowhere hills
of grass. put a few coins on the blind man’s feet
for light. come to me wet from out
the rolling edges
the barely fitted
parts of us. my rage is made
of all those simple
joys the mailman
takes to hell. there
is no hell. on the scenic railroad
we sit in one place and the art
moves all the painted stuff the hills
and dales. when we get out we’re
enormous.
we walk over the machinery and through the town
and out on the cut-outs
the stars.
bowling green
sewin machine. green
is the night green
kindled and appareled. green
kindling. time
of your life.
colors
in the soaked logs. death in a small place
is large as needs be.
for the breathing space. for the sudden access
to other. for everything remembered in
the lights of coming light. who
would deny the snake his simple
musicality? on the green green grass
the brass shines curved and potent. on the green green grass
the bandshell flutters
white wood. in
the hearts of the kids and the agèd
god flutters too. one great rolling
ripple through the flesh of minds. daisy daisy.
real as hell gone home. know what that’s like
in the twilight when you know
that all the things as hell
are pictured
right there up the stairs
in re-
arrangement? it’s all bloody nothing
but better wade through. it’s
the beast that eats your head in little
cakes. get smart
the refrigerator says. I open I close
says the door. the bedroom is full
of empty hats
and outside the fire engines idle. that light.
summer night.
all your stuff
is pasted on. piss on it.
walkin away so cool.
if there were a bridge to nowhere
where would it attach? this is a monday morning
in the year of our lord
Ə.
the numbers mean nothing. the scaffolding
means nothing. wheat means something
what? wheat? wheat
means nothing.
so all these things inside have names
and not one means
a goddamn thing. good
place to start. can give
to a mute fish the voice of
an angel. nightingale. the voice of the angel. ngale.
shatters the gorgon’s head in her dripping
courtyard. any head.
in the furnished room
are the gorgon’s head and a long silence. the muteness
of the fish. as if one snapped fingers
the papier maché rises.
fuck it then.
it ain’t no head it’s just
for scaring the kids. one two three and fall to knee. four five six
and tock tick tock. the voice of the angel
freezes the tracks
and the green grass grows
all around all around.
endgame. no? kind of like something
remembered.
the mistake is at
any head. also
the green grass
is a mistake. kind of like
maybe not. the card with the great
circus fire on it
flips neatly through the air to ground. to ground a system
is to provide it with roots. the terrible fucking thing
is the ball lightning. hold
my hand. I’ll go back and look now
and notice. the cat’s gone away on
his own.
seven go-ahead places between the neck
and the body. grow ahead
why don’t you? I can’t.
sit down and say that
and understand it. you can’t.
makes no difference
sit there.
there are some guys when
they die it’s like
they leaned too far back in the chair and then there’s
that feeling. this is in the room where the floor
sheers off. up on the fourth floor.
in the dark all the border
flowers nod in the breeze. which two
eyes see?
the ones with the marbles
are fat as cheese
ghost eyes. the light bandits.
the overcoat twirling
its dead feet. the alcohol. oh
for the pleasures of the harbor. tangy
port
and Willie dead
and all our dreams
remembered.
the snow came just in time
in great shapes. I touched it and the edges of the shapes
changed. how it fell on my life
at the edge of everything. beyond this snow
is mercy. mercy is
the fact of this snow and its im-
placability. how the eye sees
the world is the place
of the knowledge. which
is of touch. and fall. and opening
distance made particle. drift
made dance. oh how we danced. did
we? seemed that maybe
we missed in the shift of the tracks. in the shine
of the tracks.
in the tracks of the tracks through the air to the place of
speech.
hear me haltingly say in the evening
that the fall of snow grows blue as evening
falls. a few words back and forth. they touch
too. each other. they
collide so that
this one
falls left
and that
one
falls right.
and the meaning
runs off between
dead Euclid’s eyes. more
watery now. more lakes
to fish in. everything everyone
has place. it’s a charm bracelet
thing. and the angel detaché
opens and closes the vaginal clam.
the power the grace and
the stupid poetry.
fucking stupid
pot of message. would they were all in
the air in the manner
of bees poke their holes and
are gone. brown and gold and sounding. of course of course. they
will be gone
as jupiter falls like a tumbling coin and the night breaks free
of glass and expectation. one fine swirl
of cape and nowhere dimension.
the cape is not this and then that. the cape
is a swirl and the rain. far afield
I came to words
as a vast open grave
in a meadow. or was it a ramp?
without the words the walls have nothing lighting
anymore. but where’s the harm
in that? the walls have light
as snow has fall
and meadows graves and bees the fine
particularity. snowflakes buzz
too. passing the looming
sign in the air.
I Am the
Electric Place. I am the place
in the meadow
raised high
to the mass of you.
press your hand
against the face
of falling snow. trace its features. stick
your tongue out.
I remember remember
Miriam’d never
seen snow and twirled in it.
long thick brown hair moving
like alive. like thought.
I remember the real and the unreal and their hands press one
to the other. my love. everything
has a place as everything
has a death. perfect
simplicity. in simple city
lives the man
who comes around at twilight lit
with death.
the most beautiful light. broken
to numbers and walking away from it all
so cool. one tight mind. the sprawling night. the palace
of memory
built of the streets and of
thought and of love. cold blue arches steel
and moon. blown paper. steam in the cold.
light of god.
never out of touch
never over touch
never short on cloud
in head. a bouquet of the luminous
miniscule. a loveliness beyond
the pale. a real.
a being. nerves
and light and broken
stairs.
if you’re in danger
listen hard
you’ll hear the tumbling tumbleweed in the ever
same. the route of ambling
easy final in the blue
blue shadows.
the great thing is
as dying goes
the fake is left
in the stable. where would I
of all bright things
have come to understand death
as an ambling
on horseback
away from the great stone skull [head]?
where are you?
in the big parade the dead guys march
along the rutted country lane. you see their eyes? you hear there [their]
hearts beating?
the sounds of the beating
hearts of the dead
is in Ripley.
everything moving
at once and the only
light is the light of
the eye. one big eye
is red and flat
and one is cold
and white and flat.
and all I care’s
the one that rolls
will get me home
for dinner. love
bade me eat in a place where people
laugh once in a while. if you want your kid to be a decent
human being laugh
once in a while. all
together now.
but they don’t care
don’t care and let them
at the tumbling keys they’ll turn
the world to metaphoric
shit surrounds the heart
like smothered hands. not Monk
though.
my old friend death says watch
me fucking run. off the planet.
out to the end where the whole thing
really fucking is. I’m death and my long hair streams blond
in the sunlight. I’m death and the world rolls away
under me. I make space
and in my hand
the bees creep. hi.
this is me and
this is my job. and
if I could
there would be none
of words misunder
stood or dark.
past the thin mirror. the eggshell. the leaping
blood that falls to
earth. the edge
of the fuschia. the heart of the dog
star. the pictures in that head in which
the buttons float. red and green in concave
pairs. off and on
and live and die and be
and flutter.
down to St. James
emporium. there’s a mistake
above. as above
so below. there’s a mistake in the matter
of buttons. I wouldn’t lead
you wrong. even if you are
green.
I wouldn’t do that. what
a right guy I am. hey.
here’s this small
tantric sermon.. give it to you
cheap. you can give it
to your girl. make her
stop and think in all
the clothes and stuff.
sure [ ].
what the hell. nobody
lives forever.
the men who haunt me are
not so bad. for the most part.
for the better part.
I give what’s due
it’s due.
Smart falls
in three parts. Melville
looks out the window at the harbor which is now
a great gray heart. Jay
Gatsby dies of a hole bleeding
Demeter slowly and Spicer
smiles and says hi. shyly.
the poem will
go on forever. blow
your nose and come to order.
we associate understanding
with tones of voice. we’re dumb
as dirt. the work assumes and contains and extends
over all and never
forget. one step twice
that’s all she wrote. in the air that was sweet as
the rose of the summer. in the long twilight
of her hand. in the train of her appleness nightgown went tremblingly
by and croaked as it went. croaked.
in the endless silence the black bird croaked
and the whole of creation came round in panels and lattices.
honeydew and thigh-bells. murderous hands and children
tucked behind vapors. here
you might drive a peg through my head
just for placement. here you might scrawl on the fence we
came this way before but didn’t
know but now we don’t
no more.
there isn’t a single thought from out
the high-toned crowd of fancy dan
poseurs I wouldn’t piss on.
my obligations are clear.
we need to follow through.
don’t we?
on Easter morning ‘62
with no one awake but me
so it seems
I in a three piece suit walking down eighty-sixth toward the corner’s
wire trash basket in it
a dead man
lying back with just his ass
wedged in the basket.
we look at each other.
when I come back
the other way.
he’s gone. tell me a story
daddy. Sergeant Preston
cuts the snow and Easter morning
falls like a tray of biscuits.
now.
what the hell is wrong and why? this is the weave
and it all must be here.
must it?
nah.
but hints must be here. though
the gleam is always
fugitive.
running away on a wednesday morning
never coming back.
take that as you will.
sadly.
there is no certainty of that.
may come back locked
in big old carriage
wheels with blackbirds at my face
and a sun of the morning
intacto.
the words are door and foot
and sure and glass. the errors are many and in them we find
the poem. the salted mine. the place by the side of the road
where the passing is all
accomplished. it’s always the side of the road or the banks
of the river. the unknown
can be known. the unsaid
can be said.
but mystery
is forever.
who was that guy?
one flat face comes leaping out on springs and trills the water
edge to edge. one new place is opened up and how the standing hats are smokestacks see
the silken women open up and twilight in a band of angels. the movement
is so slow from here that half the time goes by in shale
and fingernails. unreal undead
city gone by yesterday.
red
clay bank no child. not a one
in the long stress
of faces.
dead clue giveaway.
true-heart kid
gone down the sluice
and turned to gold
in pebbles.
none not a one
to be left to the long
line of birds. you see
how they turn as we pass and show
their beaks.
oh pay attention.
in the errors are all of the truths of the long
tracing. where the errors are the truth shows through.
J. Arthur Rank
and the dark of the wheel beaten gold.
this is a place
in the poem.
watch out.
I come down the stairs with
your hand. no.
with all of you.
the errors reach their hands the one
to the other and build the great passages between. the human
universe. I don’t care. we
were as we were
and we loved
it.
so [sew].
now then when.
inside you I was pulled to god
like an assembly. today the first bright song will be
the face of you in full
unknowing. the cloud of
the face of
the gasp.
the first will be
the next come
end. my particular end comes unconsciously..
stop and slide and love. the woman in the elegance steps
from out the crowd and sliding
we mix on the floor
apart
but mixed
and step to the music unheard but
there.
okay.
I step on her foot and
she smiles
that smile with which the graceful knowing
take the un in grace.
there are no pasted
steps.
this is not metaphor. this
is life.
the self-willed is not
and the knife in the back
pulls the set to attention on
my desktop now
you’ll find a deep gray silver print of Navy Day
1946 the day
I was three and there. we were. my
father and I in the cold white cream and gray
of the river. the Hudson.
look at the size of it. in all that size
is a mind insisting no.
I am not here I will not
be here. but the loved ones will take you
where you would not go as the turning
planet carries them.
feel the breeze. the braided ladders
hang from the carrier.
here I am
and I was god
help me
whacha gonna do?
embrace death. the ease of it.
walkin away from it all
so cool.
the light coming down from out the broken.
the foot with a substance of leg.
as if there were somewhere
to go. nine
lives in one place are
one brain in nine places.
press your feet to the ground
and whistle through your lovely bones
the roses of picardy graveyards..
the moonlight serenades. the sprawled
and slippery entrail
falling viewmasters.
a bit of music and a slice
of flesh
and all the stuff we don’t
tell the kids.
see that city
down the valley
that’s the brightest
place there is.
and all the kids there
have no one at all. and all the food
is dragged by savage cats down long black alleys
you can’t stand up in. if you’re Irish
come into the parlor. we’ll pop your heart at the door
for the weasel. the cry of the ten cent
beauty. the feast in the house
of the dead barely
a face left to eat
came sailing through the foggy dew.
so [sew] and sew again.
do you hear in the back of my head the fine skirl
of the waltz? the way things are
we barely have
to finish the line. the damndest
thing.
everything that’s cant
we take seriously
and everything that’s true
we kick to the side of the road.
kick her head
down Regal Way
and fuck her dead
with lies.
the Hudson is a wide gray line
and on it move the ships that once
were burning. these
are not personal matters.
I stop where the outlines
are clearest then turn
and turn again. the poet
has no personal
if he’s doing his job. the poem
lifts and drags and sighs like
the snake of the world.
that’s just personal.
hell.
those be his eyes!
I
have no solitary.
get it?
for once and for all
in the staggering ballroom
the band plays the three
in the morning.
the waltz.
I
was born this way and find the errors
full of love and grief like carpet.
this is a different river
and maybe it runs
to the Laws of Large Numbers.
the flaming London.
this is a different poem and yet
and yet.
the problem with the flat
bike tire is
that something is always
missing. not for the spandex monsters
but the kids
this is for. lost at Clove Lake Park and suddenly
flat though the patch kit is there it’s just
the pump isn’t. or the wrench. or the eyes
of the belovèd. Carol
it was then. her face. lost
in the rowboats and tangle of snakes
in the reeds and the catkins pussy
willow. oh my love. can’t get back
without no tire.
walked the bike back
and when I got to nowhere then
I walked back home again
and left the words alone
for a while.
alive alive o. she died of a favor
and no one could save her. alive as I can be in this
the walking frame of likeminded monads. it’s all in the different
colors and sounds in the far valleys
the amygdala. I remember
you. you put your hand on mine against
the wall and then
the double. that gray day on the river there
your snowy muff was laid out over
79th. at the river. street. we came to die
but found the eye
of other. we
died anyway
but the ember in passing
breeze lived again.
and sang in orange.
not worth the paper
it’s written on.
the long gray line.
the plucking in
the chest. the eyes
on the river. the roar of the stack
of the clouds. the subwayed
river. the life
down there.
the inadequate
in sections.
the press of the thumb.
the waking to sleep and the glory
of it. raised up here where nothing is
its name and the pomegranate idea
bleeds in sections and is
not. the poemgranate
telephone. just between you
and me. the dyes come out of the sea in a fine
transparency. I wrap you in the being and
my brain goes down the stairs to flat
rock and cave. the colors eat me
and happy at last I find a new library with a new lamp
and a fluttery door.
and down to the path of
the ducks and their turn
of the pool. the municipal pool
is in Sunset Park
where late one night in dream I watched
from an apartment window.
and I was other.
with ruby lips. the curtain fucked
the breeze. the old crochet.
the breasts in lilac. many
things to say but how
the poem eats them.
puppy chow.
the breathing in the hall of the statues. museums
are like that. I have a museum in my head
and in it streaming runners pass
themselves in painted windows.
every painting shrugs a little skips
a frame.
just like that.
statuary
is just for creep. the deltoids
creep. the breath comes down the line
of fancy-ass cursive.
come on in. I’m
all the rage I’m
dead in squares laid out beneath me
like a picnic cloth. the ants coming out of the bloody statues.
all this stuff I thought in 19
55 or so. went places then
by myself. saw the women in their summer bodies. you.
make my heart a wreck. a ten cent cold Rilke and a two dollar trip
to the Jazz Gallery.
a city with skirt around hips
and hot stone fronts
with glass [glass]. glass between and glass between
faces. never thought I’d make it to
the dance. never thought I would. but
there we were and artifice
became the leg up. the speaking mechanicals.
the mystery scrawls. araby. the light in the air before
thunder the twist of the dark maple life in the little front yard the cold
of the hands of the rain. the voices. all the voices
come from out
the little boxes. and because they were flesh
they die with the down-winding
spring. machinery gathers itself into a huge
arrow. croak the hollow tense the spring and leap
the decal [decal]
campfire. see your mother’s eyes go up
and fade there big as moons.
because you were
a small thing held
in hands and can’t forget. make
the effort. any number
have forgotten. perhaps. any number say they have
forgotten. human beings will say
any damn thing to get you to stop
asking questions. but you
don’t really forget
do you? somewhere right around the edges of
the acorn there’s
the light of the afternoon
hill of the dreaming
hands.
with the fingers the head
that falls back
to be caught.
london bridge
and so on.
and for every broken hand that falls
away there will be grief passed out
like ration stamps.
here.
you’re still real.
you’re not crazy
you’re born.
there is no power there’s only
the hands that pick you up the smile
if you’re lucky.
walk
up the avenue. the Easter parade was never a thing worth
recounting. the fatuities of the rich are hinged
to what’s been denied them a glimpse
of the whole broken heart at
the boathouse filling.
debarkation for
Wackyland.
and all the buttons shine on all
the winter coats like
eyes of god.
ramps that go up
and ramps go down
and a band on the main deck
plays
Strawberry Blonde. we sing full
of grace we sing
we’re nine and ten
and so on
sing we
Casey got hit with
a bucket of shit and
the band played
on.
he waltzed through the door
and got hit with some more
as the band played
on.
the sins of the fathers
float for a while in the sway
of the music.
they hold to their wives
as if the gray
were pearl.
the mass of the riverboat
floats on clarinet
accordion
and snare drum.
the embedded machines
arrow themselves flawlessly
to the mystery.
what the faces they make
in the coming dark. the drawn
mechanical
arms move smooth the broken eyes
akimbo down
the underpass. the
oncoming wholeness
of cold but for friction.
orange
crush bobs its waxiness. dead-leg
stomp on the rivets. melancholy
babies early
on and too-late off
the avenue.
see how the winter takes hold and the poem skates.
I’d enter my own home justified.
where might that be, sonny?
where the caterpillars fall all green
and creep to the edge of the substance
where rising
they wave in the air.
jesus move it on then. the match game’s down
the way and so’s
the pussy. so
it is
bethankit.
some hae meat
and canna eat
and some wad eat
that want it.
but we hae meat
and we can eat
so let the lord
bethankit.
the laptop which
is dense as lead
would tell me that
the scottish
dictionary threatens
me with data with
which I should not
fuck around.
from the mouths
of babes.
these fucking bairns are lost in the woods see
and it’s fucking getting
dark and it’s really
cold. it’s really
fucking cold
and they can’t
believe it.
the light fantastic
down the stairs
that wind [whined]
the chimney.
watching the sun come up on the sprawled
deck of stone cards each
with a painting some guy made
in the warehouse under
talent and a broken window
painted
in the light off the river
the blizzard
at heart.
bring’em back alive
for Eddie the Pastrami King.
he is too. just that.
the King of Pastrami
in autumn by heave
of the river. down
the empty street
in the sketched
declivity.
the shorthand gouge
of thumb. erase
me please and leave no shine
of pressed-on words
or lunch.
see how the river
won’t go but keeps coming.
to the big
hint.
the place of the rollers. the narrative
of A. Gordon Pym. the monolith
knows everything
is being.
a big fucking pile
of art-deco flutings
and junk. so
beautiful.
suppose now you’re sitting in a fake railway car
and outside the fake countries are turning by on a continuous
sewn [sown] together screen with scenes
to which beauty has been added by
the snark and a retinue
of seaside proprietors the James
Boys. you look in the eyes across
the lady in the dark’s
and fold your legs at the ankle think
and think and
think.
the car isn’t moving the sown
screen is moving but going nowhere over and over
again in the night are the snow-lit
mountains
the moon
and the painted
haloesthe lamps.
could it be a between-decks
entertainment? a scar on the life’s
face? life
itself?
far to the north
is the south. far in the locks of the weir are the damned
barristers.
and the softening drowned girl.
so wear a colander
for the rays
and break a leg
for the praise.
and offer out your hand to that
one frightened child at edge of the great
ruffles of north and the southern
gills of the unwanted body and round mouth
DNA for sale
real cheep. Old
Macdonald
has a well full of terrible
things in the night. aeiou. black sound spaces and endless
hills of the great plain roll
it over.
play the empty organ touch
of the fake all.
I
stepped on her foot and
she smiled. of these things
my life is made. how
about you?
bethankit.
here from the ditch of the word. from the broken-
down sequence the big
handshake.
they came down from the hills with the eyes
of flashlight.
we came clambering out of the briars with hearts and with
tongues.
were there nothing else
there would still be you. pasted over there
with big fat head.
that’s me
in the painted world.
where’s the surprise? everyone knows
there are places that come
between sleep.
the mountain’s jugular.
the paste and the knowledge.
the butterfly bandages.
I lived briefly
between two rooms in a hallway
here and there lacy as if there were endless
erasures had finally
worn through the geography so that
in odd breezes I could sometimes feel
the touch of the fringes [fingers]
of what had been breathing
against me a mouth
its lips
making me turn
disconsolate and honored in the merging lost
pearls of the dappled light. through
the fringed [fingered]
places nothing
to see but dark
and the occasional
passing of hands
a conjuror’s say leaving
trails behind thin
clothes against the razor
cold.
notice. the well is a telescope.
our secret is
that everything known
comes from way outside.
great green gobs of
greasy grimy gopher guts.
music has it easy. fucking
big wigs. an owl
dog possum alligator and turtle
lend their risen voices
to Annie Laurie.
who eats them all
at sundown.
the forest trembles.
the words fall down to iodine
and band-aids red with sweet
by and by.
could this be magic?
no.
the real is simply.
not what you think.
and what you’ve been given
is the power to throw away
the notion of power.
fucking throw it away.
ah um.
I don’t know how
Dad.
but don’t be sad
I’ll learn.
of course.
I look in the windows and the people I see
are much like me. the songs they sing.
the pure breath. the pulse on the air
of the dying. to winter god I think
come get me now
as I
am done in the soup
of the loving those
dear sad wrecks who raised me when
my parents were away to work trying
hard as they could. I
belong to Glasgow going
roond and roond.
only
seems that way. never found the high road found
the low road made me ill.
never found a fucking thing
but something came
from out the thunder anyway.
the head. the thunderhead.
flak is the color
of my true love’s hair.
I think to god
and offer up
this life for turn
to green and a certain
merriment among those
who know in the high air.
the kids as always think there’s something
special in the timely yo-yo seasons
of words and their related
lies. I dust my feet [foot]
off and head for the place of the approaching
image not image.
all-wrapped man with feet and head that rocks
a bit. in the furrowed distance. in the fields of the jostling
for solid. a drink of water
through the map
life-like. the map is deep
so how to roll
it up?
with soft thumbs. the trick’s to find nowhere
and mark it with blood. one footprint. the bones
of a lost hand. the related
lies. the turn of the corner
to x street. how
cozy it is. how sudden and remembered.
yo yo season.
see the disks
go up and down.
so does One-Eye. so
does The Empty Duchess.
they are not real
who only come
to feint and bob
your life away.
it should tell you something
how powerful
the unreal are. have
access to power because
they aren’t real. only the loveless
go looking for love.
all we get’s
a fake name
and a pair of eyes go click.
see in the distance
how they approach
there are three now. dressed in russet. dressed
in Ruskin. the cypresses
make slides. the heat makes
images. the dead
make tracks. flippety flop
the Keystone Cops.
hi Susan.
remember you to death. the blue silk
with the high neck
and the silver. your fluttery eyes at twilight
in the House on the Borderland. seemed to me
we were quite alone. perhaps
not. in the lacquers and layers and peelings of the long
summers maybe
there were others. crossing Great South Bay in
your little outboard. who the hell
are we? anyway?
the flapping on the hull the spray
and the endless man-made depths the old
refrigerators and the new
flounders. the scallops and
evil-eye mackerels. the woman
up to her waist in money.
icelandic poppy
through a nervous glass.
three hundred thousand dead
do the Madison on the bay.
Dirty Old Town
is a ghost song.
the Jones Beach Water Tower is a forgotten
job. you came up once
breaking the water and between your toes
[hath sent me to sea for pearls
was a littleneck clam. see. you said.
I can still do it.
so you can. never should have brought you
to California. an act
of cruelty that was.
but who knew? you get to be
a certain being marked
with traceries of sun and leaves and failures.
then you stand naked in a clear light and look
and there’s no more sense
of what to do or where.
than when the silver rang on both sides
of the rockered horse oh
Rocking Horse Winner and oh what a good boy
am I.
the oldest autumn leaves keep watch
by the old furnace where there’s room
for everything.
and outside the rain falls in long drops sometimes.
streaky like the fat in the short ribs.
they once pulled by themselves.
see them in the rain?
you know you can you know.
remember?
you know you can you know
the snap of the rubber-band mountains the fold
of the bedspread tent the one
fucking hugeness.
you know you can. I’m sitting in the somewhat late
middle of 1948 and looking
at a matched pair of Scots terriers with magnets.
on their feet they fill the world now
and then you know the truth
but it won’t let
back you in
without you die with palms out as kite. as painted thing
for the air where the stitches roll like hills
and the voices come stumbling
and light. you know you can you know open
your eyes and stretch this
or that muscle. where
will you be now
the light’s out again? ambiguous at best. the light’s
always where it is. put
your feet on the floor. it’s better not
it’s better not
to lie in your own head as bed in the shifting
universe. the great mackerel
still-life
of brain in the moonlight
is false as the night
follows day is
the art of the possible living
the death of the cutie-pie
faces the carnival glass
moments. it’s better to rise
with the dawn. which is this or that and moving know
that in the hillside forest every
morning when the dawn is not
yet there’s a flat wind comes and cuts through the tops
of the trees and every
leaf feels it. yes. the name of the wind might be slake.
but every morning it rises and comes up out of nowhere and skrees through the tops of the trees
in a gesture. the hand palm down goes sweeping out ending. in the great.
you know you can you know in the rose. in the
future of past by the green where the village.
in the thought. in the momentary
rose of the wind and hand and star and the end of the whole was
the whole risen. is the whole. and the end of the light
was its finest place. its shell of light
with something out
as if there were a place
were there.
for in my nature I thirsted after beauty but God,
God hath sent me to see for pearls.
which seem
to contain light. rolling down the heavens smooth
as silk on flesh. and over there you are
as proof. and over there my eyes. and foot right here
and chest in the couch and heart bumping down
on the road to the road to the road. you in the distance
and wrapped in the light
of one more being. one more way
to be. dissolve
of course. resolve
of course. the course of the fabulous river is dug
with a thumbnail.
how intentional.
this is dissolved
and so is resolved
and that is the nearer
for all. and anguish and physical
pain and ugly
to eye and bent
and deranged and alone in the light
and the dark in the light
and twisted in lone
and lost in regret and visible
in misery and wrenched
from the womb and abandoned in bedclothes and lost
in the interlocked buildings choking
on grief and its stringiness wishing
for simple
dissolve. be
all resolved in one fell swoop
of the hand of the other. the light
of that which approaches
is not approached
and beneath that river to the sea
the cold ropes stream the bones and wave
the lace of fingers
flop of skull
and voice apart from flesh when first
I saw you on the village green
my life was over all again
for good.
touching one thing other.
the gap in the mind and the undone button.
where the hand once touches the old door flatly and suddenly words.
the olly olly oxen free and jeez
I’d die right here where hand is star and sign I
therefore ask
you all to nowhere.
fast. to think then feel then sleepwalk flashing
glassy in the alley transport
chalk of stars
on blackboard hand
from word a scrap
of meant a dying
child and ball of thought a mental
scrap of ice and fallen archway. this
alley pressed in white on black and trailing words and faintness high
resolve in fox-head crouched behind this piece of music flat
against the northern sky the funnels
sliding mass where mass
is all the numbers gone
to the church of the endless foam
and croon of what you think you know.
knew. in
the lines above there’s a mistake.
the letter killeth. the written letter
marks. the spoken letter falls.
and the imagined
letter brings her here
to old tint velvet sodden
garden body.
this is the book of the sudden falls and the pressed palms
on the plane. the turn to flow of stars that break
the hardest spine. the simple truth.
the place on the desk where the kid’s head is pressed
cheek to cheek of wood.
where the cow runs away with the streetcar
in wood. varnish. shine it up.
turn your head slowly. see the mark of the star. turn your palm
to give up. for god’s sake.
come to real and do what you can with it. nothing.
be what you are in the fall. the big stream.
the narrows. and who be you?
simple question.
the man at the edge of
the bridge looks around. the bridge goes away
and the cat. that which extends is the hope
of extension. as the eye sees and the hand
presses the wall. excuse me. as the hand presses
the blackboard. night sky. the wall. the one
fucking cat. the laughter of falling things
pick up sticks
lives.
so go back to the things that are wrong
and learn why.
perhaps there’s another stream entirely and
through it the animals pass and the bones.
in sleep. the cardplayers. the wiseguys.
the knowing glances. the readers of
the fat cities’ cutouts. you
again. I say to you that this
is a stream of you
and bits of mica.
flaming eyes
and dice.
that you are the heart of the world and a deaf
ear. too. my
head is very big tonight
from edge to edge a solid bite
of God. don’t
write at night. but here it is.
that’s the phrase now
here it is. go back and see
what doesn’t fit
and learn its pitted
landscape.
in the tyranny of images
the odd bruised thumb the cat the broken
line. should
stop now. hear that? you? over
there’s my bed with placement of legs as if running in stars.
a placement of dream as if.
if
and the fat words. find the glade
and the flowering quinces eros
of the lake of the seven
lost concentricities. is
it you
or is it me
or is it the night
place of the big drop?
with ankles tied together he
approached the night
as air shaft fell
to the table as eight of clubs. burra
the woman said. and the talk
went round about. if each of these fingernails
were its own street
the roads would fan from me and grow
apace the wheel of phantoms open
prayer of the open
roads. you.
again.
I’ll
tell you what happened here.
in the night was a solitary
dark moth on the far white wall.
and as I sat and tried to place
the things of the air in the line
the line came. came anyway.
burra
the woman said.
and then in early morning looking
for burra
there again it in scottish
book my liege
dictionary
thus —
burra, n. a large night-moth.
From eng. burr, to make a buzzing or whizzing noise, of onomat. orig.
let me tell you about
the moth. it was dark and open-winged
two-and-a-half
inches across.
it had a mind of sorts
and I
could infeel
it velvet-like.
my rage
is older than the hill in which
it lies.
it’s mine I have
to love it tied
as is to the lay of the land. the morning-glory. morphography
and my dead love. I think about my friends and there
I find the one or two
with eyes.
do you know
there’s a woman
whose face is never the same and whose body
is arched in shining a slick run home of
autumn breath and legs like god
damn racehorse?
her world is mine.
too.
her world knows everything.
where the lilies
grow in strait profusion
and fail to be distinguished from
ourselves.
oh what a bed
oh what a house. anguish is.
and so are you. two irishmen
were digging a ditch
and the road went on blithely
in either direction.
forgot about bowling green, didn’t you?
the legs of lamb
are all gone now
and so too the hymnals
and bounce of the knee
for the infant.
every which way you look
there’s a guy with a gun and a deep grievance. every doubled image has
a murder of its own. I’d love to touch you
say the lost. the abandoned
fall flat to the floor where the decals
live. the star in the palm and the dwindling mice. the cartoon
history. the anguish in cardboard and muslin the paper
moon.
the rider.
the shepherd stands
in perfect light
around him there’s a touch
of wind in the golded
leaves. in front at the foot [the foot]
is the dead lamb with throat of the torn
and the blood. there are other
sheep. the shepherd
knows but considers.
anyway. it’s all in the pause. this dead thing
was that live thing
in god. is
god.
the wind in the painting too
is holding its breath. do
you know how you moved me?
your pain in the unsurprised
mind as is coming
from nowhere? there is no
understanding.
merely
god in a fanning of particles the words
were the music. you hear? there is the sense
of loss you know. there is that sense and all around it
landscapes build themselves and come
to sweet flow death
its folds and hidden
dwellings. spell out
your name with stones on the floor. the earth. the grass. the touch of foot
[foot]. Richard loved
Antaeus you
could tell. how he walked. far afield. the poem is never
that. the poem touches itself as the field
curves in twilight. and the dancers come. and the big fucking
cat-head. you hear me playing jacks along
the empty hall
and all there is
is you. must be sunday.
alone then like hell and the smell of the sunday
dinners. sure [shore]. Jack Sprat rests his chin on plate
and the kids are all sorry
for something. fat fat the water rat. who lives
down the years? you do. of course
you do.
how it goes how
it works the way
things are. the cat is a mistake I guess.
but the cat insists. it does.
the consciousness riffles through all in a great shift
of brightness moving embers curling
with choice as the muscles ripple
long and flutter.
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.
stroke of the evening the lovely
surprise of the bright dead hope.
as I sit I have before
sat still
feeling the real and silver
feet [foot]. as the crow
flies.
as the brittle is not. and will not. and falls to words apart their breathless.
the unbreathing poem is hell where it is.
and so it always
was.
Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen.
He will be good but
God knows When.
wrestle me now
to the floor of the mind.
the wash on the broken timbers
afar off the shore which is tenuous.
wash on the valleys
and pepper spray
on sea-stretched eyes.
as you are you again the rain
is just as should be
and I open the book to the page of the old station. ain’t it strange
the way the way
goes crooked through
then comes out flat on
sure. of course. [shore]. arcturus.
orion. a child’s garden
of stars. trouble in mind
and finally the grace of the mist.
which is electric.
which rises up in giving up.
so now there’s a donkey too.
the Bremen town musicians
take their places.
and in the last house in town there’s a silent globe.
out there by the trolley-end. out there where
the dead guy crumples
paper. and throws it.
there was a great crouch by the fireplace of 1969.
throwing all the old paper. poems in cages .
and clusters.
don’t remember a goddamn thing but the coast.
felt like we were moving past but no.
it and they were moving
past.
and the pumpkin spiders
too. and the teeth. dentition. this was before
the music went fat
with the heads.
it was new moon and knife in the back. beautiful.
sure [shore foot]
the wings of the owl.
enormous fucking. drift on down in streetlamp mist
in heart and cat in eye. what it sees with.
tumbling
mice and new moon[mown]
teeth. dentition.
bounced a piece of paper went
straight up crumpled
moon came down so how I knew then
breath. the night was clean
and bones in me
tight and smooth and white
and doing their job
as coast rolled by
in faint machinery.
big sea making noises
always tracks.
dentition: the character of a set of teeth especially with regard to their number, kind, and arrangement — see TOOTH illustration.
everything seen is the one
thing. come
to understand
this morning come
to fall. the fall. the elegance
of slapstick face
in the hamburger.
old horse white
in the penned rectangle god
the hills are smooth around
in text-book
reclinings. sway back watching
out the tapered
skull. look at ne now, ma.
I am a horse, am I not? have I not come to the accurate
substance? what is there to say? huh?
reclension.
when I come through glass to grass my long long mind
is sweet as huckeleberry. down the path. where we all were trying
then.
and so we are still
in the dead and alive
by the fountain of goldenrod
my love.
my loves.
my furling
acquiescences. in
Brementown
where I was born
there was a fair maid
dwelling. and there I lived
for years of days
and none the less
for telling. I
foretell a great wave of nonsense to come
from the compass points jiggling. three dogs
and four paws. chicken little’s
got tenure at last.
a falling noise all over this country
and that country.
country is stamped.
a stencil.
which twin has
the dick? my twin cousins
Ronnie and Norma were last-named
Dick. which must have been hard
for her. no joke. what the language
does by itself
is the image of god.
see what a slough of despond
looks like? looks back like? have some place
to die? yet? sure [shore]. I have my endlessness
of head
and pearly morning
gray by sea but pearl. Bill
didn’t want to die in a furnished
room. but I don’t know. depends what hangs
from the ceiling. is it whimsy? god
no. don’t know what
the fuck it is. but I have pearl of light as rolls
the heaven. from out the sketchy dead things
the light within. the light without’s
just Tommy’s rot
and light within
the purest rot. we gleam. god
do we gleam.
we waver and shine like the fish in the stars.
me for you, honey. they for it
as Richard
used to say.
there is no up
there is no down
but all for you
I make the effort. big
fucking deal. that’s what the kid on the bike on third and eighty-
seventh says. not really. what he really says is
merry christmas Huey
hitting me high dead center with streaming
left hand fist.
so down I go and really wounded
imprint of star in the afternoon sky.
flake-chalk hears my prayer and flakes.
colored chalk is okay too.
marks our land with glyphs
and branded soles. Brementown
and everyman.
steadfast tin soldier and the girl with the red shoes.
sudden eyes in the city of brass and blood smeared
on stump of neck. the locked glass tower trinity
and simpleton identity. the rubber ball. time
is the great healer
my father says at night.
in the dark. it is
the snake says from under the bed.
read the other stuff. find out what they’re reading
and read the other stuff. have a few things
you live by.
as if there were a dark square pond in nowhere hills
of grass. put a few coins on the blind man’s feet
for light. come to me wet from out
the rolling edges
the barely fitted
parts of us. my rage is made
of all those simple
joys the mailman
takes to hell. there
is no hell. on the scenic railroad
we sit in one place and the art
moves all the painted stuff the hills
and dales. when we get out we’re
enormous.
we walk over the machinery and through the town
and out on the cut-outs
the stars.
bowling green
sewin machine. green
is the night green
kindled and appareled. green
kindling. time
of your life.
colors
in the soaked logs. death in a small place
is large as needs be.
for the breathing space. for the sudden access
to other. for everything remembered in
the lights of coming light. who
would deny the snake his simple
musicality? on the green green grass
the brass shines curved and potent. on the green green grass
the bandshell flutters
white wood. in
the hearts of the kids and the agèd
god flutters too. one great rolling
ripple through the flesh of minds. daisy daisy.
real as hell gone home. know what that’s like
in the twilight when you know
that all the things as hell
are pictured
right there up the stairs
in re-
arrangement? it’s all bloody nothing
but better wade through. it’s
the beast that eats your head in little
cakes. get smart
the refrigerator says. I open I close
says the door. the bedroom is full
of empty hats
and outside the fire engines idle. that light.
summer night.
all your stuff
is pasted on. piss on it.
walkin away so cool.
if there were a bridge to nowhere
where would it attach? this is a monday morning
in the year of our lord
Ə.
the numbers mean nothing. the scaffolding
means nothing. wheat means something
what? wheat? wheat
means nothing.
so all these things inside have names
and not one means
a goddamn thing. good
place to start. can give
to a mute fish the voice of
an angel. nightingale. the voice of the angel. ngale.
shatters the gorgon’s head in her dripping
courtyard. any head.
in the furnished room
are the gorgon’s head and a long silence. the muteness
of the fish. as if one snapped fingers
the papier maché rises.
fuck it then.
it ain’t no head it’s just
for scaring the kids. one two three and fall to knee. four five six
and tock tick tock. the voice of the angel
freezes the tracks
and the green grass grows
all around all around.
endgame. no? kind of like something
remembered.
the mistake is at
any head. also
the green grass
is a mistake. kind of like
maybe not. the card with the great
circus fire on it
flips neatly through the air to ground. to ground a system
is to provide it with roots. the terrible fucking thing
is the ball lightning. hold
my hand. I’ll go back and look now
and notice. the cat’s gone away on
his own.
seven go-ahead places between the neck
and the body. grow ahead
why don’t you? I can’t.
sit down and say that
and understand it. you can’t.
makes no difference
sit there.
there are some guys when
they die it’s like
they leaned too far back in the chair and then there’s
that feeling. this is in the room where the floor
sheers off. up on the fourth floor.
in the dark all the border
flowers nod in the breeze. which two
eyes see?
the ones with the marbles
are fat as cheese
ghost eyes. the light bandits.
the overcoat twirling
its dead feet. the alcohol. oh
for the pleasures of the harbor. tangy
port
and Willie dead
and all our dreams
remembered.
the snow came just in time
in great shapes. I touched it and the edges of the shapes
changed. how it fell on my life
at the edge of everything. beyond this snow
is mercy. mercy is
the fact of this snow and its im-
placability. how the eye sees
the world is the place
of the knowledge. which
is of touch. and fall. and opening
distance made particle. drift
made dance. oh how we danced. did
we? seemed that maybe
we missed in the shift of the tracks. in the shine
of the tracks.
in the tracks of the tracks through the air to the place of
speech.
hear me haltingly say in the evening
that the fall of snow grows blue as evening
falls. a few words back and forth. they touch
too. each other. they
collide so that
this one
falls left
and that
one
falls right.
and the meaning
runs off between
dead Euclid’s eyes. more
watery now. more lakes
to fish in. everything everyone
has place. it’s a charm bracelet
thing. and the angel detaché
opens and closes the vaginal clam.
the power the grace and
the stupid poetry.
fucking stupid
pot of message. would they were all in
the air in the manner
of bees poke their holes and
are gone. brown and gold and sounding. of course of course. they
will be gone
as jupiter falls like a tumbling coin and the night breaks free
of glass and expectation. one fine swirl
of cape and nowhere dimension.
the cape is not this and then that. the cape
is a swirl and the rain. far afield
I came to words
as a vast open grave
in a meadow. or was it a ramp?
without the words the walls have nothing lighting
anymore. but where’s the harm
in that? the walls have light
as snow has fall
and meadows graves and bees the fine
particularity. snowflakes buzz
too. passing the looming
sign in the air.
I Am the
Electric Place. I am the place
in the meadow
raised high
to the mass of you.
press your hand
against the face
of falling snow. trace its features. stick
your tongue out.
I remember remember
Miriam’d never
seen snow and twirled in it.
long thick brown hair moving
like alive. like thought.
I remember the real and the unreal and their hands press one
to the other. my love. everything
has a place as everything
has a death. perfect
simplicity. in simple city
lives the man
who comes around at twilight lit
with death.
the most beautiful light. broken
to numbers and walking away from it all
so cool. one tight mind. the sprawling night. the palace
of memory
built of the streets and of
thought and of love. cold blue arches steel
and moon. blown paper. steam in the cold.
light of god.
never out of touch
never over touch
never short on cloud
in head. a bouquet of the luminous
miniscule. a loveliness beyond
the pale. a real.
a being. nerves
and light and broken
stairs.
if you’re in danger
listen hard
you’ll hear the tumbling tumbleweed in the ever
same. the route of ambling
easy final in the blue
blue shadows.
the great thing is
as dying goes
the fake is left
in the stable. where would I
of all bright things
have come to understand death
as an ambling
on horseback
away from the great stone skull [head]?
where are you?
in the big parade the dead guys march
along the rutted country lane. you see their eyes? you hear there [their]
hearts beating?
the sounds of the beating
hearts of the dead
is in Ripley.
everything moving
at once and the only
light is the light of
the eye. one big eye
is red and flat
and one is cold
and white and flat.
and all I care’s
the one that rolls
will get me home
for dinner. love
bade me eat in a place where people
laugh once in a while. if you want your kid to be a decent
human being laugh
once in a while. all
together now.
but they don’t care
don’t care and let them
at the tumbling keys they’ll turn
the world to metaphoric
shit surrounds the heart
like smothered hands. not Monk
though.
my old friend death says watch
me fucking run. off the planet.
out to the end where the whole thing
really fucking is. I’m death and my long hair streams blond
in the sunlight. I’m death and the world rolls away
under me. I make space
and in my hand
the bees creep. hi.
this is me and
this is my job. and
if I could
there would be none
of words misunder
stood or dark.
past the thin mirror. the eggshell. the leaping
blood that falls to
earth. the edge
of the fuschia. the heart of the dog
star. the pictures in that head in which
the buttons float. red and green in concave
pairs. off and on
and live and die and be
and flutter.
down to St. James
emporium. there’s a mistake
above. as above
so below. there’s a mistake in the matter
of buttons. I wouldn’t lead
you wrong. even if you are
green.
I wouldn’t do that. what
a right guy I am. hey.
here’s this small
tantric sermon.. give it to you
cheap. you can give it
to your girl. make her
stop and think in all
the clothes and stuff.
sure [ ].
what the hell. nobody
lives forever.
the men who haunt me are
not so bad. for the most part.
for the better part.
I give what’s due
it’s due.
Smart falls
in three parts. Melville
looks out the window at the harbor which is now
a great gray heart. Jay
Gatsby dies of a hole bleeding
Demeter slowly and Spicer
smiles and says hi. shyly.
the poem will
go on forever. blow
your nose and come to order.
we associate understanding
with tones of voice. we’re dumb
as dirt. the work assumes and contains and extends
over all and never
forget. one step twice
that’s all she wrote. in the air that was sweet as
the rose of the summer. in the long twilight
of her hand. in the train of her appleness nightgown went tremblingly
by and croaked as it went. croaked.
in the endless silence the black bird croaked
and the whole of creation came round in panels and lattices.
honeydew and thigh-bells. murderous hands and children
tucked behind vapors. here
you might drive a peg through my head
just for placement. here you might scrawl on the fence we
came this way before but didn’t
know but now we don’t
no more.
there isn’t a single thought from out
the high-toned crowd of fancy dan
poseurs I wouldn’t piss on.
my obligations are clear.
we need to follow through.
don’t we?
on Easter morning ‘62
with no one awake but me
so it seems
I in a three piece suit walking down eighty-sixth toward the corner’s
wire trash basket in it
a dead man
lying back with just his ass
wedged in the basket.
we look at each other.
when I come back
the other way.
he’s gone. tell me a story
daddy. Sergeant Preston
cuts the snow and Easter morning
falls like a tray of biscuits.
now.
what the hell is wrong and why? this is the weave
and it all must be here.
must it?
nah.
but hints must be here. though
the gleam is always
fugitive.
running away on a wednesday morning
never coming back.
take that as you will.
sadly.
there is no certainty of that.
may come back locked
in big old carriage
wheels with blackbirds at my face
and a sun of the morning
intacto.
the words are door and foot
and sure and glass. the errors are many and in them we find
the poem. the salted mine. the place by the side of the road
where the passing is all
accomplished. it’s always the side of the road or the banks
of the river. the unknown
can be known. the unsaid
can be said.
but mystery
is forever.
who was that guy?
one flat face comes leaping out on springs and trills the water
edge to edge. one new place is opened up and how the standing hats are smokestacks see
the silken women open up and twilight in a band of angels. the movement
is so slow from here that half the time goes by in shale
and fingernails. unreal undead
city gone by yesterday.
red
clay bank no child. not a one
in the long stress
of faces.
dead clue giveaway.
true-heart kid
gone down the sluice
and turned to gold
in pebbles.
none not a one
to be left to the long
line of birds. you see
how they turn as we pass and show
their beaks.
oh pay attention.
in the errors are all of the truths of the long
tracing. where the errors are the truth shows through.
J. Arthur Rank
and the dark of the wheel beaten gold.
this is a place
in the poem.
watch out.
I come down the stairs with
your hand. no.
with all of you.
the errors reach their hands the one
to the other and build the great passages between. the human
universe. I don’t care. we
were as we were
and we loved
it.
so [sew].
now then when.
inside you I was pulled to god
like an assembly. today the first bright song will be
the face of you in full
unknowing. the cloud of
the face of
the gasp.
the first will be
the next come
end. my particular end comes unconsciously..
stop and slide and love. the woman in the elegance steps
from out the crowd and sliding
we mix on the floor
apart
but mixed
and step to the music unheard but
there.
okay.
I step on her foot and
she smiles
that smile with which the graceful knowing
take the un in grace.
there are no pasted
steps.
this is not metaphor. this
is life.
the self-willed is not
and the knife in the back
pulls the set to attention on
my desktop now
you’ll find a deep gray silver print of Navy Day
1946 the day
I was three and there. we were. my
father and I in the cold white cream and gray
of the river. the Hudson.
look at the size of it. in all that size
is a mind insisting no.
I am not here I will not
be here. but the loved ones will take you
where you would not go as the turning
planet carries them.
feel the breeze. the braided ladders
hang from the carrier.
here I am
and I was god
help me
whacha gonna do?
embrace death. the ease of it.
walkin away from it all
so cool.
the light coming down from out the broken.
the foot with a substance of leg.
as if there were somewhere
to go. nine
lives in one place are
one brain in nine places.
press your feet to the ground
and whistle through your lovely bones
the roses of picardy graveyards..
the moonlight serenades. the sprawled
and slippery entrail
falling viewmasters.
a bit of music and a slice
of flesh
and all the stuff we don’t
tell the kids.
see that city
down the valley
that’s the brightest
place there is.
and all the kids there
have no one at all. and all the food
is dragged by savage cats down long black alleys
you can’t stand up in. if you’re Irish
come into the parlor. we’ll pop your heart at the door
for the weasel. the cry of the ten cent
beauty. the feast in the house
of the dead barely
a face left to eat
came sailing through the foggy dew.
so [sew] and sew again.
do you hear in the back of my head the fine skirl
of the waltz? the way things are
we barely have
to finish the line. the damndest
thing.
everything that’s cant
we take seriously
and everything that’s true
we kick to the side of the road.
kick her head
down Regal Way
and fuck her dead
with lies.
the Hudson is a wide gray line
and on it move the ships that once
were burning. these
are not personal matters.
I stop where the outlines
are clearest then turn
and turn again. the poet
has no personal
if he’s doing his job. the poem
lifts and drags and sighs like
the snake of the world.
that’s just personal.
hell.
those be his eyes!
I
have no solitary.
get it?
for once and for all
in the staggering ballroom
the band plays the three
in the morning.
the waltz.
I
was born this way and find the errors
full of love and grief like carpet.
this is a different river
and maybe it runs
to the Laws of Large Numbers.
the flaming London.
this is a different poem and yet
and yet.
the problem with the flat
bike tire is
that something is always
missing. not for the spandex monsters
but the kids
this is for. lost at Clove Lake Park and suddenly
flat though the patch kit is there it’s just
the pump isn’t. or the wrench. or the eyes
of the belovèd. Carol
it was then. her face. lost
in the rowboats and tangle of snakes
in the reeds and the catkins pussy
willow. oh my love. can’t get back
without no tire.
walked the bike back
and when I got to nowhere then
I walked back home again
and left the words alone
for a while.
alive alive o. she died of a favor
and no one could save her. alive as I can be in this
the walking frame of likeminded monads. it’s all in the different
colors and sounds in the far valleys
the amygdala. I remember
you. you put your hand on mine against
the wall and then
the double. that gray day on the river there
your snowy muff was laid out over
79th. at the river. street. we came to die
but found the eye
of other. we
died anyway
but the ember in passing
breeze lived again.
and sang in orange.
not worth the paper
it’s written on.
the long gray line.
the plucking in
the chest. the eyes
on the river. the roar of the stack
of the clouds. the subwayed
river. the life
down there.
the inadequate
in sections.
the press of the thumb.
the waking to sleep and the glory
of it. raised up here where nothing is
its name and the pomegranate idea
bleeds in sections and is
not. the poemgranate
telephone. just between you
and me. the dyes come out of the sea in a fine
transparency. I wrap you in the being and
my brain goes down the stairs to flat
rock and cave. the colors eat me
and happy at last I find a new library with a new lamp
and a fluttery door.
and down to the path of
the ducks and their turn
of the pool. the municipal pool
is in Sunset Park
where late one night in dream I watched
from an apartment window.
and I was other.
with ruby lips. the curtain fucked
the breeze. the old crochet.
the breasts in lilac. many
things to say but how
the poem eats them.
puppy chow.
the breathing in the hall of the statues. museums
are like that. I have a museum in my head
and in it streaming runners pass
themselves in painted windows.
every painting shrugs a little skips
a frame.
just like that.
statuary
is just for creep. the deltoids
creep. the breath comes down the line
of fancy-ass cursive.
come on in. I’m
all the rage I’m
dead in squares laid out beneath me
like a picnic cloth. the ants coming out of the bloody statues.
all this stuff I thought in 19
55 or so. went places then
by myself. saw the women in their summer bodies. you.
make my heart a wreck. a ten cent cold Rilke and a two dollar trip
to the Jazz Gallery.
a city with skirt around hips
and hot stone fronts
with glass [glass]. glass between and glass between
faces. never thought I’d make it to
the dance. never thought I would. but
there we were and artifice
became the leg up. the speaking mechanicals.
the mystery scrawls. araby. the light in the air before
thunder the twist of the dark maple life in the little front yard the cold
of the hands of the rain. the voices. all the voices
come from out
the little boxes. and because they were flesh
they die with the down-winding
spring. machinery gathers itself into a huge
arrow. croak the hollow tense the spring and leap
the decal [decal]
campfire. see your mother’s eyes go up
and fade there big as moons.
because you were
a small thing held
in hands and can’t forget. make
the effort. any number
have forgotten. perhaps. any number say they have
forgotten. human beings will say
any damn thing to get you to stop
asking questions. but you
don’t really forget
do you? somewhere right around the edges of
the acorn there’s
the light of the afternoon
hill of the dreaming
hands.
with the fingers the head
that falls back
to be caught.
london bridge
and so on.
and for every broken hand that falls
away there will be grief passed out
like ration stamps.
here.
you’re still real.
you’re not crazy
you’re born.
there is no power there’s only
the hands that pick you up the smile
if you’re lucky.
walk
up the avenue. the Easter parade was never a thing worth
recounting. the fatuities of the rich are hinged
to what’s been denied them a glimpse
of the whole broken heart at
the boathouse filling.
debarkation for
Wackyland.
and all the buttons shine on all
the winter coats like
eyes of god.
ramps that go up
and ramps go down
and a band on the main deck
plays
Strawberry Blonde. we sing full
of grace we sing
we’re nine and ten
and so on
sing we
Casey got hit with
a bucket of shit and
the band played
on.
he waltzed through the door
and got hit with some more
as the band played
on.
the sins of the fathers
float for a while in the sway
of the music.
they hold to their wives
as if the gray
were pearl.
the mass of the riverboat
floats on clarinet
accordion
and snare drum.
the embedded machines
arrow themselves flawlessly
to the mystery.
what the faces they make
in the coming dark. the drawn
mechanical
arms move smooth the broken eyes
akimbo down
the underpass. the
oncoming wholeness
of cold but for friction.
orange
crush bobs its waxiness. dead-leg
stomp on the rivets. melancholy
babies early
on and too-late off
the avenue.
see how the winter takes hold and the poem skates.
I’d enter my own home justified.
where might that be, sonny?
where the caterpillars fall all green
and creep to the edge of the substance
where rising
they wave in the air.
jesus move it on then. the match game’s down
the way and so’s
the pussy. so
it is
bethankit.
some hae meat
and canna eat
and some wad eat
that want it.
but we hae meat
and we can eat
so let the lord
bethankit.
the laptop which
is dense as lead
would tell me that
the scottish
dictionary threatens
me with data with
which I should not
fuck around.
from the mouths
of babes.
these fucking bairns are lost in the woods see
and it’s fucking getting
dark and it’s really
cold. it’s really
fucking cold
and they can’t
believe it.
the light fantastic
down the stairs
that wind [whined]
the chimney.
watching the sun come up on the sprawled
deck of stone cards each
with a painting some guy made
in the warehouse under
talent and a broken window
painted
in the light off the river
the blizzard
at heart.
bring’em back alive
for Eddie the Pastrami King.
he is too. just that.
the King of Pastrami
in autumn by heave
of the river. down
the empty street
in the sketched
declivity.
the shorthand gouge
of thumb. erase
me please and leave no shine
of pressed-on words
or lunch.
see how the river
won’t go but keeps coming.
to the big
hint.
the place of the rollers. the narrative
of A. Gordon Pym. the monolith
knows everything
is being.
a big fucking pile
of art-deco flutings
and junk. so
beautiful.
suppose now you’re sitting in a fake railway car
and outside the fake countries are turning by on a continuous
sewn [sown] together screen with scenes
to which beauty has been added by
the snark and a retinue
of seaside proprietors the James
Boys. you look in the eyes across
the lady in the dark’s
and fold your legs at the ankle think
and think and
think.
the car isn’t moving the sown
screen is moving but going nowhere over and over
again in the night are the snow-lit
mountains
the moon
and the painted
haloesthe lamps.
could it be a between-decks
entertainment? a scar on the life’s
face? life
itself?
far to the north
is the south. far in the locks of the weir are the damned
barristers.
and the softening drowned girl.
so wear a colander
for the rays
and break a leg
for the praise.
and offer out your hand to that
one frightened child at edge of the great
ruffles of north and the southern
gills of the unwanted body and round mouth
DNA for sale
real cheep. Old
Macdonald
has a well full of terrible
things in the night. aeiou. black sound spaces and endless
hills of the great plain roll
it over.
play the empty organ touch
of the fake all.
I
stepped on her foot and
she smiled. of these things
my life is made. how
about you?
bethankit.
here from the ditch of the word. from the broken-
down sequence the big
handshake.
they came down from the hills with the eyes
of flashlight.
we came clambering out of the briars with hearts and with
tongues.
were there nothing else
there would still be you. pasted over there
with big fat head.
that’s me
in the painted world.
where’s the surprise? everyone knows
there are places that come
between sleep.
the mountain’s jugular.
the paste and the knowledge.
the butterfly bandages.
I lived briefly
between two rooms in a hallway
here and there lacy as if there were endless
erasures had finally
worn through the geography so that
in odd breezes I could sometimes feel
the touch of the fringes [fingers]
of what had been breathing
against me a mouth
its lips
making me turn
disconsolate and honored in the merging lost
pearls of the dappled light. through
the fringed [fingered]
places nothing
to see but dark
and the occasional
passing of hands
a conjuror’s say leaving
trails behind thin
clothes against the razor
cold.
notice. the well is a telescope.
our secret is
that everything known
comes from way outside.
great green gobs of
greasy grimy gopher guts.
music has it easy. fucking
big wigs. an owl
dog possum alligator and turtle
lend their risen voices
to Annie Laurie.
who eats them all
at sundown.
the forest trembles.
the words fall down to iodine
and band-aids red with sweet
by and by.
could this be magic?
no.
the real is simply.
not what you think.
and what you’ve been given
is the power to throw away
the notion of power.
fucking throw it away.
ah um.
I don’t know how
Dad.
but don’t be sad
I’ll learn.
of course.
I look in the windows and the people I see
are much like me. the songs they sing.
the pure breath. the pulse on the air
of the dying. to winter god I think
come get me now
as I
am done in the soup
of the loving those
dear sad wrecks who raised me when
my parents were away to work trying
hard as they could. I
belong to Glasgow going
roond and roond.
only
seems that way. never found the high road found
the low road made me ill.
never found a fucking thing
but something came
from out the thunder anyway.
the head. the thunderhead.
flak is the color
of my true love’s hair.
I think to god
and offer up
this life for turn
to green and a certain
merriment among those
who know in the high air.
the kids as always think there’s something
special in the timely yo-yo seasons
of words and their related
lies. I dust my feet [foot]
off and head for the place of the approaching
image not image.
all-wrapped man with feet and head that rocks
a bit. in the furrowed distance. in the fields of the jostling
for solid. a drink of water
through the map
life-like. the map is deep
so how to roll
it up?
with soft thumbs. the trick’s to find nowhere
and mark it with blood. one footprint. the bones
of a lost hand. the related
lies. the turn of the corner
to x street. how
cozy it is. how sudden and remembered.
yo yo season.
see the disks
go up and down.
so does One-Eye. so
does The Empty Duchess.
they are not real
who only come
to feint and bob
your life away.
it should tell you something
how powerful
the unreal are. have
access to power because
they aren’t real. only the loveless
go looking for love.
all we get’s
a fake name
and a pair of eyes go click.
see in the distance
how they approach
there are three now. dressed in russet. dressed
in Ruskin. the cypresses
make slides. the heat makes
images. the dead
make tracks. flippety flop
the Keystone Cops.
hi Susan.
remember you to death. the blue silk
with the high neck
and the silver. your fluttery eyes at twilight
in the House on the Borderland. seemed to me
we were quite alone. perhaps
not. in the lacquers and layers and peelings of the long
summers maybe
there were others. crossing Great South Bay in
your little outboard. who the hell
are we? anyway?
the flapping on the hull the spray
and the endless man-made depths the old
refrigerators and the new
flounders. the scallops and
evil-eye mackerels. the woman
up to her waist in money.
icelandic poppy
through a nervous glass.
three hundred thousand dead
do the Madison on the bay.
Dirty Old Town
is a ghost song.
the Jones Beach Water Tower is a forgotten
job. you came up once
breaking the water and between your toes
[hath sent me to sea for pearls
was a littleneck clam. see. you said.
I can still do it.
so you can. never should have brought you
to California. an act
of cruelty that was.
but who knew? you get to be
a certain being marked
with traceries of sun and leaves and failures.
then you stand naked in a clear light and look
and there’s no more sense
of what to do or where.
than when the silver rang on both sides
of the rockered horse oh
Rocking Horse Winner and oh what a good boy
am I.
the oldest autumn leaves keep watch
by the old furnace where there’s room
for everything.
and outside the rain falls in long drops sometimes.
streaky like the fat in the short ribs.
they once pulled by themselves.
see them in the rain?
you know you can you know.
remember?
you know you can you know
the snap of the rubber-band mountains the fold
of the bedspread tent the one
fucking hugeness.
you know you can. I’m sitting in the somewhat late
middle of 1948 and looking
at a matched pair of Scots terriers with magnets.
on their feet they fill the world now
and then you know the truth
but it won’t let
back you in
without you die with palms out as kite. as painted thing
for the air where the stitches roll like hills
and the voices come stumbling
and light. you know you can you know open
your eyes and stretch this
or that muscle. where
will you be now
the light’s out again? ambiguous at best. the light’s
always where it is. put
your feet on the floor. it’s better not
it’s better not
to lie in your own head as bed in the shifting
universe. the great mackerel
still-life
of brain in the moonlight
is false as the night
follows day is
the art of the possible living
the death of the cutie-pie
faces the carnival glass
moments. it’s better to rise
with the dawn. which is this or that and moving know
that in the hillside forest every
morning when the dawn is not
yet there’s a flat wind comes and cuts through the tops
of the trees and every
leaf feels it. yes. the name of the wind might be slake.
but every morning it rises and comes up out of nowhere and skrees through the tops of the trees
in a gesture. the hand palm down goes sweeping out ending. in the great.
you know you can you know in the rose. in the
future of past by the green where the village.
in the thought. in the momentary
rose of the wind and hand and star and the end of the whole was
the whole risen. is the whole. and the end of the light
was its finest place. its shell of light
with something out
as if there were a place
were there.
for in my nature I thirsted after beauty but God,
God hath sent me to see for pearls.
which seem
to contain light. rolling down the heavens smooth
as silk on flesh. and over there you are
as proof. and over there my eyes. and foot right here
and chest in the couch and heart bumping down
on the road to the road to the road. you in the distance
and wrapped in the light
of one more being. one more way
to be. dissolve
of course. resolve
of course. the course of the fabulous river is dug
with a thumbnail.
how intentional.
this is dissolved
and so is resolved
and that is the nearer
for all. and anguish and physical
pain and ugly
to eye and bent
and deranged and alone in the light
and the dark in the light
and twisted in lone
and lost in regret and visible
in misery and wrenched
from the womb and abandoned in bedclothes and lost
in the interlocked buildings choking
on grief and its stringiness wishing
for simple
dissolve. be
all resolved in one fell swoop
of the hand of the other. the light
of that which approaches
is not approached
and beneath that river to the sea
the cold ropes stream the bones and wave
the lace of fingers
flop of skull
and voice apart from flesh when first
I saw you on the village green
my life was over all again
for good.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
in light of
the moon and venus
and jupiter faintly. there’s a big
hole in my head and it has ghostly
cylinder sides. high air all around. thumbs
of tomorrow today. it was tomorrow.
the little book I learn to love
says lie down now and
wait. and wait and wait.
this is the barrel
at the edge of the deadly
desert. nice and cool
it is except
for noon.
were there not several
versions of me there’d be no reasonable
horizon. and god knows I go there
to yell. but,
this is all so much
filler.
in light of
moon and venus faintly
jupiter, and there’s a big
hole in my head. it goes down and down
but nowhere fast. know what it is
directional mathematics? at peace I wait
the morning out, and love
as I do.
not you. you.
is it a heap of broken stuff
or a crowd? is anyone
surprised to see
the giant face brooding lovely
on the hill? the face of the corpse lacks a certain
touchability. on
the other hand,
the ring won’t come off.
I wrote this morning that some lives
concentrate down to a
rosebud, like that. the center
of possibility. some lives
brood on the hillside having
nothing left but face. others die
justified, left and right. still
others are still. be still.
cold light stars and planets colored
inside the lines.
was it Captain MacWhirr? really? the typhoon
of glass in the white night? got some nerve to pick a name
like that. when
Raoul Walsh needed a boat sucked up by a typhoon he put
the model in a big bucket of water. turned it over
with the camera running then
ran it in reverse. you need to think that way. all
the time now. slowly
turn my hand to light it does
its job. bounces back
the light. need to know
what you’re doing. what
you won’t know is what
it’s doing. never will.
anyway. the Captain
has his slicker on. it gleams through the gleam
as the sea rises hollow and cylinder endless
and smooth. jupiter is barely seen.
the green. electric
orangeade.
in a sequence is noticed
beginning and end
and precarious.
moves. right along.
move it along johnny
or you’ll get my foot
up your ass.
move it along. orion is my god of moves
across the face of the earth be
holden. how it was and how it will
be once. in the great clutter
of things I’ve been given
an imagined arrangement of stars
hangs above and punctuates
mr. lincoln’s
hat. there’s nothing in this life at all
but for noticing, describing,
and coming whole
to grief with a swollen
appreciation. Holden
got out
of the black rain
trap. in The Dark
Past.
every bit conscious. what do you have to say
with your pants down the lane with the Widow
Labyrinthina? ah, what have I done? there’s something simple here
and quite beyond the mind which fancies
itself, don’t it? get
the hook.
apply to the academy and note in your letter
your honors. note too
Mrs. Beaver’s elegant frock
and the death of the light
fantastic. blind man’s bluff. the classes fall
into categories easily
enough. easy as double-entry
bookkeeping. I’d break your heart
if I could find it. hit it hard
in your newborn
english department.
much as does the glue factory
the english department comes to being
faintly all the time.
then there it is. fuck it all.
in wide circle of pale starlight run
the bright swift fish the bits of life the monad
letters come dreamy came dreamy. damp day.
shorter life.
ecstasy.
yeah, but,
is the answer the blind man
gets on the subway. playing his b
flat alto.
what does he see?
I think to myself.
but I’m young
and don’t know it’s not
a serious question.
if I stick the nose of a telescope in
the light from jupiter
do I really see the past? are there
transparencies bumping
their edges and department
store dummies and faint
saxophone?
not a single
child’s question
has ever
been answered
by anyone.
welcome
to ghost island.
the big yellow key
and the starlight on the sea
wall. understand we don’t ascend
to god. god is not just a better
more-of-the-same. we
fall to god. ho ho the voices from
the center of the island echo.
they got caves
and they got combs
and they got towers and they
got money to burn. ho ho.
sky tonight and starlight on
the trail. the rails too.
big yellow key made of old and melted
yellow barrettes. will
you be on time?
will you be
in time?
will you be
under time? look.
a handful of dust is
a handful of life and the island of images
creaks on the sea like that boat.
the Sea Wolf’s.
it is as if and
more. take me this handful of dust to the post
office
and send it to the fireflies. the occasional
suitcased, the decoder
rings in flight. we had a ring came by mail
and you put a square of paper in the top
and held it still in the sunlight
and lo was a picture of the Lone
Ranger. we take the big blank book
out on the big blank rock and lo,
history. serious as can be, smiling. the smile,
after all, is the only sign of knowledge.
did you see that kid in the street? a handful
of reasssembly in the bright of mind reflecting
the projected? the movie starts and where’s
time. if it
[what?
were nothing
but simplest feel of love
it were all. at the top of my head is the picture that grows
in the pinhole light. who is it this time?
Lawrence Kenneth Kearney
late of red dust filling cloud
and road. the pictures come out real, no name
attached. Red Cloud Jamie
used to call me. lovely
girl.
writing up a storm. Storm
is a woman named Jameson had
these books on the shelf in the old
library. how I loved it there though not
for Storm Jameson never
read her. the storm
moved all across the sea
in a ball bearing. and it was silver
and rage and dull
and foam.
images down this coast the coast
of course
is elsewhere
and not. of course. the course of the blind
river. the storm on the blind
sea. was there a movie
called Captain China? there was.
and the big black heavy
crates slid side to side
to crush the human
flesh and bone. outside
the storm on a great
waste of sea. everywhere the spinning.
every where.
odd scraps of death.
Storm Jameson:
hope is a talent like any other.
I never would have thought but for
the name and what else was there?
hear that?
in the first
wellness of spring
was always a smell
in the air never there
till then. it come
[a thaw; moisture in the air; sweat on ice when frost begins to yield
all sudden high electric. in the library
the doors would be open and by the gate
forsythia new bud. I stand in the aisles of the novels
and skip over Storm Jameson. fake name
I think. it isn’t. who should I turn to?
so many. hope was always
my real middle name.
and who’s to say
I was wrong? consider
the lilies,
fake the rest.
Thair fell ane greit storme at Sanctandroisday of snaw;
the elegant diversions of
the stone voice brought to hill of light of white.
and dark. that hill
was right behind our house
and out in front the scribbled ocean.
so many voices
live in the hill,
and so many pepper
the sea.
I lifted my head up
and looked through the window
and light of the moon and
of venus were one
in the other. money in my pockets on
the floor but not
enough. hard day’s night. the library followed me
here to the edge of the thumbnail
planet. and I love yes I do
and god
the glass is a river
of window.
flocks of snow and tender fingers,
broken lines of flight and
powder.
the snow is not never the moon but the moon
is on it. a relationship
passes in the night.
with crooked back
and sack of cloth
I wander in
this surging broth.
and ride the onion,
slide the grease,
portray the carrot,
ey the meese. see how they ran. calliope
on four stout legs
with pipes of silver. ane meese
distrubil. storm cloud hides
where you see the pussy
in the well.
i took meese for
Muse but's
muse. ah ha.
‡MEESE, n., v. ne.Sc. form of Eng. muse
Cf. meesic, Music, and P.L.D. §§ 35, 128.
Also reduplic. form meese-mose, to wonder,
be suspicious, imagine things.
I had a peg board. we had
an abacus. they had a gatling gun. learn
in sequence. be not chaste
but come with god. as over the hill
comes the coach and the runner. the starver.
the ghost with the big
eyes. the subway comes to town pre-drawn
and lays it’s body
down. do you know the stories? do
you care? if I
could find one open ear
I’d go to sleep there
just outside.
where all the birds and trees are pitched
their tents and drawn
attentions. take this language
break it up
and scatter meaning.
feed the trout.
I knew a girl
named Stephanie Trout.
and lovely she was
in the meadow where everything
opens. she had
she told me
a hole in her heart.
as my son said,
poetic is to poetry
as jazzy is to jazz.
halfway up
the sideways slope
the ragged villain
ran to ground.
and burbled as he went.
unwilled exits. elevator temples. broken
hearted melody. we gave it a shot in the old days.
the sky looked down
and we looked up.
and kicking down the coffin street
there wasn’t one of us with life
expectancy. Nell Gwynn First National
held all the real money then.
lord take
this cup and down
the sky.
down the sky in a long
cool drink of water.
did I scare my kids?
sometimes.
did I want to?
above all things, no.
above the grave and the rose
and the floating corpse.
no.
so what did you do?
I let slip the face of
history. mine and all
the other stuff
around it. we all do terrible things
and hardly notice. my effort has been
to notice and not
repeat..
how many times around?
A my name is Anna.
it only takes the fallen
syllable, you know?
it takes the razor wind across
the eye and voice in fenced
place. here and now
I say goodbye,
and bathe in the cold dim light.
the star fuck.
I came to the end of the road and it flapped lazily
in a stiff highland breeze.
of course it was beautiful.
in the final landscape everything flutters
but beautiful. it’s as if.
let’s drop that.
hear it clank.
the way the paths were at shore road.
the way the broke-neck river ran
to muscle.
this is a difficult day in the world,
but I wouldn’t miss it. look forward
to nothin at all. look back to the series of
things that guy did. the jerk
when the breeze gets cold with razor as
it was that night rest
in the feel of it, the wonderful
disinterest. dismemberment.
empathetic fallacy.
the other night the geometry went out again and just
around that curtain was something not the same.
a long hall not a door? a nest of beings
one right through
the other? a murmur
[mormor was typed first.
of boxed and ribboned
space? and through the door
a flat-out window? and out the window a great
eraser? you know how hard it is
to celebrate these empty
knots? hold
the little hook the question
mark it well. this child is want and that
ignorance. don’t matter much but the pain
is a monstrous staircase. but then.
to hear a voice in grace across
the flat revolve of old and black
revolver seventy-eight
rpm
is to point the weakened foot
in the right direction. see space
as a 78 turning
dragging gravity.
the compass sits in splattered grief
of rain beyond the pale. imagine
the sound
so you can tell
your kids. the leaning
night come sideways down.
the only present
we know is in
consciousness of consciousness.
which takes no time at all and isn’t
in the past the way
the card game is. sit back in your chair and take
your feet in both hands. notice the snake in your back. smile for the rushes and
the whispering lake and the old columns. rock forward
and fall forward
out of your chair to
the floor. let go of your feet. think.
how the cloud is growing now
and how the feeble spiders crawl
to mamma. no use picking on
the spiders. without a name
they’re same as goldfish.
unnamed. they
have no name.
no more do you. roll on your back.
the ceiling is the world. there’s
a pressure on your back
and a snake in your spine.
what’s the game today? whist?
when you play whist
on the post office loading docks
you slam each card to table. wimoweh
the radio chants. also
don’t they know
it’s the end of the world.
these are some of the things
getting done this side
of bleeding knowledge.
self-canceling
is no accident. the letter had a self-canceling
stamp. it touched the paper
and zip it was blurred.
the touch of your hand
left a print.
and it came into visible
slowly. every once in a while
it happens that
the world puts up its hair and I
can see. were I more fool than I am
I’d take all the pictures for true.
the cheapjack
too.
the wine was a dollar ninety-nine a gallon and we’d carry it
every night after the bar
shut up. we carried the blood
in the jar up the hill
unsteadily. the leaning hill the flat black sky the
studded-belt stars.
sure I was there. but so was this other.
he paid better
attention. remember
your mouth in the night?
it was all we could feel [hear]
that toppling.
Mr. Sludge
alive and out
of Browning’s syntax. saintly
and smirking and trapped like an honest
man. rolling the syllable
bones. Mr. Sludge of course is a sly
Irishman. Browning
is a great poet. who do you trust?
my money goes with Sludge. not because he’s Irish. god no.
but because he lives with the real
as it breaks like a wave breaking
plates. plate LXXII. Browning in
his study. a Brownian study. but hark.
does not the head of Browning hear
the voice of Sludge in per-
petuity? does he not write down
the phantom of honest
discourse? is it not the case that all those books
fall off the shelf in the autumn? the russet glass?
once the mayhem planned the peace
in that dear starving place
where mama
shined the skulls.
of the two
confidence men
Sludge is the more
reliable.
by jupiter
a number of the same old man
says. land
o’goshen
says the bright
child.
I took my harp to a party
but nobody asked me
to play.
as a good harper stricken far in years
into whose cunning hands the gout doth fall,
all his old crotchets in his brain he bears,
but on his harp plays ill or not at all.
the finest music coleman hawkins. dying. sirius.
crotchet: root unknown but perhaps connected to
Latin crepare, to crackle, crabro, a hornet; if so,
it originally meant loud-sounding.
at the endless birthday parties
we all turn slowly sepia.
and that’s that. the art of the traveler
is keeping his hands to himself.
tried a couple of times
to touch the unfeelable and
it didn’t work out.
by jupiter.
got me down to the store
by smokefall.
[the breath of the horses.
tell me again now
how the words go.
there was a crooked man
by golly.
euphemism for God, first recorded 1775;
a sort of jolly kind of oath,
or asseveration much in use among our carters,
& the lowest people.
the same old men are coming
one from the other.
as if from a mechanical
source.
[horse
I’d at ease be here among
the broken solids.
[solace
love
as the soul loves
is.
the privileged
moment.
potato chips moonlight
and motor trips.
the moon and venus
and jupiter faintly. there’s a big
hole in my head and it has ghostly
cylinder sides. high air all around. thumbs
of tomorrow today. it was tomorrow.
the little book I learn to love
says lie down now and
wait. and wait and wait.
this is the barrel
at the edge of the deadly
desert. nice and cool
it is except
for noon.
were there not several
versions of me there’d be no reasonable
horizon. and god knows I go there
to yell. but,
this is all so much
filler.
in light of
moon and venus faintly
jupiter, and there’s a big
hole in my head. it goes down and down
but nowhere fast. know what it is
directional mathematics? at peace I wait
the morning out, and love
as I do.
not you. you.
is it a heap of broken stuff
or a crowd? is anyone
surprised to see
the giant face brooding lovely
on the hill? the face of the corpse lacks a certain
touchability. on
the other hand,
the ring won’t come off.
I wrote this morning that some lives
concentrate down to a
rosebud, like that. the center
of possibility. some lives
brood on the hillside having
nothing left but face. others die
justified, left and right. still
others are still. be still.
cold light stars and planets colored
inside the lines.
was it Captain MacWhirr? really? the typhoon
of glass in the white night? got some nerve to pick a name
like that. when
Raoul Walsh needed a boat sucked up by a typhoon he put
the model in a big bucket of water. turned it over
with the camera running then
ran it in reverse. you need to think that way. all
the time now. slowly
turn my hand to light it does
its job. bounces back
the light. need to know
what you’re doing. what
you won’t know is what
it’s doing. never will.
anyway. the Captain
has his slicker on. it gleams through the gleam
as the sea rises hollow and cylinder endless
and smooth. jupiter is barely seen.
the green. electric
orangeade.
in a sequence is noticed
beginning and end
and precarious.
moves. right along.
move it along johnny
or you’ll get my foot
up your ass.
move it along. orion is my god of moves
across the face of the earth be
holden. how it was and how it will
be once. in the great clutter
of things I’ve been given
an imagined arrangement of stars
hangs above and punctuates
mr. lincoln’s
hat. there’s nothing in this life at all
but for noticing, describing,
and coming whole
to grief with a swollen
appreciation. Holden
got out
of the black rain
trap. in The Dark
Past.
every bit conscious. what do you have to say
with your pants down the lane with the Widow
Labyrinthina? ah, what have I done? there’s something simple here
and quite beyond the mind which fancies
itself, don’t it? get
the hook.
apply to the academy and note in your letter
your honors. note too
Mrs. Beaver’s elegant frock
and the death of the light
fantastic. blind man’s bluff. the classes fall
into categories easily
enough. easy as double-entry
bookkeeping. I’d break your heart
if I could find it. hit it hard
in your newborn
english department.
much as does the glue factory
the english department comes to being
faintly all the time.
then there it is. fuck it all.
in wide circle of pale starlight run
the bright swift fish the bits of life the monad
letters come dreamy came dreamy. damp day.
shorter life.
ecstasy.
yeah, but,
is the answer the blind man
gets on the subway. playing his b
flat alto.
what does he see?
I think to myself.
but I’m young
and don’t know it’s not
a serious question.
if I stick the nose of a telescope in
the light from jupiter
do I really see the past? are there
transparencies bumping
their edges and department
store dummies and faint
saxophone?
not a single
child’s question
has ever
been answered
by anyone.
welcome
to ghost island.
the big yellow key
and the starlight on the sea
wall. understand we don’t ascend
to god. god is not just a better
more-of-the-same. we
fall to god. ho ho the voices from
the center of the island echo.
they got caves
and they got combs
and they got towers and they
got money to burn. ho ho.
sky tonight and starlight on
the trail. the rails too.
big yellow key made of old and melted
yellow barrettes. will
you be on time?
will you be
in time?
will you be
under time? look.
a handful of dust is
a handful of life and the island of images
creaks on the sea like that boat.
the Sea Wolf’s.
it is as if and
more. take me this handful of dust to the post
office
and send it to the fireflies. the occasional
suitcased, the decoder
rings in flight. we had a ring came by mail
and you put a square of paper in the top
and held it still in the sunlight
and lo was a picture of the Lone
Ranger. we take the big blank book
out on the big blank rock and lo,
history. serious as can be, smiling. the smile,
after all, is the only sign of knowledge.
did you see that kid in the street? a handful
of reasssembly in the bright of mind reflecting
the projected? the movie starts and where’s
time. if it
[what?
were nothing
but simplest feel of love
it were all. at the top of my head is the picture that grows
in the pinhole light. who is it this time?
Lawrence Kenneth Kearney
late of red dust filling cloud
and road. the pictures come out real, no name
attached. Red Cloud Jamie
used to call me. lovely
girl.
writing up a storm. Storm
is a woman named Jameson had
these books on the shelf in the old
library. how I loved it there though not
for Storm Jameson never
read her. the storm
moved all across the sea
in a ball bearing. and it was silver
and rage and dull
and foam.
images down this coast the coast
of course
is elsewhere
and not. of course. the course of the blind
river. the storm on the blind
sea. was there a movie
called Captain China? there was.
and the big black heavy
crates slid side to side
to crush the human
flesh and bone. outside
the storm on a great
waste of sea. everywhere the spinning.
every where.
odd scraps of death.
Storm Jameson:
hope is a talent like any other.
I never would have thought but for
the name and what else was there?
hear that?
in the first
wellness of spring
was always a smell
in the air never there
till then. it come
[a thaw; moisture in the air; sweat on ice when frost begins to yield
all sudden high electric. in the library
the doors would be open and by the gate
forsythia new bud. I stand in the aisles of the novels
and skip over Storm Jameson. fake name
I think. it isn’t. who should I turn to?
so many. hope was always
my real middle name.
and who’s to say
I was wrong? consider
the lilies,
fake the rest.
Thair fell ane greit storme at Sanctandroisday of snaw;
the elegant diversions of
the stone voice brought to hill of light of white.
and dark. that hill
was right behind our house
and out in front the scribbled ocean.
so many voices
live in the hill,
and so many pepper
the sea.
I lifted my head up
and looked through the window
and light of the moon and
of venus were one
in the other. money in my pockets on
the floor but not
enough. hard day’s night. the library followed me
here to the edge of the thumbnail
planet. and I love yes I do
and god
the glass is a river
of window.
flocks of snow and tender fingers,
broken lines of flight and
powder.
the snow is not never the moon but the moon
is on it. a relationship
passes in the night.
with crooked back
and sack of cloth
I wander in
this surging broth.
and ride the onion,
slide the grease,
portray the carrot,
ey the meese. see how they ran. calliope
on four stout legs
with pipes of silver. ane meese
distrubil. storm cloud hides
where you see the pussy
in the well.
i took meese for
Muse but's
muse. ah ha.
‡MEESE, n., v. ne.Sc. form of Eng. muse
Cf. meesic, Music, and P.L.D. §§ 35, 128.
Also reduplic. form meese-mose, to wonder,
be suspicious, imagine things.
I had a peg board. we had
an abacus. they had a gatling gun. learn
in sequence. be not chaste
but come with god. as over the hill
comes the coach and the runner. the starver.
the ghost with the big
eyes. the subway comes to town pre-drawn
and lays it’s body
down. do you know the stories? do
you care? if I
could find one open ear
I’d go to sleep there
just outside.
where all the birds and trees are pitched
their tents and drawn
attentions. take this language
break it up
and scatter meaning.
feed the trout.
I knew a girl
named Stephanie Trout.
and lovely she was
in the meadow where everything
opens. she had
she told me
a hole in her heart.
as my son said,
poetic is to poetry
as jazzy is to jazz.
halfway up
the sideways slope
the ragged villain
ran to ground.
and burbled as he went.
unwilled exits. elevator temples. broken
hearted melody. we gave it a shot in the old days.
the sky looked down
and we looked up.
and kicking down the coffin street
there wasn’t one of us with life
expectancy. Nell Gwynn First National
held all the real money then.
lord take
this cup and down
the sky.
down the sky in a long
cool drink of water.
did I scare my kids?
sometimes.
did I want to?
above all things, no.
above the grave and the rose
and the floating corpse.
no.
so what did you do?
I let slip the face of
history. mine and all
the other stuff
around it. we all do terrible things
and hardly notice. my effort has been
to notice and not
repeat..
how many times around?
A my name is Anna.
it only takes the fallen
syllable, you know?
it takes the razor wind across
the eye and voice in fenced
place. here and now
I say goodbye,
and bathe in the cold dim light.
the star fuck.
I came to the end of the road and it flapped lazily
in a stiff highland breeze.
of course it was beautiful.
in the final landscape everything flutters
but beautiful. it’s as if.
let’s drop that.
hear it clank.
the way the paths were at shore road.
the way the broke-neck river ran
to muscle.
this is a difficult day in the world,
but I wouldn’t miss it. look forward
to nothin at all. look back to the series of
things that guy did. the jerk
when the breeze gets cold with razor as
it was that night rest
in the feel of it, the wonderful
disinterest. dismemberment.
empathetic fallacy.
the other night the geometry went out again and just
around that curtain was something not the same.
a long hall not a door? a nest of beings
one right through
the other? a murmur
[mormor was typed first.
of boxed and ribboned
space? and through the door
a flat-out window? and out the window a great
eraser? you know how hard it is
to celebrate these empty
knots? hold
the little hook the question
mark it well. this child is want and that
ignorance. don’t matter much but the pain
is a monstrous staircase. but then.
to hear a voice in grace across
the flat revolve of old and black
revolver seventy-eight
rpm
is to point the weakened foot
in the right direction. see space
as a 78 turning
dragging gravity.
the compass sits in splattered grief
of rain beyond the pale. imagine
the sound
so you can tell
your kids. the leaning
night come sideways down.
the only present
we know is in
consciousness of consciousness.
which takes no time at all and isn’t
in the past the way
the card game is. sit back in your chair and take
your feet in both hands. notice the snake in your back. smile for the rushes and
the whispering lake and the old columns. rock forward
and fall forward
out of your chair to
the floor. let go of your feet. think.
how the cloud is growing now
and how the feeble spiders crawl
to mamma. no use picking on
the spiders. without a name
they’re same as goldfish.
unnamed. they
have no name.
no more do you. roll on your back.
the ceiling is the world. there’s
a pressure on your back
and a snake in your spine.
what’s the game today? whist?
when you play whist
on the post office loading docks
you slam each card to table. wimoweh
the radio chants. also
don’t they know
it’s the end of the world.
these are some of the things
getting done this side
of bleeding knowledge.
self-canceling
is no accident. the letter had a self-canceling
stamp. it touched the paper
and zip it was blurred.
the touch of your hand
left a print.
and it came into visible
slowly. every once in a while
it happens that
the world puts up its hair and I
can see. were I more fool than I am
I’d take all the pictures for true.
the cheapjack
too.
the wine was a dollar ninety-nine a gallon and we’d carry it
every night after the bar
shut up. we carried the blood
in the jar up the hill
unsteadily. the leaning hill the flat black sky the
studded-belt stars.
sure I was there. but so was this other.
he paid better
attention. remember
your mouth in the night?
it was all we could feel [hear]
that toppling.
Mr. Sludge
alive and out
of Browning’s syntax. saintly
and smirking and trapped like an honest
man. rolling the syllable
bones. Mr. Sludge of course is a sly
Irishman. Browning
is a great poet. who do you trust?
my money goes with Sludge. not because he’s Irish. god no.
but because he lives with the real
as it breaks like a wave breaking
plates. plate LXXII. Browning in
his study. a Brownian study. but hark.
does not the head of Browning hear
the voice of Sludge in per-
petuity? does he not write down
the phantom of honest
discourse? is it not the case that all those books
fall off the shelf in the autumn? the russet glass?
once the mayhem planned the peace
in that dear starving place
where mama
shined the skulls.
of the two
confidence men
Sludge is the more
reliable.
by jupiter
a number of the same old man
says. land
o’goshen
says the bright
child.
I took my harp to a party
but nobody asked me
to play.
as a good harper stricken far in years
into whose cunning hands the gout doth fall,
all his old crotchets in his brain he bears,
but on his harp plays ill or not at all.
the finest music coleman hawkins. dying. sirius.
crotchet: root unknown but perhaps connected to
Latin crepare, to crackle, crabro, a hornet; if so,
it originally meant loud-sounding.
at the endless birthday parties
we all turn slowly sepia.
and that’s that. the art of the traveler
is keeping his hands to himself.
tried a couple of times
to touch the unfeelable and
it didn’t work out.
by jupiter.
got me down to the store
by smokefall.
[the breath of the horses.
tell me again now
how the words go.
there was a crooked man
by golly.
euphemism for God, first recorded 1775;
a sort of jolly kind of oath,
or asseveration much in use among our carters,
& the lowest people.
the same old men are coming
one from the other.
as if from a mechanical
source.
[horse
I’d at ease be here among
the broken solids.
[solace
love
as the soul loves
is.
the privileged
moment.
potato chips moonlight
and motor trips.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
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