A quantumindeterminism comprises language's lifeblood,
pulsating, beatingcyclicaldriving. I reachedout, I
broke, I snapped the twig: contextual illuminance.
To break. To snap. End ofthe road. There are no
synonyms nor no reliable meanings, no onething.
It was a cold day, a gray day, and the layers
feedback, mutually inform, beating, pulsating,
pumping in nuanced shading, shading of graying.
Telomeric conservatism requires the meaning, the
hardedgedoutline determining, de termining, where it
ends, where it exactly fits. Terminus. Theend.
Amen.
But it doesn't fit. I reachedout, I extended my
hairy upper primate limb, orangutan orange, to
rip down to break off, to snap the twig, one twig
of tens, of hundreds, of deadends of
unlimberlimbytree.
Shaping little russianiconsinwords, eyes downcasts,
I can distinguish no futures from anypasts anymore.
'Twas a coldday and thesap was downdowndown,
rendering endering twiggytwigs stifflydrylysnappable
endable unbendable. Laconic? Then why. . . ?
Quantumindeterminism ripples tripple hillanddipple
through it all. Twiggywigs. Vibrate. I broke/I
snapped the twig, and the twig snapped, and
broke I back.
20100130
Contextual Illuminance
20100129
Greenbacks and Grace
Like John McCain, many of those
early Republicans were none too keen on
A. Lincoln, threatening to bolt over
emancipation. But Sherman's
burning of Atlanta changed everything
relevant: economics, and political prospects.
Let us rejoice!
The Union's saved!
20100125
Time's Sugary Crystals Have Clarified
Time's sugary crystals have clarified to a translucent,
Chocolate-brown block, leaving us ancient butterflies
Suspended in forgettable, amber dreams. When granulose voices
Are at some grateful distance withdrawn we're purified on a
Rising rose-pink feathery dawning before the rest of the ancient world
Begins to stir, the familiar, quondam dust still recycled
Across uncountable nostrils. The old men put on hats
To keep the heat in and sit before opened newspapers in
Warm modern libraries, not so musty. There is too much
Turnover of words and interment of transient, interesting ideas.
After a while they may know they'll never find
Whatever salvation they're still looking for, and then they can,
Maybe, resume their journeys.
20100120
Goddess in the Garden
I.
In medias res! And a beastly, ghostly business it is: mad, mad! It's
Cold mother's milk in which we bathe, washing the whole world round,
Under the sun's gleaming, golden rays glinting in morning, reeling,
Skipping across that supple, Amytal skin wherein
An anonymous gentlemen's been recently drowned and determinedly
Reeled back in. Up the noisome, weedy hill she labors
With her sloshing pitchers, prematurely graying, her unkempt hair
Sticking out frazzled from beneath her saintly, iconic, hackneyed veil.
These waves ‑‑ these waves! ‑‑ rising, falling, revealing, concealing,
Merging, shuffling, shuttling their energies, mad for cosmic life. Strife.
Like yesteryears welling up, belching up historical submarine nutrients
To infect the conscience with remorse, but these costal waters are so
Barren. Does she mourn the drowned and drifting vagabond?
Her husband? Her son or lover, or was he some other stranger
Someone told her about, a footnote in the morning paper?
Stuff the remains in an earthen pot
And plant him by
The parking lot.
Enveloped in brooding discontent and derision, stealthy seething,
Silent resentment, the Black Prince struggles to refrain from
Openly wincing; he's too tugged and twisted under distant fingers
Manipulating cold piano wires and high-tension gossamer threads.
From between blocky castellations the same pelagic sparks
Strike his sable eyes, and he realizes how relieved he is
To reflect, even ephemerally, upon temporal matters as quantum
Electrodynamics and sequestered pathways cavorting through time
And place. England expects every man--, and sniff the rising,
Sulfurous clouds--. Like Alice Liddell badly bent by optic tongs and
Unexamined years lost reflecting long from cracks in some too-often
Dropped looking glass he feels the forces pressing in to contain
And constrain him, to shape his footsteps still, or one time again.
Yet once he watched the birds fly free and augured, already sensing,
Perhaps, twilight coming on so quickly: Oh! If only I were a
Cherry-red bird.X.X.X.And yet ‑‑ and yet! Recalled to duty, suspended
From his own right to destiny, upended, usurped by damaging,
Thorny ties, cries, even lies, puerariating out from dismal familial
Obligations expectations desecrations objurgations instigations
Expectorations stinking histrionic situations.X.X.X.We who serve.
Bah! Q.E.D.!
Identities unattended break down and disintegrate. Uneven clods.
Jettison the vivisecting archeology of a nation. Culture. History.
Mysteries of birth and death. Always more birth and death.
Family life conducted in tomorrow's unseen sepulcher plots.
Even politics is a brand of sentiment and wolfishly aggrandized
Insolence. Jetsam and flotsam. A thinking man's only recourse
Is finally perceptive recognition and calculated resistance to all forms
Of puffed-up secular authority.
"Let us meet once more back at the ship.
Go forth."
Outside the Paris library golden-wigged Newton
Backed up against the tree of memory ‑‑ or was it
Of history, of what's been or might-have-been?
Ethereal battles of clashing triple-masters, smoke
And swift light and booming thunder, splintering
Bulwarks, decks sticky with sploshing blood. Regarding
The fractal branching up above, subdividing, fingering,
Skeletonizing, shaking, rattling, rolling phalangeal
Bones bones these dry these dry bones, he contemplated
How surely, ineluctably, down within helminthine
Subterranean apartments, the lightless basements,
The roots, the roots, the roots roots roots of stones
Roots also diverged, diverged! Hemmed in within your
Tragic frozen binary logic, icicles shattering, what
Authority, what does it matter? I recognize none of your
Syntax; I reject it; I smite it; it lies in ruptured shards on
The floor, and I execute my antidromic getaway. The
Dendritic mass, the biconcave lens, branching out ahead,
Behind, blurring, losing definition. Peering through this
Narrow rolling annulus, all paths spread out in a
Chaotically disentangled scattering, a pleasing,
Divergent naumachia.
Gimme an R!
Gimme an O!
Gimme a C!
Gimme a K!
The ghoststory: there were two penguins sitting
On an iceberg in the middle of the‑‑ Do you
Freeze in the annular, angular moment, or do you
Participate, precipitate it? Perpetuate. Propagate.
The barbarians at the.X.X.X.He ponders, ponderingly,
Ponderously, impiously. Fitfully. Brow fatefully knitfully.
How does one transform the secret blazing
Interior kineticism to an expressive system of
Interpersonal dynamics? Does one? Should? Ought?
We are like pearls deep-buried and safe, enwrapping
Our true-selves in hoary and horny hard gray
Oyster shells. The artist's duty. Balance.X.X.X.Those
Who give and those who receive.X.X.X.Directional
Relationships. The bud squeezed off the motherstump
In a periodic process of procreative metastasis. The
Piñata split open, magic candy spills out. Is that not
The mystery of flesh? This narrow sphincter, cyclopean
Reception. Pupate. He sought involution, the final
Turning within, gargling gallons of gasoline-smelling
Basement medicine, sweet. The manstump's
Extrasensory prepuception, strange wavelengths
Coming in, dilating, contracting, contradicting,
Interdicting. New way of seeing one's local world.X.X.X.
The mother colony must yet love the prodigal cell,
Prematurely cast forth cruelly into the raging tides of
Unchained stew, to travel from and to.X.X.X.To travail
In quest of virgin ground like a (more or less)
Holy Graile to infiltrate. Infatuate. Castigate.
Matrimate, masturbate, cohabitate, commiserate, my
Co-incarcerated, unindicted (except by homogeny)
Campaigning, scarred and scared frères.X.X.X.But ‑‑
Are all causal connections necessarily directional,
Polarized? The signal flows in one direction.X.X.X.Or
Is that more mere dejectory, illusory apperception,
Reflecting a privileged and prejudicial perspective
On time? Isn't your knowledge little more than sparse
Bars against the untouched, skyblue gaps? Run
The tree backwards (assuming a wardal primacy for
Argument's sake) from leaf to furcating stemlets
Trunkwise deep down into the very rootage, redacting
Back to the primal seed ‑‑ may straight and focused
Thinking proceed from this profligate screed of
Memory's fables ‑‑ and you've just tumbled down into
An antimatter hole. What does it.X.X.X.Authority.
Author-ity. Abdication of. What's known. Breaking down,
Crumbly like a rocky, shoreside cliff face. Outside.X.X.X.
The ominous tides and tumult and uproar of intermittent,
Persistent warfare. Out of sight and mind: never. The
Dead spring up, accusing. The dead float. Orange juice,
If that's the way it makes you feel. Or bury it, like a cat,
Or a foxy fox, these interceding, ghastly visions of slain
Danish monarchs decked out in rings of submarine
Green glowing steel.
Blimey. Sub-limey. Lima. Peru. Bean. Peruvian. Nubian.
Nigra sum sed formonsa filiae Hierusalem.
See. See. At the edge of, at the edge of the sea, the sea,
The barren, blue-bellied sea, the Black Prince sees a great
Yellow wave rising up, water piling up, well beyond the
Herringbone beige highways of sand and nervous, stupid
Skittish gulls with no gift of prophetic powers and broken,
Unfateful shells. Can I forgive? I can't forget. No mounding
Of water can balance so stable, so still. He fancies he smells
Lightning's faint flickerings along its foamy brow, this prow
Of a ship bearing down upon good, dry land, this terminally
Alienated island, more insular by far than peninsular, disappointed
Isthmus, pinched off and ruptured. Those wild Danish kings
Must once have also seen it so: ineluctably. The gravid yellow
Bulge now remains, fixed to its selected position, but mutating
In morphology, shifting before his very eyes, if his very chary
Eyes can be trusted or believed. Chary-eyed and laughing,
Cherry-red bird. Recalls when they were caught. Crusted over,
And rusted ruins of ships chained to infrequented piers, too
Dear in victory; in defeat too near. Makes him feel a bit queasy,
And sneezy, and dizzy. He cobbles down on a scrap these
Rude words that you read, etching small marks with the
Philosopher-pretender's scratchy tool, these blending lines that
Imitatively bend back like a carpenter's rule. The more things
Change.X.X.X.Eyes closed, sound grows. Doze. Dreams that
One might come to sprawl and scrawl upon these selfsame
Sands, gripping matters firmly in his own hands.
A hostile, bilious sea cast up Orpheus on a Minnesota shore, and it
Was too late before he made it back to New Orleans once more: the
Land of dreams had melted back into the mythic night. Down from my
Baby's door to a ditch runs Highway 51 and there, my friend, beside a
Stopped car, engine still running, a dead bitch lies; he's poking her
In the ribs, but her soul won't rise again; she's stone cold beastly dead,
Already departed on the Dixie Flyer with a one-way ticket on that
Carouselling aural amplifier called metempsychosis. (Or was it 41?
No matter.X.X.X.) Crutched on pompous French philosophers whose
Airy words promise more conviction than they can possibly deliver.
More passion than perceptivity. Wanted to return myself for the
Millennial celebration, but wicked witchery intervened. Avowed her
Unconditional love with later addenda and emendations and provisos.
Never much of a liar, but with mulish persistence one can come to
Believe any damn fool thing. A fine line between diligence and
Madness? He doubts it, but maybe: especially when the price is
Confessing one's not at the fulcrum of all actions and eternity's
Great deeds. Let Helen pour us each from her pitcher a few
Precious drops of palliating elixir, nepenthes.
Shall I come to praise the past, or to bury it? Let the
Famished graves eat the dead. For groundless, unjustified
Idealism must youth be forever blamed? Far from it. Now must I
Rise to seek out what's been lost through carelessness,
Or else stolen away. In the bloom of manhood called folly doth all
Human hope reside. Then let the drowned sink down and be borne away
On the lunar ebb tide.
II.
Shooting the taw with a cunny thumb, knuckle-flicking aggies and
Steelies inside a toed circle, hook 'em in, winner take all, no matter
What your mummy said. Playing for keepsies in this life, not for funsies,
Else not worth playing at all. You can build up your pile quite nicely and
Neatly or else you can quickly lose them all. The pearls and onionskins
Smack clack-a-click! Stutter mumbling through their answer-guesses
Back in the classroom, their triumphant victories short-lived at best,
More commonly decidedly Pyrrhic. These boys down on their knees
Scrutinizing the minutiae of the contest grow up to trade tips on horse races
In earshot of distant long horn brass blats and drink Guinness in cool
Caliginous pubs, making small talk about soccer, or: "Trench blew his
Brains out, you know. A revolver." "Really? Was it, I wonder,
The same.X.X. ?"
His story, it seems, was to blame.
Now, years later, the child-man rolls around a single orb in his hand,
And clutching it between index finger and thumb, elevates it for gazing,
Regarding the world through a cat's eye, golden dawn's rays glinting
Along the towering church steeple outside, bells tolling the quarter hours
Away. Takes his morning constitutional, strays down the avenues before
The bustle's fully underway. A circle of toadstools and black magic at
Midnight. Esoteric Aleister Crowley stuff. Silver star. Secret of secrets.
The strong, scimitared angel standing before the abyss. Barring entry,
Or assuring the lid securely kept on?
Kept.
Satellites sweep out great arcs in elliptical grace around black masses
Situated at the well of one focus, kept in one orbit, by one particular
Idea bound. The gravity of the matter: a grave situation. And that, too,
Is where he's bound, many years hence (God willing), and more pointedly,
Today. What time? In the late morning. Mourning the late, great man.
His body given to be burned, aye, but his demonstrations hath profited
All men who knew him. But no matter his wanderings, his yearnings,
His sunderings, his many blunderings, derailings, unveilings, penalizings,
Rebukings, punishments and reprimands, that one single silver thread
Winds back, twisting forever back, back through the labyrinth of clashing,
Warring souls, like a trail of bread crumbs to the solitary focus of his own
True-hearted heart, amen!
Feelings in search of objects. Tooth-rattling trams shudder past in front of
The Grosvenor, too slow, too long. Whole half-forgotten histories scribbled
Down on small bits of paper. The high-ceilinged grocery story catty-
Corner from the library on 4th Avenue, and its yellow fluorescent tubes
Out of reach, or waiting in the parking lot outside in the car, bats
Dancing across impossibly hot and low summer skies. Mulberry trees
Up and down the avenue and mint in the flowerbed. The morning smell of
Big bottles of formula to feed the young calves. Until you surrender fully
To the dream state you can never be alive. And now, we pause to reflect
.X.X.X.Digest our breakfasts.X.X.X.Dolce far niente. Don't stay out too long,
Little girl. Red roses, red rover, I'll build you a bower and wrap you up in
Red roses, my love. Take you up in the tower. Drowsy. Lazy. No recipe.
No key.
Keeping to circuitous tracks, sidestepping prying, suspicious eyes and
Ears. You invited me to follow you down this breathtaking path when you
Knew I'd follow you anywhere you'd care to go, my dear, mavrone. We
Were surreptitious correspondents speaking directly, heart to heart, no
Practical complications got in our way while the whole wide world was
Waiting and raging out there, and our only significant difference was
Which life we deemed to be real and which one the fantasy. Now,
Sinking deeply down in these perfumed waters of oblivion, my dreams
Come and go, come and go, take my best dreams away, all memories
Of a happier time, a happy life, floating astride the inescapable tides,
Arbitrary, unflinching, streams of consciousness and conscience, drifting,
Adrift, riding high in the salt sea saline. I, like the Buddha, take in visions
Miles and miles removed, out of the futures and out of the pasts, while
My childhood companions sink down lower and lower with every passing
Year, out of the dreams they pass away one by one, 'til they've dreamt
Their way out of imagination at last.
The whole wide world, it seems, must salute the pitiless captains
Of industry, no matter how sleazy; these alpha-males loaded up on
Testosterone (bulk does not earn but presumes respect by unrighteous
Birthright), with feeble capacity for compassion and less for rational
Consideration, so quick to intemperately lob unsupported opinions
And assertions into the ring, into the mix, the mild but informed be
Damned! We are alienated sometimes, or often enough, in opulent
Cauldrons of companionship, where an absolute debauchery of
Unsolicited opinion and wearisome mythology is poured over the most
Trivial of remarks and inescapable transits through the long days,
And the lower orders must make way for their social superiors.
Stuff the remains in ‑‑ Goodbye, Mr. Trench! Gone, but not forgotten,
No; these hours we've known must now be played and replayed again
And again, letting memory overwrite history and a narrative emerge from
Chaos and stray circumstance. And the ghosts must come back (for
Ghosts always will), eking out their tiny corrections on the small knots
Of popular folklore. While we, in the know, we'll whisper only behind our
Masking hands the miscellaneous arcana we sorely bear, of the secret
Identities of the true murderers haunting this vast American landscape
At midnight under nine billion faint suns. Goodbye, Mr. Trench, we now
Know you far better than you ever did.X.X.X.Anyone for a spot of beer?
Shine on
Way down
Way downtown in the
Nitty-gritty dirty work-a-day
Away away
House-that-Jack-built world
Streets jam-packed up and down with
Slinky alley cats in rags and uptown
Suits and paisley jackets
And echoing marching sleek black jackboots
Oozing clotty between glass and steel walls
And cascading like gushing falls down
Lawyer-strangled marble halls
In the bustly hustly shoving mix and mess
Jumble tumble crumble down lives
Immunizing venom-spitting witchy wives
And match and bait and switch blurry
People hurry scurry worry
Rush and jump the track
Fighting for a scrap of meat
Stab the next one you meet in the back
Bargain basement quarrel
Come to terms in exigent negotiation
Scraping cash together in a pile
For an elective operation
Got no time for revolution
Got no dime for contribution
Curse the corporate institution
While the wind blows on and on and on and on and on
K-Map Architecture. Kalium Magnesium
Aspartate. Kansas Museums Association.
Kappa Myeloma Antigen. Karen's Missed
Achievement. Kenneth Miller Architects.
Keep Me Advised. Keep Me Amused.
Keep Moving Ahead. Keeping Memories
Alive. Kentucky Medical Association.
Kentucky Motorcycle Association. Kernel
Memory Allocator. Key Market Area. Kiger
Mesteno Association. Kissinger McLarty
Associates. Knowledge Management
Advantage. Known Medical Allergies.
Knoxville Museum of Art. Korea
Meteorological Administration. Kursk
Magnetic Anomaly.
From the pinnacled peak of a high and narrow
Up-thrusting, towering slender pillar
Infertile seeds pommel our citizens and serfs
Where this foreign hero stands in myth enshrouded, yet
Full disclosed, exposed before critical and vengeful,
Waiting eyes, aware it's just another emperor
Devoid of aught but imperceptible clothes.
Directly then upon a clearing came he
As the bustling afternoon was nearing
Amid the riotous gallery's japing and jeering
At the bloated production, listing and miscarrying.
Seeking refuge and a placatory repast
From the rude role which he'd been
Discourteously cast in. He passed within,
Through the welcoming doors of a café
Unsuspecting the traumatic tantrums
Therein on display:
A nauseous scene intimating want of breeding,
This ravenous pack of wolves so fiercely feeding
Over oily carcasses, spasmodic claw-hands pawing,
Greasy forks stabbing, clinking, serrated knives grossly
Sawing, speaking nothing, stuffing faunal ruins down
Savage gullets, chops of half-cooked pork cutlets and
Undecapitated mullets, and hands and ears and shins
And jaws, and monkey meat, and badger claws, slurping
Soups and spitting small bones they'd gnawed for marrow,
Ringed by driblets sprayed round on dingy table cloths,
Their newborn farrow. The close air hot and malefic, he
Tumbled back from the horrific panorama into the
Shattering daylight waiting only a very few short footsteps
Back outside. Heedless of his retreat, he did unwittingly
Collide with a passing stranger ‑‑ no, she was no stranger
After all.
"My dear lady, I beg your pardon! I was just--"
"Oh, excuse me, Mr. B! A simple accident, I trust.
Oh, fancy meeting you here, after all it's been,
What? Close to a year, I must suppose. And
How's the missus?" "Still keeps me on my toes."
"I'm sure she does!" "And dear Mr. Braun? Seems
Like eons since I've seen him around." "Around
He is, I do assure you: around, a square, along in
Tooth and loosing hair. But here's a sorry truth
I must confess: his wits are wanting, or maybe
Something less, and with his temper he's made
The butt of every joke and canny cut-up. Why,
Just this morning in the post he received a missive
Which made him drop his egg and biscuit
And spill his coffee and carry on with so much fury
I must suppose they heard it all in old Teheran!"
"A letter, you say?" "A letter, a threat ‑‑ such a
Menace he'll be weeks getting over it, such is my
Supposition. A card it was, a simple plaque
Marked by two letters only, with two symbols in
Strategic interposition." His brow wrinkled with
Curiosity. "Two sigils you say? And what were
Those?" And here Madame Braun paused to bite
Her lip, and then: "I cannot say; it must be depicted."
Producing forthwith a golden pencil stub (which
Signified undying hope) from her prodigious purse
She inscribed said formula on a lacerated bit of
Envelope, thus: A\A\
Then, when parting company once again, our dubitable
Hero and his long-lost friend, his thoughts immediate
Rebounded to the gustatory modality, and forth he flew,
Venturing on in determination's totality. And soon, anon,
Around another corner, he pinpointed a more fitting filling
Station, one palatable to his refined tastes and conducive
To a pabulumous and salutary digestion. And as his
Alimentorum waxed replete with vegetable victuals and no
Detestable glimmering of slain-prey meat, he had occasion
At last to cast his thoughts beyond the belly and its lots.
Thus he pondered, for although he'd pleaded bafflement
Respecting Mr. Braun's cryptical communication and left
Unconceded what perhaps it meant, in truth this orphic
Emblem was not beyond his own exotic and esoteric ken.
But why, oh why, he mulled, of all of those philosophers
And wits, as we might suppose would hold out promise of
Talent or leastwise affiliations to the kings of commerce
And international influence and sway, they who require
Nor expect mutual reflexive genuflections, or given other
Miscellany connections including kith and kin, then in all
The world why should it be that they'd sieve out the likes
Of him?
(Failing to rendezvous with his erstwhile companions back
At the ship ‑‑ "We'll meet," quoth he, "on edges soon, or
Ledges, clearly, quite" ‑‑ we now find the young apprentice
‑‑ Rather, the Black Prince ‑‑ cavorting with sinister masters
Of arcana and long-transmitted lore in the Palace of Whispers.)
Can you understand the powers of genius
When they're staring you down? Can you feel
The heart pounding underneath the pulse?
Probably not. Your ears fail to hear the clarion
Trumpet voice declaring an end to the ages you've known.
Do you demand Gabriel put in a special appearance, gray clouds
Scrolling back across the sky? Do you ever wonder why
The parties where you booze and schmooze with all the Who's Whos
Seem to fall a little flat?
Can you take the tint out of the sky and paint a scene
To make the angels sigh? Can you rob the graves of your days
And elevate your decays and pain, infuse it into the artistry of old
And find the future there? You're even convinced that any
Theories that I spin are valid only if they're literal, no doubt.
You feel no pattern laid out in the arcing arms that rock
The galaxy to sleep at night. You're fashionably agnostic ‑‑
I know the type! ‑‑ huddling down beneath your thin sheets
In the lifeless summer night.
I close my eyes and spread the fingers of my hands. I feel it ‑‑
I feel it! I feel the whole shape of everything that's absent, unsaid
And untold. I feel all our ancestry unfold, and my voice meets their
Hallowed voices. All my choices are their choices. I'm closer to
The past than to today. I've seen all the volcanoes bleed and blaze.
For I shook the earth; I flashed across your skies while you
Trembled in amazement under spectacular lightning displays,
Looking down at your thin stratum of abject civilization clinging
To the crust. I! And you with your waxy, professorial features, look
Down your long, fleshy nose in contempt at what's next to be. But I
Tell you this: I am coming, and I've penetrated the veil dissevering
This sensuous world from spiritual truth, and now that I'm revealed
My own parent, like some mask-shifting Sabellian, or out of Roger's
Mini-Egyptian fired epic tale, all your world is mine, and I claim
Possession of it. I come to catch your conscience, and that of
Every man. I control the waves from unseen chains affixed to my
Fingertips, and they rise, and they fall, revealing, concealing ‑‑ so:
Mock on, mock on while you can! Let your sons be armed; as for
Your daughters: go and check on them. For soon I'll claim and collect
Your sordid stories for my own, and raise up armies whose like you
Never reckoned!
(Ah, stooping to negotiate with such manner of men, so inflated with their
Self-same mythology, to mount the high wire among the likes of stupid,
Sightless them, seeking balance, to teeter on the brink. One misstep,
One slip, and the bloody gig is up, spent! That I must needs sweet talk
And suckle them, them! Then, that this solid flesh might melt and drip
Down among the low ones. Dangling, scraping barnacles between the
Devil and the salty deep on the Flying Dutchman.X.X.X.Between desire
And the spasm.X.X.X.Ah, long hours of unvital life, dispossessed!
But when I'm gone they'll long recall
A giant once strode here among them
Who dwarfed them all!)
No more omens:
Do not try.
No birds fly against the sky.
Beware! For some few fractals are literary; these are, doubtless,
The most perilous of all, seductive and insidious; be instructed:
They're obtusely captivating, aggravating the unsuspecting
Innocent intellect or peckish mind that's come in naïve search
Of a more familiar, pedestrian plotline. Self-similar fractured
Across all scales, slashing through theosophical veils in an
Infinitely regressing labyrinthine funhouse or shifting, unstable
Horror picture show ‑‑ beware! The fine and elegant structure's
Masterfully maintained as if by magic across every scrutinized
Scale; verily, like unto a broken holographic plate: no matter;
All information's self-contained and easily reconstructed and
Reknit; this thing of uncertain wealth is both indestructible and
The logos ouroboros that engulfs itself; not so different from any
Other boojum; three times I tell thee: beware!
The choice: unmade.
The promise: unkept.
The secrets: mysteries.
The instant: unexplored.
-- The exploding possibilities!
With this scalpel do I slice through and at
City streets and upright civic lives that
Turn and burn upon the moment.
Horses came and went where electric trams now go
While women discuss Michelangelo, and priests
Conduct worthy enterprises on behalf of
Them that lacks, while a golden calf is
Revered not many blocks afar, the fury
Reechoing within metropolitan bell jar.
Groaning, the grinding ice grinds on while
The forsaken lover lovesick pines on for
Well-earned affection that's cheaply spurned for
Baser providential proprieties, and furthermore
Within sordid bookstores one who seeks may find
Self-conscious literati, who wait in line for
Scandalous purchases ‑‑ for whom? Of what?
And why? How for? And miles away dear daughters
Of fate-smitten fathers gone astray in drink
And dark pooled depressions plead concessions.
All of it transpires in an unremarkable eye blink.
All of it: desires, and uncaring what you think.
Picture the scene: figures grand and insignificant,
Quite as Brueghel might well have pictured it.
Lashed to the mast, hold fast, steadfast,
Go through, go past, row fast, row fast.
No matter that seas rebel or heavens squall.
The lovely ladies tempting sing
Inside the warm chamber their charming call.
Their voices ring within the rich-grained hotel
That music lovers love so well.
These verses ‑‑ these choruses! ‑‑ rising, falling,
Revealing, concealing, merging, shuffling, shuttling
Their energies, mad for life and lust. Vibrations
Interpenetrating invisible through air, yet we
Ignore their influence; we don't acknowledge or care
To recognize the role of sound, of timbre, on choices
We make, ensnared in webs of dulcet voices.
Their voices rise and chords all melt
Beneath the moonlit cotton belt.
The wine is fine; the liver robust.
The tunes are true enough to trust
And hold on to as if in dreams
Where everything's exactly unlike it seems.
Where intoxicating melodies transport the soul
And orchestral pages effortlessly unscroll
And young Turks die for rock'n'roll.
His lay of patriotic betrayal would wring
Tears from the crudest libertine, and
When the jaunty cod had quit the scene,
So too the child-man, that golden mean.
He thinks of the chain chain chain, of how
He long recognized it was unnecessary to
Listen to anyone who recorded after Orpheus,
Because it was inevitably derivative (recorded:
The history/memory/mystery), but the real
Epiphany was the instantaneous discovery,
As with Paul (Peter, Paul and Mary; Paul and
John and George and Ringo) on the dusky
Damascus Turnpike, that it was unnecessary
To listen to anyone who recorded before
The aborted Hadean hero, because they were
Inevitably derivative too: he'd somehow become
The father of his own race, of his own race and
Ours; critical mass, involution through a
Philosophical event horizon.X.X.X.He'd
Somehow succeeded in swallowing the
Whole kit and caboodle, he'd swallowed his
Own head, and as so few mortals ever did,
He'd truly created Himself. Out of nothing, all
‑‑ Perhaps, or turtles all the way down
.X.X.X.Did it with mirrors, seemingly.X.X.X.
But just listen to Woody, for example.X.X.X.
"If Jesus was to preach like he preached
In Galilee/They would lay Jesus Christ in
His grave." Too true for the 30s dustbowl,
Clearly. Waves vibrating throughout the
Tree, in all directions in time and space.
Some voices are only the clanging of
Brass cymbals, beating, the bleating of
Sheep, incognizant of the ideals implicit--
Careless in back alleys he strayed,
While inside the playful tunes still played.
In loneliness incomparable, undulating,
His heart swelled, and then it quailed.
Nor heavier burdens another hero's assailed.
At his dark-clad back black rumors railed.
Heedless, he went on his way
To meet the upshot of his day.
Never was one for small talk.
Never could see the world through your one
Monocular eye.
People see me coming, they stop whispering
Just long enough to let me go by.
Pretty sure I know what they're thinking,
Or what they'd be thinking if they tried.
But critical thinking's a risky business.
They'll pay you back with exponentially
Compounded interest. They're sensitive to
Doubt and alienation. They're suspicious
Of any unorthodox orientation. They'll
Serve you up with all the trimmings.
Nothing so tediously orthodox as a
Swarm of lemmings.
When he walked into the bar every head turned round.
They watched him sit down and no one said a word.
He didn't want a drink, and he didn't buy a round.
Not too sociable. He was a peculiar bird.
Can't puke like a Christian, 'ey?
Don't you know that real men drink?
Don't you know how real men think?
Don't you know that real men fight?
Real men get it every night.
We love football and boxing and beer.
No one wants your kind in here.
We don't care what you think you know
Or that you're sensitive ‑‑ hell no!
No matter what the ladies say,
They only want their men one way.
When push comes to shove, then of course
Real women need a man's brute force.
Knock one up and then you marry.
Knock 'em around when it's necessary.
My way or the highway, better believe it.
America the beautiful, love it or leave it.
Guys like you get nailed to the wall.
Guys like you aren't real men at all.
We don't serve rabbits and we don't do queer.
We won't serve you ‑‑ get the hell outta here!
To them he answered: "We who are men
Necessarily long suffer, but we must be kind,
Celebrating not envy, but truth. We who are
Men must labor to bear all hardships; to hope;
To believe; to endure. Love that's true cannot
Fail. For faith and hope support our houses,
But only love abides forever." Forthwith, amid
Their castigations and vitriol, he returned unto
His element, the street.X.X.X.
Eyes closed, sound grows. Doze.
In sweet repose.X.X.X.In the aftermath of all that's
Gone before. After all emotion's been assigned
An object, Until no more objects remain. At the
Edge of a gray-beige sea in the twilight turning
Purple and rose he stands, watching, waiting, at the
Burnt out end of a day. Try to remember a day.
Roses. Roses. Forgotten cigarette that's burning out.
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, and cigarette
Ends. Half buried Guinness empties, or Coors. Up.
Smoke curling up, swirling, turning inside itself, rising.
Extinguish.
Put through all this. Made to. Test one's
Endurance. Test one's mind. Mental tensile
Strength. Stress and strain testing. Compression
And drawing. How many know? Hard to know.
And hard to know. But they seem so casual.
Emotions on their sleeves. Can they be so?
Can they be? At the brunette violet hour.
Certain substances mutually dissolve. Like
Male and female psyches. Like magic. Why I
Wonder? Each may find, for brief, sweet moments,
Quiet peace in the other. Sharing. How is that?
Caring. The priest called it romantic love, but
It's not that. Then what? These voices that
Intertwine, that rise like smoke, that dance like
Jazz performance, freeform. The words that
Hypnotize are irrelevant. False datastream. Not
False but misleading. Deceptive. There are whole
Other languages to which we are not privy. There are
Whole other dances to which these bodies move,
Chassis that conduct us through a human
Chassé. There are distinctive voices that call to us,
Or pheromone gradients moving across the breeze.
It is these. It is these.
I guess everyone reminds you of someone. I guess
Everyone bears a certain face. Features. Disguise.
And we resonate. Need. Desire, yes, but: need.
Require. And when that's denied. Spurned. And
When.X.X.X.
These crude physical attempts at demonstrations,
Twitching these bodies unsteady, speaking in other
Voices, incomprehensible tongues.X.X.X.Means
Little, or less. These.X.X.X.
This.
"Pallas Athene. Ahhh.X.X.X.She was ever a
Royal headache for Zeus. Are you certain.X.X. ?"
"Yes! Speak on, old man!"
He shook his head and took another lusty swig
Of blood.
"Good stuff. The XX imprint.X.X.X.Well then. I
Need not counsel you about involving yourself in the
Struggles of jealous gods. Nothing good ever
Comes of it. Why, just the other day I was speaking
With Sandra, you know.X.X.X.Curious girl.
Snakes licked her ears, it seems. You see the
Symbolism there. 'Twas Athena herself gave mine
A good laundering. Four star wash and wax job
With a nice buffing. Shine up the rims, too.
But I wax loquacious.X.X.X."
"Old man!"
"Raid not the beeves."
I tried reading Turgenev, but his
Radical liberals were too conservative; likewise,
The profanity on display in the lying-in falls a little bit
Flat these days. If it's true as some suppose that
Our child-man-friend helpfully and unsuspectingly
Passed on his French letters to young Mr. Bannon, then
There's a certain bit of amusing anecdotal irony there,
But.X.X.X.
What is genius or inspiration
When your body must be split open to release the
Next generation?
Little Miss Piñata, have no fear.
By this time tomorrow those bad memories will
All disappear.
Hanging around with a gaggle of clowns
Sinking down in his cups.
What does he care? Only vaguely aware of the
Funeral-frocked empath brooding at his side.
Do you see? Do you see? Some are clever, but
Most are antennae, beating to the transmitted tune,
And a few, a very few,
Still know
How
To
T
H
I
N
K.
(Quite the bumshow, ain't she?)
Black cats at midnight and crossroad ghouls. Too much smoke and heat.
Too much dancing. Too much drink. Delirious whirling. Intoxicating.
Running, running as fast as he can just to get away from himself. The
Smoke doesn't clear but only grows more close, stinging, burning his eyes.
Whirling. Hot. Hot. Hardest thing in the world to not think about
An elephant. Can only successfully turn himself into one of those
Unthinkers through the greatest of efforts, and it only persists for the
Briefest interval of time. Smoke signals puffing up inside the room.
Gas jet flames. Carbonized features. Lace and tawdry velvet. Candles.
Candles.
You know how the dead won't let you alone. Keep coming back like
Insistent alley cats looking for some kind of handout. What gives them
The right? These ghosts act like they own the world. Spying on us.
They're just spies. Moralists. Pushing their judgments off on us. What
Do they know anyway? Maggots eaten their brains out. A feast for
Worms. Leave us alone. Leave us be when the night sky is wounded
And spilling forth with broken springs of stars, scars. Once he raised
Many tadpoles in a large aquarium. The statuettes he made seemed
Continuously more alive, coming to life under his elegant sculptor's
Hands. Wrath of wraith. Howling like glass symbolist logic. Crash at
Specter near the ceiling. Undead rising in the hot room.
They are out in the night street and nothing makes sense. These
Sailors accost them. Faces hint of equine, teasing. Somebody is
Making threats. Eventually beating. The blows fall. First pirated,
Now abandoned. Friends like these. No. Acquaintances. Predators.
Everything he owns is in his pockets and then scattered over the
Streets. So little. Making secret signals to appeal to his brethren
Who are either absent or pretending not to see. Either way. Secret
Signals, like glands secreting tiny volumes of hormones to distant,
Unseen targets. Everything is really broken up now. Even the pain is
Foreign, as something happening to an alien mutant. The young are
Suddenly old and there is no connecting them, no reconciliation.
This febrile call to action is so exhausting. Turn into something else.
Someone. Art. Winding round strands of glass chaos. Bloodied
Strands. He comes, taking over, taking charge. Good. I'm in no
Condition. Picking up the pieces. Collecting. Wonder what he wants.
This is not what I imagined. Eating the gutter. Still have all my teeth.
Lucky.
III.
My boy.
In the night, in the night, in the dead, in
The dead of the night, in the winding back
Alleys, glittery glass bestrewn from ten
Thousand bottles broken over thirty
Years' time, and wind-whipped scraps of riven, half
Shredded, crumpled paper and assorted
Litter and human castoffs castaway,
In the dark, in the obscured back streets and
Brick-lined lanes, graffiti-scrawled, chipped, gouged, grates,
Gutters, amidst the unwanted refuse,
The forgotten, neglected, the late-late
Night, the early-early morning boozers,
The losers, fringefolk, unwashed, stiffraggedremains of
Onetimeclothingrags, pukescented, stiffened, bodystink,
Lousebitten, shoeflopping, coarsebearddraggy,
Cobblestoneyblitzkriegyramshacklebrokenbacky cumulations of
Spifflicated detritus, came on these two, these two hokey pokey winky wongy
Weebly wobbly hangers-on-to-whatever's-holy-or-might-be-soniks,
Misconstrued hope, misplaced, straw-clutchery-wise in this world awobble on the
Keen gleaming buzzing knifey edge of dousery.
The spires and domes of city buildings are gothic ghostly silhouettes
Against the cold, dark, breath-bated starry night. Drinky drinky alcohol
Blots edges off the senses: an infernal carnival of spiritual dislocation.
It's less that we're intellectual engines pestered by unruly emotions than
Emotional beings, some of whom periodically, or aperiodically, seek
To graft on patches of rationality. To grasp at strands of order lost
In the pandemonium. Who or what is what it seems? Nothing. No one.
Not even the thing itself. Form does not precipitate down out of the word.
The word is a fingertip pressed to the surface of a lake, prompting
Ripples of change, association. Triggering unpredicted chain reactions.
Predicate. Connotations. To act upon and to be acted upon are
Inseparable conditions, a single state. No primacy: it moves both ways.
I am, therefore.X.X.X.Our accepted rules of syntax are fundamentally,
Irreparably, in error. Indeterminism. Protean.X.X.X.I think.
My mind.X.X.X.My mind is tired. A long day. And yours. Fragments
Of sense. This is no place for the likes of us. Come. I'll rejuvenate
Your equilibrium.
Ancient lives, long since overgrown
With weeds and untrimmed trees and crumbled under rubble.
What can the bloodless voices of ghosts have to teach us?
Nothing we don't already know; nothing new, that is.
Some waves fall whilst others rise. No light shines from
A dead dog's eyes.
No key.
And as he sobers up, his
Alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes revving, revving, kidneys
Choogaloogaling, the Black Prince coming
Up up up
While the child-man comes
Down down down,
Perspectives and perceptions
Shift shift shift,
And all parties concerned commence to
Get the drift:
No matter that we are
More similar than different, the Other remains,
All pieces of a single vessel, like an
Ancient Grecian urn recovered from the
Soft red muds of the Mediterranean,
Perhaps broken,
Human identities, ground down in the
Years against each other, mutual degradation and
Reduction, leaving men and women doubting
Who they are ‑‑ at least
Not quite open to
Perfect communication.
Few pleasures in life are more
Satisfying to a man than
Pissing out-of-doors, especially under
Windswept stars: a reality that no woman will
Ever comprehend.
As though by magic, as they
Shake hands, long-dead Newton looking on,
Longing for compass, protractor and ruler
To plot their paths, they find the unspoken thing:
Their keys: the one has found the
Prosaic mock-hero to
Inflate into legend; the other the means
To contextualize the matter that
Awaits him upstairs.
Kepler, and the Sleeping Beauty:
Equal areas in equal times.
And she dreams on her dreams, bearing
Handfuls of water, or cupfuls of light, scattered, shattered,
Memories fragmented, thoughts and perceptions come on, while
Society's moral conventions always lag way behind, way
Behind the mind. Lamentations and celebrations. Identity
Is a distributive process, some waves rising, some in decline.
Goddess in the garden, arm broken off reveals
A hole in place of a shoulder, the only Penélopê who's
Left to us now. Her skin peels, peels, back, hips and thighs,
Peeling skin, flaking, her head bent forward, her knee flexed
Walking slowly, slowly pondering, reflecting. Goddess
In the garden, the only Penélopê who's left to us now.
Life's
Descended into disarray,
Socially excluded and ostracized when the
Bourgeois has become so implicit. Families
Breakdown, their ties inexplicably dissolving into
Comic, cosmic alienation, dancing
Fluidly and lightly all around
Changing circumstance without visible
Compassion or empathy, without the
Nuanced demonstrations of love and affection
For which we thirst.
For fear of embarrassingly sentimentalizing
Love and mourning, everyone
Wrestling with problems as complex as those in
Mathematics or physics: how to balance
Activity and passivity in the world. It may well be that we don't
Reconcile ourselves with the past, but only
Consign our ghosts to ancient history, seeking
To solidify all of these broken-down identities, seeking
To manifest one's own true self in some
Nonexistent, safe venue.
Have you then no remorse or conscience?
Or are you too crafty at repression? Weave
A network of symbols to comfort you and protect.X.X.X.
Are compassion and remorse
Opposing extremes?
The text itself is
No less a character
Than the setting.
She is
At the focus of his cometary orbit, and her dreams
Are his world. And she
Dreams on her dreams,
Remembered, misremembered,
Disremembered, unremembered,
Dismembered, misspoken, mistaken,
Near the Dorset corner
On Eccles.