Goddess in the Garden

Copyright © 2010 Ernest Bloom.

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.