Written by Mel Reichler Copyright 2002
The Collected Poems
Hieronymus Bosch on Television
Sarantino comes riding, tan chaps flapping against the hide of his mount, slavering dogs harrying his flank, toward
roses beyond beauty, petals sweating an alcoholic mist
hung over
fences, regally positioned at the edges of softly tilted lawns
(drooping points, unevenly lined up
anticipate a serrated welcome)
toward virtue’s frail, distracted, thorny reward:
dividends, Daisy Mae’s, certificates, bonds, paper.
Language is smeared on his face.
His face is blacked with it.
Wai. Wai.
Wanting to speak we have no recourse but to a
figure of speech
totally wrapped in the image of his own action
welded in ecstasy to the horse
riding towards the shimmering line of
other horsemen
obscured by our hand on the dial.
We nurse a glass teat
are filled up
with horsemen from one channel
fenced 1940’s lawns from another
Lucille Ball from a third.
Stagmant tidal flats at the end of the dial.
on television.
2
Have you,
have you,
have you seen
on television,
someone’s mother,
waiting,
someone’s mother,
on television
being talked to from someone,
waiting for
her son who is spread eagled dead on the street
waiting for
her son to rise up on the
on television
on the Six O’Clock News, to tell her
where he is,
what has happened.
3
Victims pour out of the tube, into the living room,
onto the Karistan carpet from
chunks of skin on pieces of the sky;s
criminals, lost childeren, homosexuals, soldiers,
bloodied, crazed,
spill out of the tube,
climb the chrome lamps ,
cover the faience,
pile up on the plush sofa,
doze on the love seats,
fill up the living room:
march in circles,
fall,
rise,
fall.
4
In the vast space
between the picture and the surface of the tube
miniature suns orbit, tan our skins in the dark.
Scales form on our eyes.
Across the face of the tube
on the diagonal,
in Pleistocenes of 60 minutes,
in technological time,
we evolve again.
Across the face of the tube
against the glass mountain
on the diagonal, a new species mutates.
5
On television character exists.
Off of the tube, in front, behind,
edges dull, outlines smear
but
on television,
on television
stroked in the same direction
definite dimensions of character toughen
deepen,
are exercised,
run and rerun and rerun again
until we can trace their shadows in the dark;
until the lightest random fingering causes them to leap
from the darkened box
muscular, distinct, well defined
and, half turned way, stand next to us
giving advice.
Starved for character
we try to crawl into the set
but it will not open
only its sides become transparent
and we can see its insides.
Grains of sand.
We molt,
become
beautiful collections of sleek dots in phosphors
tough
supple
flexible
fluid.
Swarm, become
motes, a swirl of dots on television
(the hangman, the rope, the condemned, the drop,
dots in phosphors.)
6
Asshemovesherfingerbetweenmylegswalksitslowly
sensuously over muscles,
leaving perfumed trail of ripples and spasms
like an erotic snail
she
turns distractedly to change the channel and brings famous people to bed.
7
At the beginning of the day
a pattern stumbles casually onto the screen
as if from an all night tryst,
a little drunk,
bestubbled,
caught, it oscillates vigorously
it shakes comically.
We meditate in the half darkness on the signature of a great intelligence.
Eventually it dissolves
and the world
reappears
made small and precise and perfect.
Mother and father are reunited
on television.
We are again a family.
True, father is small.
True, mother is small.
True, son and daughter are small,
at most 25, 30 inches on the diagonal (with their shadows)
But that there appear on television people at all is
a mystery: reminds us (we remember)
that though linguistics is a queerest science
we have no science at all of what the two eyes see.
But master one eye
sticks a philosophy to us,
a zen of entertainments.
At the end of the day another pattern appears—or the same one (it’s hard to tell).
8
An arm drops in a tender arc, a leg thrusts itself at us
obsequeously
death has a pushy motif and often consequences,
on television. The knife disappears,
the body curves into a him or and a her
drinking beer or pepsi
while
a dectective takes notes that are found
on another show three hours later
during which time, a relative comes to claim the body
which because of a snafu
Translations
As
after words are spoken we require
more words translating into a language we can comprehend,
released toward rather than said,
I will translate for you
through English to English and back again.
A translation
as a white cotton hankerchief in which to sneeze,
as a pale blue silk lined pocket in which to tuck ourselves,
as,
wanting mercy we receive justice and white bread,
pronouncements and aspirin—
and those only from nine to five Mondays through Fridays.
I will translate for you
through English to English and back again,
as hearing poetry read
we wait for the words to be said again, aloud—
to be translated,
because,
between us, within us
there is a gashed and splintered word scarred barrier
against which language crashes, rebounds and
injured, goes astray,
wandering
into the dusty tunnels under fingernails
burrowing,
into the pores of skin
which remembers suddenly
oils and rinds of fruit eaten years ago.
2
I will translate for you from English through English to English
to capture that which words held prisoner,
that which was bound between words en route to the short sentences
along which words progressed
but which escaped from words
and disappeared without a trace,
as a deciphered code disappears into a message.
I will translate for you the indelible marks on air beneath works.
3
Old Simcha walks with words, singing
recognizing in his friends a woolen foolishness
discovers poetry dressed and encoated in black letters of the alphabet
needing translation,
drinks as priests drink, sees what priests see
and is beaten for his pains,
while, at the zoo, between pages
the book carelessly left open,
words wander and without malice
take visitors and keepers casually for their dinner
and we,
mauled and bitten by the toothed animal that curls and waits between senteces,
sweating and wounded
say our lines
and wait for the translation.
A Response to a Request for a Bedtime Story
(for My Daughter Elyse)
DAUGHTER:
Daddy, tell me a bedtime story,
not too funny but not too sad,
of tailors and cobblers and fame and glory,
of danger and courage and good and bad,
A fairytale to start me dreaming,
with heros on horses and fairies and fools,
with dwarfs and giants and witches scheming,
and rings that talk and dancing stools,
a princess enchanted, an unhappy kingdom,
a charming prince who sets her free,
a knight who gets what he wants and then some,
a wizard with visions of what will be.
Daddy, tell me a story to sleep to.
Start it, “Once upon a time,”
in the middle put something to weep to,
a brother’s betrayal, a stepmother’s crime.
At the end, let the kingdom ring with laughter,
the world secure, its wrongs set right.
If ou finish it, “Happily ever after,”
I’ll put my head down and say goodnight.
FATHER:
Once upon a time, daughter, it was simple.
A prince on a horse rode out with a sword,
and for love of a princess faced a dragon and slew him
and claimed the princess as his reward.
All the dragons today work for large corporations
and do awful things at authorities’ call,
or quiet as mice they do the king’s bidding
and a sword against them counts for nothing at all.
Now the horses of villains are all packed into engines
that make the earth twitch and drive people mad,
but the horses of heros belch smoke and confusion
so that no one can tell the good from the bad.
And rings talk only in T.V. commercials,
and knights sell something to buy at a store.
and all of the princes are in law school at Harvard
and the princesses just won’t keep house anymore.
And giants are products of glands misdirected
and dwarfs are the same error compouded it seems
by a firm manufacturing drugs for enchantment
for magicians to use to capture bad dreams.
And all of the fairies are out of the forest
and the cottage is empty and the closet is bare
and the witches all have been liberated
and a wolf in a woods is exceedingly rare.
And charm and color belong to the atom
and strangeness is something that is seen by a few
wizards of science in chambers of bubbles
and only computers have the future in view.
There are no cobblers to speak of, darling,
when our shoes wear out we throw them away
and little old ladies who make clothes in
are all that is left of tailors today.
And fame and glory belong to figures
who run with a ball when bowl games are played
and boldness and courage are found only on Wall Street.
in princes whose killings are made with a trade.
So sing yourself to sleep my daughter
for a modern child such tales won’t do,
yesterday’s news is to fantastic
and what happened today will frighten you.
“Happily ever after,” I’ll worry
whether there’s much of an after at all.
Tommorrow they may fuse their atom
and the sky fall.
Sunday Morning
(for Vera S)
Sunday morning before the Times
walking down Spring Street, East to West
I see, across the street
someone 20 years dead,
walking down
Spring Street,
West to East.
And desires, 20 years imprisoned
released by the perception,
claim satisfaction and
turn me,
uptown,
towards her.
While
glands,
which do not discriminate between mystery and threat,
which do not make judgments beween degrees of dieing or modes of dead,
flex
and having prepared me for every emergency save meeting someone I
loved
20 years dead, on Spring Street
turn me,
downtown
away.
In the breach of a Sunday morning, before the Times,
midstep
beneath the turning toward, above the turning away
in desperation, a part of me twists to find
some other way to fall than up or down,
searches
for the ground on which to complete a turn
finds
only the gap between what I loved and what I found merely attractive
and sprills sideways onto
disappointments, betrayals, indifferences
anticipating a death 20 years old but still to come.
But
claims the encounter as its own
imposes a sense of commonplace upon the impossible
draws out of the mysterious only its artistic possibilities
sketches the unimaginable as two figures against a slow
colors desire the shade of passion on canvas
and proportions fear to the fear of being tasteless.
How do you call to someone 20 years dead
and if they turn around what do you say
and how do you make excuses for a mistake.
I sing out to her,
I call the only hallo appropriate to the dead,
her name.
And, at her name, she turns reluctantly
as if against desire
slightly annoyed perhaps but not surprised
no sign of recognition in her eyes
only a tone of familiarity in her voice
acknowledges the need for explanation.
“I came to brunch at
and whispers something else that’s hard to hear.
Which explains nothing at all.
Distracted still by reason I remain
only inclined to roll down hill.
Passion, held in rein by habits foreign to the neighborhood,
trips on observing little things.
That I have aged 20 years but she is still the same, only
her flesh is tinted gray around the fingers and the brow
and how,
the dead are still governed by the
reflexes and customs of the living, and look lonely.
But you have been dead for 20 years, I say.
“Well it’s boring, and besides, you never wrote or called.”
Almost hysterical I cry,”But at your funeral I walked behind the coffin wept and mourned;
Where should I address the letter, and whats the number to call?”
But not convinced by logic she complains,
“Why don’t you take things as they come, not as they are.”
and just as easily I defend myself.
Two lovers on a stroll we turn the corner of our argument.
Catching myself, I scream, for God’s sake this is stupid, why are we standing here arguing.
“I’m not,” she answers, “I’m walking to
And for some reason lost to me, then and now
but final none the less,
the most important thing for me became
to convince her that she was dead, had been for twenty years.
This can’t be you and I can’t be talking to you. You’ve been dead for 20 years.
“A waste of time,” she says, and turns and walks away.
I love you, I call after her.
But only slowing slightly and over her shoulder, she replies,
“You said that 20 years ago and it didn’t keep death away.”
“Are you busy tonight?” I call after her. Then, as an after thought, ”the galleries are closed on Sunday.”
She shrugs her shoulders and continues.
I find myself in front of Al and Sam’s
The paper’s there and the morning’s half complete.
In front of the Charcuterie, a couple complains about the cost of pate
behind me, someone curse’s the lottery.
And I overhear a conversation in my head.
What kind of a neighborhood is this
which will call forth the dead from the grave
for brunch and a display of art and not ask questions?
To which the answer was:
“What kind of fool would loose his woman twice
demanding of love that it be sanctified by logic?
What sort of a person asks of the dead risen.”Are
You Busy
Tonight?” What fool would demand of the dead returned that they be real?
Epitaph For a Civilization Botched In Its Teeth
The frightened birds they calmed with effort and taught to glide upon the surfaces of lakes
and not make waves and not stir up the bottom
took to the air at once, all cawing.
The fragile human needs they planted
in gardens they cultivated with such care
flowered all at once and suddenly
the smell of human wanting filled the air
and the piles of metal they collected
and placed with such precision on the ground
then shifted again and again from place to place
and the devices they spent so much time finding
and the delicate mechanism they repaired, oiled wound
and set in motion carefully, were for an instant neglected
and slipped and came together grinding
and the birds came home to roost.
The first thing that they asked was “Whats the special?”
and “How much does it cost when its on sale?”
“How soon will it come if you deliver?”
then,
“Whats it do, whats it for?”
They announced they had caught the sun, sold plaster mirrors and reaped a million;
They made what was simple complicated
and reaped another;
They made what was cheap, dear and
pocketed millions more,
on paper, in credit.
They amused themselves by calculating interest
entertained themselves by opening accounts and
getting gifts
Economists became their silver poets
brokers became their philosophers
accountants the critics of their literature.
Everyone had the same thought.
If wheat is cheap and sand dear
what good is planting wheat.
Better plant sand.
They planted sand.
and the birds came home to roost.
In every house a dog guarded the kitchen
lights were left on to keep the house secure
alarms were set to keep the vandals distant,
yet, somehow they forgot to close the door.
Their tragedies all had sensuous endings,
All of the photographs showed people laughing
with the wind blowing in their hair.
But in every family portrait there is someone
out of focus, off to the left, something horrible, a
relation without a head, turning, talking to a friend,
They thought if they called plastic steel it would hold up concrete buildings
They thought if they could pay for electricity the lights
would never go out
They thought if the weatherman predicted sunny weather
the sky would hold the water forever.
When it rained they all got wet
and the birds, the birds came home to roost at once.
Before Us People Worked
Before us people worked
we went to the heart of economics.
Before us people worked,
we become corporations.
We incorporated everything,
poverty, old age, the body politic
any number of strange diseases
unusual ways of being sick.
Finally, we incorporated ourselves.
We sold shares in our aspirations
mortgaged our wants for working capital
floated bonds backed by our breathing in and breathing out.
We bought ourselves back to drive the price higher
and sold ourselves when we could find a buyer
and found, one day, we had to ask permission
of an institutional investor when we wanted to laugh
and when we wanted to make love someone else owned
the necessary parts and we had to pay a commission
and found out that unhappy as we were we couldn’t cry
because that apparatus was hedging a bank’s position.
And when the crash came and we tried suicide
we didn’t own enough of ourselves to be able to die
and were sued by our stockholders in court
for mismanagement.
Before us, people worked.
We went to the heart of economics.
Before us people worked
we discovered the secret of making money.
It was simple, we became a mint, coined our own.
Engraved portraits of presidents on our needs
seals and slogans over the signatures of our desires;
In God we Trust,
And found when our insides were printed upon
we had millions but nothing to spend them on.
There was nothing we wanted because our wants were in bonds
of large denominations
and our desires were cash in vaults drawing interest.
We found that all our wealth just left us more in debt
and needing wants and wanting needs we resorted to counterfeit.
We forged desires, counterfeited impulses
inked over whim to look like need
and loosed a flood of bogus upon the nation
of two hundred million money makers—
and inflation.
We found that skin itself has much to recommend it
as a means of exchange until you try to spend it;
found we were stuck standing around like idiots
not able to need anything real or want anything genuine
boring ourselves with fantasy
eating ourselves to a fat starvation
going crazy watching our capital grow, daily compounded.
And when the crash came we found we didn’t have the need or desire
or impulse genuine enough to want to die, so the banks just closed out our accounts.
II
Before us people worked,
we went to the heart of economics.
Before us people were happy to hear money talk,
they liked to listen to it tell of the places it had been
the things it had seen, the miracles it had worked.
Before us money only talked.
We made it sing.
We found it could speak foreign languages
take actions, make decisions
We found we could read in its entrails
the poetry of the future and the past.
Before us money only talked
we made it sing—
only the songs it sang.
Before us people worked, we went to the heart of economics
we discovered money was slow
that it had to be printed, counted, sent, arrive,
that it had to be passed from hand to hand
that it could be hoarded, drooled over
that it had to be imprisoned like a thief,
protected like a child.
We found that people liked it for its designs,
for the netting that hooked the numbers,
that people found something esthetic in it
taped it to the pages of books, collected it,
bought it and sold it for the way it looked,
for how scarce it was.
Before us people worked, we went to the heart of economics
and found that money’s little fet couldn’t take it around
fast enough
that it tripped and stumbled and fell into some old lady’s purse and stayed there forever
that little kids saved more of it than they needed
to buy something that they shouldn’t want,
that it wore out jingling in pockets, being passed from hand to hand that people put it in their mouths waiting to make change.
IV
Before us people worked, we went to the heart of economics
and realized that money didn’t matter
that it was a nuisance
that we could do better,
that human debits and credits could be made
to dance and sing
at the speed of light
on the head of a electronic chip
in the synapses of a computer
that accounted every transaction
whose truth was indistinguishable from fact
who forgave no debtor, took no risks
made no bad judgments
which remembered everything, which forgot nothing,
was able to take its pound of flesh
without a drop of blood.
Only the electricity,
the electricity.
We thought we could pay for the electricity and the lights
would flicker and the tape would run forever
but when the crash came and the juice went off
billions on billions stopped and disappeared into wires.
We couldn’t hunt for change in closets or under seat cushions
because there was no change
and we couldn’t rob the piggy banks because thee were none,
only numbers on cards
and because all the electrons stayed in their holes and
all the plugs were dead in their sockets and our pockets
were empty
we couldn’t run down to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread on credit
and we couldn’t even burn money to keep warm because we had no money
and we went bankrupt and froze to death with
billions to our names.
Before us people worked
we went to the heart of economics
then
economics went to the heart of us.
The Right Eye Never Marries
The right eye never marries, never divorces
three times a groom, never a husband.
Three times the same promises spoken
three times the toungue wags and marries
three times the tongue’s a husband.
Three times the right eye blinks
three times the right eye snuggles in darkness and
leaves the bride at the alter.
II
Three times waves of passion rise up like a great storm and
fling themselves upon the sea wall of marriage.
Three times the wall collapses,
three times the sea floods in,
three times the sea salts the earth,
three times the tide recedes.
Three times the right eye blinks.
III
Some men are sailors by profession
for others it is a hobby
some because they hate the land
some because they love the sea.
Some men are husband the first time,
some are rescued the second,
for some, like errant whales,
it takes three to beach them
on the sands of matrimony.
The right eye’s a sailor
who loves the sea for the sea’s sake
and seeks ports away from home
only to conjure the sea wall’s memory.
Robust She Was
Robust she was, big and big around
and flavored deep,
and, when she moved, her weight in air moved with her.
Her depths were still unfathomed and unplumbed
but ripples hinted at
perverse dimensions harboring the source of jokes.
Floods of passion left watermarks only
up to her backside
and it rained downward of her upper parts.
Water settled in puddles in her pudendum
and she made waves when she laughed.
There where and why she moved was a mystery
and how was paradox.
She bobbed on streets like a cork to the height of the mouths of buildings
rode and rolled in water wet air,
her navel a naval artiface, semaphoring she was
negotiating a destination unmapped on charts;
people like ports waited to be called up
to lay to and slide in
tectonic motions wowards her.
Body of wrought iron peened with the mongers mark
the irony was her face,
a vivid lace of silver, sheer as the damp on a baby’s bum,
washed and lightly dried.
Face, flesh and skull
floated on the ambient light,
suckled and weaned translucent shadows.
But when she said, “take me,”
she threw a darkness on the ground
on which to labor.
She made you think of
blessed with prodigious hordes;
measureless numbers gathered and exposed themselves
and all of evolution flashed in view.
When she said, “Love me,” she posed as natural a challenge
as volcanos hissing just beneath the skin of the earth
or monsoons or hurricanes emerging from the womb of quiet air
over a lagoon.
Afterwards her memory was a reminder that
even man’s carnal knowldge is incomplete.
This Little Poem
This little poem juts out at right angles to my life
and casts an odd shadow and pushes wildly into my gut.
This little poem sits on the parapet of my breath
threatening to jump and smash itself on the hiddle of a blank page.
This little poem exposes itself and
gets all the other little poems in trouble.
II
This little poem is ugly
this little poem is sad
this little poem is excited
this little poem is bad.
This little poem is wily
this little poem has class,
this little poem is stylish
this little poem will get kicked in the ass.
III
This poem’s for
This poem’s for Jane
This poem’s for pleasure
This poem’s for pain.
For headache,
for grief,
for tension,
for relief.
To be written,
to be read,
to be spoken,
to be said.
whispered
sighed
sung
cried.
IV
This little poem is nasty
this little poem is fun
this little poem is misisng some parts
this little poem is done.
V
(This little poem’s transparent,
this little poem you can’t see,
this little poem is a poet,
this liittle poem is me.)
Dancing Songs
FERMENT
Too much Shakespeare on the noggin
too much Tennyson in the bean
too little nose upon our morrows
too little thought to where we’ve been.
Insurance for Cadillacs, cataracts,
contrracts, constructs and sorrows
(Insurance covers the small of the rose.) (sic)
The smell risen
reasons like raisins in bread in the oven,
the smell covered with briars,
with beer with pralines and with sonnets
eleven, twelve in octal numbers.
Spirit of Shakespeare’s ghost reclining , stretching
lurks, shadowed and unseen, unseasoned
asks three questions out loud
and one silently; where, on this day? why on that day?
how, on tomorrow? and, why not yesterday?
carrying us swiftly to the brink of estuaries down which drift
branches of trees with unopened blossoms
(for the which, gifts are returned unopened
for the where, we right clauses and write songs.)
LUSTER (KREBS)
No one reads unopened letters
Writers repair to lick stamps and
stamp their wounds.
Shakespeare’s ghost cancels our vision
envelops, develops, discovers, repairs;
thirteen, fourteen in hexadecimal
rising,
risen, in digital remorse.
Shall play our fashion on film
a movie in infinite, indefinite, empty frames,
the dream of alabaster statues
which do not move;
‘what we record cannot be replayed,
what we receive cannot be transmitted
but we are wired for sound anyway” or
reduced to the orientation of molecules on tape
recreated in the image of
velocities of dots in phosphors
follow electrons in rebellion
over and against edges of
orbits on orbits around tension rods and three heads
and fall condemned to lie
in semi solid states on the ninth track in cassettes.
FUZZ
The nose of my noggin reconstructs the smell of the rose
salt over beer numbers glasses unseasoned
unopened estuaries (to be discovered)
take wrong passages on maps
and are opened and still not discovered.
Remorse fashions lofts into which we roll
like rocks and dance
desperate, obscene dances
against which another bar opens in
Letter appears from the state office of gifts and punishments;
to wit
therearetoomanyartistsandnotenoughtalenttogoaround;
we wishtobetrutallyhonest;honest,notalent,nomoney; giveitup;forgetittakeupreading
regretingit; signed
Shakespeare, too much, in the noggin, Tennyson,
too much in the bean.
Sorrow,
a little for my morrow salts the season I hew from dreams.
Get the rag and shoot the table,
wipe yourself but send the cable:
Cain; Stop; for God’s sake think;
Abel.
Rose. Snow. Ascending. Wrong, wrong, in octal numbers
Descend. Right, write decimal remorse.
I save the stamps (you can reuse them)
I save the bombs, (you can refuse them)
but of the glue only the taste on the tongue remains.
Nicholas
He said,”We have to patch the holes in the river, lay down
squares of rushes and ride the back current.”
I took it for the crazy talk of a dieing man.
He said, “Her love surprised me, it was so uncalled for.”
He said, “I did something that called for it. It too was uncalled for.”
When he awoke he rumpled the tin foil of the morning gently and put it in his pocket.
At night he smoothed out the silvery sheet he saved
and folded it arround the evening.
He left each day as he found it, complete.
He insisted and insisted, “We can make a place for anything in our
lives.”
“There is always another inch to move over,
a little room to crowd together if need be.”
He insisted and insisted,”Flesh is compressible.”
“There is always an extra dollar to be found,
a scattering of coins under the rug, behind the cushions
to be brought together to spend on a new toy,
always beautiful in the memory of the first moment we held it.
When he had a choice he chose the noisiest thing
especially if it were brightly colored. He used up the time allotted him. When he died the space he left was small but it retained his shape.
Making
Making
making conservatives, making conservatives out of us all.
We hang, hang from the skeleton of many images of a tree
the noose a harness for our sight.
Garroted.
Dimming vision through purpling eyes.
Garroted
we turn, turn slowly, slowly to the right, as the landscape turns,
turns to the left.
To the left
the landscape turns,
out of sight,
out of vision.
Out of our vision a golden land,
a promised (golden and ochre in the sunset) land
drifts to the left out of our vision
as we twist slowly, slowly in the breeze,
as we stretch slowly, into our future.
Dressed for riding, we ae saddled and ridden
by the wind as we turn,
as the wind makes,
makes,
conservatives out of us all.
Yet we hear things said to us that no men ever heard before.
II
Holographs,
holographs shall not,
holographs shall not recover our vision.
Computers,
computers shall not,
computers shall not recover our vision.
Tape,
tape in infinite loops shall not recover our vision.
Only,
only the wind
only the wind can do that,
only the rope twisting and untwisting in the breeze can do that.
Yet we are told things that no men were ever told before.
III
Is education
is education for the senses
while
in the distance, in the blackness, behind our backs, in our backness
the golden vision going flat, goes flat
goes to dust, to dust.
Out of our vision, out of our sight
the cities are looted and sacked.
Is education
is education for the sense, while
in the distance the town collapses.
Cowboys, indians, addicts, artists, teachers, lawyers, professors, doctors, poets
carouse, doing their dance,
for advantage, for position, for politics.
The golden vision grays, falls in on itself
the salemen, the stockbrokers, the merchants, the speculators, novelists
carousing, sightless
bumping into one another.
There are things to be done, profits to be made
things to be done, profits
in education, in divorces, in sickness, in ignorance, in advice, in pork bellies.
Yet we overhear conversations no men ever heard before.
IV
Disappears,
when the wind swings us back facing only the image of the landscape turning to the left
out of view, into view
as a television set comes on.
On television
on television
we become moving imges only,
synchronous lines of dots, scanning.
In computers,
in computers we become data in binary numbers.
We do the hustle at the end of our rope and wonder
why the noose does not pull tight and why we ae not engulfed
only gulled and gutted,
gulled, gutted and twisted in the wind.
What is in front is on tape
and what is behind is instant replay
and wonder why the noose does not tighten.
Yet we hear arguments in languges never spoken before.
V
Erased,
rubbed out,
smeared,
smudged,
sentences, paragraphs, whole words,
erased, rubbed out.
Wording and rewording descriptions of things.
We recognize sense and sentence only between words.
Wording and rewording
one sentence.
Only one sentence
written and copied, Zeroxed, dittoed, mimeographed
over and over again, and rewritten
the description of turning.
Erased or clear,
only the punctuation
the punctuation is education
as if the punctuation is the name for the place we are, the time we are at.
And wonder,
and wonder if at the end of our journey on the rope
there will be a vacancy
a vacancy at the place it stops turning
and whether the food will be fit to eat and the water fit to drink.
And we make errors no men ever made before.
The Survivors Song
Lay down the tool of the trade of being human, rest.
I’ll teach you a song
The damndest song I’ve ever heard
the only song I’ve ever heard worth singing
the survivors song.
A jazz for those who hear with their eyes
dance music for those without legs
a march for those returning disabled from the war with themselves
the celebration of being able to sing at all
which is the only thing that’s worth a song.
You can sing it to yourself on the subway
squeezed by bodies like damned souls on the express to hell itself
stalled between stations
when silence sucks sound dry
and words
drift and accumulate in piles between people
like dead leaves between trees in a forest
or
when the train is rolling again,
and noise floods speech
and words bob and toss in the briney ocean of sound
as useless for communication
as bottles without messages adrift in a stormy sea.
The survivors song, a song without words or music you can hear,
a drinking song for swallowing more than you can swallow
a work song for bearing more than you can bear
as good in church when you are miming faith
as in bed when you are faking pleasure,
a song you can sing with a cigar in your mouth
or when that cavity is filled with someone elses sweet flesh
or brimfull of blood and froth and fragments of yourself
The survivors song,
a song for singing after the house next door burns down
and the char and foam and water leave a barely recognizeable mess,
a song for humming to yourself after you hear the screech
of brakes
and a scream and thump in back of you
off to your left, not far, but far enough.
It’s the song that pushes out of you on the way back from the
cemetary
after you’ve buried a friend your age
and you’ve cried out all your tears
and rage sits on your lap with fear
and with each bump wisper wet tremors in your ear
and
after you’ve lost so totally
they give you losing as a trophy for your very own,
bronzed and shining with your name engraved
and failure glimmers in each shadow when you catch the light
and winning is an image in a dream
receding beyond the speed of memory or desire
it’s the song that finally sings you, softly, slowly rising.
FOR C.A.F.
This is a poem
for the wild animal that calls Carol home
the animal that burrows deep in the winter of everyday
to avoid snows of parents, the sleet of husband to be
winds of academe.
The animal that creeps out into the spring of night
and stretches sleek beside her, ready for a go at anything.
That loves to wrestle, be tossed, laughs; loves to love.
She got this animal
from a grandmother
who married into the line way back and late in life
a woman who tried again and again to be only
a good Jewish peasant wife.
A woman who while dressing one day, discovered she was a woman, discovered against her will
between milking and being milked that she had brains,
discovered during a progrom
pursued by a cossack, that she had class.
And,
after she uncovered these facts she covered them up again
with lies
and sadly backed back into her good Jewish peasant wife’s
disguise
and hid herself from her husband, her mother-in-law
her daughter; from mirrors and pools of clear water;
from herself
But
to keep the woman in her alive she made this animal
she made this animal to keep the woman in her company
She make this animal out of air, out of misery
out of tears, out of parts of her own body
to keep the woman in her company in the depths of
dispair.
She taught the animal to burrow deep in the winter of everyday to escape the snows of mother-in-law, the sleet of husband, the winds of family.
Carol
got this animal
from a grandmother who married late in life
and even later still came to
who watched her daughter grow up and
overwhelm her
until she became her fathers daughter and a husbands wife
One day hoping it was not too late
she offered the animal to her daughter
who asked, “What kind of animal is that?
it’s not a dog and it’s not a cat
and whatever it is it’s not pure bred.”
And her daughter laughed at her and said
“If I brought it home my loving spouse
wouldn’t even let me in the house.
He wouldn’t let me keep that kind of a pet.
Mother, leave peasant things in the old country, learn to forget
This is
for a loving mother and a caring wife.”
So
the woman in the Jewish immigrant wife disguise
took the animal back and closed her eyes
and fed it memories and cried the animal some water
and waited for her daughters daughter.
And
later dying in the back room of her daughters house
struggling to be free
of disguises finally
grandmother called granddaughter aside
took the animal from inside
and spoke clearly to the woman in the child of three.
Here
is a gift for you. Who knows what Czar you’ll find
what regimes rise and winters come to
this
Give it a home, keep it alive, this woman animal
It will comfort you in the terror of yourself, remind
you when you let it out, beyond disguises what you are.
I kept it in a space inside, she said, penned up and hid
I thought I tamed it but I never did
Remember, it can eat your sense of duty in two bites
consume your conscience whole without half trying
It’s not yet a domesticated household pet
It wants to roam not stay at home
in bed, with you crying.
Perhaps, she said, before her disguises fell full away
perhaps, she said, a woman dying
you won’t have to keep it chained and out of sight all day.
I fed it on dispair and dreams
but I think its natural diet
is loving and being whole
but I never dared to try it.
and whispered, ‘Don’t tell your mother that I gave it to you,’
she doesn’t understand the things we do.
The woman in the child of three
not caring if the animal was wild
the woman in the womb of the child
reached out her hand for it
and the beast leapt to its new captivity.
This
is a poem for Carol
and the animal that calls Carol home
the animal that she hid in the cage of her body
until one day, by accident
under her Baycliff aristocrat disguise
she discovered with her grandmothers eyes
she was a woman with brains, class and pride
and decided she wasn’t old enough to be wise
and keep the woman animal penned up inside
This
is a poem for Carol
who took a key
and breaking a tradition
set the animal free.
For Carol who opened the gate that divided the two
and locked both kept and keeper in a zoo.
And for the animal who broke a tradition
and let Carol in, for the animal who
liberated her keeper.
This
is a poem for Carol in whose voice I hear
the purr and roar of the beast al last free
this is a poem for Carol in whose eyes I see
the fire of an animal quick and untamed
This is a poem for the both of them
stretching out sleek ready for a go at anything
for the single shadow they cast
For Carol the woman animal and the woman animal Carol,
at last.
Renfrew of the Mounted.
Renfrew of the mounted,
stapled to the north
to frozen wastes
to whiteness
startled by the mottled violence of his thoughts
thinks of Rumplestilskin,
reinvents fairy tales,
rediscovers inaccessible places he had been to,
women he had known
prays for violence
for disaster
Sensibility is not a blessing
sensibility is not a curse
some things are better, somethings are worse
it depends on where you are
your surroundings, your place
In the west, on
mulled by the smell of cow sweat
on the plains, on the trail
Renfrew would have been blessed
But in the north country
sensibility pressed out to an extreme
he could see clearly past the far edge of his vision
no haze obscured his sight.
Clarity is not a blessing
clarity is not a curse
some things are better
some worse
it depends on where you are
your surroundings, your place.
On the prarie, on the dry range
vision obscured by smoke
dust mediating far and near
on meadowlands or grasslands
Ranfrew would have been blessed.
But in the north country
clarity presented only the possibility of more clarity,
clarity held reality from reality like the surface of a soap bubble holds air from air— and burst.
Things are what they seem only when they are half clear.
II
Renfrew of the mounted
stapled to the north, to frozen wastes
to whiteness,
rocked gently to fear by drift and floe
thinks snow into straw, straw into gold
spins rumplestilskin but forgets his name
Memory is not a blessing
memory is not a curse
somethings are better
somethings are worse
it depends on what you remember
your surroundings
your place
In mountains, in hills even,
oiled by mist and damp
stream and river would have polished
the memoryof Rumplestilskin
until it reflected all the possibilities of the present.
Renfrew would have been blessed.
But in the north country
memory only counterfeited perception,
only reproached the past.
Renfrew imagined only what he remembered he saw.
Imagination is not a blessing
imagination is not a curse
somethings are better
somethings are worse
it depends on what you imagine
your surroundings, your place.
On tableland, on upland range
dew soaked, cloud brushed
on bluff, in gorge
Renfrew would have been blessed
But in the north country
memory only insulated the present
held past from future like the surface of a soap bubble holds air from air
and burst.
reality has to be imagined to be real.
III
Renfrew of the mounted
stapled to the north, to frozen wastes,
to whiteness,
cradled by cold, blanketed by dispair,
thinks of Rumplestilskin but forgets his name;
hesitates,
and a nameless wind
blows gold into straw, straw into snow and ice;
Certainty is not a blessing
certainty is not a curse
some things are better
some things are worse
it depends on what you are sure of
your surroundings, your place
hesitates
rembers he has forgotten names, directions, places
turns,
turns,
realizes,
he is lost,
takes out his gun,
hesitates,
turns,
turns.
VI
Renfrew of the mounted
stapled to the north, to frozen wastes
to whiteness
imagines,
remembers,
duty has an answer
even to unanswered questions. Duty has a retort to unmade comments,
duty survives temperatures at which passion, desire, interest freeze.
Duty shades what sensibility illuminates.
Because of indifferent geography and unbroken sameness,
because to every territory, however featureless
duty provides a map; directions, routes, distances.
Because duty is certain,
Renfrew of the mounted, stapled to the north, to frozen wastes
turns to duty
which back is sure,
waits, listens
for duty to rescue him from fateless meanderings
from endless pursuit of nameless quarry
from the north, from frozen wastes,
waits,
for Rumplestilskin, to whom he promises himself again as a child, to relieve him from his appointed rounds.
How Come
How come every loving wife
screams at her husband, not on your life
only a beast would do it like that
and I wouldn’t sink to your level, you rat.
Whereas if an old boy friend
happens to mention he enjoys that end
she sighs, “what a sensual thing to do,”
and paints it colors and perfumes it too.
How come it’s a sure bet that a woman
with a mouth full of a man
that she’s just happened to meet
swallows and says it tastes sweet
Whereas her husband trying the same trick
will end up with tooth marks on his stick
and what’s in her mouth spit over his belly
with the complaint that it makes her sick and is smelly
How come the woman only recently wed
with someone else’s spouse in bed
get off before he does and squeals with delight
though he only lasts a minute before he drops from sight
While her husband who’s twice the size
like a long distance runner pursuing a prize
chases her for an hour and finally drops worn
and wins from her for his effort something between a squeak and a yawn
II
How come the wife who at home will only do it on a new sheet
and complains after her husband’s bath that he really hasn’t
washed his feet
and tells him she finds sex tiring and slightly vulgar and they
should stop
because he’s always too heavy when he’s on top
and insists that making love is just a lot of trouble
and makes him shave again because she can’t stand stubble
and demands he close his eyes and not touch her below the waist because it’s not refined and in bad taste.
and says in the middle that she feels oppressed and doesn’t have her heart in it and they should stop again and rest a minute,
and says she wishes he would do it slower like Mary’s husband Jim because she never has to rush to catch up to him,
and, as he’s coming, criticizes his technique
and says he doesn’t have to prove to her that he’s not weak,
and, instead of an orgasm she gets the point of a joke she missed and can’t understand why he gets pissed,
and says, tommorrow, and turns over and shuts her eyes
and says, marriage requires compromise.
Whereas with the man with whom she’s having an affair
she’ll do it almost anywhere
and prefers the decor
of a public place like a washroom floor
or a roof somewhere or the back of a bar
or a nearly empty subway car.
And when he comes in at a slant and misses
she hardly ever groans and hisses
‘You jerk, you’ve wounded me
open your eyes don’t work from memory.’
She doesn’t ask if it was meant to kill or merely maim
just shifts her body so he doesn’t have to aim
and tells him she gets excited when he dresses up in a disguise
and he insists she rape him with her eyes,
and tells him she adores his favorite position
(the one made famous by the Spanish Inquisition)
and when he flops on her and give a shove
its his technique she says, that won her love
and says, she’ll pay whatever price
because, she says, true love demands real sacrifice.
III
There’s a moral here if you forget it
I warn you brother you’ll regret it
You know it already but you’ve suppressed it
so I’ll tell you again though the ladies protest it.
If there is someone for whom you really have warm feelings of love and devotion,
for whom you care deeply with full honest masculine emotion,
someone with whom sex is everything it’s supposed to be and then someone you can give to as well as get from ,
someone who’ll satisfy your every whim if you let her,
with whom the first time’s good but the second better;
if there’s someone you’d like to settle down with to live a sensuous tender domestic life,
someone you’d like to marry and make your wife,
for God’s sake don’t—it will ruin everything.
When a woman marries she gives her heart
but raises the price of the other parts
and while she’s grateful for what she’s got
it’s never as good as what she’s not
and the man she’s caught, she thinks can’t match
the speed of the ones she couldn’t catch
and any man who’s free to roam
must be smoother and smarter than the one at home.
Before you do anything drastic reconsider
a woman’s always won by the lowest bidder
after marriage things are never what they were
a woman changes when you marry her.
The moment that you say, ‘please be my wife,’
her mind turns to the one who said;, ‘not on your life.’
If you really love her let someone else wed her,
she’ll love you more each time he beds her
let her take someone elses ring and name
when things go wrong it’s him she’ll blame.
Let someone else change with her seasons
when things go right you’ll be the reason
let someone else get pushed and do the shoving
its you she’ll run to when she wants her loving,
let someone else stay husband if he can
stay single and her lover and her man.
Select a word
Select a word. Good the word is….
Now think of sheep’s eggs. Sheep’s eggs and of course—‘Bullshit’
You say in modern times a word’s as much an egg as ‘Sheep’s eggs.’
Sheep’s eggs to boot. You read my mind.
‘Nonsense.’
Nonsense.
‘A game.’
Perhaps. If games played players, as players games, if words played poets as poets words, if dreams dreamed dreamers as dreamers dreams, then we would have poetry to spare
AND SHEEP’S EGGS TO BOOT, OF COURSE.
The word is ….
‘A choice.’
A choice.
Time dissolves in language, language in time,
Action dissolves in choice, choice in action,
and leaves as residue… and
sheep’s eggs.
In this world poets make of random words
poems rich as sheep’s eggs,
laid in haste, in nests of one night stands
which hatched bring forth politicians,
making of random words ‘speeches’
and sheep, of course
great milling sheep
with clothes of wool,
and hoof and mouth disease for poetry.
Chance as random as probability allows
produces from poets
sounds, quick to break and cry and echo sheep’s eggs in your ear,
or poetry as quiet to the touch as random patterns on the printed page.
She was Blond
She was blond and she was neat
and what she offered was poisoned meat
and I said to myself “you shouldn’t eat”
but I was hungry and it was sweet
and I didn’t think about tomorrow.
She was short and she was pert
and the meal she served was sand and dirt
but I ate it all and each bite hurt
and I didn’t complain about dessert
because you can’t tell about tomorrow.
I hoped it wouldn’t but tomorrow came
and if it’s anyones fault then I’m to blame
that my tongue feels like it was made of flame
and I’m blind in one eye and deaf and lame
and only God knows about tomorrow.
Someday I swear I’ll go on a diet
eat coddled eggs in peace and quiet
but my appetite’s strong and to satisfy it
if her menu’s the same today I’ll try it
because
who cares about tomorrow.
Song
Perfume and quiet music, a soft silk sheeted bed
help when the spirit’s willing but the body’s nearly dead
but when the jisms’ rushing and the rip is on the vine
a place on the floor by the open door
will do for me and mine.
Perfume and quite music, candlelight and wine
stoke the flames of passion when the body is supine
but when hormones are flowing and the rip is on the vine
standing up in a china cup will do for me and mine
(or squatting down with a crowd around
will do for me and mine.)
I Knew a Woman
I knew a woman who looked a fright
the pieces of her face weren’t right
She had a body just as queer
with three parts there and two parts here.
Vertical she was a mess
and what was where you had to guess
but on her back she had a grace
and everything fell into place.
(not beauty but delight
redeemed the lady in the night.)
Sage Advice Poem
How often have you heard some
wise guy suggest
pointing to a lady with a well
developed chest,
“you ought to give her a whirl,
she’s an easy score,
no matter how much you like it,
she likes it more.”
“When the lights are out and
the room is dark
she’ll play the fish to any
shark.”
“She’s not much on brains,”
he’ll say of course,
“love’s gain was a public
school’s loss.”
“It’s not that she’s dumb she
just forgot
which end is up and which goes
into what.”
“If her shoulders weren’t
attached to her head
she’d lose it, and probably in
bed.”
“She doesn’t know her ass from
her elbow.”
My advice to you is forget it.
Now and then you happen to find
a passionate lady with love on her mind
who doesn’t know the difference between her ass and her elbow
or your ass and your elbow
but says she’s willing to learn if you’re that kind.
Passion is good and ignorance better
she’ll give you heaven if only you let her
but when the evening is over and morning comes
you’ll have three green thumbs.
Every once in a while you meet someone’s Mrs.
who loves caressing and is heavy on kisses
and doesn’t care much whether it’s her ass or her elbow
or your ass or your elbow
as long as it’s not his’s.
Looks are good and willingness better
she’ll give you heaven if only youlet her
But when the new day begins and you get out of bed
you’ll be one quarter living and three quarters dead.
Occasionally you happen to meet
a sensitive woman who’s willing to cheat
and knows the difference between her ass and her elbow
and your ass and your elbow
but says she’ll forget it if you’re sweet.
Endurance is good and inventiveness better
she will give you heaven if only you let her
but after it’s over you’ll wish you had not
because you’ll remember what she forgot.
So when you meet a woman who isn’t quite sure
of which is which or doesn’t much care
my advice to you is exit the nearest door
or make believe she isn’t there
because,
the morning after the night before,
even your toenails will be sore,
and you won’t want to, anymore.
Soho Ditties
The women of Soho are sheik
and they dress in a style that’s unique
but the group as a whole
has the heart of a troll
and the soul of a pussy in heat
2
Some people like it belly up
some mouth to mouth
some with their heads tucked in
some with their middles out
Some like it standing up
some on the ground
in Soho artists like it best
going round and round
A gives it to B’s wife
A’s wife to B’s best friend.
When C spreads her legs apart
A catches it again.
Art is art, you can not keep
an artist from his calling.
(Painting is their hobby dear,
their real profession’s balling).
3
Of Soho a critic once said
its a place that reality fled
and left a profusion
of convincing illusions
exquisitely dressed and well fed.
4
As a breed the tourists unclean
noisy, ill mannered and mean.
In the rest of the city
the tourists are shitty
whereas here they’re merely obscene.
So the tourists of Soho can claim
they put all other tourists to shame.
Ours come from strange places
to stuff art in their faces.
(I wish they’d go home just the same)
5
Though lacking in medical smarts
for esthetics artistes paint their parts
so you’ve nothing to fear
all you’ll catch here
is an illusion of a dose of the arts.
6
At parties in Soho we fuck
and frig or bugger or suck
but don’t get excited
you won’t be invited
they’re off limits to tourists, tough luck.
7
The painter believed he amused her
but she complained he abused her
She said what they’d done
was a great deal of fun
but the flick of his wick had contused her.
8
The Soho man is sleek
and stylishly clothes his physique
but naked he looks
from the back like two books
from the front like a troll with a beak.
9
The women of Soho are sheik
and possess an alluring mystique
but they wheeze when they suck
and squeal when they fuck
and when they’re shot into they leak
10
The people of Soho appear
somewhat strange and a little bit queer
the ones that I’ve met
I forgive and forget
its the ones yet to come that I fear.
11
J— is sick but JJ’s sicker
Stv— is quick but Dck— wicks quicker
Frk is thick but All—’s thicker
Sing So Ho, Soho.
M— is busy, Mar— wife selects
D— whom J— rejects
W— watches S— screw
while he peeks at JJ—’s views
Sing So Ho, Soho.
In— tries whoever’s new
and M— says Hi, how did you do.
J— takes them when they’re through
marches them backward two by two
Singing So Ho, Soho.
N— hunts sailors in the park
J— marks them with her mark
(and M writes quickly in the dark)
Sin So Ho, Soho.
One walks upon wires
another stands until he tires
A gallery opens, another expires
Sing So Ho, Soho
12
Post urban, premenstrual, post scene
the Soho woman is lean
and ready to fight
when thing go right
and when things go wrong shes mean, mean, mean.
Pavlovs Dog
Pavlov’s dog remembers
when it ran barking after carts
chased rabbits.
The memory persists.
It thinks of birds taken
bitten and bleeding
strains,
twists its head
and drools.
Skinner’s pigeon
remembers
the circling starts of long ranging flights
ribbons of grasses
flattening under the wind
always under breast
running straight in the
direction home,
flexes his head
and pecks.
Engorged with memory the world splits
at the level of the eye.
In what we repeat and what we do not do
our bodies brush the
boundaries of someone elses mere history
and we are changed into frogs or swine,
short sighted and forgetful with long tongues.
Pavlov’s dog remembers
when its master
with the smell of
fresh cleaved earth on his hands
reached down and roughed his coat,
and in response
he licked the hand.
The taste of dirt and skin persists,
pricks memory
and the dog drools.
Skinners pigeon remembers
the curl of air on wings
pressing the eath up,
the wheat tenderly touching the earth
at a single point, hesitating
before growing up and down,
remembers the distinction between ground and sky, between
grain and everything else,
and pecks.
Pavlov’s hands
divorced from the smell of Pavlov’s hands
reminds the dog of the butcher behind the counter
and the butcher’s bones in a pail nearby
and Pavlov’s buzzer states a condition of
his master’s voice
hanging in air, working its way slowly around curves, as
to the pigeon, in false perspective
on Skinner’s apparatus
appears the image
of the farmer strewing grain
on wooden fields.
We discriminate our pleasures and respond
with the memory of pleasures that were to come,
drool as the square and circle merge,
peck to release our minds from the cage.
In The Face Of Death
In the face of death some of us grow bold and others of us become afraid of soft noises and shadows.
In the face of death some of us weep and others blow their noses.
In the face of death some of us shit in our pants
and others develop constipation.
In the face of death some of us whistle and others sing.
But death he has no preferences at all
no matter how you stood, you fall.
In the face of death some of us pay our debts and
others of us fogive our debtors.
In the face of death some of us drop our pants and
others of us forget howto work belts and zippers entirely.
In the face of death some of us develop a taste for gourmet
foods and others of us lose our appetites altogether.
In the face of death some of us walk and others of us run.
But death he doesn’t give a care
He takes you where you are, anywhere.
In the face of death some of us become quarrelsome and
others of us lose our taste for argument.
In the face of death some of us start a diary and
others of us forget the morning by the afternoon.
In the face of death some of us sleep a lot and others develop a taste for jogging.
In the face of death some of us smile and others frown.
With death anything you do is okay
He just takes you anyway.
In the face of death some of us find reasons and
others give up excuses.
In the face of death some of us buy calendars and others of us give up seasons.
In the face of death some of us acquire a hobby and others of us give up activities.
In the face of death sdome of us laugh and
others cry.
But death never is distracted
He takes you anyway you’ve acted.
In the face of death some of us grow sick and others give up all diseases but one.
In the face of death some of us grow shrewd and others cultivate stupidity.
In the face of death some of us hear voices and others begin to listen to silence.
In the face of death some of us roll and others yaw.
But death he never is mislead
Anyway you are, you’re dead.
In the face of death some of us get our sleds out from the basement and others of us burn all our old letters.
In the face of death some of us develop tics and others stop stuttering.
In the face of death some of us make appointments with doctors and
others start attending church.
In the face of death some turn out and others turn in.
To death it doesn’t matter how you lived
he forgets and he forgives.
In the face of death some of us start collecting things and
others of us give away possessions to passersby.
In the face of death some of us begin to remember things and
others break up their memories one by one into little pieces.
In the face of death some of us get their hair done and
others shine their warts.
In the face of death some of us bend and some of us break.
But death he don’t give a damn
he takes you anyway you am.
it doesn’t matter how you lived
he forgets and he forgives.
death has no preferences at all
no matter how you stood, you fall.
Letters to My son: The Pessimistic Letter
I was thirty when the message came; Stop; Prepare to get ready; Stop.
I was 31 when the lines started getting longer,
32 when they stopped putting exits on expressways.
I was 33 when people started leaving
34 when people started coming back saying there was no place to go.
I was 35 when money became obsolete
36 when computers replaced poets, politicians, farmers, soldiers,
37 when the electricity went off and the computers
suddenly forgot how to write, argue, grow things, protect.
I was 38 when another message came; Stop; no one could read the rest.
I was 39 when all the telephones started ringing at once,
and 40 when it hit the fan.
I had 10 years of clean air, more or less.
I think of the poor bastards who had one or two,
whose lungs have always smelled like latrines,
who never knew what air smelled like.
I was 41 when the ride ended.
“Everybody off,” a voice said, and everybody got off.
But I had 11 years of a bumpy ride,
I think of the poor bastards who just got on
and the engine stopped, cold and dead, and no refunds.
My son, I would gladly share those years with you
give you the fat and settle for the lean
but it just won’t work
(it doesn’t work that way! it doesn’t work anyway!)
You’ll have to take the memories and they’re not worth a damn.
We who were supposed to know something turned out not to know much of anything.
We who were supposed to have convictions had only interests.
We who were supposed to be concerned were only curious.
We who were supposed to know how things worked knew only how to throw switches.
We who were in charge of things were in charge of lists.
Reading, writing and revolution
didn’t do anything for me at all.
The typewriter is in the attic
my gun is in the hall.
(Take what you can use, throw the rest away.)
All the advice I can give you is bad;
Most of what people say is just talk
If you have to go somewhere important, walk.
Old Gentleman’s club Lament
We used to talk about niggers and kikes
and how they were lazy and caused all the strikes
but now we don’t talk about them and their likes
they are just like us and boring.
We used to talk about tits and asses
now all the ladies are wearing glasses
and want to be doctors and teach college classes
they are just like us and boring.
We used to complain about commies and queers
but oddly enough it now appears
they have all of our troubles and most of our fears
and are just like us and boring.
We used to tell stories about how we were jewed
how chinks were dirty and japs were crude
now they own the banks and we’re getting screwed
they are just like us and boring.
We used to tell jokes about polacks and wops,
they were crap on the bottom and we were on the top
now their lawyer says that we must stop
they are just like us and boring.
But we know what it’s like and we can wait
for the last laugh’s ours, it will be their fate
when they’re on top and humor their hate
and joke about us, it’ll be too late
they’ll be just like us and boring.
Was it Lowell Thomas who spent time in McCleans
and, adrift in his mind wrote about the shapes of the
sea and seals and harpoons and friends.
Maybe it wasn’t.
Thomas?
Drifting in the sea of McCleans towards shoals of poetry which blocked landsview couldn’t see land.
All the ships at sea were no more at sea than
Lowell drifting caught windward without his motor on
in McCleans toward land away from the shoals of the news.
Perhaps Robert.
broadcasting a warning of a war being fought
for all of us by hardly any of us in the holds of
ships adrift in McCleans seas.
Dancing, so sure of defeat.
Hominids
occupy my spaces in the minds of men
display their influence to humanity while Lowell
adrift in the sea, up the river without a paddle
tries to paddle his way out with words.
Waking up to find himself walking on water
on MCleans sea,
and in England turning Mrs Welatate properly down
amazes at his feet and promtly drowns
only to wash up, word caked on McCleans beach
as turn puts bag over his head
and sighs inward until he hears the hog wisper to him.
An old gentleman sings two Songs to celebrate Spring
Spring sprung, the sex is ris on me
straightens me up like some big maple tree
Christ if the season thought to bring
a girl to fuck to celebrate the spring
2
Spring springs the rain and breeze compete
to raise the lust like sap in me
nature’s victory would be complete
could a cherry grow on an olive tree
her buds are small, her limbs are bare
lust blinds me in the street
Christ, could I raise my eyes and stare
at her, not where I put my feet.
LOVE SONG
What’s a poet without a love song, or a
love hum or love whistle at least.
So here’s a love sorry to my broken hearts beloved.
Polished, polished to reflect her
who smoothed herself down to receive it
and then just as it was finished
upped and packed her clothes in a jar
hung it from her belt on a string
wrapped her essentials in a paper towel
and walked out, on the tides, to the moon.
I got a note from her, pro bono, postmarked space.
“Shining brightly,” it said. She knew it would break
my heart.
(It is her way of saying that she wants a divorce and that
our relationship is over.)
Released from commitments she will play at being a
dead planet and communicate by reflecting light.
When I look at the sky I will always see a new moon
but think of astronauts orbiting
her dark side, collecting stones.
Obituary of a Poet
A saint he wasn’t but which of us is, racked as we are in the womb cracked and broken by our mother’s labor
repenting and ready for salvation and rebirth, we are only born.
Which of us who first reached for this world with the top
of his head and shoulders is not mean spirited and sour faced.
He complained that the rabbis were complacent.
He complained that the priests did not complain.
He complained that the explanation he received was
fit only for gentiles.
His complaints were a constant buzzing in our ears.
He dropped his pants when he had the chance,
and made poetry, on occasion,
when he had the chance
and confused the two successfully.
Passion is passion he said.
In the war with words he was our general.
What he knew best was how to stem a retreat,
to keep a rout just that.
On the attack he was less successful. Logic always got the best of
him.
His lines were to long, he never could keep track of the troops—
of who was saying what, where.
When he stopped complaining and retired it was to the city, to
He fished in pools of stagnant street puddles
for urban cod and city trout.
He loved to see them break water and dive
striking to spawn in estuaries of
hydrants dribble.
He wrote his own obituary;
“I have rendered unto Caesar what would have been Caesar’s
had he recognized its value and spent the rest. I resisted
the tax man and saved nothing.”
A Memoir
Even that memory is gone
the memory that I husbanded for a day like this,
a day
fragile in the morning
taut and gray in the afternoon
by evening, shattered like an archeological object
into pieces of minutes and seconds to be
patched together to make
24 hours.
A day scrubbed clean of city life
a day devoid of easy city spectacles.
No store windows were being changed
no bag ladies scavenging
or old gentlemen propped up on benches
perfecting dignity.
No one collecting for obscure charities
or arguing causes on street corners.
No policemen staging performances of the majesty of the law
no weddings spilling out into the street,
no Harikrishnas, no Moon children
no musicians waiting for a line to form.
Even the bums were brooding and sullen;
A day not even charity could command.
Dead adjectives growled and moved through city streets
attaching themselves to objects,
Damp, distraught, algebraic,
Archaic words that you never could use
because they never quite fit anything
suddenly applied to everything;
woe, pall, melancholy.
I tried every trick I knew to bring that day alive
every minor pleasure and a major one or two
but nothing worked,
so I dug for the memory,
the memory I had counted on for a day like this,
the memory I thought secure
and found
even that memory was gone.
Beached on the island of Manhattan
beyond the line of incoming waves
that memory had seeped out of me
like the evening tide caught in a sandy hole.
A fully explicit day.
a day when pious Forty finally arrived
prodding, tedious, foreboding,
a day for which I had laid down a memory
the memory I thought secure
and found in the place it occupied
like the tiny crabs that colonize abandoned shells
an idea which scurried across my mind.
“You have reached that time of life when
experience will not suffice and
memories will not endure,
a cruel and killing time.”
THINK OF WORKS OF ART
Think of greed
think of good will
think of works of art.
Think of artists, think of disaster
think of works of art.
Think of dialogues between non-persons
think of prison camps, think of summer camps
think of camps of art, think of camp.
Think of soft drinks and hard edges
think of photographs of steaming coffee
think of painterly bowls of soup, think of good will
think of bowels
think of works of art.
Think of gratuitous violence exercised on innocent bodies
think of peace,
think of masterpieces, think of holocosts, think of art.
Think of pieces of bodies lost in rivers
think of rivers of pigments running dry on frames
think of bones made into pigment.
Think of holograms.
Think of art.
Think of the smell of perfume that lingers on clothing,
think of the smell of turpentine on painted ladies
think of disaster, think of art.
Think of dialogues bloodied among Incas
think of layers of pigments hardened to stone
think of stone in washes of grays and ochres
think of dreams that reappear on waking
think of danger
think of disaster
think of good will
think of works of art
Songs of Madmen: Simka’s Song
I
God’s breath stinks of tobacco.
Nothing to do, no where to go
everything forever done
he takes my space and time to do his nothings in
babbles and murmurs and mumbles incessantly
and makes up stories
and makes them come true.
Trapped in the curve of God’s attention
the smell drives me wild.
“Give me a cigarette,” I cry.
Then he becomes an awesome,
an awesome, angry, refusing, silence,
becomes a turning,
a turning away,
then he becomes a somewhere,
becomes a somewhere else,
leaving me a crazy man
disheveled in my craziness,
spilling words on empty air.
2
And slowly silence slips his mind
slow as smoke dissolves in air.
3
Simka, Simka, he asks quietly
you wild Jew, tell me this;
They’ll do it to you and they’ll do it for you
but will they do it with you?
Uncle, I answer
if wanting and believing are the same
if to and for are different than with
if you and I can talk only here and not be driven out
then
what does it mean to be sane
and what is it worth to be sane
and where’s the synagogue?
Give me a cigarette.
4
Then
he becomes an awesome, angry refusing silence
becomes a turning away, becomes somewhere else
leaving me a crazy man, naked in my craziness
spilling words on empty air.
5
And slowly silence slips his mind
as slowly as sense slipped mine.
slow as smell slips smoke.
6
Launder the mind and make it clean
Insanity is being mean
Ingless, ingfully, for, to, with
(excuse me uncle, I have to pith)
7
But he makes up a story for me
(not letting me go, I pith where I am)
makes a creation,
creates an evolution
evolves the world to smoke, inhales
shapes a finger, shapes a ring
exhales them to motion, drifting.
8
What good are all your stories, I cry
all your creations and evolutions if the simplest of needs
can’t be met.
Give me a cigarette.
9
No one believes any more, I say
and threaten him with disbelief, yet I believe.
Caught in the ring of his attention
tethered by my believing, fingered without relief
his breath is over me, everywhere.
(Anything with breath that powerful must exist;
I smell therefore I believe.)
10
I have a day long dream that lasts a week, from week to week
lingers month to year.
I cry, give me a cigarette,
and from God’s pocket (where cigarettes are in the world)
two cigarettes appear.
And smiling at some private joke
he grabs me roughly, lovingly
and makes my craziness a match and strikes
it on the rough edge of my mind
and I burst into flame
and light the cigarettes.
11
And I breathe in God’s face as he breathes in mine
and we talk as equals and equally we babble
and murmur and mumble and make up stories
and make them come true.
12
Crazy faith denies all simple truths.
Should God who speaks all languages
not know the dialect of the insane?
Should he lack syntax to speak
plainly to the crazy man?
Should God who ransomed the world with words
withhold finally something so small
as sense and a cigarette from one poor crazy man?
13
Give me a cigarette.
The Whale
The whale as a species’ defunct, spurious, deceased dead,
sloshes in seas now like streaked boots slipped from the
rotting feet of drowned sailors
or like matted sunken ships captain’s hats that have grown
fins and tumble from sea weed haired heads to lurch at
tenuous shaftless hooks baited with sunshine.
Defunct, deceased
like a mad sea dog grown sick on shell bones and seaweed
the great whale dives to release its sickness in dark and
colder water and is caught there.
Spurious,
lives on sufferance of good breeding behavior
is allowed to sound
as long as it dives no deeper than
the bottom of the chart on which its numbers are beached,
sings,
on sufferance of treaties, agreements, congresses, parliaments.
As a species defunct, spurious, deceased dead, the whale,
a slightly living testament to the human therapeutic,
dives deep,
retraces its birthing motion, gathers up its evolution,
down deep, down deep, down deeper, enough to roil the bottom,
begins the motion up
changeling as it rises slowly
streamlined as it rises from the lumbering barnacle
plummaged hulk to the
lean, inedible, unrendable, terrifying great shark
with pointed snout and rows of sharp teeth shredding
our security to bits on celluloid while
it tears up the surface of the ocean as its rises
completely out of the water into the wet air
evades harpoons and guns but is caught on strings
pumped skyward in plastic reincarnations but is
held earthbound on sticks, takes to the air as an
awkward wingless reincarnation in plastic
with a message tattooed in its side.
Spit into the ocean twice and have done with the
whale as a species which is defunct, spurious, dead, tired
and wait,
wait for the leeward wind
to turn the message so we can read.
To a Politician: RN
Your anatomy fits you like a glove
you wear
on your crotch
so you may finger love.
Your Adams apple recreates
the serpents apple
that Eve ate
(then spit up.)
For mouth
two suckers
set together
which undulate and throb
when biting needs to be done
rasp and beat when flesh needs to be broken
(shiver over sounds when words are spoken,)
a slimy sheath
where a set of knives
are kept as teeth.
Your nose
a fleshy grate
over a hole
where smells
fornicate
then rise up.
For eyes
two rimless holes
to catch the light
and snuff it
and stuff it out of sight.
Two lids
thick tissued walls
of skin
to keep
the darkness in
so night
may come when it is called.
For ears
two flaps of flesh turned out
sift noise from sound
and suck it in
and take it for advice
urging acts of avarice.
II
The price of pork bellies shall fall on your birthday
and rise when you get sick.
People shall forget your name but remember what you were called.
Your memory shall be a distraction between parts of a sporting event but all the games scheduled in your honor shall be rained out.
Your name shall roll off the tongues of corrupt judges
but stick in the throats of bakers of bread.
Your picture shall appear on the label of tainted pet food
and be drawn perfectly on the floor of privies.
The post office will honor your name with a canceled stamp.
Children shall complain you Pied Pipered their childhood
Old men shall complain you seeded the acres of their
final years with pebbles and salt
and your name shall become an abstraction
referring to; a hurt without place or form or cause or cure
referring to; a person of oscillating, ambiguous sex
referring to; anything irremediably bent or out of shape.
THE JINLING BAT
A bat has found its way into the lobby of the Jinling hotel.
Order dissolves. The girls in their tawny uniforms move away from
their posts and cluster like deer,
the doormen in their freedonia uniforms with the gold braid,
siddle up.
They stand around gaping.
Even the attention of the black suited
security people is caught. They observe it
stoney eyed as if it were a breech in security,
and whisper to one another over the devices they hold
in their hands.
The girls jump and giggle as the creature darts from one place to another; the boys stand bravely demonstrating their manhood.
The bat realizes something is wrong; it misses his usual darkness.
It has made some horrible error.
It tries to unmake it, looking for some door in the ceiling,
a back door that will release it
to the darkness again.
The manager frowns. The foreigners may complain.
There may be a letter to the China Daily. He thinks,
“You can never tell what upsets them.”
As if to certify his worst fears a bus filled with
tourists swings through the gate.
One big traveller with 100 arms and 100 legs
and 100 eyes moves jerkily into the lobby.
The manager has no quarrel with the bat. There were many
in the straw roofs of the houses.
It is only a little bat—but the tourists….
It is impossible to know what offends them.
He feels sorry for the bat but maintains a stern face.
The girls in their fawn colored uniforms let go of the excitement
reluctantly and return slowly
to their posts behind the desk.
The tourists, tired from a day of sightseeing crowd around
The manger makes a decision. He whispers something
to the maintainance men whose shift is over and
who have already prepared to go home.
A net appears from somewhere, a tall ladder from somewhere else.
“Try not to kill it,” he whispers loudly, to no one in particular.
It will not be his responsibility if it dies.
The workmen chase it, moving the ladder
clumsily from place to place.
Finally one corners it behind some ornament—an ornate dragon.
Angry at the fact that the fluid, elusive animal has made him stay after his shift was over he smashes it angrily with the rim of the net,
making no effort to catch it.
It utters an almost human cry,
a sound utterly foreign to the Jinling, clings for a moment
then falls into the net.
The tourists confused stand still momentarily
then pull away.
Once dead the bat holds no interest for the manager and he turns
and disappears quickly into his office.
The ladder is taken down and things ebb to the edge of the wave of
the evening rush.
Only the echo of the bats cry lingers over the coffee and beer
on the second floor lounge.
The Old Man of Duling
Why should the emperor get such good report.
It’s not to his credit that reason dawns: he
should have known better all along.
Honest spies are a people’s best friend.
Postumous honors, postumous relief,
taxes, comfort that comes too late
are the marks of civilization.
Short pleasures after a long wait.
Plumes of grief
always arise from human fires,
then quickly dissipate.
The emperor turns, deftly lifting his brush from the
white hempen paper, feels the high of
having done something good; he is
filled with imperial grace.
The old man of Duling sighs in pain. He clasps his
emptiness knowing, even
if the emperor is just there is no justice.
Official winds never blow straight.
Dear Bai Juyi
I like your poems.
A mirror, better than a mirror.
My face stares back as if it were
reflected from the silvered bottom
of a mountain pond.
No glare from a sun dim one thousand years
but enough illumination.
The features of my face are softened—yours too.
A breeze gently ripples the surface of the mirror
my face peels from the glass like a tiny wave
and falls on the dresser in
my room at the Jinling.
I like your poems. The text: how to ask simple, unanswerable questions.
I like your poems but I want to ask you what, in Chinese fashion, did you neglect to mention.
What filled the gaps as my lady sits in the gap of my life.
Passion in china.
It is easy loving her. It is not easy loving me.
I am traife—a foreigner—an embarassment. Her passion jerks her around to face those who stare at her.
She is forever in motion.
Outside the window of my office they are
building a house. The architecture: brick walls smeared with
cement.
The walls are up and the bamboo poles to support the roof. They are laying corrugated panels for the roof—plastic.
There is a crew of nine, but only three are working. Six are
kibbutzing or grousing.
It will be an oven in the summer,
ice house cold in the winter
but it will keep the rain and wind out.
When they are finished it will look as if it has been
lived in for centuries.
China is an instant antique.
Outside the window of my room at the Jinling
they are rebuilding all of China.
The architecture: Cement smeared brick. The walls are up
they are waiting for heaven to provide a roof.
On Zhongshan Lu, battalions of ladies with brooms, heads dressed for a country fair, bottom for daylabor, raise clouds of dust and keep them in motion.
China is a net,
space held together with string.
It lifts people out of the water
and tosses them on to the sand
where they gasp for air.
Times change. There is dust everywhere and the smell of progress is in the air.
Times change. Rice is cheap and there is enough
but it is served with grit.
I am writing because I thought I saw you
twice in the last few days.
The first time, “in white gown, short boots,
hat pulled over your eyes,
Sichun walking stick hanging from your belt.” You were in the crowd waiting for the number 5 bus, making a fist with words.
The second time, lying with your back to the sun next to the scum covered pool near the red pavilion at the institute. A peony clung respectfully to your foot.
Illusions, I know—yet I recognized you clearly.
A incorrigible habit but innocent enough.
What harm can come from seeing dead men.
The live men here are ghosts often enough.
I am afraid I am drunk on China.
I am 51
not an official, not a poet, not even a Han
I am entangled in disorder.
My children and my ex-wife are coming to visit in July
My lady is in Shanghai looking for a doctor
who will not ask questions.
Wu fights Chi.
I am 51 picking at a loose thread but try not to pull too hard lest
my clothing unravel and leave me naked in China.
I am 51 and lovesick, not sensible, not reasonable.
Like the emperor, passion has left me bereft of common sense.
Court is of no matter, matters of state, inconsequential.
I am hung up on a Sichuan Road,
no army to move me forward
no army to carry me back.
Everyone is an official, now, though few hold office.
Everyone is an official, now, but without passion.
But look where passion has gotten me.
My lady lies on the bed
crying about what she cannot have.
It was not easy.
She longs for a child.
The most I can do is hold onto her tightly
and greedily imitate a child.
It is not the same thing.
Dear Juyi, write me about pain and love
and a society gone wild.
I can use the advice of a dead man because
the advice of the living is of no value at all.
The One Armed Old Man
Sometimes the sound of the army recruiter comes
as a growl, low over the hills, skimming the trees,
sometimes it rings smartly like a bell through
the village, a brisk command.
Sometimes it is not more than an urgent whisper,
growing louder as it echos off the bodies of
stunned men hectored into bushy lines.
Patriotism is the rage today;
We believe in just wars, wars of liberation
wars to prevent war. Honorable wars.
Our choice is never between better and best.
If we are lucky it is between horrible and
terrible. At worst, it is between the
unthinkable and the inimaginable.
One should not agonize over a decision
between the shadow of something improbable and
the afterimage of something impossible.
It is absurd to think such a selection is a choice.
One should decide in the fashion of children,
“One potato, two potato—-”
Usually a heavy stone is not of much use. It
gets in the way. At night one trips on it,
during the day one mistakes it for something useful
left in the grass, a basket, a coil of rope.
Heaps of heavy volumes of old books, like stones
are also nearly useless.
During the day, one wants novels
Nights are for stumbling over technical books,
something useful at work.
When the sound of guns and swords drift down to the valley
and the recruiter calls in that soft demanding voice
that will not be dimmed or denied by shut ears
a heavy stone is a useful thing. It makes a real choice possible.
An arm smashed at the shoulder, falling of its own
weight, a bloody stone on the ground or dying in Yunnan.
The old man gives good advice; don’t hesitate.
Hoist the stone. What war means is a lot of
dead bodies in Yunnan waters
dying admist scattered bones.
Abiding Sorrow
An emperor dreams dreams and makes them come true.
A beautiful woman is a dream.
Both have a terrible awakening.
He awakes to find his dream slipping from him
in an ooze of blood and dust.
She awakens into a blood damp nightmare that lasts forever.
Our dream is abiding sorrow; our awakening, to realize that
there is no abiding sorrow only a pain that lasts a long time.
The air is rose colored in the Jinling’s Plum Garden.
The erhu spins it’s song more sorrowfully than usual.
A man walks in looking like the emperor of some corporation.
On his arm a beautiful lady.
Moth eyed exactly, dress like the opalescent covering of a moth.
He glows full of the pleasure of her, yet is not sated.
She reconnoitres his desire.
Dinner is an unwelcome respite.
Will it come to a bloody end on the Sichuan Road?
Probably not.
But there are other painful awakenings, dusty roads in other places.
Someone should tell the emperor;
Emperors are prisoners of empires.
You can not trust soldiers or lawyers or accountants.
They don’t give a fig about the emperor’s pleasures
or his abiding sorrow.
Moth eyes do not usually last any longer than moths.
Sorrow may not be eternal but what there is of it last long enough and repeats itself.
When China applauds many hands clap.
When China deplores many feet pound the earth.
When China is restless, millions toss in their beds.
When the nightmare passes, millions snore softly again.
When China ponders, millions scratch their heads.
When China decides, millions are certain.
When China changes its mind, millions are unsure again.
When China forgets something it is forgotten by millions.
When it is remembered, millions remember it again.
In China a secret is kept from millions by millions.
In China a rumor passes from a million tongues to a million ears.
In China gossip is told by millions to millions about millions.
In China when people have time on their hands it is centuries.
In China the day before today is not yesterday it is the 12th century.
In China tomorrow always begins next year
sometime, usually on a Tuesday.
No small ruptures, no small breaks; privacy is a wet dream of children who instead of blocks receive a set of ambiguities to build toy houses with.
They learn an architecture of contradictions; they learn the back door is always in the front of the house.
In China what appeares to be order is merely regularity.
When China applauds many hands clap.
When China deplores many feet pount the earth.
When China is indifferent millions of faces go slack.
II
Culture of Motley
Culture of dull.
Culture of Putitan,
Culture of Unbad.
Culture of Spit.
Culture of Snot.
Mouth Culture
Culture of indirection, culture of unstraight lines.
Culture of arcs with infinite curvature.
The rule holds: Victory passes. Defeat passes.
Only what is official endures.
III
In the absence of a revolution the workers must take
jobs—whatever they can get.
It is only temporary, the revolution will be back again.
Mao passes me on the street, disguised as a
professor, great coat pulled
back by a gust of wind, barely hiding his disdain for the
crawl toward the 21st century.
Lucious, languid, frigid shopgirls
bored to death dealing pounds of candy
doze, while winter creeps up on them.
Mao regards them with disdain also.
He stops before the Jinling, marvel of Nanjing.
Because he is Chinese and has no business there they will
not let him in the gate.
Later, through a backdoor, he makes his way to the
revolving top floor.
In his honor the 36th floor stops turning and all of
China revolves around him.
His glare is pitless.
Imitating Groucho Marx he asks, “For
this we made a revolution.”
He mediates loudly.
“It is not enough to make a revolution. It is not enought
to remake it. Is there anything that can save the
revolution from its successes?”
The waitress brings him a brandy.
The liquor loosens the lute of his tongue and his
complaints become characters on the wall behing Jimm
King and his Hawaiians.
“Those who want to, shouldn’t.
Those who will, can’t.
Those who should, may not.
Those who can, won’t
We are always having to choose between getting things
done not quite well enough and getting them done at all.”
In Fudzemiao, in a restaurant, a beggar begs by banging
his head on the table, thump, thump.
Mao slips him a few fen and the revolution and the beggar
gives him small change back.
IV
Something appears on the mountain in
distance, indistinct through the dust.
It appears to be a man on a bicycle who seems to be
carrying something.
It is hard to distinguish the man from the bicycle and
easy to confuse him with an ancient poem about the
mountain or the latest party directive about mountains.
Obscured by dust it is not easy to tell what he is doing
on the mountain and the bike rider throws up his own
dust. It might be better if he did not ride so quickly.
As we get closer, it turns out to be really only a large
sign on the mountain, a picture of a man carrying a box
of bicycle parts on his back.
Dust provides the illusion of movement—the muntain
point one way, the man points in another.
V
Li’s Song:
I went to the countryside for a vacation. Not a vacation
exactly: 10 hours work for 7 cents a day, the value of a
plastic button.
In the evening I taught illiterates to read. They slept as
they learned.
My father’s father owned three factories. My father
managed them for the state. Then for a vacation he went
to work in one of them as a cook. The factory managed
itself for a while then it went on a vacation also.
When my father became a rightest my mother took off on a
vacation. Before the country went on vacation I raised a
brother and a sister.
I came out a backdoor wide but not wide enought and fell
into a hole, not deep but deep enough. I found a place to
hide, large, but not large enough.
I would like to paint but teaching English is my ricebowl.
VI
On the day we came, the first day we heard the tatoo
of dull empty thuds and asked, “What were those noises, what’s making those
sounds?”
They said, “children playing;
perhaps a house is falling; thunder,”—although the day was
clear—”fireworks maybe,” and looked chagrined.
On the second day when we went out we heard the tango of
sour percussive sounds and asked, “what
kind of sounds are those?”
We insisted they answer, demanded the truth not a fairy tale.
“Guns,” they said, “weapons are being tested, far from the
Institute; well, just near the city wall-
actually, just outside the gate.
Unfortunately, next to where you teach.
When we first ate, our first dinner
when the plates came we asked, “What’s in
that dish, what kind of food is that?”
They said, “vegtables, spices, doufou and meat,” and
looked chagrined.
Next day at supper when the meal was served we asked, “What’s in
that stew, what kind of food is that?” We insisted they answer, demanded the
truth not a fairy tale.
“It’s not cow,” they said, “not goat, not sheep, not pig. It barked,” they
said and struggled for the noun.
When from our window we first saw people passing, when we first
went outside and walked and saw the people walking, we asked, “Why are the
people so sad, why does every person over eight wear a disguise of dispair?”
They said, “Summer has gone and winter is
coming
fast—though it was Spring.
On the second day as we sat and watched the people
forlornly watching birds and watching us
we asked,
“Why do the people ooze unhappiness, why does every person over
eight wear a mask of dispair?” We insisted they answer, demanded the
truth not a fairy tale.
“Dancing is forbidden,” they said, “husbands and wives
live somewhere else. Some want to write but they are
engineers, some want to paint but
chemistry
is what they do.
Some want to sing…”
We turned away.
We do not ask questions any more, settle for what we
happen to be told.
We do not indulge our whim for clarity.
On clear days when it thunders we look for rain.
We settle for culinary ambiguity. Now that winter has come reunited
families seem happy again.
During the vacation, while we were away, we heard there was dancing every day. Someone’s novel is about to
appear;
the exhibition of paintings merely has been delayed.
We do not ask questions any more, we settle for what we happen to be told.
We do not ask questions any more and are not told
more than we want to know.
Lu Shan poems
I
Thinking of summer I wanted to go south.
I went south, took only light summer things to wear
went south but up, Lu Shan’s mountain’s chill
taught me the limitations of horizontal thinking.
II
(Lu Shan)
To close, can’t see, not close enough
can’t see.
To far can’t see, not far enough
can’t see.
Just right—see a blur.
Above, can’t see, below can’t see
outside, can’t see, inside can’t see.
Just right—see sea changes.
Sun to mist,
mist to rain,
rain to snow,
snow to sun.
Bu ren shi Lu Shan jen mian mu.
III
Dog’s feet in paw caligraphy.
Hen’s feet verse on bamboo themes.
Melting snow makes rain beneth the trees.
As we two alone await the fog which advances slowy like an ancient army,
we write with icicles in the snow;
unnamable longings, impossible dreams.
IV
Snow
Taut crystals primed to implode into wetness
(pent up wetness.)
Restless, a blanket for the mountain.
Blown sugar as it melts in the mouth,
gives the trees a tongue to gossip
about Lu Shan’s magic.
V
Scrubbed caligraphy on buildings
mark recently obscured, barely historical events.
An inventory of ancient poems complete the scenery.
The snow covered mountains seem to labor gently
to be born again tomorrow
and drift up stream slowly into memory.
VI
Kurtz, in the twentieth century, in China
his memory repeatedly suffering minor deaths,
telexes over and over
in caligraphic breaths
what he cannot remember but cannot forget;
The net, the net.
VII
By the lake
we make an inventory of what we lack:
a place to smoke
a boat
a way home
and, although we are sitting side by side,
each other.
A boulder on a distant mountain
frames your face.
It appears precariously balanced
and about to fall.
As we talk I wait for it to tumble down your cheek
knowing it has stood that way for centuries.
I look first at your face, then at the boulder.
Appearances are deceiving but not deceiving enough.
It is impossible at this distance to read the ancient inscription
chiseled on the rock.
I look first at the boulder, then at you.
Mirrored on your face the words are clear.
No tree or flower planted here can root.
Men who have passed have tried to move me.
All have failed.
Enjoy the pleasure of my shade.
Enjoy the sense of danger.
I am safely unmoveable.
VIII
Li’s Song 2:
In the evening unable to rest
I pace my darkened room,
As I walk North, images of
old lovers appear
grow stronger then fade as I reverse
direction and your image appears.
If only there were no wall
I might love you forever
but my room is small and I must
stop and turn.
Darkness is a map of
a territory between lovers.
I find my bed from memory
sleep from habit.
SLOW DANCES
Mountain
My memory plays tricks on me,
remembers things that never were-
you and I on a mountain, half stone, half air.
Smell of pines on your finger tips,
flakes of mountain flowers on your breast.
Abruptly, in a single absent minded, forgetful turn the mountain
drops into the water,
and we plunge into one another.
Later, pines remind the mountain it is dirt and stone.
My memory reaches for you but grasps only a cloud caught
in trembling leaves of bamboo.
Debt
I borrowed you from China.
I knew China would have to be repaid someday
but I did not keep track of dates.
Suddenly the loan is due with interest
and I find I owe
more than the fishes owe the ocean,
more than the birds owe the air.
Game
We played a game on the board of our flesh
made up the rules from move to move.
We played by shifting pieces of ourselves
from square to square.
The game is over now. I replay it in my mind, move by move
to see how I could have played so well
and lost so badly.
Chop
Flesh stamp
stamp on flesh.
Teeth chop
natural signature.
Love’s mark
crimson on flesh.
I think you think-
Wu ke bu wu ke.
J.R.
For all the years of couch and therapy
for all the women’s groups and sisterhood
for all the liberation and raising of consciousness
her head is filled with unexploded munitions
from the wars of independence she’s fought.
For all the years of couch and therapy
in her fantasies her body is a scar
from battles lost then won
on beds like fields where wounded men
were left to bleed themselves to death
between an uncertain armistice.
For all the liberation and raising of consciousness
her breasts are marred for her, like hills where
soldiers fought hand to hand
rises over which batallions advanced and retreated
sweat soaked in victory and defeat.
Her head is filled with unexploded munitions
her sex a place where men entrenched themselves
and sought a refuge from the noise of firefights
in folds of flesh beneath the surface of her earth
secure for a moment until she, like a mine
exploded underneath them and shrapneled them to death.
From the wars of independence that she’s fought
her sleep is filled with nightmares.
Generals direct assaults upon her.
Colonels liberate her liberally.
Captains put cannons to good use.
Lieutenants take her prisoner and abuse her beyond conventions.
For all the years of couch and therapy
for all the womens groups and sisterhood
for all the liberation and raising of consciousness
her head is filled with unexploded munitions
from the wars of independence she’s fought.
Like a good soldier she waits out her peace
as a stranger in a foreign land
a fighter in a peaceful time
yearning for war to bring her home again.
For Elyse
In the palace
the gypsy girl
left newborn on the doorstep of the princess
grown to dark beauty
whirls and moans to music only she can hear
while miles away by a campfire
the princess’ child,
stolen as an infant by the gypsies,
grown in encampments to pale luster,
practices courtly motions,
weaves and embroiders cloth only she can see.
My daughter,
which band impatiently awaits the return of their lost child
and what is my own flesh and blood crafting while
dark eyes examine her strangely.
New York City
When the New Age begins it will begin in N.Y.C. (or
someone from N.Y.C. will buy the rights to it, exclusively.)
New Yorkers have seen it all or know someone who has
seen it all or have a cousin who knows someone who has seen it all.
They know life, New Yorkers, even the children.
The smallest can identify life in any form, for what it is.
Tots are familiar with the living in each of its disguises,
exploding in the cracks of sidewalks, floating in puddles
alive in the zoos of 42nd street arcades.
They feel it struggling in tufts of grass on the tracks of the
subways,
evolving rapidly under layers of debris in wire baskets,
clinging on the polished surfaces of marble in the
lobbies of office buildings.
They recognize
even the germs as kin.
New Yorkers know how far to jiggle the string, down to the
millimeter,
even the children.
The smallest knows death for what it is, in every form
They know death of every kind, even the kinds that
don’t appear on television.
Dark formal death, slack informal death
death private and death public.
They know all the signs, all the parameters
scraps of paper, legs askew in the street, all tones
of gray, the merely not being there one day.
Even the old people for whom dying is no difficult thing
come to New York City where they practice dying 24 hours a day every day of the year, weekends and holidays included
as if they were perfecting an art form.
In New York City people learn how to ignore things, to
disattend
This yogic discipline comes with the news in the morning in the ashram of Manhattan.
It comes with living on the brink of an indelicate balance.
And in New York City people learn how to attend to details,
to discriminate.
That discipline comes between the lines of the news in the
morning
In New York City there is always a crisis. When a new one fails to materialize, they rerun an old one.
One never knows, someone asks. You can’t tell, someone answers.
They complain, “When someone wants to protest something, he comes to New York to explode the bomb.”
Nothing can be taken for granted. Everything is uncertain.
New Yorkers snatch cat-naps on the job of waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
There’s always a piece breaking. Someone’s always finding
a new gem of a hole into which part of the city has disappeared.
Miniature private disasters, public disasters in epic shapes
and forms, flickering subliminal chaos, continuous beneath a flow of events held together by bridges and tunnels, bingo and banks, faith, credit, habit, doubt and politics.
In New York City even the educated are superstitious.
Everyone walks around with his/her fingers crossed.
None of the laws of nature work here.
New Yorks have a physics of their own.
Some people take energy and make time with it
and other people chop this time up into minutes and move
them around buying and selling
and someone else scavenges the seconds lost in
moving time around and bootlegs an hour to someone
whose time as come.
In New York nothing is wasted. Someone is buying and selling waste anything.
Everyone knows someone who is making a fortune
buying and selling nothing at all or has made a fortune buying and selling nothing at all and retired to Miami Beach.
In New York City people know four languages;
one to read the paper, one to converse in private
one to talk to visitors
and one, half movement, half silence, exchanged on the streets
when there is no time for talking.
Buying everything, people, places, things, selling what has been sold again and again until there is not much left of it to sell
selling what cannot be sold, under the counter, at a discount.
Inventing, buying, selling, selling, buying, inventing,
improving, anything, people, places, things, again and again.
A primordal soup of difference in every form,
a ferocious compressed ecology.
Streets divide centuries,
avenues, worlds.
A teeming prodigious excess
ready to collapse on itself like a burnt out star
but not collapsing; enduring; persisting.
In New York City miracles happen.
A man walks on the sea of air between sky high buildings.
Private images appear in public places,
“A gull riding the garbage looking for the river.”
From Queens, the skyline washed clean by rain on a spring
afternoon.
Finger Music: The Small Pieces
I.
Bereft of reason, love abandoned, drunk
he walked into a fan, eyes open, masturbating.
Her voice was his vice, his verse her applause.
They said it was a suicide but I don’t know.
They never found all the pieces and the fan
started a paternity suit.
II.
When I went round the bend on sweet Thursday when Jesus
modern rose and made a speech
DaVinci fell but that’s no concern of mine.
When I went round the bend I saw banners and strange devices and mechanisms —but no people.
I have searched for them since, they were so stark and
separate, sere and strong.
In the war that began that day I captured a
word with a garlic baited lung breath
but it was a bruised and wounded word so I let it go.
All of the breaths I could breathe that day were used breaths
and all of the words used and wounded words
so being a hero was tarnished.
I, fishy fish, heard the firing of pistols on islands
lost in seas I didn’t know existed,
and the whoshing of blood in my veins was blood
in the troughs of the abattoirs of the world.
The world was soaking wet so I wet my pants.
The only flag I could find was my belt so my pants
were the first casuality of the war.
I was a hero and went over the hill, and over the
hill I went round the bend
and round the bend I was captured
but in the panic and confusion
my mind fled. An unknown prisoner of war.
But they found me out, discoverd my hut
set a torch to the thatch of my roof and I burned.
Then someone came and cooled my ashes.
The men came to my wife,
“He’s gone round the bend, you know.”
and she said, “He’s always been around the bend
what took you so long?” “TAKE HIM AWAY.”
Then she cried and they consoled her
one held me and one holed her.
I was confused, for what, for what.
III
What is my horoscope for today,
how do the stars lie, am I dead,
is it a good day for a risky enterprise?
It reads, “Muffled shall be the drums sound
over the snow fallen quick.
Sagitarius is in Virgo
and Virgo is sick.
Old Men
Old,
are old
old Jewish
They are old
they are old Jewish men dying
they are old Jewish men dying in Brooklyn and not wanting to die
they run
run up
they run up to death and
they run up to death and yell to him in Chinese.
Chinese,
thinking they can confuse him.
Death takes out a Samuri sword
Death takes out a Samuri sword.
Death takes out a Samurai sword and ends their days.
(You are wondering where
You are wondering where death got the Samurai sword.)
A,
a Japanese
from a Japanese general
from a Japanese general who he caught
from a Japanese general who he caught in a rice field in
China with blood
on his hands
with blood on his hands and feet
with blood on his hands and feet and face.
Death isn’t easy to fool
and he isn’t fooled often
and he speaks Chinese,
he speaks Chinese
(and he has a sense of humor
and he likes to collect things.)
Meditations 1: Naming
The morning naming begins.
The word lets laughter
loosen it from itself.
Each things own gravity pulls it down and away from itself.
An unknown fragrance drifts gently between a world
arrayed in double ranks
from nowhere yet to nowhere.
A restlessness rolls and smells and bows slightly.
“Not today,” it pleads, “today leave the unspeakable
unreachable by words.”
No voice answers but paths shudder as names
spring up and pierce the hearts of things
and the world, wounded
falls and embraces its shadowed self.
An odor slices like a broadaxe cutting the day in two
and objects and people slip into the formality of their existence.
The evening naming begins.
As light withdraws noises that held things to themselves, quiet.
Gaps form and darkness insinuates itself between molecules
pushing things away from themselves.
A restlessness darts and twists and thrusts forward.
“Not tonight,” it pleads, “tonight let the world
rest in its incompleteness. “Let it dream its unrealizable potential.”
No voice answers but space crumbles as memories brandishing names spring from behind images of trees
and beat flesh into bone.
In a panic things thrash and spin trying to locate all of the pieces of themselves.
A sigh like a screech of terror rises and people and objects stop and casually enter the formality of their dreamless sleep.
Quick Notes:Poetry 1
There are things said easily, straightforwardly
hardly the stuff of poetry so not said in poems
or, if said, passed over, just because said by a poet
as if
as soon as a poet says it, everyone knew it already.
Thoughts distorted just by being written down
thoughts that disfigure a poem that carries them
thoughts that can be straightforwardly said
so never said poetically.
Thoughts so fine images cannot contain them
so gross images cannot support them
so common they disappear on paper
so clear we see right through them.
Transparent thoughts never seen in poems
make up a mysterious underground
the resistance to the secret police
of the regime of the everyday
in which, as poets, each of us plays
the role of double agents;
wanted men in uniform
pursuing ourselves.
Park Songs 1: I Like to Skip
43 and skipping
I skipped into a wall
which was where I was not looking
which was backward 35 years or so,
and knocked myself out
and lay there imposing myself on passersby on the street
identified as helplessly
hopelessly drunk
waiting for a sale
on good sense to
start soon in the store
north by north west of my head,
until a friend
negotiating my sprawl
embarassingly recognized my face
as belonging to a 43 year old
architect of words—
(who shouldn’t have been skipping
who gave skipping a bad name,
who had neither credit card
nor cash
and never shopped at sales
of any kind of sense
unless accompanied by a grown up adult)
—and dragged me to my bench and left me.
I like to skip but my feet get stuck
twist and tangle in too long arcs
on paths that have become to short,
At 43 I walk
in intricate trenches on the surfaces of streets
and am supported by to little air to skip.
I have seen too many movies
in which skipping is always out
with someone’s heart in a paper bag
or down,
the last indelicate motions of a man leaning on a tree by
his neck from a rope,
whose horse has just decided to go home without him.
And, while for children going up and coming down
are the quick halves of the same act
for me they are solutions to two diferent equations
and at 43 the possibility exists that mathematics may fail;
one can stay up forever.
Later I am tried in secret by my former peers and found guilty.
I am condemned to become 45 more quickly and
spend at that age some additional years;
prohibited from skipping during daylight hours and,
ordered to buy everyone some candy.
Pure
First possession.
A sleepy mornings blitzkreig.
Fence leisurely surrounds the tar cot and grass urinals where
bums hostled behind parked cars.
The permanent street shop of the corner man, outflanked, retreats West.
A coil of steel barbs is hoisted and unfurled along the top of the fence. The lot surrenders.
Possession.
Then occupation.
The tar sprouts shrubs, graffitti veined broad leaves,
flowers.
Nomadic highwaymen, come to slit the purses of
tourists come to mecca SoHo,
slip in at dusk disguised as potted trees,
squat down and root instantly,
found a dynasty of greens and ice cream.
Occupation.
Then commerce.
Import of machines to make coffee and ice cream
export of cups and cones.
Travelers pour into the forest.
The drift of business shifts the woods ecology.
Plastic table legs drive out saplings.
Bright colored bulbs seize the flowers niche.
Thinned and shallow the forest sags,
becomes a drawing of a forest sketched on the steel
mesh canvas of fence.
Commerce.
Then return.
Local upheavals in the thin urban crust
register invisible Richters on human instruments.
Fissure of desire, spring of credit dries up, invisible pox,
some unseen force twists and pulls and everything stops.
Gates are locked and Darwin is reversed.
Out tables and chairs, out lights, out machines, out nearly everything. Only the remains of the forest not worth the repossessing are abandoned to the neighborhood to be scavenged by thieving little girls hoisted by parents through a fairy door, forgetfully left in the sketch of the forest leaving finally, the fence with its barbed bunting, the tar lot, grass urinals and space.
Return.
THEORY OF POETICS: I
The license
is registered at birth
death does not cancel it
only it must be renewed,
replenished.
The license
seals, signatures
imprimature of the state
metallic,glossy, catching light
certified.
Eyes do not see,the mind remembers only
people and places stained with color
where something with a ragged edge tore light
and it burst and colors spilled out of a hole in the spectrum
yellows, blues, purples.
And the mind tried to reverse the process like a prism
put tone and tint back to white.
Registers, scanning spanning the spectrum trying to
locate the precise red of a dead mood that belongs here.
A trick.
The mind picks up the wrong things and holds them the
wrong way trying to remember.
A trick.
Nothing perceived but expectations,
no one knocks at the door but who the mind expects to arrive.
Green’s green for want of imagination and
the mind refuses the ears charity.
Distinctions fade,
with distinctions minds also disappear
lines loose their form become sounds
poems become mathematical
aromatic images become the final lines of proofs axiomatic and well defined. We look up the answers to novels in the back of the book, and porcelain looses it memory for swirls.
Just so, enough, in exact measure not enough to estrange the
senses only enough to discolor the image the mind remembers the eye sees, only enough to lace with thin
noises what the mind remembers the ear hears only enough to distract to recognition,
to nudge with a fine lacy vector, to encourage to navigation in strange waters,
to blow out the sails of frail, waterlogged ships, beams half rotted out, only
enough to avoid the smooth beach and reach out past the tender rocks only
enough for the smallest fraction of experience to catch like an anchor the deep
water itself.
SOHO POEM: PART I
SoHo becomes what it was not the day before
becomes what it never was, will not be,
becomes
something else.
Boundaries marked by walls change direction daily
as walls slip, as businesses blur and collapse softly
as SoHo shifts,
snakes and leaps
along walls.
Art is politics,
something it was not the night before
is invention
is someone’s
theory of the praxis of businesses collapsing and
new businesses practicing a new technology
of
dreams of art
adrift on SoHo streets looking for the dry ports of the rich
float on tides of bloody marys.
into harbors of brunches
fashioned for sailors who sit on the shores of the stream of the
imagination
dreaming day dreams
copying copies of a dream of art.
SoHo.
Walls lecture on art.
Posters repeat lessons by rote.
Time, rain, dirt vary the message,
recreate the lesson, make the copy original.
Art.
SoHo
offers itself to be moulded to arts desire
like a lockered lady
to be shaped to someone’s imagination,
to be
mounted by someone’s dream
pressed, taped, glued onto walls of an extended labryinth
with endles
walls,
not where they were the day before
or what.
SoHo.
Into SoHo pour
great temporary migrations; Pour into SoHo
tours,
the SUBURBS
come to do the stations, to rediscover
what was bartered for the peace of suburban life
transformed by television
find, on Wooster Street
television in FLUXUS.
The walls lecture on art to matrons
coming to complete their continuing education.
They say, “Art is the politics of queers. GO HOME.”
The women write something down in a book and move one.
MIDDAY FUGUE
Westchester ladies
and dandies disguised as workers
who whistle from black, backlit caverns
where paper waste is mined like ore
observe each other observing suspiciously
workers from the factories of the imagination
on a permanent coffee break complaining about...
AFTERNOON FUGUE
Tourists, disguised as refugees from tourists, see, reflected in flowered windows of restaurants images of artists, artfully disguised as…
EVENING FUGUE
Find we cannot fly on Wings
or eat Food
or be cured by Dr. B
and transportation to and from these places is to be hoisted up and smashed down
and camouflage is to be seen
walk or crawl but not on feet and
Dog turds fossilize in dead bocci courts.
Evidence marking turns not taken memorizlize
ethnic changes.
Old men rise like steam from cellars and congreate
like a cloud in meat markets. Over chuck steaks and sausage
they review games played.
Post urban, post hippie post SoHo figures
appear among them and take their place as shadows on murals and complain.
SoHo’s a disaster zone
of people divorce prone
no one I know is married anymore
to the person they were married to before,
SoHo.
Art demands sacrifice, the walls say
husband, wife, children, lovers, self,
art itself, if need be, for ART.
Stay away, the walls warn, it’s catching.
In the streets, people scribble on walls
inside scribbled on walls, people scribble on each other,
grafitti is raised to an art form.
My almost ex-wife writes on me,
“To a ferocious ecology people adopt ferociously.
Fish that swim in water will not survive the night.
Fish that swim in polymer emulsion, might.”
Her almost ex-lover writes on her,
“SoHo sucks, bring back the trucks.”
We write on each other;
“SoHo has been sacked by tourists.”
In SoHo
the 21ST century rushes West on West Broadway
the 19th century greens Greene Street
the 20th hides out on Wooster Street its back on walls
in fear of SoHo
where
seven storied buildings
tenuously hold the entire spirit of an age of a short
time to come and
languages are spoken which no one will understand until
the day after tommorrow
(and people worry about fires.)
On Mercer Street sex looses its grip on beds, flows from lofts. Over sexed SoHoites flitter and sting, roil and roar, scratch and hustle looking for a way to hump consciousness,
knock up history and father a movement.
(The stollid thrust their portfollios through the doors of
galleries, the shrewd screw assistant editors of ARTFORUM.)
In Shanghai, trapped between mountains
and
in the valley of SoHo
smeared between towers
walls have mouths.
Posters five deep
proclaim new regimes.
Who knows which new prince will ascend
the wall under the sign of Goldman’s Steam Processing
Machinery Corp.
Notices of coronations of kings and queens of art
arrive and rearrive as paper wets as walls slough off the new growths of paper skin to reveal the old regime clinging tenaciously underneath.
The avante garde communicates by word of wall
in a slow language which peels, tears and runs in
shreds.
Nothing happens tommorow, it happened yesterday.
Then suddenly, Goldman’s Steam Processing Machinery Corp. disappears, in a single night its ruins are razed and a new palisade erected, stained and varnished planks that whisper blankly that SoHo has been elevated to the bishopric of the saint of tourists.
The next day pilgrims appear.
Bribes made it possible.
Krebs, do you hear it, baksheesh.
Bribes,
to fire inspectors for not noticing
exits went nowhere
to policemen for disattending openings and closings
to building inspectors for mistaking
stainless steel kitchens and tiled baths for
lockers and washroom basins,
for omitting reports.
Urban indians hunted city buffalo on plains of lofts
tenant farmers harvested crops of children in cellars
itinerant traders bought and sold from dumpsters
until the slow drift of settlers pacified Houston Street
and beat down a path through the scrub forest of Canal Street
until,
the land was secured for fences and titles and the country tilted.
Then,
the doctors came and the lawyers rolled in
and the teachers came in station wagons
the accountants came and the speculators,
and respectability came and certificates
came
and dean came and delucca came and food came and
Mama came and Bizen came and
Steve came
and Zachary came
and a New Morning came
and
with one bound
Soho became what it was not the day before
become what it never was, what it will not be,
became
something else
Inventory of Knowledge: First Inventory
What poets know:
1. What knowledge is of uncertain color:
Some knowledge is of uncertain color, sometimes silky green in the tenuous afterglow, sometimes, contrary to expectations, grimy blue in the preliminaries, sometimes an indefinable faded color, mostly between changes.
2. What we knew but forgot:
Words are just that and those words are just those words, and the people into whose care words have been entrusted often are distracted and busy with other things.
3. What we guess is the truth:
Money runs in ruts and circles but lives ages and looses a little hair by the time it gets back to us again. Wisdom does come out of the mouths of fools but also much foolishness and a lot of other things like sponges, shells and reserve clauses: and out of the mouths of babes wisdom but also considerable babbling and childishness and the names of politicians.
4. What we might believe if we gave it any thought:
What we know for certain is the first casualty of doubt and people rarely survive the bite of butterflies (although the scars of the bite of the butterfly are at least as beautiful as tattoos.) Poetry bounces checks.
5. What is of doubtful truth:
The names of things change when you turn your back and most of what is worth learning has bad breath and a ferocious mien.
6. What knowledge is obviously true:
If we listen carefully , long enough, to sufficient facts one of them is bound to sound true enough to believe.
8. What children know:
Children know that there is a turning toward and a turning away and a turning both ways at once without moving a muscle.
9.What knowledge we learn too late in life to do any good;
The best things in life may be free but the store is always out of them and they spoil when you take them out of the box and you can’t claim them as dependents on your tax returns, whereas: the worst things in life cost ferociously but are available on easy credit and are childlike and cling and never grow up and go away.
10. What knowledge we never forget once we have learned it:
When the light comes on it is wonderful but sometimes, later, you yearn for the darkness again.
11. What is the tiniest bit of knowledge we know;
If you listen long enough you can hear the heavy breathing of sounds lusting after words.
12. What knowledge you hold only in desperate straits:
Words grow under the roots of every weed and some vegtables. Some things are easy to forget and other things are difficult to remember and Umber is a slow color.
13. What knowledge we get free ( for the good it does us.)
Most bits of the world are tints of pink but the hues of our knowledge are flecked with purple and words have babies as easily as they grow beards.