Traveling into the past on the Internet

I see an old friend from forty years ago

Now dead five years. He hasn’t changed a bit.

Or listening to a tape there are lots of feathers

Another friend’s feathery voice

Stilled in a mix of blood and French gasoline.

Deserters both of them, one from Hitler’s army

The other from consensus reality:

“When he was good he was just mildly insane

When he was bad he was out of his mind”

& into another we could not know.

And this is one of those “long ago” poems.

They did give me courage: I still run

On some of their essence. They were fine deserteurs.

“On some of their ... “: “essence” in French -- gasoline;

“deserteurs” (Ft.) -- deserters.

What’s current? I mean misheard?

Currently misheard? Shelf dancing? Alpine badminton?

Now write a sampling on one leg

Of composed being with shaky eyelids

Who tells you “I am in the art, but molecular

Only by dint of a visiting pillow;

I am the author of Author.”

Now shall we agree, say I, before the bar is toothpicks

That poetry is a chicken in good mud-tennis weather?

Such tube-lit discourse. Ten dollars a waltz.

No tidy archery. So sell me that bumper, no, I meant

The mouse calliope, yes, that’s it! The ego

Seriously in tears at the holy beneath

Dangerous furry feelings -- beware the hole punch

Of darkness, shrunk from the world.

So. One mouse calliope, please.

from up there on the ridge

the successful manufacturer of vacuum cleaners

surveys the valley: ah, all those little lights -

each one of them a “home”

with at least one of his dear machines!

it is festive

it is the festival of Saint Retail

that ends every good U.S. American’s year -

martinis uber alles!

but bellicose poem no buy dinner

but the sea slug remembers everything, you hear?

It remembers Everything

“but the sea slug” - sea slugs have been immensely helpful to human memory

and dopamine receptor research.

all that fifties-style

wretchedly splendid

better living through chemistry

when people said things

like “haven’t I seen you somewhere before”

always worried about hitting exactly wrong note

hence tall strung-out conversations

with hypothetically beautiful persons

remember those? but now

I am pissed off at you old sport

even though you are dead

to my regret & possibly even yours

no longer hanging on to tatters of poetic mantle

or moth-eaten unacknowledged legislator’s wig

Now that was pretty simple-minded wasn’t it.

A dog barks in the dark. It’s simple-minded.

It probably belongs to some simple-minded person

who cannot understand what the dog wants. The dog wants

some simple-minded attention,

that’s all it wants. 2. ~~So softly stirs~~

3. So stubborn are the boots

walking an old man. His matter hesitates

where there are doors among the glaciers

furred with brine. O softly stirs, when he goes out,

the next door cat, pees on the holy book

under his pillow. So the old guy grits his teeth

and wishes for that song “She Is a Country Woman”

to call him back to the bars of?. Late Modernism?

Attempt the Latest

A false vase or flourishing

On the tilted

Economy without rungs

Forced tongue in a whisper

Or series of whispers

The thing now gone

Away by the permissive finery

Too heavy with plot or restriction

It’s all yours, mighty Rocko

Go hitch your station to some wagon

Or series of wagons

Latched to common punch

Where it gets classic, edgy

It will make you pink

I don’t necessarily need you to like it

I’ve changed my mind

You can if you want to

Too loose in the mercy

Of photographers by rain

As clouds sank

Compressed like foreign money

It did in fact

Revolve in a culvert

Of impeccable test patterns

Before the eyes averted

In a twirl or surfacing

Toward the conveyance of shadows

Dislodged by graphite tongues

The train fell off

An important rejoinder

In back of the apartment on the date that exploded

As lines which flagrantly

Are trashed

How about you?

I’ve bottomed

Out, only to reemerge in the rapid

Transition from springtime

To hardball

A stick-figure formality

Shattered like bricks

In sunlight, batting a thousand

Decoy

The story arced

Above its head

Who dared not look away

For all time, or in summer

Toward that which we increasingly could not expect

Velocity kept in a box

The story, by itself, was not explosive

Things trapped, in a mirror

What was your reaction

I could store

The trapped things a little

While

In the room before burning

& Sealing them

(Becoming more unglued)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, it is night

Something goes away

Carefully in the trap or middle

While I surmise my legacy

& The juices of some flowers

Captured as an insect

Grave upon the distortion of thought

Art imitates thought

You have no emotions but those onscreen

Unresolved in gesture

A tabletop, or what was still

Felt increasingly to correct the barriers

For what’s lived is still unseen

As some vital rearrangement

Or else by thought is stricken

Desires

In what was lived or settled

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The blue horizon develops the retinal image

Whispers ossify

Gather meaning

The turnpike bridge is closed since Tuesday

Everybody feeds

On them. You wouldn't want that information

Published

Meaning gather

Up the contents of your purse, & follow

In the old ways, what had been done

Before

Between acts & their ambitions (facts & their

Concurrencies)

The retinal image & the ravished boundary

No one

Would console them

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bashed in but not

Promulgated

By screed- arose, or rose in

Belligerant prose-

Belligerant like

Heaven

On ludes (alludes heaven’s levers’ connective

Phrasing), bent or shifted

Into the eddies, deafening

On the condition of splitting

Guaran-

teed as rope, though not delayed

For peeps, a thorough

Sutured

Tragically to come home

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Though yes dissolved in sparks

Hedonistically swiped

“The story arced

Above its head...”

Unimportantly, until the next skirmish

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This

Isn’t

It. How

Does

One do it-

Suppressed

Or leaning

Back

Against

A future is

Unoccupied

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rebegin. Set merge to

Null

Compliance. Gray as drifted

Scenery. Prod equivocal

To a lip sharpener

Replace music then when ordinary

Lift faxed eddy

Who what or where while screaming

The rapture was marginal

As a daybook slumber. Link again

Under provost steps

To a hatch, lulls secrete

Inter echo variety drill. Thus it reaps

In order to disconnect

A trinket on the

Post something heap lamp;

A tarmac to the stunner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This matter of

Against (she’s in

The lab, an array of

For the line, like

Her name’s mis-

spelled

On the cover, roof

Dins, I want

I want you to frame it

No, I can’t believe

Rushed against my startle

A great deal of time’s misspent

This is called history

Written though in fact

A curvature of hearsay (heresy)

My utopian rope

“I doubt it very much”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reptile. figurine. dust jacket. scare.

The great scare-city from which we (don’t) awake

The Screens

Fly, or were they complete in the assignments of launch with attacked participants? **Time out** I have doubt of form attack per night towards heaven. Or freeze as if the significant balance were falling asleep, fall or form with regular Disturb one moment of song be attack itself, be very balance but repeat in any event touch fashion. The night attack fraternizes a figure, a figure a going beyond be very differently. Catch up with in order to himself delay with space between an original and its shade- crenelations of houses, billboards fast with memory become more stable, "at least you can hide." Towards a figure, a figure, you can hide that in your gardener **time out** among the scenes of accidents remain calm. Or having a place set on the fire in addition to some screen- the matter touching them- there have in part to steal or place on fire in addition to some screen- the scene of positioning of buildings on the fire in addition to some screen- the interval, true like the setting in sheath or tactical While-You-Wait for, true, like the setting in sheath tactical (the going beyond the moment that your gardener, the deracinated gesture in the disturbance of the household form in the matter which touches them. Was there part to fly or form with regular (I doubted the matter which touches them) was there part to fly or was there in fallen sleep or was there just complete the assignments of launch with regular, disturbing balance. Or form with participants attacked or fraternized toward the question. I doubted the scene of the positioning of buildings on fire in addition to the screen; the scene of the shapes of households while waiting, true, like the setting out of tactical sheath night. I doubted the matter which touches them, in part right or early.

Because

because I have to put ice in my shoes

this is that future. this is that past. this is still only this

presence. always looking over the shoulder

because you do look different

the blank label already affixed. you can articulate the shadows

if you've forgotten the names things came with.

the words were still in the refrigerator

because the alarm sets itself to crazy hours

I am not given to sleep. now this instant is already

over. and my looseness

extravagance seeks out remnants as proof

of lucidity (a necessary misunderstanding)

because this is what wobbles

and I'm afraid of silence. crazy lumps of gravity

the details all occur. so delicate, unsure

It's all understated, understand
my heart may be short, but no one reminds me of it

the picnic's made and gone, transport it

orchestrate it (you can't help it either)

the gulf of it, parting: this dark is bad

call for it, the land of milk and yearning

(drag the river, dredge the shore

drink another dram - it's scenic

I'm only fooling my liver

when I fall on my face yet again)

it's just a mood, yes, a word

last year's expert who swindled us

all these years (later)

get your finger off my sweater

(all my scales are falling off

I can't hear myself in the spa)

see your cinders sitting there

scattered after the Vermeer

it works, hard though it may be:

a slow drunk on the upper bunk

(onward, feet first, scoot forward -

free canter, it's freer there)

closer to the border, greener

I'm almost sorry when it's over

with the backstreet yuppie

scrounging off of angels as we were

Nocturne

"I dream mostly about love"

but occasionally of raptors

and the distinct impression

of weightlessness

( )

This medicine is an emergency

the floorboards, next door, a comforting

debilitation the skin renews itself

the pipes whang an inert display

to immunize the self against its own memory

it's important to emphasize the positive

we no know where Osama bin Laden is

a kind of pinprick smiling at your face

I can't see in the dark

even the worn out bits

the maps and rivers on my eyelids as you speak

this refrain lasts forever

This emergency is a medicine

this is what emerges: defiant and strange

open-ended stuttering

where the button pops out

and the fabric pulls away

calling attention to secrecy

I warn you, as always, after the fact

Eye

is the field of it

the overarching that astonishes

the body with the shadow of a depth

or its simple migratory prism

the showing of the slow dust of

transfiguration

held to flame of air

to the wideness of river

the complex host

of separation and desire.

In the eye

the beam is a latticework

net of receptors

the distant made immediate

the near an intimate room

breath the issue of a touch

grazed by

the web of belonging

the fineness of the instant

that is also the longitude

of our desertion.

It is the myth of light

ascendant the crux

of jubilation that makes

possible a world and its forms

of speech the saying

of the obscure light

by which we love one

another through the reciprocal

modes of brilliance

and penumbra

signifying totality

the feeling of

crossing the street

at midnight the entrance

to the grove or sweep

of grass the sense of

being amid

in this blaze of care

where the iron world stuns

us poor along the axis

of diurnal bone.

Eye to eye

and speech from

speech rising

to the morning of the room

of the visible

a stone surrounded

by what halo

what shadow

even the unspecific bird

on its unruined winter branch

would drink from it

for light has turned it

to water

and water has knelt

before the eye

proclaiming the kingdom

of sight.

ii.

But who looks plummets to accord.

The inlet and perverse obligation of the Thing shining in its thingness and then.

The sense that we must persevere in our looking.

Staring stone-straight-to-sun and ardent with the hope of a greater burning.

That would lift or erase, sever or join, the totality of all possible perceptions.

Who we might become in the instant of the gaze and its consumption

its self-emptying gesture to the abyss of a single day that contains us and.

Boon of sundering.

The faraway is what exaggerates me.

Size of a rolling point of an object in space

because it surpasses me

blesses me.

Withdrawal of domain.

You claim the world as the very first

and are undone in the mode of

the body of another uninhabited

but for the liquidity of this exact

circumambient stammer and blush.

This preposterous wideness of O.

And who hovers

by the lamp of things

that maps the investiture of skin

the broken field of the sea

combustible everlasting iterations

put to sinew to flag of bone?

These are the things that are told

and told here again for the fold and fall of them

ever in the bright crease of words

spit split and gone.

iii.

And when I say that I see something at a distance

I mean the express size and approach

and I mean the rise of a greater convergence

and I mean the things of this world are braided with light

and falling and I mean

my body is broken open

and the stones and the stars are inside it.

Adorn

the drip of the body’s murmur

with the pulse of the turning soil.

Turn

on the ocular dais

all the spent -ologies of breathing.

This becomes us more than

we can guess to dream the beyond

and not parse but praise its utterance.

For the force of longing is exhausted against.

The body of light cast by the body of light.

The moment of grace that hangs from the tip of the lip

and enters the eye

and goes blind or deeper than

all the avatars of loss.

iv.

To the wavering tune

of the visible

the heart of the world

scatters in the prime

moment of its opening.

Soaring where I am touched and touching

this incomparable sonorous being

overwelling the order

of the seen

to repeat the interweaving circle

of vision, fission and return.

That there is vision.

That the eye is aperture and conduit.

That it sinks and is subsumed

in the flesh of the world the carnal

realm emitting photons before

a theater of clouds

the obscure lamp

doubling us in our beauty and decay.

Immense air alone burning

in its nothingness.

What holds us to horizon in the dream of being

able to go beyond.

Mourning for Palinurus, he said, we went down

to the city, cold air licking at our ankles

once again. The bourbon tasted funny, beer

left metal in our mouths. Hit the town.

Fast basketball on TV in the bars

bloody bodies from small wars,

or from the streets.

Burn their furniture for heat.

The men around were far away, might have been

shadows, might have come up here

through the wrong door

the edges of empire, or

with other surprises:

told us how he died,

lines of cancer already behind the eye,

fleshy tubes growing around the heart.

Slept. And then,

Mourning for Palinurus, we went down

I'm sure they're hatching mysterious things

on days like this, the streets

cloudy and bright at the same

time, it's part of the mystery.

There, all is order,

pleasure and tranquility

but here women striding about their business

They have not come from the ends of the world for

you, they couldn't care less.

Celebrate emptiness

Its corollary, the perfection of desire

What are you doing with the mourning dead

they won't even help you in the cemetery

they are absent

what are you going to do with them

with the mourning dead

Speak gently to the mournful dead

their silence is not enough

their murmuring

everything has been taken from them

iii.

Walking around with the unmourned dead

bloated with mourning fluids

With the unmourned dead

he did a lot of drinking

The unmourned dead

lay with him in sleep

Be gentle with the unmourned dead

Listen to them, listen to them all day

The mourning dead walked with him in the street

the sound of their mourning moved through his life in silence

or white noise, their keening filled the room

like tinnitus, a sound you learn to live with

The sound of their mourning moved through the house

The unmelodious dead

croaking at him

in the morning, the evening

the croaking dead

What are you doing with the mourning dead

vi.

They all crowd round me on the avenue

they pull at my lapels, their faces

thrusting into mine

others push me from behind

The aggressive dead crawl into my bed at night

they want to know

The evening dead came out to meet him in the street

vii.

There are some dead people

You'd rather not be around them

the slow risers

You were so stupid long ago

your life was a series of serious mistakes

Now

that cemetery up the street

the slopes are full of such interesting people

Still scared of being trapped there when it closes though

They’re not patient enough for the likes of me

viii.

one of those mornings when you feel immortal

surrounded by the strong & numerous dead

reanimation track whines down

merry merry

the life in this cemetery

THE MODERN CITY

Immobile artists in their golden mummies

see this clearly as I race by

Who would have thought it

among the Arabs moving bricks & cases

an archer on a motorbike

The sign says coffee wine & coal

a success story totally modern

like the angel on top of the holy chapel

And there's a hand to sit on

blue hand open with its fingers curling up

Is that the tantric hand

In this city I planned my future

my life came to an end

After the magical busride through the city

dreams crawling in broad daylight

but now through grayness to the edge

up the pharaonic steps

down the metal walls

reduce us to our true ant size, she said

My enemies walk smugly through the halls

set a table before me in the presence of my failures

It looks out on the river that you cannot see

(from Book One)

Mother of delight,

sweet wheeling sign,

rouse sea and

all we breathe

and begotten rise to light;

from winds flee

storm’s artful

ocean

and calm become.

When wide for spring and splendor

fostering blows free,

pricked power of air

you enter

fertile beast

(so seized

wherever you lead);

across hungering

homes and fields,

heart struck lure

desire their kind.

You alone

since

shores of light,

I try

to pen

my friend

accomplished

grace!

So who

of fire alone,

fallen from truth,

enters a

cryptic style-

who seeks

what

lurks under twisted words

tickles their ears

with pretty sound.

For how various

fire

rarefies and condenses

bright

qualities they compose.

Force fiercer than heat;

scatter or split,

no further effects can follow

from two

alone.

This void

could be

Muses seem so

shy,

so fearing they lose the true

nor free of

their world would make

one from

ablaze slings light and smoke:

It cannot be composed.

(from Book Two)

These lines should seal

nothing not jumbled

and numerous in kind

replenished fire arises (earth’s fury) glossy beasts

roam rivers and trees

Earth alone formed

the flesh of poets old

and sang lashing

this world hangs and obeys

bound with a crown

so symboled over awe

an idol rides ancient

rite first law drawn taut

in frenzy signs of fury

in thankless quake with fear

in rhythm gleaming Greeks call Jove’s wail

on brazen wound

Ingeniously presented

reason rejects

Link every way and race

would spring as branches

sprout with life feeds flame

as fixed law to each

brings unseen bonds

hold fast and bound

by form as tangle

divides land and sea

holds heaven back

Listen and heed love

search for dazzle

born of any color

since all minds go far

astray and blind before

sunlight joins all

in darkness immutable

world reduced to change

beyond limit earliest taint returns

to one stunning hue

Measured Response

We have a taste for bedrock

Beneath this spectacle

-George Oppen

Any other evening

a strained convention

Waiting in traffic

watching the one

in front advance

an end unknown to

our own insistence

The games staged

in my hometown

on sale before

and after effects

end with applause

for sponsor’s snow

made by machine

USA wins gold

Fear of the fortunate

left to their own

undiminished ease

Obsolete egret

archaic heron

lost plot of wave

after wave waits

for the one in

front to break

Spectacle of self

styled reason

I ride behind

at ocean’s edge

west of who won

Too constrained

to see

what conspires

against the given

we have

each other in hand

An earthquake

southeast

of San Diego

measures itself

as p and s

waves shape

a city laid out

along

the Wasatch

fault a world

waves

in the stands

demands five

point two

from an age

caught in the

shock

of currency

Knocked off

the podium by

‘a disease of heart

only gold can cure’

Cortés told

Montezuma

‘I wish you

good health’

the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet

one added to one olive tree

the numerical value of words

mark the accent to wander aimlessly

or become extinct

libation

ones senses

and she

chain of mountains

her hands against braided loaves

head crestfallen

wine and spice box beside limbs

she mourns with

root of althea

aroma

to live in fields of cucumber

a motion toward the face with palms inward

cover with hidden light

from the mouth of the other

mark the accent “mamma”

tributary loaves

shores nomadic banks

she cursed a person’s father

sand for sprinkling on letters, she said

anatomically, octahedral in the sixth millennium

what do you know of your mother’s mother

she mourns with head covered

apples, honey, wine, and walnuts were used in the ceremony

soup with beet root

recipe for the numerical value of words

did she teach you this one

the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet

he will certainly not live to see it

a family portrait beside a pomegranate tree

he will certainly not live to see it

root of althea

what would you say to him if you could

one of the revolving spheres of diaspora

at what passage are you

a symbol of the mortar made in Egypt

a certain kind of earthen vessel tributary time of day

she is born during the ninth month of Elul

one added to one

epiglottis

border end nomadic bank

where were they going

why did they have to flee

she arrived during the cycle of the lunar tide

at what passage are you

arteries

revolving spheres

Virgo with metempsychosis

glacier

did you know her then

topaz tundra

he was the father of a child to be circumcised

the legendary Sambatyon

azure

lapis born of coition

soup made with beet-root, she said

prevents love-sickness

mourns with head crestfallen

made in Egypt

one of the forked twigs put into the hands

of a dead body at its burial

anatomically

Gogmagog Goshen Gehenna

and three thousand years

mourning with head covered

sprinkles sand on letter

he will certainly not live to see it

who is at the end of the border

a clay figure of a being

I want bread of course rye

I want laurel your hands on braided loaves

I want soup with beet-root

rose water on my neck

anatomically diasporatic

anatomically one of the forked twigs

anatomically what I was going to say

anatomically glacial

cut length wise

plucked from a living animal

she said he cursed a person’s father

at what passage are you

I want you with drums and dances

Virgo with metempsychosis

Elul

root of althea

one added to one added to one added to one added to one

the numerical value of her name

the first letter crestfallen

what I was going to say

could not pronounce all the letters

sand for sprinkling

a body at its burial

aroma

cover with hidden light

did you know him

asphodel Habdalah

end border bank

how far will you go

the geomancer drew lines in the sand

I didn’t know the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet

what she was going to say

mark the accent

where I stop

she mourns anatomically

with head

crestfallen

a tributary time of day

dough scraped from the trough to wear morning

book of giants

Torahtic architect who listens to hybrids of women & angels—: they would be

grasshoppers in Deuteronomical eyes; fulcrum-legged nephilim Noah would never know of. Enoch

is their doxologer, hoary-born ascensionarian. Elijahan forerunner.

Chariotless. Lost tales from the Book of Giants he composed. Dwelling among them. Abominations,

all. Goliath-survivals. An error. Miscegenation.

Light bright as hyacinth. Sky crystalline with all that grew. Seraphim of lightning,

cherubim of the fire, ofannim of the fiery coals. Living

tongues of fire & the legions of anger. Above all, Metatron,

prince of the divine face. Enoch, little Jehovah

who walked with God, then was no more.

For God took him. God who

stretcheth out the north over the empty place, who hangeth

the earth upon nothing. God whose enamoring

agents withered when he grieved the evil born there in the multiplications

of creeping things. They buried their dead

in honey, the sung dirges like Egyptians; the human women

ululated like bald ibises. Harlequins.

“The world

as we know it is always passing away.” The flaws

of creation are mended in evolution. What star

wasn’t once a God? And what sun, plunged inward

with gravity, deforming, isn’t giant in the earthly eye? The opera

of Enoch is watched by lidless heirs stripped of

their birthrights-: what worth

can they see in their whole world fragmented into ruins by its incautious maker? Enoch

is heavenly ambassador of our holy error.

gen. 6:1-6

photoeidos

Being light, hosannas of sun scour the horns

of Capricorn, star parasites of praise the Virtues use to cleanse the primum mobile, kissing

its spherey Keter, a blessing. Even our air flakes

with frozen particles of that jasper choiring Haniel

interdicts in memoria of Hebrew; we breathe

them as æther. As ice. Alien chemicals we suffer from.

Asthmatic, “within the breathing-space of immensity.” Death sounds

outlandish echoes of life. Heaven, the spool of domes,

winds on.

Scattered bits of paradise release

miasmas our dreams balloon in. Waking entrapment makes

sleeping vision where hidden life thrives, symbol-less, awaiting

adornment. Images flaking upward coaxed on

angelic thermals make the sojourn with us, there. Holy light beings

fill space infinitesimally inward until

their expansions take from it the power of passing farther onward.

And the gap they make in their endless outward motion draws us down, draws

us down, back down. The Soul of the World mushrooms in daylight.

A fungus. A lamb-enmattered matrix. A fecundation of ghost-light, transient.

Paradiso xxvii 67-72

s.h.a

requiescat in pacem

pygmy

St Jerome saw them as synonyms

for outlanders, knowing his Herodotus despite

its heresy. Equitorial gnomes atlased in Ptolemy.

Men of Persia, of Lud, of Phut. Their armors they hung

from the rafters of cedar. Men of Arvad. Men of Hellech.

The Gammadims. These he rendered as “Pigmei.” Perfectors

of the Lord’s beauty. Pulchritudinous visitors. In

cool butter labyrinths his translations hung

with floss spun from Greek spiders.

The crepuscular predator is a pygmy with four eyes.

What a tiny menace, this owl. He hunts in hemlock

vaults, giant & green. A non-Adamicall animal, pixilated? or only pugilist?

Worries echo upward. Voles pad the mosses softly.

Movements ripple extraaudible waves he dives through,

silently. An owl’s front wing is grooved into a comb air

flows over, noiseless. Varied thrushes—almost miniature robins

—move into dusk like a rapid mist.

He is a perfect foe. Unheard, unseen. As God.

Without friction. His epistrophic head. Turns. As the Lord’s speech does.

Goads & taunts. Immovable strix. Named after a once fabulous

dwarf-man of swart climes. What lost prophet spoke of the Lord

in diminutives? Daniel? Javan? Cannech or Chilmed? Togarmah? Whoever, he was

a genius. God’s is the smallest precinct; even the amazon forests of Washington

are asynchronous with atoms. The pygmy owl looks through

these radiant sizes & the world

is made more bearable

in this description of it.

for m.a.

To confuse

can fuse, mix together [match],

cold fuse, fuss, must, a mingling,

lingering, again, stale, a mix un-

mixed, nixed, near nexus, from

bind - whitch: mix or bound.

To dispel regret

misspell my spell, drive away, but driven

away letter by letter - regret becomes regress.

Another name not another way to spell me but

another me.

To join

Only connect. to join at the place wherein we agree

one more step, we can’t.

To amaze

from bewilder, be, so make, willed, be

wild, wild child, witch (of Walden -

walled in or, again, willed. Maze me,

again, craze [from crush], confuse,

from mix together, match (from mate:

one letter to, six letters to, maze.

For dispersion

this person, scattering of minerals, molecules,

the permeable impermeable, cannot contain me.

this version. skin breathes, has its own thoughts.

To agree upon a definition

finis, boundary. to articulate is to point to agree:

the definite article, the articulate, a joint agreement.

The indefinite article, the unboundaried joining, a,

one for one for one. a me, a you, a me, a you.

I hear you, I listen, a deaf intuition. agree to disagree.

To daunt

daunt after honor after daughter, daughterly daughter-in-law,

enlawed or outlaw, of intimidation and discouragement, from

domitare, to tame, daunt tame me, your will won’t maim me,

q-n-a me. It is true, I have an Aunt Maime. Not as ordinance

but coordinance, a role without rule or rue, sorrow for.

To arouse discord

pull this cord, this heart, dishearten;

dissension, dissonance, harsh mingling,

inharmonius few, it only takes two,

disagree with me, accordingly not me. Knotty.

To maintain harmony

arm on me, a defensive pretence, how much harm

equals harm, hard money, finance secure, her money,

main taint, persist, her purse singing to yrs.

to merge

from plunge, to sound, to measure

from inmix, not nix

[blend together]

from immerse, moreso, emerge

The Spiral Path

When I was a kid around Boston, a foul ball over the backstop was a Chinese home run. Said with a sneer. New Yorkers thought it meant a cheap left field shot, over the wall, through a smoky pub window on Lansdown Street. Dear Fenway Park, green as a witch’s tit someone said, or a pint on St. Patrick’ s Day. We should cut spiral guides for the dead in the scoreboard slatework. The Irish dead. Like Jeffers, before Una shot herself, taking off for a six month Ireland trip to poke thru Neolithic burial sites. That’ s when he saw limestone warrior grave slabs tossing like waves on the slow heaving Ulster turf. The spiral path.

Here’s how I heard it. Turn of the century, a Polish team had an Irish club down to Salem. They went 17 innings deadlock’d and came to their last baseball. Everyone shiver’ d. Could hear wild dogs back in the cities and against the ridge a cromlech eaten by lichen was tilting. Up came the shortstop, Chaney. Two strikes. He fouled a fastball over the backstop and off it went in the twilight. No one could find it. So the umpires gave the Irish the game: home team supplies the baseballs they ruled. Glendalough, Monasterboice, Kilmacduagh, Clonmacnoise. Black beech and oak roots. Underground monoliths chiseled with spirals and shila-na-gig cunt signs. From cairn to cromlech the Irish dead running the basepaths. After that any ball hit out backward was a Chaney’s home run. In St. Louis they tell the same story, though by the thirties “various shifts in dialect” had occurred on the spiral path. The path itself changed.

We called it a Chinese home run.

Crossing the Seas of St. Brendan

for Susan Heenan 1841-1940

Heenan is family name of who fled the famine. Susan the given or Christian, of who noticed in childhood a shil-na-gig, shaggy with moss. Stone burrows collapse on the hillsides, massive stone cromlechs tilt in the turfbog, but we’ re crossing the seas of St. Brendan, the mackerel seas for America. Our potatoes turned to pulp while we sat by the turf.

Remember our Irish deer? Likeness cast on a silver mug? Tall as a man at the shoulders, ten foot span at the antlers. Came with the ice sheet from Europe, a hoof the Pleistocene wolftooth had whittled. That’ s what the poet said, whittled by wolftooth. We still talk of the day, but that day is gone and this hard feldspar the stone that cried out. Scribe, ready your pen-

Angry wind

whipping the sea into froth.

Tonight no invaders.

Crimson wind comes from the east, white wind out of the south, black from the north, bronze from the west. Red and yellow winds rise between the white and the crimson; green and grey between the white and the grisly. We know much natural history is what they say back in Rome. Grey winds and ciar winds rise where the jet-black and grisly contain them; dark wind and mottled between the black and the crimson. We also know stars and their motion, the size of the planet, what creatures breed on the earth. It is said we commit enormous amounts of poetry to memory. But day of the game the only wind that concerns us is, which will carry the baseball.

Nuff ‘Ced runs the Irish tavern

first of the legendary Huntington

Avenue pubs

he settles disputes with a baseball bat-

a high green wind

sweeping in from left field.

Celtic Songs

Tonight I don’t go

to my bed.

Tonight it is cold and empty.

I lie on fresh dirt,

between us just earth, coffin, shroud.

Long-suffering suiriochs,

flamelike aspirers,

you have won your reward-

a man lies

bloodily

under sharp feldspar.

Sliabh gCua

wolf haunt, faischte & flinty

wind whining all year in gnarled glens

in autumn the brown deer shrieks

in winter

harsh cranes-

The blackbird

opens a yellow beak

emits a

discordant whistle-

shrill notes released from a white-tufted bough

drift over

Loch Loigh.

Time to make peace, Robinson Jeffers, lend me your wolf tooth

Bata scoir tally sticks out in the hedge

When ice returns in gaunt sheets will it grind the diabolical pinions to

Headstone west of Chicago tilting in tallgrass

This is the island found by Saint Brendan and after he sailed for it never after has it been found by any man

Shamanic gestures of Nomar, Pedro’s impeccable curve ball, peregrini on Lansdowne Street shagging home runs

Adequate timber in those days? in the northwest? Or leather curraghs for monk Brendan?

Mactire m, madra m allta.

On the east edge of a cordillera of mountains running the length of two continents patron of poets patron of thieves

To remember the site of stored food, to enhance spatial memory, to develop an evolutionary edge

Which way the Third Base Tavern

My great grandmother’s cromlech atilt on the Illinois bison grounds

Call it hedge school poetics

Before her death

a photo got took of the boys

four of ‘em living

Can almost smell whiskey they

mug for the camera

brows of feldspar, chilly cramp-iron

noisy brawling impute

Irish gangsters? I asked at

a hazard

She’s only their mother-

That I get brutal

flash to the eye

Follow the old geography. They were dark winds & mottled drove her ship over seawrack, high green winds mussel & cod put ashore. At Boston, Cape Breton, or where. Running guns from the loading docks, pulling a Guinness, smiling through smoke at the ballplayer photos. Tell me the Jimmy Foxx story again. And she ends up in Hagerstown married? What fills the gap?

Sweeter than any music the harp of

Lowry Lorc mariner.

Because my great grandmother was buried outside Chicago. Fault scarps. Shale troubled crossroads. Where prairie winds have no color, the plough stands for labor, stars are cross-referenced as dream. (Ireland’ s language far like a dream.) Pressing eleven children through her Illinois pelvis, gone trolling the prairie, gone farming the sea. Go tell the children impossible stories. And quietly vanish. No photo no letters some trinket no hope; no story no photo no trinket some letters. Clutching one tiny crucifix how to depict her, crossing the mackerel seas, seas of St. Brendan, the IRA seas. Crossing the mackerel seas for America-

Sixties Flashback # 12 & 35

Formula for a Dylan Song

Some guy comes in the room

And does something

Sixties Flashback # 60

[Leaning on the lamp post]

Band

Hermits

II.

Band

Gypsies

Sixties Flashback # 7

Time

Used to be

Being

A sellout

Meant

Something

Sixties Flashback #65

[Shindig]

“The White

Girl”

Even

Black

Girls

Did it

Sixties Flashback # minus zero (no limit)

Being sorry

Means never having to say you’re in love

Sixties Flashback #42

(Aram Scaram)

Darkark

Sixties Flashback #66

On the beach

White kids

As far as eye

Can see

Their close friend

Stevie Wonder

Appears at their

Fingertips

Part II

More white

Kids

Sixties Flashback # 451

Our right

Denies

Our inalienable

Right

Alienation

Sixties Flashback X

(paranoia strikes deep)

Area 51 Revisited

Sixties Flashback # 1970

(overheard)

Who

Lasts lasts lasts

Best

Dear Stevens

Dear Stevens,

Your project is a decadent ocean liner populated with people who have no place else to put their feet. They watch themselves sip champagne in mirrors across dance floors as they dream about what kind of ice cream they’ ll eat before bed. The band, mostly dead, groans on. They’ve been playing too too long. The waltz, dear Wallace, is done. All flesh is gone. There’ s not a drop of blood anywhere in sight. Nothing here but sagging hide and broken bones. Corpses, all of them, corpses. You’re a corpse, the band leader’s a corpse, the trombone player’s a corpse, they’ re all, corpses. Just look at that skull playing the trumpet, good god. Someone should let his poor tired mouth rest. I’ll be a corpse soon myself and I’m not even getting paid. Is the money good enough to be dead for? It’ s too much. I need to change my diet. People don’t eat duck AND pate anymore. Way way too much fat. You said so yourself. Fat, fat, fat. It’s all fat. The line’s fat, the champagne--full of unresolved fruit--it’ s fat, and, dessert, of course, fat fat fat. I never thought I’d live to say this, that I’d die and not quit, but now it’s clear so I must tell you: I’ M SICK OF ICE CREAM! New music, I need new music, we all need new music. Where is it? Bubbles rising from a hull once full with moonlight? Could that be it? I think it could, must be. I once wondered if an iceberg sank your ship, if you were bumped up by a whale you shouldn’t have crossed. Maybe someone, you, Creeley, or me pulled the plug and let it sink. Stevens, don’t get me wrong. I still care, still love your ear, mind, etc., but I’m done, “all set,” i.e., “out of here.” Exit’s there--that next bubble’s a fine one. Got to catch it, now! Write if you can.

almost always,

jack

A Note from Ramon Fernandez to Wallace Stevens

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know

Why, when the singing ended, and we turned

Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights . . .

Dear Stevens: I leave

what's metaphysical

for someone else--

my concerns are these:

One can only sing

towards the sea for so long

After a certain point

the elements force us back--

back to town, back

to home, back to love.

The glassy lights of

course, help mark the way

Have I oversimplified?

Should I be more

concerned with origins,

the so called "shore

beyond?" I'll make

my peace with dust

It's substance I want.

My taste for subtlety

went with my teeth

I'm here--bare fact

of flesh and bone--

a slow rot of sun

My eyes are long

gone, but my ears

are still mine

I listen to the sea

when it's near. I think

of you when I hear its song

Dear Stevens,

Epiphanies aren’t what they used to be. How do I know this? Just the other night I was arrested for speeding. The officer asked me what the rush was. I told him I was a post Stevensian poet seeking a priori form, that I couldn’ t read Kant anymore, that I was inbetween forms ... that’ s what made me speed, lost form and lost love: that she who sang beyond the genius of the sea left me with the seashells when all I wanted to do was to hold her, put my ears to her lips and die. He looked at me kind of funny. I knew it was time to make use of my MFA so I told him the real reason: that I speed in order to enter the predicate of substance. That was it. Instead of a ticket, I was arrested. Why. Because I was seeking epiphany in all the wrong places. Stevens, I’ m spending my dime on you and asking you to represent me in court.

jack

midnight-blue

chirography

hunt

heart

clear

space

informed

confirms

names

chart

double

vision

for Andrea Koehler-Burns

quartet

pollen

hazelnut

dandelion

buttercup

pine

seasonal

rotation

yellow

idea

yellow

for Wolfgang Laib

sprig

determination

philosophic

counter

blended

spring

into

the

world

dusk

dawn

for Collen Lookingbill & Jordan Zorker

wire

defines

region

flour

beans

coffee

tobacco

herd

distance

paretheticals

rounded

sweat

rope

in memoria L.D. Burns

movement

across

center

left

right

considered

lack

between

vertical

seems

see

two

see

one

for Duncan McNeil

it's

alright

along

(approaches)

are

small

mouthfuls

enough

vowels

muting

convention

dint

for Guilia Niccolai

PORTRAITURE

Part I.

the print of the feather. as the parents as the children.

enter through a prism.

tangled knots in coastal waters.

thread together to form a net.

an instrument to measure. the distance between lips, supplies.

detached from a set or a series.

the eye socket trembles.

expressing movement, an open lane. the little girls.

pulling petals from the novel.

of drawing solid objects.

with a red crest.

or an electromagnetic force. the parents as their children.

for one’s own advantage. a bit cruel. red-rimmed weeping.

but pyrotechnically enhanced.

without making complete revolutions.

blunting the corner. transparency by way of.

a confetti politic.

singing in the intersection. satinflower.

scapula.

swayed the population at large. a portable device for re-living.

including the nose, the mouth. the open end of a firearm.

often with cress.

a megavolt.

introduced in greater context. by the action of heat or damp.

cosmetic. scene of the atmosphere.

of fragrant wood.

it was easy to think conspiracy. rule of three. bluejay.

rummage.

before or while dropping bombs.

yet autonomous. reddish flowers, red leaves.

of the spectrum. various kinds, longer wavelengths. vermilion.

in the light. new galaxies.

positioning freely.

one of these stitches. after a vowel sound. hive music. life.

the wave prop. shaped like an arrowhead.

a wheel driven by water to work. machinery. the little boys.

like a game played by swimmers.

flexuous. the single engine. families.

plucking numbers from a comet. and decisively.

bleeding their waxwork. proxies. some luna press.

of something fastening. awash.

for the stranger.

rays and eyes.

must be added to blot the edge.

Part II.

unlike work. the subject combines. a woman undying.

autobiographically. full of waterhouses.

with glass butterflies in blue and gold. flurry blueprints.

a nuclear unit. like an outer silk.

resisting smaller patterns.

firecracker folds beyond the escape route. arm and arm.

burst out ebullient.

more spiels. more pearly. not that.

something for the fluster.

new erosions. tarot blue. passed off as landmarks.

such as the man, nor his face. hypnogogic.

in the margin interim.

nor the woman nor the man.

a corporate thing at either side.

the highest degree. the absence of circuits.

spreads among the nation.

blackened streaks recommended for study.

a skull of anything.

harlequins for the paper children. passwords.

not really the man. not really the woman.

Part III.

river, river. in less than three seconds the mind.

makes it curve. linked side by side. as if contingent.

a mountain hooks. over again.

the borders hook.

fractions. shimmering. the fan, opal.

beading the architecture. novelty.

from the inside out. like an iris repositioning.

a second sharp.

including art. intermittence. numerous.

icy and trailing. a natural extension.

like a telescope in the spare. a blooming tree out of place.

girls and boys. beside a house, which huffs and hurls. backward.

lawns smoothed. examining their exhibit.

reversing the music. sky after sky.

there’s a world out there. the conclusions of outcomes.

more than once.

Part IV.

if radically embedded. if expanded. if plot on a flat map.

the ripple tanks evaporated.

consecutive wave crests. like footprints, unlike.

experiencing death.

with leaf and law. with fist sizes and origins.

with the events balancing the shadows.

and the capacity to separate. jewelfish.

formulary. predicting the future.

the years of a century.

unequivocal. fleshy.

fleurons.

produced on the surface of earth.

echo. with plot and pores. a plethora.

then and there, there and there.

composites made up the rest.

ignited in the swarm. and touched by loss.

as they read. the little boys, eye to eye.

themselves fashioning outlines.

discontinuously forming expressions.

unable to take part in.

the purpose of a flag.

more difficult to recognize is the clock, the hand.

something too final.

biochemical.

brimming with significance. an emerging gesture.

its spirals split.

institutionally. the mirror image. superimposed.

we could have planted sutures.

sapphires.

interior sparks, which cannot be used to define.

how the fully awake understand continents, constituents.

afterimages. their compound eye.

responding to the screen as though motionless.

through something that shows itself.

which is a semblance.

blue corals and silver. sequins in the deep ravine.

ornamental pendulums.

perpetuity.

a whole subculture of.

dreams at the molecular level.

witness a band of light where variously. no ocean ends.

there is action off those waters.

an intricate system of spells and zones.

for the children. figurative in their clothing.

the woman and the man in use, disuse. or is it

into? this present and that one. light on hills, perforated.

slopes into. a dark matter.

the outermost.

verge of this.

NOTES ON THE ENCLOSURE OF CUES

Though skylines swarm me like rosebuds,

thin and unstable, and shallowly torn.

But the pellicle’s too blue. The sun will

rise and fall as though in the sea.

The sky is no door. It is a transfusion of

places, like headstones or the moon.

Above the photographed cloud there is

one even more horoscopic.

I produce the plural as evidence: echo

rung, each distinct tint a pail over water.

Beneath floral waves cup enduring hands:

the loud children beaming.

Impeccably frayed, the wing and the iris

switch skins. Tree lines smear distances,

sparely jointed. Unstable cores and past

atmospheres keep partially alive.

For natural tightropes leavening freedom

and the ability to gather clues, I require

before the dive an uncorked lake messy

with some surgery, the loosening slip.

Of help, helix, hydra. Emission nebulae

gather around the galactic center: two

keys neck and neck. Awaiting scientists.

Escape. The spectator look.

One light-year is equal to or greater than.

Decomposition invalidates the control in

the experiment; your tests, like my tests,

group supernovas.

Within a sheath they construct a temporary

architecture. I calculate no sudden contour.

To the sea, a horizon shiver, this is the spiral

alloy of homecoming.

floridize, absorb, spin:

Cockney Keat on Fanny Brawne

Keats mimicking Leigh Hunt: “What is this absorbs me quite? O we are

spinning on a little, we shall floridize soon I hope” - letter to the

George Keatses, Dec. 1818-Jan. 1819 “Shall I give you Miss Brawne?”- same

letter.

In singing never mind the music

devoted to wreckage

Suck or drink in a penchant

for acting stylishly: floridize

Keep your time and play your tune:

Dodge him

Abounding in flowers, spin the irreparable

Her mouth is bad and good

Innocence of all becoming

We have been depleted

We shall floridize soon I hope

Her arms are good her hands baddish

“Figurate” elaborate run and bloom

spin

to fish with a spinning bait

to twirl or whirl

to draw out elaborate evolve

twist (of the Fates) of wool

cast a spell and whirl and twirl

to fabricate from suitable materials

spend time in inactivity

her arms are good her hands baddish

to shoot, spring up (as in blood)

issue in a rapid stream

Keep your time and play your tune

Dodge him of florid face

flushed--running in rapid figures--

In singing never mind the music

Devoted to wreckage irreparable

Taken up by chemical action

I shall insinuate some of those

creatures into a Comedy some day. . .

Grotesque to a curious pitch

Yet still making up a fine whole

The poem is “fulfilled love living in desire”

We have been depleted

Frozen words: a sign of the fantasy of total control

Among Camels, Turbans, Palm Trees and sands

Draw out and twist fibres of wool

Just draw out and twist

twisting and untwisting of thoughts

Draw out the spouting of blood

Some suitable materials blooming

with a penchant for acting stylishly

Pass or be spent quickly

The irreparable Dodge him

Spend time in inactivity of

flowers abounding flushed florid

She wants sentiment in every feature

Cast a spell figurate in grace

Monstrous in her behavior

Flying out in all directions

MINX

“Lately” “I make use of” “the

term” that term of use and inactivity

Spending spinning flushed and blooming

Twisting the fibre and fabric and product

Monstrous in her behavior grotesque

Yet still making up a fine whole

Passage of music running on

Calling people such names

“Floridize” occurs neither in Webster’s Unabridged nor in the OED. But

“florid” musically means “running in rapid figures, divisions, or

passages.” Recall Scarlatti, Bach, Haydn, early opera. “Floridize” may

be Cockney poet leader Leigh Hunt’s neologism, it may be the secret

“flash” language of boxers and dandies on the edge of Hunt’s circle, or

perhaps Keats, friend of Hunt and with an “up-market” yearning, made it up

with Hunt in mind. Vincent Novello, an important early nineteenth-century

publisher of European Classical Music, and John Byng Gattie with his good

singing voice, brought running musical figures to the Cockneys (spinning,

drawn out, spent, twisted, produced) in immortal dinners of Bacchic

figuration, while Fanny Brawne (of whom as he is dying Keats, absorbed,

will say, “the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see her

figure eternally vanishing”) spins for the first time into view.

Privacy twists deprivation’s threads

Draws out bereavement’s fibres

Fish for depletion with a spinning bait

We have been depleted

Love which is true attention to something or someone

She wants sentiment in every feature

A penchant she has for acting stylishly

And no longer exist apart--play *your* tune

to convert to twist of joyful bird: *allegria*

Her feet tolerable--she is not seventeen

ARCHITECTURALLY

house is heavy with being what I see,

honey-smear swallowing vowels

in its pitch-less hum of place,

this table politely

blurring past, a lilty garden-ish buzz, where I'd thought

to put my tea cup down,

a slanty vanish, blue

teacup, bursting with purposeful bees

of black tea, its hive the steeping

phenomenal,

caffeine of its kiss-traffic

gone secreting,

useful undoing,

what's left, color and shape complicate,

stings like surface,

its one-way mirror of gravity

NOURISHMENT

mauled by it,

not kitchen-teeth

eating as if eating made bread, but pleasure-seethe,

grind and swallow, skin in its sweat-riot

is a hungry god, absolved of its treacherous

becoming,

by becoming ¾

we are in bed, a goat's sentience our eyes chew

tin

for its glue,

the event logic

daunting, listen,

in the kitchen there's spicy leftover chicken not more

than a week

or two old,

we know better

the feebleness of warnings, just listen,

twilight is salting our bones

TIDY THE STUDIO FOR VISITORS

The aggressive catastrophe hurried up but wouldn't finish.
We ate our mice at the table, then scrambling after them
on the floor, which stretches us to become precise, but not
instructive.

...crib death of the gesture.

The debate as to whether our degradations are voluntary
did change the bedding, but left our stains intact.
Rattlesnakes, I heard you say, one dozen, large.
Our agreements become susceptible, but not suspect.

...that night, the parade.

Even the hurly burly of outcry rings with the medium's steely
inertia. On the other hand, nearly every system in our bodies
is affected by weightlessness.

...if poisonous stonefish, why not a reasoning god.

FOLD OVER

from poster child to carton face,

fed pinhole images by optic fiber,

no lasting impression, peel to view,

no plea by finger and thumb. The

monad silvered, inlaid with any

projectile, any diorama

hogsplit at subject / object

spindle, tugging the sheaf to book. Clouds

then appear to bend, to slip off

whitely in an hour of tilt and collage

collapse. That possessive concretion

in the landscape: the looking post over-

looking vistas of glass. Instamatic obscura.

The strewn bank bleeding

its promise, the skin of pastoral attention

laddered at the waist, holding steady offshore

in stocks of silver halide and rubber.

Daily news in orbit wrapping gusts,

snuff shots in exchange for trading cards.

Containers, contd. Empire of the manifold,

perceptual sheath: an import panorama

any color you like, any polymer in festal rage,

new cargo shivering under retinal cramp. So

lopes with each stenciled star to

Potter’s Field, bag by Fendi

carrying stilettos and balled lyrics,

these gleanings congealed

to bruise it or lose it, styled

to an aid sack and two left shoes.

Polymorphous memory ploy: swart

preserve for concrete islands of paradise

floating in fisheye snaps like an oiled gull.

This fixture yellowing as she cries

to violence by photofit, to bodies of print.

The wash is mere displacement, proffers

a surface of slits. What glimpses

touched up over scrape and ditch, pit

in the woods, turning to scar tissue

where you stand? Nailed the gestalt

flush to a cobbler’s last. This face

recognition software tracks

lipids through turnstiles, stringers

flagged to covet your country cellar,

your blockhouse door.

Buried capital in radiant cadaver,

hermetic glamour package, rip

at the seal so the dead might turn

on our tales, sounding off at visions

like another vampire airstream replete

with hidden lives. Flay inversion:

his head fills up with flashes of the soul

on paper, with idols packing hate.

This name gooses that, this kiss

secure with the teller, sets the score

on a skidpan or tracking shot, shouts:

you bruise it you buy it, a stranger

notion beaten at the curve.

RIDING THE COG

a private reserve edition shadow

under the shadow of government

where masses resembling clouds

don’t shine or break agitating

against Mount Weather, lowly

hummock laced with lead strands

and scenes of salvation in a vault,

an appointed noise suppressor

called granite wrinkled about

the brow giving nobody away

and nothing in petrified forest

emplacements kicking back

flame retardant carpet to waltz

gravely out of history into empty

heaven where the mandatory state

is the apotheosis of infancy

a pure flutter of love in a cave

nation without check or echo

AIM NOZZLE AT SOURCE

Scene one: a settlement staked in lovely Greek,

seen through a film of kitchen fires. A clearing

recently flattened, now laid out in primer coats,

industrial gauge foliage crinkling against illusion.

Predator patience upholds the heavenly rift. Jump

to currency swept to a sorting den, a fable of origin

stalled in sweet tar. Backdrop: the oxblood ceiling

tapestried with the banknotes of many nations.

We walk through the rehearsed emotions, pulses

pinned to a flaw, jog or squawk at the ratchet,

but flop to wilting sickness, scare quotes, these

surrogate gas kegs and ration packs, sunscreen

dispensed, trailers circled in the hills. Local

symptoms may include dizziness, nausea,

a taste of metal on the tongue. Sidle in

on razor rows stuck with stray canisters,

clouds worked to the texture of sopped seed.

Our terms twist at earth, the ground slopes

steeply away, the mock-ups indicate wires

crossed on a stick figure, imply suspense-

the scarecrow plucked out, snipped into image

fragments afoot, burning on the last targeted hill.

Expect subdermal shock and cold hives, smoke

inhalation roaring at the hood, ashes in stipple.

Scene sixty-three and counting: day of wind,

day of dubbing. As sand whips off the ridge, so

pathos bellies through foam to the boy shepherd:

place him neck-deep in limestone, hoist his wound

wobbling into public view, re-jig the graphic

for maximum vantage, snaring salt in the eye.

When did this bar get so stale? The power

outage is continual, untimed, chafes phosphor

turmoil from the palms, and Stick Boy is now

tinder on t-shirts stumping up tracer fire

and fine resolve, any glowworm sentience

chilling on the sand hills. The grafts knit,

the stocking becomes the face, and the treatment

bills fly up to applause, flutter forward by craft.

STADIUM BENDS

always the makeweight, trick to match, match to flick,

pops that bud of flame in a penthouse

culture-overhung suite-to scorch through vinyl,

lesions brandished later, lips and coal scuttle-

are we still on the air?

Mash notes settle and bite,

spittle and bonhomie yanked up for wreckage

bags, another trashed day flung behind towers,

a night gassed up, grin and get stuck in.

Dissolve to Wet This Whistle with emollient magnum

curd, halo bloated to cranial damage,

tossed skittering across the yard. Dissolve to You,

Me, and the 5 Iron makes three. We crack

on sight, pores eased open, host jabbed off

in a paper cup. Why ask when you know?

Why trickle the residue over stacked margins?

Why strangle in bunting? This bludgeon

and this suit-why not? Crack knuckles null in self-

destruction till knuckles run out; heavy

weather, so spike the bauble, the 50 proof, set

firm hand to acetate chin. Multiply glam.

Techno-heavies in the mirror, gamely split

along an ice seam. Same tickle, bloody

collar, bloody strip at the window, who licks

the dirty words shut?

You do all this, you follow

through, you never let up. First mist clings to pylons-

stub that line, track it for wipeout, this donut

muscles into that, these platelets flick to snow.

GOOD HUMMER COUNTRY

Safe to say under the failsafe, tongue

a slippery monger considering the facial

paralysis of blindsider ideologues, batched

in the bunker with suicide jelly and plastic sheets.

Lean-to citizens lean chugging blue milk

on the doorstep, grow gray in the drill:

your Undisclosed Location loves you.

Entombment has a palate slip tied up

in latest ligature, laser emissions

discounting in full the penalty that crashes

through trees at yellow o’clock, funereal

gab artist, spare bushy remnants.

The eyes to watch are courtesy of satellite

cornice, the purest projection of moon pits

undermining our wafery hills, our crabby

peristalsis flapping the creed, paranoiac iris

rimmed in a system of light, circled by

implication and dead drop, encrypting bed rest.

I dedicate the next decree to the penultimate

five minutes in Texas. You can’t smell Odessa

in a mineshaft. The new is pleated by concern

to leaf detail and gopher specks, the war

of spasm against jism, flue-figured for rush

of zeroes, a peck of territory, spruce eaves.

What word from the sump line? Orion is his name,

hunting fleas by tonguelight. The goad has its

damage reckoning too, where clock teeth engage

with velvet, dirty belvederes, this snake natter

grabby as the rest. The sun today rocks

in bleach, soaks up light at muzzle’s end.

Nocturne

This medicine is an emergency

Measured Response

We have a taste for bedrock

Beneath this spectacle

Celtic Songs

Dear Stevens

Why, when the singing ended, and we turned

A Sort of Variation

PORTRAITURE

FIRST

FOLD OVER

	For Immediate Release guest-edited by Patrick Pritchett
Volume II, Number 4 April 1, 2002