Poetic Pantograph Side B
There Would Be Drama Here
What does one do with a life wrapped round of silence,
With an Act I, scene i
Within whose folds,
Within whose folding folds,
Within whose folding folds folding,
That first act has grown fragmentary--
Breakage multiplying into some ten thousands, half-said,
Kaleidoscopic, spilling,
Drifting beyond capture,
Far beyond the of
Of any speech,
Of any meaning,
Of any turning,
Of any shoring,
Of any....
Of....
And Who's there?
The miracle is that Act I can function this way.
It can go about one's business--
The business of one
Of sadness, of happiness, of elation, of defeat, of....
And who would know the difference?
Who would be put off by so much being put off?
Who would be put off if one were to find drama
in some word of convenience?
And only then by way of one's own,
A one populated by the floating chorus of
What would be, half-recognized as half-said:
I. wants....
I. wishes....
I. thinks....
I. sees....
I. is....
I. seems to one....
But if one seems to one what one is,
What is that want, that wish, that thought,
That see that saw what seems?
Seeming?
This, which would be
A confession, a pronouncement, an accounting of,
A moment different from any other,
Is--
Is turning out into some child's amusement,
Some play by an over-educated man,
Who's trying hard to be simple in his own way,
Lest...lest...lest...One doesn't know.
seesawscene Fire in crowded theater can't be arrayed on shelves,
seesawscene But constitutes a permanence after its own,
seesawscene Which is always another's,
seesawscene In the act of finding the fuel that will suffice.
Up and down. Up and down.
So far the giddy pleasure returns,
Each time with a new fulcrum;
The very pace puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain.
For here there's no weight of another,
No return of the said, half-said, and unsaid of before--
Never a thud...a thud...a thud...a thud...
And Being?
It seems to one that this is
The playground of the park of the whisper Of....
Where grow the bits that no one can admire.
Meanwhile, a crack in the silence,
Something said too directly--
Half-assembled, but half-sensible--
And this world, this park, rushes inward:
A vortex of terror.
Mangled bodies, parts, fly bloody in all directions,
Sinews and vessels wriggling and spurting now,
As if never connected to anything from the start.
Act I. becomes a moment of the writing of the said,
And of a moment when terror begins
With pleasure
With momentum
Within sight of
Hershey's chocolate kisses
Yes, yes, yes....
It's always kisses in the end....
The drift turns, gathers
And organizes itself in movement,
In the rush of terror. Mainline terror.
Only drugs are adequate to this.
A false statement, a metaphor to stay
The movement, the pull, the vortex outward,
Unfolding in every direction at once,
A flowering, an exploding,
The last day of spring dying.
And one is already too old for this child's play.
It seems
To me,
Yes it does,
Yes it does,
Yes it does,
And now I know it.
Could that be you?
It's been four hundred years, but a cloak lies open on the dress of some shading tree. An empty pick-up -- crazed colors parked illegally against a fire hydrant -- looks on, while broken twigs placed in the grass build...
P.S. From Brazil
I feel better than you think. Life goes on, But oh my ego And maybe my heart (If such a thing exists). --My personal opin-- She doesn't love him. It's the easy way out of life. She could love me,...
Moving Day Debris
I reject your severed head electing instead to bust lust lost to greedy farmers swarming to sell weeds to rats injected dissected and reported by sophisticated children placating bully masses seeming to team west and east. Looking for love lost...
All Too Pink
Derelict as usual, but with a better grasp of the moment, a sense of the necessary leads me back to the machine in the window. Some tree, some shrub, chooses this moment, just outside -- a lull in the afternoon's...
An Ordinary Afternoon in New Haven
Life moves by this stretch of Orange Street, in all its forms, with all its thoughts, separate, isolate thoughts, inspired by the same scene, indifferent to the same scene. I watch them go, fast and slow, lazy strolls, and purposeful...
Leisure of the Sentence
The leisure of the sentence without subject, the subject debilitated by the destruction of the principle verb, successive images piled up with their implied turns, twists of that thought which might be, one sentence turned into another, and the subject...
Roll This Night
Roll this night into a hot smoking cigarette and have it with your rum. Have it while you're young and time still seems a thing of promises to come. 'Cause in the midst of this pit, this humid backwash of...
Orange Street
Outside my window the bush goes on, the pink blossoms of weeks ago having long fallen, first into white flowers, then into brown summer crust, perhaps some new leaves, perhaps some seeds, in the promised offing. I sit here as...
Fond Memories of Catholic School
The mice are dancing the floor is wired plasticine animation Molded to motion ambulatory responses must be made Feets don't fail me now...
Jim-Jim
The flat faced man walked down the road. Tucked safely under a large black bowler hat, he walked slowly, very slowly and very carefully, picking his way through nine long blocks of scattered ice. It seemed that kind of a...
Details in Heaven When It's All Played Back By
"Jabberwocky," said the Ticktockman to the rhythmically rising and falling back of the typewriter bound body. "Machiavelli," said the body. "Hobbes," talked the Ticktocktalker. "And America," said the body. "I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see...
Ethics of Addiction
Why did I throw my cigarettes away? T., GET MY CIGARETTES! ...where...? UNDER THE ROCK! Forget it. FORGET IT! You left your cigarettes on the top? Yeah. I buried them under the rock. ...D.?... YEAH? ...You leave them up here?......
On the Trail
Actually, what did those guys.... Oh, when they went up into the snow they had rum or something, right? Who? Brandy? Hikers. Oh, NO! Big Red! Ah, I don't know whether I want a hit of that. How much was...
All-American Facts and Figures
"...the ruling organization was conceived in family terms." A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care...
Sundaze at Baskin Robbins
As you lie in the sun Toasting your econometric mind Pinking your toes Burning holes in your lungs Vegetating You might consider listening to some.... Sentences aloud make different senses out of this one rearranging, adding, subtracting, with and without...
New Age Wisdom
Chant: Oleomargarineoleomargarineoleomargarine --You will be high. Spread: Oleomargarineoleomargarineoleomargarine All over your body. --You will be messy. Or, is it the other way around? Something's slipping here. Does it make a difference?...
Being OZ
Sanity. An object. A passionate center. Something round which the ideas can drift and circle and twist, And suddenly grip with ferocious energy To descend, a tornado from the sky, Ripping across the fields of cottony white 25% rag, leaving...
God Save The Queen
Went to a punk party at Cloyne Co-op Psychotic Pineapple on the stage Waist deep in the crowd A raised platform six inches off the ground The room the basement Packed with hot sweating smoking bodies Pogoing on the floor...
Waiting for the Bus
WE'RE ALL JUST WAITING FOR THE BUS HOPING THERE'S ROOM OF MUSH THAT IN EBBING VERY VERY SMALL SLIPS OUT THROUGH THE ORANGE SLICES AS AN ENORMOUS ROOM WHERE MUCH SHROOM IS ENOUGH FOR ALL. OR SO IT MUST HAVE...
A Pastiche for Friedrich Nietz
Once upon a beach, Tick-tock time took a turn up the wrong street and found himself a black beetle trekking up and down the little shadows of microscopically multiplying dunes. He was a curious beetle and his was a curious...
Once upon a beach....
A seal. There it is. You see it? There's some. The other one's coming. Look at him! Ha! Ha! Did you see what I just did? Yeah! Don't get wet! I navigated the whole way. I went around that rock,...
Don't Forget to Breathe
I met him on the beach, Sitting on the sand, blond bleached beard poking through the windburnt face. It was a face that spoke to me, and said, "I'm just waiting, waiting for the bus." I ate and I wait....
Cabrillo Highway
Like. Like. Like strange and alone, a capital stone leans windward, high plateaued above the sea, scanning no equivalent but weighting the lapped landscape that finds its own fluency a strange twisting thing down Highway 1 an hour before...
Cabrillo Highway II
Somewhere, short of dusk, we stopped over the dip of a hill, got out and stood silent on the warm, radiating, sanded asphalt, salt breeze stinging our faces, waiting by the oceanside of Cabrillo Highway for the beige Volkswagon beetle,...
What was that?
Go ahead. When I was a little bitty baby, my mamma would rock me in the cradle, in them old cotton fields back home.... You're missing your chance. [Smack] AAAAKKK! Heh, haha, heh. Work! Bwoy, work! Masta, masta.... Dis way,...
Yarmouth II
The morning afterrooms a blade of grass in heavy dew, high arc bobbing in the wind, depending points, which shift everything ever so slightly eastward. As if in unending substitution for a sun that just won't rise. We wait, this...
Golden Gate
That's it? Yup, yup, yup. I'm disappointed. He, he, hu, huh.... One, two, three, four; onetwothreefour! As we approach scenic Golden Gate Bridge, we see headlights and fog. BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, YE HA! How come I keep getting the...
America falls just fine without my eyes and ears.
When you grow up in the center of the universe, What's it to you If from somewhere Out on the edge of western civilization, Where a several century trans-continental rush Of real estate grabs and techno-lust Pulled up to...
Coda on the Downward Trail
POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA Did you bring a book? Yeah! What did you bring? Language, Truth and Logic! Arg...What does Logic have to do with this? This is illogical whatever it is. No, it's extraordinarily logical. It's the only consequence of...
