Flags of all sorts.
The literary life.
Each time we dreamt we’ d done
the gentlemanly thing,
covering our causes
in closets full of bones
to remove ourselves forever
from dearest possibilities,
the old weapons re-injured us,
the old armies conscripted us,
and we gave in to getting even,
a little less like us
if a lot less like others.
Many, thus, gained fame
What are aesthetic values and why do
there appear to be lesser & fewer of
them? Quick: define the difference
between arpeggio & Armani. The baby
cries because the baby likes crying.
The baby cries because a pin is
sticking into the baby. The baby
is not crying but it is called
crying. Who’ s on first, what’ s
shortstop. The man the man declined
to be, appraised at auction at
eighty percent of surface volume.
Cube steak on rye amusing twist
on lay demo cells, absolutely no
Third Avenue in sunlight. Nature’ s error.
Already the bars are filled and John is there.
Beneath a plentiful lady over the mirror
He tilts his glass in the mild mahogany air.
I think of him when he first got out of college,
Serious, thin, unlikely to succeed;
For several months he hung around the Village,
Boldly T-shirted, unfettered but unfreed.
1
It is calm.
It is as though
we lived in a garden
that had not yet arrived
at the knowledge of
good and evil.
But there is a man in it.
2
There will be
rain falling vertically
from an indifferent
sky. There will stare out
from behind its
bars the face of the man
who is not enjoying it.
3
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’ s throats.
Dark thing,
make a myth of yourself:
all women turn into lilacs,
all men grow sick of their errant scent.
You could learn
to build a window, to change flesh
into isinglass, nothing
but a brittle river, a love of bone.
You could snap like a branch — No,
this way, he says, and the fence
releases the forest,
and every blue insect finds an inch of skin.
He loves low voices, diffidence
on the invented trail,
the stones you fuck him on. Yes
to sweat’ s souvenir, yes to his fist
It is my emotions that early me through Lambertville, New Jersey,
sheer feeling — and an obscure detour — that brings me to a coffee shop
called “This Is It” and a small New Jersey clapboard
with a charming fake sign announcing it to be
the first condemned building in the United States
and an old obese collie sitting on the cement steps
of the front porch begging forgiveness with his red eyes.
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat that killed the rat
That ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the way we we lay the bricks,
To make the walls nice and thick.
This is the way we lay the bricks,
All day long.
This is the way we saw the wood,
Strong and good, strong and good.
This is the way we saw the wood,
All day long.
This is the way we hammer and nail,
Hammer and nail, hammer and nail.
This is the way we hammer and nail,
All day long.
This is the way we clean the glass,
Clean the glass, very fast.
This is the way we clean the glass,
All day long.
All day long!
