All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding
on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air —
tiny acid-factories dissolving
salt from living rocks and
eating them.
Here they are, blooming!
Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it:
rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and
cliffs like murals!
Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly
with shooting-stars and lupine at the base.
Thar he blows! Plus, tusks
crushed into grins, grins
host to, guest of, impish
Nature, her fort/da “jewels”
glassified behind blank
opposable pupils — Ahabit perfected
(“perhaps memory”) by/for the dicey
Veil. Auto-didact/-dialectics
staged in rent-to-rent
“crowded houses,” asea to har-har-
poon Terrible Tom’ s tom-tom
stutter — VAC C. Gone
but for “language, music,
imitation and perhaps memory.”
Owns no umbrella to forget to splay
This is your foreign correspondent,
Aristotle, for The Poetics,
reporting live from the Mediterranean
where the skulls and bones of a few Egyptians
crown the tradeships of His Majesty,
wave back and forth:
starfish — moons — Februaries.
To my right, our military advisor,
Hernando Cortez,
oversees operations at the Aztec/
Mexican border
where to the left of a stone no longer rising from water
a dove collects
its nest egg
upon the skeleton of a hummingbird.
The signature public
the only avant-garde
behind invention
wheelchairs (in) "the street."
Type (A) bleeds through the page —
or screen — it becomes —
a pool as it we're
one drop rules(.)
Individual talent
divides tradition
into tithes, tenths
and nationalized tribes —
catch-as-catch-can
market share erosion.
Staggered Lees
piggyback the Gap.
John Henry — busted by Keaton.
Gentlemen, 'e thinks,
as the bespoken,
it was the other
kind of happy
The heretic’ s papers were spread out on the armchair
*
At the window, fruit of
spring,
you can bite again
against the weather
weapons I let fall outside
pharmacies, drowsy and bright
*
Air comes to the confused bends in the rail where
in a mirror lush food puts you
out for 1 night. Then it is the weather
at noon that prepares to spring on you
in December, a month ago
blowing the lights out with a sob
*
On long walks
a poorly tuned radio
The poet is a man who feigns
And feigns so thoroughly, at last
He manages to feign as pain
The pain he really feels,
And those who read what once he wrote
Feel clearly, in the pain they read,
Neither of the pains he felt,
Only a pain they cannot sense.
And thus, around its jolting track
There runs, to keep our reason busy,
The circling clockwork train of ours
That men agree to call a heart.
The morning after
my death
we will sit in cafés
but I will not
be there
I will not be
*
There was the great death of birds
the moon was consumed with
fire
the stars were visible
until noon.
Green was the forest drenched
with shadows
the roads were serpentine
A redwood tree stood
alone
with its lean and lit body
unable to follow the
cars that went by with
frenzy
a tree is always an immutable
traveller.
my house’ s stairway is seized
with vertigo.
Matter having forsaken its laws,
we land in hell,
ascending to heaven.
*
Shadows move along ladders
under the silence of ordinary things
there is another silence:
it belongs neither to the leaves not to the
dead
In the dark irritation of the eyes there is a snake hiding
In the exhalations of Americans there is a crumbling empire
In the foul waters of the rivers there are Palestinians
OUT OUT of its borders pain has a leash on its neck
In the wheat stalks there are insects vaccinated against bread
In the Arabian boats there are sharks shaken with laughter
In the camel’ s belly there are blind highways
OUT OUT of TIME there is spring’ s shattered hope
In the deluge on our plains there are no rains but stones
I had heard the story before
about the two prisoners, alone
in the same cell, and one
gives the other lessons in a language.
Day after day, the pupil studies hard —
what else does he have to do? — and year
after year they practice,
waiting for the hour of release.
They tackle the nouns, the cases, and genders,
the rules for imperatives and conjugations,
but near the end of his sentence, the teacher
suddenly dies and only the pupil
goes back through the gate and into the open
