Nice spring day off big white cloud
At Inspiration Point escaping time wars
Poet takes book & wine bottle up into Mist Mountains
Since only available agenda is rhyming with silence
Seeking window of opportunity on a wall
I disguise what I have to say by sounding Chinese
Such as stars are now darker and farther away
They take deeper drinks because space is
Drying out afraid to think own thoughts
Only open homes & woods & pansies’ blue ledges
can lead the zero with his only arms
to embrace himself in open fields for all to gape upon.
He unbuttons steel-gray sheets, a knotted top coat,
bares himself, his hole, a vision
as framed by the marker that is
where
his body blew and left enclosure intact,
skeletal innards
enough to make moviegoers ask,
“Has anyone finished themselves yet?”
I haven’ t. I swim the lagoon, take note:
the babies are barely dirty,
their armpits smooth with silky soot
Once upon a time
I caught a little rhyme
I set it on the floor
but it ran right out the door
I chased it on my bicycle
but it melted to an icicle
I scooped it up in my hat
but it turned into a cat
I caught it by the tail
but it stretched into a whale
I followed it in a boat
but it changed into a goat
When I fed it tin and paper
it became a tall skyscraper
Then it grew into a kite
and flew far out of sight...
“Breadth. Circle. Desert. Monarch. Month. Wisdom. (for which there are
No rhymes)” was just the title, and I only read that far.
That was because I felt like some old agent-of-the-Czar
When a new plotter swims within the scope of his exertions,
And I was scared this hothead would start hedging his assertions
Before I had him dead-to-rights. (A Chekan’ s or a SMERSHian’ s
Lot, you know, is not an happy one.) He might retract.
I wonder what the Greeks kept in these comicstrip canisters.
Plums, milletseed, incense, henna, oregano.
Speak to me, trove. Tell me you contained dried smoked tongue once.
Or a sorcerer or a cosmetologist’ s powders and unguents.
And when John Keats looked at you in a collection of pots
it was poetry at first sight: quotable beautiful
teleological concatenations of thoughts.
Pigfoot (with Aces Under) Passes
The heat’ s on the hooker.
Drop’ s on the lam.
Cops got Booker.
Who give a damn?
The Kid’ s been had
But not me yet.
Dad’ s in his pad.
No sweat.
Margaret Are You Drug
Cool it Mag.
Sure it’ s a drag
With all that green flaked out.
Next thing you know they’ ll be changing the color of bread.
Art was long.
Paul was short.
Art sang the song.
Paul was the sort
who made one up
as if from air.
Paul had more gift.
Art had more hair —
which isn’ t to take
away from Arts.
Many sing well
if someone starts,
and it robs no Simon
to get paid like Paul.
Along was Art’ s way
to be singing at all.
If Paul robbed some,
it’ s harder revealing.
What stuck in his mind,
he stuck to concealing
Ginsberg, Ginsberg, burning bright,
Taunter of the ultra right,
What blink of the Buddha’ s eye
Chose the day for you to die?
Queer pied piper, howling wild,
Mantra-minded flower child,
Queen of Maytime, misrule’ s lord
Bawling, Drop out! All aboard!
Finger-cymbaled, chanting Om,
Foe of fascist, bane of bomb,
Proper poets’ thorn-in-side,
Turner of a whole time’ s tide,
In a culvert by the airport
under crumbling slag
wine colored water seeps
to this pool the two does
drink from: each sipping as
the other keeps look out.
The skyline is a blur
of barcode and microchip.
Even at home we hold
the narrowest purchase.
No arcs of tracer fire.
No caravans of fleeing
families. Only this
suspicion ripples
through our circles of lamp glow
(as you sweep the faint sweat
from your forehead and flip
another page in your novel)
habit smacks
its dull skull
like a stuck bull
in a brick stall
and my version
of what I know
is like eye surgery
with a backhoe
on grace
so much beyond
my pitiful gray
sponge of a brain
I'd not believe it exists
except for such
doses of felicity
as this.
