The Mind

I don’ t buy it, says

the scientist.

Replies the frail

and faithful heart,

it’ s not for sale.

A lizard does not make a sound,
it has no song,
it does not share my love affairs
with flannel sheets,
bearded men, interlocking
silver rings, the moon,
the sea, or ink.

But sitting here the afternoon,
I’ ve come to believe
we do share a love affair
and a belief —
in wink, blink, stone,
and heat.
Also, air.

This is not a fable,
nor is it bliss.

Impatience,
remember this.

The King saith, and his arm swept the landscape’ s foliage into bloom
where he hath inscribed the secret mysteries of his love
before at last taking himself away. His head away. His
recording hand. So his worshipful subjects must imagine
themselves in his loving fulfillment, who were no more
than instruments of his creation. Pawns.
Apparati. Away, he took himself and left us
studying the smudged sky. Soft pencil lead.

On the eighth day he coined the word “alone”
and saw that it was as good as everything else.
A yellow school bus rattled down the lane,
a wind blew in a drainpipe, strong, mellifluous.

I brought two empty crates to the parking lot,
watched neighbors with briefcases and car keys.
At noon a mailman passed by where I sat
invisible, like a tree among trees.

How lovely it is not to go. To suddenly take ill.
Not seriously ill, just a little under the weather.
To feel slightly peaked, indisposed. Plagued by
a vague ache, or a slight inexplicable chill.

Perhaps such pleasures are denied
to those who never feel obliged. If there are such.

How pleasant to convey your regrets. To feel sincerely
sorry, but secretly pleased to send them on their way
without you. To entrust your good wishes to others.
To spare the equivocal its inevitable rise.

Doubt not
the artist and his age
(though bald as the pilled head of garlic),
married or divorced
and even vying downstage,
are both aware
that God or Caesar is the handle
to the camel’ s hair.

They moved across the screen like a computer simulation.
They moved across the screen like complex models & we learned
to call this a nature show.
Animals but set in gray shades for video capture with a lighter area for
the face.
Almost white they moved across the screen like a compressed
meditation.
But the song was never familiar.
Because this was the only room this was the only room where we

My fugues have no apparent relation to past trauma of any kind.
When it came time to rehearse we decided to get glamorous.
We get all done-up for rehearsal. Gradually, imperceptibly, things begin
slipping back into their normal place. My body is slowly rotating
into its proper north-south orientation. My playing is flawless
as it turns out. The audience goes nuts
but what was it all about?
Had I longer to see the aspects and facets of the family,
which as we know are not always tickety-boo but I have drifted away

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

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