December 31, 2011

It’s hard to say what sort of day it is:

precipitating mysteries

the way it is.

.

Cabal

Ideas crash, ad hoc,
out of exasperating vastness,
crass and shocked as sunlight,
cracked and cut and bleeding,

stained with black blood
from the mutha-flooding kiss
of the abyss which sucks back
at them till, at last, of course,

they can’t resist. But meantime
they consort in a cabal,
breeding secrecies and plotting
to corral impossibility into abject

submission. And for a moment
death plays dead: finality  
is in remission: hope amasses.  
The moment passes.






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Night-Blooming Human Head Plants

Night-blooming human head plants
can’t be counted on to conjure up
romance but they’re good company
when bleak Existence looks at you

askance and it is two o’clock
beyond redemption in the loneliness
of last chance sleepless night: when life
will not agree to any even slight degree

to help requite your least desire;
you're sinking in the mire, and things
are getting dire indeed. But then,
sometimes, as if they sense the need,

night-blooming human head plants heed
the plea: know what is required: a soft
endearing word. Once murmured –
and once heard – equivalently

captivating vegetation joins the chorus:
whispers more – therefore allowing you
to feel rapport with something actual –
a sweet reprieve you cleave to: better,

God knows, than the raw deal of your
own internal spiel. Oh, be relieved
night-blooming human head plants,
anyway, at least, are real.




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What a Mommy Must Know

As long as she hasn’t killed them,

here’s what a mommy must know:
whatever it took to build them,
the point is to let them go.










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Harry and Mahatma

Hanging out unrobed
like Mata Hari – ruby earrings
dripping from their lobes –

is Harry and Mahatma’s way
of cheering themselves
out of after-Christmas doldrums.

It’s swell to feel yourself
insouciantly lolling on a plum-
red velvet throw, not worrying

about how things will go,
with precious jewels
as your companions:

just the gift to lift you from
the canyons of post-holiday
despair. After all the folderol

of promulgating vol-au-vents
rempli de champignons
et truffes all day – that stuff

can make you swear! –
it’s lovely to recline, aloof –
expensively decline to care.






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In the Mirror

See the threads and shreds and strands
that coalesce out of the shadow-lands of being:
streaming into, breeding bodily capacities –
random chances massing into form;
glance at the enigma of your eyes and hands:
this build-up to a warm and human viability –
with its inevitable liability: vulnerable – visceral:

ephemera which trick your vision into registering
symmetry and outline from the swarm –
the threads and shreds and strands that weave
and melt into a course of sieving this, retaining
that, exacting strategies for taking, giving –
this force that you call living. Regard this blessèd
and exquisite mesh – this conscious flesh.





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The Problem with Imaginary Friends

The problem with imaginary friends is,
when they hang around for long enough
they start acquiring autonomy –
abandoning the clear taxonomy of traits

and psychic states through which they
once definably were present. Now they
morph from unequivocal to unpredictable,
which isn’t always pleasant. Quixotic

ambiguity is what they seem to gather
through the mystery experience
imbues – their vagaries bewilder
and bemuse until you aren’t sure

who is imaginary any more. They soon
are indistinguishable from the rest
of everybody else who may be actually
knocking on your door. That’s a chore.





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The Holiday Boys

Mild tensions ignite.
All feels contrived.
No poem is right.
Now they’ve arrived.

They turn it about –
wielding their wizardries:
Christmases turn out
not to be miseries.








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A Bee Than Whom

A bee
than whom
no other was
ever born

with a finer
or a stronger
instinct for
perfection

of excellence
in execution
of his
apian-issity...

ah,
Swinburnian
bee!






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Certain Troglodytes

The certainty of certain troglodytes soon draws the curtain
on the barest possibilities for chat. They stand there in their
troglodyte-hauteur beyond the reach of caring what you think

about what they call “this” and you call “that.” You wouldn’t
mind relaxing with them – praise their dahlias, pet their cat –
bantering about the bliss of watching premiere ballerinas

do their pas-de-deux and entrechats – or asking them where
you should go on a vacation: Cap D’Antibes, Mount Ararat?
But any topic taken up with certain troglodytes goes splat.






.

Unforgivable Transgressions

She rides a lover like
a politician rides a scandal,
flies it high, ties a handle
on it, strokes it, stokes

its hopes, soothes it when
it chokes, glides behind
the plume of toxic smoke
that lust and smoking coke

evoke: she’s not the nicest
girl you’ll ever meet,
but she thinks she’s a treat:
a naked pink and orange

sweetmeat. Unforgivable
transgressions fill a lack.
Anyone who’s ever
had her wants her back.






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Archetypal Elderly in Flight

The shock!
We just caught sight
of a delighted naked flock
of archetypal elderly in flight!

Spirits of who we might be –
if they could only stir
us up sufficiently to see
beyond the blur

in us
of mortal terror’s hold
on us.
Getting, being old.






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Manhattan, for a Moment – Late Night December

Habits and agreements –
city going on –
copulating rabbits –
rutting through to dawn –

and old men
wearing cologne –
sweet – strange:
being alone –







.

The Shaded Man

Let’s all praise
the shaded man –
evasive and abrasive
and invaded man –

the man for whom
chiaroscuro was invented –
the man in whom no sense
is circumvented –

whose adumbrations
of the heart suggest
minute circuitries
that can’t be guessed –

the man who lets
enigmas bloom –
the fully human
being in the room.





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Philosophic Phlegm

The metabolic processes of psychic progress
are a deep bewilderment. What are the biological
imperatives of Soul? How does it cultivate the messy
fleshy whole – the rest of what adheres to it –

what springs from it – what rings in it to make us us?

We mesh: we mostly get along. But what about
when things go wrong? Does something central harbor
markers of catastrophe conditioned in some future

to explode? – existential DNA which hankers to unload? –
promises to blast the last of us away? Is the plasma
of our genesis devoted to its final day?  Who can say.
Philosophic phlegm. Silly words. Tired of them.






.

I Wish I Was an Avocado Mousse

Oh, to be a rich addictive dip! Subtly
spiced, accessible – in high demand –
soft enough to slip on melba toast –

voluptuously thick enough to boast
about – to grandstand on a cocktail
table in the middle of a chic soirée

full of extravagantly hot grandées
for whom I’d be an aphrodisiac –
the last transgression to which

they’d succumb before they left
to you-know-what each other numb.
Dressed with fresh Wisconsin cream,

the juice of Spanish limes, a touch
of kosher salt and Indonesian pepper –
oh, the hubba-hubba I’d inspire –

oh, to be right at the center of desire!
For that I’d gladly suffer sacrificial use.
I wish I was an avocado mousse.





.

Some Fun

Feeling less than sultry
in the dawning morning light –

sitting half-awake in the ill-fitting

irony of her pink-hearted bathrobe –

one importuning suitor at her left,
another at her right –

she’d once supposed
ménages-à-trois might be all right

before she’d had one.
By now whatever slight

je ne sais quoi her two relentlessly
attentive boy toys

might have had for her
had run its run. Some fun’s no fun.

The end of love
can be abrupt.

Especially when you
make the whole thing up.




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Refocusing

Out of the vivid pink of living light
our sentient presences alight:
ignite each other’s interest.

Stained with lurid brightness
by the shocking sight of difference,
we wonder if we’ll ever reunite –
or if we ever were a unity to start with.

The universe regards itself again
through us: a lotus noticing
it’s opening – refocusing.
Another vision we must part with.






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Why Mutant Creatures Tend to Thoughtfulness

Living with a set of limbs or mind or spine
or point-of-view which by the measure
of most other beings is askew first seems
to doom the mutant creature to a labyrinth
of aberrance: every day a Pilgrim’s Progress

through innumerable turns and twists of bodily
betrayal – persisting like unfathomable
sins it hadn’t known it had committed –
of a size and strangeness so intransigent
they can’t not manifest again, again, again:

until one day it spends itself – and in a blink,
the mutant creature finds that it can think.
And thinking makes the Universe crack open
like an ostrich egg into a flood of cosmic yolk.
The mutant creature gets the joke.






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Change

Globular to angular –
amorphous
takes a form;
through incremental
stages shapes accrue;

softnesses,
once warm, now cool –
contract – exact
an edge:
sharpnesses ensue.

You want to bear
the loss
and love the change
in metamorphosis –
and almost do.





.

The Whole Shebang of Them and You

Today another sentience mounts her head
and wraps it like a hat – introducing lulling
thoughts which seep expansively into her skull
to render her, for once, at last, dispassionate:  allow

a clear-eyed new increase of the idea she might,
some night, discover she quite likes this going-it-alone.
(Craving tenderness had gotten tedious.)
Although, with this accommodating creature,

she’s not going-it-alone. In fact, new entities –

now that she’s noticed them – she daily sees release
her into realms in which she hardly can be said
to be remotely solely at the helm. She’s in a crowd.

Thoughts, like pets and problem children, can,
of course, get loud: wear out their stay – until,
that is, that final possibly delicious day the whole
shebang of them and you implodes – and falls away.





.

Waiting for a Cue

What are your eyes up to?

I search each pupil for a clue.
What would they have me do?









.

Cloud and Puppet Show

Sometimes a feeling
like a cloud calls up
another feeling like a puppet

and they both put on a show
you never know about.
Benign as lambent sighs,

they lilt around like spies
until they find their
separate ways out.

All you can surmise
is that an inexplicability
somehow erased a doubt.






.

Guardian Angels, Revised

One stridently demands you’re an agenda.
No absolution.
The other wants your utter quick surrender:
your dissolution.






.

What Love Might Be Like

What is this private holy war –
this secret insurrection?

What storms the door
of solipsistic introspection –

sets off these soft alarms?
Why do I want you in my arms?





.

Oh, Let’s Have Sex!

I seem to want to keep the link alive
to waking consciousness all night.
I do not turn the TV off. I let the sounds

and unseen sights of BBC World News
and other PBS enlightenments ignite,
make bright, a shamanistic purgatory –

a liminality that veils, regales the inner
and the outer and persuades them
to unite. To feed, to feed, to feed:

to end the blight. Tugs-of-war excite,
incite – breed between dimensions. Sex!
In this space where nothing’s known,

beseech the Universe! Oh, let’s have sex!
Nursed and vexed – Soul erects.
Assembles and dissembles. Trembles.





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Desperadoes

Symbolizing clarity,
or purity, or God,
transparency seems odd.
Being loves disparity –

conundrums in the shadows
which pass through glass –
evade, amass –
subversive desperadoes.







.

Testosterone Reflects

Testosterone in muscularly musky splendor
sometimes sees the ghost of something pink flash by –
and wonders, as it’s brushing past, if pink might render
him a little softer and more feminine: supply

the means of knowing from an inside view
what women are; sense aspects of the female genus
he must surely constitutionally misconstrue;
beckon to a little estrogen; let Penis rhyme with Venus.






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Agnes, Myra-Ann and Lila-Sue

In a universe wherein dimensions
number only Two, three mystic sisters –
Agnes, Myra-Ann, and Lila-Sue –
herald the presence of a Third:

“Chiaroscuro!” “Front and back!”
they can be heard to call to all:
“That's what we lack! A Holy Thickness!”
Other flatnesses dismiss this as absurd.

“These girls breed moral sickness,”
they all hiss. “Their deity deceives.”
And so they flat-line Agnes, Myra-Ann
and Lila-Sue. Nobody grieves.






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Under Cover of the Light

You find the colors bright.
You see the sun is out.
You press it to your chest.

You dimly grasp the wonder
under cover of the light.
You doubt. Assess.

Strangenesses surround it.
You can’t quite clasp
your hands around it.

You ache. You take
a breath. It isn’t love.
It may be death.






.

Coco Chanel Said It Was So

It’s nice to have a man
around a hat –
to take him out
of everything but that –

to burst his narcissistic
little bubble –
to put him where
he can’t cause any trouble.

Coco Chanel
said it was so:
Mettez vos hommes
dans vos chapeaux.






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Certain Serpents

Certain serpents –
be sure! – are best met and addressed,
as it were, perpendicularly.

C’est à dit:
do not walk up, abrupt,
and confront them straight-backed
with the palpable proofs of their lack:

let your spine be an offhand surprise,
not a prod to attack,
not occasion for something
they’re likely
to find they despise.

Praise them for all of their morphing
amorphous and multiple
unending sizes.

Careful (with all of those esses)
that you do not spit on them.
Then, if you ask very nicely, they may
let you sit on them.






.

Apprentices

Depression takes apprentices
who pay a hefty fee
to learn the arcane nuances
of clinical ennui –

so they can sneak them into you
with assiduity –
as well as slip a complex few
obliquely into me.







.

Blinking Child of Chromaticity

In the realm where colors roam –
effect investigative introductions
to each other, rest inside an outline, or more
subtly overlap – to capture light – to find
another home for off-off-white: in this bright
crucible wherein innumerable hues become
the muses and the mentors of unprecedented
pinks and tans and blues: in this arresting
mine of brilliant ores, this sea of glories –
weave of interleaving shades –

sometimes a mutant breathing bit of stuff
pervades the corner of a bloom of fire-red
or tulip-yellow: and abruptly heaves out of infinity
a random unsuspecting fellow. He sits there
naked in a rainbow he cannot begin
to fathom, dazed that there is such
a game with such a claim on him – amazed
he is its thinking progeny – a golden
and beholden scrap of datum – blinking child
of chromaticity. That blinking child is me.






.

Bearing Creatures to Their Fate

Bearing creatures
to their fate
affords an opportunity

to witness
how they wait for it.
Humming

dum-de-dum some
ride along as if
they’re on the way

to brunch.
Let’s hang out
with that bunch.






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2 Pan-Elucidations

Personification May Not be the Solution



Exasperated’s beef with Calm ran thus:
“You’re boring as a bus.
I’m thrilling as a bomb.”
Calm nodded with his usual aplomb.

“Never mind that,” he replied.
“We’ve both just been personified.”
“I’d rather you were dead,”
Exasperated said.

+

2:30 a.m.



Perversity as overlay
on a convention
always works.

Subjecting something
to spasmodic jerks
through any means at all,

however evidently artificial,
pan-elucidates the vast
organic mute reality

behind all prettiness:
the gall which undermines –
and peels

the scaffolding away –
reveals
whatever skews

itself into
a structure
in its vulnerable

disarray.
Inoculate yourself
with that today.




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Existential Jerky

Art, and Thanksgiving

The thing about a manifesto
is, it’s blind. Because
it joneses to believe  
in single-mindedness,

it does – in that buzzed way
compulsive sex erupts
into a specious All – grunting
to its blunt inevitable fall:

done when
it's no fun:
foregone:
a yawn.

And there you’ll be anon:
the spawn of something
you can’t recollect.
But heck: I’ll stay,

seduce you anyway.
I’ll bang your drum
and strum your heart strings
like a hooker. I’ll be

the looker you’ve been
looking for, cooking zesty
definitions. What is art
and what is not? Here’s

what’s not. Whatever thinks
it is what it’s describing.
Whatever doesn’t know
it has complete autonomy

from its creator. (See you
later alligator.) Whatever
buys its own PR.
Whatever’s not bizarre.

Eschew the turkey.
Chew some existential jerky.
Presto!
Manifesto.




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Two Searches for Something Else

1

The ghost of my grandmother dreams
of betting at the track –

and sipping out
of stenciled crystal
hypothermia-inducing
icy, gleaming ryes-and-sodas –

to help her

plan –
and cope –

deflect –
and dare.

2

My Host of Poetical Schemes
is threatening attack –

tipping his ballistic
juicy pencil
like a hypodermic:
Excise redeeming codas!

He yelps.                     

Abandon
hope!  

Reject
despair!




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We Suck at Seduction

We’ve taken
instruction.
But we suck
at seduction.

We drop our hints
like bowling balls –
heavy, stupid:
all fall down

the wrong part
of the lane,
causing only mild pain.
If only we were wild!

That’s what undercuts.
We lack the stuff
that threatens.
Nothing beckons.

We catch a whiff
of sweat – of skin –
of sex – of sin –
of crotch –

disarming secrecies! –
that don’t proceed
from us.
It’s hard to watch.

It’s hard to cope
when you’re not hot.
If we had hope! –
but we do not.




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