Just Another Message Down the Cosmic Wire

 

I look out through the open window – watch

whatever current swatch of planetary influence
I’m subject to: imbibe its layers of translucence
through the leaves – listen to the hockey sticks
and playground yells of kids in games across

the street – sweet blameless light of cold and warm
September – final breath of month exonerating me –
forgiving me carte blanche for everything I’ve
ever done – consigning me to an inevitable cloud
of unremembered history – a mystery of coolness

causing anguish of such strange delicious power –
as if to feel it is to know how long the flower
has before it falls. October’s coming in with blank
New York indifference: and the inference is:
I’d better let it. I loaf upon the sofa – aimless brushes

of the air rush in – tender bursts exciting something
like a thirst: therein resides the anguish, riding
winds like an apocalyptic horseman. But nothing’s dire.
Just another message down the cosmic wire –
from my father and my mother and my brother.








.

Everybody Felt the Shock

 

 

It happened close to two o’clock.

Everybody felt the shock.

We’ll have to find another way.

Paradigms all changed today.











.

Early City Autumn

 

 
You pray until the tips
of your protuberances
swell to fat abrupt tumescence –

as if to blast your gut
determination at the Universe
will pay you back with essence.

Perhaps it will. Meanwhile
the summer fades
to early city autumn chill.












.

The Way It Was Last Night

 

In the twilight of dichotomy

before you fall asleep
to merge back, hushed,
into the dusk of gentle chaos –

after all the harassment
inflicted by the edicts of duality –
its specious tugs-of-war –
afflicted by the rank egregious lie

that nothing isn’t half
of something more –
sometimes something in you
feels affection, cuddles into all

the rest of you and lets the whole
thing you’ve been being free.
That’s the way it was,
last night, with me.










.

Shrapnel

 

 

Do what you will

but here you are.

Volatile spill.

Shrapnel of star.

.

On Reading Henry James Again

 

Today discernments of a certain sort

resort to clauses so innumerably
and exquisitely subordinate,
we cannot make them out.

Strange, though, how exacting
and caressing and successful
and attractive they can be – in their
mission to distract his mind from doubt.











.

The Thing You’re Working On

 

Strange

to have the thing

 

you’re working on

look back –

 

take in

the view –

 

know more

than you do.

.

If I Were Thee

 

Who are these three

who sit so prettily
on my settee?

How have they come to be?
What have they to do with me?
Do they bode catastrophe?

If I were thee,
I’d flee.











.

Exemption

 

Well-meaning if distracted motivating

aspects of the Psyche will occasionally
crowd around like casual acquaintances
who now and then convene because
of some vague pressure they collectively
imagined they experienced in some
long distant dream to get their shit together.

But just a bit of wayward inward weather –
the emotional equivalent of untoward sun –
humid breeze – arid freeze – becomes
enough to set them free from any memory
of any plan for their redemption. Life is
once again what they will always wish
that it will be for them: exemption.








.

In the Dark Green Night

 

 

In the dark green night

of deep September –

 

sleepless in bewilderments

and rushes of the heart –

its blushes, tatters –

remember that, to me,

you’re all that matters.

.

We Thought We’d Let You Know

 

A mild chronic case

of poltergeists

and demi-gods

accounts for everything.

We thought we’d
let you know
for any comfort
that might bring.











.

Odd Thing Is

 

Industriously,

tactically,
synaptically

attempting
to adapt –
unable to allay

the inner terror
that it can't
be done:

odd thing is,
sometimes
that's fun.











.

Talking to God

 

Conversation with you causes rifts –

shapes begin to shift –
deft coercions and persuasions
in the rash abduction
of the soft seduction
of your voice induce inevitable
incremental loss of choice.

The sense that sense has turned to scent –
an acrid odor of consent to Fate –
re-conjugates the Soul – and relegates it
to a whole catastrophe of difference.

Everything is whispered – inward –
separates – evaporates –
leaves me in some alien thrall.

It’s as if I haven’t talked
to anyone at all.








.

Some Gentle Apparatus

 

Strange to be a child and sit around

and listen to your mother talk –
to sense the quiet machinations
of some gentle apparatus in her –

running through their measured paces –
letting everything seem possible
without much fuss: sound and something
quite remote from fury signifying

nothing more or less than what it meant
for you and her to settle in the presence
of whomever she was talking to –
discussing what to do with walnuts

and pecans, or how a neighbor ran
for councilman and lost, or whether
anyone could ever be as good
as Charlton Heston was as Moses:

easy poses – lulling murmurs –
render bliss – in every memory of this.









.

I May Be A Beast, But You’re No Burden

 

I’ll take you where

you want to go,
you don’t have
to pay me dough.

Just climb up
on my back.
And give my butt
a whack.











.

Astride the Hum

 

Spirits who preside

astride the hum

between what can

be seen and said

are never glum
and know no dread –

as long as I make

sure they’re fed.










.

What Dinner’s Been Lately

 

Shapes acquire faces

to communicate with me –
show deference to whatever reference
will permit analogy –

require particles in pattern
which suggest trajectory –
symmetry inviting solipsistic narrative
sufficiently declarative to hold a mirror

up to my inquiring eye –
fool it into thinking it is thinking as it blinks.
Lately dinner’s been half-moon shaped
Chinese dumplings –

crescents from a Shanghai sky, grinning
mouths all crinkling at the lips.
Tamari soy sauce – chili garlic paste
enrich the mix:

lend irony
to cheerful cheeks.
I’ve been doing this
for weeks.









.

France will Float and Linger

 

France will float and linger
for a day or two at most –

gently jolt me – coast me
through her ghostly wake,

softly breaking into aberrant
dimensions of New York.

Paris is a phantom mildness –
vestiges and memories

of déjeuner two weeks ago:
a cream-sauced cotelette of pork,

subtly bubbled by the Perrier
I sipped as its accompaniment.

A-lumpity-dumpity-do – by dint
of nonsense rhyme,

dismembering, remembering,
I pass the time: imagining I feel

the Ile de Saint-Louis
hold onto me.

.

Art Lesson #61

 

Start

with trifles.
Randomly
attract disciples.

Harmony’s
the least of it.
Fuck it till it sighs
to make a feast of it.











.

Harrowing Delight

Sharp and showy

consciousness
shoves cavalcades
onto the stage:

flicks and twists – scintilla –
prick you to response:
everything’s at once –
and gone, death and dawn.

Harrowing delight ignites
in having no idea
what’s going on.









.

The Only Fact

One

perceives
what one
believes.

That’s
the only fact.
Perception
is a solo act.









.

Approach

 

 

Venture

near the center
of the riot.
Hear the quiet.










.