Sunday, September 30, 2012

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.








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Saturday, September 29, 2012

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.











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Friday, September 28, 2012

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.












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Thursday, September 27, 2012

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.










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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Shrapnel

 


 

Do what you will

but here you are.

Volatile spill.

Shrapnel of star.













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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

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.











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Monday, September 24, 2012

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.







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Sunday, September 23, 2012

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.











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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.








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Friday, September 21, 2012

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.











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Thursday, September 20, 2012

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.











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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

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.











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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

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.








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Monday, September 17, 2012

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.









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Sunday, September 16, 2012

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.











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Saturday, September 15, 2012

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.










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Friday, September 14, 2012

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.









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Thursday, September 13, 2012

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.









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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

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.











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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

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.









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Monday, September 10, 2012

The Only Fact



One
perceives
what one
believes.

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









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Approach


 
 

Venture
near the center
of the riot.
Hear the quiet.










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