Do What It Will Do With You

 

Persuasion’s

yellow.

Likes to meet

a fellow.

Thinks it has

to bellow.

Skepticism’s

violet.

You can’t

beguile it.

But don’t

revile it.

Do what it

will do with you.

Take it in

and file it.











.

Conjunctions

 

 

Evening turns

to periwinkle blue,

and all your little household

crowds around the prospect of colluding

with the warmth and reciprocity of you,

and fall is falling

into winter’s spell,

and all is well.

.

Naked, Shaded in Gradated Greens

 

Naked, shaded in gradated greens –

unforeseen – a couple now convenes,
it seems, less for a conversation
than for unknown oddness: the relation

they appear to occupy to us

relies more on some strangely luminous
intention to distract with their insistent hue
than to communicate with me or you

through some syntactical vocabulary.
We therefore do not hold a very
sanguine feeling towards them, nor
can we imagine what their psychic torpor

or their rampant verdure signifies.

What is being offered to our eyes?
Something strange in all the glowing
signals some new way of knowing.








.

Secret Habits

 

The circumnavigation of your days

entails meticulous attention to the ways
details of what conduces to your ease
comport with one another: in the breeze

of every open-windowed dawn –
when you get out of bed with nothing on
and trundle toward the sweet sufficiencies
of your abode’s machinery's efficiencies

which, at a toggle switch or two,

will summon light and music, brew
your coffee, ready you for your ablutions
at the bathroom sink – you find solutions

to the daily challenge of existence:

drink in, with your java, the persistence
of pursuing what you’re craving most of all –
to tie new ribbons on the pretty little doll

that no one knows you’ve got.

Secret habits hit the spot.








.

The Lot of Us

 

 

Twenty-three from mommy,

twenty-three from dad.

 

What a mix of chromosomes

the lot of us has had.

.

Entanglement

 

 

Strange how intricately calming

entanglement can be –

as if it’s only in impenetrable mesh

that we can fathom being free.

.

Verve

 

Quentin Crisp says,

“Fashion is instead of style” –
but how to find your style?

Drop your guile.

Serve your verve.
Cultivate your nerve.












.

When We’re Through

 

I know what

let’s do.

You sit here

reading me.

I’ll sit here

reading you.

But let’s not

talk about it

when we’re

through.












.

Your Pastel World

 

Today you woke up powder pink
immersed in sapphire blue
impinged upon by two
lugubriously ghostly mint-green

and banana-yellow creatures:

features in a pastel world
you never bargained for.
But what is ever bargained for?












.

Flat and Sweet and Bright as Day

 

Everything’s what it appears –

it’s all what it would seem.
Just as the conundrum clears
the rectitudes of dream –

you burn into a consciousness

you’ve never known before.
There is no paradox, no mess
to fix, no fairy lore –

you’re fine and full of purpose –

there is nothing in your way.
You live right on the surface –
flat and sweet and bright as day.










.

It Isn’t Easy Being You

 

It isn’t easy being you.

Others plot their paths to affluent satiety –
while you pursue the virtue
of exploring the bewildering variety

of sleepless mind. You’re up all night.

It seems to you completely right.
To let the merest swatch of conscious light
go by without your overt scrutiny

would surely cause the mutiny

of everything that mattered
in your thickly laden mental habitat.
A nap? The craven irresponsibility of that!

What psychic mildew!

Missing nothing’s what you will do –
pursue until it’s filled you.
So far it hasn’t killed you.








.

Reflecting on Manhattan Crowds

 

Permutations of the human

shift in random patterns: cognates
rambling, not with any urgent purpose,
towards the novelty of sense:

they hop the fence between the known

and unknown every day and night – looser,
possibly, inside our dreams than in our
daylight schemes, but always probing:

spiced by some faint echo of the shout

that started everything: the genesis
of supernova, and Manhattan, light. It seems
inarguable, in the grand descending curtain

of November, that our spanned fraternity

of morphing souls has only one great secret
interest which, however unacknowledged
by its vast collective convoluting self,

is nothing else but this: to feel eternity.

Which I do when I call up for Chinese
takeout – szechuan steamed wontons,  
shrimp and snow peas – give the man

who bikes them by a hefty tip: we greet

each other as if we were strangers in on it
together, which we are. Kaleidoscopic
metamorphoses of star.







.

Before Long

 

 

We don’t know what you are, my dear –

we don’t know why you’re here.
And least of all have we the least idea
what you are thinking. Are you contemplating
randomness? Sinking into warm despair?

Is life too much a mess to care?

Your private calculations leave us
outside your domain. And yet we shall remain.
Nothing is that bleak. We haven’t anywhere
to go ourselves: Before long you will speak.











.

A Puzzle in a Parcel

 

 

A realm where gravity begins not quite
completely to pertain to how the naked
pink man hovers in a baseless yellow
beach chair with his two feet seasoning

in blue: the sourceless water slaughters
reason – which, despite that it abuts a slew
of background dead amorphous depthless
green, no less conduces to the strangely

sweet serenity and solace of the scene.
Is this a dream? You aren’t sure. Pure
surrealities procure you, snare you, take you
places so entirely beyond improbability:

nothing you are feeling could be possible.
You are a puzzle in a parcel on its way
to fathomless illumination – smelling, hearing,
seeing, tasting something like creation.








.

Today We’ll Be A Barren Tree

 

 

Today we’ll be a barren tree –

rejoice in the obliquity
of cold late autumn morning –

feel Existence in the dead

exemption of the fallen summer –
look ahead to winter’s warning –

let the hungry gremlins

in our hearts run deep into
internal dark and leave us

to blue outer icy light – in love

with prospects of the ever
incrementally enlarging night.









.

Self-Analysis

 

 

Just when you decide

you’ve got it sorted out,
your psychic waters rise –
and suddenly
you can’t afford to field
your speculative doubt –

or wield meticulous surmise:

bold cognitive
foundations now are cold
and wet and getting colder,
wetter – nothing’s getting
better: all is heavily

becoming mud. Soon

the apparatus of your
delicate calamities
will soak it up like blood.
Dumb thickness will replace
your fascinating sickness.

You’ll blink instead

of think. Some blundering
amorphousness
will steal your evanescence
like a thuggish thief.
Oh, the relief!







.

You, and You!

 

 

The weatherman

is drumming in
the warning that a cold
front’s coming in.

You, and you!

Come bundle into me
so we’ll be three.
What toasty camaraderie!

Relish it! Imagine

just how warm
we’d be in our
conglomerated form –

like baby birdies

and their mother.
Let’s wear and intersect
each other.











.

Android

 

You thought you could avoid the void

by catching up with all your trendy friends:
no longer would you be alone with your

pathetic little phone. You searched among
innumerable technologically global-roaming
marvels: finally your fraught imagination was

seduced and goosed and loosed: it swooned
amid the zeitgeist’s feisty Smartphones till
your heart deployed its love, and caught one.

They never told you that you’d turn into
an android when you bought one.











.

Something Large and Faintly Blue

 

 

Something large

and faintly blue

appears to be  

in love with you.

Could it
be true?

Did someone

slip hallu-

cinogens

in your stew?











.

An Untoward Form of Happiness

 

 

Today an untoward form of happiness

began to sprout up from your psychic terra firma
to beset assumptions and make tenets squirm. A
chance, at least, to turn what you now guess

had been your certainty you’d lost all chances

to feel gratified and perfectly aligned.
You’ve changed your mind.
Some secret dances.











.

Your Bodily Dysmorphias

 

Scrubbed inordinately

clean and bright,
so as to be inordinately
seen, the sight

of all your bodily dysmorphias

(attired in scanty white)
today, improbably,
does not occasion fright.

So much

you thought might
happen hasn’t:
not a single fight –

no arguing
from spite –
no caring very much
who’s right.

They don’t look bad

in all this light.
One wonders what
they’ll do tonight.










.

My Clown

 

 

Poundin’

the ground
downtown.

Cartin’
my clown
around.

Man gotta do
what a man
gotta do.

You knew
my clown,
you’d do it too.











/

Upon Our Pink Upholstered Chair

 

 

To bed we’ll soon repair

but first, let’s bundle up and sit
affectionately in our warmth
upon our pink upholstered chair –

insert ourselves into the end

of yet another day –
reflecting not so much
on what may have transpired –

what we created or dismembered

or desired – most of which
now languishes unloved
and unremembered –

but on the way we managed

somehow to prevail –
defray, delay or trundle past
the catastrophic possibilities

that lie all round us as if waiting

indiscriminately and indifferently
for us to die. Let’s be grateful
somehow we got by.






.

Day After Election Day

 

Here are we again.

We think we’re fine.

The one we hoped
would win has won.

Of course Existence

still besets us with

impossibility, delivers
kicks to our behind.

The universe is still
a smoking gun,

pursuing its peculiar fun.
But we don’t mind.

The one we hoped

would win has won.











.

Assemble Your Triumvirate

 

 

Assemble your triumvirate --

those other two, and you --
to take a moment to decide,
perhaps, on what to do.

But if you find you disagree

about means and their ends,
let it suffice to know you've nice
imaginary friends.












.

Remember and Release and Reconnoiter

 

Gentle tensions soon obtain

when strange November takes the rein --
exerts its obfuscating change
on soul and weather -- tethering
the temperature to intimations of an end --

as if it's true (it may be, too)

that everything is growing old
as well as cold. It's nice then, when
November shadows loiter, to remember
and release and reconnoiter -- with a friend.











.

Bring It On, Babies

 

Yesses, no's, maybe's --

all of 'em hit the spot.

Bring it on, babies.

Ready for what you got.

.

Unassailable Logic

 

One would have done what one had had to do

if one had thought that one had had to do it.
But how could one have done what one had
had to do unless one knew it?

That one had therefore had to misconstrue
what one had had to do is hardly something
to review anew -- as if some apercu thereto
might then ensue sufficient to pursue it.

So screw it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

Let the Bats in Belfries Sing!

 

Today we've found the agency!

The catalyst!
The poltergeisty twist!
The vagrancy

residing in the heart
which counts for everything!
Let the bats in belfries sing!
Consciousness is more than part

of what permits the pearled blue sea

to swoon with you --
to spoon with you.
It's what allows the world to be.











.

Those Archetypes

 

 

Those archetypes arrive again -

ambiguous, this time.
In fact you can't remember when
they took so long to climb

back into their mythology.
They seem a bit at sea.
Once ruled by their biology
which set them on a spree

of wild and unexamined lust --
inveterately hot
to trot -- now they've begun to rust.
You're ready, but they're not.











.