I Start Like Anybody Else

 

I bought a seasonable flower

and it turned into a face.
Blooming human ambiguity,
it commandeered my space.

This now happens

all the time to me.
In fact it may turn out
to be the only constancy

I know in my experience

of un-exonerated being.
I mean, I start like
anybody else in seeing

petals, leaves

and stem –
but just as soon
as I have breathed ahem

it’s grown a brow and nose

and ears and chin and eyes.
Frankly it’s no longer
a surprise.








.

Warm Enough

 

Here we go a-voyaging
a-voyaging a-voyaging
Here we go a-voyaging
oh let us find a boat.

Ah, but

my-oh-
my-oh-
me.

There isn’t any bay

or lake or pond
or fjord or sound
or sea!

All there is, is air.

Though warm
enough so that
we do not care

to

wear
a
coat.

So

let’s

just

float.

.

Not One

 

It’s hard to cultivate

a sonorously
sanguine
point-of-view

when not one head

of yours is thinking
what it wants
the others to.












.

The Clairvoyant and his Friend

They thought they’d get along with one another and they did –

as soon, that is, as The Clairvoyant rid himself of one
obnoxious trait – predicting without cease The Other’s daily fate.

“Oh, I know what you’ll do today at two, you’ll screw up yet

another apple-tripe-and-carrot stew, so that at three, you’ll have
galumphed into an anomie so indescribably a bore that finally

at four, you will contrive a plan, to carry out at five, to fix, at six,

the sort of culinary heaven you might bake for me at seven,
an extravagant brioche-and-sausage plate on which, at eight,

you would announce that we, at nine, would dine, until at ten,

when the brioche showed no propensity to leaven, you’d
conspire at eleven to attempt to delve into the mysteries

of several secret pantry shelves for something we might eat

at twelve, the conjuring of which would, by the stroke of one,
however, not be done.” The Other offered up a poignant sigh.

“Will you also tell me when I’ll die?” “Don’t make me cry,”

the wizard of presentiment replied to his sweet friend. Which
marked the moment his unwelcome prophesies came to an end.









.

What Some Call This

 

Gods make untoward

importunings in the night.
In indigo and wine-red light,
the fine delight of a caress may
metamorphose into strangling,
then maneuver back
to wrangling through

the warming embers
and the pitch-black shadowed
murmurings of unexampled
love, to which, below, within,
above, the only possible
response is crying.
Some call this dying.











.

Waiting in the Dark

 

Strangenesses

rampage

all through

the range of us:

waiting

in the dark,

ready

to embark.

Nothing’s

dangerous.











.

Why Spring Is Late This Year

Spring is late this year

because the gods
in charge of bringing it
don’t feel like getting up
and doing anything.

So if you’ve planned

for crocus hocus pocus 
or to tiptoe through
the tulips soon, I'd let it
go. Just so you know.












.

To Train You, and to Keep You Sane

To train you,

and to keep you sane,
those sentient aspects
of you which contain

your ecstasy concoct a sort

of lulling psychic serum
to inject into your vein
of Soul, the theorem
 
for which might be
worked out as follows:
that if you are the famished
thing which swallows

everything

it can,
but learns to be
a quiet man,

so nobody

will know,
your spirit can perceive
and freelybreathe and glow

in an unseen

eternity.

No rhyme

for that.








.

Jar Heads

They say we can’t be

what we’re not.
But that still leaves us
in a spot.

How to get at

all the rest?
Is their adage
meant to suggest

it’s just like

opening a jar –
uncovering
the stuff we are?











.

Most of Us

 

Strange how
most of us advance –
dancing naked
in a trance.















.

Literally Laterally Littoral

 

Literally laterally littoral,

I am a fish who only ever
swims along your shore.
Every time I see you I want more.













.

Existential Sticky Buns

We’re not sure, but it may be

nobody goes away.
Perceptions spill into and play

with the imagination as they

always do and we construe
and make each other up

the way we’ve always done:

at whim and will. Arguably
here or no, in fact we never go –

always larger than our sums:

ephemeral amalgams –
existential sticky buns.

Spinning in infinity’s vicinities,

we’re always on the spot.
Hard to see sometimes,

but when was any of us not?

No one’s dead or gone.
Someone’s had us on.










.

Identities

Identities can be a pain.

You pick one up
and put it on
and take it off again.

Sometimes you try on

three at once, though
that produces strain.
It feels a little vain.












.

The Thing that Sniffs Out Spring

Sing to the thing

that sniffs out
Spring –

whiffs the lift

that brings the curtain
down on pall and gloom –

and hauls

the backdrop up
for bloom.











.

The Shocking and the New

How our higher primate 

brains all strain
to understand

and countermand

the shocking
and the new! –

when nothing's

really shocking
and the new is merely

more of sheer eternity.

We are a queer
fraternity.









.

Morphday

 

Though it may elicit gasping
or a gape or two,
today we think we’ll take
another shape or two.














.

Be Like God

 

Be like God – be bold –

give void a form.
The joy in being cold
is getting warm.













.

The Appeal

Refusing the appeal –

confusing the familiar
with the real –

we miss who’s with us

or what’s going on
entirely:

desiring the fiery –

stranded in a fleeting
dream of flame.

What you’re seeing

doesn’t have
a name.









.

Why We Do What We Do

 

What to do today to slay

the demons in the day?

Blood and clay –

mud and hay –

Mold some sentient

flesh from it –

Make it prescient –

fresh – and split

and fold it up like

dough again from

blood and clay –

mud and hay –

what to do today to slay

the demons in the way?










.

Homunculi

 

They say there’s no homunculus

responsible for consciousness
in any single one of us –

no little guy inside

deciding anybody’s overriding separate
perception of the who or what or why –

and we agree with other observations

which amount to these that this construes
a reasonable point of view.

But surely it is true –

though oh! –
it makes us sigh –

that what gives rise to warring senses

of what’s you and yours and me and my
comprises an unwitting babbling tribal bible

written and rewritten and redacted

and enacted in the lurid plural
by homunculi.









.

Your Hangers-On

 

 

Go dancing
with your hangers-on
till dawn.

Après cela

go to an all-night boite
to eat

seared chunks of saumon

en brochette,
sliced beet with goat cheese

with the barest squeeze

of jalapeno juice.
From this, deduce

you’ve done

your duty
to their beauty.

Now stop.

Let the damned things
drop.








.

Feathered March

 

Feathered March

appears
equipped to fly,
but walks.

You hope

for tweety chirps
from it.
Instead it talks

too softly

to be heard.
Apparently
it’s not a bird.










.

Strange

 

Drop the curtain.

Sense the certain
pestilential
existential

acquiescence

of the essence
of the thing.
Do not sing.

Scurry

into worry.
Languish
in the anguish.

Repel.

Expel.
Decrease.
Release.

Strange,

this peace.







.

Imaginary Friends

 

Imaginary friends

are very nice
to have around –

when you’re naked

and unwitting,
doing nothing,
sitting down.











.

What the Night is All About

 

In your floating yellow predawn dream,

your bed is evanescing into ghostly splotch
and something pastel green appears
to want to watch.  Another crack of late

night morning – one to two – breaks open

to uproot you – as if consciousness in sleep
were mostly proving more unwieldy than was
good for mental health. There must be wealth

in wanting to be wakened. Something’s

shakened, but it isn’t telling. Something
irrepressible: a fresh upwelling takes another
form and there you are again, still warm from

having been accosted, lost in almost pleasurable

doubt which, like a melon smashing, wakes up
into wet and ragged pieces – manifestly you –
wondering what the night is all about.









.

The Romance of Bad Weather in New York

 

Weeks away from Spring, late afternoon is lighter

than it used to be: turns dusk as if the atmosphere
through which it has to suffer weren’t there –
the air, a brittle edge, a frigid slice of thinning Winter

cuts the skin – and suddenly I know this city

saves my life. Spirits in me softly climb and tumble –
seizing and releasing. The storm will soon arrive.
My city! – oh my city, oh my city! – is alive.









.

All of This

 

for Catherine Synan Green

Aiming my investigative apparatus

at the voluble variety of you,
I find myself acquiring a picture
which entirely takes up my point of view:

that of seeing you not caught so much

as situated in the network of a spine
directing neurological behavior
and sensation in some vastly larger

glowing creature whom my irrepressible

imagination is suggesting is divine.
Something knowing gives a nod.
All of this is God.










.

Beat

 

To try to find you in your fine defended privacy –

to touch and understand what overwhelms
in those most unreported realms –
to conjure up some access to the primacy

of what enrobes your soul in secret

and provides its impetus, its locomotion –
to chart the dark expanse of that great ocean –
come upon its meditative calm and peek at

something at its levitating center: sense the heat –
the endless deep research, the trenchant leads on
what I’d need to get at what your psyche feeds on –
has me beat.










.

Your Findings

 

Abandon your notions

of cause and effect
and express some affection
for who or whatever’s nearby.
Report on your findings.

Oh my.

.

In a Way

 

The apples you purchase

in March in New York at bodegas
relate to the apples you get in September

at fresh produce markets the way

certain yearnings for romance
relate to the last time you

can’t quite remember

that you were
in love.

In a way.

Push never quite

came to shove
today.










.

This Thing That Sits and Talks at You

 

This thing that sits

and talks at you –
when will it stop?

You aren’t fond of stories.
The flop and splay of facts
arrayed as if

their manufactured tactics
all intrinsically
had interest doesn’t interest.

This thing that sits

and talks at you –
its infinitely intricate specifics!

You crave to be inoculated
by the serum of the flow
of what persists below.









.