Here

Something in the predawn wakes to cull, collect
shreds, threads and pulses of a soul – fresh-threshed
by dreams and sleep into a porous mesh – a fibrous
consciousness: a wonder that it coils into the semblance
of a sentient whole – which sets for yet another

coalescence of itself such concrete goals as: putting
feet to floor, amassing neural signals which conduce
to the assortment and cooperation of the body’s limbs
and core – in preparation for its getting up and turning
towards the bathroom door – and oh, whatever

strange innumerable more effects the efficacious
realignment of that fragile sense of agency we like to label
“me.” That we manage this amazing and courageous
feat each day is quite beyond what comprehension
I can bring its way – never mind that factor of it

which arrests: its built-in obsolescence. We’ll run down,
my dear: one day our shreds and threads and pulses
will no longer whoosh together into anything remotely
like this whirling sphere: we’ll disappear. For now,
however, somehow, we’re miraculously – thickly – here.

.

Bloodletting

Boom and blare
conspire to barge in –
loot the mind –

what to do: resist? –
or let it take exactly
what it finds? –

me, sitting in
the grinding
meaty fist of this

pumped bumping day –
across the way from
seven drums’ undoing

of a large East Village
park: palms flay,
slap, bang the drums’

tight skins –
loud atavistic lark –
proto-shamanistic spins –

a celebration
of the need for festival –
relieved by having one.

So what? The city
makes my psyche
seethe and bleed a bit:

hardly a surprise.
Blood-letting is
her daily exercise.

.

Labor Day Weekend, A Prelude

Dripping with incessant gold – lavishly
indifferent, but aware of you and me (she likes
an audience), magnificently narcissistic,
rapturously falling over into and around her own

abounding lolling rolls of precious fleshly pelf –
in orgiastic foreplay with herself – Manhattan
in late summer flaunts it – taunts in more than
usually blatant ways – transvestite courtesan

who’s popped her corset stays like an Edwardian
pink-stocking-ed mistress to a foreign king
whom she’ll meet only on these sorts of torrid
perfect days – when nothing but the butter

of the sun plays on their untoward splay
of rump and thigh and florid cloud-sky-plied
extremities – without a thought, she grants us
the considerable grand amenities of watching

her: we’re simply on the sidelines where
we ought to be. The king is drunk – he doesn’t
care – and oh, the funk he’ll have to bear
tomorrow morning when she’s dumped him.

We’re the little flitter-glitters who reflect her blunt
erotic flashing naked glimmers back to her –
how she shimmers! “Hold the mirrors this way,
little queers!” – she whispers at us –

throatily, but clear. And soon the king will
snore, early fall will pour, and she will find all
notions of our adoration one big bore.
And honey, she will not be this way anymore.

.

Yet Another Way

When, by chance,
sweet balance is advanced,
enhanced by some sporadic
and involuntary luck –
unlooked-for ineluctably
voluptuous felicity –
somatic, silly, deep and glottal

as a nesting chicken’s cluck –
gently surging into
and usurping every
psychic aperture –
from echo-ridden cavern
to tight tiny silent duct;
when random amplitude exudes

an effortless benignity,
dissolves the muck –
becomes the strangely simple
order of the day –
a voice in you may gently
burble up, and say:
“Yet another way.”

.

Evidence

Glad, proud, blue, bright –
September conquers: climbs
the atmospheric rafters
and achieves its height, again, at last –
seizes and surveys the vastness
of the day – defies you –

disavows disparity – propagates
its clarity: everything in this
eternity is evidence: a heaven-bent
examination of the light
reviews all motive and effect –
finds them unified and right.

But you! – oh you – you brownish
runty little creature – hear a whisper –
underneath, within, inside –
a tickle of a faint reminder
that the ride ain’t over yet –
and who knows what it will beget.

.

Shift, Personified

There is – now she’s awake to it –
the loveliest reprise –
a variation on a theme
she’s heard before: a breeze

of psyche which alerts the soul
that something wants to give –
a tendril of whose scent suggests
how much it wants to live.

.

More Words About Style

More words about style
are surely unwise:
too prone to use guile –
or silly surmise:

lame stabs at some proof
of what the thing is –
a silly grande bouffe
which traffics in fizz –

obscurantism –
mell-of-a-hess –
strained syllogism;
until (hmm) – you guess:

while you’ve remonstrated –
decried rant and rot –
you’ve just demonstrated
your style. (Can’t not.)

.