3rd Rails

3rd Rails
1

stand up for me
somebody green and filthy
noises in the arc of songs
blasé and fruitful, recondite in their
pleasure and fortunate in gloom
all risible features are unclothed
in this tentacle forbidden rose
implanted garden of rails.

2

through the veiled window of her grounded vacuum
did you flirt or munch the frail potatoes?
arguments on this point reverberate
through glass knives echoing in forbidden ruins
History will not record, it will regurgitate.

3

smooth is as smooth does
flip reason and grouse about
the griddle. Heed the ringing,
ignore the flume. Nobody there
there.
It's all noise.
The only salvation
is song.

not much
to look at

or hold on
to

nothing
to eat

2002

Flight of the Philosophical Stork

The cornflakes of memory
are like the
airplanes of lamentation,
neither are they obvious
or scant.
They might be orphans,
the orifice of artifice,
orphic, oracular and orange.

Steadfast at last
in the virtue of green distances,
or fog embracing time’s
wounded tonsils. This reverence
becomes you.
The text is not toxic
nor fleshed code.
It is blue,
uneasy, flighty,
unfinished, feared.

They stood in the breach
between civility and purpose,
gauging whether this notion or
any notion could peal
prettily, anyway.

Don’t hold it
against them. Cold
makes cold.
That aching drink
could talk.

Is free will predetermined?
You can’t say that on the radio!
Ivy climbs the cop’s umbrella.
This lack of something that’s not
there is reminiscent
of smeared paint.
Someday tourists will come.

Sorry, we don’t listen to
dead Romans now
roaming through whistles
winding
nor do we attend to echoes
of flown ancients
timeless in the earth
and the trembling they delivered
as rooted wisdom
to the eighth sea.

Now spasms
of gilded tendrils
deep fingered, are silent dreaming
a solitary song.
The captive lamp in earnest
volume is like
the forged passenger.
The mother ship.
The parent company.

Fly now
bundle
2002

There It Was

There was a boss and there was a tide
 and a cold wind shouldered from behind
 The grass ached and the banker plunged
into the bass note on the veranda

 That was the scene, that was the context
as ravenous hours ate up the morning
 which was really evening, or even night

Savage bells bent, all upholstered
 in granite. Waiting for the train
in the mysterious station,
worried about the schedule, but not
the unknown destination.

2/2017

Cloudbank #1

 I think he said his name is Trotsky.
 Maybe he plays the piano.
 Some rooftop Lothario in a fiery mold
 and a mile wide leaf on the faultless highway.
 Nobody here will grow up
 until I say so.

 Steam wasn’t the only groping.
 There was the ergonomically challenged clothespin
 sprawling with doubt.
Measure for treasure, I always say,
 he said. No clouds like the present.

 2/17

When I Go

When I Go
c 2016 by William S. Kowinski

When I go don’t have to forward my mail/cause I don’t get any
 when I go don’t have to pay my bail/won’t cost you a penny

when I go I’ll be wearing a mask/so you won’t recognize me
when I go my net worth will be low so you can’t amortize me

 don’t get bees in your bonnet if I wrote you a sonnet
 instead of finding a buy-in
you think we’re getting rich but we’re just digging a ditch/
for us to lie in

 when I go it won’t be a blow you won’t find it vexing
 when I go I’ll make my farewell address while everyone’s texting

 when I go you can drop out of school get a job that’s steady
 when I go the morons will rule but they do that already

 did you find it surprising that the temperature’s rising haven’t you been listening? if they’re all blowhards when you pass by the graveyard why are you whistling? 

when I go I’m taking my name on a long vacation
 when I go I’ll take all the blame for procrastination
 when I go I’ll mail back the key but it won’t fit any longer
when I go the air won’t be free cause the sun will be stronger

 will anyone remember when it snowed in November and the world was quiet
 will they regret we knew what we would get if we tried to deny it

 when I go at the end of the show there will be one hand clapping
 when I go you won’t even know I’ll catch everyone napping
 when I go I take what I know it’s gone forever
 and when I go I go with the flow it’s now or never

 We all have to follow what the days will swallow as the world stays busy
  theres no time to make another rhyme before it makes you dizzy

Something in the Morning (Something Else in the Night)

This is a song lyric.  I haven't posted these before here but they are another form I've worked in for many decades.  I've also written the music, which in this case came first, with the two line refrain.

SOMETHING IN THE MORNING (SOMETHING ELSE IN THE NIGHT)
copyright 2016 by William S. Kowinski

Theres something in the morning/something else in the night
 something in the morning/something else in the night

 Grandmother in the garden/spider woman tells her tales
 butterflies spin around you/like packages in the mail

How many weeks till christmas/how many days of rain
the porch light on for supper/sleepy whistle of a train

Moron threw the clock out of the window/because he wanted to see time fly
 how many days without you/with no memory of goodbye.

 there's something in the morning, something else in the night.
 something in the morning, something else in the night.

Burning on the sidewalk/ of the life you could not see
 there’s nothing here that’s for you/ but maybe to believe

College was depressing/everything sad but true
 you learn that life is tragic/for everyone but you

She sits down at your table/ with her stained glass smile
 she takes you back to her apartment/for your free home trial

something in the morning...

You go back to the office/to try to make things right
 you peer into the darkness/as if its just another shade of light

In the deep blue of the evening/when the lights begin to glow
 it all has such potential/but it’s all you’ll ever know

Your destination is programmed/into your new device
 but you don’t have to go there/just think about it once or twice

There's something in the morning...

The future mocks the present/the present stares at the past/
lost in the viral moment/of the shoes that do not last.

A breeze wrinkles the curtains/ a bird sings Beethoven’s fifth
the highway sounds like the ocean but the yearning never lifts

Hummingbird at the feeder/blue cat’s come to play
 he said life is no 10 point program/it’s what you do everyday

There's something in the morning/something else in the night ...

From here the ocean seems so endless/sun shining in your hair
 but you know we’re just all tourists/spreading poisons everywhere

Thieves and liars above us/they hide in the brightest light
 we don’t seem to learn anything/just take another bite.

They take everything from us/with the power they have bought/
they get away with everything it doesn’t matter if they get caught

 something in the morning...

Buffy won’t take the freeway/Tom won’t get on a plane
 I don’t like escalators/you don’t know where they’ve been

Watching for your car for hours/never thought you’d be that long
 a hundred times I saw it coming/a hundred times I was wrong

These days with you discover/the colors of the deep
 they’ve spoken of devotion/in our castle keep

 there’s something in the morning, something else in the night
something in the morning, something else in the night

I started the water running/ I can hear when it gets hot
 wash away the chalk marks/ between what's real and what is not

 Hope is what she’s doing/ in a world coming unmade
 be kind and be useful/no time to be afraid

This scene is dissolving/ into the one to come
 it must be getting near the end but/ I guess we’ll have to let it run

Theres something in the morning something else in the night
 something in the morning something else in the night

adding something

add something to something
and you get the price
of tomorrow's pears.

the best thing that happened today
didn't.

happy happy
inscrutable as a chinese
gong:

it's function is limitless
in new brunswick,
new jersey.

ii
anthony winchester is a
spy.

yesterday he ate his last
scrambled egg
dreaming
of setting womens underwear
on fire.

just before lunch
he caught a moneychanger
BLAM
through the temple.

iii
jesus christ
is a wholly
indistinguisable
metaphor.

says his wife never pays
the bills.

iv
twentyfour years on the same machine,
brianowsky knows everybody in the plant
including all the secretaries
and who they married
and the cars they got it in.

lived seventeen years with the same woman
but never married her.
never can tell when another
depression
'll sneak up on you.

v
there are fiftysix ways to broil hamster,
sixteen of these are illegal.
all of them are unnecessary.

vi
marshall newberm gets a relief
check twice a day.
his wife buys rachmananoff
and they eat dinner wednesday nights
on the fire escape.

marshall is fascinated
with odd numbers.  they have a daughter
who thinks she is a sieve.
oleg cassini talks about the fall
line on television, allen
ginsberg says "folks..." the
landlord demands rent
every six minutes.

vii
circe
pushes the coffee at you    you
smile at her.   she says
'you wan anything else--
huh?'           which
is her way of saying
wach it          i'm
expensive.

viii
standing on the highway
six hours, want only to say
no lady, i'm not a growth
coming out of the cement
of your imagi-
nation.

george, look at that funny hitch
hiker
in the rain rides are easy
college boys with sexual frustrations
will tell you all about it.

i rode with a guy in iowa
who thought pennsylvania was
in the deep south.  he showed
me a picture of his girl. i
worried about corky, wondered
if she made it back home ok.
prettiest dog i ever saw
in iowa.

---1967

The Survivalist Song

The grave survivalist stood
 in the blue meadow
 accosting a fervent mirror.

Evening spread like pollen.
 He saw the entrance to it behind him,
 but there was gauze to stack and count
 before it all disappeared

 in the swirl of magic noise
 wreathing the blank sky,
 or the failure of darkness
 or the teeth of the moon
 or the spigots of eternity
 or the implacable prison
 of urgent flowers.

 His heart had already flown
 into the busy distance.

 7/24/2014