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

Workshop

The least manageable fraction
of unreleased time
is a virgin consequence of blasted
tomorrow.  This stem of night
carries flashes of life through
ardent branches, not
perplexed at all.

You want to know
where you are.
Fair enough, as hands emerge
from fragrant meadows
of longing.  The long
and short of it.

Is this the workshop honey?
parting her hair
with the sun.

3-13-13

The lost purpose of evening
when the stars are fertile
and time bends back

dreams edge their masters
into realms of dust
glowing in another universe
just across the wobbling sea.

The vagaries of day desist,
while sleep insists on
passion's focus
swimming in long sunlit waters
for the moment before it fades
back into the boundless sea.

Moon flares its rhythms,
broken words racing into its light
how do we locate ourselves
in the blazing cacophony of night
so far beyond us it seems silent?

We can't go back, we can't go on.
With aching echoes of yearning
the urge to wake back into time
before the night is solved
into the consolations of morning.

 --early March 2013

whereupon

the dreamer lies
within the lies of dreams

whereupon the strangers cry
for the strangeness gone missing

for some the course will change
as the flowing sweeps flowing on
persistent current in the novelty of days
and some things will rearrange
till absence is no longer strange
just flickers of light
that skip across the water
or a sudden echo in the night

did a lover smile
did a companion laugh
did a stranger stop and think
or even for a moment be
inspired

whereupon
the drift of haze
covers the road, but is beautiful
and the dream goes on
until it doesn’t.

2011

At my age a man expects honors
and recognition.  Forget that!
The bland leavings of diminished demands--
contributions to the ambitions of others
are all that worldly matters, along with familial fondness
however distant, however adhering to someone
I no longer am, perhaps never was--
but what do I know about that?
So this is it--cope with the present
until the light goes out forever?
I end as functions, as scenery,
as someone whose desires do not matter,
whose accumulations are irrelevant?
A stick figure of silence, just another
vaguely startled red face and white beard
identical to every other old man
our individual faces lost?
Small warily searching eyes, no
smile?  Just one
of the floaters without position
in the world, whose children are far away
or don't exist, or never existed?
Old man fading into the darkness.

2011

S'taff

I wait for the song to finally reach your heart,
for the sun of my true fathers to shake you.
I am not patient, I eat knives at my gentle
table, I wake up several times a day
always alone.
I wait for the thunder to crack over your city
of damp shock, the lightning to surprise
your mirror, so you can see the face
that I see.
I wait for the blister of a world to go away
and leave us to our own rain,
our wind, our snow, our sea,
our faces drowning in the same glass
our teeth beating in the same
madness, our dreams
at rest with each other.
I can't reverse the clasp of my mind
or the sinking of my heart
or the skin's discouragement without you.
Call it an unearthly instrument
too clear to bear a name
among the prodigal namers. All we have learned
is to turn away.

1/14/1976

Goodbye

I want to scream pictures into your mind.
Many of them are burnt with a sun I have never seen
but in them.
A leaf purple with other leaves,
a woman pink with strength.
I want to put us both on a healthy diet
and to strangle every cigarette in the world.
I want to not worry.
I want strings pulling ordinary language
past the quiet where my mind zooms.
I want the ether to be noticeable, but easily walked through.

I want your eyes where I can see them
and your hands where they will move when I move mine
and our lives to make silent dances despite our
weakness. I want you to have our baby
but only if you quit smoking first.
I want this to be the last time
I am afraid I am only kidding myself.
I want the world to tease us
to the limits of a love.

1/15/1976

Maybe the art is not apparent
maybe it isn’t real.
Maybe the silence out there
of embarrassment, of incomprehension,
that absence that is refusal
is wholly correct.
I no longer care.
I no longer expect
more. I ramble
on, being what I be,
as busy as the blood speeds
buzzing and humming.
Lonely,
sure.
But in here
with the light and the rain
the moist flaking fog
the dark boughs, the flashing trials
the golden trees, the melodies
in breath and out
why bother
stopping.
We can all
talk to the future.

12.10

This is not the silence of the cemetary
but of the soul world
of shadows that must be named and arranged,
of the explorations they force, and their rewards.

This is not the echo of the crypt
but conversation with a friend unknown,
another echo maybe, or another time
never to be known—
a phantom, or a future.

11/10

Twitter me this:
mania phobia
LOL
SOS

2010

So here among my fellow parasites,
the jibbering and buying, a warm
steady hum that cumulatively strangles
the given world,
and me scratching
the itch of writing, for that is--I've
come with alarming speed to accept--
its only remaining function.
We are the rapacious guests
and all I've got is silent gratitude
for my muscles working through this world,
its trees within the sky, its insects
ravening without conscience,
and for this brief moment
our fellow killers hidden.

In this most
comfortable age for as many as have ever
been comfortable,
easily sowing the seeds
of total destruction with every
happily stolen breath.

9/2/2010

The nerves of lemons, may they
peacefully reveal the limits
of forethought. What is the moment
when it's over? What is the future
when it's ignored? Eating can't
be remembered, not really.

Stan got on the subway in 1967
and got off the planet in 1983.
Where did he go? Does it matter?
He's gone. Was he ever here?
Or ever there? A fashion for two-toned

cars began in the model year of 1955.
Boys sat on hills overlooking the highway
shouting out their names. Ford! Chevy!
Buick! De Soto! Little girls squealed
and jumped up and down.
Now they totter
and smile, at being still alive
and yet, maybe not.
The fog before my eyes, the sudden clarity
through the earphones,
a dance.

7/2010

Boy’s Life

This stem of obvious
cool dark wheels
silence of night clicking open
and clasping shut--
me in my hiding place watching
comings and goings, magical only
because I’m hidden, and it’s night.

I sway in the tree
or huddle in the window-well
with the warm bricks around me,
safe and excited
no one sees me

...

Now the night phases vaguely
outside the melding glass
after another round of noise
beat me near numb,
dumb at the dinner table,
the prattle of forks and tongues.
After another day of busy light
locking me in illusions of action
eyes and mouths everywhere
feet and wheels, hands and money,
opinions and desires
and no one sees me.

no one ever sees me.
I must be hiding still
I must have learned invisibility
too well
the warm bricks around me
swaying in the leaves

To be seen is not to be
much more than a target.
The bigger you are in the plundering eye
the blacker you are
in the hot corona.
Better to eat this candle
and keep hiding in the night.
I trust no one.
The warm darkness around me,
silence in the tree.

7/30/98

Let the buzz slip by
as the flowing architecture
wakes you.
Across the weary fog,
the ancient plot, the passing noise,
the relocated stone, the patient water,
the apples in formation, the air
in retreat. This fervent
dalliance.
The echoes of pain,
the anticipation of everything
changing forever.

7/2010

What is the measure
of this dislocation
that I know myself
best in anger.

But note another
sign:
of dry mouth,
sounds collapsing in throat,
mind dismayed
at the weakness of anger
to make myself
understood.

No eloquence comes,
only wholeness
in that instant.
It is the measure
of what I know
I know.

early 1970s

The Chain

By gripping my eyes
in helpless insistence,
I see what is needed

instead of what be-
fore them is behind them,
forever and for
now.

For friends who will not
touch,
insolence
is my only clothing.

Forever forced, I am
lost in the needle
of these
eyes' demands,

squeezing mud
and scurrying to perceive.

early 1970s

Between State

rate this impulse: fill the page
errands like this reveal
streams of forbidden will
wiser even than 25 years of humiliation
not so smart now are we
repeating

wrapped around the reflection
the blue curl of 6
pillow of nostalgia
no angry fragments of tomorrow
just hours of artificial rescue

ribbed garden, dangling return
evading, escaping the familiar moments
turning as a sudden monster.

silhouette of a friend
waves from the station.
that was long ago, and
someone else's friend.
all that remains
is his piano.

whirling, the torturous voice
gratefully far away,
the darkness trembles
with waiting light.

9/10/09

Things are
as they
sound
how hard
or soft, close
or far
wood
or metal
scream, sigh
breath

07-09

There are no trophies in my trophy room.
There are no prizes in the drawer, certificates
on the wall. All the gold stars
are lost in the sky. There's only

the setting sun burnishing the bay
and the cold shadows coming
to meet it.

12/07