LOVE, JUSTIFIED

 

The absence of death

is lostness of memory   

 

The imposture 

quickly justifies himself 

 

Sad, that consciousness 

Devolved

 

“A specific capacity to be redeemed”

 

   *

 

What’s funny about love 

You forget the details 

remember the fall

   that one day, you first

loathed yourself

 

You never had recognized 

truth being Less

Human 

drawing the animal 

Spirit Card

   

seeing clouds as thickets

tall tree limbs climbed

to pry holes open 

for leafed cleansing

the moony sky’s sin

 

   *

 

The horizon is a mouth opened wide

Its hunger paves the asphalt sky

Oiled seas’ rustproofing sticks

Shorebird feathers to bodies -

A smoke aggrieved diffraction

 

Pulling myself up and over

the overwrought boardwalk

At the vacancy of doors

(its society teeming)

fairground rides invert

the undercarriage

 

You find the mailbox empty 

This being the surface of our greetings 

Its irony repose of laughter

 

   *

 

The museum keeper sorts and labels

Objects entrusted him, changing

Shows weekly, hoping visitors will not tire

of returning.

         As they observe

objects, he observes them,

hearing a voice outside his head

“unbalanced” whose?

Labels and paintings

deliberately mismatched

 

   *

 

What I miss other than you

   is also you

 

Thunder God

   indelible Lightning,

         totem

each with a claim

on a thin electric Wand

  of interruption

Piercing the fruitful

petroglyph

with a lot to ask

 

of elders, and a populace

   poverty-stricken

 

*

 

I picked some lovely flowers for you.

 “Don’t bring them by.”

 

Forests are the home of the imagination

Couldn’t get around it No matter what

 

Your life

Needs to approach

Your shoes

 

 

                                    09/05/2024

WATER LANDINGS

Placebos

being sop

mark your absence, 

but when present

the red wolf

 

recovers

communication,

intuiting

medicine’s 

danger.

 

Chaos, spirit, 

and light

temper anew 

diminution

fitted

 

for all equations

of the heart.

The dead

have an anechoic

tomfoolery

 

shooting hoops

laces pulled tight

with leg power

another jump

advancing crustacean

 

its potential

of an olden

weight-bearing

authority

toweled off

THE CONTINENT IS YOURS

Binoculars adjust for the eyes.

On a nearby hilltop

a business economy watches 

the normative close in,

circling like raptors 

 

The fire      of repudiation     having been lit

dancing commenced

 

Land rent   not to be

         collected    

                           slavery, tenancy, capitalism

evicted       

from this world   

(its place of progress)

 

w/nu hope 

w/out enclosure   laws of protection

for people,        not property,      freed 

 

*

The sky spits on me

I congratulate myself

feeling nothing

no anger, nothing

no spittle

 

I thrive alone

ignored

perfecting wisdom

while others go blind

forgetting the sutras

 

Let the text have its life

I recall the child

awakened by Mother

over no intention

but sweetness

*

Trust me

goes further

than prove it

 

a la carte

sins in stars

Spinoza’s Monism

 

   coming apart.

No man will tell me 

what to do

 

when I fly away

I’ll ask for Biscoff

Cookies if I please

 

  We age into frailty

cling to the few

distinctions we yet

 

uphold ashamed

and glad to be

forgotten

 

 

  *

I embraced a blind man

Walking his cane through the dark

When his head came off in my hands

 

Morning, and the head was back in place

Hair jelled up like the peak

Of a wooden fruit picking ladder

 

Uniformed, charged with reparations

On a continent stuffed with stowaways

Escaped from their cabins

 

No more heavy lifting

Slavery (Egyptian)

The whole population 

   building pyramids 

 

   or captives taken in war

Slavery (Roman)

The emperor’s face

Stamped on his coin

 

Patricians putting plebians to work

Taxes going up with interest

Into feudal dispensation

 

By strength, for fealty

Land parceled 

Tenants farming

 

Waiting for capitalism’s

   evening out.

Revolutionary

         motivations abound

 

  *

The soul has no connection           to Realty Drive

Pawn your security key       

    deficits, decibels, descriptions

belong to resist - 

                  beyond self

                  combat we

                  recognize

                  the body,

                  recall it’s

                  person

                  now without

                  origin

                  or bardo

                  lights - 

                       the voice    of your   thrown-ness

 

   *

Three disciples climbed

to the full reveal

of the transfigured

form

that can’t be looked upon 

and seen

 

Three disciples

         holding out

                  for a peaceful mind     

         the God-Man

         having promised,

                           “I will send it along     later”

   

Form you desire

                  Beauty       composed          restored

                           to original           face

 

 

                       01.02.2024 – 07.17.2024

                        -for Seraphim Sigrist

BACKYARD TREES

Desire, Conception,

    Malignancy -

Wind picking up

out of nowhere 

 

When we knew the body,

  we knew the person

 

Wanting the best 

   Pleading

to be seen, recognized as who

         we really are

 

  *

Yamantaka, Conqueror

   of Yama,

“Ender

    of Death”

 

Each of life’s transitions

Appropriates an ancient offering

 

The head has shifted

   A path to enlightenment

 And below, 

Shoulders of rock

 

  *

My dear friends,

in Narsaq

the one Jew 

arrived on Green-is-land

with wife and dog

to wilderness

 

I have books, 

eyeglasses 

I read, study

 

Sometimes, at dusk

I sense the child

clutching air

without shame

  as if wisdom

were an afterthought.

That was my mother’s hand.

Have you seen her?

She dances with shadows!

 

  *

The news is good.

The house of the Lord we built

         still stands.

Icebergs ferry sheep

across the fjord

Musicians negotiate 

  the music

of the mouth.

 

 

         - for Joe Somoza

         06/19/2024

         Essex, VT

A LOOKING AT, WITHIN (1840)

Guardian, custodian, teacher:

Another damned tutor to get past

Before the intuition.

 

        - De Quncey's "estrangement from Wordsworth" attributed to the latter's

           pride, arrogance, and rudeness - 

                "the whole theory of picturesque beauty"

agitating the taxed cognition

 

                    *

 

Vanished thoughts resist retrieval,

the pitch of words

No more.

 

"Seen from within"

             "Contemplated"

 

each new thought

            lobbed

                    a volley of cannonballs

                                                My Way

                              (the fort's re-enactment)

                                   patrolled

 

"to perceive directly without reasoning, know by immediate perception"

 

a paradigm    

        ghosts    

                tossed about     on lake waves    

 

                    *

 

Follow the breath                further out                than can be watched

            Sit        w/the feeling of finished "to do"

 

Intimation

            Admonishment

Done

 

                        for Romance you shall quest

 

                     *

 

The child never "safe, safe and sound, healthy"

            Left alone        (toying) with hand-me-downs

                        Needs    himself        "to be strong"

UBIQUITOUS (Levinas)

Images led 

their channeled winds

through a canal 

of birthrights

body.  

Another’s crude fingerprint

on the first to bruise

leaves piling up 

 

the particular contractions.

The same yellow slicker.

Park paths.

"Leave-taking self for another"

 

   *

The cobbled street ran along a canal

A man was going into one

Of the yellow buildings

He hung up his raincoat

Sat down at the chair by the door

And peeled off his galoshes

He had passed no one on the street

And the office was empty

There was a coffee machine down the hall

 

   *

No unconscious force

Or historical totality

Survives a military's gauntlet.

 

Fecundity's 1^st Instance

Entirely undivided

Before you pull apart

 

Sugared cinnamon

Fried dough

Loose change

FATIGUE

Many feel depressed. Our times, our truth,

   our pitter-patter. 

Rain clouds         a storm of greys.

Depression not what you want       wet, 

messing with                the innocuous

(a soldier’s boot kicked at the garden)  

Spring buds 

If lucky, brought to bloom.  

wanting to open.

I’m too tired to talk.

The broken-hearted ask, "How's your day?" 

"Amiss” I say, and to the heartbreakers, “I give.”

The bully keeps me up in the air, all his weight 

grounding his end of the seesaw.  

Tell my doctor your concerns.

I've been culling thoughts,

slighting details.

 

Infrequently, some things will clear.  

Always, one thing stays shrouded. 

   Real time bums people out. 

Lots of off base explanations, 

tried out first in a sand box.  

One person who doesn't like herself.  

Another blames meteor showers. 

Neither wants a penalty shot.

Miss, maybe shocked. l 

Tell the professionals of medication 

   I am empty within, where the swelling begins,

just above the groin, and the brain 

has no patience re-routing desire.  

I took up with an anti-virus, 

a consumer of restlessness 

who became lethargic.  There’s no reason 

to get out from under.  

The door is locked from the outside, 

   and guards dress like nurses.  

A prepared person always has a suitcase handy, 

packed for every occasion. 

Sartre's "No Exit," for instance

 

The last café you need requires your portrait

Painted as the absinthe drinker 

recalling the signature sign             a gift

from (gift-giving) Simone de Beauvoir.

Her EXIT could go up on most anyone's wall, 

out of the way and quickly misconstrued.

     

    Here you are to run, there stop.   

    Walk to keep busy.  Move between the lines. 

When nude in traffic.

           Avoid mirrors.

                                                                         

Someone was looking for something in my eyes.

A searchlight was strapped to your forehead

and its’ penciled beam swallowed 

the dark by mistake.

THE 27TH LETTER

alone.

Absolute

nothingness

with only a frightened

heart made sick

by divers spirits

passing elusive will

around words writ

that we do

Love

a little help here

what a mess

in a crowd

wants and remains

HISTORICITY

Cast off 

        emotion         snagged

  beneath black ink

 

Kept to bed, pained by light

bright behind lined eyes

 

Paris, of transvestites,

London’s condemnation

 

We disembark 

a chorus line 

at tidewater

 

Greet the shores’ noisy birds

Crack shellfish open

 

   *

Money went down the Hudson

More was coming up

 

Bequeathed

to its unkempt progeny

a colonial rash of gravestones

memorialize intent

 

   *

If only the houses

could line up

closer together

 

Don’t walk across the grass

seeded distance 

between body and blood –

 

Measure instead yourself 

lurching forward

ERRANT

I was a twin at birth

Half mother, half father

 

each gave me a name

to take apart the world

 

I was a monk

went over the wall

 

and hit the streets.

Neither Adam nor Abba,

 

Wisdom nor Eve

called me back.

 

I was lost

In the grit of a wind.

 

I wrote for my mother

and cooked my father’s books.

 

   *

All the love coming my way 

Going to save me from the blues someday

SIDEWAYS

Nothing works 

As quickly as the mind

Hurries along thoughts

The electric goes out

Filleted and breaded

white fish scraps floating

in a blues soup - 

Poisoned eel blood

Her parents had wanted to meet me

They laid towels out

on the Queen's bed

in the attic

The surprise, an argument,

Our parting:

I always expected the body 

To end sideways

At the edge of the universe.

Once more, it's fall.

I stand in front of the window

On and off all day

Hoping to catch a glimpse

Of meaning.

DUPLICITOUS

Mickey Maniac had a side no one ever saw.  

Or was it Roger’s Maris? (Etruscan, infantile.)

Slides and swings belong in a playground,

Until they make the difference

between winners and losers.

A sleepy barn has 4 sides, an open door on each end

And one “reason for being.”

The farmer (son of Heracles)

never caught on  

as to why climate change meant “forking the hay.” 

Was the sun 

Rising

into Heat?  Everything true 

had been eclipsed:

earth’s shadow, earth’s shadow. Ducky-wacky. The two 

fell behind my horse. 

I picked up the tab, put on my shades, and left the bar. 

The next time I see you at work, I’ll say “hello.” 

REDACTION

You followed the path as far as it went

Along the lakeshore, only to turn back.

Dusk forced the concession;

Fortune wouldn’t butter your bread.

He was leaping in front and behind you,

The little man, frog-like, who gabbled on.

THE 4TH WEEK IN EASTER

    Sensei has gone on retreat.

No one sits on the cushion, teaching.

    At dusk, a pair of geese squawk,

alighting in Spring's low alfalfa - 

                Refuge!

SLAPSTICK

Mentors and bourbon and ladders to heaven;

Eight lives lived, this one to go.

 

Worthy or not, there’s no looking down;

I had a target tattooed on my back.