J'étais fou de toi.  J'ai été

I will never forget
the more I wanted (you)
the less I was.

If a dark night is for dancing -
will you come waltz with me?

from the top of a hill
she never heard
which way to down
and never felt
a connection underneath

a missing note
a deviate step
a vapor mist
our kisses never met

a hollow cavern
a hole forever closed
inside and out

like tar water run-off from a hopeless ash basin
an unending drizzle of forever ending dribble that fizzled ... out

help me dear earth
if you really want to be mine
blacken the soil and ink the green

in deeper ferns we reappear
as lava flows to shore.

I forgot what i was going to write  you
I know it was important
It had something to do with life
Or was it death

I'm not a word man anyway
I spent my lot
It's gone

It used to be like an eternal fountain
The gifts just kept on coming
I was a zeitgeist monsoon
A freak outbreak of the
had to do's

There was was never a question of asking
if
Or
when
It would come

It was just

the

Viscera

Of

Life

forgotten trifles
dust and pollen

tie the land and sea together
with a thicket of pine

white light shining through its crown

a bough once firmly rooted in heavy layers of strata

now aboveground it exceeds its breach

like a loaf of darkened bread
it lies (resting in the sand) stacked in rows
the sun and moon having melded its form

--- --- ---

the sky is a coronae of thorns coming down to greet me

running on the beach we see what looks like the torso of an elephant, I say its a wrecked ship, a storm has washed it ashore, you say it came from the Big Bang, we laugh and sit together on the end of an exposed epoch

it is dead
we are alive
thick with moments of compassion

fused with ignorance and neglect

how now are we communicating -- do you remember when you looked into my eyes and raised your arms triumphantly and proclaimed “ologemeide ... I tamed you!”?

moving inland far away from
the coast temptation doth bring
deeper in land the head seems consumed by everything

nearing the coast it's the heart that sings

though inland, my love, you will find me

away from the bogs or the shoals o' herring

holding you at bay with *****

keeping me next to me

wanting tomorrow to be the better day

my mind, an island for tromping shores
different from desert sands
when the tide of your concern reprimands

on this island the shells
are smaller and there are no dollars,  
the sea, a shrunken plastic expanse of
syringes and lip balm containers,
soft fluid-filled bodies turned into
sopping brown-bag skeletons,

revenges
of modern life.

there is a rivulet further up shore

do you feel it?

follow the inlet wind

near a candescent pond

there is a house

open the door

if you fall in

a home can be found.

Frz have you forgotten me?

I hear your voice, but its me saying do not listen

Anyway I say, how are you?
the court records a divorce, a child, and a republican,

You were once a brooklynite, a beloved chassid gal, so hollow to hide, have you moved upstate?

me? maybe inappropriately concerned

I dreamt we will meet one day.

I see you, you see me, then run away furtively,

I race head long, trying to catch you, to touch you at last.  

Mind numb, you duck in the LGBT centre.  I stop.  

Leaving you to minds damnation and hell, a palace of fears, fool for years, you lead me down some steps, through an alley,  open a gate, and smile,

stay here, you say, between two buildings.  

I sit next to the garbage cans against a wall with leafless vines, its the first snow, you never said when you'd be back.

It is now a year before I die, cars roll by noisily, far off a lone siren, someone is digging in the garbage for scraps, it seems impossible that inches away you were within my reach

The good verb “conn”

supersedes nounsies that say much the same

they leave their mark
and their stain.


organelles are found in living cells

but bacteria is barely surviving -

gasping, respire, respiring

god will swallow death as sure as sheol

still,

the microbes must thrive

one sloppy, the other ill


a slender hand of steel

excites it,

like the splendor of redwood mounted on peach

a cleavage emerges  (causing a **** to swell)

increasing her capacity for desire

a seeker of truth now bound for duluth?

caught in an ice floe
preoccupied by the last degree

pulling shoals
of distance below,

the south pole is now our goal,

we land on land beyond sea

and space

where a wise man plays fool
to a young girl's angel face  -  

     as an aside: he likes her
     but she is not attracted to men or goys,

scattering the cremains
of
a nobody's boy
(a boy we tried to revive many a time)

into a river where the river never ends

he remains  

sinking into darkness,

adrift in a pit
of lips of labrum

down the chosen depths

of the frozen abyss of Tehom

sometimes i feel like i am in the midwest
sitting in queens
dyslexic
listening to Jessye Norman (who listens to her anymore)

sometimes i am flying over the sea
algae deep,
crashing mountains, ocean green

its the same every night when you are not here

i get home
do dishes
heat rice and dahl
open a beer

wait, wait, something on the weimar republic is on tonight
that's not new
the same questions
why the jews

how could so many
die in broad day light
while He walked the earth?

biblical tales that still
need interpretation

who is the weaker of the two
before now or after?

Jessye now sings Samson and Delilah,
the announcer announces

the singer sings,

"my heart opens to your voice like a flower

my dearest let your loving words dry my tears

tell me you are returning to Delilah

repeat the vows you made long ago

the vows i used to believe in"

the vows of heaven on earth?

the vows of justice?

who stands to inherit the earth ... the meek?    

c'mon!

by G-d she could sing

simple tasks

done by millions of workers

will be replaced by robots.


they say workers are worried ... worried they say

how will we live - let alone support ourselves and our family's?

wouldn't it be better to have robots live in misery than us?

better to have them toil?

better to have a machine plead guilty to ******, hauled off to jail, seen for what  it is, in our stead?

let them accomplish this, or invent that,

let them cry over a missing child or wife or lover,

they should suffer, die and be buried

and rise again

Lo,
let thy robots judge the living and the dead!


like a nuke on a mike
the porch we sit on

out of a giant soft shell
plastic brains break open

I'm scared as ****
batteries are recharging
a bullseye of prophecy

isn't it time

for penitence?

I just forget everything

and don't talk to anyone

except for you, dear Lord, you are my ball and chain

having died and come back again I get to look back
watching old movies of myself,
sleeping last night off, leg twitching
dreaming of moving along a motorcade of immanent death

one by one getting flat tires, running out of gas, suddenly the battery
dies

I get out of the car, look around, and see, to my surprise

a loved one's love looking back at me, twisting in the wind, empty, alone, drunk,
its my father or mother lifting my brother or sister from the back seat to the front, carelessly driving, ceaselessly swerving

towards the waterway

if it wasn't for the guardrail,  we'd all be dead

time is a ritual now, and it hurts to come back to life, to feed the living,
to get dressed in day-old church clothes, to hit back, as one sneers at being sneered at, I pick up the Daily and skim the headlines, Lost and All Alone, A Stranger Takes a Dive, toss the rag and head to work, fixing to lie to my boss about being sick, about tasting olives, about who I am.

I got no strings

to keep me here

though born of earth

of mother brown and father white

bored I listen to music:

"you're so natural - you're so free" "I'm seeing red'

"thats when I reach for my revolver"

it happened in Southampton
("say you don't want it").



Later,

holed up in

brick and stucco prisons that last

a lifetime

there wasn't much to do
when there was time to do it

like a monkey at a temple

I want an immediate response from the world

my brother-in-law fights the same depression

he turned into a Cowboy

I stayed an Indian.

Back in Queens I see a man across the street

he's in an Andy Capp hat and twead coat
he used to hem my pants (he's retired now)

he knows my thoughts but doesn't recognize me unless I say hello first

see that ******* the stoop, the one with her hair veiled over her face, staring at her iphone as to a shrine

I've seen my mother-in-law bow down like that at Meher Baba's Samadhi

I should not have been watching her take darshan

in front of her Lord - in supplication - she folded into herself like a napkin

on the way back, we stayed at the Leela and had a lot to drink before we flew home

I wish she knew how lucky I felt being with her - praying and drinking

but last night she called and couldn't remember a thing

it pains me she is losing her memory

I  had to repeat again and again, 'yes, I have your ticket and passport'

or 'remember we flew in together and now we are going back'.

so naturally our conversations return to her growing up on a farm in Virginia; the second oldest to four brothers, her swimming in a creek and charming all the boys, and leaving home at seventeen to dance with Margaret Craske in New York City (how she loved Miss Craske).  

she married a priest who crusaded for the poor in the Lower East Side;  pregnant with her first daughter (and me, having the saving grace to have married that daughter) she met Meher Baba -  a meeting that changed her course and late in life she became a Psychologist (a PhD at 74!).   

her natural graciousness was born of the wild flowers of Machair (her people are from the Hebrides),
her love of dance, now transposed and expressed in a light and buoyant outlook, made all a fools mimicry disappear like morning vapor on a Maharashtrian plateau ...

my fortune seeing that.

one day she will forget me and the world and not come back

or when she does we will have a certainty of meeting once before.

Adam!
turn me over and sing me a song of sixpence
hearing voices, not seeing faces ... with the radio on

it's just me myself and I

driving between towns emoting, gushing
hurt me, break me, **** me!
at the top of my lungs

finding bars buried in backyards
on back roads of insincerity

birch bitten and chewed
logs wet and rotten
and still, chords neatly stacked in ordered rows

can you stand me on my feet?

back home
brushing my teeth yellow
biting my nails turgid, hoping she will come with me to a show
my state is of a lower-class shambling

hoping for a renewal
                or rebirth

sweating on the train repeating God's name

gasping for air making people nervous staring
at their phones wondering if I am going to keel over and die

it's just me myself and I

that's right, write it out in long hand first, then go back and edit

(wishing  to write  like  Tarkovsky)

comparing father and son - an unchecked exception
they were buried in separate coffins
                one in France the other, in a timber cask

but won't I be
too?

I wish I could say, "we have a saying in my country" or "scripture says" or

"I'm lost without you"  (I am and now found).

In ruins at the end of a day
building pigeon flap (or come what may)
ascending a scale of notes in a mirror of songs
behold an image
in a scale of descending notes at dawn.

XXXVII

PAR(R)APHRASES TO BE ENGRAVED IN BRONZE

1
The future
A time bomb

2
Consumerism
A snake
That swallows its tail

3
A lot of talk about human rights
Little
almost nothing about human responsibilities
Number one human responsibility
To respect human rights

4
Return to democracy for what
To see the same film over again?
NO:
To see if we can save the planet
Without democracy nothing is saved

5
Third and final call
Individualists of the world unite
Before it's too late

-----  ---  -----

XLV

ULTIMATUM

Either they draw up once and for all
The encyclical letter on survival
Or I'll have to put it in writing myself
Weeps at the top of his voice
Your Lord Jesus Christ
Of Elqui
Domingo Zárate Vega
Alias the eco loco of the north
Hurry up!

There are eternities but not so many

The planet can't take it any more

too interested
in what is being put into my mouth
to listen to hard knocks

too  muted to deaden my tone

soft walls are what I need

I could put up textured paper
with simple tacks

from floor to ceiling

but would that help?

Hollo!

has gone to ground

urinating on the floor

dug in by fear

I should have broke from under my covers
and run riot at the scent of death by now

I once read, a hound that lacks
drive is apt to dwell

not stuck in a house,
putting up pictures

or breaking in blankets

not waning and whimpering like I'm doing now

Until today
I could not see you
too afraid to look in a mirror
Skin loose
Jaw tight, a motar grinding teeth

A confused looking man,
already?
Are you ready?

Adrift, we alive are dizzy, mad, confused, or blank.

Stroking our nostril hair,
portraying different parts,
one a banker, a father, an assassin
Once even a sort of Irish troll, slash, Quasimodo,
do you regret the metaphor?

How it happened...

akin to looking back
And thinking nothing,
black on black

Whiteshade in light
Static void (smiling cow).

Who was chaufeured around Paris in that film anyway?

That girl, you know, the one who won't wear shoes
Or socks

She plays in several scenarios,
once a mother, a nurse, a nun on the run,
a chemist, a voluptuous ventriloquist,
pregnant, humming, doing the dishes, going to church,
staying up late to feed the cats

can you imagine

playing all those lifetimes on a raft
an inventive vehicle wouldn't you say?

I'm a nobody
Arranging words so they align with thoughts
Uneven and impure

These poems are like living on snack food

What I want to say is,
half of me is out the door

Living with the ants.

here come the warm jests
here they come droogie

gently smiling
level headed
laughing loudly
heaven scented

being warm they are gentry
being strung-landed
they are like a bad drug
like a bed bug
they don't even like jests

still, bring 'em on
young and all
like infant children
draining *******
too hard to reach each
too hard to touch much

some of them are us
some of them are
just in the way

leave them then
more for us

what are you thinking
so curious a surrender
without prejudice

next to those mischievous pealing eyes
soft goes the song of love

for you I think of cranberry crumbling cakes and luscious blackberry colored beets

I make for you a crown
of laughing stars, with singing orbs in guileless profusion

but if ever life ends this round - forever desperate sends are bound

for if ever a war was in my heart - it rages over being with you
or being alone,
for my pride gorges on isolation

selfishly feeding - like a dismal mite -
making a mean meal - meticulously picking out flakes

of love.  but there is love - though it seems forever lost

and if ever a semblance of a true and divine love would by chance appear,
save me a place, not waiting to be saved in this world, not wanting the next, but only now
my most dearest and loving v., save me a place, in this moment,
next to you.

[they say the meek shall inherit the earth]

those *******
no one tells me anything
so no one owes me nuthin'

when living means dying
when dying means I told you so
when a letter arrives (too late)
when a boy no longer fits in his grave
when someone dies
and still wants love

defending myself
by yawning (as if shouting who me?)

afraid of people
or fighting for myself
or smoking grass

but having hatred
baring teeth
biting my thumb (and looking at the marks after)
striking my brother (with a hockey stick)

running off a neighbor's lawn
its ***** -  too fast down and breaking a collar bone
proof gone.

still biting my thumb (and looking at the marks later)

yelling **** the the rich
and bury them with those who live outside themselves

who wear me out
who wet in commercials
transmitting their cleanliness
into our homes

they can no longer stand their filth

they smile as they **** on us

the little people

turning to face me
he dares me
to make eye contact

clenching his fist
grinding his teeth
he sputters

you middle class smurf
I don't owe you jack!

o' cinereous city  
give to me your blacktops
where on hard white asphalt
impenetrable, grave and square

we play hardscrabble with toughs
who huddle in groups
hanging keds that swing in the air

a pitch of blank gray
a field of kicked stones
ashen, barren
the end of confusing friends

but still a place to go
and run and run and run
when all at once, filled with children laughing, crying, jumping, stumbling, climbing, bouncing,
announcing life in eternal screams - - let me play!

I've seen fish swim underwater
and turtle heads peek over
and smelled leaf mildew
under blue tarp's dew.

I've sat watching my mother
knitting-in-the-round
as she watched TV
buxom and warm
(whose warm embraces)
won and lost my father
who accepted having children - not his (or hers)
raised them, fed them, sent them to school
and in the end
left.

I listened to punk
and tried to drum to it
then watched TV
and slept on the couch
and woke in a sweat
and kept my head down
and fell into bed.

just like my dad
who ate with us
then drank enough to fall asleep
sitting in his La-Z-boy
head bent to chin
half smoked cigar, half ash, half a glass  

someone who knows him
can't explain.

I love my wife
and see her
and really see who she is
who when her father died
my friend too
knowing his soul was alive
placed the phone by his side
for me to say goodbye

and that was really the kindest
thing a person could do - has done
it is her love that saves me.

and in the wing
and on the shore
and in the plains
where Indians store
the living pines as tall as mine
lifting birches - children's lashes
lay running away
towards me in the dark.

that's a good question
do I write it out first?

glasses that are cheap
fold into plastic

by the time it takes -
a train passes

hurried enough to find it
I can't locate my keys

lost in a tunnel to save
Time

i had this poem in my head

and no, it's never coming back

i have this image in my mind

and it has disappeared forever

i have this feeling

but it just won't go

i have this feeling

it doesn't leave

its a feeling like you have left,

i see you leave,

you are walking away

you walk down the stairs to the train

a siren sounds,

people pass,

a taxi honks

you are gone.

i am sick

i drank too much

i imagine dying

alone writing this poem

wondering if

someone will know

what i mean.


i know where you live,

i have your phone number

i send you emails

still i don't see you.

i call you, you answer, i ask,

can we meet any closer

than how i'm feeling right now?

i wish i could love you like a
radio hairdo

i wish i could have one

in a similar style

i wish i could hold you

out of my sight

like a radio hairdo
a total joy

i wish
we could go on like this

like light waiting for destruction

we could go on

staying apart liek

this  

like a radio hairdo

but in a similar style

for real.

I have a plan to go mad
It will not take time or money
You don't have to do a thing
But bring me lunch
A sandwich, maybe, on the train.  
No, on the steps to the platform
You will see me.
No, you do not see me,
tu me sentiras

------- ----- -------

I put my best bottles in the recycle and I was proud watching you take them.  
I thought to myself, they are doing a service, and I them
by washing the bottles out first, I write this until it whistles in my ears.

There are two typos in my last poem
There are two types of poems, my last one and the one that is being written.

I am serious about the ringing in my ears.

there is a list to drum by:

father,
mother,
sister,
brother,

the son who died is he forgiven?
the father who survived is surely not.

sitting quietly in a boat
fishing reluctantly
casting my rod
accidentally
to the bottom
of the lake

our guide
a nations pride
holds his breath
then bursts out laughing

my father rises
spits bits and flicks
his stub

glimmering light
thuds as it laps
against a hollow bow

we are drifting now

american bound.

three cheesburgers later

a valley of aspiration

o' majestic tumors, o' tedious comforts

the worst of this is true
sounding an escape with tensile strength

spires of desires as ancient as feeling itself

sinew capped mountains of sin
bones buried in landfills
city sewers, plastic bags clogging drains, in trees, suffocating bees
write me please
bite me please
lie with me please

if I were Indian maybe ever

so tall on Sundays
being tall in Bali is
not very tall at all

pause.

i am heading towards the shore

i am following the sea

i run to the ocean

cooled by the hand of your caress

enfolded in your arms


you are the drowning

you are the ocean

you are love


i am drowning in the ocean of love

drop a cap
says a lot
   of crap

used words
won't work
or at least
I ain't gonna buy it

what's it worth
if it can't be said?

until it drops
don't try it

used
words
don't
work
for
what
they need to say

to tell the grim and glum and gray

ultra-violent
rightly-fallen
defiantly-silent
irritably-sol­emn

a gap opens

a rat is about to die

muck starts settling

wood ash leaches to lye

crystals start forming
an emerald worth rejoicing.

you can sing with us

but do you know the songs?

you can drum with us but

is the circle broken?

where is smiling crow

where is steals horses

where is william strong bow?

he is with billy the long nose

[no, he really has a big nose (and a short fuse)]

there is one,
some say she kills the song,
but she is at each gathering

never misses a beat,
she loves to sing

sneaking up on us like a
grey hawk,
she swoops down,
missing her prey,

she'll be back,
watch-out!

the circle is bigger or smaller,
we decide,

everyone wants to
be close to the host,
to be the lead
to drum in the inner circle

how can we be so many?

we need to take turns

those who are close to the center know,

listen to them when they speak,

they don't tell.

i like mixes

and late night kisses

and bumps that go on all night

i have a thing for terribly thin fidgeting things
i wish i could find the cord and plug this in
(so it would work of course)

plebeian hard
raw and numb
i still **** my thumb

too tough to forget the past
holding a beachhead with half an arm ... me - i am the

the guitar that fades
as the drums come in

a short circuit

a brain whiff

my late night knees are bothering me too

this is the way that you sigh,

a leafless branch
wavering helplessly

between tides

waving goodbye to some great memory

exhaling depleted air.

Sloping beaches
roman snails
slinking deeper
into my pail.

on a hillside a log topples downward

showing a fungi of colors
in millet-seed sized scales

a devils cup
curls up

under the dark undergrowth

a mat of mossy sponge
    too lichen thick

drains its
blistering-ulcerating-soul
into an inner memory with as many folds

where are we now?

us,
a wandering tribe of black eyes.

a brief overview:

so far, in our voyage
we have stayed home
call it a parallel apocrypha
omitting all and accepting none
I own nothing

pronouns are a formality:

a Roman Catholic, a Greek from Rheims
a girl and a boy
a sister and her friends
a wife and teacher
a nun who’s a mother

chronology of implications:

first day, second month
prudes scare me
how much should a man give up
when his wife leaves him

she’s not really gone
it’s just something to think about
or ignore
or laugh about

you decide

the one person who’s bereavement
you have mulled over and over until one day
you find out the person has been going around saying your name

I call that a preferential loss
I call that, as an if

you looked
i won.


this is a poem

written by me

and sent to who-so-ever-will

open up to love,

lay aside hurt pride,

unfreeze to stay warm and hungry.

Hands folded
Left over right
Frontal silences temporal

Lobes fear duodendum
Heavyweights fear welters
Humans; robots
Sons their fathers
Sinners, a god

Art too fears
strap-ons, fears fakes
Fears sterility
Fears youth,
Fears age. Now old.

Help!
God.
Serande us with
That which we cannot, or will not
Comprehend

As seeing Khatia sur la sable makes her desirable
How can we honor her, that
I do not understand.

a river glows

feelings flow

happiness i guess

little is left after dragging myself through the night

keeping apparatuses near enough to not have to reach

she lost to pain

she came for more

she left for good

deepest waters trick swimmers
touching bottom
someday spilling out
or filling in

trickling drops
liquid quibble

how they come and go

By Circumstances Fed

Which divide attention
Among the living and the dead,
Under the blooms of the blossoming sun,
The gaze which is a tower towers
Day and night, hour by hour,
Critical of all and of one,
Dissatisfied with every flower
With all that's been done or undone,
Converting every feature
Into its own and unknown nature;

So, once in the drugstore,
Amid all the poppy, salve and ointment,
I suddenly saw, estranged there,
Beyond all disappointment,
My own face in the mirror.

when the mind becomes numb

a skull can be dissected to show its cavities

cavities are the orbit of the eyes

an old Indian saying?


I noticed you really just want to annihilate me

not comfort you.

There is a blood meal in me
ready to explode  

a tombed implosion

an imprisoned womb.


But it's too late for that

time is personal

and lately, voices.

I fear the indecipherable is now decipherable

I see in Moriah, Jonah, and Tyler, incredible nations

Cree, why didn't you listen to me!

can you ******* saliva?
get over it!

you know
the skull was dissected to show the cavities of the orbit of the suns.

here's a scene,
you are young
I am old,
we walk to the park,
light sparkles on a dithering pond
undecided
we try and waltz
through an interpreter
we watch each other
and
laugh

The People cry out
  Who will save us?
We are buried alive with deception

Dwelling like beasts in spoils of luxury
Creeping around like blighted scarabs
    growing ever stronger with rancid mouthfuls of cheat.

King of neither world
Hurler of hopes
Admonisher of dreams
Do not silence our awakening

You must save us!

I am Ha-ha
  am I to be loved by you?

It is I alone who can strike
a single chord

[though strumming with puny hands I too have limits]

Like so many drops of sweat
trickling down your spine, I caress.

In my kingdom fear reigns
   each of you
a harnesser of the means

know that I have not come to fulfill but to destroy

******, killing, stealing
Mankind will be churned underground to be reborn with burning flesh

consummate death
thy liberty is dead!

So decrees  Ha-ha

The People whimper
  do we even deserve you?

ESCUTCHEON:  Tuesday September 17th, 2019 at 09:41 PM writes:

oh please…no more fluff for the stuffy…blah, blah, blah

REPLY:
its so dank in here – do you mind moving over?

ESCUTCHEON:
have to go anyway, its late and kinda artsy for fancy yum yums like me ... so derivative like.

REPLY:
ha, ha, ha ya mean so loosely fitting that it ‘palls me *****’.   cheerios girls, as the Telegraphers say

ESCUTCHEON:
cornflakes, potatoes, silk chiffon ribbons, any french layer cake will do for you lot…btw working me times table

REPLY:
since you (men)tion it, hee, hee, kah, kah, (cough)(spits out loose tooth).

ESCUTCHEON:  
rolls around with five men until sparkling clean.  Just like all the men *** known, T. Hee (she wahnts five x =’s 45)

REPLY:
leave it alone pal (3plus10)

ESCUTCHEON:  
yeah or just leave. this restaurant is for invertebrates and finger stats and rind rats

cafe french is stupid. and quit pointing that thing at me
it feels like two flutes in the back

i **(p)e everyone just turns out to vote (for me!) (aside to self – how does one thought supersede another (self to aside – withering like self-replicating worms - it's sequential, isn’t it?))(parens within parens)

huge thugs. good work all. take 5 (6-1=3)

REPLY:
he's drunk.

ESCUTCHEON:  
blood everywhere

meh, just on the napkin...thank g-d

Geesh, Im surprised he could keep (alive) that long  (plus 0 minus 0)

Comment awaiting approval.

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Love  Time  Left  Behind  Tears

Eyes  Lost  Dark  Heart  Pain  
­
Feeling alone all day

Your sun hands inside a falling man

Life.

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Black Stone Lying On A White Stone

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day, on some day I can already remember.

I will die in Paris--and I don’t step aside-- perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.  

It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself with all the road ahead of me, alone.  

César Vallejo is dead.  

Everyone beat him although he never does anything to them; they beat him hard with a stick and hard also with a rope.  

These are the witnesses: the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms, the solitude, and the rain, and the roads.

I was dead during the day at the office
It was I who followed me home for dinner
I left me feeling empty in the evening
Still I thought I could be slept off over night

In the morning I prayed to God never to leave me
for forgiveness can never be redeemed

Yet nothing was done
So forgetting the night before I carried on as usual
Tardy for this, too late for that, too quo kid to care
Scratching my chest
With a bliss this small I'd stop
But
Each day's the same

death followed me
empty  
over night
awake

Never redeeming
nor ransom free
In the morning
I never left me

you have dis-joined parts

can they be re-attached?

Looking in a mirror, taking a photo
it's as though you blended them

bangs pulled back
you comb with eyes closed
as if scraping with teeth  


we are divided like
salt and water.

One self faithful

the other,
black, pungent, libidinous,
like a *****

I want to ask if you like your hair pulled back
with your eyes closed

a little salty?

are you looking

from the outside?

I am

Why am i writing you
Are you such a mystery?
I cant even remember the times we spent
Together
Can you?

You hate me thats certain.
I can even remember why
Its because i liked you
Isnt it?

it felt like you liked me too...

What people feel?
What do you feel?

I've had this conversation with you before

And still nothing.

A letter might be better
Or
Still more confusion.

You are a queer fellow
Sitting there
Arguing with lampshades
about how little people know
And who is with you
And who's against

It all comes down to
Past lives,
Yeah, the stuff you did before
Being born

So, why don't you just
Leave

And try again.

but so far nothing.

I would liked to have kept it
that way

last year, anyway

this book is
based on an
inner experience…

no, strike that

an inner experience
basked in sun drenched
aura's spilling their little yellow drops
of
blood money.

At night the states

I forget them or I wish I was there
          in that one under the
Stars. It smells like June in this night
          so sweet like air.
I may have decided that the
          States are not that tired
Or I have thought so. I have
          thought that.

At night the states
And the world not that tired
          of everyone
Maybe. Honey, I think that to
          say is in
light. Or whoever. We will
          never
replace you. We will never re-
          place You. But
in like a dream the floor is no  
          longer discursive
To me it doesn’t please me by
          being the vistas out my
window, do you know what
          Of course (not) I mean?
I have no dreams of wake-
          fulness. In
wakefulness. And so to begin.
          (my love.)

At night the states
talk. My initial continuing contr-
          diction
my love for you & that for me
deep down in the Purple Plant the oldest
          dust
of it is sweetest but states no longer
          how I
would feel. Shirt
that shirt has been in your arms
          And I have
that shirt is how I feel

At night the states
will you continue in this as-
          sociation of
matters, my Dearest? down
          the street from
where the public plaque reminds
          that of private
loving the consequential chain
          trail is
matters

At night the states
that it doesn’t matter that I don’t
          say them, remember
them at the end of this claustro-
          phobic the
dance, I wish I could see I wish
          I could
dance her. At this night the states
          say them
out there. That I am, am them
          indefinitely so and
so wishful passive historic fated
          and matter-
simple, matter-simple, an
          eyeful. I wish
but I don’t and little melody.
          Sorry that these
little things don’t happen any
          more. The states
have drained their magicks
          for I have not
seen them. Best not to tell. But
          you
you would always remain, I  
          trust, as I will
always be alone.

At night the states
whistle. Anyone can live. I
can. I am not doing any-
          thing doing this. I
discover I love as I figure. Wed-
          nesday
I wanted to say something in
          particular. I have been
where. I have seen it. The God
          can. The people
do some more.

At night the states
I let go of, have let, don’t
          let
Some, and some, in Florida, doing.
          What takes you so
long? I am still with you in that
          part of the
park, and vice will continue, but
          I’ll have
a cleaning Maine. Who loses
          these names
loses. I can’t bring it up yet,
          keeping my
opinions to herself. Everybody in
          any room is a
smuggler. I walked fiery and  
          talked in the
stars of the automatic weapons
          and partly for you
Which you. You know.
At night the states
have told it already. Have
          told it. I
know it. But more that they
          don’t know, I
know it too.

At night the states
whom I do stand before in
          judgment, I
think that they will find
          me fair, not
that they care in fact nor do
          I, right now
though indeed I am they and
          we say
that not that I’ve
          erred nor
lost my way though perhaps
          they did (did
they) and now he is dead
          but you
you are not. Yet I am this
          one, lost
again? lost & found by one-
          self
Who are you to dare sing to me?

At night the states
accompany me while I sit here
          or drums
there are always drums what for
          so I
won’t lose my way the name of
          a
personality, say, not California
          I am not
sad for you though I could be
          I remember
climbing up a hill under tall
          trees
getting home. I was
going to say that the air was
          fair (I was
always saying something like
          that) but
that’s not it now, and that
          that’s not it
isn’t it either

At night the states
dare sing to me they who seem
          ******
any more I’ve not thought I
          loved them, only
you it’s you whom I love
the states are not good to me as
          I am to them
though perhaps I am not
when I think of your being
          so beautiful

but is that your beauty
          or could it be
theirs I’m having such a
          hard time remembering
any of their names
your being beautiful belongs
          to nothing
I don’t believe they should
          praise you
but I seem to believe they
          should
somehow let you go

At night the states
and when you go down to
          Washington
witness how perfectly anything
          in particular
sheets of thoughts what a waste
          of sheets at
night. I remember something
          about an
up-to-date theory of time. I
          have my
own white rose for I have
          done
something well but I’m not
          clear
what it is. Weathered, perhaps
          but that’s
never done. What’s done is
          perfection.

At night the states
ride the train to Baltimore
we will try to acknowledge what was
but that’s not the real mirror
          is it? nor
is it empty, or only my eyes
          are
Ride the car home from Washington
          no
they are not. Ride the subway
          home from
Pennsylvania Station. The states
          are blind eyes
stony smooth shut in moon-
          light. My
French is the shape of this
          book
that means I.

At night the states
the 14 pieces. I couldn’t just
walk on by. Why
aren’t they beautiful enough
in a way that does not
          beg to wring
something from a dry (wet)
          something
Call my name

At night the states
making life, not explaining anything
but all the popular songs say call
          my name
oh call my name, and if I call
          it out myself to
you, call mine out instead as our
          poets do
will you still walk on by? I
          have
loved you for so long. You
          died
and on the wind they sang
          your name to me
but you said nothing. Yet you
          said once before
and there it is, there, but it is
          so still.
Oh being alone I call out my
          name
and once you did and do still in
          a way
you do call out your name
to these states whose way is to walk
on by that’s why I write too much

At night the states
whoever you love that’s who you
          love
the difference between chaos and
          star I believe and
in that difference they believed
          in some
funny way but that wasn’t
          what I
I believed that out of this
          fatigue would be
born a light, what is fatigue
there is a man whose face
          changes continually
but I will never, something
          I will
never with regard to it or
          never regard
I will regard yours tomorrow
I will wear purple will I
and call my name

At night the states
you who are alive, you who are dead
when I love you alone all night and
          that is what I do
until I could never write from your
          being enough
I don’t want that trick of making
          it be coaxed from
the words not tonight I want it
          coaxed from
myself but being not that. But I’d
          feel more
comfortable about it being words
          if it
were if that’s what it were for these
          are the
States where what words are true
          are words
Not myself. Montana, Illinois.
          Escondido.

Welcome me
To your crude levity
O white seminole

Come clean
And
Milk me of mine

The god within me
Like cream on top
Hope to god an angry god

Today I made no alliances
All shattered or broken
smiles turned into sneers
Kidding cuddling
All but burning rain
But new kindnesses
are born
you wait and see

A start of new
before his threshold
Awaits us
Has waited
For
us