bp bp bp bp
footsteps nearing me
why do i get nervous
bp bp bp bp
wait
i’m alone
my heartbeat again
bp bp bp bp bp bp bp

i haven’t been sleeping
but i sleep good when i do
lots of dreams lately
but they’re all too realistic

i’ve been daydreaming about vietnam:
i’m following this lady
who sells bananas on a bike
she’s leading me through the bazaar
to find man who sells spice
spice man just cracked a watermelon
the juice running down his hands
the aroma strong, clean
i can’t speak vietnamese
but i wonder how much he’d haggle
on a wedge

this morning on my cold walk
air blew back my rusty hair
i was purposeful tardy
but i was happy
i saw the browned ginkgo biloba leaves
limp by my feet
-they’re lucky you know, the ginkgo leaves
and i wondered if banana woman had ever seen ginkgo

last night, when I dreamt I was a fish
slipping into the water to guide red, glossy trout upstream
who slid out of the water to back the subterfuge I’d designed to infiltrate and destroy not the lush
foliage walled house or the empty lawn with dining chairs and napkins all scattered, but rather the entity with no face
which made its home there and set up traps and laid in wait and yet, through any danger I felt there was also calm
and the air did not feel too thin or too heavy
but rather as if your warm breath was behind me, and you were behind me
standing with the fish women and their cool eyes gazing past me and hands upon my shoulders, and we were the strong, quiet water

Often
Wondering
This fickle bit
Of picked wind hit
Tossing my hair
In blur

seemingly
continuous
and
never begun
burns my hand
and my tongue

my feet
like air
murmur past
flatiron towns
of nothing and everything
the obscurity of it all
does not keep me up
unless intentionally

and temporary towns
for momentary bounds
bonds
beds for my heads
that linger
in sound
irritated as their best state
and suspension as their worst

And so I ponder
Longer
And still longer
When

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.

In a strange mood - see/write art



in a strange way, disorganized but straight on,
light tinted magenta, issuing, in frothy large pours, from my mouth,
knowing what to say, and the meaning too,
I can more than walk, can write, on water,
where all can read weeping, Mary-miracles of seeing, living words,
themselves, on light waves lapping in a
shifting rotunda vision, color reorienting spatial senses.^

in a strange, strange stitch, seasonal spirits and witches,
Chagall, Baez, Dylan Thomas, Donovan, Richie Havens
doing their knitting in my brain, from Montmartre to the Midwest to Monterey,
painters and poets in lockstep head-messing with me,
imperfect clarity but still one voice,
see/write art,
so went and caught the wind, going gently into night
to banish the hodgepodge of uncertainty from inside out.

knowing well you don't understand fully, but jumbling tumbling
verses are sliding off my rusted tongue as fiddlers fly above,
roughened words, hewn from a paper cup, spilling diamonds uncut, imported from Sarajevo, Montparnasse, the Lower East Side.
wretched me, in the hour I first believed, this amalgamated conception conceded,
seceded from my mind into your palate for a tasting,
tho neither drugged, nor deaf and dumb, just slammed poetical-like, this write is
all I have to portend is your affections, your attentions, to yours, am beholden.

a *****, well respected man in daylight,
the hidden references accuse,
woke up to see Wednes-day Caesarian born,
askance glanced at the prior passages of the night before,
when my palate clefted,
when eyes chose not to distinguish
between right and lefted,
in the nightlight,
a ***** man disrespects language convection/convention,
and lays before you activating stanzas and his mind, prone,
but always the truth, speaking,
the visions, leaking, mind to eye,
recombinant, into our minds eye.




^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell


Rather than write extensive notes on the many references, inspirations in this poem, if there is a line that intrigues, ask me