New York Taverns of the 1940s

The gabardine quaff of knowledge,

Idea's incandescent pitch,

A summer baseball thrown endlessly 

Among the city boys.

It's delivered at first light 

With the fulgurations in the bridal shoppe,

The thought that these ideas 

Set us free

At least for that hot instant

Before the gossip of

Joy downclicks

To ennui.

There is a symmetry 

Between a mind that thinks

And a world that is

Just thought.

The holy wands and golden books

Were merely residue

Of what's pinned now to a spinning spool

Of otherworldly blue.

It lifts an idea, 

Gives it power 

In our mind,

Any idea, any mind,

It all becomes the one divine

Totalizing conscience 

That feels

What it knows.

The Mirror Doll

Only the eye knows

      and isn't telling,

For show has to come

      before the tell,

A life in contemplation

      of the hole — 

Wouldn't have a whole

      without it.

Starchy Middlebrook Recoils

All I recall

Of my dreams

Are unremembered scenes

That violate every law

In the material world.

I am always amazed

At your unwillingness 

To investigate what's possible

Whenever you believe

It can't exist.

Books from Uranus

Sometimes the most eccentric
Is perfection;

To be the baby who
Can never sleep,

The superhero with feet
Of fake girlfriend clay,

The one who makes the perverse

A possibility
And bows for knowledge
That only comes from briar braids.

We bend to what they are,
These distortions,

Grow larger,

Pulling ourselves away.

Good Bad Poem

As her body breaks down

Her demands grow more fierce: 

Dysfunction in the fingers,

Too much dust,

Too many flies mating

In the waste we've left,

Too much lack

Of perfection,

Seemingly the natural state

Somewhere else --

Not the compost pile here, 

The great recycle redeemer,

Where nothing ever shows

But lack of love,

The better to get

Love delivered

In response,

A way of learning what it is,

Love, the great unknown,

The thing that brings us,

The force that is us

Somehow

In every indivisible cell,

Autonomous, distinguishable,

Alone but inextricably

Of the whole,

Love, the source,

The ordinary place,

How all things of this reign

Fall away to its ceaseless wind.

Lesson with Garden Tools

When he said to turn the other cheek

He meant there was nothing more to learn

From being slapped.

Ah but there are cushions here,

Moments of warmth, a cool breeze

To contemplate abstractions 

As if they are the things

We make believe are real:

Lawn furniture, blue gardens,

Chicken wire on the jacuzzi.

So it is with Consequence

And Destiny and other fabled gimcracks 

Standing in our way

Like a leaky hose, something to fix 

Or let go of, as the test invites you to choose

What to pay attention to

And what you can leave alone.

The rocks succumb eventually

To our protestations.

There are valves to replace,

Tightenings to accomplish,

People to consult as if they know anything

Of the particular problem you are facing,

Which is always the same:

Why am I here, futzing with levers,

Leveraging ideas, chessboarding people

As deep background research for

The scholar of my higher soul

Whose invisible mortarboard

Waves over the proceedings

Like a shadow.

The weathervane spins, as if to tell me something

I could somehow learn.

A voice flows like a sacrament,

Posing a thought as if it

Was alive.

And, somehow, it becomes so,

Long enough to think I know

What it is, and be disappointed 

It has folded itself back in on me,

How I look with what I already know,

Trying to fit the circumscribed 

Into a tinier scheme

Like compost from a shovel

To a pot that is too small

So that something will grow,

And grow it does,

The obligatory miracle,

Everything around us sways

Nodding to our mind

As it yields its own 

Unaccountable fruit.

Sawyer

The cat goes to Tijuana to die.

It's better that way — death is golden there,

Like twilight when the sun begins to care

For what it leaves behind.

                                                 Before this Sphinx

The fur and the bones of the living cats,

Their unforgettable moans,

Go silent.

And yet we need them, to know about life,

Its trivial pains, reversible gains,

The brutality of the constant con.

How else can the dead be honored?                

Words for Vince and his Chain

Don't be cruel to the uncurious and brutal,

They are but cattle to their fattening idyl;

How impolite to warn them of their slaughter.

Surely there must be some common ground ...

The taste of clover, for example.

And so I fall before them, in mock prostration,

Declaring my envy and how I am not worthy

Of the honey wafting out of those crowns.

How much, one muses, would you pay to get some?

And no matter what I say, how I respond,

They will think it a lie, that I'm unable to disguise 

The urge for something too embarrassing to lust for.

It is like that here. They mistrust their very senses,

Their nose for clover, to throw me in their sack.

My ideas, like a bid in poker, must grow stranger

At each opposite my ante of self attracts.

The End of the Ink

Books are ghosts, that possess with their self-possession,

Though the corpse is put away for later haunting,

As if they could last forever, what never started 

And never seemed to end, unlike the hot forged thoughts

That pass with aperitifs between us, from somewhere 

Not so threatening as what will stay, ideas

That will come to define us, instead of racing

Away, like an octupus who loves every form

Until there's one that it cannot escape, too tight

The prison of the closest thing, you want to touch.

The Angers

The angers come

     From a too-solid world

That refuses to budge, 

     Mistakes turned to stone,

The fixing of one's martyrdom 

     Behind a secret deliberation.

The crows walk gingerly on stilleto heels.

The angers come

     From the vaprous world,

From nothing one can ever determine,

     A misheard imposition,

An arriving late to wait ...

     Leaving as inexplicably as it came.

It hasn't stopped raining since 1968.

The angers do not go away

     With the giant world against me,

There's no safe place to scream

     For what's left of conscience and reason

When all they ever learn

     Is be wary of my rage.

When the diaspora begins, the exiled turn pro.

Blessings of the Dark

We may not remember 

But at least we can forget

Or, if not that, forgive,

And even when we can't

At least we've strung some lights

That look a lot like stars.

My Day

"Now I see you, 

     So un-usual,

The thought of it

     Makes me smile..."

It's my day, so they say

     Before they tell

Everything they may

     About themselves.

I am suddenly King!

     So many subjects

Come from my subjects!

     I have to wait

To make it about me.

     "You can do that

Anytime," they say,

     "'Cos it's your day!"

There are rules,

     You see,

People can be

     So jealous.

Agreement About Others

It's the season of suicidal truth-seeking,

Evenings as black as the crows, and the orange flame

Too far away to convince anyone there is

A consequence. Who can look at the line of moon

Amid the distortions of blue? There is no room

To say the stars are true, when so many eyes 

Don't see them as important enough to include.

It contradicts what others know, what they have heard.

There is no point in telling them what to do, for

No one trusts another's eye, or believes what's been learned.

It is what each wants to be right on their islands

That registers, for the trees there are real at least, 

And the hegemon of belief holds them down like

Gulliver under needles, for something once made 

Belief and their being one and the same, a kindness 

Of seeing into them, eyes silent yet fixed in

An authoritative stare, saying "no" so many times

It seems that "yes" must not exist, even as the roots

Break through the soil, and the birds sing themselves closer.

It is only the earth that cares, and some stray 

Solitary souls, for whom what is right matters.

For everyone else, it is a weakness to be

Exploited, by the sneers of the fearful, that can

Overcome even the most permanent of stone.

Haiku

Inside you is the universe

Like a waiting bloom

Still you can't air drum Keith Moon 

Après le Deleuze

“Living in semblance as goal,” so “Nietzsche” said,

To find the true, one must use, says “Deleuze,”
Division, simulacra as excuse
For difference, to quiet the aching head
Against the agonies of the agora,
Its milieu of immanence,
The paid mage of the God on earth
Versus the amateur, the lover of wisdom,
Who borrows it to grind an axe
That might be peddled as wisdom, friend,
The philo-soph, a mark of distinction,
That shows the desire for what is not
Possessed. 

                    Another exercise in raw power,
Like shucking a mussel, as claimant
In the competition for consensus,
Where the sovereign is dealt injustice
And the unity is polluted, an experience
Where the true can not be conceived,
Even for Socrates, where there must be
An Ideal to be believed, where the sovereign
And unity are one,

          
                                  Because they are,
The universe exists in every cell, we just can’t
Conjure it up that way, the discus takes
Too many different trajectories
Depending on the individual will of specific
Arms. “The immanent must be transcendent,”
Not the holy eyes of flies, but the truth that can’t
Alight on warring mortals, so the higher
Crier would have you turn your attentions for,
A probative force in the unmediated res.

                                                                    Thus 

All things of mind turn to myth, for there is
Never mediation, no probative force
In the war between sensory forms —
All things are pretenders to the throne
Of theoretical, rhetorical ideal.
The simulacra, the impure, the thoughtless
Repetition, becomes a demon clone
In the proximity of bartered grain and poverty.
How one wishes for a son just like the father
For the bride, instead of the foreign
Intruder on the sovereign, the alien
That can never pass the test of verity,
The counterfeit Sophist, who insinuates
What he is and is not everywhere,
Contradicting all attempts to claim him
As he makes unfounded claims on everything,
Enough to make even Plato feel temporarily
Like Ulysses, cursing the nest of selfish suitors
Who must be avenged in the name of truth!

Their claims must be judged — false — in order to
Ostracize; nature must be deemed — wrong — in order
To justify, the immanence must be turned transcendent
In order to be corrupted, in order for the order
To be eluded, as being perverted
Away from ideal — desired — truth. Thus the fallen man,
Thus the senses are imprisoned, thus the lucidity
Of evil.

                So much will is hinged on being right,
The philosophers agree, however careful they are
To word their thoughts as questions impossible
To answer. Without truth, modernity regrets
To be informed, there is only difference,
Thus, c’est ca, there is no truth.
But how else could we have difference?!?
“Behind difference,” he bravely concludes,
“There is nothing,” as if there needs to be
Anything at all. Only those unpurified
In the fires of the agora would see
Any need for deeper meaning, for only those
Would see how their power has been corrupted
And how they were wronged because of it,
And how, because of it, they know what wrong is. 

 
                          Thus all critiques concern problems,
Not the solutions that a joyous heart pours forth
Across the tabula rasa of the philosopher’s stone,
And thus identity is born from the hearth fires
As difference; it cannot know itself
Except in contrast, like a photographic shadow,
As it cannot stay intact once it is recognized.
The mask unmasks to another mask, as the onion
Skin peels back, to endless displacement,
Unlimited divergence in the search for the abyss
That mediates.

                         Thus identities come to resemble
Each other, as “optical effects,” whose only soul
Is novelty. They actualize what they are, to be whatever ideas
They are allowed to be, what they themselves allow
To stay sovereign and intact above the black
Hole of form, where consequences lack consciousness.
They are only something other, as the witness
Who has given away all power in the name of it
Gains strength in being alone, for the sovereign
And the unity, it has finally learned, are one.

Return of What Could Not Be Thrown Away

Fear constricts, because we need to get smaller
To fit into these shoes, that walk across this stage,

To make it easy to forget everything
But the overwhelming feeling something's wrong.

What would we do if our visions were true?
Would we fly off like birds for different worms?

The minutes are so tense, the aperture so thin,
A squirrel skull pulled from an attic box

Becomes something wholly new, that has come
For our confusion, to explain the world.

Note to Saboteur

There is a me
Beyond the you,
As impossible as it is
To conceive.
The important work
I have to do
Is not for you,
Per se, or for anyone.
It just needs
To be done,
By me, exclusively.

I wish I could give you
A happier reply.
"It's nothing personal"
Sounds too much like
"We salute you,
Those about to die."

The Edge, Revisited

There is no break from misery,
The light of heaven's always there
To keep you free from sleep,
For it's the worst things that you do
That make you great,
To have to carry that much weight ...
How much wisdom must be gained
To let that go.

Curse of the Expanding Man

You want more abundance?
How could that be?
To go further away from who you are
And deeper to the world of service?
As much as the couch calls for you,
You will still feel alone.
As fast and as far as you can drive
You will still raise your arms to the sky
And implore: "more absence!"

A Note from Ricoeur

The cogito reduction,
That darkened box
Hurtling beyond the trap of the senses,
Deified doubt
As indisputable,
Because no soldiers of the dialectic
Could pose on the other side --
Skepticism canceled skepticism,
No negation could oppose a void ...

When, in fact,
The all-seeing "I"
Was discovered
In the act of thinking,
An aha moment
Forever outside
Any other self
And thus invalid
In disputation,
The truth of how being
Emerges from the darkness

While that which is obviously false
Becomes proven.
The darkness
All too apparent,
Oh but the light ...
You have to take my word for it.

We've seen these powers of the mind
Before, the atom bomb, the Holocaust,
How it can fold in on itself
To nothingness,
But of the light
We barely know,
Just an inkling it is there.