Dealing with Delmore
 
So, I’m playing poker with Delmore Schwartz
and I want to know what he thinks
about the state of current affairs, but he’s working
on an inside straight and I’m tempted to fold.
“One,” he says, and I deal him the one he wants.
I can tell because he’s shifted in his chair,
settling back. “Women will rob you of
your passion,” he says. “There’s no poetry in that.”
I hear about his wife’s infidelity and try again.
“What of the nature of art in the information age?”
He ups the ante. “What about another drink?”
He raises me a Jackson and wins the pot.
“Let me tell you about art,” focused now
and leaning forward, “one minute you’re a genius.
The next you’re taking out the garbage.
It’s all the same to me. Either way,
you end up smelling of week-old sausages.” 

raison d’etre
the children have come home,
unhappy and smiling as always
no matter what they come home to.
wash hangs from a line;
soda is substituted for potatoes;
relevance falls down the stairs and
aftershave smells like boot black.
he flies an american flag, most
likely to remind himself what country he lives in.
i suppose it’s hard to remember even simple things
when news channels encourage a bumper-sticker
mentality. we’ve talked. we’ve bloviated.
other times, one-word sentences passed for
conversation. the last time we talked, i said,
“don’t give me that patriot bullshit. that’s
tired, man. really tired.” there wasn’t much
point in saying it again.
there’s a large oak tree in the backyard
loaded with nests and swings. a
woman who seldom leaves the house. maybe
his wife. maybe his mother. maybe the children
aren’t his. maybe a robin flying backwards means
the earth has stopped revolving. maybe it will be
dizzy when it lands. i need to drive a bit and pick up
a paper to see what day it is. maybe the hours
are moving like the robin. but the day doesn’t
matter here where so many have to remind
themselves where they live. look at all the
televisions, never off; all the flags fluttering
in the same direction. i don’t know if the earth
has reversed itself or not but i’m having
difficulty recognizing simple things: what used
to be thought of as sanity. there’s this flipping
in the breeze. underwear, tee-shirts, white sheets,
flags. snapping to the crackle of fireworks that never end.

The Gunman

I've never killed anyone in this country...yet.
I let some bullets fly in the sand box but'
never ever went to check out the results.
Most the time, I carried a malfunctioning 45.
The pistol wouldn't feed from the magazine. 
I had to load one bullet at a time by hand.
For a while I waltzed around with an AK.
Not a souvenir, just a found reliable weapon.
Closest I could have come to shooting anyone
was when I was a 'tower man' as a prison guard.
None of the cons started any trouble in my area.
I did shoot a small refrigerator in the tower.
Blew a hole in the door with double aught buck.
Tore up the insides real good, but it still worked.
I called the shift captain, said I fired a round.
Accident of course.   I didn't hate refrigerators.
Captain says, "What the hell you doin' up there?" 
I say, "I guess I'm fuckin' up."   Silence then,
Captain bust out laughing and couldn't stop.
He sent a lieutenant to the tower to check things.
Lieutenant takes the gun and shoots out a window.
It was determined that the gun was defective,
Or, maybe we both were.  I taped up the refrigerator.
I think it's still there (Tower 3) after all these years.
Curious people would ask, "Why'd you shoot it?"
I always reply, "'Cause it was runnin'."



Book Burning

Hot damn!  Book burnin' at the church.
Pure filth and trash goin' up in flames.
Opportunity pounds upon my door.
I gather a stack of my own vulgar books,
Run down to sell them to the faithful.
Yup, make some money from the sales.
But, not enough.  I sell them slightly
Above what they cost me to print.
Stroke of genius, I print some covers,
Book covers with nasty nasty themes
And wrap them around books I find.
Books I find in the trash or get free.
They sell like hotcakes.  "Brother, buy
A filthy book to burn,  Sister, of course
The donation goes to the church." 
The church of my empty wallet,  It all
Worked fine until a cover falls off and
They see that we're selling fake cover-
Wrapped old Nancy Drews and Mother
Goose Rhymes.  That was when they
Considered throwing us into the fire.
There are times when one can run fast.

1.6 equations of the apocalypse


A cyborg human of mass 5 kg lies on
The horizontal cheeks of a dark god.
If a horizontal fire of 8n is applied to
The nose of the wind through the tip
Of the flames and coefficient of the whirlwind,
Transforming a boy to a man, a man to a god
The total measure of bones broken by
Stone-age goddesses and their broken lips are:
     a.       The cyborg + human= 2.5 kg x 2
     = 5kg of fire neighing on the tooth of the apocalypse.
     b.      The horizontal fire incubating the laughter
     Of bones in this poem= ––termination ––
                          8n in geographical force
     c.       & because a poem died with no masking tape
Of death in a whisper:

Bones= horizontal fire
Cyborg human
——> (h + f)  n  = 8n
C + h= 5kg
——> h + f
C + h
——> 8n of breathless fire
5 kg of terminated thunder
——> = 1.6 men singing the anthem of heaven
            = 1.6 mothers with no song to sing their melodies
            = 1.6 gods, overgrown into monsters
            = 1.6 universes with no oxygen to name a soul
            = 1.6 whispers of fire on the chest of time. 

Charles Mingus: 1979 - 
jazz makes otherwise
wise—

play the wrong notes
they still do something
play the right notes
they do too

hence the jazzy
like warriors—
old as their tomb

jazz reminding
we're all of us
yet born


Expected:
A child digs for treasure
and delights finding a worm.

Plant strawberries
you grow ravens.

Ask for much, receive little.
Ask for little, receive much
or little
or nothing.

I asked for everything
I received you.
You asked for nothing
you received me.

Beware looking in another's eyes—
you'll find something.

Transmission

Drinking red wine on the patio,
slapping mosquitoes the color of smoke,
I watch the Milky Way shift east to west
above the roof’s black shingle.

One hundred thousand years ago my ancestors,
beneath these very stars,
invented a glossary of gods to limit chaos.
Mosquitoes died, leaves fell,
the galaxy drifting west.
                                                                                                                    In the liquid gift of night,
I send my signal to the future.
By the time it's reached,
I'll be gone.

Night Ride

Full tank of gas
my old Impala waxed smooth

I'll keep it under 140 mph
out into the country

heading deep into the back roads
narrow lanes lined by wide-eyed deer

down and up into the hills
moonlit trees and meadows

listening to the hum
of the never ending

memories
taking their turns

removing my hands
from the steering wheel....

“The Genes of American Decay”

In a country of senseless killings,
And brutal overseas domination
“There’s no place for this kind of violence,”
A senile president says
After the failed assassination of a burgeoning fascist.
The veneer of prayer is like the blood on the ear,
A barbaric sign of sanctioned irrationality
Twisting hatred into the divine.
The underlying ill will split the people inside,
Tuned to the dominant civility that is ongoing genocide.
They have no aim. These states cannot unify
Beyond the delusional equity that all
Are burning equally in the collapse of our home
Or the bulldozing of homeless camps,
Although that is clearly a lie.
Your myths are drenched in the glory of war,
Your conspiracy ideologies believe in the necessity of apocalypse.
Yet all must pray, and unite
in all being fascists today. 



“No Time For A Peon, Hey Protean Mag?”

How are art
And politics the same?
For a start
Think of the nature of fame.

Each one the privileged domain
Of the upper classes
Leaving a drain
On the expression of the masses.

Is it that socialists so intellectualize
That they forget
The pillar of their theory is set
On the simple need to democratize?

Where is it that The Left will go
Creating authorities out of an industry like Verso.
Building hierarchies out of a bourgeois sensibility
Believing the extent of the process was getting a doctorate in Marxist theory.

Don’t tell ME to organize
Or expect me to read your stars
As if the movement was “ours,”
If one simple dialogue you can’t even communize. 

Sometimes
--------------------
Sometimes I forget
just how cool it is
to be me.

I've got exquisite
taste in music.

Literature.

Films.

Food.

TV.

Pretty much everything
to be honest.

Sometimes I forget
just how cool it is
to be me. 

Meditation on Alcoholism
Insanity climbs to the top of spine,
It's always some kind of beast or another.
Ground meat for a back,
Bones sucked dry.
Sick, hindered by the very weight of thought,
Crashing harder than meteors.
Imprints of destruction in skin,
The archaeological artifacts of a life
With out control.
Never quite able to understand the divine
Spark within; Never able to accept
That helping hand. Invisible yet all embracing
Which comes from the eternal fount
That bleeds love.
Never quite able to grasp the mythic hope,
That once saved my soul.
Perhaps this time I'll learn the lesson;
Before i'm beneath the ground so cold.
-------------------

In the times of struggle/\a new smoke break poem___
Waking up and going to sleep

Living a life constantly on the ropes
Blocking nor feet shuffling. Brings
recourse
Sitting out side
The frozen world crawls upon me
I am shivering beneath it
Beneath the weight of all of it
Smoking one of my rare these days
Cigarettes
thinking of how such
A life was once sought by my younger
Version
now ragged and embroiled with
Dis ease and despair
I exhale what smokey life remains
----

For Michael McClure __
Transformation of language
A mystical ecology
Holy mumbling
Of existence

Be meat stars
Eternal vibrations
Of sound
Be you
Me
Us
The full bodies of intelligence
Swimming same pool
Be the eternal
Sigh
Of birth
Guttural echoes
Of concentrated
Protoplasm
Our ever morphing
Consciousness
Moving through
Time simultaneous
Explosions of
Immortality
Lasting both a second, for all time
The bicycle of
Dream
Hear my mammalian swoon of silent
Augury
Sigh
------