The dark intricacies of loneliness
That many lovers many friends cannot untwine
Sleeplessness beyond drugs
How has the traveler grown so foreign
How retrace the itinerary
To the primal transparency mythical no doubt
Which made visible heart lungs fear and expectation
And made visible the pulsation of the blood
The cartilaginous appendages of an embryo

Moving through the multitude in a plexiglass box
Miracle acrylic that withstands bullets
The surface a miraculously transpicuous mirror
And many in the throng express concern
How are you they ask
And What are you doing in that box
And you answer in the most appalling cliches
Referencing evil clowns vicious bunnies
And exercise apparel that is not what it purports to be
And you wonder why you resorted to irrelevancies

But you know the true cause
You hoped to invoke matters of general interest

But you further know that hope
Is merely a shade or covering or compensation for fear
Appareling anxiety in the logic and the freshness of a dream
When finally you know that you know nothing
About clowns bunnies or apparel
Except insofar as these antic costumes
Conceal and thereby reveal
The lineaments of ungratified desire
Horror in the casket of reflections

Dionysus and Apollo of course
But also Hephaestus and Aphrodite
As flint copper and iron precede the farm
And the drive to reproduce precedes all

Comically mismatched couple
Or perhaps more punishment than joke
Small wonder she preferred the dashing knight
To the ugly stolid artisan

She the force that drives hydrogen toward oxygen
He the understanding to break apart ferric oxide
She the drive to create
He the will to carry out

She the mother of Eros martial demon
Herself with no mother save the sea
Compounded of semen of parian hue
And water yes but also the salutary sodium chloride

Venus with her boy’s name
Not lacking in warlike virtue
Who drives like her virgin sister
All to join the hunt

Goddess who divides the double helix
Who smiles when it joins again
Haply with felicitous or baleful mutation
Within the firm receptive flesh of her mons

He hero of the iron age who dwells within mountain
But not without antecedent and descendent avatars
The robust and the gracile early hominins
And later wielders of the steam engine and the binary code

The god with his tools for that which works
And hence of the proprieties
Artificer also of those prostheses
That make human life possible

Thus the halting deformity
Fabricates the autonomic tripod
And jewels and radiant chambers and toys and weapons
That make immortal the anthropoid immortals

She the drive to create the same anew
He the will to make the same again the same
She brings liquid to fruit
He goes after hard earth hammer and tongs

To construct architecture of curious detail
But the roof must keep the rain out
She doesn’t mind the rain
Washing the car in her bikini

A good blade a good coupling
She smiles upon spontaneous intermixture
He frowns above the daunting assemblage
He the clay she the foam

Take digital audio for example
Of course the promethean theft of theogenic electricity
A configuration really of volcanic fire
But worthless without the application of skill

Worthless without the daunting assemblage
Of equalization gain compression and delay
The marshaling of tracks of thirty bellows
Worthless without the caressing liquidity of the voice

Or lyre pipes or fiddle
Or for that matter blocky earth-born sculpture
Or flickering firelight
Or all-absorbing tale

Or the beat of the drum
Descent of the malleus
Song of the beaters of flax
The marvelous saltire across the beating heart

A million mutations obtain ranged in field indeterminate
From geometrical perfection for measuring twice
To rowdy drunkenness that dismembers
The lightest caress the blow upon the anvil

She of flamboyant display
He of patience unseen
Deviser of the apparatus that shows
To advantage her irresistible breasts

Miles Davis
Lenny White
Aretha Franklin
Ray Charles
Buddy Miles
James Brown
Gail Ann Dorsey
Louis Armstrong
Patty LaBelle
Count Basey
Jimi Hendrix
Big Mama Thornton
Wayne Shorter
Mississippi John Hurt
Art Blakey
Ray Brown
Lester Young
Billie Holliday
Blind Arthur Blake
Bessie Smith
Any portion of infinity
Is pathetically finite

To reduce the American flag to a single blue line
What a vile desecration and not just of the flag

October
November
December
January
March
April
June
July
August
September

I demand blue moons
Azure skies
Mood indigo

DK & The Hoop Snakes
Downstrokes
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kcP2JZLz1Le82gisZhri8F7SYxPrudWkw

Sunlight
I’ve been away for fifteen months
Feels like it’s been fifteen years
As my head moved forward felt my heart falling behind
But in my hour of darkness I’ve not been as I was blind
Let the sunlight in your eyes
Let the sunlight in you rise
I got on the bus to neverland
There’s a reason why they call it neverland
Frozen in the winter of the everlasting no
At last I hear the voices of the springtime waters’ flow
Let the &c.
In olden days a madman would be shut inside a box
Treatment for a head case would be darkness bars and locks
Nowadays the night police mad passions up in heat
Blow away the naked guy found wandering in the street
Praying for your body as they drop you in the hole
What they call asylum is a tomb built for the soul
Let the &c

Most Perfect Jewel
My oh my what have I done
Carelessly cast away
The only woman I ever loved
If she falters let her fall
‘Cause even the most perfect jewel is flawed
Day and night you work and toil
To make accomplishments
Something you can be proud of
Deady pride that twists your heart
When even your most perfect jewel is flawed
It’s a disappointed feeling
When you get just what you want
No pleasure is both permanent and pure
You want it make it stand still
To turn to stone
It’s a disappointed &c.
On the night I cross the bar
To meet my Maker
Will I have the courage to stand tall
And say take me in Almighty God
‘Cause even Your most perfect jewel is flawed
Even the Lord’s most perfect jewel is sadly flawed

Velvet Sleeve
Why my beloved did you abandon me
Why did you leave me my love
That’s when a hot seed
Burned through my fine velvet sleeve
Hostility perfidy insanity malignity
Incivility impunity dishonesty duplicity inanity banality
A swarm of a thousand wasps
Pursues me to the very brink
Of the ancient city cesspool
Deputy seeks revenge upon me
For the death of the sheriff
Whom I never shot

The Valve
I had a valve installed
In the back of my neck
Guilt worry and indecision
Making me a nervous wreck
I got all kind of symptoms
I got invisible pain
The Doctor said I need an implant
Keep me from going insane
Oh the valve oh the valve
Oh the valve it doesn’t shut no more
It’s all crapping out it’s not keeping down
Stuff coming up through the basement floor
My head is my house
I got a window eye
I got a hole in my rooftop
Open to a stormy sky
I got a chimney facing downward
I got a padlock in my mouth
I got danger on the outside
I ain’t never going out
Oh the valve &c.
I prayed for madness
And the madness came
I tried to halt that delivery
But it showed up just the same
I thought it’d help me write a letter
I thought it’d help me write a song
I’m not feeling any better
I’m feeling bad that I was wrong
Oh the valve &c.

Pretty Fire
Fade to black but see the image frozen on the screen
Takes me back to the dirty forest to the dirty playground
To the dirty primal furry scene
I want to turn back the line that I crossed
I want to be obliterated buggered beaten maimed
I want to watch at the keyhole I lost
I want to play the old familiar game
I’ve outgrown the stupid tricks I followed where they led
On my own I learned to scratch the pebbles
On the uneven pavement
I learned to scratch my skin until it bled
I want to drown in the creek in my backyard
I want to take a boat ride with my old vacation friends
I want to find where that dark river starts
I want find out where that river ends
Down my throat never kiss me any other way
Skin the goat let the blood go running
Let the blood go streaming
Burn the fat and throw the meat away
I want to sulk where the grape tangles grow
Light my cigarette upon the sacrificial pyre
I want to write words that nobody knows
Throw my paper on the pretty fire

I Can’t Go On
Sleep who says sleep
Someone who gets no sleep says sleep
Peace who says peace
Someone who gets no peace says peace
And it’s all I do to make peace with you
I can’t go on
One who says one
Someone who’s got no one says one
Love who says love
Someone who’s got no love says love
And it’s all &c.

Cathy Ann
I got an invitation to go out to a funeral
From the mother of my old girlfriend
Cathy Ann died of leukemia
I never loved her she died for love of me
I never loved her she died for love of me
She died for love of me
Now what am I supposed to do
I really thought really I loved her
Till I met you my love and off we ran
Found out I’d all along been telling lies
Fell out of touch with Cathy Ann
I never loved her &c.
I never listened to her heart’s love
Heart’s love heart’s love
And then sickened in her heart’s blood
Heart’s blood heart’s blood
I know I’m a conceited asshole
I know the cause of death was cancer
I know I don’t know what effect I had
I know I’ll never know the answer
My friends say I should get outside myself
Like try some charitable giving
And Jesus died to save the dead from hell
Who’s going to die to save the living
I never loved her &c.
The mother of the Virgin Mary
The virgin martyr St. Catherine
Heard of a billion babies named for them
But neither one protected Cathy Ann
I never loved her &c.

Message of Love
Hear the rhythm of love
Hear the rhythm of love and justice coming down from all around
Dreaming back to Eden nowhere and everywhere
The land of peace and freedom
To save us from the burden of
These endless days of restless rage
Hear the rhythm of love
Hear the rhythm of love and justice coming down from all around
Hear the rhythm of love coming all around
Hear the rhythm of love and justice coming down from all around
Keep away from cowardice and don’t give into fear
Don’t be intimidated by
The selfish ones those long black guns
They want frighten everyone
Sometimes they shoot sometimes they score
They buy their courage at a store
Something’s living in the sunset
Something’s living in the ocean
Something’s living in the mountain
Something’s living deep within us
Hear the rhythm &c.

Residue
You left me with a residue
A wasp-colored stain that I cannot forget
A frank expression everybody gets
You left me with a residue
You left me with a residue

I Will Signify
I’m overcome with depletion
My plenty hoard I have all spent
I’ve spent my wisest hours sleeping
My waking hours on indolence
I’ve turned my palace into wasteland
But in the place where castles rise
To such a height on so blank a night
That tells me I will signify
My jealous guardians make proposals
I should forgive I should forget
They designate my word and promise
And style them each a petty jest
The gov’nors threaten retribution
My poor weak case to charge and try
To such a height on so blank a night
That tells me I will signify
I will signify
Can’t be satisfied
While I live or die
I will signify
Somewhere is form somewhere is meaning
Just where remains a puzzlement
The hell is heaven’s star a-leading
Lately have you seen Bethlehem
No more will peace sustain the nations
Where all the bloody passions rise
I’m going nowhere somebody help me
To know that I will signify
I once had fame I once had friendship
A cross of gold upon my back
But fame and friends and gold are fleeting
Things I’ve forgotten fade to black
Ahead the endless road of freedom
Above the endless lonely sky
And in my head an endless song
That tells me I will signify
I will &c.
John Keats abed he lay a-dying
A Roman pillow neath his head
Unknown unwept and yet he whispered
I’ll be among the poets when I’m dead
I am no Keats I am no poet
I have no skill to prophesy
But to such a height on this dark blank night
I know that I will signify
I will &c.

The Glory of the World
Let’s all say goodbye to Carthage
Rome Troy Paris Moscow Washington and London
Say goodbye to Ankgor Wat
Goodbye Temple of the Golden Pavilion
Goodbye mining manufacture
Wining dining software tycoon’s billions
Thus passes
Thus passes away
Thus passes away
The glory of the world
The glory of the world
Goodbye White House goodbye Kremlin
Goodbye Moe’s & Joe’s and Mary Mac’s Tea Room
Goodbye Hamlet Mona Lisa
Abbey Road and Exile on Main Street
Goodbye Hustler goodbye Playboy
Goodbye Penthouse and every image of the birth of Venus
Thus passes &c.
Say goodbye to every being
To every animal and plant that ever lived a day
Say goodbye to every concept
Every consciousness every word you ever heard a wise man say
Say goodbye to every star to every planet
To that tender little flap of skin that ever made you stay
Thus passes &c.

DK & The Hoop Snakes
Part 1 of Alchemical Infusion: A Festival Groove
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n-rRHIm96_fQhYmaLoij3BtdZrc3Zi3CI

Animals Think
In the ditchbed behind the houses the lone coyote sets
Waiting to kill and eat all the neighborhood pets
Got no mate and got no litter committing such atrocity
Tell me why tell me why tell me why
I wonder what do animals think
I wonder what do animals think they don’t talk
I wonder what do animals think
On the beach down behind the jetty a broken-off antenna in my hand
Carving naked pictures in the sand
Got no job and got no money don’t you wonder why I’m wasting time
Tell me why &c.
In the basement you’re disappearing I know you won’t be coming out too soon
I guess you feel alright with a needle and a spoon
You got tons of friends and tons of money I guess it makes me wonder why
Tell me why &c.

When Speaks the Iron Man
Additional words by Robert Johnson 1936
Three old ladies three old weavers woke
Like a light spike inside your head
Who’s gonna hang when the filament broke
Like a flame up inside your head
Somebody’s written down what somebody spoke
Like a light spike inside your head
Flame up inside your head
When speaks the iron man
Eighteen wheeler rig with acid phones
Like a light spike inside your head
Night transporter ride the tragical bones
Like a flame up inside your head
They built a shrine to the precious guns
Like a light spike inside your head
Flame up inside your head
When speaks the iron man
Everything you can have everything candy from a baby
Take it away take it away take it away
Lightweight Luger in a sharkhunt fight
Like a light spike inside your head
He don’t know nothing but he knows his rights
Like a flame up inside your head
Bluebird flies from the left to the right
Like a light spike inside your head
Koolaid mushrooms have yourself a bite
Like a flame up inside your head
Bluebird flies from the right to the left
Like a light spike inside your head
Asking whatchu have to say for yourself
Like a flame up inside your head
Some people tell me say these blues ain’t bad
Like a light spike inside your head
Worst damned feeling you most ever had
Like a flame up inside your head
When speaks the iron man

Doublemint Cage
What will the market bear what will the street allow
What is the cost per share where does the price stand now
You bartered me in trade you named a price and paid
You bargained in good faith you bartered me in trade
What are fresh souls going for today
Everything’s negotiable they say
Gain the world and throw it all away
Throw it away throw it away throw it away
I bash my head against the wall these choices ain’t no choice at all
I’m mighty limp with broke tick rage I’m in the doublemint cage
What are fresh &c.
You bartered me &c.

Everything (instrumental)

Fly Venus
Additional words by John Keats 1819
Here’s no time here’s no space
Here’s no climb here’s no race
Here’s no belt here’s no boot
Only flesh only fruit
Just one drop light your fire
Precious blood warm desire
Fly Venus fly her bodily
You’re feeling mighty good
Away away for I will fly to thee not charioted by Bacchus and his pards but on the viewless wings of poesy though the dull brain perplexes and retards already with thee
See her glance hear her moan
Water dance wave and foam
Feel the feel feel the flow
Ride the wheel get some more
Everything that we share
Take your pick ride the air
Ride the water
Fly Venus &c.

For Certain
Where does that tree begin and end
What was the cause of the Crimean War
What was it that you said I need reminding of
I can’t say for certain that you’ll never know
I’m pretty sure I’m not my mother
I’m pretty sure I’m not my father
I’m pretty sure I’m not the president
I can’t say for certain &c.
Long time ago somebody spoke it
Long time ago somebody wrote it
They spoke and wrote in Aramaic into Greek
I can’t say for certain &c.

Song (How sweet I roam’d)
Words by William Blake 1783
How sweet I roam’d from field to field
And tasted all the summer’s pride
‘Til I the Prince of Love beheld
Who in the sunny beams did glide
He loves to sit and hear me sing
Then laughing sports and plays with me
Then stretches out my golden wing
And mocks my loss of liberty

Spicy Hot Roll
We could go for a spicy hot roll yeah
We hip we shock roll and we rock

Tick Tock
Words and Music by Debra Lynn Rodriguez

Back to the World (instrumental)

The Ballad of Briarcliff Road
Up in Atlanta stands a stunted pine tree out on Briarcliff Road
But in the pine wisteria all riotously grows
Its flowers clustered like the grape but hanging empty hanging dry
While wisteria flourishes the Georgia pine tree dies
And right up to the ruined KFC all gutted once with fire
Through the pine and the wisteria runs electrical wire
And a mockingbird alight upon that Georgia Power line
Flings his soul abroad in strains of unpremeditated rhyme
Why do you cherish every failure
You think each sin makes you more human
That monument down in Decatur
Supposed to justify your crimes
See yourself see yourself
No joy no sorrow yeah but only naked triumph tells me that
The little bird fancies himself an aristocrat
He looks so fine he looks so dapper in his uniform of grey
And it was given me to translate what I heard the singer say
You love your jim crow republic
You love your rotten old lost cause
Your wretched oaths and sacred contracts
Your dirty bills of sale
See yourself see yourself
The cars swerve by they’re all sealed up they neither hear nor do they see
The pine tree or the singer or the ruined KFC
Or how you’ve got to burn the past before the future can arrive
Or how all smothered up in beauty Georgia pine tree struggles to survive

Part 2 of Alchemical Infusion: Roll and We Rock

Too Good
Don’t be too good now my baby
You’re pretty good now my baby
Don’t be too good babe
‘Cause any better’d be too good
We’d have to start over
Don’t be too good baby

My Heart Leaps Up
Words by William Wordsworth 1802
My heart leaps up when I see a rainbow in the sky
So was it when my life began
So is it now I am a man
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die
The child is father to the man
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each
In natural piety
The child is father to the man

September 13
No cloud interrupted the perfect sky the air just hinting autumn’s cool
Afar a dog was raising up its voice the kids were all safe in school
And not a tender leaf trembled on the tulip tree
Nobody acted mean on September 13
The neighbors raised a hand in greeting then and raised the outward-turning palm
So sweet the sign of civility so sweet serenity and calm
And not a tender &c.
Which god creator of benevolence could make such a perfect sky
That day when over Atlanta not a single plane did fly
And not a tender &c

Well of Happiness
It is the object of my pleasure
In its bright clean loveliness
It is the object that I treasure
It is the well of happiness
It takes the rough stuff that I’m bringing
It takes my loving fond caress
It is the song I am singing
It is the well of happiness
It is the well of happiness
Image breaking image making making your own free choice
Pen, pallette, or fiddle bow you know you will find your voice
In this world of shame and sorrows
In this world of sore distress
On this day and all tomorrows
It is the well of happiness
Image breaking image making making it doing it right
Nothing to fear when day turns to night
When the lamp lights a light
Remains a friend
When everyone’s gone
Makes it true makes it real
Cause it knows how it feels
And it rains every day in a song
Well of happiness

You Don’t Need Everything
You don’t need you don’t need everything
You don’t need you don’t want everything
You don’t need you don’t need everything

Wild Guitar
Everybody’s crazy living in their homemade worlds
Boys dream of boys girls dreaming about girls
Ready to take on that weird destiny
To be strange for the rest of their lives
It is an unnatural act it is an unnatural act it is an unnatural act
To play the wild guitar
Flying eight miles high I forgot to bring the plane
I think I can see my house from up here I believe that makes me sane
Ready to take on that weird destiny
To be strange for the rest of my life
It is an unnatural &c.
Don’t jump for joy when they wash out your cage
They get around to it once in an age
You’ve got a reason to set your soul on fire
I feel it streaming right down through the wire
Moving microwave ovens dreaming of love and fame
Tasting the blood of strangers seeing they’re not to blame
Ready to take on that weird destiny
To be strange for the rest of our lives
It is an unnatural &c.

Hard to Leave
I see the dawn I see the sunset
I see beauty out my doorstep
The daffodils came early again this year
Ain’t it hard to leave Ain’t it hard to leave the place you love
I see your face light up with gladness
I see you knocked down hard with sadness
I’ve heard you tell the world how it’s gonna be
Ain’t it hard &c.
When I get back to the world where I’m supposed to be
When I get back to the world that was so hard to leave
I see everybody worry
I see everybody hurry
They’re gonna get there soon enough anyway
Ain’t it hard &c.

Just a Toy
You forget to think about what she might want
She’s just a prize to be won
She’s just a female sex toy to you
She’s just a toy
Get her drunk and drugged enough she can’t say no
You don’t want her to know
She’s just a &c.
Well now here’s a thought you know you could be kind
It never enters your mind
She’s just a &c.

Eyes Shine
Your lynx eye
Your castle eye
Your cat’s eye
Your acid eye
Your makeup eye
Your street eye
Your needle eye
Your region eye
Your eyes shine with seeing
Your eyes shine with singing
Your eyes shine with saying
I know
Your leaf tongue
Your cat’s tongue
Your crown tongue
Your wailing tongue
Your arrow tongue
Your animal tongue
Your golden tongue
Your strenuous tongue
Your eyes shine &c.
I know I know I know
You got illuminating eyes You got universal eyes
Your eyes drive the water up from the ground
Your meat thumb
Your emphatic thumb
Your late thumb
Your impact thumb
Your tool thumb
Your greasy thumb
Your sharpened thumb
Your snap thumb Your eyes shine &c.

Peace March
Words by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963
Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

My father said
You can sleep in as long as you want to
But we have to get these goats to her by noon

I didn’t see any goats

So I asked Keith Richards who was also there
Hey Richard I said and got a little confused
Should I start smoking marijuana
I gazed closely downward
And I could see the finely ground weed mixed in
With hooks and screws
Dirt and nails
Nuts and grommets
And a few shreds of cellophane
A little allen wrench was in there too

And so it is I thought
We focus sharply on what we cannot grasp
And we don’t know much about the periphery
Most of the time we see what we expect to see
Whether that’s what’s really there or not

I can’t write a happy song
Don’t say can’t I tell myself
I talk to myself a lot
Although do I really know
Whether I talk to myself more than anybody else does

I can’t sincerely say
Oh what a beautiful morning
It is raining but that has nothing to do with it
To whom would I make
This spurious subjective claim

The situation is not that bad
The situation is this
I have habitual ways of doing things
As now talking to myself in Google Docs
But doesn’t everybody have habits

Some more than others I suppose
But I don’t know anybody else
Who fills screens with unpunctuated words
Or who makes lists
Of self-critical or rather self-condemning thoughts

Who when words don’t materialize
Makes up inexistent pmisti effrent
Who seeks permission from the greats
For slovenly slack
Like Keats’s thine ‘appiness

And I’m so tired of the sickly confessional mode
That’s why I tell myself
That I should compose something happy
But when I feel happy
I don’t feel like filling or overfilling a Google Doc

And it’s not like I’m never happy
But it’s also not like doing something else
Makes me happier
And so I sit at the keyboard
And talk to myself

Put an image in there I say
Yesterday you saw a big butterfly
So light that it barely needed to flap its wings
And when it did it did so slowly
Never a good sign addressing oneself as you

I’ve written some good poems
Surely I’ve written a happy one here or there
Have I ever written one that was both happy and good
Wait a minute
What makes me so sure about either proposition

Those I admire brim with self-confidence
Whitman Muddy Waters Dickinson
Keats in spite of everything
But the diffident ones too have their moments
Howling Wolf kicked out of the army for melancholia

I am at peace being a bad poet
That’s an improvement
Over the situation that used to be
When I castigated myself
As no poet at all

I mean that bar is pretty low
I can call myself a poet all day long
Really the author can’t judge
One way or the other
Or maybe the good ones know they’re good

I just wish I could write a poem
That’s not so damned dismal
Cakes and ale
There’ll be no cakes and ale boy
No beer and cheezy pooves

The works that I judge relatively successful
Just come to me and I’ve always known
To the extent that knowing is possible
That the way I work
Won’t fulfill an assignment

For years I’ve imagined the implantation
Of a device with psychotropic properties
A month ago I received a real cochlear implant
And when I awoke I had prolonged vertigo
Accompanied by violent nausea

I don’t think I’m a narcissist
You don’t gaze into the pool and see a vortex
I know I’m not a solipsist
I knew that the world was spinning for me alone
I crouched and vomited while everybody else remained upright

Tomorrow I’m getting the external component
They tell me I’ll hear something
But intelligible sound will take a while longer
I don’t know the point
But I don’t need an implant to talk to myself

If I can’t say can’t what can I say
And separate question
How do I know what I can’t say or can
And separate question
Who issues the prohibition or the permission

That’s the problem isn’t it
The assumption that situations are created
That is created by somebody
And that I omnipotent creator of my situation
Have botched the job

And the truth is I revise
Today is now the day for the activation
The rain has ceased
But I feel a moral obligation
Or perhaps a mere compulsion to publish

Sorry dear reader
To have left you out of the mix
Out of my cheapass therapy
It’s not terribly therapeutic in point of fact
Habitually to figure oneself a failure

Michael Harris II gets another base knock up the middle
And I remember Ernie Johnson’s
Or maybe it was Skip Caray’s dictum
That You have to be pretty good to be that lucky
And I’m damned lucky to be alive
So I guess I’ve been pretty good
If Money Mike is any indication

I’ve tempted fate a time or two
And maybe I’m tempting fate right now
If I permit myself to suppose
All the filthy habits safely behind me
For ubiquitous is the opportunity
And lavish with permission have I been
The solid sidewalks of my leafy suburb
Cannot efface the squalid lights
That reflect in oily iridescence
From midnight streets

True to some extent one can remain
Aloof from the path of perdition
And healthy habits can nudge the foul ones to one side
And one can somewhat conveniently forego
Those pleasures requiring cash payment
Arbitrary deterrent
But indulgence in this or that substance
Or this or that pleasurable activity
Stands not chief among the skills of self-destruction
For life is suffering
And nothing hurts worse than the desire
Never to suffer

In dreams we are each an artist
And how I have dreamed to sojourn with the gods
And enjoyed an endless bliss in lofty place
Only to drown in wakefulness
And thence to feed those rich addictions
The habits of defeat self-condemnation and despair
And crushing ennui deadliest of sins
To drive myself yet lower
To approach the misty substrate of the atom

How strange that to feed the craving never satisfied
Induces only further craving
Misty thickets
Briars sticktights and beggarman’s patches
Ticks with their viral subterfuge
Phlebophagous mosquitos
And the nightmare worm
That burrows through the auditory nerve
Cousin to the penetrant of coffins
And to salamanders that batten on the pyre
To speak in language of damnation

And yet they are but rare
These monsters that burn upon the night
That brand their lurid images
On the retina of the soul
The green ones red
The blue ones yellow
And yet enfeoffed and affiliated even they
With the indigo the orange and the violet
On rainy sunlit afternoons
As the brain invents refractions
Upon the closing of the eyes
Even so my restless consciousness
Never without a song gliding or surging
Or rattling in my head
Perchance to supplant the voice of dire chastisement

To replace the voice that had been implanted
Parasitic worm
The psychotic nightmare though never forgotten
Of horrid hell demeaning torture universe of agony
Foisted by priests and nuns and their lay accomplices
Who in their delight at inflicting pain
Devoted their awestruck humility to Him who would inflict pain
Forever and ever world without end amen
The God who will torture interminably for masturbation mortal sin
Burning pain imagine they insisted the pain of fire forever
The pain of flame licking and flogging a child without cease
True there was this little heaven they promised
For the price of a minute’s humiliation
Inventing sins to report to the confessor leering behind his screen
A heaven peopled by little saints with their ridiculous little miracles
The virgins the martyrs the canonized bishops never any humans
Humans with their meals their slumber and their deaths
And their songs of joy of sadness or of nothing in particular
Songs of a world where humans eat and sleep and die

The caroling boy and why are the cousins
Never called upon to sing at family gatherings
To stand and render the show tune
With its extensive lyrics and complex modulation to the bridge
Willing no doubt graciously to receive applause
And next the frolicsome youth self-conscious and perplexed
Too involved with pleasure for rage or resentment
Relieved to discover the mere falsity
The emptiness of that hellish deathscape though never forgotten
In favor of three chords and two-part harmony
The luckiest boy in Jacksonville at home on the stage
In love and loving the desirable and desiring
Well aware of what came naturally and others called talent
And next the journeyman entertainer
Caterer to bikers sailors stewardesses suburban adulterers and drunken spring breakers
Proficient in drunkenness and worse
And the bourgeois school teacher
But hey did you know that songs are poems
Paterfamilias and the last to leave the faculty party
And the artist with the expensive gear typical of the century
While what can be accomplished for no cost
These pages must show
And this morning with babe blanket-wrapt
Fetching the paper as I had done with her mother
I display my fair round belly and my hearing aids
And I smile misty skyward with fewer teeth than previously
And the compliant girl who loved the lucky boy
Loves the geezer with the white and bristly beard

And Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
And Bacchus and Ariadne
And The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up
And The Shrimp Girl
And Miles and ‘Trane and Monk and Cannonball
And the hibiscus-bedecked singer of Strange Fruit
And Shorter and Hancock bent in prayer at Hiroshima
And the Stones and the Beatles and Smokey
And Aretha and Dylan and James Brown
And guitar and bass and drums and horns
And Billy Preston at the Hammond
And doomed Keats and Hendrix and Cobain
The poets who died too young
And Wordsworth who died too old
And Blake who limned the images vouchsafed to him
And Vertigo and the Wizard of Oz
42nd Street Apocalypse Now and Space Odyssey or Oddity
And enigmatic Richard D James the Banksy of audio
And troubled Silas Marner and vacillating Hans Castorp
And Mood Indigo heliconian fount of beauty
And the slow movement of the Seventh
And those gorgeous works of art with nasty accessories
That you can’t deny or erase object how you will
The joy and dread and gross disrespect etched in a lump of lapis lazuli
And Whitman and Dickinson Americans who spoke the truth
Who invented a new language for speaking the truth
As had Shakespeare and Wilde
And David Melnick woi cirtus cvmwoflux
And Louis Havemercy Armstrong
And I won’t tick off the list
For completion isn’t a thing
The finish isn’t a thing
And I could make a list that goes for miles to catalog
All ye know on earth and all ye need to know

Nearly seventy and still singing the madness song
Still showing up for work
Three square meals and more
But who are these approaching
So splendidly appareled
Are they not the dear ones the fine-fine ones
Who make life hard to leave
The living and the dead
The old and young and in between
The singers the philosophers the scientists
The readers of books and the writers
The experts and the amateurs
The stitchers the menders the makers of buttonholes
The wearers of masks and those who go barefaced
The toddlers devourers of knowledge
The small children contrivers of sentences never before spoken
This must be snowman coffee
The elders capable of no more than a smile
Come to share to celebrate
The holy communion of family and friends

Amid the hundred maladies
And the thousand shocks
And the disorders dyspepsia disabilities and dysfunctions
Bad stomach
Bad heart
Bad central nervous system

A work of art
A few friends
A warm bed
And thou beloved

I really don’t care any more when I might die
But silent universe
Great power that replies not
Or if it speaks speaks in a language I cannot understand
Let no sorrow or suffering enter the lives of those I love

She tells me she disapproves of the term
But she suggests no alternative
And I excessively attentive to a single topos
Plagued no doubt by justly outmoded attitudes try

Or perhaps the thought of enjoying sharing pleasure
A little too much too self-servingly much and loud distracts
And how she is mysterious and intriguing
And I blunt and obvious and much too much

A thought not of a body part
Nor even of an action
But of a form of pleasure
Hymn of praise obvious and outmoded

And I am ashamed of myself
I too disapprove of this bluntness this repellence
That I never wanted or created
Ashamed of my failure to uncreate myself

And too much expression of my own blunt loud personality
But she disapproving not ungenerous
But ready with objections
For my own obvious attentions

As predictable as the tide
Inconsistent as the ocean
Repellent but gregarious
Blunt but sometimes subtle

In all innocence I try
But innocence wears poorly on the old and outmoded
And a word comes quickly
To pierce a distracted understanding blunt and loud

A word from a certain or indeterminate or mistaken source
That aims to puncture distraction
To slice open the truth
To mortify certain attitudes old and outmoded

Justly outmoded attentions
Steeped in attitudes justly superceded
About a man’s body or a woman’s
Not forceful but a bit much and blunt

My own attentions outmoded and conventional
The obvious joke the blunt assessment
The personality repellent and blunt and easily hurt
The single-minded excesses tipping into topical sadness

I take pride excessive and deadly
In the old sad hymn of praise
Which I neither uncreated nor created
The personality and the attention and I try

Nobody loves sadness in old age
The reaping that follows the sowing
The white and bristly beard
Old attitudes of blunt old days and dead

And nobody wants that oft-told tale
Not even I of brooding on coldness
When I am cold though outwardly loud
Site of recurrent death and unfeeling feelings

Cold dry salty and bitter
Importer of the cold north
Injector of substantial cold and dry
Who wields the rotating death taper

Who dons the truth-enforcing mask
The jolly joker
The mock enlivening piercing turning taper
That lights with cold light and dead

Perhaps you thought the dead do not move
Perhaps you thought the dead harbor no thoughts
Perhaps you thought the dead suffered no cravings
Perhaps you thought old dead attitudes simply disappear

Or that the dead know not where they are
For while it is true
That the sucking vortex is disorienting
Yet that space that crushes space asserts itself

And she lively ready with a word
A quick and sharp assessment
One of us is short on understanding
A little distracted too much by thought of pleasure

Pierced unexpectedly into sadness
Distracted by old attitudes
A single topos a blunt personality
Repellent and easily brought to death

She puts me down
I can’t complain
When I outmodedly self-servingly try
And she puts me down

Ah well away
I try too much to share
And how much is too much
To an understanding a little short and self-serving

Always considering myself first
Always the self-serving assessment
Always overeager and seeking not paying attention
Always already dead

A little short of sight
A little hard of hearing
A little self-serving of unearned complaint
A little obvious of joke

I
I am the one at fault
When blunt and repellent I bruit
A sadness a single topos and dead again

I was sick and loud
Blunt and repellent in my joke of death
I yearned for death
In all innocence I tried

I had vertigo and vomited for hours
Hear me youth of your life to come
Hear my blunt prophecy and sad
The old outmoded hymn of praise

I love little Pussy her coat is so warm
And if I don’t hurt her she’ll do me no harm
I’ll not pull her tail nor drive her away
But Pussy and I very gently will play

I dreamed again of Leopold Bloom’s dead son
Extending the candle and appareled in a white cassock
A blond bowl haircut such as boys wore in the Eighties

And gazing upon him I remembered
My own red cassock and the severe pompadour
Of the Catholic Sixties

You are also my son I felt compelled to say
I felt driven to insist to the poor dead lad
That I derided by confusion and sentimentality cared

Hwoe teks ferm sela duomo temberas
Psoeies maschs mronlely ferbrli temp
Stirpig aewah semply gratii raticles odir seniuntug
Als esse parmbule bann lat dletreierens
Thoia ssue

Woi citrus idor kern of ak oddir senkts
Oddir thrfits cnsonnts irrup met voyles
Sonior leld treiror eld biandsokte
Striang ferosdrah threep idor snectimnuus
Snas ssue

Smesirricul cannullis swey selldly croupted
Swey selldy dravan zerwids virtweygo
Dysbens mat elz nour queelibre
Mat els noor diskipouollain
Toia ssue

With muss levesk pluezuess un pluesuez
Halsod fgruae ganadamnadon ssoenss
Wile guezzidueb cute stra fistlua
Ngra nrotrociocious mpostihoom
Bels ssue

Hals thme croescrad omb mrealay Eioumbesmiey
Fenalmont nguttato dubatsome
Fenalmont ratur sicurly fenal
Cugstdu se facracs dieses cealerendarwe
Ssue derond

That troop of super-heroes who
Upon sensing any disturbance in the episteme
Convene and dispense their inscrutable wisdom

How bass is bass
What if my father had done something awful
Does number ever

Inflection or innuendo
Iago or Desdemona
Flagstaff or Phoenix

How does the worth of troubles compare to that of a hill of beans
Wouldn’t you just die without Mahler
Do you suppose this throng can’t keep it up all day long

What does that celebrity think about it
How can you tolerate such banality
Do fish cherish desires

How would one achieve apperception of the one life within us and abroad
How would one reconcile the competing narratives in Absalom, Absalom!
How would one articulate the emotional effect of Opus 132

Parsimony or impecuniousness
Sobriety or abstinence
Must may might or can

Are you ready for the catastrophe
Did you hear about the recent shameful event
When if ever

Is involvement the question
Or communication
Or passion

Wake or sleep
Vision or waking dream
Men or gods

What was the length of your uncle’s sentence
Have they perfected the thinking machine
When did the Constantinopolitans succumb

Why now
Why me
Why a duck

Have those wounds from Thermopylae healed yet
What was the temperature of your mother’s touch
Again with the unladen swallow

Have you ever seen the rain
Did they succeed in levitating the Pentagon
Who lost China

What’s blacker than black
What’s whiter than white
What’s fusciaer than fuscia

Why not use punctuation marks
What did he know and when did he know it
Do we not bleed

Human or person
Heredity or environment
Inherent or contingent

Remember the ladies
Would you ever want to be again with that retching monster
Are we not men

Do cherries desire to go fishing
Does your dog bite
Does the Pope shit in the woods

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries
What light through yonder window breaks

That thing that slithering blob coming toward us what is it
What me worry
How would life be different without television commercials

Are the mondegreens in season yet
Do westerly winds promise drought or rain
Did the Indians lose to the Giants

What was the Hammurabian sanction
What was the Westfalian treaty
What was the Arian heresy

Girl in distress Jess
Got a fag Mag
Left on your own Tyrone

Does it matter that I’m
Does it matter that it’s
Does it matter that anything

How up is over
What if I never took any action
Do facts ever

I dreamed I saw Medusa ringleted
And supplied with useless vestigial wings
Her tongue aloll like that of Kali homicide
Her stature gigantic
Great Pegasus tucked under an arm
Like a schoolgirl’s satchel
And though she lacked her emblem serpents
And an eye was obscured by a cast
The other eye bloomed sickly with petrific power
To replace the gelatinous flesh
With mineral composite
She the living anomaly
More statue than organism
More fossil than statue
Vengeful for the slight of oblivion
Compelled to repeat upon all
The agony of her own fate

I awoke to leave behind
The part of me that had turned to stone

I prefer not to exercise extra care
Though I admire Cronkite’s modulated disapproval
As he recited the DoD’s mendacious numbers
And I commend the Dragon Conner’s
Courtly mutuality in tongues Elvish Ewok or Klingon

I prefer to blunder through the kitty litter
Blust’ring iambickish pentamatroid
Blistered fingering of the electric guitar
A teeshirt and jeans over which laps
My balloonic oft-caressed belly

More Pollock than Seurat
More De Kooning than Pollock
More action than concept
Dirty diapers runny noses
And Pentheus torn limb from limb

Everything’s gotten just a little worse
Than it ever used to be
But in the light after the storm had gone
I saw a honey bee

The shuttle shuttles forth and back
Amniotic threads having tworled distaffly
Between thumb and finger that might have plied the tamboura
Antistabile discursor
Against the rotational force
Defining an ominous plane horizontal vertical or oblique
Two but two interpenetratively
Placental yarns having spindled plummetly
Or wound upon the wheel

Like all dreams they aggregate
To create a placket mass solid flexible and soft
Like an albuminate and foundational slab
Or the pleonastic bier upon which the corpse is displayed
Of one who has died in secret and alone
Or effluencing the uncanny smell of the birthing chamber
A there not there

A gown for Rapunzel
A house for a chimpanzee
The tale the spinny stars tell
Hera’s lactation or Hyades’ tears
The spider’s web spangled with dew
Both what has happened and what you will do
Evermore about to was
The warp of one and the weft of the other

More people should enjoy
The pleasure of resisting the urge

More people should enjoy
The pleasure of giving in

It cannot murrad for itself this oozy severance
Watery pause insubstantial
This patient denaturing
Bhle and again bhle
This pastoral glyph
Mundane pause artificial
This orange fulcrum
The one remaining flammantia
It cannot sairrup for itself this enveloping desire
Orange pause spindly
No face yet but only this yawpish howl
Suffering hold
Tormentuous arthold
Taking a step back from this precipitating softness
The registry of impossible narrative
Or practically pause impossible
This very refrainment
Amniotic threads
This quazi-salutary slackening
Wispy demonstrations from
Tortentious pause ergotacious
Distaffly for twirling
These vague pause tentative fingers
Photorealist protoindoeuropean
This insignificance that matters so intensely
Take from the dresser the cruelest month
Replace it with the merest party favor
The running dye that spoils the laundry
The fifth pause stage
Acceptance of terminal fabulosity
Sometimes brief
Sometimes simple
This leaking lacerance cannot murrap for itself
Declining pause conjugal
Pause quash pause
Bees to flowers flowers to bees

Coda
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world
Beyond the flaming ramparts
No objects no entelechy
No need for further explanations
Who has the courage to speak the word reality
To say it is so and so it is
See the bells upon the cheetahs’ collars
Unencumbered by any tether to the chariot
From which Bacchus leaps
Does he rescue Ariadne from the fearful pards
Who seem no more threatening than the soft-padding tyger
Or seize her for himself
And cast her crown amid the tale-spinning stars

Foreshortened unreliable compressed
Distant rampant verdant trenchant
Critical serious lamentable guarded disproportionate
Exiguous parsimonious void impecunious nugatory
Rushed debilitated unfathomable deranged
Fair soft terse dim hot plush big curt hard cold great limp
Risible foolish pishworthy superfluous
Fractious fragmented fragile frigid feral frank fresh
Deliquescent delirious deleterious delapidated
Weak feeble helpless etiolated muzzy doddering
Cruciform xi crosswise chiastic
Mala dégueulasse furshlugginer fucked up baufällig
Crusty fusty busty rusty musty lusty gusty trusty dusty
Friendly deadly fiddly stately bodily burly beastly
Tangermane quintillious finipic tulgey bredest polterine terrinate villose
Bang on straight up tuned in rolled up turned out
Tall rich young rare strong best tart sure fit sharp
Sapient judicious wise sagacious shrewd percipient astute
Sanguine phlegmatic bilious melancholic
Numerous plenipotentiary fulminous Brobdingnagian august

She enjoys refrigerated plums or
A room-temperature peach
Avocado mashed with asian peppers
I don’t understand the bulbous olives
But it’s okay for her to like them

How did they make those harsh sounds
Sound so good
In that musical composition
How do I accept the death of Nepomuk
Nepo who called himself Echo

Not the first proviso
Not the first proposal
The still life without ever lifting the pen
The plump fruits the glistening sea creatures
Their repetition on a flat panel
How did they trammel that infinity

Are we morally obliged to hope
To expect a Stuckey’s at every next exit

Children do not refer to themselves
In the third person
How do I accept the blunder of representing them thus
Or is it that at any moment
The world should cease to be the customary one

Problems are opportunities
Recited the motivational speaker
Opportunities for more problems
The eternal return of not quite the same

Why should the thought of tasty fruit
Make me sad
Why should a fairy tale put me in mind
Of the Berlin wall
The luscious pulp of tangled fibers
The beguiling juice
The sweet the sour the salty the bitter

A real artist uses sweat of course
And spit nail snot jizz and blood
Or crushes seeds in horse manure
Or mixes lampblack and petroleum jelly

I lied when I professed a Wordsworthian fear of vacancy
Hoping to be mistaken for the Mage
When in truth my cup runneth over
A surfeit of vile imaginings

I’m sorry Your Majesty
Death is not dusty
It’s moist sticky gelatinous and cold
Windex for glass so clean it seems to disappear

Invite the five women their bodies
Still glowing from their exertions
Let them join again their spontaneous celebration
Link hands and make the joyful round
Each adopt her characteristic posture
Upright or nearly falling
Neither nude nor naked for the fall of man
Has not occured

And why should your accompanists the men
Occupy a separate panel with their pipes
For melody has been invented but not
The world-drenching woe of sexual shame
Invite too the children their simple bodies
Of green and gold and blue and deep purple
And rose and cappuccino

The costume of the painting in which we live
When Hatshepsut afixed the beard of command
Was her rule more humane than that
Of either of the two Tutmoses
Piero’s stubbled penitents must leave their eternity
Pressing unceasingly their palms together
Like a sixties girl trying to increase her bustline

The corpse is richly attired
Reddened her lips
Her rings her sentimental necklace
Solemnly displayed
Incense enacts her immortality
And masks her mortality
Still she joins the dance
At last she drops the pretense of volition

Two boats the yellow and the blue
Are moored against the pilings
Behind them rises the great double sail
Which two little figures unfurl in greeny gold
Two houses stand higgledy-piggledy on the wharf
Their blue walls pierced by intermittent windows
A homunculus in an orange shirt strides
Or stands with legs apart
Never before did this image appear
Phenomenally on earth
Never will it grace the walls of MOMA or the Frick
The old lady who made it never tried to sell it
Never sought for fame

After he lost mobility my father
Diligently composed haiku
Which he regarded as five seven five syllables
No trembling plum blossoms or gathering snow
Just his dependency upon my mother

We who live will make the world
A decent place for you to grow up in

Aye neeteen ona pangyrone
Libera libera may
Neon wash rey gray fructless prorho
Galls in stevebreed petitio aye nnedeen

Not the full acebrace ealdrov
Never them glownering sprits agu
Gibt mick den panarones reg ratioale
Als needeen prey sammistid

Mundi spitifus dys array reyschau
Perseiu mayb flew hrose awloft
Ight la wills wishes melnchthoror tamben afor
Curr roar fewlowws demnae furlt

Canst thou fel low bract nels longtom sur la topas
Nal tumb la nues burgrather la newes
Case bain ace brae whe dreams may eggrum
The highest vwoel dethurst conamblulist

Verbal corrubtion as uns highhold burywares
Or the bugy ficks transputin
Nominus gravibus sere tolt mundo
Thaet waes grut kronloss ngrut forstol

Bad for stuff
Nought left of to complain
Plain pain
Notaye for woel for nadarons