Oh to devise a line that would soar aloft
On the wings of its own magnificence
And would rise above the gaze of the immortals
Who made the page their Kitty Hawk

Those bastards the artists
Who make it look so easy
Tempting the child to emulate their manner
Ignorant of their discipline

And once in a while the inexplicable
The Mozart or Handel
Tossing off masterpieces
Like a candy bar wrapper

Thank heaven for Keats
Who struggled to find a subject
Who struggled with the techniques
Which his lordly rivals wielded like saber

But then he outwielded them all
Sustained only with a love of beauty love of truth
All the while retaining the marks
Of hardscrabble life and education

And Dickinson another anomaly
No development no apprenticeship
An Athena born fully armed
And one golden monument after another

Perhaps then we should look to Blake
He of the golden cage
The prison of eros and poetry
Driven to reinvent the world

And a drive is no choice
And achievement no gift of chance or pale inertia
Look on their works ye puny and despair
And upon the crushing treadmill trudge blindly on

How do diatoms acquire the silica
With which to construct their glassy walls

How do large mammals avoid infection
From the pathogens in a stagnant waterhole

How do penguin parents recognize the cry
Of their offspring in the multitude

How do grazing animals discern the edible plants
Amid the noxious ones

How do subatomic particles come by their power
Of attraction or repulsion

How does one species exert dominative knowledge
In a world it cannot know or understand

It is said that of that which we cannot speak
We must remain silent
And yet I say of what I cannot say
That I cannot say it

The tender leaf of tulip tree in spring
The same fragile leaf in fall
How my mother invited me to pour the milk
To make the batter

The peculiar slant of light in morning
To one accustomed to staying up all night
The impressive effect of technical prowess
The emptiness of virtuosity

The great cat’s failure in nine out of ten tries
The earthworm’s continued futile striving
The bewildering plenitude of childhood experience
The bewildering proximity of dogged death

I already know too much of the future the past
How winter will pass after it has slowly arrived
How the Lions Club’s barbecue in Birmingham
Upon a Labor Day that will never come again tasted
How the pets will die and have died

Of deaths dauntless or cringing
How after long days of comfort bad days will come
How the routines of satisfaction will pall and fail to satisfy
How the striver will succumb at last
How notwithstanding denial youth will be better than age

Of manic sorrow and composèd joy
Of helplessness in the face of catastrophe
Of self-reliance and narcissistic complacency
Of humanitarian virtue and nihilistic contempt
How the mockingbird prophesied horror and degradation

The orange will still express its acid sweetness
The ocean wave its unique recurrence
The larva its unconquerable appetite
The mountain its imperceptible erosion
The poem its teasing incompleteness

1. The Ideal of Totality

Behold the deep interior trauma
Midway between wound and scar
Healing with imperceptible deliberateness

Why must it always be pain and suffering
Why must it always be trauma
Why never the sweetness of oranges at daybreak

Pleasure however noble flies
But pain persists living and durable
The bosses the teachers whose word was law

Whose word becomes part of oneself
And so express apprentice the whole shebang
The wound the scar and the fleeting sweetness

2. The Fragmentary Ideal

But pleasures too leave their residue
And the greatest of them haunt like trauma
And return unexpectedly

And their sporadic recurrence will not suffice
Nor should anyone demand as much
To resolve the ragged gash

No person is perfect whole or entire
But reliant upon poor humanity
To live tentatively up to the pale hour of death

Senility is a kind of mercy
That blunts the blade and blurs the rose
In memories of memories of memories

3. The Unruly Complication

No mythic fall from primal perfection has occurred
Things did not fall apart upon a day
Nor will they soon coalesce in the brilliant telos

Perennial problem exacerbated
By the times and my own incapacity
Everybody searches for solace for healing

And yet exceptions obtain
So no
You can’t say it all or anything much in these little broken lines

A fragmentary expression of the whole shebang
Or an exhaustive survey of one or two pieces
Fall and the beautiful banal maple

The great seaplane descends and alights
Its motors and propellors innumerable
Its silver skin grayed out in the haze
So is it with our attempts
To prevaricate to disguise to conceal
The broad outlines still visible
Though sapped of their lustre

As also our clumsy attempts
To master to exert control
The ancient platitude
Free your hand to allow the task
The burden never willing
The skill never complete
The silvery instruments soft as clay

The surest way with heretics
QED quickly ends dandruff
Give your fine furniture a lustrous finish
101 jokes to keep your audience in hand
S&H Green Stamps available at your favorite grocer’s
We will decide what consequences to apply
Somebody shut that crying baby

It came to me again returned
The empty black token of lifelessness
This time in the shirt with the Roman collar
Worn by a protester on my front lawn

Three of the aggrieved had entered my house
A woman and her two daughters speaking in tongues
Their hair the same glossless black
And beyond I saw the milling black-clad throng

Come to exact retribution
To administer justice
For my blasphemies
To draw me resistless again to death

The hack will not support you
Full daylight and the sun
Will crest the trees in its own sweet time
Let the ponderous words rest alone
A life of sensations
Arduous task for the recluse
The bookish near-invalid

Ponder only the empty space
Let it be filled with the sound of waters
Flowing from the dead past
Into the vacuous future
The sound of sunlight glinting upon the ripples
The sound of tart strawberries
The uncanny singularity

Let the words wash aside
Let them defer to other apparatus
Let the symptoms the spots the stripes
The painful lesions ripe with significance
Recede into fractal nothingness
The nothing surrounded by
Enveloped in the something

What are you afraid of
What mammalian reflex can’t you defeat
All the techniques all the virtuosity
Avail not
The sharpening focus of the will avails not
Only the ceaseless flow
From zero to one and back to zero

Now is a good time to despair
When those alive today assiduously fuck it up
When they have fucked it up for generations
And fucked it up for generations to come
Thrashed beaten and flogged
Hanged crucified crushed beheaded and assembled the firing squad
Burned villages and deleted cities with nuclear weapons
The great inflection points merely benchmarks
The Second World War
The First World War
The Second Punic War or the First

The entertainment revolution
The revolution in transportation and communication
The industrial revolution
The intercontinental revolution
The colonial empires with their slaves
The agricultural revolution
The language-technology revolution
The digital empire
The empire of capital with its slaves
The empire of God
The empire of the state
The empire of the emperor-god
The immutable castes of masters and slaves
The duty of one’s state in life
Justification by faith
Justification by making a contribution
The periodic eruption of victory and defeat
When the battle is lost and won
The pyrrhic victories when all is lost

A mother nurses her baby
And contemplates the myth of destiny
Greatness an unlikely attainment
And at what cost
A puppet spoke for the wise man
And said We must cultivate our garden
But that’s where all the trouble started
All that toil for a distant future
For the boon of a dubious harvest

That inner life
That so preoccupies
Philosophers and poets

You think nothing of it
Having long ago installed the workarounds
But others who behold the livid scar
Walk away filled with pity or contempt

Trmblen srapina myuglok n trepan
Dirl santoe Kaerss dmonium zet treeflo
Na znong traylobied did crazoy
Crazoy fald da syncova drest
Baed nat suwle rebs ezbratd
Sor hnid b hdinne swich caer
Ne nat bim conzolodor fnteelijbl
Woy cirtus c zden mlchol dfit
Stael mlaut grendi cumwoflux
Say dwn ohne s xaltazn
Sya nitng oe cnuiefrom wund
Smetch caer sa tor nagarmitec
Iamb doss spilt sarapin trenmennle bor

And when the melancholy fit has ebbed
Shall I strut and preen for my good efforts
No I made no heroic achievement
And soon the next dark tide is sure to flow

Old DK is mad again
You can tell by the cute nickname
The third-person reference
But mostly by the pompous word for mental illness

Answered prayers provoke tears
As when I an avowed atheist
Prayed for madness
And the madness came

How can you be so fucking stupid
Note the second-person address
As to invite suffering like that
An obvious insensitivity to suffering

Because certain artists I admire
Were crazy people
Never mind the Keatses Dickinsons and Shakespeares
There is glamour I supposed in the lunatic effusion

And I have yearned for power
Such as is mythologized in the Satanic pact
Which will not be revoked
When you tire of it

Why do I publish these putrid stomach contents
Because I am stupid bad and insane
So that somebody says There there you’re not that bad
Only stupid and insane

The gentle rain falls upon the earth
Or the healing sunshine
Gleams on the faces of children
In my weakness I do not face these truths

It will be dead later today
Pulling itself along the sunlit concrete
To seek refuge under the magnolia leaf
Undeterred in its futile striving
Every stretch a loss of moisture

I was told I would sleep for two or three hours
But reports aver that in the event it was more like six
Not that it makes or made any difference
Sleep hardly identifies that interval of nothingness

With the application of the anesthetic
I thought as clearly as if speaking aloud
If this be death so be it
Sometimes they don’t wake up

Did I experience a passage of time
The onset virtually instantaneous
But the endgame gradual and slow
In and out of torpid semi-consciousness

The world seemed alive with urgency
That I must wake up
That I must emerge from
Not darkness but no presence anywhere

To call it an aquacultural pilot project
Would be to exaggerate its dignity
Not that research in aquaculture is all that lofty or profound
There were ponds
There were fish which would rise expecting food
And if you kicked the sandy dirt into one of the ponds
The fish would retreat into the murk
Thereby displeasing the proprietor
There were firearms to frighten off the wading birds
But so far as anybody knew
There was nothing to be done
About the frogs the turtles or the snakes

I was surprised to weep
When I learned he had died today
Someone I never met
A celebrity
Said to be an eccentric
Inspiration of my childhood
And of my decrepit old age

If you could look deeply enough
Into the surface of a brand new tractor tire
See through the highlights of the gloss
Then you might conceive of the blackness
Indwelling the many-peaked lip of the rhino-buffalo
The fallen head gigantic above the plain

A centipede crawled across
The hotel bathroom floor
This being Florida
And arthropods everywhere
My mind turned toward a private cliché
The classical doctrine of plenitude
Up and down the Great Chain of Being
Precursor to the theory of evolution
Gapless uninterrupted with no links missing
Such that between the armadillo and the aardvark
Must be found the pangolin
As the angels must reside between God and man
And innumerable ranks of angels even so
As between the armadillo and the pangolin
Must reside the fairy armadillo
An annelid with legs thought I
Somewhere between earthworm and earwig
And I was struck with wonderment
How had it prevailed against the insecticide
Endemic to human habitations
And with what temerity does man
Build a hotel upon the houses
Of armadillos and centipedes
And who beside this centipede
Perilously out of place here on the third floor
Will survive the scourge of toxicity

First thing this morning
I wanted to write my syllabus
I wanted to tell of reasons
And good in the reason-giving sense
I wanted to tell of value and judgment
Of dialogue and understanding the significance of facts

But instead my attention was captured
By a short-leaf pine and a pin oak
Rooted in the ground as one
Which I had never noticed in my neighbor’s yard
And admittedly separate boles split off
After the first three or four feet

But it definitely isn’t a pin oak
On second thought perhaps some sort of hickory
But the longer I looked
The less confidence I felt
That I would ever know
What in itself it actually is

Molecules of nitrogen oxygen and carbon dioxide
Impact the membranes impermeable semipermeable and permeable
Water droplets dust motes pet dander
Strike the crust of dermis
The backcountry lanes of sticky phlegm

Danger and the anticipation of danger
In a world sufficient to nourish
To make thrive flourish and fruit

Imogen carried close to make her drowsy
And with each circuit the carrier takes
A morsel of strawberry cantaloupe

No it would be too wicked
Even to imagine considering
After such a decoction of verities
In this long lacuna
Or perhaps briefer than you think

The novelty of nostrums
Of efficacy famed for
Tetter gout elephantiasis ringworm and tired blood
Cramp stone wind sand runs gravel and halitosis
Headache backache toothache neuritis and neuralgia
Thrush dropsy porphyria carpal tunnel and jake leg
Acne eczema and impetigo
Strabismus astigmatism myopia flashers and floaters
Corns calluses bunions and cauliflower ear
Vacillation of the heart
Congestion of the semicircular canal
Irritable bowel
Caked breast
Uncertain stomach
Deviated septum
Defiant sphincter
Enlarged prostate
Peritonitis gingivitis laryngitis bursitis tonsilitis and tinnitus
Piles impaction and impostume
Ganglioma glomus and schwannoma
Mole boil strain drip and clap
The sweating sickness
The dolorous removal
The French disease
The German measles
Mal de mer
The Spanish flu
Undescended testicle
Hansen’s disease
Hodgkin’s disease
Koch’s disfunction
The English disease
The Prussian croup
The profit motive
The laughing plague
The disease of unknown provenance
The greenapple quickstep
Detached retina
Dishpan hands
Cirrhosis of the liver
Loofy-goofus of the goofy-loofus
Kidneys of wheat
Hardening of the arteries
Water on the knee
Wart peduncle and ingrown dewclaw
Running wen weeping abscess and delirium tremens
Sir Peter’s quinsy St. Vitus’s dance Bell’s palsy St. Lawrence’s catarrh
And all the underminings of the physical frame

And further
The unwieldy catalogue of mythopoeic phantasms
Adumbrated by madcap stimulants and dull opiates
The panoply of psychotropic arcana
Nightmares mygrim hallucinations and apparitions demure or minatory
Kelpies banshees imps poltergeists and incubi

Yea these are the premises
In both the propaedeutic and the domestic senses
For which appertaining
A hogshead of cheese
A butt of sack
A bunch of Parma violets
An erlenmeyer flask of fading chartreuse
A demijohn of absinthe the Green Muse
A cask of Amontillado
A jug of akvavit
A dram of paregoric
Microscopy electrophoresis gas-liquid chromatography
Computer-assisted tomography magnetic resonance imaging and palpation
Electrocardiogram electroencephalogram sphygmomanometresis
Cast traction and spinal adjustment
Splints prostheses and ace bandages
Stents bypasses root canals and reamings of the prostate
Appendectomy and episiotomy
Phlebotomy and shock wave lithotripsy
Fractionated radiotherapy
Endo- and epicardial ablation
Dietary supplementation with vitamins and iron
Application of topical or general anesthesia
Transplantation of the heart kidney or cornea
Defenestration of the ear
Trepanation of the skull
Bicarbonate of soda
Milk of magnesia
Tincture of iodine
Elixir of Ishtar
Distillation of mummy
An ampule of ipecac
The brown scapular
The brown acid
St. Christopher’s medal
St. Valentines’ fig
St. Veronica’s napkin
Spinal tap
Scalpels retractors clamps sutures and toothpicks
Laxatives purgatives and cathartics
Bulks lubricants and osmotics
Puffs powders patches and pomatums

You must resist
Charge the towering bastions
Apprehend the evanescent trophy
Seize the contingent triumph
Or dwindle in the immemorial yurt
Or flourish indefinitely in the mirthful pillory
Take action lieutenant but not too much

What is this Higgs boson
Of which discovery you the scientists boast

The VU meter registers units of volume
What is this volume that it purports to measure

The instrument delicate as diatom housed in glass
Reacts to the most insubstantial of phenomena

What is that and what is that
What is all this really

And how did this come to comprise such beauty
And what art thou beloved of my soul

Competent well-educated
A technologist a scientist
She reserved those terms for her husband
Though well she merited them herself
Knowledge of and beyond
Education profession and babies
But she had trouble with certain words
Which she could not pronounce with conviction
Velcro condominium Chik-fil-a
New words not current in a youth
Of Great Depression and all-consuming war
But she was not stymied by neologism alone
It can’t be just intellect she said to me once
It can’t only be intellectual
Speaking of our religious beliefs
One could hear that she suspected
An r sound lurking somewhere in intellectural
Never specifying what stood beyond intellect

She had converted in order to marry
My Irish Catholic father
He boisterous and commanding
She retiring and self-conscious
Owing perhaps to the poverty of her childhood
A Protestant of Calvinist tendency
She took a dim view of many things
But she took me to hear the symphony
And when she would see her youngest brother
They would laugh in torrents of weeping laughter
Yet I never saw her weep in earnest
Her spirit strong and resistant
Her stoical body relentless
Long after her spirit had departed
Obdurate power within the withered frame
Her body refusing to surrender
Until like a fussy baby
At last it consented to sleep