Den Soog
Den Efrenthandreg

Neither of us moves
Lying there touching
Pretending to sleep

I pitched it in the river I tried so hard to throw that gun away
Oh well I pitched it in the river I tried so hard to throw that stinking gun away
Of all the lowdown dirty moves I’ve made ain’t none worse than the one I’ve done today

I have killed my bloody captain and laid him out upon pale pale ground
Yes I have killed my bloody captain and I laid him out upon pale pale ground
I take no orders take no signals that the chain of command is sending down

If I had possession of the hearts and minds they’re leading by the nose
If I had possession of the hearts and minds they’re leading by the nose
I’d make those lily-livered scoundrels wonder what it means to say anything goes

I tried to get away with murder tried to get out from under the first degree
I tried to get away with murder tried to get out of the heinous first degree
And when the judge makes his decision I’ll hunker down and bide my time and wait and see

Well they got writs and they got summons they got all the fine provisions of the law
They got writs they got permissions they got all the fine provisions of the law
Ain’t no monumental tablets ain’t no textbook of procedure worth a straw

You know my captain is a tyrant and I let him see the bullet lay him out
You know my captain he’s a tyrant and I let him watch the bullet lay him out
And I call the many witnesses to wipe out any shadow of a doubt

Then I pitched it in the river let it follow where my true love floated down
You know I pitched it in the river let it follow where my true love floated down
All you justice-loving people you can watch as this poor rambling boy goes down

The moon was shining bright as day those drunken white boys were riding in the car
The moon was shining bright as day those drunken white boys were joyriding in the car
They ran over Sonny’s uncle and they made sure to run over his guitar

There’s rumors flying east and west about the circus is coming into town
There’s rumors flying east and west about the circus that it’s coming into town
I’ll believe them when I see the trapeze and the elephant so nice and brown

Now don’t you do me any favors I’ll be beholden to nobody if you please
And do not do me any favors I’ll be beholden to nobody if you please
I’d rather die in darkest dungeon than to live five minutes’ time down on my knees

Montresor said Fortunado won’t you come on down and taste a little wine
And Montresor said Fortunado won’t you come on down and taste a little wine
Said Fortunado Montresor my friend I guess I’ll take you up some other time

Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg headed south down highway 41
Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg like a bat out of hell down highway 41
When they hit that Georgia border Kerouac said oh my God what have I done

You’re gonna have to serve somebody it might be the devil it might be the Lord
You’re gonna have to serve somebody it might be the devil and it might just be the Lord
Down highway 41 hit 95 and hope nothing outrun your V8 Ford

The Pattle
The Pretender

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards
The gorgeous psychopomp summoned and dismissed
The murmurous haunt of flies
Attracted no doubt by the perfume of death

Death with his comely features
Not the hooded villain of medieval fright
A fine countenance a little too angular
A luscious fragrance a little too strong

No wonder he is beckoned by the lounging portraitists
He joins at length the stately minuet
Too languidly disposed
For the exertions of lusty clog dancers

The more impressive the opulent cartouche
Should arise from such splendid lassitude
Do not imagine he seems to have inscribed
The fury of the crown of vines

Child
Speak not of death even in jest
Such talk ill suits your childhood
Your beauty

You walked across our little fence
From one end to the other
When a day or two later you attempted the same
You said that fear of falling had made you fall

Small fowls make melody
Emitting their ravishing commands
A hillbilly Get off my land
Or a cavalier Come hither love to me

The wingèd multitude
The mockingbirds the cardinals the bobolinks the Kentucky warblers
That thrush that in America we call a robin
And all the anonymous throng

They do not intend to propagate beauty
Any more than the sunset
The lapping wave
The pastoral flower

Each species its unique apparatus
Even that of sublime mockery
Immense vibration
From each diminutive frame

The ephemeral song eternal
We call it song
It takes a reasoning brain
To appreciate

Up to the brim and even above the brim

I could see that it was molting hard
That avian apparition
And I felt the ache of envy rise within me
O to shed my mammalian skin
As had the wingèd visitor its feathers

I’ve always watched for signs and portents
Silly I know
Even pretending to determine
How things will work out one way or another
Not as easy as you might think to deceive oneself

The prismatic edge of a drop of water
Waiting suspended on the invariant spout
The progress of a sore throat
When one side is more inflamed than the other
The transit of the moon behind the clouds

That ceaseless barking
The sound of trucks on the highway
The mottled discoloration of the brickwork
The overheard speech with my bad hearing
The bird’s new life and my old age

So much I already know
It isn’t worse for me I know
Somebody always has it worse
Someone will be sad when I die
I will be sad when somebody dies

The subjective world is just that
A world
Infinitely expanding and complex
A complex network of attitudes
Perceptions foresights and hindsights
As we discover when the doors of perception
Are cleansed

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment
And let me add to Blake’s demonic observation
That sensual enjoyment often resides
In personal interaction
But also occurs in interactions
With those artificially-devised subjectivities
Namely works of art

And so to my theme
The Catholic Church left me
With dread that has persisted
From childhood into my old age
And yet amid the dread I find gratitude
For Sister Nathaniel at Our Lady of Sorrows
And for my second-grade teacher Mrs. O’Connor

All the persons we know are humans alas
Weak vulnerable rather pathetic organisms
We do not find gratitude in the animal kingdom
Gratitude an emotional posture of reason
For I have reason or have not
To acknowledge the benefaction of another
Or indeed their destructive ill will

Therefore do I hereby retract the innuendo
That I have been left with only dread
For in the immense precincts of subjectivity
Dread shares its quarters with other less destructive moods
Such as thankfulness approval and love
But I am forced to admit
Not tranquility

For in 1962 when I was learning to dread the pains of hell
That psychotic nightmare
I lived each day in frank terror of nuclear weapons
And of their hell fire
And of the crystalline perfection of Communist evil
That somehow would become God’s instrument
For my punishment

And to this day I hate myself as a scaredy-cat
Even as I reason that less objectionable traits
Must surely lodge somewhere in the recesses
Of my character
And why the traits that might give strength recede
While devastating dread and self-damnation dominate
I do not know though I have my suspicions

Parents schools
Don’t punish your kids
Neither listen to the lie
That success matters most
Nor hear nor repeat
The stupid rhetorical question
How else will they learn to be good

Something substantial
Something of a heft
Tell a story

Once upon a time
There was one holy catholic and apostolic church
That taught the young
To dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell
And to avoid the near occasion
Of offense to God
Who is all good
And deserving of all love

And somebody once designated me
Anti-Christian
But I do not oppose Christianity
But merely acknowledge
The great departure

The departure of love
Of deserving
Of God
Of heaven
Even of loss
And I am left
With dread

The dread of pain
Of hell
Of offense
Especially of that which is all good
For who can conceive of or tolerate
Such crystalline perfection
Even in the light of one’s own wickedness
So partial
So impure
So mediocre

I punished myself when I was young
Punching my chest to stop my heart
Ineffectual blasphemy
Failure to usurp divine authority
I didn’t punch hard enough
Hatred vitiated by pity

Don’t expect substance
Don’t expect heft
If you lack the will
To go all the way
Unforgivable cowardice

Ruined at the outset
Craving approval
And deserving none
Begging for mercy
And hearing silence or condemnation
And who was ever motivated
By command

And yet behold the multitude
Cheerful in simple faith
Bemused no doubt by one
Unwilling to take the simple first step
Or the last

Something worth a damn
Something to be proud of
Deadly pride that twists the heart
Something substantial

And now we find ourselves in a great emergency
That demands bold action
That disdains a whimpering child
In the guise of an oafish greybeard
That demands something heftier
Than a tale of piteous contempt
Violent aversion
And self-serving blame

Thou beloved
Fixture of long habit
And always something more

Little demon
Who says to me Who cares
And always something more

Weary stale flat unprofitable
Stifled drowsy unimpassioned
Something that is gone
Now can see no more

Melancholy long withdrawing
Unaware
Nor hope nor health nor peace within nor calm
Close the door on me

Akcorn woi cirtus locqvump

Affairs of state must take precedent
Over the affairs of state

In the movies you can tell
When the person flying
Is suspended on a wire
Paolo and Francesca rotate and revolve
Elements in an automatic armillary

The tortoise shouts
That same force that drives the flower
Vertebrates and invertebrates in tidal congregation
Organisms of all kingdoms in congress
Even the asexual on the move

Genetic orthographic variation
Sometimes catastrophic
Sometimes beneficial
Usually inert
Nor crisis nor panacea following the script

The actor orates
Driving sound past the pasteboard mask
The tragedian falls
The comedian springs up again
The unseen will unseeable

First let us acknowledge that these are bad words
Forbidden words
Seditious words
Hysterical vision and bride
Psychopathology originating in the uterus
Or of any other organ
Nevertheless hormones and such
Of any sex
Physical pain physical pleasure
Conducing to psychological effect
And who is to say

And in the second place vision
Along the line
That inveterate game of telephone
A neurological phenomenon
Impossible to pinpoint
Powerless to efface
The coordinates
That define
The advent of catastrophe
Rarely of blessing
Mostly catastrophe
And is it true that some authority must authorize
That definition
And who authorizes the authority

She was undressed by her suitors
Who identified themselves as such
Uncorroborated by the bride herself
Unasked whether she would endorse
This laudatory appellation
And afterward the suitor
I have suffered
Much later she says
I should have said
I should have said

Uncle married Mother
Consequently
I talk to skulls
Dress in black
Write sonnets
Counseling my beloved
To suicide

Alchemical Infusion

As a child delights in the diffraction of squinting
As the German tourist focused so intently
On the coach down the third-base line
As if that were the essence of the game

How the mind shuttles
Between the special and the general
The leukocyte and the circulatory system
Which is really the circulo-pulmonary system
Or the circulo-pulmonary-digestive system

Add immunity
Add neurology
Add topography
Add genetics
Add astrophysics

The uniqueness of a donax
On a beach that stretches for miles
And the rotating tide that straddles the Gulf Stream

Add social norms and individual responsibility
Add cultural practices and the infinite postures of affect
Add the wisdom and error of the ages and the first time
You noticed that bird song
A stately solitary
Poo-tweet

I sat quietly upon a bench
A bluebird
Swear to God it was a bluebird
Flitted down to the sidewalk near me

Hello bluebird
I silently said
Joyful at the sight of it

The bird cocked its head
And flew far out of sight

I’m sorry bluebird
That I existed
At that place
At that time

To free the living quicksilver
From its pulverulent prison

The woodworker makes his renunciation

The cherub astride the dolphin
But not the Victorian cyclists

The god who drives the storm
But not the fictional hero of intellect

The carrier wave full of aggressive demands
But not the principle of cellular division

I am a part of all that I have met

I was seven
I knew right from wrong
Or had been told I did
I had reached the age of reason
Along with everybody else
In the second grade

It was time to go to confession
In preparation for Holy Communion
Not my first
But first the examination of conscience
This from experience I knew I could not do

I knew I had sinned plenty
But I could call to mind
None of my offenses
I could carry no effort to its conclusion
I lacked application
And so I lied

I told the priest that I had stolen
A piece of candy from my little brother
Then you must return it to him
Even my childish understanding
Heard the absurdity of the command
But I ate it already
Warming and developing the fiction
Then you must give him money

That night or sometime
Shortly thereafter
I asked my father for a nickel
I never told my brother
Why I gave it to him
Nor you Dear Reader
This memorial
To the invented sin