Dr. King you should be alive today
We need you now more than ever before
America is an open cesspool
That breeds pestilence and horror
Digital transmission
Industry military and commercial
The vast resources of culture and education
Have betrayed their promise of human understanding
We have raped our mother
And condemned our brothers and sisters
To lives of endless suffering
And yet we regard ourselves as superior
In our house of razor wire and surveillance
You were a famous celebrity
Admired by many and hated by many
You knew you would be murdered sooner or later
And yet you strode out on the balcony
To preach the gospel of truth and justice
To the nation that knew its rights
To bear arms and pursue selfish happiness
In the deluded creed of rule by the majority
When the few great abused the many small
And all knew nothing of lovingkindness

Ebestinae toldruk lungtwirp
Dair tilden fi testinare
O ma ditheness thiw ibrassne
Da dir ma ning dess combirde
Vergint myo ent itilliaza
Temertin fap rnnes
Enicant dbi witin
Strety prug eskiszact
Labanlabir feloa mmemostiv
Plyhap celtia
Uo creveh myo

In youth I condemned myself
For lacking discipline

In middle age I condemned myself
For failing to achieve

In old age I condemn myself
For having condemned myself

To other people I grant indulgence
I don’t know what they’ve been through

But for myself I remember every thought
Every thoughtless act

Every lie like the one just uttered
An obsession with the cherished inner life

Self-consciousness self-absorption
Self-condemnation and narcissism

Which I hereby condemn
And what sentence shall I pronounce

A lifetime of falsehood mediocrity and unhappiness
Denial of the innumerable joys

That befall
Even the depraved

And in truth there are many lives not mine
Bereft of joy by war famine and pestilence

But I don’t think of them
Preoccupied by my own guilt and dread

I tried to believe that I dreaded emptiness
Because Wordsworth dreaded vacancy

In fact I dread being apprehended
While looking and acting like everybody else

And so I promulgate the myth
That I am much worse than everybody else

And fall into a confessional style
That scarcely merits the name of style

And I dread abstraction spread across these pages
Like projectile vomiting

Abstraction is bad because two scumbags*
Separately declared it so

But behold a majestic fact
In no possible universe

Can the sum of five and seven
Be anything other than twelve

 

*Ezra Pound and Vladimir Lenin

No really
I need that

How proud I was of my pet hognose snake
Though now I know keeping pets to be reprehensible
When children are suffering fatal privation
Wild pets particularly
The attempt to domesticate which
Constitutes a form of animal abuse

But my pet ate wild food inedible to humans
Indeed the hognose is the only creature
I know of that could tolerate
The toxic toads that abounded
In my north Florida homeland

After dark with a flashlight
I would patrol the sidewalk
Hunting for the chubby hoppers
Present in their dozens
The only challenge to select
The toad neither too large nor too small
For the loose-hinged jaw to accommodate

When you return to the place childhood
All has changed
All has grown smaller
I walked the sidewalk with my new grandchild
Too small for me too large for the baby
No toads could we find of any size

Sons and daughters and all enlist
Albeit only half-voluntarily or less than half
In the various categories
Of attitude and affiliation

Something compels in some of them
A need to count
Others amass collections of candy and playthings
Still others ceaselessly drum their fingers

Many indulge a wish to control
The origin of such desire obscure
Thereby requiring responses
From those now designated as opposition

And since all regard the population
As resembling themselves
Assuming that what is easy for one must be easy for all
Few perceive the splendid variation of difficulty

Few perceive the abject suffering
Even in themselves
Luxuriating veritably bathing
In the pornography of cruelty

And history presents yet another iteration
Of hollowness of horror of faceless sojourners
Of a void never to be filled
By muffin or cucumber sandwich

And yet another occasion for sorrow
The suffering of those who endorse suffering
Sons daughters and all
The pitious multitude in the great evacuation

All march one way
And though the tread is inequitably distributed
Among sons and daughters and all
The monarchs of wickedness are suffering too

The grate above my head lets in the sunlight
Lets in the drippings from the gutter
While at intervals some unseen agent
Hoses down my cell
Upon which occasion I rejoice
Until the realization again befalls me
That lacking drainage
The floor will retain the residue
In its fetid entirety
Slop orts and imports

I say my cell not as ownership
But only as relation to a space
That excludes all but the solitary

My clock my clock
Why hast thou emprisoned me
The morning hums
The afternoon blares
And in the evening
The riotous clamor
Of discontent resurges
And deep in the midnight
The heartbeat silence
Inaudibly whispers
Of dreadful morning
And shameful yesterday
The circuit runs the circuit
And the reverberant commentary
Pops and hisses
In its immemorial groove

We study war
We cultivate aggression
In order to deploy it
In the furious close
Of tactical butchery

We study commerce
We cultivate calculation
In order to redeem it
In the exclusive precincts
Of meretricious exchange

We study philosophy
We cultivate leisure
In order to ask
Would you give your life
To spare a stranger a nasty abrasion

Nobody is dying
To see the expired invoice
Nobody undertakes
The difficult journey
Toward the stoical the ascetic
Not even the stoic

Instead a few seek out
The rapid plucking
Upon the Spanish guitar
Or the mural that seems
A window opening
Upon an exclusive park

Nobody is to be faulted
For a preference
Toward simulated immediacy
The clocks disagree
With each other
In constricted vocabulary

Nobody is rushing
To read the autopsy report
Nobody is taking steps
To complete the encyclopedia
Of suffering
The catalogue of defects

Instead a few add to
The spectacle
Of varied and shifting colors
The red changes to gold
The gold to green
The dimming geometry

Instead a few make their
Acid findings
To supplement the one great poem
Infinitesimal increments
That all can see but
Nobody is dying to

Whether Philip had succeeded in his calculation
Calcium chalk calligraphy
This we ask nominal dominator
Crash or fall or first crash and then fall
The raptor airborne acrest the thermal
Hovering upon the incitement
That sags like a tiny island
Like a leukocyte
What comes of distinguishing wants and needs
Who bids the enforcement of equanimity and subjection
The obstruction of chaos
Obstinate obsidian oblivion
Who will be deflected
Impassive necessity obeys the reckoning
The birdsong the crops the horses
The language of ascendancy
The old manner the old idiom
The irresolution of of
The crackdown thereof
The mastery of the achieve of
A theft of molten crayons
A cognitive rift toward sequence
No visible inducement toward cessation
Whether Philip had succeeded or no
The sin of having been born too early
The other unavoidable sin
The flak the investiture the laceration
Concentric rhythms an oppressive order
Is dissonance really better
Is chalk

We I you
Or one from the small set
Of options in the third person
How amid the infinity
Of objects actions and concepts
Persons affects and projects
Available in the universe
Can a set of options seem small

And yet the facets
Of the most perfect jewel
Must be shaped by somebody
Somebody must evoke the rush
Of shapes streaming by
Outside the subway car
Somebody somewhere
The little prison of time and space

But the universe is as capacious
As it ever was
The change therefore
Has been wrought
In a different perennial fixture
The bugbear of experience
The weaker pole
Of a false dichotomy

A particular hallucination
Sometimes afflicts
The neurologically troubled
In which a body part
Limb head or torso
Or the entire body
Expands to colossal size
Unlimited by the environs

Is it a hallucination then
That the environment
Has contracted
To the static cell
Insufficient time
To compose the lyric invocation
Insufficient space
To wield the lapidary instrument

I don’t want to pull out my pocket knife
I want the knot to detach itself
That is the recalcitrant tangle
With no contribution from me
Self-conscious as always stingy as always
I keep turning to the left
As if imprisoned on a racing course
Drawing inferences concerning
Crustaceans and the different trees
Exotic characters and amorphous glass
Does a single node define the figure
Does the ordeal of fame define significance
Drain holes appear on the pathways before me
That rhyme with the drain holes in my brain
Alleged remedy for concealment
I don’t want to pull out my crocheting hook
My bookmark or the public fountain
I want to attach the status quo ante bellum
To finish the synecdoche
As if firing it in a kiln
Though letting go is easier than reputed
Plaques and tangles abound
Nobody public is listening that’s a good thing
Not even myself
I don’t want to pull out the trading cards
That some company tried to puff to exaggerated value
Not because of the righteousness of my cause
To be thoughtful of others
Whose own thoughts remain unknown
But only because of the credible shortage
There are shoes at the front door
Of the neighbors’ house
They must have organized their exaggerated readiness
The unknown does not imply a concealment
Nor silence an attitude of parsimony
If the dialectical materialists have relinquished
Their insistence upon the metamorphosis
Of the status quo
At least dependency on typography
Has declined
The small enameled box
Object of impressive solemnity
Whoever should undergo the famous ordeal
Will assume the title of Emperor by acclamation
I however keep turning to the left
Emblem of the pains of sleep
I’m not even myself
Cliffs and shocks abound
The landscape an abundance of confused categories

For The Hoop Snakes

In this salon no antagonist troubles the goings-on
The givers all swear by the go-signal
The theater of control is strictly a no-go
No shot-caller designates another as go-fer

Nor is it the design of some mad visionary
Nor a rehabilitative or recuperative revision
But simple voice civil attention and clear vision
Easy for the modest mortal to envision

Social intercourse is not a route to infection
Nor common discourse a kinky defect
Nor the ordering of forms a perishable confection
But doing without trying the way of earthly perfection

Matter and manner are not matters for choice
No augury imprints the mark of The Chosen
But a noble work should be valued for its choiceness
And every mover a marker free to choose

Knowledge does not matter very much
The existence of truth matters
The possession of it rather little

Possession of the truth is a fool’s errand
Since there’s too much truth to go around
People capture little more than a little shard

And even this quantitative fantasy errs
The unit of measure irrelevant
When the understanding reduces truth to mere belief

We know that beliefs make actions rational
Provided that we perceive the truth
And then act according to the truth of reasons

The albatross sticks the landing
On this most rare of occasions
Knowing little of the laws of motion

We do not designate as actions
The impulses of instinct
Or obedience to arbitrary decree

Instead we demand choice
Among alternatives explicitly posed
All furnished all in arms

But nobody sees all the pitfalls
The catalogue of serpents venomous or persuasive
The index of glittering weapons and gaping traps

We raise the edifice of laws and wish by decree
All is as it should be so what’s to think about
Ignore the future emergency the legal improvements

Adjectives nullify
Abstractions conceal
The illusion of no illusions

Has he lost his mind
Can he see or is he blind
–Black Sabbath

 

The wretch the creature the monster
Emblem of modernity
Organism as assemblage

But are these still modern times
Is this world still the world of Petrarch Columbus
Copernicus Luther Watt Wollstonecraft and Washington

Or perhaps assemblage is a defining feature
Neither ethic nor spirit
But only blind impersonal process

No not blind
A person who never lived is not dead
Nor an insensible being necessarily senseless

Never to have seen space nor heard time
And thus to unravel
The various and intoxicating delusion

The world is full of different trees
Though what makes one different from another
Is often subtle and obscure

Oaks for example are notoriously promiscuous
Quercus geminata and Quercus palustrus
Often exchanging their pollen

And the distinction is hard to draw
Between shrubs their foliage near the ground
And trees who lift their leaves on high

The decorative crepe myrtle
Nothing more than a burly shrub
Is often trimmed and trained to resemble tree

And even mighty magnolias and massive firs
Are sometimes shorn of their lower branches
To assure their bond with the arboreal tribe

And understanding or the wish to understand
Is quick with a binding to join together
Or a blade ruthlessly to put apart

Abrasions contusions lacerations and puncture wounds
Surely not a comprehensive taxonomy
Omitting as it does
Insults chemical radioactive and psychological

The organism or perhaps the species or genus
Will seek to avoid such distress
And in cases of repeated incursion
Will develop mechanisms for coping and defending

But in each case some pretext
Might be imagined to justify the trauma
The hypodermic the harrowing treatment of cancer
The defense of the innocent or aid to the afflicted

And a person who voluntarily accepts the attack
Thereby rationally consenting to suffer
For say therapeutic or humanitarian reasons
Must overcome organic resistance

Must overcome oneself
And might this maneuver be accomplished
Without new inflictions
Without new increments to the world of pain

Poor Settembrini yearned to produce
The exhaustive catalogue of suffering
A liberal and a consumptive lived on exhausted
By the work of more than all the lifetimes

On the other hand it seems entirely possible
That expression comes too easily
That feelings must ripen or rather
Petrify a bit before one commits them to writing

On the other hand it seems entirely likely
That what what matters is the facticity of form
As the architectonics of Paradise Lost
And the Ode to Autumn assert

On a completely different hand it seems possible
That had not Milton suffered as an exile in time
He would never have dreamed as he really dreamed
Of objectivities in the refuge of eternity

And had not Keats experienced directly his own death
He would never have endeavored
To detail with diagrammatic precision
The subjectivity of space vacant of his own presence

And I remember the boy and the bomb
The womangirl in the kimono and out of it
The birth and the afterbirth
The shocks and the aftershocks

Lextref mandoof spelassdi als prement
Endross camardha pmisti ob effrent
Vercogh wesnadritroe albantok dirst
Alban’t nadrito id obden vercirst

Waelens ardonor cal sinfucs
Melnicu effrendondo cvmwoflux
Ald meom-b dre meom-a dirdran
Twe-douzand lijyars wofl-ind Alderan

If I were the lighthouse keeper
I wouldn’t mind if ships ignored my signal
But a schoolchild would not employ
Such dense modality

Is empathy even possible
Is the Golden Rule even practicable
When all the world’s manifestly a stage
And to play even one’s own role is hard

Hamlet and Lear are gay
And we’ve had centuries for them
But what of those other less familiar characters
The refugee the first responder the son of an earl

A person changes costume
And enters a new setting
A gown open at the back and an adjustable bed
A patient in the hospital

We see suffering far away and here before our very eyes
And sometimes we wince in recognition
Acid piercing behind the knees
And in the salivary glands

And if the expression is intense enough
At last we say yes it hurts
But surely it shouldn’t be necessary
For the afflicted to beg for our regard

We don’t know we don’t know
And we use our ignorance as permission
To avert our eyes and turn our backs
And head willfully into the peopled rocks

I write from compulsion and cannot deny
That I have entered this sickly confessional phase
I don’t feel sorry for myself
But I feel pity for the child some fifty-six years ago

And to claim that child as myself makes no sense
But I was the child who entered a sickly anxious phase
And it was I who registered the shift
That occurred on virtually a single day

A plane flew over doubtless some commercial craft
And I ran into the shelter of the house
And I was aware both that I probably had nothing to fear
And that if I did the house would prove no shelter

Ours was a medium-sized city
And I delighted in the air traffic
That did not overcrowd the sky
But certainly was a common enough sight

One couldn’t see the pilot or passenger
But I would wave and wonder who would wave back
And I felt sure they did so for I felt sure
That I was solid and present and visible

And sometimes I would speak into a cupped hand
In what I took to be the tone of radio chatter
As if to acknowledge the fantastic character
Of the relation of plane to me

But today it was an object of terror
For I had learned to duck and cover
And I did not know how to know
Which plane would drop the atom bombs

Jojo is reckless on the road
Who exerts more control than any you’ve ever seen
Careening down the cloverleaf
So absolutely trusts he his own skill

Alyssa similarly heedless of risk
Well knows the glamour her wildness affords
Flashing that guy as he gets off the elevator
While screeching the lyrics of some overplayed song

Mutual friends of mutual friends
They have no acquaintance with each other
Outside the crowds on social media
But they seem all too perfectly matched

Though still in thought untrammeled and in deed irregular
Both have entered committed relationships
With partners far less interesting than themselves
Who hope no doubt to moderate the excesses

But doubtless too if they met in person
And hit it off and started hanging out
Their union would add to the devastation
But wouldn’t we love to look upon that spectacle

For the Modernists the worst thing was sentimentality
Which Yeats defined as The will doing the work of the imagination
But as his championing of imagination shows
Yeats was a transitional figure
Who had modernized himself Pound said
And yet who retained apparently a high regard
For spontaneous overflow from the anima mundi
And yet they were virtuosic technicians
Those Romantics the early and the late
Whose visions from the depths were ne’er so well expressed

So somebody tell me not what poetry is
Much less what might make it excellent
And dear critic feel free to say that this isn’t it
But tell me how poetry happens
And to be candid for a change
How one might make it happen
With hubris aforethought
For Yeats speaks of the frustration
Attendant upon having for a long time sought a theme
Thereby implying an application of will
And not simply the capture of the vast capricious image

And I keep trying to reach the fundamental claim
And I read once that the Augustans produced
A poetry of statement just as inimical to Modernist taste
As was the gushing of the world-organic fountain
And I feel the age-old dread arise in me again
Its youthful formulation I will fail to achieve
And in old age I have failed
And again the lapse into the confessional
And the fundamental claim that I have erred

And I am paralyzingly aware that I lack the gift for image
And the Modernists commanded
Skip the Romantics skip the Neo-classicals
Go back the the Metaphysicals with their antic conceits
Their compass legs altar stones and pregnant fleas
But if it’s images you seek go to the Inferno
You might as well abandon hope
And luxuriate in the appalling spectacle
The gnawing on a bloody skull
And punishment for the sin of being born too soon
Never enough that the good should prosper
But the wicked must be made to suffer
And those without hope live on in desire

And I confess that for me
It was always a matter of verbal formulations
And never the glory of the image
The golden hand the solemn monument
But DK nobody cares about you and your guilty defects
Nevertheless From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide
And yes there’s an image a trivial one
A stream of coffee
But what of grateful
Surely a misprint for graceful
Unless the feeling of the coffee-drinkers’ expectant gratitude
Has been transferred to the trivial stream
That descends into the cup as upon a continent
In a gush of verbal magic

And so too the unravished bride of quietness
And spots of time with their distinct preeminence
And even instruct me for Thou knowest
And I am not what I am
And I confess that naming a feeling does not express it
As images can sometimes do
Not only Dante’s vengeance nor Eliot’s self-importance
But also the fair love’s ripening breast
A tactile image of exquisite precision
And in elegiac splendor
The white and bristly beard of the harvested sheaf

And why is feeling so important
No doubt just because it is
A world without grief or love
A world without certainty or commitment
And what we feel we want to be made known
That I love my beloved
I grieve for my late father
And already for my mother who sustains
The grievous onslaughts of age

And with the feeling the expression comes again
That I an antlered layabout
Have merited suffering
The more so for having exaggerated the distress
When so many others have suffered far greater pain
And that I a spindle-legged preacher
Make an exception for myself when the truth is nobody
Absolutely nobody deserves to suffer
And that I a hornèd viper
Have given pain to others and to myself
Is this the thought that gives rise to the anxiety
Have I struck a devil’s bargain
Expression in return for dread