Where shall I enter this bright canvas
I beclouded on the ocean of ennui
How surmount this ever-liminal state

One foot on the restless shuttle
The slag of consciousness
The pains of sleep

I envision you spectral reader
On the other side of the receding plane
While here events tread apace

I hear that quiet song
As it languorously unspools
Is this what one does

Is this what one does
This nothing this inaction
This weather

They say the people of Hiroshima
Drank the black rain
To assuage their uncanny thirst

Should I be grateful for the world’s shifting
I a pause a meek caesura
A moment’s indecision amid the flames

Should I feel guilty in egotistical bathos
While you silent reader applaud the text
All all deserve to die

How can a voice so dry
Drip with such contempt
Eyes so lifeless so keen

I hear the patient litany
Of those insubstantial essences
Stately calm impervious

But over on this side
Windshear lacerates the travelers
Who crawl from point to point

The city stands silhouetted
Against the sunrise
Tainted by moonlight

A vigil gathers
At the ruined cenotaph
For the cheerful giant

At the toll booth drivers queue
To make atonement
The economy of punishment

I’m sorry for my compunction
My scruples my innoculations
My adverbs and adjectives

How shall I enter this sterile surface
This evasive scrim
Is this what one does

No sphinx shrieks anywhere
No flower blushes in the desert
No machine produces the articles of decorum

Lingflu bhle zerstistor
Ginnid qut zet pirmabhle
Rabn nerg brek sobbata
Lessluss fui dorla
Cumfunduer cvmwoflux
Fteh gaurgor moltseh thjan
Id vela l’crim
Prem depmisti
Ardonor
Ardonor

cvmwoflux

Pmisti effrent

Breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe

Breathe breathe breathe breathe breathe

The crow’s black beak
Its feathers’ overpowering gloss
Why the compulsion to account
Must the apprehension of beauty
Induce mythological aggrandizement
Or are we better off with scientific reduction
It’s all just evolutionary adaptation
Nothing but forces and particles

Pmisti sigurd O sergreta tanez C
Falgord peitu mlisti C als C sirgurdin

One wiser than I has said
Self-loathing speaks well of a person
And I myself have written in lyric verse
Only the better sort of people get to go to hell
A theft claiming that feeling the pangs of guilt
Achieves something like acknowledgement
Something like giving account of wrongdoing
But this only repeats albeit by introversion
The old canard that the wicked deserve to suffer

Nobody deserves to suffer
And the worst pain I feel
Is for having inflicted pain on another
And at this very moment neuralgia
Shoots through my right foot
Yesterday it was my left
And I rage at mother nature for her dereliction
To allow such undeserved agony
Or did I commit neglect or vicious excess

And what if I did
Do I therefore deserve to reap as I have sown
And I read recently
That one of the greatest artists of the age
Suffers peripheral neuropathy
As did the great hero my late father
Both of them careless of the substances
That make up our material cosmos
Thereby meriting the grim passage through pain

The smoker deserves to die
The one overweight deserves to die
The murderer deserves to die
The child who fails the spelling test deserves to die
The children of the drug user deserve to die
The Hindus Muslims Jews Christians and agnostics deserve to die
The weak the ugly the sick and the sinful deserve to die
All shall perish and rightfully so
All suffer torment before they go

I it is I
The asserted I
Who vows nevermore to indulge
In destructive self-contempt

The eminent critic
I am not a critic
The author of the paradigm-shifting argument
I am not an author

A poet much less than an author
The foul rag and lonely bone
That shakes against the grease cold
I am not c c c c c

Ledger of avowals
Intentional derangement
Surplus numerology
Compassionate not contempt

Do not scorn that I am not
It is I
My only addressee
Narcissus sister

The testimony of a fiddler who hears
When all else are blind with fury

You know how I hate crowds
I never knew that death had brought down so many
I wanted death to be just for me
As Keats was just for me
And Hendrix just for me
Artists famous for their deaths
As Aristotle earned fame for error
Among arrogant science students
Of course there must be billions dead I thought
But here I see only conceivable numbers
Vast to be sure
But any more than one
Is too many

Because a puppet was wrathful
The world has grown furious

For Ethan

Kelkay durest termendos whe
Tjnbui pmist effrenti gurdrif insay

My earlier avatar
Sylphlike
Limned in silver
Spoke with men
As other gods
Scorn to do
Most consistent
In inconsistency

Liquid metal
Pregnant virgin
Surf boy
Fade fairyman
Innocent experienced
Long-haul trucker of moonlight
Fragrance of lavender
Flight of wing’d heels
Chirrup
Leaning on a staff
Wet falling red and green leaves
Elegant contrapposto
One thin dime
Snake handler
Filament
Orientator
Blackball
Retailer of charms
Wine bibber
Permeable boundary
Detachable penis
Root hairs
Puppyface
Plastic gasket
Glitter girl
Potpourri
Autumnal equinox
Converses with crows
Chrysalis bursting
Secrets in a metal pouch
Lithe and lean
Fovea
Cochlea
A well-polished helmet
Deciduous tooth
Foil for the jewel
Particles
Floating needle
Great ape with pen
Face paint
Love button
Arch scamster
Ah! A quiz!
Tinker’s damn
Shining cinder
Boygirl
Sneakthief
Metagirl
The number seven
Catswhisker
Jerking crocus
Tiny dancer
I am not what I am
Cairn of pebbles
Klein bottle
Derailleur
Lampwick
Goosehorn
Triangle
Piccolo
Kalimba
Kaleidoscope
Kaligraphy
Sanguine song of sixpence
Weightless ichor
Cheesecloth
Sequin
Crispness presence
Pine scent
Tweezer case
Fillip
Pease blossom
Fate ferryman
Baby rattle
Reservoir tip
Taste tester

All those years of schooling
To fill out a few forms

Interstate highway
Airport runway
Country lane
City street
Subway advertisement
Pornography
Bodies
The distinctive markings of various species
Badges
Certificates
Tickets
Diplomas
Signs & signs & signs & signs & signs & signs & signs
Informational signs
Directional signs
Warning signs
Commercial signs
Banners
Flags
Pennants
Blueprints
Architectural elevations
Carpet
Linoleum
Hardwood flooring
Stone flooring
Vinyl flooring
Wallpaper
Paint glossy flat or matte
The portrait of a forgotten ancestor
The landscape one corner of which thunder causes to look darker
Scripts
Characters
Fonts
The covers of books and magazines
The pages in books and magazines
Flyers
The fan behind which lurk seductive eyes
Placards
Menus
The image of the snake that bites its own tail
Bunting
Garlands
Bouquets
Swags
Nosegays
Clothes & clothes & clothes & clothes & clothes & clothes & clothes
Business clothes
Wedding clothes
Fantasy clothes
Uniforms
The costume of a tramp
The costume of a dandy
The costume of an officer of public or national defense
The costume of a tycoon
The costume of an athlete
The costume of a fine lady
The costume of one who believes that nudity conduces to health
The costume of a child
The costume of a show business entertainer
Shields
Armor
Lampshades
Vestments
Regalia
Corporation t-shirts
Coats of many colors
Coats drab and unremarkable
Logo-bearing tennis shoes
Lists of lists
Lists of lists
Brown skin
Pink skin
Olive skin
Mottled skin
Skin of corpse color
Cheesecake
Beefcake
Paint
Peel
Smooth
Ripple
Waxy
Fuzzy
Reflections

I prayed for madness
And when madness came I thought for a while there
I am become a god
For my prayer had been answered
And since I was a real that is a manmade god
And not the inexistent omnipotent creator of the universe
I set about suffering and dying
In the venerable agricultural cycle
Of regret anxiety revision reassurance and contrition
So having lapsed now into testimony
I hereby disclose that I was motivated
By a certain means-ends calculation
Namely that madness would crack open
A mold into which I had been poured
Partly through my own neglect
Partly through the operations of others
But mostly through the machinic routines
Of punctuality input output and degree
Hence a program contradictory from the get-go
And I hoped to accomplish the liberating
Of the shaping power of imagination
Now lying inert
Through romantic derangement
Not conveniently attainable in this decadent age
And so instead I underwent unremarkable psychopathology
Though in my clouded frame I regarded this episode
As apotheosis
And instead of effusions gave forth symptoms
Intelligible to any objective observer
The depressive’s musings and sonneteering
The manic’s talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk
The obsessive’s enumerations and futile exertions toward comprehensiveness
ADD follies fish bicycle Mona Lisa lath and plaster wattle and daub

Nevertheless just as in sanity
The pathogen waits of insanity
So too lucidity shines in the mad shadows
And happy is he who carries out that light
That’s right I said happy
For even now as I sit upright and take nourishment
I relish the force of eight lines plus six
The tranquil counting of twelve breaths and five
The catalogues of my own device in the locus amoenus
And the rush of shapes the horrid and the beautiful
From the deep well of and so forth

Well for one thing I’m much bigger now
Bigger even than the I so large in life
That I must use to speak to the living

Everything in everything I used to say
The pomposity of that formulation obvious now
Though it comes as close as the mind can grasp

But the mind can grasp so little
The tongue discourse so little
And what organ is it
That registers that sense sublime

Of something deeply interfused
The one life within us and abroad
The spirit of delight
The blind inarticulate will

Nevertheless I assert it now
That what one apprehends
While hanging off the edge of a skyscraper

Or in the most intense erotic oblivion
Or in the deepest musical tone
Or in the true experience of the suffering of another
Or indeed in the distortion of consciousness

Constitutes a hint
Toward the rending of the veil
The apprehension as we say of what cannot be known

If it were possible for consciousness to cohere
In the aftermath
Then I might write this very poem

In a clearing
Amid the expanse
Of palmetto sweetgum and pine
A mockingbird declaims
Chup chup
Dandy-lanes dandy-lanes dandy-lanes
Beneedle alderbest
Purrip purrip purrip purrip purrip

A barren hillock
Hard solid clay
Red with oxide
But see the prominent chin
The lips curled in a half-accepting smirk
The weary gaze
He slowly moves
Imperceptibly shifting
On the great arm
That supports the massive head

Beside him the maiden is seated
Small by comparison
Her dark hair
Falling carelessly
Upon the white linen about her shoulders
The rest of her form concealed
Beneath the billowing black garment
Hands folded upon her knees
She speaks
We are here

Could be as chrism on the brow

I like to chew things
I ask questions with my mouth
I like to taste things
I ask questions with my mouth

And having discovered dignity
To traverse the endless indecorous valley

At the ocean floor a shrimp polishes its antennae
Attenuating the noisome accretion
Have the doors of perception been cleansed or merely opened
Drunkenness has never served the punch that’s certain
The end-stopped lines the faulty paradigm
How about an image that’s not a category
A tool a rationale a piece of fruit
How about an allusion that’s not a backslap
A source neither forbearing nor minatory
Eluding specification
Regardless of all the forks the way is just the circuitous way
The difference between mastery and misapprehension
Rarely a matter of definition or enumeration
And hence the dissonance of other people
One grows accustomed to the chronic defect
Assuming of course the primal perfect
And the futility even of acknowledgement
Ceasing to insist upon heroic resistance
And yet the fascinating exoskeleton

The hand is not infinitely strong
Nor the eye infinitely discerning
Neither is an avoidable defect

For John Kelly

James Brown who was a mad dictator
Is said to have enjoined his players
You’re not playing a guitar
You’re playing a guitar drum
You’re not playing a bass
You’re playing a bass drum
You’re not playing a horn
You’re playing a horn drum

James Brown could not have done otherwise
For he had been touched by the hand of God
He did not consent to his epiphanies
Any more than Lazarus to his revivification
And since James Brown must manifest his talent
Or what we weakly call talent
As surely as dogwood must bloom in the spring
He lorded it over the hapless mortals in his band

He could not help but prophesy
And on this occasion
As rarely for prophets
The content of James Brown’s strictures
Stands to reason
For in soul music as doubtless in all music
Rhythm comes before all else
And all players first play drums

Even singers first make the rhythmic grid
Take the birds with their Peter Peter Peter
And their Drink A Beeerrrrrrr
And Who Who Who Cooks Who Cooks For You
And primates are not far behind
In devising the patterns of duration
The lemur’s accelerando
The long-distance calls of howlers and gibbons

And those cousins the whales afar remote
In another grander dimension of space and time
Of vastness of extent and period
Count beats not per minute but per hour and per day
And now the hominids have exploded time and space
As they have their towering cities
Conquering death and bringing death to bear
With their technology their spells and their planning

For they have encoded in their cries
The logic of instrumentality
The logic of instruction
And they transmit skill in guise of command
To stitch a garment or tune a lute
And for all this song can never die
Decorum and due measure
The sweetness of sound the solace of sense