Legend has it that at their first meeting
My father offered my mother a tug on a flask
Which offer she declined

Huxley asserted I seem to recall
A universal human proclivity for getting high
A claim that maternal myth apparently gainsays

And throughout my life
My mother’s behavior
Has backed up the legend

On rare occasions my quite-moderate father
Would suggest that they share a toddy
A term he employed generically

Even more rarely my mother would accept the offer
After protestations of unwillingness
And her more-than-half-full glass would waste

It may be that my mother’s tastes resulted
From the worldly renunciation
Characteristic of the Protestant ethic

If so then they stand as proof of the rule
That human nature resists universalization
In a world of cultural contingency

A tree surgeon once said to me
Upon observing ants swarm around a gash
The bar is open

But surely the ants were there
For sugar and not for alcohol
Though the two are molecular cousins

Captive animals can be made to desire spirits
And I’ve seen a dog lap a bowl of beer
Small children not so much

Although Hanno Buddenbrook
Drinks wine
Until his head swims

At 19 I drank tequila until the room whirled
Threw up my spaghetti supper
And can’t touch tequila to this day

By 20 all the other bevs were mother’s milk
And I spent the decade treating a hangover
With large doses of hair of the dog

At 30 I had to rehab myself
And practiced a year’s abstinence
A can of Bud dormant in the back of the fridge

By 40 I’d mastered the weekend binge
Several days without a drink
Then a debauch with a rock and roll band

At 15 I played my first gig for money
The bar in a fishing camp
On the southern edge of the Okefenokee

And shared my first joint
With the New Calibre
Out of Jacksonville

And weed is wonderful for certain styles
The unleashing of creativity
The slight confusion and anxiety

The mild euphoria
So in keeping with the tone
Of jazz trumpet or rock guitar

A cultural practice no doubt
And therefore not a universal
But pretty widespread certainly

The nakedness past nakedness

Somebody is sure to be unhappy

 

One melody rises
While another descends

People want what they want
And won’t let truth or reason stand in their way
And employ verbal and mechanical devices
To separate flesh from bone

Joy it was to be alive in those days
WAPE The Big Ape in Jacksonville
Aaaaaaa-EEE-AAAAAH
And five notes announcing Satisfaction

Temporary symptomatic relief
That does not get at the cause of the pain
What did you really expect
The brimming cup of happiness

Nevertheless the anti-inflammatory function
Does more than nothing
Though the effect is subtle
And a matter of the longer term

But immediate relief is what we’re after
When the mother in labor
Otherwise demure and contained cries
I’m uncomfortable you son of a bitch

Can there truly be no help for pain
Ah love let us be true to one another
Well hell shouldn’t everybody be truthful
Shouldn’t everybody at least try to tell the truth

An institutional superior
Once disparaged shooting the breeze
But who has not sustained trauma
And sought relief in timely utterance

Camera tricks give you a more realistic background
Than the one you already have
Buffalo herds for Plains Indians to infiltrate
Star-fields for interstellar travel
The perplexing byways of the forest primeval
Air support for the troops pinned down on the beach
The impossibly sophisticated cabaret
City streets where cops and robbers swerve and crash

For Kelly

A shaman told me the following story
At least I think this is the story she told
I was a little messed up

The fox accompanied by the crow
Or the crow accompanied by the fox
Either way
Met up with the panther and the armadillo

And they all had a real good time

For Kelly

Her life didn’t go all that well in the aftermath
After the outraged initial public response
Motivated by fear of imperial reprisal

The emperor went into seclusion
And silently instituted measures
Even more repressive than those in place hitherto

The family huddled around
With words of protection and damp approval
Don’t be afraid child you’ve done a good thing

But she was not afraid
Everyone else was
She was too young to be afraid

But she felt alone
And could not go to school or play outside
Without being pointed at

There’s the girl they’d say
She’s the one
Who saw and spoke

When she just wanted to see
The interesting parts of her world
And not the emperor’s genitals

This must be snowman coffee

A tiny bicyclist racing up the gutter of an open book

Before robot fingers installed tiny screws and springs
Men silently loaded the empty cassettes
Into the feeder magazines and then swept up scraps
Of videotape that fell out like excrement

Meanwhile women wearing white gloves
Chatted at a cloth-covered table
And inspected the products like polished lacquer
Before placing them on the boxing line

And one woman recounted to another a miracle
That occurred recently or long ago
She couldn’t remember which
That she knew had decided her destiny

For her husband had defeated The Adversary
By taking his wife downtown with him
To the Greyhound station
To purchase the Satanic Bible

And when they brought the book home
He placed it atop the television set
During a broadcast of the Miracle Gospel Hour
Which played day and night on channel 68

And the Reverend Bobby Stevens
Of Sugarland Texas was explaining
That the faithful could acquire a marvelous cloth
That had been prayed over by Pastor Stevens himself

And thus exposed to the sacred word
The fiendish book began to howl with the pain
Of six thousand years of infernal torment
And to bellow words of unsurpassable obscenity

And Bobby with the utmost calm
For the husband’s name was Bobby too
Placed a Testament upon the squalling beast
Thereby silencing it forever

And then she knew that her husband’s gift
Had earned him the right to his own congregation
And if she prayed hard enough
Someday his own worldwide television ministry

The joke used to be that blues was devil music
Because it was all about sex and sex is bad
Pretty funny huh

But what of those who lack the wherewithal
To cultivate the techniques of enjoyment
Is it not so that basic needs must come before
The pleasures of philosophy

Many a philosopher has glorified the ascetic path
A dead end unless it’s freely chosen
For it is the path of self-denial
And not of the chance effects of political economy

Does justice therefore require renunciation
Of all pleasure since it’s denied to some
No it cannot be
That one simply chooses coldness to beauty or to truth

But indulgence in sick pleasure abounds
Notably the taste for violence
Or just as bad for sybaritic luxury
While a single child goes hungry

The magus is one of such extraordinary competence
As to make a practice seem a congenital property
Disentangling a traffic jam for example
Lighting the flame in the inaccessible beacon

Myriad other actions less obviously technical
Filling an audience with pity terror and delight
Toasting the emperor with a subversive pun
Causing the pathway to blossom into a new Eden

Don Juan mastered the seductive art
While that other lothario Faust
Needed only the conjuring word
For all creation to come under his sway

But the most sublime act is to set another before you
And beauty manifests itself
Only to those capable of appreciating it
Cultivate therefore the techniques of enjoyment

The extraction of surplus value
During fun times funky times
The chief emblem of invidious emulation
Steel glass paint polish vinyl rubber polyester
And the employment of subsistence labor
For the maintenance of display

The loop of musical selections
A psychiatric patient with repetition disorder
The uniformed personnel
At their similarly repetitive tasks

The sodden towel having been applied
Inattentively to a door frame
The door at the hinged side closing on the thumb
Door handle out of reach of the free hand
Waiting for somebody
To appraise the situation
Upon which accomplishment
The relief of release
And the horror of mutilation

Presumably they don’t become spectators
Before finding positions to witness the spectacle
But what name is there for the file of pedestrians
En route all marching one way

When suddenly the vectors of attention shift
To the disturbance that defines a center
Two young men grappling
And punches thrown

Mystics inward or upward
Refugees outward
Not-yet bus-riders along the line
And the aimless milling before the panic

If it’s in a poem
It’s not really me
Especially if I use italics

Start with error avoidance
Begin with forbidden words
Fuck nigger and cunt
Law for one is law for all

Do not employ the imperative
Neither permit any autobiographical reference
Do not explain
Make reference only to concrete objects

Do not enumerate catalog or compile
No ideas but in things
Rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules
Rules rules rules rules rules

Expose no obsessions desires or aspirations
Employ no punctuation
Know therefore that syntax will manifest itself
Only in word order and lineation

Expunge suicidal ideation however fleeting
Do not repeat word choices
Erect solid defenses against reference
To violence antagonism or hostility of any kind

Observe the precepts of scansion
Maintain a positive mental attitude
Accept the fact that no situation more requires obedience
Than punishment

Somebody once wrote that when Dickinson says bee
She really means the clitoris
And another said that demon life for Keith Richards
Was nothing more than addiction to heroin

Dylan’s Mr Jones inadverently
Blunders into an uncomfortable
Homosexual encounter
And all art is traceable to mundane events

Alls I’m saying is
There’s gotta be some overflow
Beyond what’s on the poet’s mind
And how do you know what that is

Not that what I have in mind is any better
Bees put me in mind of bread-balls on fish hooks
Colorful pebbles rolling down a bank in New Mexico
And a girl with an epi-pen in her purse

I don’t know what to think of demon life
Other than demon life had got me in its sway
And to be under the sway of any force
Is to suffer the grossest of indignities

The poet tries to speak the truth
And the reader tries to understand
No problem if you have the self-control
Not to let mind get in the way

But matter is an almost equal problem
The head baboon and his emphatic tooth
The cryptographer’s enigma variations
The book the crown the jar the robes heraldic

For a summer in ‘38 my father played first base
For a B-class affiliate of the St. Louis Browns
He was long and could stretch for a throw across the infield
But right-handed and couldn’t hit a curve

In ‘39 he joined the Navy to learn mechanics
Working on biplanes in Pensacola
Which seemed a good career move
Until two aircraft carriers were shot out from under him

Later he coached a Peewee team
In the Catholic school league of our town
And while a St. Louis farm team of the 30s might win
Jacksonville choirboys in the 60s had no such luck

There’s a photograph of me in my cap and jersey
Proudly displaying the Christ the King initials
But I never went in before the fifth inning of seven
And then to right field and never at second base

Next to me my brother stands wearing a miniature version
Too young to join he could feel a part of the team
But boredom would seize him before the bottom of the first
And he would putter in the dirt under the bleachers

In high school I traded my baseball costume
For Berber jewelry jangling down the street
In imitation of Brian Jones the monarch
Though mine consisted of beads from a discount store

And my father said Be your own man
Why do you want to wear a uniform
Just as Zappa had ridiculed Feathers and bells
And a leather band to go around my head

But I wanted to join the cultural revolution
That came from real people who had made themselves artists
Otis and Jimi and Janis
And not from the wife of the Party Chairman

And I never really pulled it off
Not with my Catholic schoolboy’s haircut
And the braces on my teeth
And the regalia doesn’t buy membership anyway

Everybody wants to belong
Nobody wants to be expelled from the circle
But the tribe does expel and with endless enmity
Toward the loser the apostate the wretched outsider

Let me explain the truth to you
Shut the fuck up

Immeasurable merchandise
In seven stores