I search for being and everywhere find modality
The question is not the hoary one of subject and object
And in subjectivity resides at least one ding an sich
And what I am and who I am kowtow before how I am
The trees are green the grass is green the sea is indefatigable
I assert most assertively that here is a hand
The baldest cliche harbors ulterior motives
What is that crack I see in the floorboard before me
That is how is that floorboard the site of a negative excrescence
For the crack which presumably belongs to the floorboard
Exemplifies precisely how the floorboard does floorboard poorly
Or at best where the floorboard is not a floorboard
And I hate myself for ranting about the floorboard
It’s really just a plank on my front porch
I hope I didn’t give the impression that it’s indoors
I just wish I didn’t always have to hazard a judgment
Starting with spatial reasoning a skill I lack in spades
And why do I suppose myself excused from universal obligations
Starting with the accommodation of others’ sensitivities
Dirt is soil and a weed a plant situated where people don’t want them
No doubt must is the most onerous of auxiliaries
But imagining the world without it is the deadliest of ironies
But why must I fear what I only imagine

Time differs for the starfish
If echinoderms experience time
Time differs for the industrious squirrel
And for the stately blue whale

Gentle duration and dire sequence differ
Quick and painless or low slow lingering savor
But first you live
And then you die

You’re beautiful, Tiny Woodpecker.

The severed head continued singing
Even as it floated downstream
Though not so marvelous an occurrence as it seems
Since no sound is ever lost

The voice that commanded obeisance
From insensible stones and trees
Before which wild beasts acquiesced
Will never dissipate entirely

The voice of Socrates resounds
Chiding Meletos for his indifference
For which rebuke the Athenians
Put the old man to death

In theory all sounds reverberate
Though the ones human ears recover
Remain to chance or to fashion alas
And ascension must be preceded by resurrection

The thoughtful therefore allay their resentment
That so many false utterances are preserved
Since Socrates and Orpheus continue to chant
And sounds replete with significance still ascend

Materials needed
A sheet of plain white paper
A colored marker
A room with a plain white ceiling

I find that red works best for the marker
A deep hue a strong saturation
Do not shilly-shally over
Crimson or scarlet or ocher

Inscribe a nice plump dot of a half an inch
Or a figure with an irregular edge
A solid star or profile or amoebic blob
Nothing too thin or sticklike

Gaze at the figure as steadily as you can
For as long as you can stand to
And try to minimize the movement
That inevitably befalls your eyes

And behold the first of the marvels
The aura that swims about the figure’s edge
The white whiter than plain white paper
The whiteness of an anime Hiroshima

And when you have enjoyed the aura
That dances with your eyes’ involuntary dance
And enjoyed the glorious aura for a good long while
Turn your gaze rapidly upward

And behold the second of the marvels
Dancing on the plain white ceiling
The self-same figure
Though now in a contrary color

And contemplate the harm you have caused
Albeit only temporary to the retinal rods
By filling and overfilling them
Beyond their specifications

A television program appraises objects
Once owned by the haute bourgeoisie
Assigning to each piece a monetary value
At retail or in a well-advertised auction

The look of lust that I mistook
For a look of disdain
Why didn’t you ask she exclaimed
Why didn’t you said I

Out yonder each builds a shrine to Fovea
Supposing the show to take place externally
And all neglect the innermost temple
The Orphic theatre where the real action is

When I finish this poem my life will be simple again
And I will be free to return to more profitable pursuits
But the poem does not ask
Whether it will somehow benefit me
To complete a task not of my choosing
The poem only demands to be finished
How will I know that I have finished the poem
A question not to be asked
How will I finish the poem
A question to be asked
But the poem does not answer
It only demands
And how will I know if it’s even a poem
And what if I should err
And mention Mona Lisa and wattle and daub
Or fail to employ the possessive with the gerund
What the hammer what the chain
No answer
And yet I have encountered poems
That assert a subject-like character
That look back often with a gaze indeterminate
And speak often in sentences unintelligible
The world is filled with such gazers and speakers
And sometimes they turn out to be poems
The poem expresses no sympathy
For any somewhat sad perplexity
The poem only demands
When reconstructing the choreography
Of The Rite of Spring
Do not ask how to get from here to there
Just go from here to there
The poem does not ask whether I am capable
And in this I gain a glimpse of freedom

Of course it’s only natural for dreams
To repeat in antic cadences
The worries disappointments and regrets of the day
Or even those of days long past

It remains then for consciousness
And not the half light of racing thoughts
Or the dark hand of Morpheus upon the eyes
To devise the bridge’s imaginary peak

Though care burdens the traveler’s tread
And weighs upon the shoulders like a leaden pack
Each step achieves some estimable ascent
Toward the suppositious crest

The St. Johns arises from no single source
But from a thousand marshy springs
And loses itself in the brackish estuary
Before becoming nothing in ocean’s infinity

The human frame does not lend itself to flight
Nor even to rapid transit or other resorts to technofix
And so from this middle height
I gaze upon the river’s swift unfathomable flow

The world is half-full of leaders of men
Promulgators of effective interventions
Executives who work the world to their will
Renowned for their performances

Who cultivate and display their own beauty
And that of their fine possessions
Radiant with noble workmanship
Secretly articles of mass production

The other half grumble of their governors
And vaunt aloud the reforms they will work
When justice comes
And they become emperor

But across this fearsome cleavage
Stand astraddle the few humble doubters
Who suspect their performance all for show
They shall be among the exalted

Forgive my presumption commencing another missive
In the first person
O thou
After so many ragged passages it’s high time
For making professions
His theory of theories
Aged eighty-eight and perfectly felicitous
Drawn and wardered rubbed and cuffed
Clubbed and roughed abed enough
The iron cage through long habituation
Cozy confines
But I have wriggled through again
Another rolling tumbling racing attempt
At sleeping and failing
No plums in the fridge
No pigs in the parlor
No sailors in the red question fonts among the leaves
‘Tis not through anxiety of this helpless lot
But being too high too thought-intoxicated
Mona Lisa and wattle and daub
Vocab and receipts
Plaster saints and plastic scholars
Quixotic rhyme of sod and abroad
The emperor denuded by a gay man from South Carolina
Or at most eastern Augusta city of brick and marble
The hymeneal of those long wed
I quickly quietly quit our bed

Each time I see before me
The records of that last wicked ensemble
I inwardly crow and paw the bedclothes
Like an outcast from his own connective tissue
True the mountain girl from the north country
Had it worse than I ever did
The sigla of the bat’s wings
The wolf in a woman’s body
Her plethora surely it was a plethora
Of mothers misfits niggers and narcissists
Gothic enough ‘twas said
Ample to chasten and subdue
Bad to swallow you whole
I have been a narc and a narcissist both
I too have demanded reassurance
And yet in moderate old age
Too old to imitate
I have endeavored to moderate the cleavages
You want continuities we got continuities
You want discontinuities we got those too
You know I wanted another gin snow cone
It’s always like that
A bridge of sighs
Spanning from sigh to sigh
But of course fame comes only to those who are well-known
Not by how much you know tin man
So sit right back
And watch me make
The wrong mistake

I could quote Hemingway
I could cover Cobain
I could remonstrate upon extreme excess
In philosophical resignation
Do I abstract myself
Well then I abstract myself
I am capable
I contain idealities
But I would rather husband my chalk dust
I have become a connoisseur of chad
Call it confetti for the unimpressed
Once again fail to take my rest

The plush arcades upholstered sewers my father called them
The festival for the founding of the kingdom of desire
There was a convention as the legend holds
Attended by the carnal valetudinarians
Who carried the naval float commemorative
Who affixed the  placards in the martial museum
Who mounted the edifice for the progress of commerce
Whores whose hose yellow-cross-gartered
Gave weight to the resolution that henceforth
All who witness these presents
Shall know by these presents
That those who encounter them
Which is theoretically everybody
Shall pursue possession
Or as it shall henceforth be known
Domesticity
Regular prefigured and prophesied
Whilst I
By looking upon them
See riot and dishonor stain the brow
Of absolutely everybody
The regime of infinite requisition
Brooding calculating
The annals of anarchy
The chronicles of contempt
These are not matters of idle speculation
This is not address ex tempore in the postprandial key
Rather this is an account full and binding
Aloft and damning
To keep me from sleep
But to return
Poor King Charles to offer an additional interest
Suffered unrequited dreams of apiary achievement
And so was severely upbraided
For espousing dogmata not even his own
And Louie was a locksmith
And so with that cautionary semaphore uppermost
Let us resolve
For that was truly their mode of discourse
Let us resolve quotha
Embodying as it were the dicta of the collegium
A bequest of insatiable vengeance
Let us resolve to purge ourselves
Of these
These unattributed demonstratives
This rabble designate of irresponstratives

Meanwhile back in the chains
He himself skimmed
A breezy account of investigations
Transcribed via harp aeolian
That purported to disclose
Certain shameful effects
Of a diet of stewed prunes
Starting in the first instance
With where they have been purveyed historically
And concluding finally in so many words
That any person or group of persons
Who would embrace such a recollection
Resembles nothing so much as a winged insect
Or swarm of winged insects respectively
Content otherwise in the dark interior
He himself had experienced however
The diametrical contrary
Sulfurous illumination for example
And dishes of heterogeneous pedigree
Stank worth staring
Nubbed in the chair
Nudged in among the lotuses
And the threnody of enraged passengers
The murmurous haunt
Sweetened among the nightingales
A sickly kind of sweet
A comely kind of decadence
So rarely understood by those unacquainted with Latin
And yet and thus and so in his theatre of theatres
Ineffectual lover
But there is more to life than efficacy
In there
He concedes that validation is valediction
That those who know
Say howdy brother
But they themselves know better
And in any case the question is moot
He knows what he knows
He can do no other

Lucid dreams are not the bliss
They’re popularly cracked up to be
They say the dreamer of such a dream
Says I know it’s a dream I will dream on

I dreamed I was back in Jacksonville
Walking across the Mathews Bridge
Which is restricted to vehicular traffic
And thus prohibited to pedestrian me

And just as you would expect
The bridge kept rising and refused to crest
So slow and laborious was my ascent
And I continued walking and making no progress

And since I knew I was dreaming
I knew I could take flight at any time
Escaping the bare metal superstructure
But still my heavy feet trod the endless span

And so I carried my sinful ennui
Even into the morphean refuge
Even there I brought my defeat
Never to cross the broad St. Johns

Unearthly music fills the sky
The incorporeal voice of a child
The tones of unimaginable instruments
Toward which words can never ascend

And yet I am compelled to recite
And what force could drive me to a task
Which as task is doomed to fail
Perhaps if I think of it otherwise than as task

But to think is to despair
And it is not given not to think
Perhaps if I turn my thoughts elsewhere
And hear the music for myself alone

It cannot be
That is of course it is as this
This is of course how it is
And in this I cannot be

The music lives in the sky
And yet it touches me
Untroubled by can or cannot
Mere tokens of earthly gravitation

These are the things the neighbors speak of
Landscaping problems and onerous taxation
Meretricious claims by elected officials
And how all that is is going to pot

She cut a triangle in paper
And was dismayed by the ragged edge
How does it comfort to tell her
Nobody can

For several years now I have enjoyed the privilege
Of residing in a leafy neighborhood just outside Atlanta
A city that after many setbacks
Still calls itself I think the City of Trees

And for several weeks I had enjoyed the sound
Late at night and even rather early
Of the cry of that creature a little research identified
As the barred owl or simply the hoot owl

I leaned on the porch rail chatting with I forget whom
At early dusk the shadows just beginning to lengthen
When out of the west flying with great speed
The owl itself came to light in the front yard maple

And the bird gave the cry I had just learned to love
The rising intonation followed by the falling
Hoo hoo hoo-hoo?  Hoo hoo hoo-hoo.
I saw what had only been heard before

And now another unprecedented event
The same cry but pitched just a half-step higher
Was heard from the west end of the neighborhood
So there was a pair of them

And out of the west flying with great speed
Came another owl of slightly smaller size
That lighted in the oak in the yard next to ours
And it gave a third variation of the same subtle theme

Purists distinguish the aesthetic apprehension of art
From the enjoyment of natural beauties
Phenomena spontaneous and hence unconscious
Unworthy of the judgments of taste

But I could not distinguish the effect of this song
From that of the second movement of the seventh symphony
To take me outside myself
Momentary relief from the frustration of striving

There’s this character in a movie see
Who keeps losing body parts
Bit by bit piece by piece
When he first shows up he has an eyepatch and a hook
And in the next scene
One ear and one leg below the knee are gone
And pretty soon the arm without hook and the other ear
You really ought to see this movie
He’s a funny guy the gabby type
Who laughs it off every time he gets whittled away a little more
And he keeps losing pieces
Until there’s nothing left but a mouth
That keeps gabbing and laughing
It’s all special effects
Because in real life you need lungs and a brain
And stuff like that
And finally there’s nothing left of him at all
But his voice keeps jabbering
About how hilarious it is
To talk without a tongue and no body at all
You really want to see this movie
Because in real life the voice is the first to go

A fish doesn’t need a bicycle she said
What do you mean by fish I riposted

We saw a root protrude from the ground
And could not tell which tree had sent it out
So distant is the little scrap of forest
That backs up to the yard

They say the surface is a mirror
The roots replicating exactly
The extent of the spreading branches
Though unseen by us who tread above

With what force a tree drives itself
With what determination
Shoving aside all resistance
From the solid ground

And in its journey
At least in our slim sample
The root had lost all character
Of oak or beech or sweetgum

And we spoke of our perplexity
Of cause and shape and what and how
The great root spoke to us
In unintelligible sentences

Are any impressionists extant
The pavement decays the pavement decays and crumbles
Lesser notes arise to fill that portion of a substance that nature abhors
Bicyclists in the gutter disclaim their entitlement
New ceremonies of reassurance arise
A long-haul trucker aloft and comprehensive
Humblebrags the advent of strategic efficiency
The circumscription of festive mammillary flowers
He waives the recipes and stops on a dime

Do not question my output the candidate insists
Geronimo and Hit the dirt
Square pegs round holes and knightly evasions
Take a left at the next boulevard
Past the dreamy villas
Past the dilapidated noviciate
Over the viaduct that traverses the pit
Until you reach the emporia of groovy vibes and hidden agendas

There is a kind of freshness in exhaustion
Energy in lassitude
Beauty in extreme old age
The brain supplies geometric diversions
Upon the simple closing of the eyes
The brain supplies the missing pieces
Hence the myth of the prophetic ulna

The epic mural gets it wrong
The field marshall is never in the van
Long worms or were they sour lines of verse
Commemorate that sin which the moon
Duly constituted representative
Has pledged to consign to unhallowed ground
How dare one ask she sings with indignation rising
What another sees much less how
And castigates the vogue for lacking sorrow

The tyrant and his yes men advance their confections
Their own swirling medley of synesthetic tenders
Documents in triplicate and juridical burlesques

In a plot of beech oak sweetgum and pine
A dead sweetgum stands tall as its neighbors
Though riddled with invertebrate excavation
The dust of its diminishment heaped about its base

It gives forth no leaf
Nor none of the little maces trodden underfoot
Its bark flakes its pith wastes
Never to serve as canopy or commodity

The antique pen was fashioned of wood
Its later version of wood veneer
A subsequent imitation of wood-grain polymer
Engineered compound of petroleum product

But the rock-oil itself volatile mineral
Owes its being to vegetable reactions
And we burn the remnants to steal their storage
Of life and food and heat from the sun

But here the theft was for organic molecules
And cellulose is a polymer too so what’s the difference
The pen crumbles the carbon chain slips
That the tree stands however briefly is a miracle

The sweetgum was young when it died
As slender as two hands in a ring
A nominal pause in advance and decline
Flesh is as grass and the world is as dust

Many of the appurtenances in our hospitable land
Frightened the man on the ambassadorial mission
The temperature the venomous serpents the stinging plants
But none so much as the roaring cicada
Mating cry of course
The sound he found unpleasant
But the ubiquity of it the inevitability
Discomposed the envoy most of all
Nevertheless in his diplomatic tact
He distinguished for us an offense
Of merely environmental etiology
From one that issued from the mind of man
And how reprobate would such a mind have to be
To assail the sensibility of so gentle a guest
And yet in his disclosure his forgiveness of nature
He discloses further matter
That there are crimes that warrant consideration as crimes
And thus warrant consideration of sanction punishment or worse
Acts not of nature acts not of God
But acts committed by his beloved humanity
Representative of the old world he turned around
At some point he departed for a welcome return
Now surely in the ancient kingdom of his birth
Certain accidental accessories would have disturbed the composure
Of a sojourner from precincts now near at hand
But what of us who are left behind
Who cannot estrange ourselves from the cicada’s threat
Already so long-familiar
Is it our doom to be cradled forever
In the homely hominid brawl
Having forsaken our arboreal homeland
Yet never to have departed from the plains of Laetoli

How comforting to heed the logical limit
Of objects at which you can shake a stick
Regrettably all too often exorbitant boluses
Transgress the inevitable perimeter

How comforting to heed the logical proscription
Against certain objects’ holding candles to certain other objects
And nobody troubles about the terms’ consent
They seem so like objects compact and entire

Psychoanalytic explanations obtain
And explanations phylogenetic biophysical or politico-economic
You can’t lose except by remaining silent
But how to explain the lone rider’s compulsion to speak

I registered to lose by default and I was glad to do it
Not every wry-necked lamb is a victim of indisposition
Or even so some grow up to be Richard III
The terrifying spectacles the demonstrations of inanity
I was fascinated by their shards their topology
Their modularity
You had me at spectacles I’ve always been a railroad buff
Willfully oblivious to the cost of ballast
Some people devote their lives to abstraction
Renouncing the vital importance of fish and bicycles
Others derive contentment by weeping into their corn flakes
I do not fear vacancy lacking as I do a frame of reference
Every book has its gutter
Every rhapsody its diaphragm
Why await the second coming of ecstasy-without-horror
They don’t build motorcycles in Denver
Nor First Communion outfits in Nantucket
It was autumn early November
The driblets hung upon the eaves
Everywhere was felt the ambience of mingled expectancy and regret
The flocks of blackbirds dwindled
A voice sang strange modal plaints high-pitched but not shrill
The tertiary economy seemed so wan that day
So estranged from the hard facts of groceries and overcoats
I too fell into the lull lubricious equivocal static and covert
When it gets like this I always resort to the middle way
As the inner ear defines equilibrium
I’m not proud but old habits are hard to break
The categories of the understanding are not optional
And foveal concentration is corralled in vitro
I resolved to have my wiper blades checked
To refer to the specifications in the preface
But why assume that there’s a story
And I did in fact manage to see to it that the deterrents were expunged
But such is the fate of policies of incentive and disincentive
One casts a wary eye until the familiar Nemesis intervenes
I said You had me
Where have they flown the thief exclaimed
A little late it turned out
Where do good platelets go when they die
If you lived here you’d be home now
I have more memories

Investigate the substance of a fallen tree
And you might happen upon a beetle grub
That feasts upon the giant’s decay
It’s easy to catalogue the visible features
The round head of varnished mahogany with its hard alien eyes
The crescent white abdomen
Translucent to reveal the brown intestinal sac
The tiny bristles
The six legs emblem of the insect brand
But how to account for the horror the monster evokes
Science accounts for surfaces
Even internal surfaces so to speak
And the worm’s immature exterior already bespeaks the habits
Customary among the animalia
Science allows the cheerful to sing
Everything is beautiful in its own way

And then you begin to detect the signs
Transmitted from who knows where
That announce the transit into nightmare
A tingling of the extremities
A whiff not quite ozone not quite kerosene
The recuperating neighbor swaths of countenance sacrificed to surgery
Armies of rapists mounting their invasions
The suicidal fighter planes
Nature’s concert of earthquake tornado predation fire and flood
The schoolyard bully causing injury and making no demands
Newborn babies roasted on spits
The great wheel of growth death and insatiable larval growth

Many of my classmates were hellions
And I yearned to join their lusty tribe
But we all of us I supposed suffered ravenous curiosity
As to the nature and origin of sin
Thus we questioned our teacher of religion
Himself of the laity and no expert
And were dismayed to find his vocabulary
Little ampler than our own
Does this act or that thought qualify as sin we inquired
That’s not the point he would insist
Disappointed more with his own incapacity
Than with our patent lack of imagination
Everyone among us I supposed was perfectly aware
Of malefactions commercial vehicular and interpersonal
But one sin lay veiled in silence behind our shame
As if each of us already knew its vileness before man and God
And each must suffer its delights and torments alone
Perhaps I was more cognizant than others
To see the inward act as more damning than the outward
For I knew myself more than damned
For wishing my polluted thoughts incarnated
In matter more substantial
Than a schoolboy’s simulacrum
Many years since I heard the wisdom
Though cowed by its fearful modality
That ought implies can
And who can prevent the acts
That condense in the mind from the mere body’s distillery
But other sins equally irresistible have gathered
In that Cartesian charnel house
The sheol of the mind
One ought not to be bored in this world
Of impossible suffering and impossible wealth
But who can sustain a posture of ravenous yearning

The lightest gust sets their trunks a-swaying
One green hue never not even from afar
The stiff the needled and the willowy
Leaves bicolored when the wind moves among them
All distinguish themselves or rather
Give themselves unto distinction
Even in their times of dormancy