... Somewhere... A Telephone Booth... Is Jumping to Its Death ...
Over Your Shoulder and Through the Woods
My legs freeze a swollen stabbing,
and sleep a journey of no walking,
The ship’s Captain comes to me cradling his embarrassment.
“I had to do it” he says.
I pour the tea.
My arm, shaped like Hi-Li, and my throat,
Both offer “ Yes. Yes, O know.”
Having one anchor on the ship is quite enough. But this captain – this peculiar and young, and tall and old and tiny captain –
Scared only by the ravages themselves,
Insisted on three anchors – so that the ship could never out maneuver him - could never tell from whence he would toss.
Under a bath tub far away a split is growing in the wood.
The wood itself is lonely.Exponav1
Who brought the ships To this incredibly –
No, It must not be said –
Or I - perhaps it is simply
That I can not speak it.
When I got on my one knee
In front of the crowd of El Ferrol2 ,
They all thought I would ask Marianna
To marry me – but no –
It was to say good-bye to my Mother
Whom – perhaps – by the time we all
Return –
Will be long dead.
Even though the Armada
Is sleeping,
My small boats
Are nubile
And less noticeable
To the gods.
Napoleon at Sea
… so then tell me Helmsman,
how did you find this incredible locale?
… Why with the thanks and happiness of Monsieur Appert3
The pebbles
At the bottom of this little sea
Are tapping each other on the shoulder to say:
“Look : ships have again blessed us after all these decades.
Finally we have a moment’s relief from the pounding ruthless sun.
… FINALLY I AM ANGRY ABOUT DEATH
… And the moon shows its broad teeth
Ever so clum za lee (clumsily) to the camera.
John Wilkes Booth, in his infinite wisdom,
Gathers the bullets – one by one off the table…
… when the best thing in your life is the 2 inch by 3 and a quarter inch grey piece of paper that is the 17 days left on the rain check for that blue-green Spanish lure over at Teddy & Freddy’s Tri-City Bait and Tackle ( “ We been hookin’ you with the excitement for fishing here in the Tri-City Area for over 43 years … ”
… the things we do … looking off into the distance at the large round headlights of an old car – hoping…
… as I walk in the rain, a frog jumps over a puddle, rather than into it – hey we all make choices…
Poem: In
In the mad winter of time –
And it is indeed mad –
Rolling around the universe
Like a child rolling in
Descriptive leaves.
In the mad winter of time,
The cold is so fierce it turns
Your skin into anti-matter.
Ginsberg was right to hate his own
Poetry,
And to secretly want to write only haiku.
In –
You get what I am saying, right?
When I write “ In – “
I am really re-saying the refrain in:
“In the mad winter of time.”
Baskets crash into asteroids,
Especially the asteroids
- eh baskets –
Out of whatever people
Weave stuff out of –
And daydreamed – if you prefer
Daydreamt
that
she would give them to you
and they would become an
heirloom for the family.
In the mad winter of time
My breasts are still male
Breasts.
Children walk through the alternate
Universe, intent of selling
Term life insurance plus an
Annuity to unsuspecting
Thirteen year olds.
Except the kids
Know that
Term plus annuity
Is not the newest
Financial product
And you cannot text it,
So
In the madness of the Russian winter
Tanks froze in their tracks,
One of Hitler’s
Smallest stupidities
Namely of attacking Russia
With whom he had a
Non-aggression pact was
Revealed.
I cannot say that –
The endless murder.
I live WWII every
Single day,
On a good day,
Not hour by hour by hour
- day.
Every time I try to kill myself
I botch the job.
And the cold of the universe,
Of which I previously alluded,
Is nothing like the pain of walking through
The woods, all of my unit slaughtered,
Watching the tanks drive over the head
Of Albert who played the saxophone
When we celebrated
My daughter’s first birthday
Thousands of miles from her.
Of Teddy’s arm,
How ironic, since he wanted it
To pretend he was –
Well, let me say this –
It is supposed a poem
Afte all –
If only if he had lived
he would have made
a great Sandy Koufax.
When I go to Temple,
No one laughs at my
Absence of a brain,
My inability to remember
Anything.
Time walks backwards
Out of respect for me
Only but the tragedy
Is can not follow
Her,
Because I already live there.
An Old Russian Jew
Sticks his head
Literally through
A mud fence and laughs,
Laughs because
He lived before Hitler
Began,
And then he cried so hard,
He cried for generations,
He cried so hard the mud
Turned to brown water
And became a river
And drowned
Our children,
Our old people
We will never forget.
Poem to My Cousin
And I was quite surprised.
Somehow, I gained access to his poem.
A long piece dedicated to –
No the title says it best,
His title is
Goodbye to Sorrow.
In his poem,
A bird meets
The iris of the iris
Of his eye.
The way wind
Actually moves and the existience
Of yellow light
Is thoroughly revealed.
I lay on my pillow,
Whispering the poem
In homage,
In discovery.
The best minds
Have been writing poetry
That no American knows
Exists,
That no one will ever read.
(page one of three )
The oil in the feathers Of the grey fox,
Seeps slowly back and forth
Across the wing,
Expecting him to know
Its secret.
He flies.
He flies with curtains
That depict invisible people.
He flies with the
Power to make memories
Respect him.
Far away in an Arabian tent,
A teenage shiek
Askes that his
Lietentnats
Bring him this man
That knows so much –
He can not be located.
(page two of three)
His tracks disappear
Even
When he walks
Nay hikes, unstoppable
Along the spine of the wind.
I need not give you drops of water,
Read it for yourself.
But know this.
Any river that you visit.
Could tell you the story,
But it will not.
It is their secret.
To cherish,
To nurture,
And wrongly,
To fear.
( the end -
.
Somewhere, A Telephone Booth Is Jumping to its Death Weldon Kees – Standing – Ever since the first God awful thing Used its long green Scale-y tail for balance, Grabbed higher and higher On the repulsive thick shrub With whatever was in the front Of its body Endless settings of the sun At one seventeen in the afternoon, Weldon looks down at his fingers, The ones that played Jazz Piano In New York City. Of course he left the cat, And the bright red socks That Martha had given him One Halloween . Below Mexico, Below Equador The Golden Gate Bridge, Like an older brother, Stood behind his bent back. Everything that could have been done Was in fact done. Perhaps he would hire a Local Brazilian To translate The next adventures of Robinson … y. Straighten its legs. Poet, Jazz Pianist, disappeared - h
On July 19, 1955, Kees's Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge with the keys in the ignition. He had told a friend that he wanted, like Hart Crane, to start a new life in Mexico. When his friends went to search his apartment, all they found were the cat he had named Lonesome and a pair of red socks in the sink. His sleeping bag and savings account book were missing. He left no note. No one is sure if Weldon Kees jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge that day or if he went to Mexico, although suicide is presumed.[1]
Before he disappeared, Kees quoted Rilke to friend Michael Grieg, ominously saying that sometimes a person needs to change his life completely.[2]4
Resplendent I read the word “resplendent” In a Thich Nhat Hanh book,
And I might as well
Have spilled peanut butter
On my jeans,
Or
Walked through a spider web
And it had been hanging
Around my shoulder all day
Without my knowing it.
I might has well have spilled
Merlot on my silk scarf,
Or told an Amway distributor
That yes I want to hear more –
It would not leave.
So here I sit,
Thoroughly teasing myself
To look it up,
And thoroughly teasing
Myself not to.,
…. Fragments ….
Rather like a cartoon whale:
He can talk,
But he does not yet have the artifical colrs…
Poets are fond of saying:
“When I was young …. “
Sunday, December 20, 2009 11 21pm
… so many paradoxes – mom . For example, I love public speaking, eg seminars, speeches etc. And yet as a boy I spoke very fuently and this turned off people. In order to get anybody back in my life, I cultivated a more common way of speaking and adopted it fully. Now that I am nearly 60, it probably would be ok if I spoke intelligently in everyday conversation – and it probably would have been beneficial for the last several decades, but that early child experience of being left out has me often times speaking in a very common way – which now days also leaves me out, since I now hang out with more intelligent people.
mm
In This
In this winter
Of winter
I do not see the precious
Raccoon family doing Kinhin
Amidst the nature grasses.
This time one of children
Sifts, nose down,
Leading.
Seemingly out of no where,
Since no where is just
Beyond them.
Oh a street light
Does attempt to shine.
As the twinkle
Upper
In the mother’s
Right eye
It
Is a faint star.
Granie Meditation
Just –
I bow
Her grave stone
Is my Zendo.
A long poem,
Really,
Do you want to go that route –
No take Fifteenth
Over the Alabaster Bridge,
If I wrie fast
And the pome
Is deliberately
Confusing
Will they think:
“Hey, He must be good,
I don’t understand
What he is saying,
Obediently
The gorgeous Yugo
Prances onto the Bridge Alabaster.
The driver digging in the floor boards for the toll.
At the poetry reading
Mr. Ginsburg went on and on –
Everyone loved it.
His tie had a blue stain,
Apparently from a quick dinner
Of spaghaetti.
Tzu Chi5
Tzu Chi,
I am in love with you
Aleady.
The woman in the photograph,
Turning back,
Even as she tries to face the lense,
Back into the moment
Her mother was lifted
Into the Primordial sea
Just as we would
Toss a fish
Into a surprise boat.
Yes – Comedian Mash Up6
Yes,
The first draft was in fact written,
A Jerzy Kasinski attempt
12 years after his death.
Lifeless
( Does he mean Kasinski is lifeless?
Or does he mean the first draft was lifeless?)
The obligatory different fonts,
.( Why were they obligatory ?)
A long, intricate, minutely detailed,
Letter his mother.
(I thought this guy was suppose to be funny?
Where’s the funny guy?)
Jim
Channelling Robin Williams,
Walks quickly to the long table
Filled with row after row of bottled of water,
Quickly he opens gulps
And jumps back to his spot on stage,
He positions himself to start an imitation of Lisa Lampineela,
( What is this guy doing, I’m confused?)
Just then the real Frank Castenallo
Comes on stage, and shakes Jim’s hand.
“Nice try”, Frank says,
and exits stage right.
.
.
.
starthere
1 Exponav is the permanent shipbuilding exhibition of Spain.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain’s_National_Exhibition_of_Ship_Building_(Exponav) Tuesday, October 13, 2009
2 El Ferrol is a Naval Station in North Western Spain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain’s_National_Exhibition_of_Ship_Building_(Exponav) Tuesday October 13, 2009
3 Nichola Appert first invented the canning process in 1810 in response to a national prize to do so created 15 years earlier by the French government. http://www.cancentral.com/brochure/invention.htm Tuesday, October 13, 2009
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weldon_Kees retrieved on Tuesday, December 08, 2009
5 A Taiwanese Buddhist Charitable Organization
6