from
Ritual
High upon a promontory -- yes, that’s
right, a promontory -- he lies chained to
a great stone face. The chains themselves are stone.
A simple enough trick for a god. No
waving of arms or even a wink of
an eye was required but will only. A
god’s will. And it was done. Now, every
day at noon, birds come to eat his liver
without onions. My friends, I call you friends
for good reason, he will say. Were it not
for you I would have no company at
all. Speaking from experience, I have
a little advice for those times when all
seems lost. Just keep breathing, that’s the way to
do it. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Hold it. Breathe. Hold it.
Hold it. Breathe. Hold it. Hold it. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
*
I am pleased to be here and would like to
begin with an excerpt from my last book titled, . . .
It doesn’t matter -- you wouldn’t read it
anyway . . . Cantilevered horoscopes
decry untoward photogenic bares
and airs as upside down doors navigate
excelsior and tassels. Novellas
recite covalent platitudinous
homogeneities. Aphoristic
soliloquies dredge plastic coral reefs.
Conspicuous gematria belie
nascent copasetic sestinas as
cornucopic ambassadors inspire
millennial blank assurances, as
tiny lepidopterists and windmills
troll tellingly tumescent aquifers.
*
It was a new city. I couldn’t find
a cab stand and knew better than try to
flag one down. I decided to stand still
for a minute. That’s when I first heard two
voices, comparing notes as it were: Far
from history, an open field. What work
is. One who brought them together. Language.
The sand. Written with either hand. Sawmills.
The radio stopped working while she
slept. The candor of concrete. A tree hung
with birds. The last cigarette. He cried, then
stopped crying. A button and a scrap of
paper. The cave’s clear silence. Water. My
capacity for understanding is
somewhat limited in situations
like these. It’s better if I just listen.
*
It is not possible to paint a less
than perfect painting. Not anymore. Not
in this world with everything in it so
picture perfectly Zen no matter what.
Rolling naked at a rave, dripping dye
from planes onto corn fields, copying a
postcard down to the last little Ben-Day
dot. Channeling Giotto or Picasso.
You can’t do better than best. Not no way.
Not no how. Everything’s a painting now.
So. What to do? For my part I think I’ll
try something in the style of Klee or Arp.
Better yet, a watercolor filled with
lilies on a blue background, a sky as
empty as a perfect mind can make it --
serene, happy. Happy. Happy. Happy.
*
In the story, a Chinese folk tale I
think, there are three brothers. One of them has
eyes as big as saucers and can stand on
the shoal at high tide with his head above
water. Another brother has eyes big
as plates and can stand in even deeper
water. The third brother has eyes bigger
than umbrellas and can stand flat-footed
on the bottom of the ocean, maybe
even the Marianas Trench. I’m not
sure. Perhaps all three brothers were standing
in a lake instead. A really deep lake,
like Qinghai Lake, or Poyang Lake. Those are
both pretty deep. A fisherman needed
their help for some strange reason. I forget
what the rest of the story was about.
*
My younger brother and I, two small boys,
kneeling back to back, beat long nails into
pieces of wood as though we were Zeus and
Thor hurling judgment onto the world. Blind
in my zeal, I slung back my hammer and
struck my brother’s head. He turned, surprised to
see fear in my eyes as a trickle of
blood rolled down his neck. Catholic, panicked,
I ran inside, filled a glass with water,
blessed it, poured it on his head. He was just
a little hurt, thank God. In a calmer
moment, my father took me aside. You
blessed that water yourself? Yes, sir. Good, but
remember, whether money or god, the
great heresy’s to cut the middleman.
You do, they’ll burn you for it if they can.
*
Two, four, eight, ten, sixteen: numbers enough
to make a poem suitable for framing, --
and if not, what the hell. Please don’t expect
me to be tied down by declarations
of purpose. If it ends up in a desk
drawer, so be it. Not to change the subject,
but have you ever noticed how reading
something as simple as a children’s book,
a magazine, a postcard or even
a poem (and what isn’t a poem these days?)
can suddenly turn everything around
you into something so complete you have
no way to describe it to another
person -- not that that means you won’t try. Re:
“It was as if the truth was nowhere to
be seen, The sky was blue. The grass was green.”
*
Whatever happened Miss America,
to make you so, you know, . . . ideal?
How did you know precisely what to say
in answer to the question, “If you had
just one wish, what would it be?” How did you
learn to dance like that? Or sing like that? Or
play the baby grand like that? How did you
ever get to be so be-u-ti-ful?
How did you keep your poise in that swim suit,
knowing we were all wishing we had a
pair of x-ray glasses? How’d your mother
keep the wolves away past puberty? Or
did she? Just kidding. You’re out of my league
and I know it, my Wonder Woman, my
Playboy centerfold, my pretty, pretty
princess -- sublime, empyreal. Your deal.
*
Was any woman ever loved more than
a patent? Not just any patent, but
the patent to vulcanize rubber, whose
inventor lived thirty years in debt and
abject poverty, who lost six of his
children in infancy, or the patent
for a polyphase electric motor,
that spinning heart of the world, dreamt up by
the same guy who happened to invent the
radio, radar, and remote control
robotic boats, well over a hundred
years ago, no kidding, or the patent
whose inventor died so rich that he left
enough loot to give a Nobel Peace Prize
plus a million bucks to more people than
you can shake a stick of dynamite at.
*
I get this email that says, “Hughes did not
sell missile guidance technology to
Israel who sold it to China who
sold it to North Korea. It only
made it as far as China.” A little
while later I get another email
that says, “So what if we dropped napalm and
nerve gas on Fallujah? What’s your fucking
point, you ‘tard? They’re lucky we didn’t nuke
their asses.” Finally, I get one that
says, “Extraordinary rendition? Keep
it up and see if you don’t end up in
Gitmo minus your fingernails with a
butt-plug up your ass and wires hanging off
your balls, you commie faggot.” So, I left
the Sponge Bob chatroom and went somewhere else.
*
What spaces does death leave behind us? How
close or far apart? The night my older
brother died, (days before they told me he
was dead) I dreamed he came, not as a truck
driver or welder, but as a blue sphere,
suspended in air, reflecting like a
Christmas ornament an infinity
of other spheres. That was not like him at
all. He was gregarious, reckless. When
I was only five, he would sneak me out
of our parents house in the middle of
the night in my pajamas and take us
both at a hundred miles an hour on
his motorcycle for breakfast in the
country. Our parents never knew. Is that
you? I asked. Yes. I brought you a present.
*
In looking for the, heroic or not,
ultimate couplet, -- here’s how far I’ve got:
Love wakes the sleeping world with memories
made not of dreams, but of love’s congeries.
What lips are these, whose purple stains do press
silence, each on each, in infinite address?
Will time’s compass lead us to such minds
as have their own and illumined designs?
In fear, the world’s undone by aged men
lest age be governed by youth’s acumen.
What sickness and despair is there to be
the child of lovers who care not for thee.
Selfish shids, instead of cruising for lids,
keep your bomb asses at home with your kids.
Was that “to be,” or what? . . . as far as ink
goes, tell me, what do you think? Does it stink?
*
Out of nothing, a fire no bigger than
a point, hotter than a quadrillion suns.
From that fire, time and matter, a great cloak
unfurling at the speed of light. Later,
dust, darkness and space as giant suns form,
explode and collapse, again and again.
Heavy elements are formed. Black holes and
stars are formed. Galaxies are formed. All things
are formed as they move faster and farther
apart. Over time this solar system
with its planets. This planet with its moon.
Water. Carbon. Life. The universe made
self-aware. Man-made elements. Man-made
suns. Man-made life. Man-made entropy. There
follows a great and growing darkness. Cold.
Mindless. Forever expanding. The End.