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I don't see the point of remembering you; you're too boring, Iowa City, Iowa, much duller topologically than Needles, California. I'm here in the Rebel Motel, with my grape-colored sweater and maté tea, whose smoky odor's bound up with first rooms and foods here sex and snow. I write about Needles Herman and rocks, the story's called “As Good as Anything,” and in it daft Herman—true local of Needles—says “Rocks is as good as anything.” I figured that out summer after first love affair in New York: hung out, home, at a rock shop inspecting geodes and thunder eggs Arsenic samples and petrified dinosaur dung. What can I say about Iowa City everyone's an academic poetry groupie, I haven't yet written a poem, there's a bar where for 25 cents a meal of boiled egg and tiny beer. Really I don't know what kind of poetry— what's the name of the make they use here—or what kinds of poetry live people write in the world. Is there a right and wrong poetry, one might still ask as I patronize, retrospectively, the Iowa style, characterized, as I remember, by the assumption of desperation boredom behind two-story houses divorce, incomes, fields, pigs, getting into pants, well not really in poems, well no “well”s and all in the costive mode of men who—and the suicidal women— want to be culpable for something, settle for being mean to their wives and writing dour stanzas. God this is bitchy I modeled for art classes that's rather interesting the hypocrisy: nobody needs to paint nude women they just like to. So here I am naked for art, which is a lot of dumb fucks I already know, same with poetry. Written and judged by. Those befoibled guys who think—you know— the poetic moment's a pocket in pool; where can I publish it; what can I do to my second or third wife now. Nothing happens in Iowa, so can I myself change here? Yes I can start to become contemptuous is that good or bad, probably bad. In New York I'd developed a philosophy of sympathy and spiritual equality: out the window, easily, upon my first meeting real assholes. “A rock's as good as anything” there are no rocks in Iowa shit-black soil, a tree or two, no mountain or tall edifice, University drabs, peeping Toms, anti-war riots, visiting poets treated like royalty, especially if they fuck the locals or have a record of fighting colorfully with their wives. You can go to the movies once a week, like in Needles. You can fuck a visiting poet;  you can be paraded before a visiting poet as fuckable but not fuck. You can write your first poems thinking you might as well since the most stupid people in the universe are writing their five hundredth here. I'm doing that now. What difference does it make. I like my poems. They're as good as rocks.

Drunker than Voyager I but not as Voyager 2 I rode my blue bike back through the darkness to my lonely geode cave of light awaiting nothing under the punctured dome. I had achieved escape velocity drinking clear liquid starlight at the Thunderbird with a fingerless Russian hedge fund inspector and one who called himself The Champ. All night I felt fine crystals cutting my lips like rising up through a hailstorm. And the great vacuum cleaner that cannot be filled moved through my chest, gathering conversation dust and discharging it through my borehole. During one of many silences The Champ took off his face and thus were many gears to much metallic laughter revealed. Long ago I forgot the word which used to mean in truth but now expresses disbelief. So quickly did my future come. You who are floating past me on your inward way, please inform those glowing faces who first gave me this shove I have managed to rotate my brilliant golden array despite their instructions.

1 As I ebb’d with the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok, Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems, Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe. Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide, Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me, Paumanok there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses, These you presented to me you fish-shaped island, As I wended the shores I know, As I walk’d with that electric self seeking types. 2 As I wend to the shores I know not, As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d, As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me, As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift, A few sands and dead leaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth, Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d, Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows, With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written, Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath. I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can, Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me, Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. 3 You oceans both, I close with you, We murmur alike reproachfully rolling sands and drift, knowing not why, These little shreds indeed standing for you and me and all. You friable shore with trails of debris, You fish-shaped island, I take what is underfoot, What is yours is mine my father. I too Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been wash’d on your shores, I too am but a trail of drift and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. I throw myself upon your breast my father, I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, I hold you so firm till you answer me something. Kiss me my father, Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love, Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy. 4 Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,) Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother, Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you or gather from you. I mean tenderly by you and all, I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead, and following me and mine. Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, (See, from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last, See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,) Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoy’d hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature, Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets, We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before you, You up there walking or sitting, Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.

for Dianne McIntyre as i fly over this time rising over only this so much painted suffering unseen grimaces and stares among spruce greens these few forests left all of us trying to be alone quiet and blind. * i see soldiers in bus stations with colored names polaroid shots their girlfriends chew gum smile wide * in all this silver of sky like stars these wheels car gears lampshades electrical refuse zen oiled and greased the believers now so many now so tired of the sad songs the endless yearnings for war and more and more * dumb cries i sigh trying to get out of town i am writing on the wall it will be painted over like all the songs once outside but as i fly over this time * dianne is dancing touching the far reaches leaping and teaching she strokes and struts the air none of us stumbles or fears their lives steel beams and rail tracks strike an E-flat, B-flat, A E-flat, B-flat, A dianne is dancing no one can handle the hostages terror is abandoned because of light breaking in leaves because the center is gone we are still breathing and the swing is our bodies

As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits: Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were there going to St. Ives?

How do you explain why elephants appear to move their unwieldy hulks with greater dignity than most humans do in their finest moments, as if they had evolved beyond wanting anything but what they have? Why does the field begin to ripple before the wind arrives in whispers, as if there were a communication, as if the landscape were poorly dubbed, and we weren’t expected to notice? What butterfly does not dart away from us as if it could sense our latent cruelties, and yet return to check and double-check? Has the night not gotten recently darker, as if to insinuate that we have squandered the light that was there? Have we made too much of our own? And did you notice afterward the dawn opening up with a tentative eagerness as if there were something crucial to illumine, as if we would wake up early just to see it? I imagine you reading this now with an expression of quiet trouble itself troubled by currents of hope, as if you imagined me here with you, as if I might be able to see your expression, and at least answer it with mine.

— “mu” one hundred eighteenth part — Heaved our bags and headed out again. Again the ground that was to’ve been there wasn’t. Bits of ripcord crowded the box my head had be- come, the sense we were a band was back, the sense we were a band or in a band...    The rotating gate time turned out to be creaked, we pulled away. Lord Invader’s Reform School Band it was we were in, the Pseudo-Dionysian Fife Corps, the Muvian Wind Xtet...    The sense we were a band or were in a band had come back, names’ wicked sense we called timbre, num- bers’ crooked sense our bequest. Clasp it tee- tered near to, abstraction, band was what to be there was...    Band was what it was to be there we shouted, band all we thought it would be. Band was a chant, that we chanted, what we chanted, chant said it all would be alright... A new band, our new name was the Abandoned Ones, no surprise. We dwelt in the well-being that awaited us, never not sure we’d get there, what way we were yet to know. I stood pat, a rickety sixty-six, tapped out a scarecrow jig in waltz time, big toe blunt inside my shoe...    Who was I to so rhapsodize I chided myself, who to so mark my- self, chill teeth suddenly forming reforming, who to let my heart out so...    To be at odds with my- self resounded, sound’s own City the wall I hit my head against, polis was to be and to be so hit... We heard clamor, clash, blue consonance, noise’s low sibling sense ________________ We pumped our arms as though they were pistons, elbows in and out. We nicked our name to Abandon. Abandon was our name now... Thus was our music no music. Music too we left behind. Everything beside the point that there was no point, everything thus the point... Thus was being there sibling sense gone treble, the balm to be a band the true amen- ity music was, the fact of having been there new to its Buddha-nature, the fact of having been there moot • To have been there wasn’t dasein. No Hei- degger told my horse. Trussed up to the side it sat, pressed and preponderant, sov- ereign, self-contained, were it music the music we sloughed... Slipped accompa- niment, surrogate cloud, rapt adjournment. Agitant. Surrogate cue... I kept clear of it, caught up at arm’s length, all but caught out I came to see... Thus was our music no music it seemed I said, mujic more than music I might’ve said, might as well have said, no matter I mumbled other- wise under my breath... The Freedmen’s Debate Society our name now was, the Ox Tongue Speaker Exchange. Fractal scratch. Nominative ser- ration. Cutaway run, cutaway arrest... Thus was our music no music I did say, say’s default on sing such as it was... We called it history even so, insisted it, the it crowding the corner of eve- ryone’s eye. None of us were not crept up on, none not required we sing it, say it. Thus was our say not so ________________ Beginning again for the muleteenth time, we counted off. It was our muleteenth breakdown, muleteenth new beginning... Brass rubbed off on our lips, reed rubbed off as well, string steel left on our fingertips, stick wood left on our thumbs

In inaccurate skin, among hologram trees, fresh from the tundra of dreams, I hear public television say that Jesus was trilingual. Billie Holiday sings the loss of plotliness, the loss of onomatopoeiabreath. Doris asks if I’ll touch her titanium humerus—I do. I go to Sheboygan to stand in Emery Blagdon's "The Healing Machine," which was brought in pieces from the Nebraska Plains. Its coffee can klieg lights' grace and copper wire sculptures leave burns all over me. Death is like Russia: beautiful, cold, expansive, expensive. Ephesus says: even marble turns to chalk. Aldebaran is nearing the end of its life. Jupiter and the moon are the closest they'll be until 2026. It's 25-below wind chill. Winds push iced piers into houses. My wounds smell like strawberries. Jim who once saw a UFO and was too tired to tell anyone, who rode a tiger, and slept with his cornet's mouthpiece stenciled on his lips, was a lifelong Indiana water garden gang member, Jim who delivered a baby from my body, Jim, impresario of poems, parking tickets, and sky-blue hydrangeas, Jim who "wore a crown of snow," Jim's ashes change the garden. Who can sleep with banded Jupiter so close to the moon?

As if the moon could haul through you Its tremor of light and stone, Be cleared of sound. Plough The mind's noise until it's a shine In the purl of south-bending river that bears Itself toward a blacker part of the forest. If you hum, hum through the motes of air, Perhaps your nerves will find at last A tone to which they will succumb. Be still. Be not so heavy-hearted For a moment. All is not a tomb, Blind sarcophagus staring dumb, thwarted Pleasures nailed inside. These fireflies Sweep their tracings on the evening. Weep if you must, but board what falls Away, abdomens flaring— The brief, nomadic intervals.

Strange to remember a visit, really not so Long ago, which now seems, finally, past.   Always, it’s a Kind of obvious thing I guess, amazed by that Cycle: that first you anticipate a thing & it seems Far off, the distance has a weight you can feel Hanging on you, & then it’s there – that Point – whatever – which, now, while It’s happening seems to be constantly slipping away, “Like the sand through your fingers in an old movie,” until You can only look back on it, & yet you’re still there, staring At your thoughts in the window of the fire you find yourself before. We’ve gone over this a thousand times: & here again, combing that Same section of beach or inseam for that – I’m no Longer sure when or exactly where – “& yet” the peering, Unrewarding as it is,in terms of tangible results, Seems so necessary. Hope, which is, after all, no more than a splint of thought Projected outwards, “looking to catch” some where– What can I say here? – that the ease or Difficulty of such memories doesn’t preclude “That harsher necessity” of going on always in A new place, under different circumstances: & yet we don’t seem to have changed, it’s As if these years that have gone by are All a matter of record, “but if the real Facts were known” we were still reeling from What seems to have just happened, but which, “By the accountant’s keeping” occurred years. Ago.Years ago. It hardly seems possible, So little, really, has happened. We shore ourselves hour by hour In anticipation that soon there will be Nothing to do.   “Pack a sandwich & let’s eat later.”   And of course, The anticipation is quite appropriate, accounting, For the most part, for whatever activity We do manage.    Eternally buzzing over the time, Unable to live in it… “Maybe if we go upaways we can get a better View.”   But, of course, in that sense, views don’t Improve.   “In the present moment” (if we could only see It, which is to say, to begin with, stop looking with Such anticipation) what is enfolding before us puts to Rest any necessity for “progression”. So, more of these tracings, as if by some magic Of the phonetic properties of these squiggles…   Or Does that only mystify the “power” of “presence" which Is, as well, a sort of postponement.