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This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the time of the tragic man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a wristwatch telling the time of the talkative man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the honored man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the roadstead all of board reached by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the old, brave man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls of the ward, the winds and clouds of the sea of board sailed by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the cranky man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board beyond the sailor winding his watch that tells the time of the cruel man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a world of books gone flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board of the batty sailor that winds his watch that tells the time of the busy man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is there, is flat, for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward waltzing the length of a weaving board by the silent sailor that hears his watch that ticks the time of the tedious man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to feel if the world is there and flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances joyfully down the ward into the parting seas of board past the staring sailor that shakes his watch that tells the time of the poet, the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the soldier home from the war. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is round or flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances carefully down the ward, walking the plank of a coffin board with the crazy sailor that shows his watch that tells the time of the wretched man that lies in the house of Bedlam.

You saved me, you should remember me. The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. I remember sounds like that from my childhood, laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful, something like that. Lugano. Tables under the apple trees. Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water; perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. Crucial sounds or gestures like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried. Islands in the distance. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes— as far as I remember, changed in no detail, the moment vivid, intact, having never been exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age hungry for life, utterly confident— By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green pieced into the dark existing ground. Surely spring has been returned to me, this time not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

let me get the vocabulary of this song right—the curious happiness of poetry— the word materialism dropped by the way side—its mereness of the other face of spiritualism—just two notes to sing— repetitious dualism— do — do —once in a while one squawks louder than the other, baby crows being weaned before the next batch— thus, singing, move from how it does matter— Oh!—a murder of crows 1998

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near? Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.

Rotten, he says, motherly how could you miss that Like a ragamuffin with no eyes his body has a dark spot Like doing laundry all day long he is being nowhere Cottage cheese runs out his mouth Another one and another one that doll can crawl his insides like an awning Motherly if mother mother as if spread If I could break the hymen of his ear with I can't stand you I won't say a thing and I won't notice god you are the softest kind of jerk and yesterday is gone and I had nothing to do with it

We've packed our bags, we're set to fly no one knows where, the maps won't do. We're crossing the ocean's nihilistic blue with an unborn infant's opal eye. It has the clarity of earth and sky seen from a spacecraft, once removed, as through an amniotic lens, that groove- lessness of space, the last star by. We have set out to live and die into the interstices of a new nowhere to be or be returning to (a little like an infant's airborne cry). We've set our sights on nothing left to lose and made of loss itself a lullaby.

Standing at the baggage passing time: Austin Texas airport—my ride hasn’t come yet. My former wife is making websites from her home, one son’s seldom seen, the other one and his wife have a boy and girl of their own. My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town so she can get to high school. My mother ninety-six still lives alone and she’s in town too, always gets her sanity back just barely in time. My former former wife has become a unique poet; most of my work, such as it is             is done. Full moon was October second this year, I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine owl hoots and rattling antlers, Castor and Pollux rising strong —it’s good to know that the Pole Star drifts! that even our present night sky slips away, not that I’ll see it. Or maybe I will, much later, some far time walking the spirit path in the sky, that long walk of spirits—where you fall right back into the “narrow painful passageway of the Bardo” squeeze your little skull and there you are again waiting for your ride (October 5, 2001)

Look, above the creek, hummingbirds in the trumpet vine. Not too close, wait. See the green blurs stitching the leaves? Here at the edge of the millennium I don’t imagine you’d call them anything as archaic as angels. But aren’t they agents of a sort, and secret, dissolving and solidifying, spying from their constantly shifting perches of air, always nervous of us, risking only a stab in a bell of petals? Don’t look so stunned, lay your pack in the needles and catch a breath. I know, you thought you knew me, and now to hear me talk this way ... I’m glad I’ve stopped pretending to love people and the cities where people can’t love themselves. This is what the quiet accomplishes, and the water trusting the shadows to eventually peel back to the trees. Small wonder the angels are said to despise us. Still, without them how do we account for our meanness? Look at that, what else can promenade in the air? And how easily they’re alarmed, revving off into the mist.

Walking at El Pulguero, a tarp shines next to the dog track. The dog track a bowl similar to the Colosseum, but with steel poles subdividing the voyeurs and attending bidders, tickets yellow and flapping in their hands. Greyhounds on the billboards    ... I walk under the stands. Bracelets in a jumble under the black- marker-scribbled advertisement brown board. It exemplifies the innocent rebuttal to being cultured by my particular country — the country of my birth, though not quite my teaching. The Cuba of the womb, of the in-walking-distance- of-the-beach land in my memory, with shouts beside our houses at the corner belonging to the distribution agency. Fruits, mangoes, milk, soy beef, when that traveled our way, divided and partitioned by an old minibus with a man in an apron and a smudged baby blue shirt. I remember soda bottles being carried off up our streets, but by who I don’t remember. Too vintage a memory to properly retell. Orangey glued to the burn of sunset on time that young inside — I as well draw from that very same exclusion, a pleasure from this participating memory. My childhood was a happy one, albeit the pangs existed, sharp like a battery, violent, sorrowful, but elastic, coming back at night home, be it dark inside the house. This indictment, the personal exclusion goes timid up my skin and neck. At the Pulguero or not, I’ll find something to bother about. It is that time, turbulent and worrisome until later. It is just not only this place. And so I reap from the crystalline sky, the mangled trees, the faux marble and jet furniture with gold filigree forming a subtle Chinese dragon what I can. The gold iron floor lamps. The off-brand running shoes — Fila, but not really. Always apart from what includes me. Vaguely includes me, is chummy enough, falling out of the tether when more incisive probing corners along. And so in my cooperation- less demeanor, I shuffle further into the flea market, never benefitting from the seductive resignation of allowing everything a true potential buying power. • The baby marmoset gurgles when belly-rubbed. Deserted by its mother, the video lector tells us. The YouTube bubble incarnadine in the corner. A hibiscus, a bee dropping from its flight. One dreams it could be okay to keep the little monkey for an alarm clock in the a.m. A gang of marmosets intertwines among the branches. The ground heaves an ash coloring. I bogey my apprehensions on the little primates flinging. Bug-eyed, I read their spastic jerking as uncohesive with my stock of reality. • The stony wheel gurgling in its solar pickling. Moss underhand, the water running its cataracts of limpid murk. The wheel has cracks in the stony center. • A frittata offered to us by a resident. He’s a culinary student. It was surplus practice. And oats on the bread loaves also in the offer. He’s a kind gentleman, toughened by who knows what. He’s staying here at the shelter and I’m too coward to ask about his life. Like a scouter of fumy billows, we all happen upon the hits which we must report to someone. And god knows how they’ll take it. • I listen in on the praxis applied to the nexus in accelerating, intimate make-out fondling. I feel it with every go at the mouth and lips, teeth testing their courtship at submittal, effusive biting. • The phone shelly, an onyx coat warm in the jacket pocket. A regulator’s annual finish like a yearling passerine flickering on the computer screen.

Sweet beats of jazz impaled on slivers of wind Kansas Black Morning/ First Horn Eyes/ Historical sound pictures on New Bird wings People shouts/ boy alto dreams/ Tomorrow’s Gold belled pipe of stops and future Blues Times Lurking Hawkins/ shadows of Lester/ realization Bronze fingers—brain extensions seeking trapped sounds Ghetto thoughts/ bandstand courage/ solo flight Nerve-wracked suspicions of newer songs and doubts New York alter city/ black tears/ secret disciples Hammer horn pounding soul marks on unswinging gates Culture gods/ mob sounds/ visions of spikes Panic excursions to tribal Jazz wombs and transfusions Heroin nights of birth/ and soaring/ over boppy new ground. Smothered rage covering pyramids of notes spontaneously exploding Cool revelations/ shrill hopes/ beauty speared into greedy ears Birdland nights on bop mountains, windy saxophone revolutions. Dayrooms of junk/ and melting walls and circling vultures/ Money cancer/ remembered pain/ terror flights/ Death and indestructible existence In that Jazz corner of life Wrapped in a mist of sound His legacy, our Jazz-tinted dawn Wailing his triumphs of oddly begotten dreams Inviting the nerveless to feel once more That fierce dying of humans consumed In raging fires of Love.