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there is a shipwreck on each side of innuendo, tears gather around the collective shadow of shadows; none clearer than the last unshakable, anatomically inexplicably, never noticed, next time, please sir, more. enshrouded by fear, one hundred years after eleven pages of violent reality testing, when the beginning was the final question, outside the disruption of anything hungry on emptiness, suggesting a response of objections, calling on me to speak in tongues. trying to read the consequential future, apply anything to anything; knowing any application to the current materiality is wretched normality and remote productivity.

There is another way to enter an apple: a worm’s way. The small, round door closes behind her. The world and all its necessities ripen around her like a room. In the sweet marrow of a bone, the maggot does not remember the wingspread of the mother, the green shine of her body, nor even the last breath of the dying deer. I, too, have forgotten how I came here, breathing this sweet wind, drinking rain, encased by the limits of what I can imagine and by a husk of stars.

There is no age, this darkness and decay Is by a radiant spirit cast aside, Young with the ageless youth that yesterday Bent to the yoke of flesh immortal pride. What though in time of thunder and black cloud The Spirit of the Innermost recedes Into the depths of Being, stormy browed, Obscured by a long life of dreams and deeds— There is no age—the swiftly passing hour That measures out our days of pilgrimage And breaks the heart of every summer flower, Shall find again the child’s soul in the sage. There is no age, for youth is the divine; And the white radiance of the timeless soul Burns like a silver lamp in that dark shrine That is the tired pilgrim’s ultimate goal.

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul –

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack that should have been bagged in double layers —so that before you are even out the door you feel the weight of the jug dragging the bag down, stretching the thin plastic handles longer and longer and you know it’s only a matter of time until bottom suddenly splits. There is no single, unimpeachable word for that vague sensation of something moving away from you as it exceeds its elastic capacity —which is too bad, because that is the word I would like to use to describe standing on the street chatting with an old friend as the awareness grows in me that he is no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance, a person with whom I never made the effort— until this moment, when as we say goodbye I think we share a feeling of relief, a recognition that we have reached the end of a pretense, though to tell the truth what I already am thinking about is my gratitude for language— how it will stretch just so much and no farther; how there are some holes it will not cover up; how it will move, if not inside, then around the circumference of almost anything— how, over the years, it has given me back all the hours and days, all the plodding love and faith, all the misunderstandings and secrets I have willingly poured into it.

for a long time, the lotion stigma swirled on the man who clothes me with a broken world. I came when they called me. that cotton rubbed me the wrong way all the way inside over the course of time. way before cotton sewn into the coat of the one who clothes me. before I started clothing them with paper. before cotton sewn into their coats they curled up on flat boats all the way back up the country. the beaded strips of leather and cotton made me come to myself when he called me and wrote me on the one who clothes me. pour some water on me. make coming matter cut and twirl on me. the law of emulsion is always broke on me. somebody pour some beautiful jute on me. let her blow some horn on me. the man who clothes me in my skin is gonna write on me. your writing moves to stop on me. someday they’re gonna curve this on a pearl on me but now it’s time to go and I can’t wait to get up out from here. it’s simple to stay furled where you can’t live. for a long, long time I’ve been wearing this other planet like a scar on me.

There is someone who knows. In no beginning was there just one language nor did the surface gleam with nineteen hours of music as in our body-heat through the head & limbs the thumb and index finger to form the ovular OH of our self-fathering fable war flail ≈ morning star The original garden erudite, lush lawn, & round of trees behind the limestone square, night rain out of paper, under the lights of the narrow path up the rose hill. From a dark corner rising now to write orange with a knife over green of the elusive wall no one is watching

My friend they don't care if you're an individualist a leftist  a rightist a shithead or a snake They will try to exploit you absorb you  confine you disconnect you  isolate you or kill you And you will disappear into your own rage into your own insanity into your own poverty into a word a phrase a slogan a cartoon and then ashes The ruling class will tell you that there is no ruling class as they organize their liberal supporters into white supremacist lynch mobs organize their children into ku klux klan gangs organize their police into killer cops organize their propaganda into a device to ossify us with angel dust preoccupy us with western symbols in african hair styles inoculate us with hate institutionalize us with ignorance hypnotize us with a monotonous sound designed to make us evade reality and stomp our lives away And we are programmed to self-destruct to fragment to get buried under covert intelligence operations of unintelligent committees impulsed toward death And there it is The enemies polishing their penises between oil wells at the pentagon the bulldozers leaping into demolition dances the old folks dying of starvation the informers wearing out shoes looking for crumbs the life blood of the earth almost dead in the greedy mouth of imperialism And my friend they don't care if you're an individualist a leftist  a rightist a shithead or a snake They will spray you with a virus of legionnaire's disease fill your nostrils with the swine flu of their arrogance stuff your body into a tampon of toxic shock syndrome try to pump all the resources of the world into their own veins and fly off into the wild blue yonder to pollute another planet And if we don't fight if we don't resist if we don't organize and unify and get the power to control our own lives Then we will wear the exaggerated look of captivity the stylized look of submission the bizarre look of suicide the dehumanized look of fear and the decomposed look of repression forever and ever and ever And there it is

There may be chaos still around the world, This little world that in my thinking lies; For mine own bosom is the paradise Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled. Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled, Unmindful of the changing outer skies, Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies, Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled. I heed them not; or if the subtle night Haunt me with deities I never saw, I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw To hide their myriad faces from my sight. They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

The best-known German goldsmith of the sixteenth century, Wenzel Jamnitzer, is also remembered for his study of the five platonic solids,Perspectives of Regular Bodies, in which he proposed that out of the same five bodies one can go on endlessly making all other bodies. The five solids originate with Pythagoras, but are named after Plato, who paired four of the five solids with each of the four elements and the fifth with heaven to make up the difference: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), cube (earth), icosahedron (water), and dodecahedron (heaven). The idea is that the universe is made up of a handful of shapes and out of these shapes other shapes are made. In a letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Nobel Prize Committee, Chubby Checker claimed to have invented the dance that begat all other modern dances. Speaking of himself in third person he wrote, “Chubby Checker changed everything. He gave movement to a music that never had this movement before. The styles changed. The nightclub scene is forever changed. Checker gave birth to aerobics.” The song originally called “What a monotonous melody,” written in five minutes on a dare, begat “Limbo Rock” begat “Let’s Limbo Some More” begat “Mary Ann Limbo” begat “Limbo Rock/Do the Limbo Rock,” as “The Twist” begat “Let’s Twist Again” begat “Slow Twistin’” begat “Twist It Up” begat “The Twist (Yo, Twist!).” Checker calls his dance “dancing apart to the beat,” not dancing separate from the beat, but two people dancing separate from one another. “Limbo Rock” ends in a whistle. Limbo, the dance, comes from Trinidad, where it was danced at wakes, but in reverse: the bar began at the lowest height and was raised to symbolize a rising from death into life. Dante’s limbo is the best circle of Hell, all those unbaptized babies and old philosophers to snuggle up with at night. “Mary Ann Limbo” starts with a whistle. All day, all night, Mary Ann Down by the sea side siftin’ sand Even little children love Mary Ann Down by the seaside siftin’ sand Take a shape. Repeat it — translate it, reflect it over a line, rotate it around a point — and you’ve got symmetry. Go, go, go, go: that’s it! That’s gold.