1269 Arts and sciences poems

The signature public the only avant-garde behind invention wheelchairs (in) "the street." Type (A) bleeds through the page— or screen—it becomes— a pool as it we're one drop rules(.) Individual talent divides tradition into tithes, tenths and nationalized tribes— catch-as-catch-can market share erosion. Staggered Lees piggyback the Gap. John Henry—busted by Keaton. Gentlemen, 'e thinks, as the bespoken, it was the other kind of happy feet I wanted. Guess these shoes will have to have.

Bewitched the boys were out in force Drunken- ness and lust —and full moon bouncing back and forth that black above the bars * Last night it burned cigarette tip thru old blanket hole-punched gray paper sky Tonight it outright blinded One headlight or drive-in sci-fi eye * I’ve been alone long enough Even the moon wears a ring and is full

Some prowl sea-beds, some hurtle to a star and, mother, some obsessed turn over every stone or open graves to let that starlight in. There are men who would open anything. Harvey, the circulation of the blood, and Freud, the circulation of our dreams, pried honourably and honoured are like all explorers. Men who’d open men. And those others, mother, with diseases like great streets named after them: Addison, Parkinson, Hodgkin—physicians who’d arrive fast and first on any sour death-bed scene. I am their slowcoach colleague, half afraid, incurious. As a boy it was so: you know how my small hand never teased to pieces an alarm clock or flensed a perished mouse. And this larger hand’s the same. It stretches now out from a white sleeve to hold up, mother, your X-ray to the glowing screen. My eyes look but don’t want to; I still don’t want to know.

Mornings, the body’s old winter monochrome gives its image of extraordinary cold to a million hives— I could imagine a lanthorn as it swallows its strange light and gleams from within as if reborn when the bees come.

A word you can’t quite say without itching, flinching; it’s not easy to ignore its squirming appetite, stay your primal juddering. And yes, at night, each microbe gurns in the salty sea of gut and gullet, born again, boldly eats as you ate it, brews its own queasy tea of proto-raunch which it will quickly sate, birthing wanderlusting vigors, as yet unknown to microscience. They sashay, set out for the toes or gape through your eyes at your drooping lids, your fat bunch of keys, at this internal motel’s boss, bellhop, lackey, sat in the throne of his slumber, a mercy seat.

You can't even buy a soda. You can only see these things, see a mother steer her son to the car, his head cocked licking his ice cream. Earlier, driving, trying to keep between two cornfields, I couldn't see myself into a map, couldn't be anywhere in it, though I knew all the patient states between us. Pigeons sit high on a mill's peaked roof, spaced even as beads. They can stand that close to each other, but looking at them you wouldn't know it. Would you.

Feathers fluffed the ashtray bin at the bottom of the elevator. Feathers and a smeared black look littered the parking lot like mascara. A cage would glide back and let them out to merge with the other cars on La Brea. It looked as if a struggle had ended in tears between the bird and an enemy. She broke through the fear to examine it. No chicken claws, or comb, no wing, no egg. The neutrality of words like “nothing” and “silence” vibrated at her back like plastic drapes. How could there be a word for silence? A child’s lips might blow, the North wind bring snow, a few stars explode, boats rock, but whatever moved in air did not by necessity move in ears and require the word “silence” therefore. She had personally sunk to a level where she could produce thought, and only “violence” remained a problem. It was common in her circle. A bush could turn into a fire, or a face at a clap of the hand could release spit and infection. The deviants were like herself unable to control their feelings. Los Angeles for them was only hostile as a real situation during the rainy season when torrents ripped down the sides of the canyons and overnight turned them sloshy. Then they hid in underground places, carrying Must the Morgue be my Only Shelter?? signs. But the rest of the time the sort of whiteness spread out by a Southland sun kept them warm, and they could shit whenever they wanted to, in those places they had long ago staked out. My personal angel is my maid, said one to another, putting down his Rilke with a gentle smile.

for Robert Creeley (1926—2005) You told me the son of Acton’s town nurse would never cross the border into Concord, where the Revolution left great houses standing on Main Street. Yet we crossed into Concord, walking through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to greet Thoreau, his stone stamped with the word Henry jutting like a gray thumbnail down the path from Emerson and his boulder of granite. We remembered Henry’s night in jail, refusing tax for the Mexican War, and I could see you hunched with him, loaning Henry a cigarette, explaining the perpetual wink of your eye lost after the windshield burst in your boyhood face. When Emerson arrived to ask what you and Henry were doing in there, you would say: You got a song, man, sing it. You got a bell, man, ring it.

Three years, Huang Gongwang worked on his famous handscroll, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.

sleeps into heaven with his lamps on, finishing explan- atory negotiations for a while.Desert the enemy. Star formations, sandstone understanding, rock time in gen- eral, whatever. Latching onto ecstasy, words that change on waking, clover as a syrup of spring mind. Working off a deficit of sleep or cash, you know who your friends are. Singled out in traffic, lurching into light, having lunch. You’re a little one with sand in your eyes, with green on your horn, with milk on your chin. With flow- ering ears and hearsay.