PRE-RIBBED

Pre-ribbed before born,

Pre-Trib    ululation        I could live

with you in an ordinary home

at river's edge     or in a golden city     "of the Rhone"

Road's island made splendid     undull    snap

-shot     "drive me off of this picture"    sum-total

tonal light      You are always the "scene stealer"

Noble with a laughing face    I may seem dull

at first but give it time       brickwork blocking

light     Build the wall       I'm not as flat as

sponge cake made with real sponges     Cue chorus-y

droll     (I get a kick out of you)      "How long men

have lived in this region is a mystery"

World full of evil Rochefort's      Could comb your

"locks" with a diamond comb      You're my Major

apex of Appalachian-cragged history      it says

"I could repeat myself"        Alps capped in snow  

I picture Bob Ross in Marseilles in a flat terrain

painting everything in sight        A marshland

where bulls roamed & mosquitos rose

in clouds         into clouds      Swarm me

like thick stone slabs out of nowhere

rolling down from a craggy mountainside beneath

sacred oaks bringing a curious absence    solemnity of

frontiers     nearly clairvoyant      nearly engraved

by your gaze       that could wield iron swords

rough abstractions      like the way

every photograph sees differently         like

looking through Galileo's telescope

at a star-strewn sky that scrapes the Eye

of Certainty      creative containments

"ethereal bubblegum"        A wide empty void

is empty only because one's ignorance of a Creator

We're throbbingly-alive     You & I     who else?

Throbbingly-alive & kicking in the mind's

underside      like Memory's image      like aban

-doning the armor         Cobwebbed dungeons of the

past still echoing strongly in the gritting

teeth of three-ton bulldozers       A world seen

through the abuse of dirt reflects riffs of

barbarousness     but of cultivation       Centuries of

calm follows until the unwritten language

of man's manners prune the vine of

a selfish    ravenous    rage         desires symbolized

through a kaleidoscope of tears         The days

smiling with cold lips        without impassioned

applauses      definite umbilical ties to evil

like the lies of paganism still seen in stone

sarcophagi      Les Alyscamps        The

odd visual intents of the cathedral of

Saint-Trophime     Supernumeries       a world

full of inventory shrinkage           In an early

morning gig in mere suburbia I am somewhere

feeling restricted & overwhelmed       "Information

Age" can heavily-heave       like the Gauls

being crushed by the Romans        This, a classic

episode of my mental "master performance"

"Keep your hand on your wallet & a grip

on your sanity"         Where are you "accumulating"?

Hm?       Rubbing sleep    not far from the eyes

but from the stalwart core of being dominated

in over-populated dreams         I could be

wrapped in another time      another place

elegiac cornucopias          vehicles getting guadier

& guadier      The voluted columns of my

heart     like a transatlantic steamer       Every

age is a gory content              Nth-born

gimmicks          Think of Woodstock:    those couples

that were sharing their joints & cornflakes

now have crackling joints & are perhaps flaky

with corns           Same "Headlines of History"

Nth-born gimmicks         the way a woman may

line her thighs with goodies if she wears

unstylish baggy elastic-edged underwear

Native population of setting booby-traps

i.e., public embarrassment being profitable

"I heard that" someone mumbles

Evaporated I become      feels like long

-winded diary entries but I reflect "feeling"

like contours of hills outlined in colors

Pottery    poetry    silked-spice    inward wares

unawares    I gather mirrors in the center

of our explanades      the ones where more is

more   (music from a jewel box?)     like

a palace of atmospheric-neutrals      You could

be sea-grass        a similar tone      We're left

within infinite space as if Houdini had

come in & decorated          Your eyes add

"height" to my yearning        to be a tiny specimen

in your sight (modesty)        My youthful beard

is crooked            Eight years ago

I was an unknown Octavian-like

individual in a small town        merely to suggest

certain delicacies & character        tempered by

claustrophobic surrounding

Now        even slightly mellower        no excavation of

seasonal grasping          bearded I rise        awaiting

too late  perhaps  for love still tugging at my

torso of the dangling beribboned dart in my

Corinthian-like facaded ribcage                  I feel

engulfed in gulfs of blue       the way northern-folk

seek sun in the south           warming up the mental canvas

ablaze          strawberry patches flourishing

like the unhaunted garden of an asylum      

perhaps that of which Van Gogh gasped at in wonderment

on the Christmas Eve of l888      following the irrevocable

rupture with Gauguin          "Stir crazy"

One can nearly hear the soft shoes approaching

walls that weave in & out           Somewhere

"lost" amidst this is a network of a fifth sense

like nostalgic repetition        Humor hem'd in frolic

& variations of variations        like grandma fighting

off a crazed orangutan at the edge of a cliff

with a suitcase of money she had found in

the backseat of a Chevrolet convertible      "Information

at the root of humor?"         Humor is only relative

to our consistently-evolving expectations      

The energy of youth allows one to seek for anything

the abilities to fill gaps in patterns

like the government eventually rooting

& resorting to a Mexican dugeullo:

"murder & take no prisoners!"         "Never laugh

when the hearse goes by / For you may be

the next to die.."                 My point has

been insured           this poem stretched around

the earth       balanced on who's forehead?

"Stressed" each word         Will you come

over to pirouette with the silhouettes of my

rightstandingness?      Perhaps soon        Perhaps

my voice will crack & I will turn away from

the idea & run down the street

(If so      meet me for a get-together       Do you

like cheese? coffee? crackers?)              Comic

imagination               The winter birds are everywhere

their "tweets" the only sound around          

the surround-sound of the tree-openings

I will wait here in this dead-grassy stretch

of quiet        I have a spot outlined for you     

               Fog's patching certainty leaves me

               busy-bodied in expectation

At night the cloud-changing sky matters not

Here       the marshmallow softness of ground

with Anticipation     like a hundred buffalo

running through my torso