2.08.2011

DANGER STANDS BURNING

                          Our pistols are hungry
                          Our tempers are short,
                          We are the cops of the world...

                                                       --Phil Ochs


--danger stands          burning         let's place the
ashes under a rose bush            The "Remembrance Book"
under vigorous attack              smoke curls romantically
from the chimneys of every bedlam-laced "patriotic"
action of "leaders in office"        i.e., ANIMALS THROUGH
GREED & SELFISHNESS DARKLY    & the water is muddied
"ahead of its time"         The circus animals should be
doing the training (braining)      learning that we must
plunder & never remain "lifeless"     (a simple injection
of the simple & effective)          "Should I smile at 
strangers?"    "Desecrate their beautiful landscape?" 
"Consider themselves no better than the milk man?"
"Do you believe that people who have odd or private
interests must be snobs?"     The days of living
"stretched out" far between neighbors with room for
lawns between houses        is over     Humanity placing
its short-term satisfaction ahead of society's needs
"non-socialized individuals increase in number"
ending up in chaos or a police state     Some say
The White House has become a brothel
with the acclaim of its "generous hospitality"
& casserole informality     Where is the intellectual
sterility?       There's gasoline on my hands
The motor inside of my head revvs       prevails in
much of the rest of the country        Others say
that The White House is "haunted"
Sir Thomas Browne said that one could
locate a "ghost" simply because of the
"sulphurious" furious smell            Think of
Carl Jung who adopted Philemon     "servents
of the gods"  in Greek Mythology      as his
"spirit guide" with whom he claimed to have carried
on conversation         just as Socrates did
with his "daimon"   &    Cromwell with his "personal devil"
Is it any wonder that there is such confusion
& misleadings?    A man strolls along           threads through
a block of Marxist engineers who are learning to be ants
learning calisthetics      learning to put together 
their learning: what else?     Rumors echo throughout
the block about a drunk Marxist-Leninist white woman
who is ranting & raving about how her husband 
has been untrustworthy        The entire town is on "alert"
The Commander-in-Chief "makes proper calls" 
from a resort from a hot vacation spot & warns that
the woman may be an "alien with nuclear weapons"
The elasticity of such a "warning" provides unforced
assurance that the odd ominous cries of a loon
from far off may or may not be diluted by
foreign missle-blast-sounds off of our nation's coasts
There was a time where there were tendencies
to prefer an Insider's outlandishness to an
Outsider's merit             Too easy to be content 
to be excluded from what one had regarded as
effete      stagnant      & undemocratic
I dreamt that I visited Seattle          I jumped out 
of an airplane & I still haven't landed
Patterns are set in one's childhood        Those whom are
against censorship often repeat the argument that
no one was ever corrupted by a book                 postcard
beauty of crumbling cities       Must we hammer-out
the remaining coins from the Piggy Bank? 
Something (unseen) in the sky rakes over us 
like lighthouse beams





2.07.2011

WINTER SONATAS


Winter sky, white-grey
giving breath to browns below--
inside:  coffee's enigma. 

*

Your fingertips, like
Charlotte moss; testimonies
of my serenity. 

*

What could be far-fetched
if one fetches it closely? 
Vulnerable breath:    icy. 

*

Wide-eyed cat, watch
-ing leaves out of wind
-ow: crackled iced intercom. 

*

Who turned off the sun? 
Night's syllable in every
breath:   Romantic teeth. 

*

Your character is a rose
stroking her gently, full
-blooded performance: 
too weak to open your
heart: a rustling hulk. 
Your initials engraved in
-to her heart of sinorous
wine--our forest of leathery
-green leaves, like baseball
bases in the vicinity of
the equater. We, meaning
You and Her, are well-merited
errors. I, like distorted
corridors, submit to the
age of the wind; sharp 
fangs in my swollen bosom--
sharp as winter's glancing white
foresight: impenetrable earth.



MAN ON THE CORNER


A kind of subculture               a man of fine age
     standing in front of the corner bar 
with his acoustic guitar            This moment
     like a strobe-flash as I drove by
with kinetic action          I parked 
     I must have resembled a cubist 
walking towards the bar with camera in-hand
     hoping for a familial harmony        a greeting
enhancing an unchanged ambience     a direct
    language       an impression            Maybe
he'd play his guitar          sing songs for me
    as I photographed every surprising detail
of his timeless face        like constructivistic
    line structures        or would he feel distant? 
Does he already feel distant?        From a distance

                                                             I squinted
                                                          through
                         vivid light


My eyes                                                  as "fixed"

as the gentleman's in   
                 
Gordon Parks's Portrait of the Harlem Story

our eyes                                                 all the same

my eyes                     spotted
                                 a blank


                 space


now in front of the bar                     Disappointment
Where had he gone?             Entertaining angels? 
or angels entertaining me? 

Was he a mere Metaphor for Life itself?  Many harmonies
        restricted by an ever-changing body   mass   experience
the recycling of shadows      stretched to exaggerated forms

This man, following me in my dreams