THE RECURRENT IMAGE OF CELESTIAL RECOGNITION

People surprised
to see the sky
presently descending

as if drowned in water
or the standing aloof
of a halo of indifference,

which attracts
Reiterating D.I.Y. sunlight
which consists

of bathing
in contemplation
the imperceptible things,

or insects in silence,
eating alone.
I spend a lifetime

expecting the unexpected
which always arrives,
unexpectedly, yet

in one brief clumsy
moment during this
wholesome summer

I have turned into
a reckless butterfly
where the arithmetics

of the crickets
is like the microphone
in my spirit.

MY HOLY WATER IS UNHOLY

             Jack Spicer: “A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer...”


My slippery brain has a whipped creamy mind of its own;
there’s not much of a science to it. 

I can predict the future & look like a guy that was
swallowing a beer at the same time.
That is what sparks offenses. 

More results for daily puke & slime
are like the advertent objections of political leaders,
or the science of ordering a frappucino,

which I suppose rings true for the saying that
one should remain close to anything that makes one glad
that one is alive. Squint-eyed,

my poems are like unholy water
that has been sprayed on a demon-possessed individual
that does no good, because holy water is about as real as
Martians

    or Poets

        or:

        What is a Poet? 

I’m here to fill that alien void with graphic scenes of Poets
in pursuit of poems that never come,
to make inroads for departing cats with a twist to it: 

Pavel Tchelitchew had a phobia of mice
so he comes back as one & dares Edgar Poe
to rise from the grave as a cat,

along with Ralph Waldo Emerson
to teach apes to write poems with everyday enchantment. 

First line:

    “O Rose, thou art NOT sick.”  

Why should not what is thus daily achieved on a small scale
be sick on a swing?

Spray the holy water upon the sick & it’s like loading a virus
onto your already-handicapped computer; your body
as ancient as the 14th Century

where Hafiz ran Middle East Oil Companies inside of his pen
that had minor aches & pains.

This Daily Bit of Beauty is just enough good conduct
to make one pass as a “serious person.”   O you
who believe! What do you believe?

The ducks line-up better than the stars,
ding-dong that says What’s wrong with me & why do I keep
doing this to myself? First impressions for human approval: 

Before I go to bed each night
I read all the minutes that pass as I go nowhere—
the end credits make Morpheus say,

“I dreamed a dream, & now that dream
still creeps me out in ways that I can’t articulate.”

I go nowhere because I’m everywhere,
the way my mindless mind is mindlessly minding,
with much strange melodies.

ANTI-PARVENU

I don’t want to say the sayable. The sayable will always be
defiantly abrading, stalking us, forcing us to speak
in allegories.

I’m in no particular societal class; I’m like a model railway train
that puffs along with insect-speed, in the way that certain
baseball players take all of the time in the world when they
come up to the plate after their walk-up music gets an arousal
out of the audience, before the Rally-Snack takes hold. 

He said that the best career move as an artist is to die. 

My Early Mornings are Late Days to most, & the secret to a
Gorgeous Face is, they say, the Eyebrows. 

Imagine my surprise when I truly did seek a way to reverse
Kertészian “emotional atrophying”
& my youth is still pretty; or, a pretty mess,
just like how my Poetics are wind-mill dancing; or,
wrapped in pretzel crust. Crust of sleep, post-midnight. 

Who wants to be my new friend?  I’m tired of being lead on—
it feels so vulgar.  Truce-breakers are a sign of the coming
world order (laughs)—what is a friend but a
Universal Network Language of banal pretending? 

I could simplify it all:  anti-hero is what some ingenuous souls
want to become while their infantilismic orthodoxy
is a kind of illusory bourgeois, smoke-in-the-eyes, clouded sight,
ruined milk poured into an open grave.