ODE

ON MYSELF

A Remains of Ruins
asking of the Wind, "What is Justice?"

Off the Ramp I AM the beacon Tower of
stillness trying to shed light over
The World that has vanished
without telling anyone

into some hyacinth pool of Always
tawdry & distorted
a slight bit of insanity: surrounded
by a number of reasons;

this one time will I tell you:
I am not a brick-maker nor a bricklayer
but a juggler of bricks! molded ^[sic]

Luck's callow character into the deep
of the meaningless muds of the never-
permanent (that mansion that's half

buried in the fragrant treasures
of th'violet Snows (all I-dont-knows,

wormy & mossy) Am I
th'scoffer, searcher, saviour,

sorcerer? its proportions) &
pavilions: Sun-soaked, soft
daffodil winds so wonderful, the

sizzler? slosher? but smiles of
the Dance's dicey Death benefits...

maybe the mother/lilac where Warmth suffocates
those sibyls of human sadness (th'chitchat
Cosmos at its burly Bliss, tears

like a tribe of bees --Universal!
raping the glories of the flowerless groves)

Candor its archives &
Sin! its associate weaving that tapestry
Th'Keepsake, a hundred nothings,

salmons crashing through the mirror,
past the enamelled tongue: O Sigh, so
pudgy & poisoning in its postponing

laying down Spring's steaming prints,
yelling layers upon layers: all
the pains, poems & passions'

eternity poisoned to a point

I peel --Summer like a sultry sleet
boiling th'sureness of the startling streets

turned up a fall through the snow
(Winter laundering th'leaves),
Fall's arrogant bones, the

--Scapegoat? or satyr? or

a mountain range of Impossibles
endless rows & rows of Changes & changes
endless & moonlight that overmuch AM I

the one-legged monster that got hopping mad
& stompt Manhattan? the sucker? or

soaker? an elephant trying to pick up
the most infinitesimal grain of Time
unremembered, O so certain

on my way to but a God (because
it is a greater leap from rock to DNA
than from a Man to God, because

Einstein was wrong: Time IS absolute
... it is human understanding that's relative:
The closer you get to the spit of Sight,
the slower the molecules manage Mendacity,

but that only means Th'Thing's freezing up
--not that it's entered another dimension),

the simple? the shadow?           

                      ... At least,
of this I'm certain: incapable of patriotism
since countries & nations come & go
(after all) but one's life is everything,

the sorry? the silly? the somber? the sober?

horror-stricken by the truckloads,
self-stalking: I walk (Will's wealthy won't,

in shock, silted up with sighs,
choked with those goldfinches
Wait & Want, or softly swinging
atop Hesitation's shedding pines...

almost able to touch the clouds more snow
than clouds that eventually fall
with so loud a thud as faint the fishes
that form Man's inner self-
dissolving fountains & then

Jacks through the jelly! ... let's all go
& make funny faces at the monkeys
instead of kicking about
WHY we ain't gett'n Anyplace (by way of our
legless wishes) there, for a nickel

I'll buy you smiles (from The Machine)
by the bags-full...                 

WHO AM I,

                    somebody
kicked the ball while I had my eye on't &
now I've got This (black eye): I cannot merely
look in any mirror to see (drenched
in hushes) if I recognize: THE

savage? the shabby? the solemn?
the sated? the serious? the Silence?

... the Scathing? the soggy, I STAND
over some nameless and distorted (except for
one true eye) shadow, starkly under th'Sun
... th'sage, saint & sphinx

O simple, simple:

the slapdash, the saucy (the sacrifice?
sacrament? sample? and scarcely a Symbol? a
Sameness? a Splendor? a Spasm?

amongst the littered phrases of the
World now nerveless numb:

I AM unendable--Catastrophe!), always
eternally dissipating into some ever-

unattainable ... Dance of Plenty! sprawled
over th'tambourines of Th'Ages
like folded flashes & dialoguing
with God over a starving child:

O thou merciless
God, Why!? (Seeing this canst thou
still sit there & do naught?)

& since there is no God to speak of
answering myself: O thou merciless Man,
canst Thou still sit there, seeing
this, & do naught!?

free as a whorled bird
& with the brains to match it
& forever delayed before it all
(because there's always One Rebellious hair)

dominions & dominions
& th'dawdles I STAND
for Nothing! but space of pools
within th'hushed forests
that pass themselves off as Night
pouring into The Empty Gesture

pouring into Th'Splendor & Th'Splendor

of an empty gesture I AM, tiny,
glimpsed in the blank, in the hush
AM (eye's grappling Speck)

in Th'Silence of Wings at the wide
& fully capable of drawing all of Infinity
within (their calm Perfection),

but for Now beating wildly amongst
the pitfalls of The Slightest (words

uncovered by the Spring skinning me
coldly alive--until I AM) am I

a remains of ruins
surrounded by The Night's silent hounds
Once & Once! ... finally (that fly),

the beckoning warm Beacon of a Whole universe
frozen at its Void & Vast-
ness now over-grown & settled to

a Garden full of cries in the Wind,

"Justice is but Revenge perpetrated by
some third party," and goose

after goose, Once & Once,
the Light's footsteps made to flowers

... You want baloney? We've got
warehouses of baloney! 'Joe's New Jersey Baloney'
--Off The Ramp: Progress

the yet inevitable, sometimes
even desirable blooming (they're saying

all around me) as I do
the mosquito Obsession, Perfection's
nasty bit of hard work

(their Despair) Th'Lightning:
an entire literature in The Night of
Not-Knowing-What's marvels,

stroked by The Abrupt's deforming claws,

and there standing shocked
like some disarmament

trying not so much to keep Th'Peace
as The Distance
--mutual--with O That Rebellious Beyond

( The Sudden Rose )
knowing it's almost as great to be right
(as to be righteous--No, I can't explain it
to you, right now, because to do that
I'd have to teach you to think,
read & write, talk, walk & suck &

I'm in no mood to teach you to suck right now:

just use some hairspray on your moustache
--that will satisfy you magic enough)

centuries on chairs of Ash
trying to visualize Fate's feline

bodies, blossom's mad spasm, Satiety's
troubled ecstasy, otters through the soap,

Leontyne Price thinning into Infinity or
Caruso melting upon the phonograph,

eyes full of Hunger's speckled cattle,
good intentions' intricate macaques,

Sun by example, Chaos at its massacre,
Time's final storm,
sunken hours, cankered centuries,

motionless flinching & chalked laughters
hand feeding melancholy's fawns,

the Clock's screeching Continuity,
the outlandish Human Touch! for any cause

gargling Because ...

the gods must have made their commitment
and I am going to follow thru, given
I am not comic author enough to change

the course of the cosmic tragedy: I stand
at the crucial time

(knowing there's always a moment
when Someone can put an end
to th'course of events that drives
all tragedies ... to their sad ends)

but I cannot even count myself amongst
those who would assent

... I who should know better
(because I know so much of th'worst)

Excitement's mushroom
over the chill-swallowed Flesh:

th'fence-swallows flying up Th'Feelings
their filaments which dragons Th'Gone ^[sic]
crying, "In such circumstances: What Salvation
for Man?" if, at last, a Dead End:

to what Purpose ALL
the whatever numberless generations of Man?

... what salvation but Love (not Nature's
jealousy, nor Man's cold-blooded debate
over costs, but)     

some even as yet unsuspected Understanding

to rival The Infinite (with which we mortals
may conquer Time), shortchanged as we are,

cursed, amidst seasons of The Sacred
under The Arch (of the remaining)

Gulf fulfillments & crows-nests-peoples
trying to peer over the unimaginable horizon,

wading about their self-
fashioned moats (monster smiles)
to keep out Beauty's shapely bulls

& yellow & black ... or bubbles
like the cathedrals of April

unleashing its muds & its mires
into the sorrows of Summer's inaudible
Sun that yet manages to suffocate a frog

(with fondness) upon the turquoise Absolute,
that reckless tortoise, Evil

at its millstone, I AM
& there you'll find me

trying to cut the crust
with kindness! or else stumbling down

to the bottomlessness of the uncertain Whole,
so nimble in the rhythms of its mingling,

where (they're saying around me):
Are you dying? Are you already dead?
Do you have somebody who just isn't gonna make it?

... Well, we've got caskets & more caskets
& caskets!... warehouses of caskets:
We're 'Joe's Casketria!' --Off The Ramp

(those abrupt ships which pester the seas
at their calmest) all the snows of the Ordnance

(Depth averaged a peak)

all-legged with Lie's endemic lines
straddling th'slightest slip
(each Spring's assumed Unique),

Rapture according to The Quiet (glint
in The Terrible ... pillars as if spilt),

trembling Memory of grass burnt with age,
colored Autumn's homage, its Greatness
overgrown its girth... & tender,

the marbled redwoods' fall
here by The Blaze
of Th'Greyst of columns

once the unbreakable & stalwart supports
of the divine ... now but

Time's twisted antiques: frozen & crumbling
reminders of how long ago the fires! or, tear-

fullest, self-collected (into
the) reservoirs of Dust that's Salvation,

so-called, I AM th'sandstone
in Autumn & yellow & black & blowing my mind
(with the meanings & meanings all)

singular & unique upon
their distant reds, greens & AM I
really all those dingles
of th'drowning-off lightnings

down Th'Aisles of some dark inner sanctum,
once trying to burn the universe,
now holding myself an urn:

amidst th'quivering Quit
of man's contradicting inspirations
squeezing the lemons of the Sun: Your job is
to spread it about    

              --This stuff!

Is it safe?          

--Of course: Oh ... it might
make your skin red and tender, and
after a while it might peel off a little,
but --The reason why

you must not trust people!

is not because they're inherently evil
but because they do not know
they do not know! their goings all unglued
employing principles as parachutes,

Beauty the betrayer? the sleeper? the
dreamer? speeding along the instantaneous O

illiterate in th'dull Pursuit
(of weasels at their shuffling) run
along with the inflexible snakes of Faith's
(makeshift forms) yet ever tending
Doubt's little cattle, feeding upon

Pretense's personal petals, tearful
at the Truth's interrupted, singular

twitch! ... sobered by the Mind's mortgaged
meanings, Conscience too much the shush, the

slush, shivering & shaking AM I
& what I AM: Am I that

I AM (I ask of me,
child of That I AM) plunged but

Perhaps (the most articulate) pool of Agony
swirling wordless in blues,
that old entanglement, or dissuadable

hurricanes of hues through my hair come up
out of the water fountains: tornadoes!

to my toes (the rewards of bloom?) AM I

that fountain of flashes that's failed
upon Th'Full (for its feigning all

the rubbles of my false being,
as if it had been Th'Fall)

recoiling into The Cool coming along
like some comet! upon the uneasy go

of my self-gazing Song

& the gossamer of my ungodly un-
merging (th'flushes of my learning

wings at their welling trying to wake up

--as if they had been finches!
suddenly taking off to go funning
upon the suppleness of their presumptuousness

I AM) manifestly The Justification
(but one more amongst
desperation's desert flowers)
along the diminute & mute
motionless morning

(Attempt's scuttled turtles)
flooding the World's words upon the grass

my being (with its odd long-ago
odour of stilled flowers weaving

The Dust beautiful) into stone
strands & the dust of Ago
into The gilded garment of Th'Comet Comeback
sparkling anew against The Sun

The Will's wild wolves

Like some audacious being, all-
emblemed: I stand amidst art's bloodless laurels

( stronger by their constancy )
circled by Dont's deadly knives,
mere moon's rumbling monotone,

between One's multitude
the darkness at its lizards all around me:

my fellow men (under Anxiety's straw blankets)
shivering, trying to turn up
a warming flame     

       & while all
th'birthdays of worlds/innumerable
worlds-without-end, & so beginningless,
toll their ALL down the wandering Ways

bestowed best! with the pledge of th'snows,
of the greens & reds, of the dull

columns as slender as rills of water
splashing matchless over the splendid (pools

putting out the brightness & reflecting
th'Light of All)         

    meanwhile
(in this Wondering worn the wistful,

prisoners of th'Foul, of Luck's lewd Always,
of wonders without weight,

in Freedom's dirty underwears,
Folly a virtual high feat

--yet forging Fear's flaming names!
I walk) my telltale Talk

upon shoes almost like parachuting
and a scorcher at every last step! I AM

O, an isolated incident of knot? or
Fun's furry? AM I, a jar full of

sufferings? or dumbness pretending to be
the Owl? ... the ascending Vain? (descending)

Hymn of unmoved & unmovable
granite? or, Faithless? ... I who know
there is no God--for a fact--yet still believe
in Him...                                   

    Th'Pretty? Th'Pettiest?
inelegant? titanic? wrung out of Right?
having fallen off Wachamacallit's
claws yet at th'hedging edge

still nibbling raw upon the Rare's
sermons (implicit upon The worship of The

Wrong?)... the un-picked up think-sparks
of the passing shower of tormenting Anguish

burning & smarting, sprinkled down upon
slain lawns of that Garden, overgrown

(with too much dawn? too much dusk?),
where I AM that I AM, like

washed in the sunshine's opiums & morals &

Significance's figs & Time's lopsided plots &

tunes though the Immediate... O
God, sifting their spreading

beauty & being across such a spool of

Becoming (      

O so defenseless ... I have no defenders because
none can cite me to substantiate
their validity --If I exist
they don't: One's impossible sums of raindrops
which ever-so-slowly, as if unwilling,

sifting & sifting down to Th'Bottomless-
ness collected to a Soul

(through centuries: a dark pool
down at the meaningless alive
with syncopations), down to a lagoon of

Laughters, down to a gulf of Griefs
the loving gush of my longings
I stand (down there)
hobbled idly, bent backwards

slightly, Soul but some slanting,

some winking flash! of Light (reflecting
over the broadwalk of my Plush:

the Pause)'s huge Peak absorbing the bluster,

absorbed into shyness but monstrous (because
so presumptuous! & glinting

upon (what's) & wanting &

beckoning) Enigma!
for a mounting...