JULY FOURTEENTH, NINETEEN SEVENTY-ONE

At This Date
(Not On This Date)

Satire # SCAN:

Observations On An Earth-Journey

SPH CYL AXIS

R +275 -6.00 2
PD 68/
L +3.50 " 180

BASE CURVE: +4.25

CYL + SEGMENT TYPE
plus S.V.

[Instructions must be followed exactly.]

--I never attended a day of school
(I was there, of course, but) I was too blind
( to notice it )

everyone around me too blind
to see I was blind--But, this is something
I realized much later

after it made no difference
of course: It was too late by then,

by then I was already a poet
(what fate!), everybody telling me
I adapted too well (to blindness):

My teachers would point to a whitewashed wall
I was only vaguely aware of

to a blackboard I had to take their word existed
(there), to words whose reality eluded me,

words my eyes could not touch
--I made up my own words then

and have been doing it ever since
then: "That is your assignment for tomorrow!"

I spent my youth trying to uncover
the nature of THAT,
always trying to connect THAT to things,

things to THAT: "Why didn't you
do your homework?"

What homework?
Were there things beyond The Immediate
I knew nothing of?...

Why did they tell every other kid about it
while keeping it from me?

Was it so as not to prejudice my Judgment?

Everyone keeps insisting I adapt so well!
In the stupor of Life's delights

and naked in the narrows,
I tumbled through the tumults of the autumns,

madly, until I was downed to the pure
undyed Dark            

       ... There did I
glitter bloody in my heaven

blind to the blades of likeness,

raged in the rites of my nerves
there in that imperious blackness

amongst the blossoms of moods like madness
the silver canvasses of cries

as joyless as mothballed bells
I quenched the thirsty Splendor of man

amongst the ambers, amongst
the somewhat remains,

the singular outcast upon the loudness

laughing down at the gallows of malice
with infinite gladness! ...

Those who know There Is No Answer
(because there're no inevitable questions

after all), those who keep their silence
--It is only the infinite fools,
the painfully ignorant

      ... who raise
their shouts in the Night

leading the mobs of darkness towards
the nonexisting Light that lives only inside

each person's ineffable, unspeakable
inexpressible Inner Sight:

I do not care to share your Ignorance
even as The Highest Wisdom of Man!

If you're full of shit--I'll tell you.

DO

At this date, July 14th '74, existence is still
prancing along in its so indeterminable
periods of duration        

       ... appreciably
slightly unsynchronized with the
Great Moving responses of the stiff World

using its choices of random-dynamics (to betray
itself! away from the false move, dusk

upon the fingers of the Sun, just barely,
my goat fingers down your spine

who was it who said My kingdom for a hoarse--My
butcher, a plunge at each lapse, or

... Don't give up the chip--JP
Morgan when asked what was the most important thing
in poker, Four score & seven years ago--Don Juan
at 8 years of age

... one thing alone will always
prove right: people who decide what's best for you
do it on the basis of what's good
for them, If at first you don't succeed
try, try again--God, when you're young
you ask:                    

"What did I win?"    

     ... as they move into
Integrity's ghostly buildings

like lions dreaming the dull, mugging at
th'mirrors that reward us, from Truth's

(treason's) beautiful towers looking down on:
Boy, if ever I'm being squished into a meat grinder

he's the one guy I'd really like going in there
with me... street people moving into

Tomorrow's unmade tents teetering upon Th'Thrust
of the dark, individual demons inside each man

twisting themselves into the ultimate
made-up constellations        

      --What's the difference?
If a man is beating another man with a whip
and you take away the whip: that is Justice.
Everything else is revenge,      

                    he spoke (English
with a Martian accent)...         

--How could you tell?

ME

It's my 23rd birthday. Existence
still functions on fun, wrapped up in clamoring

bronzes, deaf to th'inviolate lies of Nature,

the Autumn massive in all its tragic

or the ancestral April in women like porcelain

mountains dripping or dragging my merciless

bottomless memories         

               & frailties

like banners fluttering in th'mutterings
I am yet mounted upon the unbroken stallion of

doing something purposeless, occasionally,

if but to own something
which won't be fatal to lose (amongst

th'monotones of such magics

like snakes through the contagious), anything

do I create if only for the joy of creation

Truth's empty brightness,

Fate's fitful fun,

and have not yet learned to do
only that which one is forced to do

by the dumb timing of the bronze numbers

of Time's plopping into their tombs like tubs.

DOOR

Blessed be all those

who can find others to blame
for the wrongs of life, I cannot

and I know the Curse of La Cucaracha
(played by a Hindu band),

softly-sighing cypresses
in th'unbridled Bright

(at its height: Humanity!)
and swallowing the years like slime,

stabbed by the edgeless knowledge
(of lies) locked out of the things that matter,

locked in the instead
& indistinguishable in th'sunshines

I stand Time's ticking contradictions,

incarnate, upon the patterns of the harsh,
tempted, before the patterns of embalmment,

Time's ticking retaliations,

that personal thing (The Grave),
th'jaw-breaking Tragic, listening,

trying to hear th'rippling footsteps
through the moonglows

like lakes knitting the lips
of mortality with laughters

like seams down the wet,
legs at their length

& th'gestures of grief like transfigurations,

watching with silent eyes
the unglued ghosts of Plenty, of Joy,

of Delight treading the skin of Man

like a floating agony

(with my life yet holding on
to enough flexibility, over & above

its broken bones, to
easily or not so easily absorb a bit more

of The Truth thumping Destiny
to a dust

--& be bounced off (of it)
some countless times more without cracking)

Love at its most elemental conflicts,

feeding upon its sufferance,
muffled a fineness,

trailing the lines of our lives
all over the power of its passions

I find myself (who is there to find us?)

somewhere in the first quarter:
a dynamite fuse speeding along
the dynamisms of Inevitable Explosion!

like an ocean sounding out its womb

at night, led irremediably to The Quick

(world's) ending (not mine),
holy & inhuman,

& brow-beaten by the throbs of Time,

lost in the guidance of its dance,

I have been savage as jungle,
sudden as the prayers of the damned,

my own sort of Justice,
my own sort of Right,
my own sort of madness,

my own sort

of raging darkly against the ramparts
of the Light, green as the Springiest,

a grape-pit with the look of martyr,

brittle as ash, as weak as wind-feathers

trying to catch th'Cosmos
of consciousness, by chance,

filled with a bliss enough to tempt
the noble peril of life

... like all the others before me

nibbled at by the mindless moths of silence,
Wisdom's homeless months,

doubtful as matter, and as bastard,
lofty in the belly of King Leer,

or happy in the manners of the abandoned Mind
like some always-moving mime

through th'empty proses of Form

I have been striding the trackless,

the shoreward-gnawing waves of granite
that change the shapes of my existence
moment to moment
glittering in the bitter antics of Beauty

or crashing against the torques of Time,

safe in the tentacles of the butterfly
my beloved, necking the nuances of Th'Night,
street-dancing through The Gardens of the dead

at,                          

gored by a guess,

flayed by the flesh-tattering tongues
of What's whirlwinds & cyclones,

made deaf by the thunder in the done,
playing, nude & golden, in the satin of Th'Sun,

forsaken into the naked shadows
after th'thin shower of Light

shaking in the rain's much fatter, cold remains
dead-drunk & hiding in my harbor bar

where now play the loneliest boasts once stars,
at the margins of mankind

& scribbled upon that Bright that blinds
( all good men of sight into sighting

the pallor of eternity,
th'musics of the mind),

poisoned by the green Spring of poetry
have I listened with the lowed ears of Man

to the high speeches of Time's steeplejacks' axes
commending to the memory dump of man

The Leaping Blind!

with th'sweeping of some mode of elegance
like monkeys dragging their musics of mime

(our immemorial medicines), and made to march

through the prisons of Interpretation
like everybody else

I too am standing on the corner

waiting for the corner
of this direction unqualified,

unspecified,      

      impossible,

to find out if I'm cornered

or outside...    

THRIVE

Against th'barbarous dissonance of Chance I sing

in poetry of dreams Th'Flood of slumberings'
most untranslatable nightingales, Chaos

Autumn's meaningless memories

above the Winter's bayonets of ice,
the heartwarming Wings of the snows,

in the capricious liquid
licking up our lives at the beach

imagined, spitting Truth
as silent as a mirror's

I sing, in th'Tangible's slippery trebles

I sing the fabulous refrains
of Therefore!         

      ... the Dust
unconquered at its must!

and The Sometime's utter numbness,
finding myself amongst the ruins, the quicksands

like a cat, painfully naked amongst the torn
veils & sweet ills (of Love's?), the fetor

of the flowers lasting still,

as Adam found himself
after The War, battling tenement roaches
in the name of God!          

         ... I sing, &
to date I have yet not seen Th'Serpent
of my wriggling existence       

               ... though I sing
loudly th'towers (O the vitals of my watch!) I find

O so delicately: Myself!

an adolescence passioned through th'barbarous!

Chrysalis-                       
This!       
             introspection's

tireless twitchings, stirrings! amongst Th'Blanks ...

FIX

Others, in the landscapes, in The Fierce
flamings distilled a flash!      

             ... in front of
Awareness' silent Eye, in the remote & timeless

smothering storms undone by The Dark,
Death the untimely tigress clawing & clawing
at The Light                  

          ... others (guests of
The Enchanted) not having yet had the cool
lightheadedness to sing

wreathed, wrecked Mankind! the politick

the thriving babble of the times

those starving children staring pallid
before all our feasts of War, others,

in their crucifixions of pathos
dancing Th'Needled roads of Silence

weeping the midnight of their coming ends
like frost upon th'wings of Th'Passing

I sing the Spring

mauled by the bulls of Beauty
to the blues about me, sterile & stained, I sing

myself the doomed eyelash standing too close
to the eye of mankind, the burning blowing

with candor's whittling winds,

th'Frosty moccasins of Apathy...

HEAVEN

who is with me, you mister apollinaire?

as the evening makes her ancient
theatrical escape over the precipice

and the day slashes his throat at last

over th'foliages' permanent-weave wigs
within the limits of th'sempiternal

park, O th'pathos        

               ... the lazy
horticulture (so designed to keep warm in miniver
the strollers through Time amidst the random

arrangements of Roses & all the other minuets of
Sense... trees set well enough apart so that

Uniqueness makes them unique,
bushes blooming at their fury,

and love almost in a beard of birds
all chirping like cosmic changes

fashioning the face of God)
and making all life nervous to find

Itself a place of such intentional un-design!

Ah, the Soul always protests such purposes
to life, against Nature so unnatural, against

crowding structure upon structure,
multiple upon multiple, man upon man

pushing inapprehension upon inapprehension

all while he can, is it true? mister
apollinaire, or is it only necessary
it be: true enough?...

I'm running out of gas, out of

clean clothes, out of hair-spray, I'm running
out of purpose, of aim, out of toothpaste, out of

tricks, out of T-shirts, I'm running out
of money, of patience, of destiny, I'm

running out of life, out of world--what is
my purpose, mister apollinaire?

the most basic: to witness
the end!              

       ... but, mister apollinaire,
no mere man can witness this!...

we'll only be able to see a very confined portion:

only the closest inferno around us, only

the nearest atomic blast,           

       the final pneumonia,

those small laughters that follow you (where

when you turn: nobody's smiling) ...

HATE

Dear Prince, if you are a romantic

this Today will wrap you around its
pearl-real teeth shining like a glimmering

Substance! in your eyes of mist
and will snap th'jaw! before you know it

like The Great Orator who really is th'con-man

whose bombast has the magic to put The People
to sleep (so his henchmen can go about them
picking their pockets), their ears stuffed with sin

Awake! Awake! he cries out in their dreams

as some honest little hero (deaf
because he lives only in the silent
screen like Charlie Chaplin) comes along,

immune to the spells & magics of his terms,
principles, high morals, ultimate definitions

and sundry other assorted splendors from the gullet

... an innocent witness to The Crime, who
regardless of how The Great Orator tries:

( lynching & burning little dolls
symbols & significances in effigy,

beating up a pup, sticking a knife
into the eye of an infant

in the storms of his rhetorics
flattening some poor old soul with a baseball bat )

while he marvels that the poor tramp
should be impervious to the speeches of his madness

strangling all even as one little Charlie Chaplin
just stands there, marveling

at all the people asleep! (Which naturally
means: the henchmen of hate cannot rob them
with impunity before the witness in their midst

--This means they must first eliminate him!)
... Dear Prince, but in spite of all the flying fists,

bricks tossed like a snow storm
& clubs swung about him like juggler-pins:

they cannot bring even a single Charlie Chaplin
to his knees... he still keeps listening attentively
at what Th'Great Orator is trying to say,
as if trying to make heads or tails of his speech
--Until, finally, The Great Orator, frustrated,
angry beyond hate, calls in the police,

accuses him, by the power of his prestige:
And the police swoop down on him, hold him,
and are about to drag him away when

The Great Orator can't help finally but berate him,

blast him,                       

curse him,    

           loosen upon him
the powerful narcotics of his speech
one last time              

and he puts the cops instantly to sleep,

long enough for the escape of
(one less-questioning) Charlie Chaplin.

MINE

And here I am, today, This Very Day

although no matter how much of me I show you
you will never see my entirety

--There will always be so much more:

I am, & also have my slow soliloquy
to bed (all to myself) albeit

the tulips ringing in my head
are accurately telling me I am not,

calling upon mouthwashes & deodorants
& such & lotions & hair-sprays,
elevator shoes & false eyelashes

as witnesses for the prosecution...

Who cares!?!... I am
& that's what matters

because the rains of the forests-primeval

are no longer out to freshen Th'Certainty
(they used to bathe) but are a gang

of falling sparrows like arrows of Death
poisoned with Th'Fanaticism of All Doubts

coming down hard upon our empty heads
like helium-filled O
vulnerable men!... Well, here I am,
impenetrable skin walking dazed

through the unbleached beauty of the ages
learning to live with the sun,

licking with untuned ears
The Now's most civilized Song,

riding the cosmic dromedaries
one after the other one endlessly

into a grave of robins, over
amongst the many: One!

little splendors that peak,

that transform themselves into
th'prodigious buttons of habit

on some old-fashioned gentleman
catching up to Th'Sometimes like a tram

but nits of the infinitesimal...

I am, the motions of shadows
& swallows like notions

crowning the cosmic diadem
atop the swallowings of Sense:

I also am The Monarch dense in all
my mortal accomplishments,

as small as no difference at all
I am the Sun Sire

in the bush of self-consummations
acquiring baldness (like an eagle after
its first four years or so),

of the shorelines receding to the water-wilderness

(of all) am I The Bridge of my wonders
here but half This and The Better Half

half-heartedly uninhibitedly touching
(with its nude sole) The Other That of Oneness,

like some toad on a throb,
settled into a thought, on a roll

like the marbled ball God cannot find
rough at all, I am the Chariot that chases

& the midnight feet finding
(if at all) no Way along the streets

the Noon convulsively making his speech
before The Following morning mowing th'lawns
outlasting & patronizing the barbershop of beasts
I look down upon my peaceful fingers
fiddling with whatever-war's dull magazines:

I, th'butcher troubadour
with half-Shakespearean speech showing me

--Makes you think, how a low-life like him
could have a kid who maybe writes Shakespeare
--Big deal: Shakespeare's already been writ

who am I? with a knife clever enough to slash me up
limb & limb with most-deliberate fashion

showing me the weak, weak countenance
nothing can face

& finally chunking out my flesh with bared teeth,

falling apart all around the tongue of treasons

"The country folks come & the city folks go"

to the me-moving tunes of blistered-by-the-illusion

(Doom), bits of my soul left floating upon Almost,

the invisible filament nerves of my passions,
hanging by moral scruples O
too loose am I still the very sustainer of Th'Hyacinth

(Heaven & Hell, if in the magic th'hens pee,
then th'children of the world can talk

to all men, & they must listen) Amen,

I walk (up to) the last stranger
standing in the infinite line
& hand him my self-portrait,

telling him in great satisfaction:
My friend: I am! Well,

who cares for that!?! (This is most confidential:
I laugh hysterically over the solemn herds

of the dead-but-digging-nuclear-shelters-
&-lining-them-with-lead

out of the smugness of their world-wide existence
staggered by th'Sorcerers! of the slipshod,
th'Wise Men of the afterthought)

as he asked me: "You some nut, my man?"
But I know perfectly    
what a nut is    

               ... and

I am.