ILL OMEN
The poet may toss a sweet blitzkrieg at Wit,
Death is the Summer's womb
bristling with Th'Immaculate
worms of the upcoming Winter
... Fish takes the lure, walks
away (the runner at his Beginning),
but wings which wear themselves out
with their flights, uncountable
pieces of eight
shining in the deep's black
noon the optic nerve sees things incredible
in the blind passions of its fit-
ful anxieties: Intelligence staring
within Sleep's disbelief
upon all th'inconsolable skeletons
still bulging with the globs of Greed,
the nose starts smelling the sweet stink
of things whole
... festering
in th'World's salads of maddest necessities
"You need a hair," and, "Whom do I love?"
O, th'dim nobility of the humblest man,
the twilight: that clattering
carrion-birds of Th'Bright
that dusky clan of gentlemen up to no good
(ends)
... pregnant ladies
like prologues in th'thick calm tide
(of tries) tempering & testing, tempting
The Essential Silence with their dark cries,
dropping their stones like stars
and fainting in their antics
a Mind that can more readily appreciate
a squared anything
than Something evolving from a blob
(which is The More Natural state in life)
Why love? so unfeeling & unlearned
& cold: You must first teach me how to flush
out My Love, which at the touch of things bloodied
with handling
... suggests a blush,
asks with great intent: How can I, my love,
How can I flush my love out?
the mute measures of Winter at its striking,
Truth like a foam, unfathomable,
concealing its treasons in the humdrum
deathlike, unlovely Nothingness we roam
mounted on but mutterings
smoldering in The Nevermore,
seeking the cold despite of Darkness
Are you The Moon? Tell me,
tell me (trying to figure out Noon
coming along) th'smelly socks of our mortal emotions
coiling in the pantomime of Warmth
the flurries of Failure's invisible furies
rolling over the blank alleys
of Day's goings-on, so blind,
so blind, crackling atop its high wires
with Desire's closed-eyed sparks
& all of Life's other ruthless rushings
like Fall's fat finches
swollen with the rapture
of Th'Rotten & ripened,
deformed into those omens
the Autumns like puppets
at their hanging
( holds )
but masters of Th'Evermore,
picking up (on) any th'scattered hooks
of disasters big & small
and painfully sticking them through their tongues
for O the sweet, sweet bitter taste
of Mortality--at last!
melting to the sawdust,
eating bananas of bronze
in The Timelessness,
in the Stone that's Time
where it is (already) too late
& th'frosting's devouring up the gluttons
from inside: the grass heaving in
beneath closed doors growing over us
where we dream our fun
still raging & puzzled
in th'disregard of The Blue Instead:
th'birds of Death spindling over our heads
themselves
into a form of Fate
too late and ebbing ever-closer
inevitably, a cool jigger of Something's
All-The-Same, deformed
amongst the mixtures of Doom
(the same as dawn), since it's too late
to notice there's any difference anywhere
at all, too late, too late between
the Being & its Image drain:
all of the universal drams of Destiny
too late and straining at the drunken
uniqueness of Man, yes, we
the echoes, the self-proclaimed tyrants
of its most untranslatable Strains
our thoughts, our feelings, our memories,
our souls, our always orphaned fancies,
our fantasies shoelacing The Universe
stomping The Grand grounds
of agonies and angers too late,
too late, uncertain, always
asking: On which side
(of the looking-glass) combs The Madness,
on which side? comes The Sadness
(of Life) against which we raise
the self-melting armors of our crimes,
human, mortal, but to deny
Th'Infinite fineness
trembling before our brutish Sight
and, timeless, shifting through the instantaneous
changes between a struggle & a prize
freezing us in the stupor of its monotony
quick: the Government's on vacation,
take off your uncomfortable masks: Now
we can hold the holdup up to the light
of the sun, our Mind!
O you The Unfinished, Fate's flimsy
effigies forged in the hesitant Womb
of God, parrying against the par,
chirping at its sharp, O yes,
and sifting across growing changes
charging all chances
shrinking, chasing
The Impossible's circumstance,
greasing with blood
the unsubduable engines of Progress'
unceasing, albeit too late, too late
(don't you know it?)
... and
no World-Walls will tumble in that Fall
of All even down into Death's disbelief
or The Living Else
if Gabriel blows his brains off
all day long (or not at all), so
laugh, laugh in Th'Hollows
of his terrific Strains, O Man
nibbled & munched to Silence
by the unmoving moths of Nothingness
No one's around to care if th'angels blow
badly or too well, too
late, too late for all that
Heaven & Hell, Love--Hate:
You're Man.