ATE LEAN
the mongrel fish schools move in their total
hunger after the raw's nameless
armies out across the bay
mindless (always) the dusk's
dolphins leaping leeward like disks of bronze
shaving off the sunshine, like undocumented
dreadnoughts--Time's untiring battalions
stained to a look of people:
above them--the fishermen on the stir,
soldiers of desolation
practicing the commerce between all Moods,
munching upon Explanation's unparalleled
potatoes, shrivelled & dark, yet smug as onions
within th'eddies of their defying Life's little
unsettling, self-circling fates
... striding
amidst the universe' omens' great mist
all of Horizon with their quiet scars: rippling
down the peace & tranquility of the All-
confining Silences around them, of the surface tension
--speaking but a brackish water, lured & hurled through
th'silken subtleties of the silver streams:
moving in quest of their lives... beside them
somewhere: the cock at his calling
in mornings of Same
... through the unhealthy
vaporous mists of an unnoticed Passage:
servicing Horror's handmaidens--Above them:
th'inaudible Sun talking back
only with watered-down, inutterable Light's
rotting references & Death-translated tales
dressed in the Sun's warped welts &
th'rasping errors of Earth's
... swim the mongrel fish
schools (in Love's abulia): the different colorations
of the moving shifting tides
... shifting & shifting
to the feel of their own different, dry vibrations
while the mongrel fishermen within the barren substances
that hatch grasshoppers' eggs (in their dreams)
the fishes catch in a handful of crackles: armies
embalmed in the wear like some small homage,
following dry patterns & useless techniques
(so) easy
... to the cruel, trying to avoid
their own whatever Destiny's voracities, staring
out at the waves' full blast--Out there
in the tide's tired permanence
(of Man's)
... beyond
the crimson musak, Temptation's trembling lamps,
beyond even Love's long legacy, beyond Embarrassment's
embroidery & beyond Motive's all-mauling mobs
passing in invisible silences by the glass wall
against The Darkness that circles us all, that glazes
our human eyes,
confines our laughable calamities,
the ever-returning shuffle of our public shames, private
catastrophes, all of The Aftermaths of our mattering,
Meaning's milder aims, Care's conical likenesses, calms
down to Sympathy's essential hill... so pointless:
there stands that occasional someone
(usually some nameless
busboy who pausing upon the crisis of his wabbly legs)
happens to glance
... beyond the elfish edge (Doom's
unpardonable Past, Future's most unjustifiable, Present's
somewhat magnified all around us): There!
at the designated edge of all of mankind's Immemorial
Crisis: brewing the ole bean, shivering in a garment of stars,
having risen from The Primordial, standing at the Dawn-
ing of his mind
... in a peapod of parts: are gathered
now... the gifted hogs of the holy, Sanity's
snivelling clams, Concern's chronic peacocks,
Beauty's mottled ants, Justice's obstinate ostriches,
& all the other boring ghosts of the Blood
taking lunch or ordering their breakfast, perhaps
tipping the two-bit busboy a quarter bribe (so's to get
a hotter cup of water next time)
... like some revolution's
mad assembly's most exemplary-stained beasts
& other dwellers in th'unfaltering, deepening diagrams
amongst the staggering grapes spread
out upon the endless & endless buffet tables (of
belonging, of blindly participating, of
Existence!...) grasping at The Enveloping Alone...
all around him: watching the many Forms of The Self
ordering up
their scalloped judgments (as if
for some meticulous breakfast & later: lunch
... as they knit (some of the more artistic
ones): the gaudy & tangled threads
of our most & least)
... amidst th'tinkling sparkles
of spanking china, in front of those curtains that talk
by their very opaqueness: of moths' wings
enormous as mountains (out there all around
their all-enveloping moods)
... about Vision's Great Enough,
about long leather furnishings, sterilized,
comfortable & old
... within the shadows'
questionnaire: binoculars on every passing bird
(outside: the pavement's stark ravens
like bits of Night slowly covering up the Day),
Matter's forsaken Worm (emerging the merest hint
at the fall of Man under the wheels
of his very own unstoppable Impulses), and
the never-ending din of children replacing
The Hushed...
*
*
*
... like some spider's planned dreams
all ruffled to a fog, made the instant harbors
along the whys-piled warehouses
... along the waterfront
like abstract stars in the transfixed existence
of (a) Man the political hostage (no one thinks
highly enough of to demand a ransom
for), hostage of but so tipsy-turvy
a Reason of his: within himself
trying to reason himself out clearly
after having obtained a passport through the vapors
that separate him from the things that made him
standing aimless there at Pause's stilled stanzas
... perhaps his own coffee-break...
Again's obliging agents scrubbing him clean
of their last visit)
... or at the bar sipping
the whiskeys of Wait
... witness to
the unmitigated Brain, immune to Mind's mending
--but yet, late, brambled in the ticking
of his own Self-blame:
trying all tendencies
without destinations he can discern in the blinding
instant--
of his being (between a birth & a death)
crying out in his struggling gait: "Forward!
Forward!"
... but Where?
... in the spillage
of clattering bleary-eyed berries,
their words: watching World's wee waitresses
that go waltzing between the tables: to serve The Flesh
to an Instant in Th'Immaterial Meanwhile
(in Moment's most intimate) ever attending to
a fine few thinned secretaries catching their
coffees before they break, or dull business peoples
downing their grey'st boredom in rainbowed ice-creams, in
Love's novel Void, in Reason-for-Being's unalterable
make-belief,
"Never after
..." old reticent peoples
toasting down throats of th'unnoticed: that
lady--The Less!
--Once the phantom flesh
now retired completely from the world, from their
most trifling or engaging habits
--Once drinking in
their lives... now sipping ever so slowly the Virtues
like stones, Importance's professing Nought,
looks' emotional lies, Triumph's touchy mush,
History's pages of wax, and Danger's all-
displacing delicacy, the Untried's trainloads
to the dark...
every now & then:
all of them (like silly soldiers) lifting their glasses
in salutations to the waterproof!
... their
heavy-scarfed shoulders shivering, they may ask the busboys
balancing over trembling knees: Who the Hell can stand
this air conditioning setting!?
... that never-ceasing
dripping of Impatience's faucets--Not, certainly,
the busboys either, surely (who are swimming
in their electric sweat),
who suspect:
somehow The Circle of Being's unreconciled
as yet (with itself) around them
--Always: Crack's poetic peak! (or Design's
narrow breakthroughs)
... or some sudden
smudged Image in the frozen invisible
limits!... suggesting:
Are we but a bowl-full
of sandbagged fish?!... Staring upon the Sun's eccentric
indistinct
--upon Language's loud neglect, imagining
unslaked sails out there somewhere midway
to Mind's true mission
... stumbling apart
into th'flotsam over forgetfulness' great
ooze, the cheap-ink-tinctured truths (of God?)...
Strange instruments!
... thinks that busboy, Whomever,
the well-made frenzy feeding business' most humble
mystics, away from the eye of the maelstrom:
the one who will never be listened to
(were he to speak, for all his words are wet
with th'whisk waters of Away), who agrees:
"Somebody ought to do something
about the air conditioning!" wiping away
the sweat of sympathy from his brow,
exchanging (pleasantries), trying to understand
the cool customers ... even while they're bursting
their dried up heads
against th'invisible circles
surrounding everything--That stingless Darkness
out there somehow poisoning them
with unholy Nothingness, with its wreathed Dare
lapping at the walls around them
with seraphs' sobs that shake the whole
place (to a hint about the inter-connections
between everything that exists
throughout),
... with Ought's warped waves
staggering the still unyielding walls
across almost different dimensions
does he look, staring at Comparison's many parts
out there in That Aimless Straight
he can never bring within his understanding
--he being but a creature couched in his own inclinations
only, a being embossed to a smooth stone in the bottom
of a lake
... who can yet remember every inch
of the stream that shaped him, that brought him within
--there to his place (seemingly at the dead center
of the scheme of things)
--The Whole World & earth
engaged in Implication's comedy (Ho ho's warped hollow
tragedy) of mumbling beasts at breakfast, lunch or
at some late feast (mindless of all around them),
whoremongers, respectable prisoners, pensioners
once so disreputable, yet-fetching failures, and
manners' small angels, the contemporary's obsequies,
tomorrow's all-mottled miracles, determination
like a mail bag, the sigh at its expiration, loyalty's
sliding lovers, art's unspeakable tellers, motion's
common miners & sundry other fellows who sweat
the whole day
... or yet struggling busboys
& little old ladies of late (at rest) agreeing
--because they leave it at that, yes,
because they do not press the meaning: instead
shooting saints like bullets at every human despair
or error--Here's your tip!... Will's ever-wilting
Good & Evil strolling across rows & rows of contradictory
oddities... dwellings
... like Autumn spreading its Death
without meaning to, grateful all over the voiceless sighs
like foundations half fountains: melting Reality
before eyes capable only of weeping Dreams--but hollowed out
spheres ringing the real World in which we are discovered
to be th'prophets trembling where we're wallowing
in our outworn comforts: comfortable precisely because
so drily imprecise & while yet in the stream of existence
that wipes out the Worlds without us, poised
upon the edge of I ...
tabulating the Day's many receipts,
through th'imperceptible insufficiencies
(like desolate numberless cypresses)
guessing, hi-stepping it through it all, listening
to the never short-changed murmuring
of flattery's gloomy menageries
self-praisings amidst the shredded drifts of breeze
sometimes the Silence "is the best
of all musak" (as O'Neill told somebody):
masking the Meaning (for a while
of melodies, of motives) masking
the while's well-oiled human machinery
like boozing bugs under the few scarce
stars also making their music (juggling Chaos
--they too--by braving it)
... while the soundless Mind burns up its feverish case
splintering all of th'limits that kiss our lips
just at the edge (& tickling the teeth
with Verse's stony blanks)... running down miles
& miles of feet to the cool of the stomach:
with th'fervors of composition dawning
more splendorously than The Sun introducing a World
to itself: "Here it is, gentlemen (that we replenish all
our grand imperfections): Here in this feast
(of ruminations rotting at our lips) uttering
all our infant symbolisms
crawling on-all-fours
about the diaphanous dialectic dais of the universe
--down padlocked gulps: Ever faithful to a Fashion (at
its high surf): Outside, like enormously pruned trees
rattling all around them with their thick, shifting shades
like skeleton keys trying to find the Whole
... (and gobble it up)
within: The Sweet Soul full of self-calming emblems
our failed befitting blues)
trying to stuff with our bitter extremities
down every shivering shock of the Devil's prime
globules of flesh, of bloodsheds like brandies of the best
vintages, of our finely-baked beliefs, of the Good
at its over-raw & Irony's too crispy, of the wide-eyed
wheat just planted & sprung, of Pleasure's several-
layered, beautiful with Shame's bitterest cherries, glued
by a yawn's dull jelly, of Perversity's delicate arrangements
of sins, of those disappearing peaches of Youth, of
all the most terrible terms to mate the Times to
(they can think of), of Provocation's peculiar ticks,
of the most grotesque golds of God's (of Grandeur), of
eloquence by atoms & storms and audible plunges into
the Invisible Unknown
... of concealed antitheses
in the transitional (like bridges & ties), of work's
better turbulences, of the Immediate's dinky contrasts
& of The Grand Sameness in The Greater Whole around them all
they're speaking (roasting marshmallows around
the beggars' bonfires)... about th'approaching Revolutions
of Th'Magical Meanwhile
while the moving momentums (that have been,
that are, that will be: Man): perish
up Hope's thin chimneys
*
*
*
Inside: the comfortable cool customers
fed upon The Certain (even if LIE: they'll never know it
--even all their collective lives aren't long enough
to reach into it)... They are safe!... safe
behind impervious walls differentiating, separating
everything ( we make up our minds we understand )
from the outside's... in the quiet, moist comforting
hum of the air conditioning: busboys sweating &
the wee waitresses round & around they go--taking the orders
of the well-fed fish already (to grab a few lousy crumbs
of their own)... insisting the Spring is hiding inside
the half deserted coffee-shops, gingerbread houses &
melting coffee cakes the Sun's quietly baking:
the goldfish peoples watching the clear-cut Crimes
that scare to death all goldfishes swimming in their spit-
bowls of being... whole worlds-away from those living streets
(that look to us like rows of creatures going by the name
of positions they hold within the ever-shifting, ever-
rolling, ever-changing Maneuverings
about The Main passing eyeless, street-wiseless, now,
through the thin clogged purposes of modern men
like lies run-away to where the pedestrians have gathered
around a street mime playing the mystic role of a work-man
trapped somewhere within, playing significantly upon
Perfection (the Man-made) because
the instant man chooses to cease his quest (to better
anything & All) he calls:
The Achievement of Perfection )
living anxiously behind thick, impenetrable walls
of glass vibrating to the rumblings & tensions
(somewhere outside his spheres of
clevernesses that can kill &
fears that can be cured with stuffing them
with the latest discoveries
of our cleverest chefs )
threatening their well-measured & exactly-
considered universe (walls impenetrable to the Mind
confined within itself) our human touch can't
feel its way out of
... the disquieting
uncomfortable Ideals of man like some gnawing
graffiti scrawled across glass panes fogged up
between the brown & the green
with contrast's cutting hot & cold
*
*
*
Outside: Th'spherical artificial world
like a tear of God's
down the drunken divide's transparent
concepts: The well-lubricated Moon
sliding to first base from home, or Night's starry
witness taunting The Sublime, Triumph's full
moon (too waterproof a wrap of everything):
the wild eternal fountains of our conceit
washing away th'Dust that collects against the invisible
walls around us & makes some of us suspect
they're there really (collecting th'flesh into swirls
of inward pains outside glass panes: the pun's done
pondering)... overpopulated lanes of unfixable troubles
pushed rudely aside (to the whatever Side's available)
by th'passing busses of the very next
closed-eyed lovers, or perhaps those unthinking
autobuses too wide for the narrow
& narrow ride (having been pushed on their way,
originally: centuries & centuries hence
--when that route made sense) out there
in the world-shaking catastrophe of everything
turning to Dust walls covered over with the darkening
curtains of our cultural make-believes (always
seemingly so transparent)
... like a waterfall
always threatening to begin crumbling at any moment
into some sharp crystallization at the least hint
of disharmony between the lies & the lies,
outside/inside, above which we swim so mindless
the pasty patterns of Paradise's groping oars)
... each one a thunderbolt disgorged above us
the threatening, disquieting shadows of the passing
Sun (suspecting the Day... somethings all sorts of
puzzling intents)
... Below us:
statues of fallen saints like spent bullets
lining the (just for the) Hell of it
(the drunk at the bar assures us it's God
shooting fish in a barrel!), and leaves us
shaken, what with that Present (which likes
standing behind bullet-proof glass panes):
All of us saved by knowing we own more room
for our circular, closed probabilities of Faith
--O much, much more than all (also our own)
real earth's sprawling lands have room enough
for Man's meaningless skeptical multitudes' swimming
chances ... The Past's mongrel sad futilities
& piles of the prevailing
Future scarcely oars netted & cut short
backwards coming from outside some(where [sic]
he thinks he lives well-fitted into his furnitures,
self-made, fabulous & well put-together
with a cosmos-cementing truth, Decay in the black
... All The Guilt of The Universe stashed away
in the bank (well-away from the waters he is
condemned to swim through for his life): a Faith
calamity-poxed, atop foundations of effervescence
harboring the hazardous with impunity, although th'deadlocked
of Luck, maybe The Night's grand nursling, but also
Th'Day's benign nothing, Beauty's unbuckled
stallions & mares, maybe, but too: Repugnance's
irksome cats, as well
... Melody's rads
of radiance, and twitters of th'Tarnish...
the ages' deliberate angels, and the blacksmiths
of our own madness
... The Past's brisk prodigies
now but oracles of some old convention, now forgotten
queuing up th'smorgasbord--If Fun's fateful
fugitives, then,
too: Adultery's
trying apes, also: if Moon's mystic mariners,
then the Sun's great welts, as well
--Snails down The Shining Always?... yes,
and Jealousy's abiogenesis' goofy frogs
--Immortality's redeeming doves, of late, of
course, yes also, but The Wooden's whirligigs,
always: Sufficiency's all-pat fat?
... and
Ambition's
Never-Enough!
... Love's overall?... sometimes, and
sometimes Discussion's naked witches, O yes:
digressions of God, Th'Mind's oldest nomenclatures,
the gods' chortling wrath--
... but aspects of Inasmuch,
hanging like horse thieves from Satisfaction's
thin boughs--but traps:
... Bait's beauties once-removed
(those gnarled girls & lads of Old Age
once Beauty's predestined
... Spring's superb,
stumbling baby tongues, and Summer's immeasurable,
overstated strums,
... and Autumn's effective orange,
ghastly emphasis, and then
... Winter's marbled moment,
secrets well-salted in Melancholy's over-thickened
milks, down Satisfaction's smoother side (smashing
clear through the sunshine's Song's
intrinsical assuages, Pleasure's impulsive imps,
several leaves, Peace's so happy symphonies,
Graciousness' blurred bows, Always'
most alluring, Almost's unfalling leaf,
Life's stifled long, unspecifics,
Conformity's inward faint,
Continuation's someday,
Greatness' indiscriminate gore,
Pride at its usual pride,
Notion's discredited
noses, Passion's applied explicit,
Doubt's downwards swarms,
Crisis' taut crossbows,
immaculate pimps, each Self's other otherness
(as well), Embarrassment's entangled
turkeys, Remorse's tucked
dignity, Regret's
moot mutinies,
teardrop's most-penetrating
Verse / Death's (ivy-covered
silences) that Nothing
but Nothing reverses