HURRY WORE

di immortales, homini homo
quid praestat! stulto intellegens
quid interest!²⁰⁷

There I was, intently into 'Wee-Wee' Magazine
(which details the toilet habits

of world celebrities) when... somewhat
a saintly face (slightly reminiscent of

Billy Blake), an aureole in its orbit
running vertic'lly down his long nose

surprised me in the morning mall

& seeing that I was only on the first of two bits
(of my life), he told me: Of Wisdom & of Strength,

my friend, although I barely knew him: One Thing
Alone I know: Wisdom's its own only friend,

Strength is its own only, foe
of the Darwinian term 'evolution' (who

thought it should really be called 'adaptation')
Damn it, man, we adapt too well, only too late

can we tell WE ARE DYING and so we say "We're
dead," because (although not because):

what dead can say it?... thus the living
instead (live)... and who laughed at the great

discredited fundamentalists that (on principle
alone) support witches & devil-worshippers

in The White House (because, but not because, of
course, being good Christians--and not like

that atheist The Pope... who only believes in
one God! of all things) trying to bring honor

& fame out of their illiterate religions
into politics (of all things) mumbo-jumbo &

abracadabra in the academies of Man--enough
to cure all the ills & woes of the world: yes,

it's really that simple, amen... to say
there are gods is but to say there are
more advanced beings (if there be gods):

yet all this gets done is that instead of
thinking in terms of the evolution of men

basic thinkers must then switch to the evolution
of gods... & where does that bring us (if not

to amen/amen) Goddamnit, we can't abolish
evolution Abracadabra! Abracadabra!... Hell,

Opinion does not negate Reality, Goddamn! Goddamn!
some unspeakable horror so I said, "Okay,

let's hear about it..." My mistake: he dumped
upon my head a fully-loaded pail of garbage, raw

& warm, wet--saying This was Th'Perfection
of his Thought & the perfect Production of his whole

World & art & labor & Love THIS (by his life)
THIS!... & also by his leisure (for he had,

in any case, like every other man, himself: wasted
most of his life, amen), by Th'Progress of life!

amen: THIS (each & every) backtaken step
of Allison Hitchhiker III (whom he claimed he

was --or had been-- in some previous incarnation
earlier that day), and stating he was prepared to

swear he was not claiming to be anybody at all
(at that time)... while I tried not to laugh

--he furiously yelling furiously O this

is serious, my man! and launching into th'following
deadly serious platitudes while I tried to get down

(out, or get off) before he climbed to some
more deadly altitude by the weight of his words:
It is as unwise for Those Who Must Die Tomorrow

to accept the Wisdom of Those Who Were Born Yesterday,
as it is for Those Who Were Born Yesterday
to study Hope under Those Who Must Die Tomorrow

turning his head & whole body both ways
like a spinning top as he said it...

"I'm sorry," I tried to tell him, "But I must
be on my way," yet he assured me I was!

he told me it was I who was on my way
and not him!... Not that Wisdom is always right,

but that The Wise take into consideration
they may be wrong--Blind folly sometimes

falls by chance into The Right,
failing to grasp the beauty of life's sweetest

Irony I danced out from under his familiar arm
but again he made a grab at me with... Experience

& Wisdom are two distinct stuffs, which
sometimes oppose each other, but

it's out of Experience that Wisdom gains its Best
and only from Wisdom that we finally get

the right experience... I always trying to forget
all he was telling me just as fast as he said it

Wisdom is pliable, seldom becoming brittle
enough to crack (from any innate relentlessness

as Power might--which shines brightest
upon its solidarity, boasting the loudest

about its adamant strength, temper
poised upon the brink of some inevitable

Shattering break): Wisdom's like water,
patient to quench ultimately down to th'quickest

spark of even the most spectacular... but
a wave breaking its own defiance--Wisdom is wide
as the ocean! he said, stretching his head
so high that some stupid albatross (carelessly

flying by) wrapped his cheap life around
his dear neck and died (but he, on the other hand,
lived on--for he was already too far gone
into it to notice much such incidentals

as life & dying): O my friend, he assured me:
the nature of Life is to grow outwards

towards Wisdom (it doesn't exist within you,
you damned empty idiot), whose nature's

to grow inwards into life: so
it's not possible to hide Wisdom from Man

because it completely surrounds him... but
O how easy it is to make a man blind to Wisdom!

Hell, by merely enclosing him in th'petty
hollowed-out little shell of wit, well, now

he was getting personal: Wisdom's a tragedy
--And you can most easily appreciate this Fact

by looking upon the great number of men laughing
their heads off at it down the everyday, I tried

to instruct him on the fact that he wasn't looking
so solemn himself, what with a beard of albatross

(but the bird, even though most dead
yet kept getting in the way): Wisdom is the fever

of a mind which, living in such a scalding world
as this, knows that a cool head doesn't keep

long, I also noticed he kept a stuffed cat
under an arm (which he insisted, when I asked,

suffered from Parkinsonism... but was otherwise
quite stuffed full of life), taking th'opportunity

to wonder if cats no less than a few selected men
also had a sense of destiny, if Knowledge is The Key,

then Wisdom is always The Right Door, he assured me,
breaking a plastic bottle over my head, to

give Wisdom is as difficult & as hard
as to give of th'Heart & as simple as that!

as I prayed for some passing traffic,
even the odd bicycle or somebody on roller-skates

readying myself to push him to a higher Fate,
he said the difference between The Fool

and The Wise Man is that The Wise Man is
eternally sufficed, and The Fool's ever in the process

of turning over some one or another fast profit,
asking me for a dime (saying I should content myself
without it) he would not hear of my raising statues
of dried up muds to him, begging Th'Moment's storms

the Wise Man can tell immediately the difference
between himself and Th'Fool (while the poor Fool

can't tell, bad, well: th'difference
between The Wise Man & himself), only a fool (it is

certain) argues with the devil or with an old man
spitting albatross feathers upon th'dwarfs

like swollen dolls pushing their wiry, rattling-
eerie shopping carts full of cadaverous Emptiness

in th'ghastly, unearthly dancing of their short walk
... while in the distance like some post-mortem

was passing the uncanny, thrashing, wan & weird
disease-filled garbage truck of that Dawn

Oooo-weee! like some Vision from Purgatory
while Th'Poet then said: And yet The Fool can hope

to act wisely, after all, and even the Wisest Man
can make himself every inch the fool

looking like an impression in his own head
he lampooned all Th'Moderns and cursed Th'Dead,

gingerly sidestepping all the others in between
like scraps & heaps of concentration camp bones

in his way--You cannot write Wisdom in Th'Eternal
Book: for Wisdom's forever the exclusive property

of The Moment in my own head he then became
like some forlorn, wayward mariner lost in the wake

of day... sailing his way through Th'Darkness
of his blindness chased by the dogs of Ago

(so godless) & barking around his steps
like waves lapping at him audibly

as he (blithely, deaf to all truth) discoursed
upon some another calamitous magnificence

... You can purchase (Wisdom) but only
with more Wisdom (of your own), and you can

only sell it to itself!... Wisdom is knowing
when to cash in your ignorance & other things,

in the eternal timeless gasping in his gait
because all the rising pollution I said I had

to get away--Because I was the guest of honor
at some wedding (I just made up that very day), but
he just engaged me in the enduring dread
as if with the bat-blind fangs of Fate, Folly

has many outlets, admiring the naked manikins
frozen at their whatever individual antics

in the storefront ballets throughout the mall: Wisdom
knows no alternatives... so we kept on walking

as we went through the dreadfully sticky mists
of that ever-growing morning amongst the banquets

of weeks-old trash & the unwanted remains
& throw-aways of Today which decorate
the more fashionable markets in the shopping-mall

to suggest to the public how urgent a thing it is
to replace everything they own (with something

quite exactly like it), even all they now are
... with all they hope to be: for the right price

(or as close to it as they can manage to find
discounted), all they may hope for Wisdom is

not indiscriminate he quite assured me: that's why
it avoids Love like the plague--as suddenly,

in a vision: in front of me passed sassying
that cute little bitch Beatrice

on her bicycle, flirting with th'Cosmos
in hotpants & sweat pasting her T-shirt to her chest

... Oooo-weee! the Fool always looks
forward towards escaping Heaven (or Heaven's

escape) while The Wise Man sometimes also looks back
upon the pursuit of Hell he said (while all around us

Th'Dead came back to life again at Eight in the morning
all around us) crying, Ah, fundless dreams! and

constantly apologizing for the cat who happened
to be killing some rat most beautifully &

saying Only the plants are innocent, certainly
not we higher parasites and that The Basic Crisis

of Human Existence is that we individuals
long to be Perfect (for all time) when

biological life (in this Reality) is based
upon the premise that individuals do not matter

(not even a nit) and are only the stuff upon which
The Species nourishes itself, my man! to labor

at their pay-checks... & then gave out a holler
closer to a howl than a cheer...
the sunshine becoming more and more concrete,
my tormenting Mentor began to seem to be

without actually being: he was like some boundless
monumental (theoretical) foundation that sprouts

but a bean (bland & brainless) but embodying (if
we are to believe its priests): The Whole Body

of To Be (without actually being)... Although
Wisdom lies not at the end of any World's way,

worlds being endless, yet do those seeking
their own ends... travel down the ways of Wisdom

--THESE, he told me, were a few of the Proverbs
of Heaven (he had made up whilst

traversing the State of New Jersey, both ways), and that
now he had to rest... that it was getting too hot

for him to walk ahead during the coming of day,
and he called upon a mangy-looking hobo (who'd

just awaken there & then) from his bed of smells
(even God could not define) and had been scratching

(with great enthusiasm) his murky behind
... to lead me Further into The Sun, ahead,

my man!... his farewell: even as Poetry
is the Wisdom of The Poet, Wisdom

is the poetry of the earth--Forever Wisdom
perfectly like life: the veil of Death & died,

for the time (being), "Is he going to be all right?"
the Hermit asked; but, "Don't worry about it," he

added, pointing to the ever-approaching garbage
truck: "You some kind-a poet, or some'n?" & again

(without waiting for any answer, since he wasn't
looking for any): "Gimme a dollar and I'll sing you

a poem I'm certain you have never heard before
--Unlike that garbage that loco bum was feed'n ye!"

So I gave him the dollar & this is the Song he sang,
almost in tune, almost in time, from memory O

a guy with a world-class ass
got rid of some world-class gas

(it broke every record & killed
some danged slow trekker

who'd been left behind en masse) O
how refreshing to come across someone
(for a small change) who wasn't after Wisdom
(although way behind it)... he saying then

that the curse of a sound constitution
is a too-long life: I myself am old as Man,

what'd you say we get ourselves
a couple'o popsicles! espying a skeleton Good

Humor truck (rusted almost to that death
that eventually overtakes all mechanisms ... like

something right out of The Lowest Circle of Hell
yet) playing 'For He's A Jolly Good Fellow!'
with almost half-well-tuned bells

... The Hermit & the gypsy ice cream vendor
struck a hard-fought bargain between them

then (to cast dice over my dollar against
two rapidly-melting popsicles) to our loss: I'll bet

your life each one'o'them dice were loaded,
my man, he said: You got another dollar? and

although I was sorely tempted to tell him
the singular case of dice was 'die' (I didn't

want to tempt Fate a second time), so I refrained,
afraid to open up a can of wiggling symbols

& instead I listened in silence as
under th'bad humors of his foul breath

he said he thought that gypsy Good Humor fellow
wasn't human at all--He was probably The very Devil!

... I wonder: amongst all th'sorry-looking wretches
including scurrying cockroaches & rats, strewn

about us like so much ever-growing morning
was he really the best candidate one could name?

... I would propose that rotten Song-Shark
who gypped me outta twenty bucks back in '69

O how gullibly I believed him! "We here at
Horse Sheet Records are only interested in

le creme de la creme of course" he said, but,
after all: his company did have that hit single

atop th'charts: "Jesus Is My Favorite Bus Boy
in The Eatery of Life!" recorded by that dynamite vocalist

of another day Kyle Rickie Ray--If he wasn't Satan
then I never heard of th'thing!... Buddy,

what's your name? Mine is Adam continued
my unflappable pilot: What? O, yes: I was once
a pilot: I dropt bombs on people's heads
(point blank--That was my mistake, I learned

after the first): I've got any number of medals...
Some kind of hero (according to the psychiatric ward

of the V.A.) I keep telling them that I am Adam
--The Very First Adam, mind you, not one of those

cheap later imitations you see walking the streets today
God! I just never will be able to understand

how a simple, little casual fuck could've screwed up
so many lives! for all time ... he just kept on

talking & talking, I listening to all he said
... strangely, as if spellbound by its arresting

sounds: the flow of its sense, while all around us
The Angel of Popsicles, along with (respectively): The

Angels of Bowties, of Hot Ones, of Shoe-shines,
of Streetwalkers (in immaculate white) & of

All Sorts of Drugs & Pleasures That Don't Last,
that later come after you to collect (all you were

& are, yes, whatever's left of you) like ghosts
out of The Grave... chased us noisily shouting

their hymns of Noonday: Hey, Hey, You Got A Dollar,
Man! You Got A Dollar! in a blinding chorus

down the glaring streets leading Nowhere, not even back
again... the null of all Wisdom, since

no sooner do we describe The Grand Finality
of It All... than it's something else again

... then: What can one say with words
ice-cold in the heat of an unstoppable universe

of actions, O plain words that don't apply
amongst th'glamors of laughters: thunder!

the Misunderstood: flaring like Silence's fantastic

feats                                                    
     ... rattling amongst life's disasters

with its unheard (of Rage) I saw: The Great Dante

walking blindly hand in hand with some demon lover
of his                                                
... over a dumb-struck page   
                                              (who
himself burning in anguish for what he contained

--instead of letting go--subconsciously I'm certain)
I saw in th'Self-describing, self-mirroring Circles
of Hell & Heaven: all the mythical men & monsters

of pagan Antiquity blithely chewing the fat
with Christian deities!... no less, with saints

in good stead, where Dante saw one of his petty ancestors
closer to God than even Saint Aquinas--There

and watched Solomon!... no less (who was
too justly judged to achieve Salvation) there

Dante saw an old girl friend closer to His Essence
than even Saint Peter (who was kept only as th'door-keep,

although he was given a grand title & a fine tall hat)
... there Dante saw God's pussycat Charlie Mane

in Heaven!... no less (or was it Martel the plumber?)
in any case: in Heaven! yet, and because he butchered

his fellow men in the name of Jesus (or: so he claimed,
although he did get some other earthly additional
advantages which had little to do with Faith)

... Take heart, O you self-murdering
Northern Irish, you blood-thirsty hit-men
of Allah, you butchers for Whatever Faith...

when The Great Dante at last came to his ending,
he saw--there--at the very end of his over-long journey:

The Three-Headed Cosmic God! without it
even (casually, even in passing) reminding him

of humblest Cerebus, that dog tied up
to the lowest door of Hades

& barking & barking his pagan chorus
in three-part harmony, O abandon all Hope

all ye who but stare for an instant
upon The Light so far       

       ... when you ought to be
employing it to make bright The Way of Life

through the World about you

for your fellow men!...