SPORTY LICKS

O Dios tan puro
que no tiene curo!

Life-like in granite
stands some great Antiquity
stretching out from his pedestal

his hand resting upon most massive
frozen breast Pledging

the Place

a promise so sacred
& so great a promise
as surely it knows it cannot ever hope
to keep

nevertheless Pledging
is its ponderous stand

upon that pedestal of pile-up bones

so solemnly
does it promise this

it must have been undoubtedly built
out of the most hopeful Stone

once flesh & blood

[Agamemnon's sacrifice]
drawn into such a far-fetched & utterably
unaccomplishable compact

O such a mystic Oath

of vanity bordering on sacrilege
that surely no human being hearing it
could possibly live long enough
to disprove it

none of his builders
could possibly live to see

the Impossible

for which this great Antiquity was
built from premature Faith

and there it stands
an Unquestionably Immortal Truth

forever in the granite of its youth
Life-like frozen out of the snow

A violin scream upon the snow
black as tar upon the pristine Wilds

where the alert eyes of the fox
follow closely the rhythms of the
prancing bear scratching out
his Soul against the occasional stands
that break silent upon the wilting snow

& other things sharpening claws
as the rabbit yawns

& immediately
some old lost long-legged mammal
in The Living Woods

answers The Question unasked

with his savage &
incomprehensible rhetoric (all his own)
thinking: "Christ
here means nothing--We have no souls

subject to the enslavement of the Master
Spirit that twists all things of flesh!"

Men's artificial religions
but bumperstickers going by
too quickly for their timeless eyes

their attention drawn only to
the passion
of some momentary nameless bird's

shadow stalking the contrasts of the
pregnant ground: They know

(the field mouse & the hare below)

she goes too high to mean much more
than merely a glance
(& a false glance at that) so
they turn with less distrust (again) upon
the Song of some imponderable forest saint

whose sound breaks into mortal fear
the Sacred Silence that protects all living things

in the forest

from all other living things

by long, long ears

THE PRAYER

O God so pure a gas
You do not have an ass!
are armless, legless,
poreless, hairless!

without eyes, mute, dumb!

Dear God so pure a God!
Supremely Masculine
(without a rod)

& feminine (to whit:
without a tit)...

O Thing so pure
you're actually de-scented,
un-nerved, gutless, heartless,
spineless, brainless (or,
de-mented)

Purest God! Hear
--Shit, what'd I speak!?!
... Stupid those who seek
a goddam Divinity who hath no ear!

(Fade off)

A genuine drop of sweat
hangs from the tongue of someone who
's refreshing his heart

while drinking out of the low bushes
& drops in to break upon

the rocks
discovered in the music
from the snows

an accident
inherited out of instinct

O the sweetest consonances
of notions & consciences all together
tales admirable about the angelic Golds

smiles really drooping eyelids
arguments making the Night eternal
broken hearted, died

"... inconvenient to follow up
the train on foot..."

and consciously aware how easy it's
for the man who weeps too much
to drown himself right out

Memorabilia
mellows with Time
into the multiRomantic Isms
& supernatural blue windflaw
flutters its zithers

Screams!

an American egret
perched upon a most deserted
fell trunk dead or dying
out in the windless Wilderness

of the Everglades

wrestling the devils
of O life! asking
a question mark
with its neck.

And ambers & purples
& violets & greys & greens
& yellows & oranges, browns & blues
& sulfurs & rusts & flesh

the solemn stains of Autumn
adsorbing so slowly
into the Woods! near Trenton