PRETTY LATE

Immortal Blood,
the Intellect's a Summer tree in Winter,
unbeautiful & out of place, even startling
yet charming,               

      somehow--Surely not
out of place! but a grim reminder (of the
inescapability of The Situation)...

Sometimes what we have to say needs to be
said too urgently for metaphors: The only things
that have A reason for being are those
Mankind has made               

           --Man did not make
Mankind (which is but one of the many natural features
of our universe), although he certainly made it up

(a little more than merely making it
up): Mankind can't claim any
reason for being--It's as foolish to seek
(for Man) some reason for being as it is
to speak of the Sun's soul ( baby, it ain't got
none )                        

      ... although I'll grant you
any given man (having been made by a man) could
claim a reason for being (for himself)...

O Immortal Blood--Haven't you considered The Possibility
that you are wrong?! All the time, my man,

all the time: But I must assume I'm right; other-
wise, where all possibilities apply, the necessary
ones might not--What then would be possible
in such a world?                     

     --And what if you are wrong? In a
World where only the right possibilities apply
there wouldn't be a Mind (to seek out the Right ones,

to save us from THE BAD)... Let alone You and I, my
friend--But, what if
you are wrong, just the same? Then: you are
right! That's why God could not live with Adam
all by himself in The Garden, why God Makes
the Devil equal to Himself, also

                  to test all the
possibilities of this world--What if you are wrong?

What if I too am wrong? Who might determine
Such A Thing where God, even God changes
His Mind! O Immortal Blood, what then is Man

but some despicable, reasonable creature?

because he lacks the strength to be God enough
to settle a point (any point at all)
forever! What wretched a thing

to be God at the mercy of history! O Immortal
Blood--But, isn't Strength the greatest Evil?

from whence proceeds all Wrong!... Set there
by Reason. Evil is everything
Reason fancies or rates
below what it needs or wants

                 --On the con-
trary: our lack of individual strength's what
drives us to shape ourselves into Th'Conscienceless
(many) who are mighty

persuasible indeed, and Might-
y Persuasion is Evil indeed (to the few). And
all sorts of other sorts of Reason, for then

we invest our prejudices with propitious terms
like Morality, Ethics, The Good, and our Worst

Superstitions with the terms of our most reason-
able respect & dignity, like Religion, Piety,
Faith! When, brother, we're motherfucking
apes anyway you paint it, O Immortal Blood--

--Enough, enough! Have you no trust in Man?
Nor for him... Why?

Because he can create all sorts
of fanciful Gods? Surely

I'd trust the police to shoot me
were I trying to kill somebody, but I wouldn't
go so far as to trust the cops to shoot some-
body trying to kill me, it's too much to ask!

In this battle for life, in the balance, the more
Man breaks down the laws of Nature, the better
th'cement he must find for his own social laws:
It's a balance, O Immortal Blood

               --All the time
that has ever been... has not the same import-
ance as the next few minutes, nor did it take
as long as they will--                  

Always this is: Th'Past went by
in a flash! while th'future will take forever

--I am greatly discomforted (all th'muscles in my
body ache, all my bones weigh tons!), plus: I am
never satisfied with anything... O Immortal
Blood--It's no wonder:            

       Actual living's never
quite up to The Ideal (of it), you know. O what a tragedy

is Man! because there is no Absolute Truth, and
the only way Man has of establishing (his own
individually insane version of
it--which he terms The Norm) is by taking
his fellow man by the neck (or the mind)
& forcing him to subscribe

to his notion of the truth--It is always
crucial to know The Truth, even when
the Truth's irrelevant, O Immortal Blood...

Who has seen God? The superstitious believe
The Strong have always seen God. The prudent
insist that only The Weak see God--No one

in The Middle has ever seen God... Chances are
YOU haven't (being in there somewhere in the middle
of it) neither you nor I have ever seen God, yet

many will tell us what He looks like
(for a few measly bucks), have seen Him

& are seeing Him sure enough! right now
as we speak--Every day: Only The Others
really see God! (everybody claiming we are
neither beasts or gods but something In
The Middle)... O Immortal Blood--Look, let me

be frank--Okay, then, listen Frank: How can you think
we can save ourselves--when The One Act of
Murder we could choose to abolish IS Capital Punishment
and we cannot do't... and yet Man does, with
utter sincerity, ask: Why there's War!?! Because
Truth's the consensus of The Strong, you dumb-
ass! (who are not always those rats rattling sabres &
shouting out in the street:

The Strong speak softly because they
don't have to shout to be heard above the rest
of us) & what criminal thinks that all his injustices were
not unavoidable!? if not right-down plain-
justified & called-for!              

  Take a breather, you're beginning
to sound like some invitation for the men-in-white!

I tell you, the Greatest (human rights) Violator is always
The First to claim the violation of his human rights

(ex-criminals'd make the best judges, not because they
know the law, but because they know themselves
better than we know ourselves

we are all THE SAME! without any distinction
at all, we are all Man)               

          I wish I knew
what is it you are talking about! I am only
advocating courtesy as The Best Rule of all!

Maybe, but with all of your ravings, how can
one tell what side you are riding on! Are you FOR
or AGAINST Th'Strong? O Immortal Blood--Either way

I am bound to set up some justification
for murder & Wrong, for Evil, et cetera

if I tell you--I disclaim the whole of it
& any part!
We aren't gods enough to win

eventually, nor beasts enough to bow, at
this time: Esteem's our only worthwhile genu-
flection, by far!                 

       Goethe loved Order above all.

But Order loves not more Order at once in the
Same World & Time: Order loves all other Orders
someplace else & at some future or past date

sameness, O Immortal Blood--But, to say Chaos admits no
Order (or that Order admits no Chaos) is
to acknowledge they are two different things

--Or transitional versions of One (they can't co-
exist) All Order-s are but states of mind...

dreams! (that's the only place in this whole
monolithic universe where two such mutually-
excluding things can exist at once in the same
place). Yet your democratic consensus is in
& it is that we can't make do
without dreams

swinging his sword of swift motions (emotions

merely for the sake of the music th'minced
Winds make upon the cutting short of th'harmony of
Continuation)... Can The One God exist

without His Oneness? Can Christ part
way with his Godhead, become a mere man

and still remain Christ?... except they do so
in our dreams? Can Man do without his
marvelous delusions & yet remain Man?

We're our dreams, the rest is fur
and Nature's-- For myself, one finger to
Th'Lip & naked as long as all the rest of them go so,

green with them, brown with them, purple
or splotched, blotched with blues, or clothed

if they so vote it in this season): wild & whichever
hues th'motliest crowd chooses to sport! (for that

is the way with all true democrats): Evil (with
them), or (with them) heavenly Good & kind!

Thinking my own thoughts, always thinking (perhaps,
if the brain still works properly) my own
way--What dreams within dreams, what

dreams!... But with them (always with them) shall
I scream out: Only at The Final Moment

of All, ultimately (only) as

Th'Weeds overgrow Th'Omega, dreaming--And
What Dreams! What Dreams! What Dreams must perish

(with me) at the World's end
--Because, like all of them, all
of them, down to The Last, I too am but
a plain Potential looking on aimlessly
at what goes on without me, afraid
to judge it Wrongly (and so, act to affect it),

and as afraid it is The Right ( over us all
stark, naked, fallow & brown
to th'distant look of the mountains above us

... Although Here too beats a heart susceptible to Grief
as is th'skin to Pain, O Immortal Blood--Outside: A delicate

frail leaf abandoned upon the Autumn's lone-
liest tree--This heart within: wishes the
definite insistence that is Love--
That leaf: always threatening to drop
even with th'softest breeze--One

so human as to long for Mortality--One

so brief as to fear even th'slightest
Challenge--              

         A heart not merely
th'Instrument of some monotonous Duration

but that meticulously metaphoric Cause of
living itself, O Immortal Blood--A

leaf: only the pharisaic Pride of Death
on Th'cakewalk through the inebriate
Void, drunken planetary rider

dissolving through Th'Prismatic stars, a
leaf at its briefest instant severed

from tree, which in fantastic ballets
lingers & falls & rises down th'kisses
of th'breezes... improvises banisters

down Th'magics (yearning orange hues of the Autumn
worming its way through the dead of

Summer's) enticing the ten thousand eyes
that watch her hapless bleak cries across the

indifferent ages looking on as she is blown
from Dawn through the stark world impearled

across with a cool scarcity, paucity of souls

as hers (is--Yes, I am the one you seek. Are
you? the true Christian? --I make no judgments

over Christ, nor over you, not even over myself:
I advocate not The Good--How much evil that's done us!

--I plead with you, as an absolute act of faith:
Give up on Evil--        

undulating words) she falls
so severed and swimming volumes
of molten Autumns unheard

 --Don't pass it on!
--Is this the Logical Advocate? I speak of

Death! Come, pray with me, say: "Let it die with me!"
(the evils that to you are presented--Don't
pass them on! Isn't this the best of Christ's?

You will never succeed killing Evil in others
(that only works with Th'Good): Evil can only be killed
within you (lesser evils promoting The Greater Good).

The True Christian does not extend Th'Sword
of his Goodness to the outstretched neck
of his evil-doing fellow man: The only thing we can

pass out of ourselves is the most Foul of all--The Good
dies within us when we wrench it out

of ourselves to stretch it out upon the marketplace
of mankind--By your standards not even Christ
was a true Christian! Do you advocate the Good

to be: Do nothing!? ... O Immortal Blood, we are

creatures never certain of anything, not even
the least important of all things--The bigger our actions
the more freedom we give Evil! But

Man is a sum of his actions: No matter what is said
here... If you must yet do Good, do the least Evil

you can manage (however you manage it) because
of the blank senselessness: a brief falling
sans breath --is
Death? Let'em warp themselves (even) unto
life's longest tragedies! All any man knows

(even the least-knowing) is enough to judge Th'Universe!

O Immortal Blood! sings The Unfell Bird a sweet Song
fresh as the unheard thunder because of the
lightning death--Or unseen frost, invisible (thus) be-

cause it has already overgrown the living
Rose! Sings out over the Dawn
The Emulator of O
Music! on the snow-blown snow-bound lawn
a Song about a bird a Dove endowed with more than
wings: Sings that Universal Poet, dinosaurs

dancing over the Doom of All, clouds
& clouds, patient as some tremendous stone,

like a sandbar unsuspected under th'murderous
storms--the demons lashing out at The Light--

throwing up bones, souls & all, cosmic ice-caps over
our commonplace, ever pirouetting atop th'parapet

dappled a powdery being (ever on the edge) of the
Dust, frozen in panic (at the closeness of his self-stuff

The Ashes/with/The Dust), scampering barefoot, ah
trying to out-race afoot the horsed Reality, the

phantoms dancing upon his tears, awash
with weeping aimless minds & ever-moving

mouths, bent & bowed with the markings of
martyrdom, every daintiest dent a disaster, all
stratum upon stratum of th'mockingbirds over his
hush in th'mumbling mud, mockingbirds

of moonlight & minnows of the Sun
distant as flickering candles, the geese all-golden in
th'Blue, bursts & bursts of bird

brushed all over th'Blue like a plasm

th'buoys bobbing their brutal assent to th'Blue
O Immortal Blood--That we often take What Is Not
for What Is, while What Is we make to Prejudice

we sing... Do you have anything better to do? Who
th'hell knows what he's saying during his
poetic trance? --I meant that... Man should
live (if) for no other reason than

what better thing is there for him to do? (I thought
you were leading up to such a question.) Maybe

I was: What kind of despicable creature can live
in Heaven at peace while knowing there is a Hell?

somewhere, for someone... Does he not, at the least
wish to know if the sentence was fair?!.... There cannot
exist a Heaven for The Good! Only for

The Merchants of Justice (who profit from some one
or another aspect of The Trade in Th'Good),

for those who can be
bought & sold by God and don't fight The Devil for
each & every last soul of their fellow men, tanks & canons

& bayonets, swords & Saturday-night-specials--You despise human
justice & you have contempt for the justice of God:

What can save the World then?--An act of courtesy
can save The World (of men). Not justice

when its least portion possesses absolute rights:

I mean that no one recognizes anybody else's rights
until such a denial itself threatens the
forfeit of one's own rights--So, what right has
Man beyond his power? and is not Power unjust

inherently? O Immortal Blood--I cannot
follow you, you contradict yourself too much!

Am I not a man? That's my inheritance!

Is not Man fashioned in Th'Shape of God? And, is not God
a Paradox!?!... We shall continue to encourage

& applaud The Murderer in OUR Cause (whatever,

sad or silly or vain or void)... stare
out the dwindling windows of Wisdom,

barnacles across the rump, our thinking
full of the imminent bricks of the muds

of the shuffling texture, lilacs chiselled
over the soul, leisure raining over itself,

our gaping jaws of th'iridescent mindlessness
lapping up all the fragrant atoms of Time

with impromptu purples of tongue between
interrupting ephemerals & frivolities, the re-
ference-less slopes of all human progresses

O Immortal Blood--That we ignore The Murderer

assign to Resignation's verdict. Nature's verde-
rer finds no flower because Winter's strictest
Quietude of White--Where is the Rose that
longs to break with Death's still cold
Repose, in the dead of Winter? Song's warmest

words: They are the scorching life of this
world's frozen stay!?! Or, are they but
th'rhymes descending whilst th'rhythms climb?

Rimes of the dumbest birds--is right! all frozen
in their attitudes sublime (apathy for even the most
boundless crime) Th'blindness of unseeing eyes

--Because of Death we do not hear The Thunder's breadth
all over the deafening clamor of us clams,

casting a deadly shadow (the stalking Form
of fate), O printless upon th'snows of our self-devouring
Hate, O Immortal Blood            

    --Commonplace the gardener
squandering his bestial stabs over the corse Humanity

raw, mythical & as yet unborn whilst whistling his
Song of 'strangling eternal creatures takes Time, takes
Time' --Galactic beryl under th'Cliffs of being

like cosmic lakes--Upon whose bottomlessness
perhaps we find ourselves

finally--If there are no other avenues to
getting lost (from ourselves: I advocate not
that we do The Good              

--I advocate becoming!   

                 ) . There
is (always) the avenue of Insanity--There's
always, always ( that great advantage to being insane )

... And that is--that It Doesn't Matter. I hardly know
how to take that--You wanna hear something
strange--You're not going to be Frank again?...
--A fat man used to stand outside my grand-
father's window whenever he'd cook Irish Stew

and sing like a frog--I see: Who was doing the cook-
ing & why did your grandfather sing like a frog?

... it's crazy! Strange! Besides, it wasn't he.

You cannot say it wasn't he--And yet: Although you
cannot say it wasn't he, you have to say it!

Don't you realize that while you must say it
wasn't him, you don't have to say it!

Who would have to say it? Some very strict English grammar-
ian (maybe), for one--It certainly belongs to her
to say it. Yet, while you must say it belongs to her

you don't have to say it--& although you cannot say
it belongs to she
you do have to say it--At least: I just had to
say it (you saw it here)! I think, therefore I go

... O don't go yet: There's still something I must say

You're using a certainty, when you can only use a
possibility--You keep saying 'cannot' when you must
say only 'should not'. On your own advice--You do it
more than I! Maybe, but I'd rather hoped at least you
would adhere to the right--Yet how can you: when there's always
a right beyond any position one may take!

Do be satisfied with being only some portion
of everybody else (the whole of you is completely
made-up of tidbits pilfered from th'sketchy multitude):

Stand still & all's The Same. Can some anyone reach with
naked hand into your chest & keep your heart
going for you despite your wanting to die? You should've

told me all this maybe a million years ago--Now it's
only so much verse,              

           O Immortal Blood--I search for
Meaning amongst th'cookies in the cookie-jar, like

th'waves searching for the end of eternal existence
at the brief shore, like th'tiredest man on
th'face of this faithless
earth throwing himself upon th'handiest
chair, thinking about Columbus's first steps ashore,
Christ's final journey, endless other discoveries and
inventions of Man... and marvelous music, words
& arts, O Immortal Blood--Is that then what I must do?

--What you should do, if you were smart, But you are
only a reflection (O Universal Poet) in the
hushed Night, the seasons strewing their verdigris
mantles of autumnal dews & wintry layers
th'ever-moving white over the red vermilion of our
ever-continuing into the grey, O Immortal

Blood. The breeze blows not over th'endless mead.
Th'Unfell Bird breathes a note then instead, spring-
ing over The Dead of Winter

bled--jewels in the Woods--marching

against the waters of their wandering, bowers &
bowers of Spring's leaves & flowers arching the Highest horizon

Spring! Say, where are you to? You

wandering nameless women moving, ambling
onwards upon the retinue of your wondering

men restrained, bedizen! O before decorum's
quaint mortalities:                

       Much greater flexion
of Emotion are the quiet vistas of The Sea so
motionless, than your empty commotions O

Immortal Blood of Man with his formulas
like clouds & Sun-soaked blanks over The Edge of

th'Cold (O, Humanity scalding his fingertips)

stands Man: Lighting numberless candles, one after
another one, only to cast them into Th'Pool

of The Dark (as if, piecemeal) trying to drown his

Light!--Instead of his Darkness, now I
understand: I should light th'candles upon the stars!

stuff myself with the Darkness! stands Man: by
chance, occasionally surfacing over th'moving Unending Springs, ul-
timately but to fall like some flotsam, O

Immortal Blood (gorged with th'ghosts

of going) deep into
your most mortal Sweep, O Blood
Immortal!...