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Covet....
I covet....
The far drindle star,
Cast away breaths ago
And run aground
On some dread sky
By a bungler's scarred hand.
Today it reaches no less
And perfumes the black breath
Of the universe, knowing
Place and time and self.
Ears buzzing, eyes bloodshot,
I look... and look....
Quicksilver on deep sands.
Poor old Huxley,
Kindly man deluded
Into thinking
Discovery his
vocation,
Aldous, anxious wit
Amid vast "learning."
In this world
What an identity
To lose!
Did he notice or
Remember his
Unwilled death?
Walking library
Of second-hand wisdom;
Certainly modern champion.
Sad joke it is of
His being fooled by the
Mirrors, clouds and shadows
He wrote endlessly about.
But it did end,
And he lost again.
At least he went to
The best sources he knew,
Which were aborted puzzles
At best, never at rest.
From the mystic spring
He drew, paring and fitting
The pieces, now here, now there.
Around in his skull he stirred
His stew of borrowed thought,
Well salted with ecstasy and pain.
He would have argued
Delightedly and brilliantly
As always,
But he found nothing,
Even contributed unknowingly
To the labyrinthine mirage.
Ah, poor old A.L.H.,
He led me on once.
I have seen the plastic
Electronic chemical Messiahs
Playing to the grandstand,
Their names in lights.
The friendly local agent of the
Magicalluring thetan trap,
Serious-wise and smiling
Invoking and quoting
The saints and poets,
Building the merry-go-round of dualities,
Selling tickets to nowhere.
I an leery and weary
Of the hollow answer and
The double-meaningless repart‚e.
Posh in May, caroling
Flowers ring out lush
Achings for glory summer,
With its past-blooming glow.
Circles of shrinking,
Pulsing light reaching,
Overbearing but light touch,
Swaying nostril twirlers,
They do not beg or insist.
These stretch far in number
Over hills bulging green
Into the sky blues
And blown flatter by
Kiting winds of chill air.
The forever flower sees
Beyond the next hills
Of time and its own
Crisp brown skeleton
Riding the sooted snow,
Then ragged, broken, and scattered.
It is its own time and joy
And shining symbol of moment.
Three days out in the middle of the day
We decided to forgo the first albatross
That landed on the mizzen, fish in mouth.
Later, several devils were noticed to be
Staring at our every movement.
To their merry surprise, we went jolly about
Our business. No wonder they turned green
And rushed off to their caves.
Undoubtedly they likened us to OT's or T's.
Come as soon as you can, the food is good
And at least filling. Sometime we shall
See what can be done about those fair devils,
But now we can just ignore them. Thank you.
See I see the seaside sidelong look
Careening in cloudly wonder
Portraying light-spark tale-tellers
Fancifully weaving tell-tale
Unmuscled horses of the night
For endless tired generations
Of philosophical flash-thoughts,
Whereas the intertwined life-motif
Grows itself its tremulous granite,
Bubbling upwardthrust in the black crust,
Self-sourced, self-consumed.
It was a treacherous romance.
Blackbearded night eyed openly
Blanketed treasures of subtle villainy.
Whether oops! or pain, driven daggers' comments slew dragons' teeth.
Awful mirror-hung terror shifting lazily
Original pulser trailing down into some
Whithering cavern's tonal nocturnity.
Hail or hallow the rank concern,
Tiptoeing through the ruddy tower's noble direction.
Oh, moon, hardy and crisp, moodily dripping
Tallowish sparks, care you that the frosty sky
Blackens the scaly mystery and the whisker breath?
Sidled up to knowing and intimate with wisdom,
A single curved hair falls from my brow,
A woven horn of sorrow wakes over Dorchester Hall,
Moaner graves fellow-up on the grass.
And there is no tenth partner.
You need never have said more than your name, O Grateful Dead!
The child who cannot spell his own single name falls stonily
against the cliff and cries,
"Leap, fat bird of mangled claw and soar birdfully,
Making it known that I a not only a mere pip squeaking
In the peril dust raining from your spangled wings."
He sees the buried cities filled with archeological curiosa
Such as smiles, hopes, dreams, chocolate pickles,
Flags, crosses, belches and question marks, and he wonders.
We wonders what good it has done these dead men
For his father or his son to decide what was or will be good
for <their> yesterday or tomorrow.
He will continue to wonder because do you have that answer?
If you did, I would tell you it had to be "none".
Yes, sometimes this artist-poet-painter
Looks in through the window of life
To watch what others are doing and saying.
He raises his hand and parts his lips,
Then notices they cannot see or hear him through the glass.
Besides he is not quite sure (Ha!) what it is
That he wants so earnestly to transfer.
So what he does is work on this problem,
Patiently convinced that when it is clear to him he will get it across.
Remember a poet with nothing to say,
No way to say it,
No one listening,
And no reason to say it,
Except to praise God.
A painter bent and turning in that same puzzlement.
<Say> something, <do> something, at any
rate,
That's the game, and there was the only reason.
Then is a man happy, when he is flowing out,
Out to the Source of.....what?
'Twer better to fracture thy knob on stone
Than scramble it thus on columns of symbols
Arranged for horror, despair, and interspersed photos
Of blood & billy-clubs, travesty and tattoos.
Up a frail sandbank carelessly
And reach into the rattlesnakes's mouth
For what comparatively delicious poison
Than the tugging headaches of the madness-yapping
Gorilla, clown-suited, frivolous skull-and-crossbones.
Wide open his showcase of disorder coyly hides
Products pitched though hardly looked at.
I'll tell you a stolen tale,
A tale of all my grief.
Here let me pour it out
Like a loaf of bread.
Towering silly words
Keep it back in my head.
Over the noise of eternity
The solemn hand of struggle
Keeps the perfect time
And I spill my past
In the middle of the floor.
Touched, alight, burnished, frozen, crystal, imperious,
Floating river-like, turning in clipped progression,
The crypted screamers totter brink to brink,
Their twitch-strained smelling totally (and modestly) computerized.
'Yond the young poor fevers,
Mock on 'fraiding night,
Opal crush three fan-stick pillars,
Paler outside brine sea slightÄÄ
Tomorrow impale rat creepers final,
Nodding moan on to us white;
Luster most of lesson ghost,
Yokeled vision presumes the fight,
Must taste of waste the napped insurgence,
Looped the highest bringer in sight,
Toga-laden pear-tree fun'll chase shrink through M”bius
tunnel,
Regent quotes former spark's "not quite."
Over and over, I will not stop, I say that good things
can only come. I say this to you and in private regret lose
my hope for future dalliance with any kind fates. Now do you
see how lost you are? Not you, you say, my soul, my soul,
gone I think forever, but slim hope still reaching, the end
of time will tell. End of soulless time, that's the lost
timeless soul, waiting and wondering and struggling, forever
wandering round and round, wanting to stop (!), seeing it
goes nowhere, still trying.
Wrapping tail of comet on pared prune
Of a love, we can see the tweaking
Resistance for the eternal cross-draft
Is too strong; the buffeted leaf-body
Quivers at memory of time-stormed battlements
And we sigh and tug the strings a little.
Ah, you could not stand my speaking directly to you.
Out here in the wilderness the love song is optimum potency of brew.
Here, when for time blessed,
Angels wend through the land muttering
Plain songs in our simple language,
We, the inheritors of our own creations,
Shall cordially confront and inspect our works and ways,
And not shrink and cringe under deeper stones of mystery
And not further grovel before death and dark,
But leap and float high:
Light and free and knowing.
Soft-pedal my fury to rarely-lit chambers I go
Recent trembling resides too often in split context
Fortunes rumble far off in raining angel litter.
Half laugh eager shortcomings foreseen nimbly approaching
Bearing gifts of yawning catastrophe aimed down my gaping throat
Or a gnarled knot of big beings parades
Along the untainted beaches of eternity
Whispering beacons of hope and comparison.
Silly rant campstool
Unsexed unisexed miracle player
And we strain our fair bods over close barriers
To observe the newly placed wonders hitherto
Unpreserved: ethereal pointing arrows,
Paganic gesture hiding terror,
The liturgy of the Devil, overwhelmed moron,
Sacred and genuflected to to the last.
Brash sand we hereon stand,
Scorching feet on white beach,
Sand conditioned by the sea,
Leaping, flapping, Effect on Effect.
Plaited she no more we see, lost tomorrow
Wind fluted and blue cold.
Moistened yet the carrion birds,
Wheel on distant clouds as white,
Sun on spray limps for light
Knowing special weakness again, again.
Deliberately obscure, ragged tower bow down cruciform
Playing pariah, shepherd arrogant toady
Fulminating on the chaos sown
Tearfully regretful, aching....
Where oh, where oh! Going back on the track
Pallid visions loom as hanging lanterns
Lion toothed roaring ears
Bone-strewn mental veldt
Whenever I look. Velvet heat nods spun heads
Towards Mecca's meandering Moors
Jeep-fed moose branch
Tangled with rough
Knuckles of larch tree, summer semaphore of terminal illness.
Hair faired demons loosely pant that
Twilight is good enough for
Unidentified ancestors
Whose duty carefully unwritten or worn from headstones
Gave us no clue to the future, if any,
And whose hazy thoughts gave
No key to the past, if any.
(The seal of tomb
Gives no room)
Passionate wildflower while I tenderly echo
Fat flesh in darkness....
Passionate wildflower while I never weep
At the crumblestones....
Passionate wildflower while I caressingly laugh away
Visions of the Holy Grail....
Passionate wildflower while I slobber the foam
Of nestling regret....
Roar, dank Xenophon and prate I on of the
Passionate wildflower extending breath in looping tentacles,
Facing the, merrily, clouds....
Passionate wildflower girt my hurt
Waist deep in a mound of moans....
From the catapult and the catacombs
To the parapets and the battlements
Oh passionate wildflower torn in felt lurch
Mad storms frame and bind the beauty of frailty.
Spectator
Grim and empty eye, seeing only.
How strange, astigmatic and enigmatic
The actions of the operating class,
The causative responsible beings.
In perforated pipe-dream he sees himself
<That> fully alive, unstopped mover,
Sure rock turning the ferried tides of time
With straight intention unembarrassed.
Know this as his fallow-hoped envy.
What time and where will fall fated action,
And what terror hold the reins?
Scooping out the guts of life
Trade the wind for prickly knife
Hear the trails of barbarous vales
Yapping cur-dogs shitting nails
Astronautic super-high pleasure bent
Fabric of the dome-black sky is rent
Pass the manners scribbled obscurely
On the back of your vest, surely
Waiting for the Eden-apple
Don't promise the poet shall grapple
Tease the space where ferment sparkles
Tearfully page a lesser striped hierarchical
End it off before you're due
To pass off the old as knew.
Ah, Suzette, what is this dripping, left-skull squish,
All hundreds in my lap of milling, folded fingers?
Pray, dearest Florina, I want to know what
Muddy squall of mule bile pours off my fuzzy cranium,
Makes my wool trousers sticky and pools
Swampily around my feet.
Isadora, come now, what can you reveal
Of the cycles of compulsion and revulsion
Careening in stampede in my horny front porch?
Can you name it, Iona, this lasting slime
All amok before me?
Whence does it pour hence out from me
So successfully making my life a stagnation, My events a paralysis?
Christine, what rivers of life pass this juncture by,
Pause, drop their garbage on my hearth
And gurgle merrily away?
My Diana, I beg of you....
..Oh, never mind....
What I do I do for me.
Therefore I do it for you two as well.
I want this "impossible dream" for me.
In it reside all other dreams,
And as it slips away, so they slip more,
Being shadows of the genuine.
You cannot but must wait for the castle built on rock,
Or be satisfied with sifting sand through your fingers onto the
dry leaves and charred bones.