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9 Jan.,72
Oak steps peer onto lasting shades
The solitary beach heaves its bulk on the land
Over forest glades singing wings drape
the past ahead
Blanck bunting in covert winking
The green estate glimmering jewel of volcanic ash
Unadvertized symbolic menace in jester's clothing
Dragged upon the Persian carpet
Is the patient doctor with
Divine intentions and able to
Define interventions as what they are
in where we were
Focused the literary point in the formal orientation
Before the haze swallowed the hills
And the beings dreaming therein
Chill of the raven's wing embroiling steadfast mannerisms
While the regular pukefinder is on vacation
Comes the monumental nubile perpetration
A perpetuation of a penetration
Every fly its own suspender
Dancing on the tongue of the salamander.
Pendulating time trap wafted tender quiescence
Over the waiting usualizer, a patented end of cycle
Thrice defeated, force deleted, careful formulation
Of mayorial ceilings. Yet retrorespecting M. Matisse.
Sailing, the glider on the plane planning subversive
Orchestrations a snort away from death
Soaring away in eternal moment, full time to
Raze the realist windmills each by one, one by each:
Slashing serenely passionate, the form builder,
Singer of space and tone, in a warless world
Surrounded by a worldless war. He, no whore
Of words, from his disguised throne
Delivers light and life into the graveyard.
Or she fled unalloyed to the liberal forests
Of breaking crystal annoyed in tasteful reckoning
Beatified by welts as spinning hands
Weaving tongues flashing in dark terrors:
Hang stiff in the shadows, rigid being,
And hope the giant dome of whelm
Passes one by; the millennium is the mirage.
Drooping candlestripe tilts with dynamos;
Boots at an odd angle, a single signal symbol
Perhaps of grimmer things to go.
Collapse of grammar flings you low
Suggests the rhymy scholar to himself,
Eyes closed on his home, his work, his prayer;
Extended theses ballooning on parchment;
Phrase-juggling to make some meaning root
In the desert-jungle-maze of physical universe thought.
Ocean fed unarrayed to the literal forces
Of creaking dismal avoiding wasteful beckoning.
Form the expanding delicious,
Expand the felicitous forms,
Never level from germination
Or recede to reach unseed.
There are dreams, and there are Dreams;
Blossoms picked to fade,
Flowers bedded to bloom.
I struggled with thy poem
Milking its sweet marrow.
I wanted to keep its excellence.
Perhaps I have.
15 Apr. '72
I am ambling up the frozen gulch
My legs astride a steady horse or camel
Called Time.
"We" trudge up hill and down dale
Insistently persistent in and under
The saddle.
And I go on that way, but wishing
Hoping that I might here and there dismount
To walk on my own legs occasionally,
To sift the sands of time between
Soft white toes.
To see the universe's time
From outside it.
To walk on the tide of light
Of the glowing flyspeck
That appears so
Large from
The saddle.
To slide and sigh and fly
Over the arched spine
Of creation.
To spit in the eye of the
Shadow horseman.
I jiggle along under the spinning sun
And promise myself to rein in, climb down,
And stretch these legs, one of these days
For an eon or two. Meanwhile
I enjoy
The
Ride.
22 Apr. '72
Dry climbs the Ulsterfestering whine
To the torn tombs of antiquarian bombs.
Cannot we whose superior vision captures pentagrams....
After ages less only pattern flops in the ordurous lair.
Float in ape-like wonder after the breeze all the trees pummels
down?
Flow ÄÙ
Certainly certainty can easily invent coruscating comics for bored
senators and other abstractions and distractions.
30 Apr. '72
Love /...(MEST)
Time is too slow for those who wait;
Too swift for those who fear;
Too long for those who grieve;
Too short for those who rejoice;
But for those who love,
Time is
not.
-Henry Van Dyke
*
*
*
*
*
*
* *
Space is too large for those who need;
Too small for those who cringe;
Too far for those who have lost;
Too dear for those who laugh;
But for those who love,
Space is not.
Energy is too flowing for those who are weak;
To sparse for those with none of their own;
Too flashing for those overwhelmed;
Too trickling for eager celebrants;
But for those who love,
Energy is not a problem.
Matter is too little for those who grasp;
Too much for those less than it;
Too heavy for those who are crushed;
Too light for ambitious builders;
But for those who love,
It matters not.
8 April, '73
Flowers spin no webs,
Spiders cast no pollen or perfume.
The moon sings no songs,
The poet is not in anyone's orbit.
The eye does not hear the raging sun-storm
Nor the ear taste the bitter cup of fools.
Patternless clouds preach law and order
And a robot dreams of his tomorrows past
While Apollo waits in the wings
For the players to forget his cue.
Boots stand empty, the frozen fire glows in the fireplace,
The glass half empty, a flower wilted in a goblet.
It is night, a still, blasted desert
With its ages writhing on its back.
I observe. I take a step. I look.
Gently at first, I wave a magic hand
And see the sun blaze, hear strains of Haydn,
The flower blooms, the wine bubbles.
More and more, now both hands I wave,
The trees moan, the sea cries,
The earth spins through the galactic wheeling.
With an ultimate sweep the universe erupts
In a roar of glory, then shrinks to a tiny dot of serenity.
I hold it in my hand
And come or go as I please.
22 Dec. '72
Tomorrow, the circle of nothing,
Picture of desire progressing to satiety.
Today remains thus a dream,
A straggling behind the dance of life,
A void avoiding action,
Gentle and oblivious to motion and desire.
Life recedes to a distant future of imaginary or recalled pleasure,
Or imaginary or recalled revulsion,
While life's moments drain unused for development.
Men of knowing dream in their doing,
Living between reach and fulfillment,
And have it all.
The leaves they do quiver on Lexington vine.
My lover won't remember the past future perfect
Or the automatic plastic spools of agonized wine.
Don't count....don't count the heavenly snows.
Rather you would measure the charcoal "infinity" of the mind
and universe.
But you in your moderate wisdom prefer the eloquent fair play,
the aerial spinning of the milky web of verse.
Soon to tell me perhaps you intend, through the mad obscurity,
The mountainous maundering meandering of your latest penance.
I shall turn my own head not yours or you mine
And not wait for the last or the next fleeting mendacity.
It will be this now or nothing.
pity foreseen
cannot
collapse in the mulish
swelling
cherry orchard to plaster
ages of medical gore
tumultuously plastic
over the bracken strewn ontology;
madly blackened palaced
true cowardice officially
assigned origins.
25 Aug. '71
What do you stroke and how do you ride
When the fat leaner his beef's on your side?
Do you dream your castle's foundation
Or pounce on his jaw
Or lie quiet that he blindly may pass?
Spreadest thyself thin as a nation
Or helpfully leap to his maw
Or stand rigid and silent as glass?
No, none of these can do but to shirk.
Behold the master who, with unerring hand
and eye, continues his work.
5 Sept. '71
What of a word would you
place forth to counteract
my taller tedium in later
frosted forests backed
against post-computed
wet varnishes whispering
of spent masterpieces
each time a mollified
intent pours emoted
symbols across the
gentle mental slab
forthcoming? Transpose
moving viewpoints overlapping
to corner the mewling
answer I shall not give
for you. Thus is the
plastic seer made
particularly ominous.
Thus we see the beginning
and the end of the word.
Please pass the salted, marinated table-cloth,
That I may wipe my unguented lips,
Hastily forestalling a disease-exceeding remedy.
Please pass the manners forgotten
To install the architectural vestry in a bat-swept mind
Of nonsense reeling, plaster cracked, lizard strutting,
Voluminous vehemence,
Acrimoniously whispering:
Peace, eternal peace, rest, eternal rest.
Please pass the eyes, that I may see
This vaporous answer's riddle enough
To trade it in at the hitching post
For a wider, better one.
Sweet purse strings of gold
Are far more than they hold
Perhaps in the night's gleaming
I find more solid seeming
Than ten thousand rafters
In black water shafters.
Swoop over musky headings
On water-logged buddings.
Bid no more cracked skulls, ached arms
Forever heavy shackled
In smothered alarms;
Bleat only you're free at last
To be lashed taut to the mast.
Can't ya tell
Ya beautiful belle
When I calls ya
Sayin' "I want ta"
Over and over again
Tell me how or when?
Don't giimme shit
From where you did sit
Yak over ta my place
Forget ta show yer face
Drag it all over
Don't mind no cover.
Super Paladin severing heads
And limbs, pointing yonder
Trees with upcoming sun. Hear
Oh lasting one why devoted
Hands stroke your inside out
Health over backwards never
Stirring a far for events
Unprotected led turning
Butte-ended switched forty
Bands over heads of
Low-toned speakers unamplified.
Get it out my monster, over
Shadow hills of prosper
Domes in far commingle
Telling tales of ends and
Means. What this is
And means is why we're
Here to belly up to
The solids bar only to
Have our belts buckle
In half or so. Can't
You all finely recall
The recorded cold of
Menacing barbarity
Over in the greener pasture?
You will howl with graceful
Delight never once falling
Prey to the churning cloud of
Light pretended.
Early in the morning
I see partially veiled
With rippled clouds
The shining stars
Standing in the dark sky,
Struck speechless
By space and time.
Farewell, swinger, pistol on your jaw.
Poke around the old landscape,
Seeking comfort in the thickening air.
Ride from out your stable
On the proud shining mare.
You will purcha
se heavenly the barest
Nonessentials in the yearly Faire of Estimation
And slowly slide into the grass,
A stilted mime of phantomfoolery.
17 Apr. '72
I build a ship to sail the stars,
The keel is up and heavy laid,
The breeze is scattering my hair,
And I on my dream bridge
Clutch a tugging wheel
And wish my future sails
Were fertile for the gale.
But I am patient and hopeful
And keep building.
1 May, '72
Hostess of a
universe measures
out Planetary succulence
******************************************
* Oh! The tongue of sweets and
savor! *
******************************************
a clear cloud of aesthetic pleasure
promising LIVING FuTuRe playing
crystalline intellect against searing
motions becoming that clear
palace of Wisdom, the castley
home where safely forming
higher spirals and makes
the special honored guest
feel right at home.
Lo! Is it that time again,
When that favored flounce
Prances in the clouds,
Dances before petty or noble crowds?
Surely it is, surely it is.
Come stand and stroll on
The velvet stroke of noonight.
Fancy the moon rolling
Around the obsidian dome,
Touring the living planetarium
With us in tow toward
Warding off dull monotone,
Thick ignorance,
Sticky mystery.
And. Fancy us tonight,
Skimming through
The inside-out void
That back-handedly
Makes it possible
For us to live.
3 July, 1972
Beautiful dreamer,
Can you dream a better,
A cleaner, purer dream
And put the foundations under it?
Will you, like a loving wizard
Make those wishes come true?
Who said your dreams
Were false and worthless,
Your wishes unworthy?
Who lets you be true to your own goals?
And who limits you?
5 July, 1972
The smile on the face of the horse
Says <something> about
The condition of the rider,
Who nevertheless begs forgiveness
At every other turn,
"A happy man, says I," says he.
The deceiving apparency
Makes a heaven of a blank,
A paradise of a habit,
An eternity out of fixidity
And in itself tells no truth.
For the apparency is but
The shell of the hollow man;
And the smile is on the face of the horse.