Bosh and Flapdoodle Read online

  necessarily the best stuff: but, how much

  better to replace the unachievable with the

  inadvertent: this is what an artist means

  when he says he’s not responsible for his

  genius, it just happens: but, alas, if the

  artist quite normal enough strives to be

  weird, the shocking falsity wears so thin a

  sheen it’s soon hardly shocking and far more

  dismissible:) (the material in the preceding

  parenthesis is worth thinking on): (to go the

  other way further out into the periphery is

  to lose hold on the central issues and

  become thin, manneristic, too arty, and

  mere).

  Surfacing Surface Effects

  A small moon nearly melted in the almost-morning

  night, I arise and thank God I can get up:

  (we used to use paper napkins but lately my

  wife has taken to pulling upscale cloth napkins

  through wooden rings but since we don’t want

  to soil the cloth napkins, we now have no

  napkins at all): dawn turns the moon into a

  crust of bumpy ice, and I go out paled by

  reality to face the world, the world again,

  still there (thank goodness, but still there):

  the smallest crevices and narrowest alleyways

  of pleasure microscopic nearly in the wide

  blank recalcitrance, a scope: (the weatherman

  said he would give us the causes of the changes

  in the weather when what we wanted was

  CHANGES IN THE CAUSES)

  Free One, Get One By

  I’m over and done with: disengaged, I’m up

  for grabs: if you want me, you can have me,

  floating: I’m useless to any use; having none, ready for

  any direction: (this is not

  exactly the way I heard myself saying this

  on the way to the typewriter: the first

  part sounds right, but then something ever so

  slightly fancy feeds a little rot in—oh, but

  that reminds me, one of the urinals at the

  university is out of order and a blank sheet

  has been hung over it saying OUT OF ORDER but

  I think some leftover piss, hidden in there,

  has rotted: so I was thinking yesterday

  of ROTTEN PISS: imagine, rotten piss: even

  that rots—and smells: stinks: stand next

  to it, it cuts your breath off (and your piss)

  one knows, of course, what things come to, an

  end, bobbing free, fortunately, in

  when: one on the row, say, wouldn’t want a

  definite date, would he (she): but how rude

  to have the head man just walk in on you,

  possibly in your underwear, and say, hurry up:

  please, it’s time: what, no time to lift off

  the prepared speeches like balloons, airy

  forms fingering the precincts of heaven for

  mercy: mercy, mercy: what could one do then

  but cast off into terror and restraint as

  filling as any significant finish: over and

  done with, available to the stars, one

  has no further use for oneself, all that

  remains is to smell. . . .

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION

  Dumb Clucks

  Up, O Nothing, where the coming together of

  everything ends everything, the aboriginal

  emptiness, source of all beginnings, where

  spirit at last totally prevails, up there,

  this awing site the brain sees, does it need

  a universe to back it up and, if not, is it

  anything but a wisp, or are universe and wisp,

  one and another kind of disappearance again

  all one: who cares: here, one is wed to two

  and the outbreak of things into sweetness and

  pain binds and frees us: what, after all, is

  greater than the toe of a child, and does any

  truth supercede a gushingly ripe pear or

  peach or collection of grape pulps: one’s

  fame in the hands of a reviewer is not so much

  a spur as a poniard: it is seldom the case

  that praise has so o’erswelled (o’erswollen)

  one that the doctor prescribes daggers: one

  sustains oneself on mice- and chickenfeed and

  can be swept away in the wind of the slightest

  disfavor: well, we are such dust as housemites

  husband on, riding microscopic currents in the

  stillest parlor air. . . .

  UNSIGHTLY HAIR

  Sucking Flies

  No longer confident of the transfigurations, the

  assemblages, piercing coordinations, the wound

  unwound into a new winding wound again—now,

  I just put in the wording: I give words to the

  passing music, taking it as it is, where it goes:

  who am I to prevail upon the shallows to reveal

  their source materials, the hidden currents,

  hidden drives (as the road signs say): what I

  am not is a teacher: if Heraclitus, Aristotle,

  Bacon, Burke have not taught the world then

  teaching doesn’t work, is not the issue: (but

  the music gets so flat: the energies of

  transforming lift up, tensely integrative, into

  new formations young, beautiful: whereas,

  merely to go along with scrambling mediocrity

  is to defer too much to the world:) oh, how

  flat it is (so much so that exclaiming about it

  nearly gets a rise out of me): is disillusion

  wise, or is it wise to fiddle with fragilities,

  little dreams and hopes and foolish beliefs:

  there is a smallness runs under things like a

  crumbly soil that takes in what remains and

  gives back the beauties of the field: our

  bodies share these worm-shaken roads: but our

  spirit, it is from before and knows no changes

  through all the lineations of consequence. . . .

  Balsam Firs

  With my wife and me, it isn’t so much that we

  have used each other up—we really can’t do

  that—but that time has used us up: we stand

  on the frail end of a long plank where things

  get jittery and, because of the uncertainties,

  almost new again: but time, time, has built

  us so far out, we’re nearly off the ship: we

  turn to each other and say, look, there’s

  plenty here to do something about, but do you

  suppose, so late, it’s worth getting started:

  still, life is now as it has always been, such

  as it has been, life, and we say let’s get on

  with it: colloquial idioms at such times

  soften sharpness—or, one might say, run an

  iron rod out under the plank: I, myself, am

  not much use: I have churned the word mill so

  long that I can’t pick out anything from

  anything: I’ve said everything and mostly

  cared when it sounded good: but my wife is as

  solid as a jug or judge: her words, purporting

  to mean, are bottom lines: I listen to her:

  sometimes, I write down what she says, too:

  but getting back to the boat, I’m for running

  a few sails up and hooking into the changes:

  we’re feeling blustery and the open deep spills

  out where the farthest sight is only sea. . . .

  Tree-Limbs Down

  The poverty of having everything is not

  wanting anything: I trudge down t
he mall halls

  and see nothing wanting which would pick me

  up: I stop at a cheap $79 piece of jewelry,

  a little necklace dangler, and it has a diamond

  chip in it hardly big enough to sparkle, but it

  sparkles: a piece of junk, symbolically vast;

  imagine, a life with a little sparkle in it, a

  little sparkle like wanting something, like

  wanting a little piece of shining, maybe the

  world’s smallest ruby: but if you have everything

  the big carats are merely heavy with price and

  somebody, maybe, trying to take you over: the dull

  game of the comers-on, waiting everywhere like

  moray eels poked out of holes: what did Christ

  say, sell everything and give to the poor, and

  immediacy enters; daily bread is the freshest

  kind: dates, even, laid up old in larders, are

  they sweet: come off sheets of the golden

  desert, knees weak and mouth dry, what would

  you think of an oasis, a handful of dates, and

  a clear spring breaking out from under some stones:

  but suppose bread can’t daily be found or no

  oasis materializes among the shimmers: lining

  the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:

  so the costly part of the crust of morning

  bread is not knowing it will be there: it has

  been said by others, though few, that nothing

  is got for nothing: so I am reconciled: I

  traipse my dull self down the aisles of

  desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,

  nothing spent, nothing got.

  Wetter Beather

  When a person inquires too much into my

  condition, I wonder if he searches for ill

  or good: as for my typewriter, it will not do

  well in a humidity, it takes on a gummy

  lethargy, it refuses its spaces, stalling its

  keys which, certainly, just fling themselves

  idly against a nonchalance: but let a cool

  front through or let a heat wave require the

  air conditioner and the keys flick along as easily

  as thought: this foreknowledge prevents me

  from hastening off, heavy manual machine under

  my arm or confined upon my hip by the arm,

  hastening off, I say, to the repair shop—

  a lucky patience because there no longer are

  any shops for this device, and few ribbons

  around and sparse typewriter paper: I am in

  the midst of a technological redoing which

  I will not abide till the radiant screens no

  longer flicker: but my talent is so expired

  that I need not trouble myself with digital

  advances, I merely amuse myself in the comfort

  of my own surrounding ignorance, with no

  intention of publication and, of course, little

  hope that others will press me thru the press.

  The Gushworks

  When what it was is what it is (or when what

  it is is what it was) there you have an overlap:

  for example, when you blow your nose, you

  could, you know, close the handkerchief on the

  product: instead, you are likely to open up

  to see WHAT IT WAS: was it just a clear

  gelatinous blob or a crusty skin shield or a

  butterball of gooey glop: or as when you go

  to the bathroom, you could flush before rising

  but you probably rise before flushing: you

  want to see WHAT IT WAS: you want to find out

  if what it was going to be can be elicited

  into a knowledge of what it now is: like an

  oyster-type gob, your nose, I mean: I am a

  member of the vertical circle whose arc passes

  through a height above nearly all human interest

  and whose depth encloses the silences of most

  human shame: there is a sense in which the

  integrity of the circle is taut throughout,

  indifferent to its notches and degrees, as

  indifferent as the discourses of my fellows

  remain to me: think little of me, I will

  think no less of you: the axle goes right

  through my ears, and the merriment is in all

  the go-round.

  Body Marks

  Nailing down the cause of anything is not easy:

  you notice a prominent strand in the random

  weave and think, well, that’s probably it: but

  that may be there just to mislead the born or

  else it works only in association with a set

  of subsets or sublineations and only expensive

  time can rectify a balance out of that: I say

  why is my hipbone flashing out each step down

  my femur this morning when I walked less than

  usual yesterday: well, too many stairs: well,

  slept on that side all night: well, it’s really

  your colon hurting: what? well, remember

  last night during that TV drama you had one

  leg stretched out to the coffeetable too long:

  that could have defined a warp in your bone

  pain calls attention to: well, well: you’ve

  (I’ve) probably hit on it: which would prove

  it out this evening, hanging your leg up there

  again or not: that is the question: when in

  the second grade, cut on the playground, I,

  playing hounds and fox (I was the fox, the slow

  boys the hounds) skidded my left knee over the

  spike of a buried stump, I got a 3 to 4 inch

  slash and nearly passed out: I felt so

  important, though: imagine being taken to a

  doctor’s office! and all the expensive stuff

  was unwound and wound onto me, with taping

  and splinting (I almost said splintering):

  3 weeks off from school: stitches put in,

  torn out by bending the knee, re-stitched, and

  you know how it goes when you’re eight: I’m

  70 now, and I still can see little white

  raisures where the stitches ripped free: you

  could know me anywhere: talk about identity:

  I’m nobody else except myself, unless somebody

  has a mark just like mine (backed up by

  another scar (I won’t tell you about now) on

  the inside of my left wrist, not an attempt

  at anything self-critical:) I’m sure you think

  all this is just as important and worthy of

  posterity as I do. . . .

  Yonderwards

  I want to do a painting: I want to slur a raw

  shoulder: I want to bruise a man, look into

  a woman’s eyes you could travel through

  for life as through a galaxy or toward one:

  I want paint painting-through rubs out: how

  about a sudden lush bush on the right hand side

  with a distant small bridge topping it: and

  from right top to left bottom a sweep (maybe

  water) quickly broadening down: but then a

  goat’s head is right up front, on this side of

  the river (?) and when you look away and look

  back it is all a beautiful woman; perhaps, her

  bosom is the moon filling the upper left hand

  beyond the river: I want a painting to do me

  in: I want to wilt down and supremely recover:

  but look what happened to Ozymandias and

  EVEN SHELLEY

  Depressed Areas

  It is one thing to be nobody, but to be nobody

  in the South! there is no roping in the roper />
  ladder and there are no steps in the step: or

  you’re let to climb up high enough that a

  missing rung will de-characterize your mounting:

  or something pressured by your step will fly

  up and pop you in the face: the blast will

  bust your ast: but if by any vine-swinging

  you cling on above the pitfalls and call out,

  look, it’s me, I’m way up—why the South will

  notice its allowances credited you and now you

  “owe something back”—the old give-back back

  again: whereas out West the roads are longer

  than the wanderers and up north in the City

  the homeless sit out among the tall buildings

  as noticeable and anonymous as Exxon: (if you

  own a little Exxon, no hard feelings): but

  who cares, poetry is like a swamp, it will make

  up anywhere there’s a bottom: and the great

  trees after all whose tops only the sky can

  see . . . they topple and the water eats them up:

  what do you do when the metaphors are shaping

  up to oppose your case: why, end the poem.

  Dishes and Dashes

  I always wanted (when I was a boy—and even

  now) to have a stretch of water, at least a

  farm pond or house pond, a little circular

  flat thing with fish in it, pike and bream,

  sunflowers: something glassy as the sky, that

  could fill up with clouds (cloud and could)

  that would crash into the banks where among the

  sedges and grasses mosquito hawks and dragonflies

  would pitch and tilt: the sheen and silver,

  the stillness, a patch of lilies maybe, or a

  clutch of cattails a redwing might get close

  enough to jeer in: but I still have the sky,

  deeper than any stillness I could get water to

  hold, and the years go by and it clears blue

  and breezy: the geese seesaw back and forth,

  talking through: (neither a sayer nor a doer

  be: be a beer (nonalcoholic)): much of my

  sin is not original: a little verbal abuse

  (herein demonstrated), a little self-abuse

  (which I make a practice of keeping to myself):

  a few painful exaggerations and oversights

  (lies), etc., a fairly normal menu: more