THE PRELUDE
"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you
just bombed." U.S. Air Force Manual
What might have sounded
like a fair-ground frog
as it might then have flailed–
ribbit after ribbit, ribbit
after ribbit and then some
to (rather than topple) top out
the soot-velvet, hearthside flue
of Eric Houdini’s ten-gallon hat
which as matter of rumor if not
fact was the mind clearing a leo-
pard-slug of laced angel dust
from the felt-line of its rabid throat.
Meanwhile, memory bowls twenty-thousand leagues
barreling down a waxed passage
of teak-stained oak,
aiming for the spare pin
now framed and standing in
for exclamation mark~ for exclamation mark
highlighting the night I might have couched
beneath an elm bench, having burnt my North Face bivy
some place akin to Fortune trail, in the rambles of Central Park.
Y
That such a vision of guffaw
swerves to mind while counting
my own soap opera of caws and croaks
after failing to veer from the bog-heavy meer
of what plays back for the vinyl scritch
to scratch of a Rick & Morty episode.
Though, however, now the pink brain warps
in some hidden stage of the 1 train’s ingress.
That I still might check the mic’ and take 181st,
its platform for estuary of Super Mario’s drainpipe.
Then. In the damned, drain-the-swamp circus year
of 2017, after piping down a green wad of pine-
apple express spiked with black thorn of, yes, some angel’s dust.
A
And so like Dante without guidebook
I entered through caw and croak
of Hell’s bowels where it’s only in hindsight–
after you’ve tipped over one too many pink-
spotted cows, tripped on a few red-tipped crows
which just happened, in a puddle, on the sidewalk,
to be performing the dead-man’s float–that you stir
near sunrise with your wits round-about embracing
(well) the curb where the lightbulb dawns, dawns for
eureka!–i.e., the dry-cleaned idea you should have tossed
in the towel years ago instead of cranking your mind
like an oven baked too high in attempt to tweeze out
the Morris code of an energizer crow playing taps
atop a mount of cans and worms—where you find yourself
the scorpion watching the bear bugs and tardigrades squirm
out from beneath the pyramid scheme of what reeks for the world’s
compost pile.
Z
That life opens readily as it might close
for a sodden FedEx box of burnt-out light bulbs
as the ward turns out your valley of empty pockets
and (surprise, surprise) let’s you keep the dandruff.
C
Meanwhile, five years gone–
the world could care less
for any post of alarm,
of (yeah, right) wide-spread
panic:
all they willfully (might they?)
recall and double-down
on
is how your lunch-box grade brain
(once-upon-a-time)
was supposed to have been
stolen from its own Dean Dome,
booked to serve a
zebra-
yoyo
striped
sentence
of fairy-tale prince-croaks;
a prince who always, fourth quarter,
comes back~ even without free throw
and from the your own foul line(s)
dish a dunk above the-the
rim.
Yeah.
With the ribbit
of all
ribbits;
what a dirty
fib
these hedge-
funders sold,
playing upon
the poker face(s) of
Greed. Glut. Fear.
VV
That Borges would have failed
to labor your battle-cat meow-
meow war cry to the Tlön-set
stage of one of his closest possi-
ble worlds speaks volumes
as the sheeple take another re-
freshing scroll down the con-
veyor belts of their very own feeds,
being both slave and product,
product and slave to Sili-
con’s very own pyra-
mid scheme.
W
It’s the Klee-baked ochre
of memory’s dust
that now ages for rust
as the acid bites
through copper plate
Of my own brain’s trust,
the copper plate
Into which I’ve etched
my own javelin before
the big come-up
of Brutus’ blade.
As history has already taught
to feel and not again touch
the cinder-hot charge of its icy thrust.
B
Nonetheless, I skip two steps
forward, one hop back
as I schlep
towards the drooling tongue
of infinity’s rat’s mouth.
Like the Russian Doll
of thrice-great Thoth,
wrapped and wound
in lichen, in linen, the saw-
dust of some mummy’s cloth.
D
It’s far south, upon the scarab-
black lip of Boca Raton, Florida–
behind a Steinway piano gallery
in sanity’s empty sandbox
where the mind festers
and stews in the green, fer-
mented puke of my life’s down-
ward spiral, (down in the new up)
streaming the latest episode
of busted pipes
and the same bridge
of collapse
That only leads to relapse.
The brown river is a god.
It’s there, down by the French Broad
that, like Rick, I’ve morphed myself to a pickle.
G
It was a pickle that would spill from a Bushwick drain,
off Wykcoff and Jefferson–
the Northeast Kingdom
where once I stood on platform,
homing in like some stool pigeon
for the electric-stirrup click and chirp
that was (hi-ho silver!) the L Train’s way
of announcing, hello kids, it’s time to twerk
as we (one-thousand and one Brooklynites)
would pile in with delusions we were Gumby
in the attempt not to spill our bowel’s bourbon
soaked gumbo–as the L whipped like an eel
or one of the four horsemen, precipitating Superstorm Sandy,
which would surge for 100-year storm, a premature relapse
ushering sewer’s legion of pizza rats. Like those Beastie Boys.
Pulling themselves from their half shells–back on the map of all maps.
U
As Ashbery writes, “Rough stares,
sometimes a hello,”
in my case I forget to say something extra
then went all out with what sprung to me,
“Extreme words” giving to mostly shrugs
despite how I was looking for some birth.
F
It was Miles’ Birth of the Cool
that would switch my Coney
Island train track of self-loathing
and despair as I watched
the 12-inch black vinyl
gambol and romp
in and out of groove,
serving for the springboard
that would lyft me,
me by Sherriff escort
to my next writing ward
where for 40 flush-mounted nights
I was observed,
pitched, coated
yet not bound
by a gallionic kind
of Blue.
CHAPTER II
T
There is a quiet rumbling here
my story is no longer alone
the tender blur of comity,
warmth; blind open arms
begging to mend, fix, harm-
onize, cripple, knit, reanimate
my lepered sense
with the stain
of new damages.
E
So if it pleases one to rock
when we cannot vibe
through such a series
of impious spectacle,
I’m your boy, blue.
Blue as my tarred
if not feathered heels–
Like Nike
(though no pledge to Zeus)
reappearing in the state
of flight
for ‘wingless victor.’
S
That the new world keeps joning
[sic] with such a silent hurl of insult
to bring me to boil and brand me
with mark of someone else
despite my headlight beam (L)
of Thoth’s thrice-great light
for which most of these standout
citizens sit on sofa like deers to the flame,
praying into smart screens that I’ll be picked up,
pegged in some reptilian line-up
by which I might be framed (haha, God-willing)
and posted to black-site cell.
F
To labor and labor
and, like some slug,
steam in some salt
as bloody analog for the tag~
as in title of your first Caxton?
Haha. Haha. Heehaw. Yeah right.
Have you heard of the principles
of Maat? Have you heard the recent footfall of Prometheus
as the chains have been broke and Zeus will be judged.
BELOW THE WORK IS IN PROGRESS, OF LAST YEAR’s (2021) ROUGH DRAFT
10
That I might trace
My choleric blood
To the tail-end
Of Quixote’s stirps
As I don my ass
With Roman saddle
And slipper stirrups,
Steeling myself
For another binge
Of gallops
That will most likely
Bring the mind’s windmill
To an ere-long stop.
!!
Coming to stern grip
With a narwhal’s
Sole pike,
nár meaning ‘corpse’
For its cadaverous-
white whale-like hue
As I cast a few crocodile-
tears and slug my way out
Of the barracks
Of another half-
way house, lugging
my two tote bags
Down what mirrors
The back-alley turf
Of Sesame Street
For all the fast-squealing,
Muppet-like cranks & clowns glued
To their sodium-street light spots.
1.
Service to the idea
To terminate the analysis.
It’s that kind of night
Playing checkmate’s game
Of go or blowing up
Red balloons of thought
‘til they’ve turned black
With rat-poisoned thoughts–
Some which have killed
A few wallflowers of peace,
serenity
Where all those buffalo
Graze out into afternoon’s
Extinct gaze of glare.
2.
In plain English, beating the shit out
Of the piñata in the effort not to bear
The idea–which has devolved to ter-
mites atop a scrooched pile of loin
Cloths isn’t so smart, even for a genius.
But just for today, why not?–since I’ve
Shrunk into this dog-munched puppet,
Holding an Easter-egg basket in which
Several alarm clocks tick & tock among
Fish spines, reminding you that everyone’s
Life becomes unmanageable, seized by
The same tooth-picked horror of 'perhaps
Not today but eventually’ the Soul’s eviction.
3.
But so what?–another airport, another terminal
Bereft of all flights; you discover after the seventh
Or tenth time that falling off the same brown horse
Hath become your only reasonable approach to
Kill time–not that there aren’t other ways but as
For their methods, they lack the adulation of
Being pissed and shit on, clomped over for which
My only meeched response is: “I’m just livin’ the best
Day of my life!–” before nodding out into the unsung.
4.
The track was supposed to end here,
The tape player with one nocuous click
Should have stopped but as it endures,
Continues to loop ‘round, turn out & spill
Frosty secrets, mysteries seem to have
Been added to the virulent reel of your life–
A frothy saucer of milk rises from the rabbit-
Hole that was meant to be your final gap.
5.
You rise in purple gown and hobble barefoot
To hail a taxi: to put down such thoughts of
Inner-collapse, wrapped or bandaged
As they are while the Greyhound takes
You to the end of another line
Is to awaken inside your life’s own distortion
Of carnival-coated assembly
Wherein you finally glimpse the deprived alchemy
Of its historical arrangement,
That which keeps you throwing hammers
At its glass, which fails to shatter or even wrack up
But warps evermore for the mental funhouse
Deprived of any egress.
6.
Behind another mask, I am in keeping with anonymity,
Aware of my many defects that have built for nothing
But this catapult, which consequently has sprung more
Than twice for my own full-flight from reality […]
7.
To crash so assuredly
Next to a white whale’s carcass,
Harboring the fake, plastic smirk
Of a flopped-over toy,
A flopped-over toy
Which one day
Much like this
You will box away
For a last time.
I can already feel
The hiss-strip
Of duct tape
As its greyness
Seals me off from
The damp plains
Of your history.
Who–in a year
Or day–
Will welcome
Me?