All Of Love

Page 1



All of Love

155 Sonnets

Larry Goodell


cover design by Lenore Goodell I am grateful for Here On Earth, the physical version of this book which included 56 of these sonnets published by La Alameda Press in 1996 9636 Guadalupe Trail NW Albuquerque, New Mexico 87114 Copyright Š 2010 Larry Goodell ISBN 978-0-915008-01-8 !"

duende digital book 2010 po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 larrygood@comcast.net USA


All Of Love

Here on earth for Lenore


All of Love Contents Dedication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spring 1987 Centerpiece. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 East & West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Kissing After the War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Map of Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Woman of the Year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Garden. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Going Home.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Karate Gardener.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Robot Worker/Earth Talker.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 New Sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Too Much Time to Do Anything.. . . . . . . . 11 New American Cuisine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Stairway to the Stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 He Done Died. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Discombobulation of Art. . . . . . . . . . . 15 Air. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Suicide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Home Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 A Novel In 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Are You?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 After the Sun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Writer's Wonder Worker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 March 19th. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Ode to Lenore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Ode To Song. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Under the Weather. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Find A Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Pupa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 A Magic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 The Art of Destruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Non-Fools.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 A Writer's Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 End End. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Spring Fancy.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Lost Sonnet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 On Too Long. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Necktie.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nah!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ass Hunter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Working To Live. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Teeny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kiss Hello. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quote the Breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Compost. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Retreat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Slightly Obscure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "I Want to Be Famous Anyway I Can".. . . . Heavy Scents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Case of the Filmed Crime. . . . . . . . . . . Pit Stop.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Definition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "I". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Face of God.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Piece of Dust. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I'm So Glad.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Looking Forward to Retirement.. . . . . . . . . Oh No. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Letter ..... A Cookbook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eternal Life.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unlocked. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Library of Knowhow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For The Money. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Boogie On the Square. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh Dilda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Free Spirit.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Deconstruction Industry.. . . . . . . . . . . Crows Looking Down.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Face to Face. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wet Wear.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Too True. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73


What Is Up That Must Come Down. . . . . . 74 Returning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Oh Wait And See. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Magic Stone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 And Eight Thousand Stars.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 How To Write Too Much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 The Rose On This Paper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Home So Soon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Art With A Capital T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Garden Art.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Eagle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Honest, Oh Boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Hot Bath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Heart, Heart.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 What is the Imagination?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 "Space Is A Place". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Made For TV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 One One. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Song Word First. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Orion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Ph.D. Pisser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Don't Be A Bore.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 A Salad.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Reincarnation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 The Risk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Song It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Harley.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Post-Modern Sex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Education of a Sonnet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Higher Ed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Slippery Faddists.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Spring Child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 The Feast Is For Peace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Are You Suddenly Employed?. . . . . . . . . . 107 Liars Convention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Speaker Speak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 A Fashion of Form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 I Hope to Reach More. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Hard Wind Spring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 At Home with the Dead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Out of the Hat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Circulation of the Gods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caldera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Armchair Listener. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . She Speaks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Greed Disease. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Love of Ever Great Life. . . . . . . . . . . . Truce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Racing to the Stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On The Way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In Performance of the Question.. . . . . . . . Break Out.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Greedy Greedy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gemini in the Forest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miscarriage of the Muse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Let Progress Pass You By". . . . . . . . . . . . . Visitation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hector, Fighter.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dance Sonnet.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Gift I Hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Las Huertas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tequila & Lime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heart to Mind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New Mexico Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . City in the Sun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Making it Big. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Quiet is Winner of IHSF Award, 1988. . . Attraction.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rivaling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sword of Love.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Golden Shadows of the Flowers. . . . . . . . . When a Poet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Star. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Neo-Anti-Climax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That Hill.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Verse Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Can't Have It All. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All of Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Footnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii

115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155



Dedication To the right, honorable, dignified, most holy, aloof, superior interior exterior being, gentleman & lady, above in the 13th heaven looking down on our species' follies, may you prosper in limitless longevity, flowers of all the fruit trees of spring to you in bountiful tulip to daffodil, grape hyacinth to sour cherry, postequinoctial burst of renewed gladness and glee, I your fateful servant most humble human poet offer these play-songs, these little real surprises, as spring trinkets to you that when strung together may garland you with everything I have to blossom together this sequence this necklace of little sounds odes, melodies, sonnets to you, these song nets catch my life devotion to you Meso America All America Grandma-Grandpa OmetĂŠotl Mother & Father of all of us sprung up from the earth I offer these in the sunlight, the moonlight our own light oh Thank you humbly I do with this gift. Your listening servant, Larry Goodell Spring of 1987 Placitas, New Mexico



1

Centerpiece I came to wear my buttons. But a psychologist said that would be worshiping Freud. Now Jung said he was a very old man. A fraud, actually. They got into a fight & knocked me down. I'm a center for the Angels. Life is a screw, a nail said to me. A hammer replied, it's all in your head. Sing, you with wings, & button your coat The more I write, the younger I get. The more I paint, the older I get. The more I create artificial fruit, the wealthier I get. That's why I'm so heavy, and wear a light suit.


2

East & West “Everything is simply imitation Bonsai� said the Army captain to the martial artist. "I'm in the Army and I untie my briefs." "You're no longer in the Army if you send them sailing from a military post." "I have been deposed, I am now a Shelly I am very idealistic and I love Ming trees, imitation Bonsai & artificial gardens. I make lots of money and I do retire." "Oh you must work for peace, add a little scene there under the Ming tree, of an Army captain having his head chopped off by a peace-nik, and the tree will grow into a real tree, ai? A Pinocchio of the Japanese Bonsai."


3

Kissing After the War There's no ending to the kissing that's done As Spencer Hepburn & Katherine Tracy do it all at once In exact memento of time gone by. Shadows lacing across the screen in exact Compilation of the art of the time— The post-ordinary art the thing that makes us Drivel, & sweat, & break out & cry— Meaningless meaning, a time that doesn't try. A tick-tock drudgery, a Viet-Nam memory of marching in the streets rather than the War, kissing when it's all over rather than blaming & shoving everything under the counter, kissing the Vet from Viet-Nam, kissing the Vet from Viet-Nam.


4

Map of Love I did and I do love turning over in the bed with three men I did and I do love turning over in the bed that was with three men. Turned on out over map, over country, apart, youth spread out from each other. Into the map of over-population when only two must and do dust to life together, to bring home the tether, to think as thoughts run out after the dark, the map flowing over the table like Dali's watch but better— I love truly what my duty to dust proves life doubles love her.


5

Woman of the Year As you, & to see who. Only one is you who is exact as words expel the opposite of show & tell. The name explains they're all the same except the body in my brain attached to you that is the couch the chair you sit in, lie on me beside the fire and up to the knees in February if you please and smattering of snow and scattering wind release silence with a whistle— movie's over, Woman of the Year I see you a delicious pear.


6

Garden You are the apple of my egg the leg of anything of God gave to Queen, to Goddess, Right you are, left, woman, apple, Chicken, Rooster, Comb, Turkey, Roof, low line of adobes meet jagged, hot out of the blue, the sun moon's cold face, the Poles Kissing hot center, water carries pails of meaning up the hill to fall, Jack failed not to hit, Jill assumed the crown Jewels in rice, thrown birdseed instead, the hummingbirds after everything red in the garden of even.


7

Going Home As the words tell and the song runs long and the story starts in the dark around the campfire in Barry's backyard the ghost jumped out and we had to contain it laughing all the way home silent in the sliding dark where behind the corner of the grocery store Frankenstein might jump out only 3 blocks from home on Main Street or coming from Richardson one street over any awful thing could happen too soon before you got in your porch swing door.


8

Karate Gardener Why is what I eat everything there is to meet the needs of fantasy, of the confines of the hornless unicorn, the scarecrow that's not needed in the garden where the battle of destruction is rushed down as the sprouts of early desirables push up like Karate fists, the robed practitioners, former jocks of all sexes come out of a trance to trounce up and out peas, thyme, lettuce, lupines, celery sage, onions, now for more fighting the aphids, spider mite, white flies, blown off brushed, sprayed with soap spray rotenone in it plant destroying bug plants in arms surprise the sun with love.


9

Robot Worker/Earth Talker (robot voice) Yes you must bust, yourself, that is your ass, must decay, your brain take over in its slot your blood be subordinated to your body, your body subordinated to that part of your brain on the right in tied up functioning world-weary cog that has nothing to do with the sun, the sun plasma, the earth, the earth magnetic fields, the aurora borealis, the tinge of red in the lowering fallopian curtains that means bloodshed as the private war continues everywhere in fear against each other, falling down walls to hope to swallow steel pride & meet your neighbors in a real protection of peace that is the seed gift.


10

New Sea Let me count thee to a summer's time a banana peel, a Belgian rhyme Eurydice, Hermione, Euphrates & the laughing sea to play is swim the Nile & into the open sea "whatever happened to spontaneous glee" Come with me, Oh say can I see: the oceans opened up to volcanic skinny dipping we're now on the down slide from the backending of the righteous right they mooned humanity & formed an ass-hole up mountain now we speed away & leave them to dry up there as we submit so gracefully to blessed playfulness & dolphin tumbling over ourselves, I am swimming home in the natural, organic ever-after return to the new sea.


11

Too Much Time to Do Anything Oh toilet, oh knot, oh altar, oh drumstick oh Macintosh, oh Epson, oh IBM, oh Leading Edge oh living off the limits, oh going too far, oh drag-racing oh drinking, oh philandering, oh stepping out, oh fidgeting, oh slurring, oh whispering, oh speaking out, oh breaking a rule, oh eating without tools, oh dropping dribbles, oh asking the wrong people, saying the wrong thing raising a stink, not working, oh not putting your nose to the grindstone all day as well as dreaming all night, oh waking up too late oh missing a lunch appointment, oh not writing that letter oh not getting that form X in on time, oh spooning, oh goofing off, oh not making enough money oh spending too much time thinking, oh too much time with inconsequentials oh spending too much real cash, oh spending too much time on the toilet.


12

New American Cuisine Out of the wok came the frying pan and out of the frying pan came the laser beam and out of the Wonder Woman came the TV Set and out of the Unhurried Man came the Zen Band Aids and out of Free Medical Care came the Health Revolution and out of the Health Revolution came Perfectly Ordinary People and out of All Those People came an Unpredictable One and out of Him came Her or was it out of Her came Him of course but she wrapped every language around an anvil and beat on it and he Twisted & Danced & tried to conform to a ritual he read in a book, and out of the book came the VCR and out of Boob Tube came every moment's entertainment and out of the Boring Commercials came a Love Affair with them and out of that love of everything American came the New American Cuisine.


13

Stairway to the Stars A gale descending the stairs, psychology descending the stairs, a pizza restaurant descending the stairs, a star and a mantle of clouds descending the stairs, an erect flagpole descending the stairs, clank, clank, clank, the Gila Cliff Dwellings descending the staircase, the Statue of Liberty descending the staircase 3000 women in furs descending the staircase in a Busby Berkeley miracle, chimpanzees, tattooed Japanese wrestlers & Jimi Hendrix descending the staircase descending the stairs, the stairway to the stars descending the staircase, Ed Sanders nude, Joanne Kyger with a cigaret and Drummond Hadley with a Cowboy Hat descending the staircase.....


14

He Done Died Nothing knows—tool - soap - sky - retrofit moral majors - detergent religions. Everything but Buddhism, & Quakerism, & Shintoism, maybe Taoism, & certainly animism & I-don't-knowism Sucks. Burp to show I'm an animal & not a plant. Holy doesn't exist. The Bible is more trouble than it's worth. Some twerp from Ranchos wants to rule the school and not teach anything there but the Bible since Secular Humanism has been called a religion Science is the Devil & Knowledge might get you a hard on. And everywhere they're trying to put the iron grip on our brains, as they cant stand the thought of thinking let alone empirical or intuitive discovery as they try to control: one last ditch effort Christianity dying.


15

The Discombobulation of Art The detoxification of deconstruction begins by the delittering of demarcations between deactivists. The discombobulated & the disinterred speak through the non-art critics: Post non-art lives in a demilitarized zone where subway over-pubescent graffiti guerrillas are carrying out sporadic spraycan warfare for bored serious buyers, paying to be hipped but really only confused. In the defused performance market the gate & the decomposed lecture ice the cake as serious non-artists bake their way into notoriety & bucks. The demoralized, non-majority musicians & below-the-boards dancers cannot compete with the depopped post-non-existentialist suburban big-time toxic materialist deconstructed decongested dematerialized & reconstructed retardists.


16

Air May the this of the that be those the tip of the hat be toes— may the whorled infancy of broccoli & the denied spaghetti go back to Italy. May Isaac Stern go back to France and Franco Beltrametti come to prance the Swiss franc up the Alps of America, once again before I die may a horseopera kiss a fly and everything, every jerk, every comeuppance baboon be the tragic relief of academic comedy closely exchanged trains & uplifted pantaloons excuse me, silk bikinis or 19th Century tub wear Come out to the conservatory dear, and out of the hat, out of the hat, let's pull some air.


17

Suicide "I am comfortably numb." Oh blessed oblivion I want out. Suicide has been on the increase since Marilyn Monroe died. This phenomenon of cluster suicide is growing like everything like mold like flies like the lies of summer, I mean, specifically, put under glass the pizza parlor drug case, the insistence of calling a rubber a condom, the enlarging of the test of the bomb I mean blowing it up at the factory to see if it works— you blow it up as big as a watermelon then you know no babies will be hatched. Everybody is scared of society & Society is scared of everybody. Springtime is the most beautiful, when non-blowing, season, I mean the winds haven't discovered us yet and I want to go on living.


18

Home Cave Writing is the most successful telling of yourself to Courage— Queen of the Lion Heart, the Grizzly Bear Attacker Strength bending down to touch you, touch me, show Herself out of the Tarot, out of the cage, out of the Forest the Jungle Subconscious, the Unconscious deep as the cave of the Earth where we shake grizzly hands and come out of the swamp to set the forests burning Burning burning bright as we stay up fighting all night and go to bed at dawn friends, learning how to fight again learning how to write again, learning how to walk again learning how to lose hair, losing hair under the Crown as each takes her turn, Queen-King for a Day, well it's learning ABC's and exhilarating art of breathing while you breathe, and breathing while you meet your maker who's your wife and husband, reading writing late at night.


19

A Novel In 14 I'm going to lie in there and eat an astounding fiction the lie of the imagination knows no bounds— bounding out eternally in every infinite minute I am the Shirley Maclaine of your Toulouse-Lautrec things starting out small leap up like fluttering pottery as shards fuse in some new wave new fuse oeuvre uneventful Zen no-nothing tranquillity explosion Mass ordinary, cut-off cross suffused, infused, incubi succubi, stigmata, obligato, transcendentalist cello, oud, Yamaha keyboard synthesized new trans-focused harp jump when my heart thumps up I believe in metamorphosis of cosmic hogwash comic cop-out vision pieced of old now this transfixed reality sings, soars says eats conscious words.


20

Are You? "But why are you crying? Are you dying? Are you doing the same thing over and over because it's a joke? Is it a conspiracy? Why are you still breathing? Is it I'm a motor-mouth and you won't answer my questions? Or should I never say anything to you when you're stressed? Why are you laughing when this sterile environment shirks at that? Why are you disturbing the scholars in their cubicles with your carrying on? What if security comes and catches you wasting time here? Who was your mother and father? They had a long and happy, as they say, marriage? My God are you going to risk poverty by stressing the system, I mean, no it's okay to be different but aren't you going to end up on a psychiatrist's couch? Or worse? What do you mean you're just naturally creative? Don't you know by now you can't do anything unless you do it in a group?"


21

After the Sun Wait wait wait, until tomorrow morning Until you have the light of the day from the dawn. Everything is different after Earth's turning And the miseries have gone down all night long. That's where everything begins for everybody As the light passes inch by inch along the globe And sooner or later you wonder if there's another Life or habitat anything like our World Home. Nothing spares me, thoughts and actions, vacancies of intellect Swirls of bodies fill and empty As I spread manure and turn the tilth the worms' exposed tracks The wind, the cold, the fake Winter lays the last blame. I rush in to cook, an Indian feast and let The day fall away long after suns set.


22

Writer's Wonder Worker The Poetry Writer's Wonder Worker turns you on When you want to be turned on, Write till you're Blue in the face—Mrs Stewart's Bluing will have Nothing on you, pump out Sonnets, Greeting Card Verse, Doggerel for Readers Digest, Ditties to please God in your Church Program, Bombard the Mails with your 100 simultaneous submissions: the Wonder Worker has a button, & a dial, & electrodes for each side of the brain, Set the dial, push the button & turn on the universe of smiles that will greet your Poeticizing, try on anything for size from Free Verse to Couplet, Epode to Love Song Nothing can go wrong with the Poetry Writer's Wonder Worker, as you blossom into verse Visa, Mastercard accepted, no one rejected.


23

March 19th The Swallows came back to Capistrano this year as they do every year on the Feast of St. Joseph's as Laguna Pueblo dances, and the hymn to her to Spring begins, I saw you breaking ground, we sat around then stood up crashing our heads through the ceilings and the worms ate in and out and didnt harm us as we ate their castings up the holy moment of the isolated shell of singing in the words delivering blue scilla, purple iris reticulata meticulous beginners—crocus, winter aconite blinking out as the yellow species tulips & the red their heads close to ground close in evening, opening morning, tulips rippling pointed up, daffodils blading up, we are the I-am-it-they-are I'm going out of the prison winter's last lag, I broke my shell, I'm just a spring chicken, a March 19th day given.


24

Ode to Lenore Ode to Steve in the form of a sonnet, a lyric poem of 14 lines, a line laid down like a row of bricks or rather bricks (adobe) laid down in the rising wall the dream of building row by row comradery and fun and go, ode to the other Steve and then no ode, a sad expanse of only me, myself and I, just living deliciously in spite of commentaries, introductions and lit crit seductions, oh cutter of awful, sliding through the air to root in spring sink down the hindsight, simply be, an ode to odometers, oh no, squeaking doors, oh no, cat shit, oh no, an ode to birthdays, a mood swing that jazzes out on even keel, a verging love, I swear I'm a Quaker animist misting orchids, ferns & cacti, an Ode to Lenore until I die.


25

Ode To Song The most wonderful imaginable things happen to you when you're Blessed by the onus, the curse, the habit of being a poet— Once you're marked, it is a birthmark, an aging, blurring Tattoo you wish you'd never had but know, no! You can't say that, the most wonderful powers And contentments come to you when you're blessed by all This awful talent, word jazz, link to the Blue Sky Through this Goddamn God Band, this personal, non-public Universality, the exalted ego on stilts brought down to The mere Human Being, how appreciative the stereotyping Poetry pigeon-holing audience that shoved your life-thing Under the rug since high-school and in thanks and hearing Turns deaf ears to your inflated past, present, future How dare you find life with meaning & an unadulterated song surprise?


26

Under the Weather I'm in a bad state of depression that under the weather has swallowed up two whole days I can't go anyplace to hide, the family at home, the weekend, I can't even hide from this journal of soundings, these song nets I'm caught in like a table saw grinding inside me a leaden sick wedge lying, my jaw with a gum ache, left side ass sore, the temperature at freezing under clouds and a blizzard over the Midwest, they're digging out in Kansas, it's March 29th, the ozone hole is letting in farts from outer space, everything is corny, and all seriousness is pain as the strawberries wait to be set out later and later and the crown imperials die back & try to come back and the workload from art & papers to demanding garden & property pull my wits down to nothing.


27

Find A Home Out of it is in and up and picking up against the wind that measures spring and entering cold with a fist around the hoe and leveling what was a hill into an irrigated flow that curves in waves that hold the water as against uncommon cold I spread manure and peat moss and rototill it in & rake and set in bone meal & cottonseed meal for these Scott Strawberries to spread their roots through as I set them against the wavy bank their pruned roots out flat, shallow feeders with scrub oak leaf mulch topping, dirt over them & water long and deep at last after the last winter blast late in March I hope these babies find a home.


28

The Pupa You Bastards of the Dumbcluck Era, worshiping your Pupa and TV Money Gods with Crosses for Crotches, Your Pupa and Vatican of foaming larva whose mission is to make you feel guilty if you don't overpopulate and swell the entrails of the Church— what would you do without a Sunday Dervish to dance your money out of your pockets, to get your plastic on their offering plates, as the billions go to crusade the World, till Jesus is the one & only Bishop Prick, the one & only anal god, the one & only Book the Bible of Babble & nitwits clinch their thighs around open minds, unflinching erotic hearts deveined, whitewashed, everything Cloroxed, cathedrals of the transmigration of solos, trashed in Jesus's twin brother Devil's grasp.


29

A Magic Magic is the formative power of thingamajig humble jumble ride on the magic carpet till the light bulb surprise Aladdin's lamp ghosts chance out of a hat, open sesame, "a garden by the water" becomes faith, grace, & reality, a straw saving a life removed from the camel's back, something in another room come into this one with light and illusion, the fact sexualized, lionized, idealized, rhapsodic, defined, woven in and out of self Maya pigeonholed, the wish truthed, the self betrothed the famous ancient Eastern light, the day created out of day, enchanted night created out of night. A man is a donkey, a donkey a man, a woman a spider a spider a shark, a monkey an astronaut, out of nowhere I mean a floating garden I mean the surprise of everything intended swept away new.


30

The Art of Destruction Don't spend your life creating when there's so much destruction Going on: Join their ranks, learn their pranks, and if you can't, Spy for them, spy until you have a sty in your eye Spy on everything left and right and you can anticipate the fight. Learn about those new Microwave Weapons, Pass Everything on to your High and Mighty in Moscow, Washington, Belize or Xanadu, lift up your blinders and Find out about that donkey, that suspicious burro, that Belligerent Cow. But best be the enemy, All the time. The Art of Destruction is a maxi-million More terrific in every way than old-fashioned creative. We subsume the Creative Spirit. It's one of us. We eat it. We are it. We see you: You, my friend Are the Enemy. I mean, got any openings?


31

Non-Fools Does anybody give a big fat pigeon-city donut about me? Why should they? They should, they could, some say. It depends on what you mean by "give a big fat pigeoncity donut." Be specific. You want to get out of your borders. You want to see if there are as many fools out there as there are here. Because the fools don't care, but only pretend, and you want to know if there are any non-fools anywhere. Maybe there aren't, maybe it's the unaccepted condition (hold necktie up of the human race. Maybe, you've raced to the finest pulling neck) prize: the fool gets his donut, or goes without: Pigeons, populate the cities. We must meet one another. We thought we didnt exist. There's a life, dedication. We are discovered. We're going to experience something we've missed.


32

A Writer's Life for Dagoberto Gilb Why write? Fame, shows, flowers, mental stability, flattery, corruption, shame, glee it's pleasing, credits, feathers, fine hats, insults the stability of infinity, the future of posterity, the recurring theme of a classic, the one and only, reflection, conception with God, odes, conniptions, ribbons, dejections, miseries, happiness for moments, suicides stabilities, eternities, other worlds, the right heres, political invective, love, love, love in bed again family, children, if any, if any, the tilt of the imagination, creative uplift, there's plenty of bathrooms, wars, treaties, nature, home back to the movement movement, it's everything that you can manage, anything you can imagine if you have the music, it'll sweep you away for life, life.


33

End End Newspaper supple supple potato fire— The Great Famine of 19 stickety-sticks The Great Fall of the Demise of All The end of the Beginning Disaster of Endless Debacle The Great Crash Anniversary of the Great Crash The Downslide, Backslide, Decline, Depression Collapse, that is, the Last Stop, Sheer Bankruptcy Gone for Broke, Broken, Crushed, the Slump The Rock-a-bye End, the Big Burn, the Lowest Of Low Points, this is Beyond the End, the Vacancy Beyond the Wall, the Pits, the Death of, the Rotten Turn The Bad Luck, Lost Everything, Down and Out Out of Everything, Demolished, Off the Deep End, Final Conclusion Ground Down under heel, C'est Finis, Busted.


34

Spring Fancy Green Chile is the Jack of Diamonds, Red Chile The Hors D'oeuvre express, the foundation cream Anaheim the Go-between, Pasilla the Rock-Hard Generic, Jalape単o the Red White & Blue, Ancho the Beautyrest Mattress, Bell Pepper the Paris suburb Cayenne the ball park, Peter Pepper the Shrunken Head Aha! a Surprise! Meaning! Life has a moment of Passing fancy! Need! Argument! Logic! Words that hold Water! Water that holds the bucket upsidedown, the floating bucket the clouds, the clouds holding up the sky that's here the Volcanic mesas hold the sky to the Earth Slope the Earth to the River slopes up the incline landscape of juniper and arroyos to the worked land just out of my window, the light pulls ready for the first plants.


35

Lost Sonnet I go to sleep with my radio & light on & then wake up: Everything is a teenager: I go back to sleep to dreams I've never had. Archetypes are hogwash. Anything carried too far is religion. Archetypes are a religion. Anyone is a potential cult figure. I roll over. My neighbor is spraying my garden with tomatoes. I am the poison I fear. I walk through the garden like a snake in an igloo. Suddenly I am 30 years younger. What would I do different? I've got to find a fixed focus. Enough blurring out of business. A poet is to find time to be with where the being is always new. I've never known an Eskimo, but I've shoveled snow I've always been younger than you'll ever know— my body lies, lies, like all the poems I've lost.


36

On Too Long To the trees, the breeze, the bees, within the seven seas the ease with which I eat my cheese the nuclear freeze, the teas of the English the tragic disease that cheats you, fleas— knees, seize the tonic of the moment, Keats Nietzsche, Matisse, geese & fields of eats, the heat, a neat seat, the elite the wrong, the gong, the too long song the galumphing along to please the ear, tongs on the dawn, pulling mind-boggling togs off Gods Goddesses, holy harem knocks the bong over, gasps smoke, the throng talks, louder glowing & throwing, gloating, we got you going, got you rocking, a naked tease, the trees, the glee, the wrong, a loosened thong.


37

Necktie Pontificate, beguile, and sweat, organize, spray with, faction out, decentralize, circumcise, pull the wool over, standardize, beef up, swirl, marble, whirl, chatter, asphyxiate, sue, night light, stand up to, drive up, moralize, go to church, fear, hate not quite elate, fix, charge in, order puncture, tire, sour, fish, shoot, catch, deepen, fry, bulldoze, arrange categorize, go after, fence, blow up be taken care of, murder, circumvent tower, cheapen, gird, engineer, bet seduce, reduce, destroy, love, duck manipulate, fire, fuck, give up, shit die, kiss, charge, avoid, beat it, buy.


38

Nah! I'm an organicist—no, a romanticist—no, a futurist—no, a simpletonian—no, a surrealist— no, a post-industrialist—no, a computer writer chip— no, a fuzzy thinker—no, an objectivist—no, a projectivist. No, a decentralist. No, a freelance populist. No, a frustrated entertainer. No, a poet-singer. No, a scratchy story-teller. No, a nervous ding batter. No, a pseudo-academic. No, a mini-entrepreneur. No, a part-time performer. No, a weekend competitor. No, just more creative baggage. No, a buzzline out of focus. No, a socio-satiricist. No, a scatological realist. No, a lover of word tunes. No, a pagan out of place. No, a wind follower. No, an electronic music toy operator. Nah, a design-buffoon.


39

Ass Hunter "Charge it at Sears—I went in & guess what they had— soup on sale. I bought 3 dozen cans of donuts. Do you take charge cards? This is a small shop. I mean you haven't been linked up with Hubert, Dinkley & Pooh. How many Ralph’s do you have for the price of one Mary. Atencio's on sale. I don't need any— I don't like pushy sales persons. Can (whisper) I charge this fur-lined matador on Visa, & put the Sherlock Holmes sofa on American Express? I bought a half-dozen of those modern black goose lamps for the hallway & 3 petrified zits for my spouse's desk. They're in plastic these days and you only take them out when you want to have a baby. Oh! they're having a sale at Braggadocios! Let's go, Charles, I could use a shrunken burro."


40

Working To Live I can't stand it when they spend money left and right & do nothing with their lives but fight for more, to spend large sums like mountains being overturned for the gold underneath that really isnt gold but plastic money flow and the power is there in their hands, and the people who want to create, the slow process of building a better little world, spend their undedicated lives to earn the bread to live a slight comfort on, and the uncreated art that's probably better than what gets created, doesn't exist, not even an abortion, killed in fucking— the spirits lost, whatever that is, while they the big furry they in the Cads and European sports spend it all over Europe and the Far East and swim in pools up their ass, that artist dries up working to live.


41

The Teeny A mist is the tity, the tity of flowers warped seasons of oddball minds with one half filled with lead, look on their dodo theories and become creeps of the Age. Oh tiny half minds and undeveloped kidneys, livers that are pink as the toes of their valentines—"I have been liberated" they say, looking on something cute because it fascinates the pulsating mind theorists (mind in theory only)—it is their little thing and it gets them in the door of the multiversity— the higher lounge cretins who worship the teeny because it got them in too. "Oh power to the little thing you do over & over again all the time saying it's new— I've been liberated into the gonads of praise! So tiny I rule the world." Ahhh!


42

Kiss Hello And that is the thundering praise that is the clichÊ of love that bears saying over to yourself to tell her to feel through every same thing the beginning of the first touch the break with tradition, the throwing out friends so you can be with her, so she can be with me, so we can encapsulate ourselves in birth again, that we had this erases all else, everything is what I say it is, and that is that, said again, that one brief kiss before you left me burrows down in me a thousand years back, I don't have to be told to tell, to say, to write, to call, how many million people surround the globe, sometimes infesting it, don't care, are gone—we retreat, come back today, this evening, of course tonight, I mean—one embrace to stay.


43

Quote the Breath Do sudden shifts in the rain foretell a bad summer? When the rain falls at a 90E angle to where it has fallen? And then goes up back toward the clouds then turns back down fountaining on itself it drops in splashes having gone in square circles? What a curiosity weather-watching is. Who looks out the window to predict what's going to happen? A female grosbeak has arrived black-spotted white & a brown blur, red, red eyes. Is nature fact or fiction? Don't some categories hold? Isn't something precious if it reveals to you a sudden instant thing—a surprise of applause that is the gut response to something light and unimaginable? That came like an unheard song that was more than real and made you feel good, good, good? Quote the breath?


44

Compost So let us forget foul songs and bad breath— imagined wrongs and stabs in the back the jockeying to win to win to win as competition robs you of friendship, friendship— that it's a gift pouring out, pouring out, whether taken or even seen by anyone, let's forget we don't forgive, forgive each other we don't forget—that somehow the burning issue is the trash, the bridges, the flies, the cold shoulders the rotten tomatoes and potatoes, you take it all to the dump, "sanitary landfill" they say, whatever you say, we can be friends again, that knits together again over lost time, that old shirt, that old skirt, that old hurt, that compost, that trash, that dirt.


45

Retreat The glittering malfunction of failure is the responsibility of decline When anything so slight occurs again, you know you'd better eat your apples Follow the way of the Pueblo a bit, rather than the marauding Turks Which have ended up with your blood pounding at the pit of defeat. Time to weed the millions of weeds that grow in a small garden Time to sculpt the pliable land, bring rocks in Form up walls, plant the Thymus serpyllum The late bush dahlia that survived, the bottle-gourd seeds Hoe down the bindweed, the salsify, the mallow The grass that populates like humans and looks good Tho you wonder what it is. It's cheaper than a therapist And much more productive —the silent life of plants— Half of this Earth we protect, or should if we only relaxed Into our constant need for everything that grows & grows.


46

We We have no foreseeable future, we wave goodbye as we go down the tubes, who are we to take everything with us as we go, hey wait but there is no waiting, if we have no future all the science fiction novels and the huge presumption of mind go down in a puff in a— what is it—we overpopulated with religious conviction, oh we, we? watching ourselves lying to each other— who are we we say waving goodbye who are we we say waving goodbye who are we we say waving goodbye who are we we say waving goodbye.


47

Slightly Obscure Hunger eats in vain a boiled tomato Poetry is so much fun I think I'll write some Just don’t forget your P's & O's & to be Po-et-ic Wearing the right startling makeup & a beret Hitting the right haunts & hanging out on the left bank of the Rio Puerco—knowing who's-it & him & her Who edits the this of the that & arranges poetry bashes Wearing a moustache or hose & never saying shit Simply always seen with notebook & pen scribbling at the Oasis on the corner of Tufts & Main— stale coffee produces fine writing where it doesn't matterwhat you write as long as who you say it, I mean who says it, & how, or rather not how, just any-old-thing will do as long as your friends will come & hear you.


48

"I Want to Be Famous Anyway I Can" A pig & gray furnish a word gone bad it doesn't matter what I mean because I'm a lang-gosh-wedge-long get languid grab bag long edge pun pond net po debt I'm a he's not she's not he is yes & he is & maybe her but certainly me I am a languid age pod net, heck, ninny it's just turning a gong, a lily lump, pocket a long-gone pun-fete, yep, hep! bad, bag! serious oh so undelerious so so-so oh no oh, just dose 'em with a big fat, I mean I-don't-mean-anything-just-a-big-wart-off-my-chest o no I said something, don't listen anyway just publish me, pod blush, print me out, book me in.


49

Heavy Scents What got me good was strange perfumes with names like Stealth, Aroma, Cattle Drive and there was one with a hint of mist called After the Flowers & who could help but wonder about that one called Fritz or the powerful one—Baboon Mating and then the haunting almost flavor of Discard one took your nose off Dynamite, and then the overwhelming one—Literal or the obscure—Off to the War. The Haunt of Ogres was almost as strong as Her Powerful Limbs, but for subtlety, nothing could beat No-No, and I almost missed Cracker Barrel—but perhaps my favorite— Stonehenge, or the one called simply Sniff oh, that one so devilish called Cucumber Reach, and also Black Bart, and oh (sniff-sniff) Muskmelon, and Iron Maiden.


50

The Case of the Filmed Crime Someone thought that Andres did it, but others were convinced it was Susan Allen, "It could only be a man," Aunt Lolly said, "the way that Kleenex was left strewn around. Anyone could have done it including Eddie the Bum. No, it was one of us here, the Inspector said, but Doctor Peter was convinced it was High Noon, the motion picture. How could a movie do it? "It fell on him, in that powerful case, and as he fell, the box of Kleenex he was going to use scattered." Ah, it was Andres, he hated the victim because the victim was always in the wrong. But why were three bowls of chicken soup left in the kitchen uneaten? She entered through the attic, put on men's clothing and shot him with a high speed camera. Brilliant! Photo finish!


51

Pit Stop Satan is the Garden of Eden and God, the Serpent backfired. When a myth runs out it joins the Gallery of Dead Gods, to be Resurrected at the whim & whimper of a day gone by. That doesn't mean that I, treading on the rim of this Volcano, Know any better or am superior. Only a minor risk That causes a lot of commotion if heard by anyone who never Hears it: the Protection of Secrecy is my Invisible Badge, Though I come out in a cartoon or two once in awhile, It's getting thick & thicker as the ranks withdraw from The Garden of what was Eden, and everyone talks about The Tarot, & their Jungian youth channeling over to Workshop this & that out of the psyche, as the What-Me-Worry smile takes on make up & a survival kit and heads, uprooting sleeping gods, on the way to the new age pit.


52

A Definition I live for definition. And that's where going crazy slowly makes sense to me. I cant help the delineation of the body or who it defines, as carefully as words. I cant help myself. I lack controls. I am that lack. I simply know that definition isn't academic. I'm with the mob, the mob as carefully defined at I. As me. As you. As "As" is—rounded and pointed & tipped & flowing. The power that came from chasing animals for food, I guess, & later, farming. I garden, the muscles move the hoe that moves the earth around. The bending bulges, the writing, defines, the character of power is in the riding of the flesh, the contours, the forms, the architecture of meaning. Back to physical beauty that comes & goes as naturally as I know this is built & so casually defined.


53

"I" Yesterday my ears dropped off, the day before my thumbs A week ago my toes dropped off, and now goes my gums My heart fell out, my eyes and nose, and now my belly button My butt fell off and then my knees followed by kidney— What a state I'm in I cant run or do anything But think the thoughts I'm given, but then half of my Brain dropped off and now I'm truly driven— One lung, now two I cannot breathe & now my stomach falls All my entrails fall out, my legs, my arms, my balls, My hair my skull, my trunk, my cock, my God I've lost my rocks, my marbles, my soul drops out My spirit, my energy, my entropy, my will, my urge My life, my dreams, my memories, my responsibilities My ego, my everything, my my, my me, my I.


54

The Face of God If both numbers on the telethon match the size of his eyeballs you have won 100,000 dollar instant winner chance to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the order of the century your half-price magazines, your bloated dishes, half-diamonds, sensate lingerie, rose hedges, miracle bath water with crucifix shower head, send in your order by May 1st, affix the gold seal instant Cadillac hearse bonus prize stamp to your order of every magazine of the universe including sub-machine guns, automatic bazookas and power shot hefty car opener screaming security crook-hooks and 10 million dollars will be added to your bonus 100,000 every week for life by watching telethon give-away of God's eternal paste-up church tear-off this portion with your magic instant numbers, watch the size of his eyes.


55

Piece of Dust I can't do anything because the death of sky is abrupt and the well-known forces below suck. Whether to change into them and become a turncoat is moot But not for me, I don't exist I'm not even a toot-toot, A flute, a piccolo, a fife, a wife to fortune, a husband to anything, which is the story of the ego, the popped balloon is not the ego, the great big "I" that not even death could kill. I came back to life having never died and I don't think I'm better than anyone else, I'm just all I know and those killers, those greedy bastards, those with nothing in their veins but blood, with nothing in their hearts but a heart, nothing in their heads but a fish, might be beneath me as unknown winking tiny star, piece of dust against the light, cool night lessens the sigh of all that's me.


56

I'm So Glad I'm so glad, my sad is had. I procure dumplings from Grandmothers. I'm a dumplingologist, a jeux des cartes. My hand is played, I'm defined With a tie and a cowboy hat, a verve— a romp in the ocean with dolphins, an erector of stone whales that call back the living, and make me a naturalist sculptor, a gambler, a history of the American cinema #412 with many shades of pink on blood that isn't blood and isn't pink but black & white, black on white, white on white, I'm so sad I'm glad I'm me.


57

Looking Forward to Retirement I always thought of fifties as graying happiness and now I stare them in the face— I'm one of them, I always was, and didn't know it. I can do whatever damn I please, I'm so lucky to be always fifty, or was I 37? I was once, and at 16 everything was stiff and pleasurable, now 47, or is it 2, I still play with my fingers, work all day in the hot sun be 50 all over again, by becoming 51, I did that, last year, although my father said I will be 53, 1935 from 1987 is 52— my driver's license renewed to 1992, think of it the 90's! then the oughts? the pre-teens? back to the 50's the 60's! I'll retire in the year 2000.


58

Oh No (syrupy voice) Design your flowers with nature in mind your people with a conservative bent make your cats & dogs cooperative your freeways with just the right curves in them your robots well oiled & with quiet circuitry make your landscapes pleasing to the eye— eliminate weeds, nor let the buildings grow too tall make all your poets self-employed versifiers your carpenters & map-makers busy as bees design those TV's with remote controls and eliminate violence from them, and let there be no sibling rivalry or economic problems so nations can lie down at peace with each other and your mellow planet will not be rotten to the core oh no, oh no.


59

A Letter for D.G. Did you get my letter or is everything death & transfiguration? What does it take to knock the head off your cloud? Mother is dead & everything is continuation. Cant I pull you back from memories into reality? I guess the chain around my neck is ambrosia turned to lead My mind is a sump full of vacuums, but every time It's filled with hope somebody might rise from nothing but problems & joy, to making it as a writer I get satisfaction thinking I will be buddy to watching it: and that is you who's trying everything & telling stories like a mad man rooted in his past. At least you're not a poet, God save us from that snobbery scourge— I'm filled with the need of a letter from a friend, or simply a note out of the blue that just reality exists.


60

A Cookbook We've got our peopled onions & cloves stuck in a vibration booth: good cooking is how to make swans or sticking to a theme is only human if you don't want to fly off the planet, which gravity, brother to sanity, protects. Something can always be gleaned from a poem about cooking, as everything builds in the machine of learning which computerized disks only imitate, it's back to tired counsel about the family, or a gap in the conversation in which love and a certain learned familiarity are all that matters. He was seen on TV eating spaghetti after, of course, they showed how to prepare it and he was her cousin, though not be blood, they knew so much in common we ate everything they brot from the kitchen.


61

Eternal Life for Allen Kaprow Oly North finds pieces of his happening in Allen Kaprow's bathroom. Since it has nothing to do with facts it is instantly believable. He shreds the toilet paper after holding it up to the light and finding it says Shit Sucks. He finds memos layered between towels, between washcloths, used as shelf paper under the roach spray. He doesn't realize the giant who uses the toilet invented him. He looks in the mirror and discovers he's naked except for his International Male jockstrap. His metals suddenly appear emblazoned on the Fountain of Youth which gushes up from the lavatory and splashes his face. Time to wake up, his metals are tattooed to his chest and his military tie and brass buttons. Lieutenant-Colonel North is fully dressed in the nude. Allen Kaprow has given him an Oly North haircut and attached his Betsy Doll wife to his lapel and sent him from the event of his bathroom to appear forever after his death on home videos. But now there is eternal life. Wish I wish, wish I were, as simple as a cockleburr.


62

Unlocked for Lenore The only thing that makes walk work woo Is three-thousand times loving you Before age assaults the standard cliff-side harmonies Of the nymph, the wonder, hope of your soft face The hair sky herons, the rock in elegant motion Flung spray birth in eyes, lips dripping Larger than life was, now come to bed where Everything including the fighting is a far off nature Paradise, gone down in Golden Dreams for tomorrow. I love, love, lying next to you, win from lost wars The whole of history expanded into universe Of us: Nature fights to be present at our Endowment, what used to be a blessing, simply A kiss, a passing of time, a love still together held key.


63

The Library of Knowhow Lawnmower of forgetful feet, mow my grass— No, more than grass, my consciousness—intercepted Transmogrified, Photosynthesized, Hybridized Eternalized in Nothing, Clippings, mere Clippings. I am the Compost of Futurity, Don't give me up: Better yet, give all of me up. Will I give myself up? I get mowed down, lost is the least desire, A psychic vacuum pulverized by reality, Every bit & piece of it, every day, as anybody knows. Or as I, now a nobody knows. Nobody knows. Goodbye experts and advanced degrees, power on platforms Ivory Towers of the necessary "There"—the Library of Knowhow Somehow turned over to the public which I have become— In honest, day to day, hard rock, how-to-do-it facts.


64

For The Money Announcing the ifs & buts of ands. The playful insecurities of of's. The noticeable ambiguities of its, his, one's. Announcing the satisfaction of nouns the verve of verbs, the overuse of adjectives, to the point of pastel sickness and the building up of words to build glass houses with. Books built up to rest your rifle on— As you aim the sentence pellet at the nearing visitor. Bam, zing went the off-color strings of my heart Throb on the pavement of my book dedication to you. Oh the laryngitis of writing, the marketing of the whore, a whole lot of words going down the tubes of the ears, as the drug processor sits on every writer's desk announcing the money fit of playing with yourself in syllables of profit.


65

Boogie On the Square The light that is the fair, the light that is the fair We boogie on the square, we boogie on the square And know no one is soon, and know no one is soon And know no one is far, as far as Zanzibar But here and now and nimble, quick & ordinary Depending on how you look at anything, if you look If you look like a canary or If you look like yourself, or If you look and don't look, like Anything or anyone or any look looks like— Boogie on the square & move everywhere Be little and big, customary and aware The light is fair and travels in and out and Picks up the board like a carpet anywhere, an - y - where.


66

Oh Dilda Dilda Perkins, blasted Phoenix of Zoron (female voice, western) Come back to life inevitably—"We don't Register Our Caddies with the doorman, we Drive them to the circumcision barn, where The old-fashioned robots of Earth Japanese Fix everything & take the flies off the pistons, Remove tired rubbers, vacuum clean the Sphinxes And return to us Antique Pleasures the likes of which Have not been experienced this side of Zircon, Oblivion, or Rosy Planet Stellar Ray." She still had a broken tooth right up in front And had seen so many eras pass by— Oh Dilda, Dilda, I still love you, you Tell me what to do. I love it, love you, love it — love you.


67

Free Spirit for Lee Connor Everything is in archetypal leaps. What is what you're saying if it's not interesting? You were the avant-garde podner. Your hayloft is your head, your halo your lariat. You are an entirely new Virgin & Mary. You are the baby of heterodoxus. Your shape is always different from what your parents was. You drink kilos. You eat thousands of foods. Everything you say forms a letter of delight. You are not Christian, Buddhist or Hindu You are Joseph or Jonathan. You are a Free Spirit—you have no fire you have no water Until you are born again into yourself You are the earth floating with wit, with everything you are.


68

The Deconstruction Industry Does deconstruction mail any divorce? PostPeculiar labialism and the decline of punditry in Modern mad scenes in non-English deportments of skunk & screw, wreck & make-out, language shafted, revisionist species spawning turtles with two legs, exhibit hand-wrenching among the aphids of superior intellects, as skies open up for everyone except funerals— and the critics of job-worship create students to teach to create students to proselytize & mesmerize & subsidize as the word-scam distorts the power of construction till the entire housing industry is at fault and nobody can build any more because of all the obtuse confusion.


69

Crows Looking Down for Lee Connor, dancer Step back when the horror of horror arrives— Don’t let it take you alive. Alive when the going's well, that's when they fell— Into the trenches, into the crematoriums, into the sky. And it all came too early, what am I to say "Let any language take over & blab about nothing?" Talk is nothing if it isn't about, whether it's nothing, That's something, or this everything, this thing live when You loved him, everything he said held special merit And he had no time for fads, neither did you. Talk was humor, the catch all of what happened, Or what will, it caught the dance, the dance Of what turned out to be life, was too precious For the crows looking down for some roadkill.


70

Face to Face It came like a monster that developed horror in some laboratory "You got me with penicillin way back when (robot-like) Consumption was consuming the lives of the young creative You stopped me then and the plague, and leprosy Try to stop me now, falling like flies do you have The chance to attack in complication gone wild with a constellation of my diseases throwing at you at your meager laboratory, every which way you turn, a trap? A deceit of nature, a vile attacker, machine gunning willowy youth? Speaking through pleasure disaster?" It's stilted the way it talks, this disease, But it's very specific, and has too many punches to roll with. Too few are lining up to fight, to find out to research around the globe and turn and face this face.


71

Wet Wear Throw the soup over your shoulders, wear liquid for breakfast. Break iron rules, if they have to do with art, not running stoplights, a voice, the host the dust, the muse, allows permits, incites me to say wear your aquarium without the glass, angel fish swimming around your head, break iron into steel into aluminum into plastic into toxic waste into ancient tombs full of radioactivity, the morgue of the faithful scientist, disperse, disperse, bring back the bands of infinite singing exact songs based on urgent needs out of a need to wear your drinks floating in air your chocolate sipped, your orange AsantĂŠ, a fizzing globe you sip, you wear your non-alcoholic beer like a mink stole.


72

Too True I don't have the iron clad genes of genius, I have the origins of talent. Where second-best is the cake you eat most. You don't apologize for the candles, you give them the hole in the ghost. And they give you Pagan Woman, the Hostess with the Most. She becomes pregnantly Earth Woman and Wonder Woman Wishes au contraire. The talent I have given you is red white & blue— my costume super wonder woman amplified in blue, becomes green takes on changing everywhere it goes. Where it goes no mighty knows, but your talent is blessed. The Earth comes up saying it, the answer, answer last— When was the last time you had a blast? Why is it Age tends to make it all too true?


73

The Performance Language should do something other than pray for reality to come true. Poetry should be assessed by millions like real estate. Exclusivity is the paranoia of the ivory tower. When you pull words out of a skull's eyes they take on more meaning. To perform something dead is a valued ridding of the carcass. You start with stimulation and proceed to the utmost banality. Everything is stress & regress, a dream of something funny, a story in reverse. Don’t divulge when you stop, but stop with a bang. If surprise is anything then imagination will destroy it. The freedom to create is the passion of the wealthy. A truly created thing is a joy for the creator. Performed right with style adds wit to nonsense. Bring everything out that the dim birds overlooked. Punctuality is second to dependability, but be there in live costume.


74

What Is Up That Must Come Down Everything goes up that must come down Progressively proscriptural, laying down the law That my body knows no one may follow Let alone the layer. What kind of eggs does that poet lay, self-proscribed Turkey Town Poet Lordeate? Saying "this is that and love is what and text is rot and rat is a bat and you're not this but I am that and this old egg is rotten and I hope it will make you sick I cluck and gobble and they come to talk turkey all my fellow local coop it's turkey time in old Albaturkey & the poet's corner's all took up by now by gobbling over rot, the shit that must come down."


75

Returning I live in my small self, breaking mists into clouds, Removing the skull so the brain can travel That far piece, that rocky place, where a trail Changes into five or six colors and you wish You were a geologist, the red in the rocks stands out Against the blue of the wind in the sky, as everything Spins out below you. I was on Peyote Rock That was Cocktail Rock and now I'm sure is A perch for viewing again perhaps a Meditation point, I don't know what that is— I’ve always traveled in myself, and there with The Jemez capped by Redondo, the weaving of The Rio Grande pulls the green all together in A dry state, the space is always moving.


76

Oh Wait And See Brains are the rains of anuses. Oh Pussy Story, Brains without anuses. If we could only put our thoughts to a lighter use— Thots, thots, thots, But we're too much into Philosophy Fie Fo Fum—We are the worlds that turn the Tums. The Rum-Tutt-ee-Tum, a big fat drum It's my over to you, to use it. And love comes thundering home to meet The really complete man. She, to meet The really completely woman. And that's the story of body wishful thinking brain. I described and that became a comma, a wait In the History of Man-Kind-Woman, oh wait!


77

Magic Stone To make something lively as a setting stone The kind you meet in a fairy tale, around the bend And suddenly you're in and all the leaves haven't dropped off The trees, the trees—oh forest glen an' evergreens The kind you end up teething on, Ponderosa Pine needles To wash your dishes, and the praying, setting stone is really Buzzing and alive with insect life: You drop the rock Afraid you will get bit. And it floats, oval, insects of All-life-Earth-knows in on it, as it heats glows that salmonPink orange-red, shrinks or rather drops back, down A tremendous heat out-of-sight to the Earth's core. And this dirt and whip of ocean covering life in miniature Steams up from it in a throbbing globe, pierced, crazed Wholed, raised, loosened out in every single sight.


78

And Eight Thousand Stars And eight thousand monomaniacal stars were exploded out And that was the daddy, the ditty, that did it. The soul scraped back against the dirt, the resistance Between her & him, the backfire from the muffler 8000 particles out of the exhaust pipe, stars in trained explosion Trained by eye and energy, everything out from center From nothing between the resistance, the hand clap, pop of eye Out & up from evacuating tube, a natural thrust pop All things are natural in these times, of time before the time Up and out of the cave, the long skinny cave, throbbed in Painted walls in, carved in, up out of in exploding stars That is sparks, wall of volcanos in the fuck vision of first time Chummed out, caved in, strung bolted out, to be on the way To become, fire, galactic spastic spaced out on call to life lives.


79

How To Write Too Much There were so many writers they couldn't write without Bumping into each other. At parties, at fairs, at dog shows. Everywhere people looked you saw someone writing, Or a writer walking, taking a course on writing, certainly Buying a book on writing. You took courses in writing in order To get to know how to write so you could teach writing. But then at the proper restaurants or coffee spots were The street writers, or bunches of the non-teaching ones Or student ones, or just hanging-out ones. And they talked And set up empires within certain cells, and propounded That others weren’t really writers, or worse, poets. And the battalion of children's book and young adult Writers really did have books to sell, as did the hoity-toity Science fiction nuts and fantasy-crazed and how-to-do-its Let alone the cook bookers, how-it-was-ers, and elbow to elbow The learning-how-to-tell-my-story writers, and the political And successful and critical and romance and the nonsense writers.


80

The Rose On This Paper I was the thrill that left enough alone and was tall, provided for, and handsome I was the kill that left her like Franchot Tone And all around me the elegance of land and sun I thought I was a wafer I was to bite And did everything in and out till spring A lonely laughing lover passionate white a story of a lifetime, of life on wing. I know I am a planner and fooler too But over the hill is still on it and the grass on the other side going true downside a song of circles in this sonnet How I confess a joy three times has come She felt it too, my lover, loved is one.


81

Home So Soon Love is coming home, a home without a house is calling home a honey, sweet without the sugar, you arrive now unexpected take up residence, TV turns on, orchids, the new laelia bloom misted, airy roots turn green soaking it up, the tropics comes in every room and your white carnation you brought in just adds leis to your shoulders hair clean smelling you turn the afternoon into a turn from the dentist novocain well it's worth it to have you so soon— the sun is still up and you're back the clean air blows fire in stove starts up a warm scene.


82

Art With A Capital T Ode to the ode ode odor, Berg-Webern hors d'oeuvres Frill stuck to the walls and eaten off lick by lick Until the 19th C. turned into 1905 and the smell Of War tore art off the walls, onto the floor Out the back alley, to the dump, nothing was left But the four walls of a bare gallery, a couple hi-fi speakers An AR turntable, Berg's string quartet or rather Webern's or Schoenberg's, the time is 1935. Everything has been heard before, no frills, only the thrill Of Vestige avant-garde, the ultimate up direction Of music, the first movement precedes the 2nd but not The fourth, everything reverses, cubistically or Dodecaphonically, the extreme instance of the intense The pure here-after, the "now" on a high Duchamp stool, A-r-r-T!


83

Garden Art Meredith Monk on the CD, turkeys gobbling outside What is the reason for sickness, what is the reason for suicide We might as well be pregnant with Spring and Earth care anyway we can & aim to turn this stage into a garden of new voices, swelling wombs of paradise— that is the ornamental grasses I plant in that corner music coming up foreign to the jaded ear over there until the artists with the freshest upstarts are planting rows of the oldest plants known to agriculture reaches sepulchers of seeds this momentary stage shines off eggplants, pumpkin, new music, hybrids that will knock your socks off what is the difference between plants and animals anyway, we're all in this boom-boom together, give everything we can to something new coming up.


84

Eagle (I Saw It On TV) Bursting brains of God and fame that is the game of love & laughter, everything. That is the universe has become one body After the big pang, the pain or should I say Extreme discomfort of birth, the perch of Violent eagle, egret is not so, but eagle Yes swoops and it's something I read Or saw on the boobtube I havent seen One in so long but nature programs Supplant the memory, the stages of the Beginning are a stage that is a rough globe That burns but suddenly in slowed down time Erupts, settles still changes as the actors, Every living life are prey to survive, and thrive.


85

Honest, Oh Boy for Bob Creeley Again it is hitting the words free Out of the block of imploded misuse Mr. Singer You, time to see you again When there isn't any time 2000 miles apart, To hear, the architecture of your presence Is an old friend and a glimpse of when We were around the kitchen table far into the night. When they were out to get some fresh air And there was the moon out there and the light Over the table stark high energy that in there Was you, I was just a seed boy at heart Unrealized I would devote my life to plants And performance of the slings of words at My heart, literally, through your guidelines honest.


86

Hot Bath Oh bubble & rub, soap & scour, why not Be a free agent in all of the above? And if there's nothing above & nothing below why not Commit suicide instead of dragging life in tow. So he continued on without any substance simply Taking a hot bath & soaking in it and Somehow they got wind that he thought it out before And they started paying him and knocking at his door. Was he Robert Service or Charlie Bernstein Or was he simply Daphne Warlock or Pat Canary? Little did they know he was none of the above Nor did he think long thoughts or dice them up before Or cook up a scheme or theorize to death He simply got in the bathtub when he damn pleased.


87

Heart, Heart (dream) "In dreams begin our" reparsed entities. The study of cool is cool, oh heart Stop your pounding, lying feeling the blood Reaching the extremities. The clock strikes Nine and my dream is over—there was a big Party of men and we were running, throwing Balls, even I was returning backhanded A basketball as we neared the corner turned Rejoined the party of everybody running Waiting for the big feast and I ran Thru the line of guys tossing as I missed Beach balls? And everything was spacious and Lenore was there Standing and Michelle was a magician waiting, I woke up with my heart pounding.


88

What is the Imagination? What is the imagination the Font & Future of? It was a question mark put to Eternity. Oh when life is so much Romanticism Why are we all piercing our Ears? Not all, some are in the Crucible of Fame, Fortune smiles, but way in the Future, Oh rolling over the Wheel of Fortune and down You can only go up if you hang on there! Everything is an investigation into books being thrown at people: Thus Government, and the Total-Totals. But smaller than that, and more Invasive Is What Is To Be, and the Fountain of Internal Oranges— The font the fount the future of What Is To Be Becomes Reality in Backward Stance, hoping to be Free.


89

"Space Is A Place" "Space is a place," and therefore we will invade it. The radio rolls out the plans to visit Mars, "Moving humanity out into the Solar System— Place means military, science, the private sector. Frustrated with the little ugly wars here, They want them bigger there, way out there, We will sprinkle space with our presence Like peppering the feast, salting the wounds in Outer stellar orbit. Will they have cages Of cooped up chickens, laying pale eggs For the astronauts? Will that Stellar-Baby be Wearing fur coats? Will the Solar Station Porno Shop stock the latest frilly lingerie? And Have marital devices for those horny floating couples?


90

Made For TV Never mind doing nothing when you're watching television It's all in the match between the goods & the bads. What happens next is anybody's guess And therefore there is no conclusion having been no Preliminaries. Those who watch intently undivided Those who fidget, divided endlessly Or do do things and do watch, that's Putting television where it belongs For the most, non educational or artistic times, The common flab of chewing the tube absorbed given in Or the lucky ones doing two things at once. There is no meditation in warfare All rules are subject to disposal, and The worst rule of all is an enforced generality.


91

One One Oh young one one, he was smiling as only A buddy out of the blue can, you wanted to see You see, to bring me the Stroh's, to sweep The floor of the pizza Parlor, to wear An apron, a moustache, a duck-bill hat, advertising Me, me, me, everything in the parlor is me, I mean I'm here, this is all me as I face out into him He wants to go outside where it's beautiful— The sun, the pre-spring warmth, the attraction Of male to male in outings, the baseball season Soon, the garden pulling, the bed, my wife. The energies of someone being simply genuinely Nice—without frills—honest connection of Strangers Renews, the hope, digs the ditches of Spring.


92

Song Word First for Drummond Hadley Without the flair there is no dare, no care to go up all the way from the seed, the given the base-foundation-grounding everything is that— the sperm out of the blue the egg out of the green the orange cap burst back, the skull cap of plant of animal, buzz, ball, socket, fine moire spiral DNA staircase up the mystery murdered death, the covers laid back, the filament the filum, brushed aside, the earth spurts, the waves of "channelled" muses, gods, vibrations, harmonies discordant atmospheres, electric brain charged to zap it out, the arc, the pop the age-old song the birth rock-daddy, seashell woman, be still ha ha! everything else is enhancement of this song word first.


93

Orion Orion, bastion of subcultures, holder Of infamy in the best sense, progenitor of change— Oh underground, underdog, sub-carpet, dive Where the free reign, Kings & Queens of the Future, Telling Fantastic stories under the stars under the ceilings— In the weavings of dance which is closest to the heart, Previous to the flamboyant avant-garde, the air Before the steps of the army of culture, oh Beneficial bacteria, lead us in art in the art of life Oh stars of what's left of constellations Still be our myth, my guiding light, sights My visitation through the rainbow in the caves of secret meetings— Orion, my favorite bold conspirator, conquistador Of change, soft part below your belt shines down.


94

Ph.D. Pisser And that of it on so by to for go Gone home how to build a fire wreck capsize Boats of floating super-intellects molded in The fad of nothing bone ring bath king get Your salary artificial celery non-food I Don’t like real food I PH higher and deeper Exorcise the soul with spiffy tweeds and Yuppie lucky puppy pucky two new babies We all work at jerking meaning out of money Interview brisk young farts whose heads Are ego insignificant bloated into published Fads Videoed movements blessed with power that sledge-hammers Oh so articulately paid by word by phrase by product We piss out our power on the insignificant public.


95

Don't Be A Bore Eggrolls! Sexual Cantatas! Everything you never wanted in a cigaret! Spliced tampons! Worry that you haven't done enough! You can never do enough the older you get. The older you get the less you can plan to know. The less you can plan. So why not enjoy every day. Well, I listen to the news, I criticize, I'm alive With discontent, I verbalize, I play. I'll never make the nerve racket. I'm too odd. I'm simply a regular guy, I say, it's all I know. Listen, I don't listen, economize, I spend. Take advantage of your time, I waste mine. I'm no example. Be an example. Think. Why think? This is it! There's no more. Don't be a bore.


96

A Salad He's gone and there's nothing left but reality. She's not here either, except in the presence of said poetry, Mouth moving to her, his lips moving to him. He's not here, nor his arch-innocent brother, Or maybe they're just friends and they know her. She does have dark hair, and eyes blue, then green— Hazel, only hazel. And he is young—no one's Mopping the floors, bringing the beer like him, it's chatter Idle chatter, but the youth springs up in either one of them The young, possibly brothers, men, and she's not here. There's a raspy "You Keep Me Hangin’ On" coming over The speakers, the Fresh Pasta sign is vivid orange neon. How I hope for some human connection rather than The human condition, but a couple, next booth, are sharing a salad.


97

Reincarnation "Art is nothing more than the" electrocution "of humanity," The spark of the dandy, in honest people's working worlds, A patch to hang up, something told about to stare But not too long, something above the furniture, A sofa pleaser, something worth something— Does the gallery keep you informed of the artist's worth? But in my daily dreams, something rivets the fascination Onto the spine onto the wall, into the act of dance Where the created bustling bounces in the ears— Lives were drawn & quartered to get to sophistication Early lines crossed, zapped out caves, paintings Chants for food, the Earth turning to the sun, The brain wave picked up everything known with Magnetism, death to life in instant pleasure.


98

The Risk for John Liebendorfer Times that fill discontinued garbage bags Will be true, above & blue, for they Are imaged, visualized, laid out on a plain That can always be seen by argument By illusion, suggestion, implication— The thunder of two switches connected in reverse To each other, turns on, the lightning, the rain Fills the unseen, what am I talking, what Are you saying, doing, the risk, above Everything else: he jumped beyond the borders Went to Nicaragua, working in the hospitals there Writes letters back you can't see the USA From the inside, you have to get out, see what It's doing, and I can only imagine what is really real.


99

Song It for Steve Sullivan The edge of the paper is it and if you're tidy You won't spill over in the margins and it Will often be about 5 beats per line or The song of 4 will reassert itself from youth And the Power Culture of America without the K. Oh pop, oh obscure, oh him, himself, Mr. Beautiful Overlaying the Dark Lady of the Sonnets as She rises up from Gaia and Earth Spirits crave something with structure, oh anything will do When doodling is dead, your past is ahead. The young man who asked for my I D, the "flatterer" Brought me my beer, and all is energy when You're most going, I swear by my Gods & Goddesses And they swear by me: to stop on time is sublime.


100

Harley The Sky, a low provocateur of skimmed milk, Blinked out, blinked out, bubble bubbled off. Harley got up on his slim machine, His Yamaha Karate Caress, and sped off over The lurid battlefield of Kawasaki Trails Gouges of homemade dune buggies with beer kegs Strapped on for gas tanks. He was A Master of Yellow Pages, finding parts no one Knew still existed for his Husqvarna Hornet, his Suzuki Zipper, his Honda Polaris, his Knight Cycle numbed apple Brilliant Stars, his Moto Guzzi guzzling Wet jets in the sky: trails led left & right From his speeding heart, Harley, David's Son.


101

Post-Modern Sex Oh Macho Man, be my Clitoris Hippy, Stars caterwaul and tongues depress "Im gone, I'm gone," she said entering Gertrude Stein. He was too tough to be worth anything & the world, heated up, worshiped him. As everything got tougher, She declined, and then Gertrude Grob-Prandel, Wagnerian Soprano, overfat but aware, and then, and then Gertrude Lawrence. Lawrence, St. Laurence, St. Gertrude. Oh rivers of the mind, repressed Earth—the cat's In heat, the greenhouse is in heat, the vibrant tie-die shirts And splattered painter's pants: everything's Screaming for seduction but afraid, and thus A book gets read, a writing written, a positivist structuralist Theory posed, a rule stretched to its limits, and broken into orgasm.


102

Education of a Sonnet A Sonnet, semiotics of phonics, the master begetter of The master begetter, the mistress-master, the sign Of signs, where everything learned as a child is in neon. Your name in neon you learn it, your learning visualized You name it, play games with it, it takes over As you age, I age in names, I sound till found And round the corner of squares in ivory, towering Prolifically, scale to everyday heights as Theory throbs to its last murdering self, and its monetary clique hangs on into culthood, making money out of plastics, as quality floors manhood and soaring becomes flight of heart, heart an organ transcended, the body saw thru soul as the magician is an elementary teacher, Miss Brown, Miss Smith, Miss Woo.


103

Higher Ed The good things about it are the good things about That have to be said or they won't be read And if they aren't read there they're dead. And they are living, the real, the live, the young, The listeners, the learners, the potential earners, The youth mob, the best of, the nexus you're A proximity to, all that vibrant speed— The use of the library, if not the use of the faculty, Looking at students, going to art events there. There would be nothing without being in a piece Of its shadow, if not light: who would buy books? Who would go to art cinema, support cheap Surrounding businesses, it's the flock of cranes whooping Over Albuquerque, dipping wings at the University.


104

Slippery Faddists A plague on their rubber noses, may they Never use their plumbing fixtures again— The upper ups on the pyramid of power Can afford to go without the conveniences Of insignificant life, oh let them bathe in The bank of their plenty, the plastic Character of their muse, their vinegar-soaked Bones of greed, of their natural riding on The popular's distaste, everything worshiped Because it is a fad, oh it's going that way catch it! As society jumps on the dating game to the top— They can do without toilets, without disposals, Without dishwashers, without sinks and running water Without their slippery spines and their asshole noses.


105

Spring Child for Michael & Judy Oh Birth, that is the Thirst, that changes everything— Thank God for the Telephone, the Freedom to Ring. Oh Children of our lives, and ongoing Telegram I morse-code you, somehow synchronicity works When it works—I call David & he says Michael & Judy had her baby Emily today, And we wonder getting older if it's worth it not To let our defenses down to say something simple: How opposite to machinations of the intellect, Birth. Or robots turning out ever more computer gizmos As everything pops up around us in Spring— I always want to drink water, & beer, milk— The breast, the sky, the rain, this Spring, this April, This Emily, this birth, this cherry, daffodil tulip apple bee blossom time.


106

The Feast Is For Peace Peace, oh waxes the taxes & burns Them down, like candles on the altar of Spring Winter Autumn Town, oh Fall Monster, axing everything, Beast left & right— Fall, Spring Monster that would complicate the Feast. The Feast is for Peace that eludes, eludes, eludes— The rude clod the demi-god the captains generals fight Is simply keeping themselves employed by the military might Keeping themselves in swimming pools and flights around the world With their coddling prodding wives waxing in the benefits Tinny soldiers all man & woman fringing sucking our money off Ever bigger I poke you with my poem in your inflated ass I burn you down with candles as I eat my garden feast Oh year-round Beast eat the dust cry because for once, there's none for you. /15th of April, 1988


107

Are You Suddenly Employed? The Incredible Sexual Tango— Oh Mr. Freud Are you suddenly annoyed? You and Nietzsche too. Look at Mr. Jung, he's certainly not too young. But I don't use those words any more. I am Post-Pleasure Mr. Sexual Bungle Stylish, even passée, full of fools Sound over Matter, Matter over Horn. Horn of Plenty, I am your lowly worm. But we do big things, when we get around to it, And are the Gardener's friends, we consult the enemies. We are too true to be blasted into the blue. Mr. Sexual Plenty a Tango and a Two Down the streets of big houses and they aint churches Caught you in the lurch all you reverend gurus— Are you suddenly employed, hey Mr. Freud?


108

Liars Convention There is no Deception where Hypocrisy is King. Everything anyone says is a lie. You don't have to worry about Truth or not. Nothing anyone says is true. And you Don't say anything honest and true to Any person living or dead. You can even Lie to your animals, those turkeys won't know the truth Or the dog, the cat and all the plants you talk to Only hear lies, if they hear. It's such a relief Turning on the radio or the TV and knowing Nothing you hear, nothing you see has any relation To truth. Thank God, the Greatest Liar of all Attends this convention, this convention of broadcast Earth— Everyone you meet or know or love never tells a lie.


109

Speaker Speak I want you to believe everything I tell you, I write In the morning, at noon, at night, any time I talk I listen to what talk says. And everything artificial is Outside the tunnel of ink that streams down willingly Thru my pen. I love to address you formally. I love to think you do care, and do. I trust Through every door that comes along its way, this String of thought runs past and pure, untrammeled by Guitar strings—is the stories around the fire Is in memory packed down tight, to come to light Like love, what is love, this I say I don't know trust Is the love I write/say through technology, leap over centuries If anyone is still here, still, my love it starts with you. This long familiarity, I know I speak through.


110

A Fashion of Form Isn't it wonderful that these words mean nothing at all? That all my love for you stated is thoroughly out of vogue? That what holds water is a thing of the past And I can give up my kisses communicated thus? No one cares having heard it better in a previous century And a thousand times this in every public place? At last we are liberated from substance only form Prevails as a love sonnet lovely growing older Together enhanced by the chances of seasons and The order of gardens we willingly slave to produce In every enjoyment of fresh tomato, bell pepper Infinite basil, thyme, oregano, jalape単o honey & creamCorn & sturdy stalks of celery of our love these 19 Years have no content, no relevance or fashion, no gutsy, reality?


111

I Hope to Reach More Comm- (itchy cue) Unication, vacation in The nation of lips to ears, fingers to ears, face To ears or to eyes, face and/or hands to eyes— Or all to fingers, itching. I sing say push lip-sync Read, think out loud just I guess like You Communicating. All aggressive "man" some say Hustler-vibes, push-introduction energies Are to reach more people as if the population Is so tough you gotta be tough and yet I From Taoist (supposed) center am femininely feeling my way through Manhood, or, as just you The opposite, do? Aren't we all mixed? I dare say I sing my say-song, say my sing-song To hopefully, I Vow, more of you night-long.


112

Hard Wind Spring Who knows what gives the Godawful breeze its suspenders That can be yanked out of Hell so easily Held up from Hell on the Face of the Earth Is there any doubt Hell doesn't exist? With Visions tearing up the Trees at Night Visions of Apples and Pears and Pomegranates Being attacked by gentle Punkers, their Wild, Inflamed Hair and Mohawk Tattoos lighting up the Dark. Winds from Baby Breezes Pretend to be tough. These Southwest Mesas Or are they Northeast Dive Bombers Are ruined by the Winds of Spring, the Pretensions That anything exists. "Purity Sucks" said the Devil Who's a figment of Prunehood, and it's all Storytelling, with a Heart of Mold, or Spring itself may blow away.


113

At Home with the Dead for Walter Hall and . . . Let Carl alone. And Lee. Let the spirits of the Dolphins rest in peace. All the distinguished species, require rest, for a long time: critics, go home Let Ann alone, and recently, Walter. And of course Max, so close, Max. And Robert, so near, so far. Let the Spirits of the Apples rest in your eyes: Poetry is reading that Death is Surprise, "I'm one of you, and you can tear me apart From limb to limb, and mount me in a Horror Show, I don't profess anything, its all confession: Ann again, a different Ann, coming back to life Entirely in my mind, let us alone, Lee, me.


114

Out of the Hat Poetry is emotion geared by reality. It sings, if the poet lets his heart out. If he sets on it, that's a different story— one of repression and intellect. Thus Old timey language is nothing new— William Carlos Williams sings to the heart of things or says it in a tinny voice that is true to the weight of his words, as everybody great gears up from the day, the universal pool of specifics: I say, give it all you got, whether they slop over you Or not. Don't set on your words like a chicken Surely evolution owes you the magician, the hat you pull everything out of, you know you never put a single thing in.


115

Circulation of the Gods He wrote a book & that book was called The Veins of God In it he plunged, pumped along by an Unknown Heart. "Which God," he thought, the one he had rejected? Which turned into many? There seemed to be One Being which was himself, as he watched himself on television Being broadcast to millions, when suddenly He was caught up in himself, pumping, and he spurted On through, tumbling, afraid, a nightmare, he woke up. Oh if I could have dreamed a little longer I would have been purified, I would have sped through The lungs, and felt the pulse of breathing! But then, awake, he wondered what he looked like On television, when he was watching himself in the dream: And if he wrote the book wasn't he the Gods he seemed?


116

Caldera "I want out," my Psyche said "And you shall come out of yourself." Me out of myself, I inquire of the Sorcerer You my guru core group will expose yourself? "We must update Myth and update Jung & Freud. We must transcend elements the tiny chips of electrical pizzazz. Your dad's, your grandma's, your family tree." I want to contain myself, I say, to me. Get back in, get back in and be free. Contain it, stamp it, eclect it, conform Adjust they said, assume the dead Posture, Be cremated in the burning lake that used to be Caldera. I am a fugue always exposing myself, yourself inside me.


117

Armchair Listener for John Stearns I've always talked from some older "text" that had Nothing to do with "writing," for armchair Listeners—wonder with everybody water surfing Or working or TVing, when are they armchair listeners? But I can fantasize my mind, pretend I know what I think Hope that I get off the page to where I started again. I'm listening for you I used to have before I wrote. I was then saying it to you now & then— I was simply a new thot strung together with new parts. I was the old thing going again, that old Ford pickup repaired. I saw you today carrying a load of sand, John Stearns For building your new bedroom for the Kids. You do it yourself and have to depend on nobody— In that old pickup, you are my perfect Armchair Listener.


118

She Speaks That's art: put a hat on it, That's not a fart, with a dent in it. Anybody can make anything interesting they can. It has the human touch, it takes guys with ties on them And strings them to laughing branches: Mother Nature has come alive with human attributes, If only to save herself from this frequent interloper, Overpopulating his flesh and making too much art With dents that aren't navels, people that aren't human Robots of the mercenary covering up their greed: She's had enough of them: Enough is enough. Only the human humans will survive, your society Is an artificial crashing bore. People with dirt Under their fingernails and art in their heart, I love I like.


119

The Greed Disease They'll build funnels right next to you & funnel out your waste A big engine going as they suck out your life in haste They don't care what it is they'll take it market it— It's you, great big paranoid you they want to turn to shit. The roads come right up to your door the noise Filters through the grates, the insulation walls are toys— They're bigger, they're big money they're in cahoots after you And when you're squelched they'll go on to another human insect fool You're worse than Kafka's cockroach, you're too shabby to boot It's on, ever on the ever widening pathway to their door Where the gold concubines hang on swingers' elbows And BMW's do-se-do with Porsches and the power whores Screw the diamond bastards in ultimate sexless fuck of towering Money hungry suck, will the greed disease self-destruct?


120

My Love of Ever Great Life I have touched the great and the great have touched me That destroys libraries and restores the looks I get back from my mirror, a face to shave, to shape It has none, there is only the great. I mean Ginsberg, Rosalie, Utah, Creeley, Ann, Ken Philip, Duncan, Marianne Moore, Marilyn, more— Two hummingbirds after scarlet lightning two Cauliflowers, perfect, photographed by my son— The clouds that don't hinge on development But unfold themselves against the ever blue sky I search up for the norm that says it's okay to be the way I create though it takes its toll Dorn, Ned, Jack, Judy, and I wish Gertrude, and almost Charles—my love of ever great life—Lenore, more.


121

Truce The world is so diverse you might as well enter into your adversaries, You just put up fresh flags and stay true to honesty— I will not defame the character of my flesh Though I'm fighting for the other dog I'd just as soon explore the character of the enemy— Be powerful, wealthy of course in the course of nations Doing whatever you damn please, oh I'd make a king I could be a Shakespeare shaking his lance a lot Or a more modern Bush shaking the bugs out. The thing I hate is me sometimes, more than lonely times So I am honestly me in contradiction of myself: That's the noise of battle, an innocent plane shot down Mistaken for the military: now that I've been so bad I'd rather be on my side, arming nothing, declaring a truce.


122

Racing to the Stars Why do I submit myself to your enduring grace It's not the mature thing to do, or creative. To see you sweeping the room with your eyes, never to light except too lightly, on mine curiously boring, to you. That you should take up acting, pick yourself up and out of here That too, a deserved star, the configuration of the genes of chance Or whatever it is suddenly brings to this planet something beautiful In maturity, racing to the stars and back when you do The smile, the voice, the whites of eyes flashing What could your tender fatherhood be but everything to a woman, my friend, My friend the woman in me is really a man, simply A guy whose perfection rings the bell, and praise, and praise, Oh hell, days and days of submitting myself to Your discovery, your making it big, where all, or many, many can see.


123

On The Way Love is bonding, a little thing that goes click! And how do you do it, you are seized and then You are seized again, and you are seized over & over All your life until you die, giving up, But these takings over come slower, farther apart As you me we, I guess, get older. I am 53. I am now seized in a different way, ALSO, in large letters, I am overwhelmed with one & a half glasses of beer That brings out my thinking bonded body. What would I do without family. What would I do without arms, & legs. Everybody copes or, nope! I don't know, I just At 5:45 with the day declining love it when my family get home. How silly to complain so much. We can still fight our battles.


124

In Performance of the Question I must connect with someone who loves the language in Vachel Lindsay, Abraham Lincoln, Otto Jesperson, The OED, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Gertrude Stein, of course, Ed Sanders, Sonia Sanchez, Lenore Kandel, Joanne Kyger, Louise Beebe Wilder, Janet Cannon, Drummond Hadley, Adlai Stevenson, Miriam Sagan, John Wieners, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson picking up fragments of paper and reading, aloud, why isn't there a word, between that & performing, why is it so embarrassing not to make your wave in print, but in local voice, I mean, it is, extended like the family tree in a fan shape, not a pyramid up, I say, read aloud, not recite but I guess, perform Shit! from the page, the ages of music correspond, this is a sonnet of the love between the voice & the page.


125

Break Out Sonnets, sound tucks. Sentence, in every word. You are sentenced to life imprisonment, sentenced In other words. Double meanings are anathema, Pope says --Scientists, exactologists, but me, I, am, open, because I don’t read only, I speak-say, live it up to oral precedent. The little voice in my ear that also sees it on the blackboard Tells me discursive lies, that are the forebears of truths, as far as I go, I see, I am bound to discipline of ear and eye, to message. I'm in prison of poetry and bound up with other poet inmates. As independent as we all are we are one with the street guys The academic stall characters or lack of, the prurient egotists With their hearts on their sleeves, we all beat our heads against the wall --This is a performance today, I hear what I saw-thot, saw-thot: We break out, out of bounds, we're off the page and in the world forever.


126

Is "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday" but tomorrow is the sorrow that flowers arent around even the birds, even the air, the water, humankind. Or tomorrow is simply today in a cycle that never ends. We're all on coils asleep, awake, eating—forgetting— Around and ahead or is it behind, I wish the coil was Around and behind, tomorrow becomes yesterday: that is the Romantic in me, how gorgeous the Dark Ages, Now that seems defeatist even if they were illuminated, And the music both in and out the Church was bouncy. I guess I'd rather go forward picking up the backward as I go, If I go anyplace with absence of power-money Only me, a family, a house, and gardens, some friends determined, where yesterday always becomes today, today.


127

The Greedy Greedy Today is the yesterday you worried about tomorrow. And time is timely, flies like flies, the perception of permission To live to see to breathe, to be, not too big, not bigger than the Planet Earth. Why worry at all if hubris isn't king or queen let them, the too-big headed war-mongering, those who shake your dreams Should I say one's dreams? no, many many dreams Are shaken, molded, rattled by the self-righteous egotists Who care less about us in their dreams, tho I wonder if I ever enter The big shots' dreams who don't know me from Adam, or Eve. I'll tell you why I worry, because I've spent my life with the poor, The poorer, the artists poets dancers, well they hardly ever had money And the work-hard workers of my friends and pot-luck acquaintances. We build everything we build, say everything I say to send this singing To their hearts, the greedy greedy, their too-big bodies that don't respect the Earth.


128

Gemini in the Forest "Language is spoken sound" as we mish-mash together In the deep dark pandering forest we are on the crotch of the whore Nature is the prince, the princess king, the Queen the precise bitch The everything we adore—my alter-ego and I, my other self My imagining traveling partner, my itching companion The Dante Troubadours are singing in the kitchen, kitchen of the forest I am discovering myself here interfering in all art That comes my way, the devouring of everything in its path The packing away every crumb in ant caverns below The eating away of every log from the heart within The misadventure of hope and absurdity of human depression: I'm just in the way—unless I drop dead My wordiness, my sounding out my name, Larry, scares everything way, As if I or my other truer self existed.


129

Miscarriage of the Muse It's such a miscarriage to abortion twist city, We shouldnt do what I do or everything would come to a halt. Im too slow for the card-carrying universe therefore will be ground under Heels, batteries, multi-epistemologies, everybody knowing their logocentrism. You must, to be hired into dust, and dust is where the money must be. Post-structuralism is moving in, a turn-key house. Spiritualism is dwarfing ghosts to fit your alma mater, A silly word with hysterical use. Everybody reads In order to keep up: refunctioning semiotics could make you more money, Get you published in the haughtiest of intellectually dishonest urinals. It all goes down with a flush if it works, if you've mouthed the latest zip code, With enough digits to reach the paradise of hermeneutics, So that common daily discourse is poetry of the muse now denuded Stripped bare of her motorcycles, and whipped dry for being creative.


130

A Performance for Nathaniel & Janet Talking with your poetry open, you may say what you may wish But the thunderstorm may bring another torrent to An already wet July in New Mexico, rather than What you did wish to say—I wish a wish I Am 53 I wish I were younger by a day oh So much younger by a day—talking with your poetry open You can breathe and speak, you are not dirty dusty book bound You are on the performance of history, Vachel Lindsay comes Chanting by a star, a lesson in astronomy, oh the stars Beneath the lid of storm over the mountain I live on the side of The giant shoulders & distant rumbling still as I am supported by the strength of this sloping land As much mine as anybody's, here to grow from Up & from this lush Paradise its time has come.


131

"Let Progress Pass You By" —The Delphic Oracle Life is a pigeon high transformed into a macaw If you allow yourself to go asleep in the backyard And let progress pass you by on its infinitely destructive course. "Slow down, think small" they used to say in print And now someone has whispered this to you in a backdoor john You come up to the front of the house and cast your votes for being late A thousand things jump at you all demanding to be done I will tackle them one by one and never get to the end, end Listen to what the Delphic Oracle has for you, You pay as you enter If you do not believe the words she says through smoke and fuzz From the tripod of her fire, "You've got to cut down on your numbers Stop playing Vegas with population—no more gets to populate The nest we chickens made, maybe one or two, but open arms are a bore When they're millions wanting more, be nice but never advertise, never, never advertise."


132

Visitation Those were pearls that were her eyes, seven fathoms deep Those were curls of her youth washing every which-away Those the teeth, the teeth still that drank the scotch and tea Now on the bank bed asleep forever and more does she ever see me, try to enter in? Is she with my other friends knocking at the door? Those were pearls and cameos, an old friend dead another And another dead, are you dreading that I think of you Am I just obsessed, simply have the time to dream of you Gone, gone, gone, when everybody else is at work Battering on the clocks and joking just to make it better. I have the time to think for better or for worse While they are out bending banks to build their faster world I dream a daydream of Ann, and more, my mother---or the many more.


133

Hector, Fighter Hector, Hector? Chiropractor? Practitioner? Choral surgeon? Symphony conductor. Combo organizer. Is a beaut from the Garden of Troy with us again? Where you were dragged to death by Achilles the heel. Or rather killed & then dragged to the Greek ships, by him. But before that and after you were the great hero, Like Truman who dropped the bomb: oh no, you fought Taught the World Valor, the distinct pleasure of masculine adventure, And although Troy was smaller than Frontier Ford in size It seized centuries of readers, as it had seized ancient hearers, Oh hear, it was a War over control of the Black Sea trade According to Graves. We die a hero's death every time we die Or I wish I could fight and truly deserve the pyre with smoke up in the sky Hector, actor, actual man my fight gains my enemies are on the losing side.


134

Dance Sonnet for Lee Connor Around the throw, the wing, the fingers Some of my best friends are white, still they die in darkness The curtain, on the other side, curtains, on the other side Around the twist, the sheer humanity of your whole soul The humanity of 360 degrees of warmth and excitement The big unfolding of the body, coming out of a crouch? The hands seem to touch, releasing serpentine upswinging Energy of desire to implant your memory, planted The body uprooted, yours in this photograph catches As catch can, the smile the head up eyes half open the stimulation Of your dance exhilarates up, turning around almost A throw, the pitcher's mound, the flowers of body, in the muscles Flown in form all the way from East Indian dance to flung New York North North the West West, the life life South, the chances sing in dance.


135

A Gift I Hope It takes you into an experience you've never had, amplifies, exemplifies, the ultimate performance if it does work because it's on unsteady ground butterflies in the stomach, you're going on, they're out there but there is no audience, you improvise before the page writing down your memory of the voice in the garden knocking in your head. Instructions are difficult when there's everything to risk, and when it's done your family can't understand it and would rather read and write a Hallmark card verse. And those at the top are so at war with their wits and protecting what few jobs accrue from it, that that essential joy the original thing you wrote you heard I copied down fearing I would drop off all the way through, is personal, simply, from me to you.


136

Las Huertas What happened to the Gardens? We used to have one We let it all go to weeds, we used to have a lot of stuff. Too much trouble. Too much time. It didn't fit the romantic picture Growing your own food, too complicated, in short Too much work for too little reward. True It tasted great—those tomatoes, etc. etc. etc. etc. But, now is the time for all good people To come to the band-aid of their country, and that's the gross National product, not spending so much time without a paycheck To show you your work was worth it. Not spending time with The plants, the plants, not the infinite worry over bugs And how to kill them, avoid them, prevent them, grow The plants into their glory, not the peace of mind that comes from rewarding ground, And living only, only where there's water & hope these crops are our organic future."


137

Whim Did Primitive Man floss? Where did Primitive Man come from? Who invented floss. Oh floss, that strings up the bathroom wastebasket, How could we ever meet in Florida, oh Primitive Woman, I mean Primitive Woman Speak to me, tell me something, at least. Did you ever floss? "I don't have to reply to you (deep female voice) You simply, simple, simplecissimus, elementary pleasure Of mine, go see all the 40's black & white movies And then, ask for a job. I will give it to you. You will sell my movies. You will come to see me. You will simply, simpleton, enjoy yourself. I'm simple-minded too, when I'm not complicated. Oh listen to the rival poets wanting to do you in. Sing a song of sex peace, Love and whim."


138

Tequila & Lime The drink was taken drinkwise until the drink was drunk, And drunk he lay dreaming—dreaming dreaming drunk. Was he drunk from dreaming even tho he drank a drink Or was he dreaming drunk, unremembering drunk. He woke up not remembering a thing that he did, and slowly A picture of him drinking till the drink was gone Now everything turned on, the light was on he was installing A ceiling fan where she wanted it over the bed. She was watching A French movie in the other room. He wired and cursed And looked for tools he couldn't find, and then got it together tho He broke a bit of the globe below the fan. It works! He put away some things & sipped the bit of tequila lime juice & sugar. Went to bed tired, not too pleased with his shoddy work, of course not. To get up the next day and think of the drink, until, the drink, was drunk.


139

Heart to Mind The importance of reading poetry aloud Has never been estimated because in the beginning That was all there was, that is, the hearing it aloud— Or reacting to, or remembering it. So it's a degree On the steps of time how much emphasis you want to Put on it, if any, at all. You don't get a degree For reading poetry aloud unless you got one in performing Shakespeare. Most poets get their degree(-zzah) In writing, they don't even encourage poetry readings They want your thesis, your introduction to your own work: They want you to become like them: totally unalive poets Who gloat on the printed page, the academic ruin of What started poetry. What started poetry, way back when we Began to stand, and address the issues of our hearts?


140

New Mexico Style Oh Sky that is my bosom, Flower that is my defect, (female voice) How the Southwest lifts me to enchantment, Enchantment of moron over dolt, enrapture of the mesa Catty-corner across from McDonald's in Bernalillo. My high-flying boots straddle that bohemian cactus there And it's pleasure! Only a woman would know. My river goddess Alpha Romero speeds down the Interstate: These stones are my inner tones, and Nature marches on. Coyote is a woman, woman is a muchacha grown up to seùora, The sky is full of rainbows over the Chile Harbor Where the Rio Grande meets the infinite, the infinite turquoise drama. My grandmother showed me everything I know back in Brooklyn "Come to New Mexico, they'll love you there—there're More of us there than the natives, and we populate and shit in style."


141

City in the Sun for David The house that he lived in he built himself, well there were friends Who helped out pouring the foundations, laying the adobes Putting up the vigas, and some who came over for The plastering. And there were mistakes—the kitchen Was the wrong shape, but the place was nice, the dream he fused Into reality with her, for her, for him he did it. And there was that unfinished room with all the junk in it That was now becoming, yes it was the nice big bedroom They planned. Meanwhile more and more people Were coming, and they got him to build for them. He was a contractor now having learned everything himself. That was the difference between him & them, He built from scratch everything he had, they did nothing Themselves, they bought it, their instant city in the sun.


142

Making it Big for Dagoberto Gilb It's alright to switch subjects midstream, if you don't lose your focus. You can come back and finish it later, that's considerate If you're telling a story. Everything I've written is a guideline to myself on How to create art. Art for masses of asses, millions of jillions: The entire universe with all its galaxies flows– – – Why not go to the top, is that only reserved for presidents of this and that? Go ahead hold out and get published by Random House, Harper and Row. You deserve to be paid for your work and not have to nickel-dime it all the way. Most people, when they are informed, will like you. Most people are not asses, I hope I'm not one, there is hope. But there are millions of us out there in the universe And we only have this planet to play with, though the Weird Eyed May come and visit us soon. Go to the top, you're right. They'll be knocking down the doors from Mars & beyond, wanting to read your book.


143

Quiet is Winner of IHSF Award, 1988 The Academy of American Fidgets has just announced the winner Of the Imogene Hopkins Stuart Malfeasance III Award For Carrying a fish with clamped feet over the Brootkins Institute. Mary Mary Mary Quiet has swallowed a canary And was first hand-standing over the Institute while Her feet held a Brooklyn trout. At the other end The honorary board members of the A of A Fidgets Nervously docked her only one report for having not been From Latvia. The University there is seen to be the Primary Institute for fish-jumping, standing on hands, And catching diseased trout. But Mary Mary Mary Quiet did graduate with beaucoups des honors from The numbskull Apparatus Part-fixing Academy in Why Lean? Arkansas, a first, and we hope, a last.


144

Attraction If your Attraction is bi-fed, post-nutrient one-one-one It will be a diversion that might get you into Sexaholics Anonymous, Or if it transcends Suzy, Ephraim, Skullduggery prosthetics It will draw Doctors to you, Man & Wife, Life Suppositories Expository righting, what was wrong. Be a moralist. Stand up for your attraction. Be magnetic. Hold your own. You are the desire of your making, the extreme cream job. Going home au natural will get you bliss, Fort Bliss. The entire military establishment stands at your door, Watching television till you bomb them with your condom bomb. Oh come to me long, my Attraction, duo-concertante in the nude Thrill will thrill, Safe will be safe, lately rife Everybody is crawling up out of themselves, to be Themselves, attracted to attraction, safe in perfect energy of themselves.


145

Rivaling Angels and Visitations. Oh Rival Poet Why are you so successful, and I'm such a clod. I guess I went off the course by courting you— Thinking that success would easily come my way if I worked hard & dogmatically, offering all my substance to God, or Coatlicue. I have given everything to every Item of my existence and I still give. I am the post-postModern equivalent of a non-pigeon hole, I simply Grow my gardens in order to exist, I mean, live. But you, oh W.S., oh magician Merlin Oh Voice of the past, telling me what to do— Ancient Greeks that are forever young, oh young— Oh sex of literature guide me, I am no older than The beauty you become, the beautiful, I'm sorry, my species is Mutating in me, in you young lovely rival, I mean, what poetry becomes.


146

Sword of Love When Love tempers and doesn't get harder It's so romantic, it flies off the handle And I can catch you almost when I want you Almost all the time is when I get you. That is an embrace and we touch the face That is a kiss and a hug and a kiss. That is strongest love that older and more easy As the time of day when everything is pleasing. That, my dear, is rare. There is a time of day when we Can be free to hold on to life as if it isn't passing Bye-bye! I've got you. It's a sword made of three Kinds of metals beaten into swirling shape And plunged sizzling into the water bath, that's Home at last this love is no act.


147

Golden Shadows of the Flowers Golden shadows of the flowers of love— Is that what I'm always speaking of? Or the yearning wish-I-had, wish-I-had, wish-I-had In that way everybody is the same unless they lay themselves To blame and pretend reality of life does not exist— Yearning and, or love, usually both that play in the shadows Where you and I walk, along the rustling water, The irrigation flow and every time I return to the flower, Say last night when this aromatic large spidery bloom opened up For us all to admire as if we were tropical night insects, And the last sun of sunset, catches on the walls In the same shadows of leaves once and for all This voice, minute, of mine, that only says it lingers on Into the best time of day, tonight, this morning, it's gone.


148

When a Poet for Paul Blackburn He was a poet when a poet could be a poet— Not a dandy when a dandy is just another dandy. I got the news and the news was not good but the news Is never good when you get the news. You were the only one who befriended my wife she was pregnant, quiet and all the writers stood up For other things. You were you, Paul we met the first And last time in that Berkeley San Francisco Mills College light. Standing on porches, drinking down silences While they were arguing, the snobs against the pompous The intellectual weight of the evangelical fringe The gospels of poetry were meshed against each other. You stood the way, the glasses, the palms behind the moustache You smoked, and wrote. You become and are more than a poet.


149

Star You are so Beautiful, why aren't other people struck Around you to every moment stare, Stare every minute, second, openly feast, and feast The perfection of the human universe held in silhouette One time, this time, you spin out the pizza dough On backs of hands, ambidextrous, whirled up in the Air Floating, whirling coming down I stare—what is this Love of the human when the other species are knocked cold solid Conforming to the upward fist thrust of the military tight-laced body? How can a human being be so solidly, amazing, beautiful, when The Planet isn't resting, isnt even recuperating, From human human human too many humans? And in a pizza parlor, it comes to nothing save Your leaving, there's nothing, but sad commentary on everything common.


150

Neo-Anti-Climax No one wanted to hear a story: that was ordinary. They wanted to screw up their faces in the academy, and make money Hand over fetus, fact over fiction, secure your idleness in the ivory tower And the lovely princess will present you with a shower Plenty of free time in the free rain as gold trickles down between your legs. Don't be vain you may be pregnant with your next book, you must be, You must worship the pain of birth as your IBM processes each page And the journals and the presses regress, you press it from your dress, Your panting pants, your dress slacks bulge in polyester book birth Back to the basics of cash register authoring, rehearsing research over & over On dead fish, antique bait, swallowing outdated hook line and sinker To tinker into tenure ultimate nonsense neo-free-oh post toasties TV idle time of the idle academic mores of uncreated anti-climax.


151

That Hill Develop the hell out of that hill: till there's nothing left But the rich staring at the rich, the greedy dripping on the greedy, The tasteful yards of swings and horses, poisoned lawns and subdued noises Screeching vistas see we made it made it maid it's silently protruding As the poor stinking there below wallow in their garden filth Their puny trailers and old fashioned true adobe homes And new American cars are far from New Age plunder of the old to fabricate the rich. Tear the hell out of nature just to get your vista there Change everything around to serve the overpopulation plague Get more made it, part-time millionaires in to boost your self-esteem, preen you With their easy oh so white feeling oh so similar to you Bounding up the ladder of your oily ego preening Narcissistically oh so pathetically power-puking on your hill for all to see.


152

Verse Work The gabber gabbed, the gaper gaped Everyone was in Elementary Doll Playing they brought Barbie Dolls & GI Joe's to life To compete with the Pinocchios— He was a common slut of a poet Who wrote for the masses whoever they are. He simply rearranged clichés and called it verse Critics called it terse, his mother called it poetry. But in actuality he was lighter than a dollar, A language poetry Hallmark versifier— And in the middle of the night he did what he wanted to He babbled babble and the idle academy paid him for it He turned on the switch of his nonsense, played with dolls Until all of them, one by one, came to life.


153

You Can't Have It All Eternal Muse, the fuse that ignites blackouts. The brain drains down its sides, there is no left and right there Is only overall. Wet. Live. Admission. Free. Whoever heard of free. Free. Nude, whoever heard of nude. Nude. Freak, whoever heard of old times. New times, whoever heard of the first row of the marching band, Marching out of step and in disarray. Everything breaks down Because of unhappiness. Do you love your job? What would you rather do? Do. You can't. I can't. I can. I do. I did. I'm done. I marched In perfect human order well back in the ranks playing the snare drum. I was never the avant garde. I simply provided the beat. Whoever heard of the beat. The beat. Why Is this so sensational, so enjoyable? Because Sex enters all and the mind gives you something to praise every daze Is secure, but cycles take over, you can't have it all, love, light, muse.


154

All of Love I can have all of love, played to a tired cello Perked up to Bach's best, the message drums in the Congo the cello, the Congo, the amazing Amazon, the woman the River, the unpolluted Ocean, the nature harmonies the voices of the Globe in multifarious harmonies. Two hundred & fifty years ago the music is still young Buoyant to any mood, unaccompanied cello accompanied in this life by this life—I mean, a flower in the atmosphere one gives the other to imagination. Three moonflowers the other night and the orchid cactus from the canopies of Guatemala blooming one two three blooms on successive nights in full burst of exotic white, sweetness and strange, to wilt in the morning, we sleep in the only sleep there is side by side by and in the aromatic air with rain, the late summer gone.


155

Footnotes for Lenore All art passed before me in the form of plants All the rules and regulations of the sport stopped, As we, the only biology with botany in the lead Rebuild or allow to rebuild, the ABC's Of the Tao, the voices from the Aspens, where their leaves Dropped almost instantly this Fall, as if they forgot to turn— Humus anything you add to make it better, makes it better— Completes the circle, breathing in, the plants that are remaking The Earth, the dirt if you can find clean dirt, Good, clean, dirt, enrichening the soil Is a matter of transportation—the plants' way of doing it Is rising and falling, green crop manure, Into the organic matter, possessing the Gods of the earth The manlets, the womanlets, let's see, what's right at my feet.



The End



When Day Is Done Sonnets are a jerk off of the mind. They are an everyday occurrence, or can be. For me they free the intellect to return to the body. They are the ritual of music, based on time: without it there’s nothing for these arts. Forever there is the possibility of concurrence, collaboration: thus music teaches poetry and intellect returns to the body. Facets of, picture windows of, stained glass windows of, a ring of circles of — say niches at Casa Rinconada around the kiva walls. Simply, each time I write it’s regulated like the reoccurrence of every day: it has 24 hours, it (the sonnet) has 14 lines. I know about when it’s going to end: I count lines and welcome rhyme but don’t place it. I enjoy the limitation: it’s like lieder, American lieder. Song. They are songs, art songs. Where everything is possible but the day must come to an end. /14Apr88 Larry Goodell


All of Love Contents Alphabetical A Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 A Writer's Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 A Definition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 A Magic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 A Gift I Hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 A Letter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 A Fashion of Form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 A Cookbook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 A Salad.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 A Novel In 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 After the Sun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Air. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 All of Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 And Eight Thousand Stars.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Are You?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Are You Suddenly Employed?. . . . . . . . . . 107 Armchair Listener. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Art With A Capital T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Ass Hunter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 At Home with the Dead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Attraction.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Boogie On the Square. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Break Out.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Caldera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Centerpiece. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Circulation of the Gods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 City in the Sun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Compost. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Crows Looking Down.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Dance Sonnet.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Don't Be A Bore.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Eagle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 East & West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Education of a Sonnet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 End End. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Eternal Life.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Face to Face. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Find A Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Footnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

For The Money. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Free Spirit.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Garden. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Garden Art.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Gemini in the Forest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Going Home.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Golden Shadows of the Flowers. . . . . . . . . 147 Hard Wind Spring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Harley.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 He Done Died. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Heart, Heart.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Heart to Mind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Heavy Scents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Hector, Fighter.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Higher Ed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Home So Soon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Home Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Honest, Oh Boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Hot Bath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 How To Write Too Much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 "I". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 I Hope to Reach More. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 "I Want to Be Famous Anyway I Can".. . . . 48 I'm So Glad.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 In Performance of the Question.. . . . . . . . 124 Is.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Karate Gardener.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Kiss Hello. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Kissing After the War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Las Huertas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 "Let Progress Pass You By". . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Liars Convention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Looking Forward to Retirement.. . . . . . . . . 57 Lost Sonnet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Made For TV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Magic Stone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Making it Big. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Map of Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 March 19th. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23


Miscarriage of the Muse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 My Love of Ever Great Life. . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Nah!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Necktie.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Neo-Anti-Climax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 New American Cuisine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 New Sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 New Mexico Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Non-Fools.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Ode to Lenore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Ode To Song. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Oh No. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Oh Wait And See. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Oh Dilda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 On Too Long. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 On The Way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 One One. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Orion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Out of the Hat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Ph.D. Pisser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Piece of Dust. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Pit Stop.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Post-Modern Sex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Quiet is Winner of IHSF Award, 1988. . . 143 Quote the Breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Racing to the Stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Reincarnation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Retreat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Returning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Rivaling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Robot Worker/Earth Talker.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 She Speaks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Slightly Obscure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Slippery Faddists.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Song Word First. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Song It. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 "Space Is A Place". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Speaker Speak. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Spring Fancy.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Spring Child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Stairway to the Stars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Star. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Suicide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Sword of Love.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Tequila & Lime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 That Hill.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 The Deconstruction Industry.. . . . . . . . . . . 68 The Library of Knowhow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The Greedy Greedy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 The Teeny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The Greed Disease. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 The Rose On This Paper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 The Discombobulation of Art. . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 The Face of God.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 The Pupa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 The Case of the Filmed Crime. . . . . . . . . . . 50 The Feast Is For Peace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 The Risk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 The Art of Destruction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Too True. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Too Much Time to Do Anything.. . . . . . . . 11 Truce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Under the Weather. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Unlocked. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Verse Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Visitation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 We. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Wet Wear.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 What is the Imagination?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 What Is Up That Must Come Down. . . . . . 74 When a Poet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Whim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Woman of the Year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Working To Live. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Writer's Wonder Worker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 You Can't Have It All. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

ĂŒ


!"

duende digital book Š 2010 Larry Goodell ISBN 0-915008-51-3 po box 571 placitas, new mexico 87043 larrygood@comcast.net


“Larry Goodell is one of the certain contemporary masters of the insistent and reexploratory sonnet — the ‘little song’ born out of crosscultural ferment of Frederick II’s court in Sicily (as these emerge from the equally complex and fervent-fertile crosscurrents of presentday New Mexico) — ” Kenneth Irby “These are poems that insist on being heard. Where music is palpable, like the skin of yucca. Where life explodes into blossoms & thorns...” Art Goodtimes “Goodell's sonnets are written after the fourteen line style of Shakespeare and his emphasis on performance harkens back to classic bardic oratory. He says these traditions enhance rather than limit his work, "Each one is restricted only in length. . . but having to come to an end is a necessity. . . in the fourteenth line." He is quick to point out that he believes the sonnet cycle is a structuring device that "...frees the intellect to return to the body" and that he "...welcomes rhyme but doesn't place it." He asks, "Why not exploit a grand old tradition in your own peculiar way? Why not have fun with these soundings?" He denies that he's part of the "New Formalism" and refers to his sonnets as more, "Neoclassical, in the sense that Cage was. . . ." Charles Lee Stuart, Editor of Huevos, 1987, Albuquerque, New Mexico



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