22. A FINE LOAD

A FINE LOAD

Rigorous as the delay was, the manservant

was longer, and harder to take. As in my old

Latin textbook, the first thing I learned  -  

'Maria cum servum ambulat'. Something,

it turned out, like, 'Maria walks with the

servant.' Approximately. I never knew

what it was all about. Did they mean

'slave'? Were they, perhaps, trysting

in the barn, or in the hayloft? My

young mind was all a'twitter.

It was all hard to take, even

learning that 'cum' here

meant 'with'.

21. ICING ON THIS CAKE

ICING ON THIS CAKE

Sing a song of dense men:

One is a speaker in a house

of the dead. Another works

the foodline in Bangkok. A

third man reads from an ancient

illuminated book. The fourth

man was my teacher in waiting.

A fifth guy, I swear, he has always

been a warrior. And the sixth guy,

underneath it all, is me myself and I.

20. HEAVEN HAS A GESTATION PERIOD ALL ITS OWN

HEAVEN HAS A GESTATION 

PERIOD ALL ITS OWN

Kerchiefs of the sky are beckoning to me, floating down

a Bowery lane. The old tenements here are sparse with

their happiness, even as they try now to be giddy. The

New Museum has a store in its front  -  first things first

when you get to the moon. Run that air again.

-

Reproductions and pins and pencils. Art books galore  -  

probably any of that silly matter that never matters.

19. CARMICHAEL AND JONES

CARMICHAEL AND JONES

I am waiting at the Mercantile Exchange; too

jagged men are smoking cigarettes beneath the

wooden shelter-roof. They look like huddled

refugees about to leave for another land.

-

I walked over to them to speak; I said 'what is 

the proclamation you were reading aloud this 

morning at the entrance?' They looked at me  -  

we all knew this was but an instant, and not 

some historic moment of memory. 'That was

our proclamation  -  we have started a movement

anew for the individual rights of free men.'

-

I wanted to say 'you do not need to do this,

you are here in America.' But I knew that was

not any longer true  -  men are in chains everywhere.

Tired and true, and unaware, but in chains.

18. THIS MANNERED ANNULMENT

THIS MANNERED ANNULMENT

They have taken down the signs.

They live for the day. Ages await.

As do I - calling like a prophet.

Bring your dogs home, they have

become too lethal for this day:

modern Man does know the news;

modern Man assumes and proclaims;

his nothingness is of a constant cycle.

-

Kids dance on the Brooklyn rooftop;

they are drunk enough not to know the

weather  -  12 degrees is not so happy a

step, even when sober.

17. WE CAN MAKE THE BUTTERFLIES APPEAR

WE CAN MAKE THE 

BUTTERFLIES APPEAR

Even as we want to : they linger with a vamp of

beauty on the wing. They have no place to stay

but to continually move, and somehow to them

places on the globe are dreams. And they move.

16. I'M BREAKING UP

I'M BREAKING UP

This consciousness is all compromise :

red sweaters, black coats, hammers and

steel. My eyes have to focus on higher

things : the cloud of realization floats in.

-

Fragmentary colorations are breaking the

lines. You will say one thing, and it will

itself say a hundred more things. Such

flames light up a distant dark.