(surely ''conceptual'' or
''happenings'') ate himself,
cut bits from his body
on stage while audience
watched, it went well
for awhile. But then
he did something wrong
and bled to death.
The art is long
to learn, life short.
2) You still think
death is a subject,
or a place
in time?
3) In pajamas still
late morning sun's at my back
again through the window,
figuring mind still, figuring place
I am in, which is me,
solipsistic, a loop yet moving, moving,
with these insistent proposals
of who, where, when,
what's out there, what's in,
what's the so-called art of anything,
hat, house, hand, head, heart, and so on,
quickly banal. Always reflections.
No light on the water, no clouds lifting, bird's flap taking off -
Put the food in mouth, feel throat swallowing,
warmth is enough.
4) Age. Age.
Locked in my mind,
my body, toes broken, skin
wrinkling up, look to the ceiling
where, through portals of skylight,
two rectangular glass boxes in the stained wood,
the yellow light comes, and outside is evident.
There is no irony, no patience.
There is nothing to wait for
that isn't here, and it will happen.
Happiness is thus lucky.
5) Another day. Drove to beach,
parked the car on the edge of the road
and walked up to the wooden ramp provided,
then stopped just before the steps down to the sand
and looked out at the long edge of the surf, the sun glitter,
the backdrop of various condominiums and cottages,
the usual collective of people, cars, dogs and birds.
It was sweet to see company,
and I was included.
6) He had a heard I wish I had.
My car is parked in the driveway.
My door is locked. I do not want
to go outside.
7) However far
I'd gone,
it was still
where it had all begun.
8) Touch, term, turn of curious fate.
Who can throw a ball,
who draw a face,
who knows how.
9) The other who I'd be
never the same as me
no way to step outside and see
more than some penitence of memory -
As days fades to the dust-filled light
in the window in the back wall beyond sight
where I can feel the coming night
like an old friend who sets all to rights.
10) Now I recognize
it was always me
like a camera
set to expose
itself to a picture
or a pipe
through which the water
might run
or a chicken
dead for dinner
or a plan
inside the head
of a dead man.
Nothing so wrong
when one considered
how it all begun.
It was Zukofsky's
Born very young into a world
already very old...
The century was well along
when I came in
and now that it's ending,
I realize it won't
be long.
But couldn't at all have been
a little nicer,
as my mother'd say. Did it
have to kill everything in sight,
did right always have to be so wrong?
I know this body is impatient.
I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.
Yet I loved, I love.
I want no sentimentality.
I want no more than home.
11) "What is Williams" (Raymond's) tome..."
Where have all the flowers gone?
I put them right here on the table...
No one's been here but for Mabel.
God, my mind is slipping cogs,
gaps of pattern, mucho fog...
Yet I know whatever I
can ever think of ere I die,
'twill be in my head alone
that the symbiotic blur has formed-
to make no ''we" unless "they" tell "us"
"you" is "me" and "I" is nameless.
"Tom" is wrong? "I" is right?
Is this the point at which "we" fight?
Us was never happy we.
all that's ever left is me.
Past is what I can't forget,
where the flowers got to yet-
Mabel's face, my mother's hands,
clouds o'erhead last year at Cannes,
Kenneth Koch's reaction when
we told him once at 3 AM
he should marry Barbara Epstein,
loosen up and have some fun.
"I remember, I remember -"
Memory, the great pretender,
says it happened, thinks it was,
this way, that way, just because
it was in my head today...
Present (present) passed away.
12) The ground is the bottom of the sky.
The sky is ground at the bottom.
13) "He ate the Hull thing." I lied when I told you I was lying, Clean sheets for dirty bodies, God's dotties, odd's potties. Where's the far bank on the corner of. Neither lip's invitation. I can't see the water for the sky. Each year's a peach, hard, and no friend. Bought or sought or fought or caught. What ever happened to rabbits? Did we finally eat them all?
14) They told me it would be
like this but who could
believe it, not to leave, not to
go away? "I'll hate to
leave this earthly paradise..."
There's no time like the present,
no time in the present. Now it floats, goes out like a boat
upon the sea. Can't we see,
can't we now be company
to that one of us
had to go? Hold my hand, dear.
I should have hugged him,
taken him up, held him,
in my arms. I should
have let him know I was here.
Is it my turn now,
who's to say or wants to?
You're not sick, there are
certainly those older.
Your time will come.
In God's hands it's cold.
In the universe it's an empty , echoing silence.
Only us to make sounds,
but I made none.
I sat there like a stone.
15) Oh my god- You
are a funny face
and your smile
thoughtful, your teeth
sharp- The agonies
of simple existence
lifted me up. But the mirror I looked in
now looks back.
