Poem XLVIII: Still Waiting

one of my son's friends
promised me a derringer
he's always coming and going
in and out of our house
slurping his beverages like a movie star
but, so far, no derringer

i'm not going to bring it up
but man
   I want my derringer


little shit better get me my
derringer

Poem XLVII: Fragment

hermit crabs...
...Poseidon's beard...
...so careless...but...
before they had
changed...

dolphins
break the surface
...Okeanos

Poem XLVI: Jealous Fixation on Caravaggio's Judith Blues

I send my thanks to Judith for cutting off Holofernes' head
I send my thanks daily for cutting off Holofernes' head
but I can't keep from wondering
what else went on in that bed

Poem XLV: Thaw Agony

weird lights
and strange temperatures
attack my fragile body!
what the hell
is this
shit?

I am an alien of the spring

once again
within this form
with a heart still shivering
from the drugs
(winter kept us drugged)
i can remember nothing

but come
let us wander in this planetary scheme
maybe something will jog the memory,
maybe we'll find
a donut!

TO BE CONTINUED

Poem XLIV: Automatically Translated Lament

Then they say there is crisis...

And all I will say is that my parents are vaniloqui

and without economic foundation.

But White lady and ugly at the register of the co-op,

what to buy,

how much for them to add up four Kiwi Organic Packaged

that seem like a box of chocolates?

Sucks to suck, and could I not get those loose for less?

Poem XLIII: Andromache

Where you are

it’s easy

but not easy

like mounting your slain husband’s armor

high on a cross-stake

before the ruined city

the one which he was killed defending

from the point of view of the physical act

it is easily done, or easily arranged

but to stand in its shadow with your son

(Astyanax!)

waiting on the whim

of Odysseus

is not: but you can do it:

because you are

Andromache.

And the thing you are doing

at this moment,

similarly:

easy

and not easy

but you can probably do it.

Poem XLII: She Will Burn Your Feathers Off

that's not skin, that's fire
that's not hair, that's fire
that body is not flesh and bone but fire

that is why, when you try
to remember her face
there's nothing

she was made completely of fire

POEM XLI: NO CHARGE FOR THIS VISIT

(to Someone Elsie)

The pure products of America
go crazy--
            says the Doctor

you would know that better than most
if you weren't so damn crazy

but I'll say this about you:
you are robust
         in your criminality
vital in your lust
         and prodigality
your disease
       whatever it is
is having a good ride

but there is no Asclepius
for your sovereign sickness
and the Doctor has no Rx
for the thing that ails
your slowly boiling self

        but at least his advice
             was free
(and I say
his opinion
is good)

Poem XL: Wake Up

But sometimes you wake up in Hell
chained in a lake of hydromel

Poem XXXIX: Freakshow

Paul thought he was the shit
and indeed he had
an excellent claim to that title

there was no prick he would not
kick
running at it with his foot

a foot
practically
as big as the sun




ENVOI
you think Paul was not versed
in the pre-Socratics?

Paul was versed in the pre-Socratics

Poem XXXVIII: 2 Things

Mr. President, two things
 are fatal to poetry:
hunger
and interruptions.

Poem: XXXVI: The Closing Gates

Instead of perfume there will be rottenness;
and instead of a girdle, a rope;
and instead of well-set hair, baldness;
and instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth;
instead of beauty, shame.
Your men shall fall by the sword and you mighty men in battle.
And her gates shall lament and mourn;
ravaged, she shall sit upon the ground.
                                                          Is.  3.24 ff

but these things won't happen to me
no
they won't happen to me

it's too late
for that prophecy

it is the first day of spring
and I am immortal

Poem XXXV: HOW TO LIVE, FINALLY

the expense of spirit
is a waste of mojo

it is imperative to invest that shit wisely
shun that heaving!
skip to the dream

speak no meaningless words
in conversation speak
no idle sentence
to numb the time until you are alone again

don't watch tv
tv is just a bunch of assholes eating hot-dogs

there are less concrete abuses, but
in all the world
there is no slighter return

Poem XXXIV: No news

But in the end
headlines can give no peace

even the one you have waited for
exactly all your life

is merely one more
improvisation
another inconclusive
experiment in death

similarly that email, or tweet,
for which your ass has been holding its breath

it will leave you scrounging around
your wilderness of wasted flesh
with nowhere
any
fucking
refresh

POEM XXXIII: Hesiod--Shield of Heracles--Dolphins!

      In the middle of the harbor
many dolphins were darting
      here and there
              looking for fish
they looked extremely real

Two silver dolphins 
blowing mist
              were devouring 
       the mute fishes
and beneath them
fishes of bronze were trembling

And on the shore was a fisherman watching
in his hands was a casting net
which he was seriously considering
throwing


(ll. 209-215)

Poem XXXII: The Moons of Mars

PHOBOS and DEIMOS
the two small
misshapen moons of Mars
of Ares and Aphrodite
the offspring
busy little monster babies
horrible-eyed
their skulls always getting bashed in
by asteroids

PANIC and TERROR
they stay always at hand
bent on their orbit
always cutting their busy path
through bloody battle
at their father's feet
the war-god
Ares

you can tell
the mother left their raising to him

Poem XXXI: Smoke Signals

We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies

We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies

Weak ant rest our syphilis Asian with somebody heals his babies.

Wiccan tree store ours evil eyes Haitian with somebody yells his babies!

Weak countries terrors several somebodies with yellow babies

restore our rabies

weak

 un-trees

restore our rabies

awful 

Alsatian

Wee cunt, roast whore our siphilization with symbiotic Ellis babies!

POEM XXX: The Moral of Beauty and the Beast

READING BOOKS
LEADS TO
MARRYING MONSTERS

but

a) 
monsters have
magical memories
know rare philosophies
and are full of the wisdom
of infinte suffering

and

b) 
they are probably pretty
dynamic in the sack

Poem XXIX: HEY DUDE / CHRISTIAN SODOMITIC QUAALUDE

O cross-dressing
Franciscan
Sumerian
men of Sodom

your sick and awkward parties
were
so devoid of chicks

and withal so lovingly
depicted by Chick
himself
right down to the last
Pazuzu tattoo (see fig. 1)

your architecture
was a disaster
!

Do you know what a disaster is?
when the stars come
completely unglued

and Pazuzu
from his pedestal
within a Romanesque arch
is all
'hey dude'

you're all
'pape satan pape satan aleppo'
with your Dante references and
everyone else is like 'whut?'
And that
is the sermon?
That
is a disaster exceedingly

but not for the reason
everybody thinks
saith
the lord

Poem XXVIII: o shit

The calendar does not lie

yesterday went completely by

without a white house

from me

what was I doing

instead of producing said devotion

?

Everything

in preparation for

the arrival of 

from Madison

Jack and Mel

(from whom you will have received some POSTCARDS)

whereafter all has been food and laughter

hugs and absinthe

i also had my moon-

shine

lemon-

drop

and this morning

such a deep and terrible headache

that i call
all my sins

of yesterday

paid in full.



author's note:

I shall probably miss 3/13/17 as well
since, Jack and Mel having just left,
I will be plunged in certain famous
and disreputable therapies
for sorrow
that brook no poesis.

but 3/14/17 will be monstrous

Poem XXVII: Booty

This century's ass
is already full
of gold doubloons
and pieces of eight

Poem XXVI: Portrait of a genius, San Antonio, Texas

wow

a country boy be he

an outlaw

a monster
part psychedelic coyote
part demented cowboy

a cosmic piper of
nebulous bags!

And a celestial con-man.

Poem XXV: Non ea videmus

All around us:
gifts from the dead

at all times
blindly we are
bumping into them

these gifts

of which we feel we merit
our insane portion

Poem XXIV: Fumon's lambs

If you ever see the wooden lambs
the ones described by Fumon (1302-1369)
leaping out of the void
you are in the wrong place
and you should leave
quickly

those lambs
a) don't exist
b) will bite your head off

So you'd better get the hell out
quick.

Poem XXIII: Obsequies

TODAY I finally buried
Polyneices
the mole
which Argos killed
sometime back in November
!

He'd been lying exposed for months
in  sun and rain
snow and frost.
The birds and dogs of excarnation
were letting us down.

We waited for them to do the right thing
but they all cruised by like
'No thanks.'

Finally, today,  I said, 'You know what?
Forget it.'
and grabbed a shovel
and some tongs.

And now Polyneices the mole

is underground where he belongs.

Poem XXII: Erasable bond

sail on silver bear erasable bond

no rubbing out is free
the shreddings
the objectless debris of our erasure
fall into the strange and complicated works
creating mechanical compromises
gumming up the apparatus
and thwarting our desires

i know the company's address
it's in Atlanta
but that information now
means nothing

sail on silver bear

Poem XXI: Mimus polyglottos

the mockingbird
        Mimus polyglottos
of all the avifauna

is the official bird
of Texas
AND
of Tennessee

      O Passeriformes! O ye  Mimidae!

only a mockingbird
could work out a deal like that

Poem XX: Industrial debris

the discount toilet paper left
embedded in my ass
its pulp, and infinitesimal
shards of fiberglass

Poem XIX: Infans piger

I was a slothful infant, desiring only

to eat and play
though sometimes I dreamt up
complicated acts of sabotage
and sometimes conjured up 
savage forms of justice
out of nowhere
which gave rise to a Satanic sense
of injured merit
which I was far too well-fed to enact
and lazy

I am not sure what went wrong there
but it is hard to wake up
from that kind of contentment

it is hard to stop killing snakes in your bed
it's hard to stop slapping lions