March 25 – April 13

What’s not the case
can stop you
on your track
as zoom goes
all akilter
and I say to you
let’s just get it over
and you say
over what?
I’m so far inside
it’s outside to me.
Never not knowing
that's the rub
in which we'll catch
the conscience of
the selves we almost are.
Journey into difficulty
twitches my pitches
and the bend in the dark
is technically blocked.
I bob and dip
like a coastline buoy
whose bell chimes
see me, see me
into still cerulean mist.

Dismayed are all my charms
Abandoned to each passing thought
That too soon leaves me behind.
A tale told by an idiot
Sung bitterly in her cup.
Her hair ablaze
She cheapens it
In fantod rhyme
To thrice and back again.

I rove upon a swarm of swain
with deadened ’sophagus
enacting my chagrin.
A breath sir, a breath
without a wish
wherever breath rests
sultry
then stoke the wind
and spit out fire
choked on the acrid air.

The primrose in evening stokes its share of mirth
But this throttled feeling mutes me till I burst.
Then the bloom of all my heart maketh merry
With tidings of resplendent penchant
Or was it a maraschino cherry?

But hark, alack, methinks I spy
Some secret sauce afoot, I flee police
In many voices, jump fanciful fences
Of meaning’s hences, claw my way forth
Toward hidden musics, crinkling songs.

& then again to scream
& then again to cry
& then again to laugh
at all my screams and cries
which never ended
nor be defended

Till phoneme twirl round pheromone
and block meets tackle
scourge meets swank
draining bollocks to the bone
through kith and kth
flk and flt
krr and krk
and back we rode again
flying the frothrig banner of Erg
as if in time
as if in not
as if in here
and if if not
or if if if is iffy how much more
serendipity would be in store
late and sooner
or discombobulator.

The clouds won't marry me, will you?
The birds won't sing to me, would you?
The flowers won't pray for me, won't you?

Of course, she said, of course, in which course
A verse appeared to override all sense.
Rude rude a rude a ride, said she, and all
The earth to blame. A kingdom for
My horse, said she, a hearse for my king.

When all the time my heart was breaking
And you the one lived to tell the tale

And all along beside me
the memory of my dreams
where there are no more

"Love me just the way
you did when I didn't
know who you were"
or what you were or
what I was or why.
Love me then like a rake
loves grass a tree
loves snakes an apple
loves dew at break of day.
Or let me alone
and love me then
till the roosters become hems
and these wild longings
turn me upside down
and outside in.
A month from Sunday
where the air is free
a month of Sundays
I’ll be waiting for thee

Surrounded by words screaming at me
in their torpidity, in their tumescence
in their sorrow and glee, but slower still
strumming a stutter, stuttering a strum
and all alone, alone together

In cold deep soil
whereupon my apron
whereupon my ladle
whereupon all that has
been done to me
be done with
and that in the moment
let the forgetting become
nearly total
no more fueled by fractious
words and factitious hearts.
For even devils are human
in a human world
and saints monsters.
While I just paddle along
and try not to capsize
(or capsize too often).
And when I do, I sink or
swim depending on
the weather. And when I
sink, I swim the better.

We've got it all except
what we have not.
The end is near the dour
ones mumble, history’s
impasse lurks and lumbers
but we timbre-breathers
know, it’s swept away
in time’s dark packet
a moment’s notice
a lurch, a lurk
fadeout to
POINT BLANK
closed for renovation.

Prefabrication proceeds apace settling
nothing. Hot fudge Sunday on cold winter
day melting down our shirts, or the rumble
of the car without a muffler, the smell of
pineapples at the Fontainebleau, 1962.
Or fumes from the furnace at Rouen
during the plague, streamers and champagne
on Yom Kippur.

Then roll on or in flimsiest of flam
abiding eyes, who look & tell
& see & swill & blur but do not swell.
Then rumble high atop low-lying
thoughts that count in fractured
numbers, filigreeing thrills in
unappointed lines, impossible detours
the mind takes to make its own.