fallacies and consequences


with these predispositions et al. you did once sink in
veritable naumachia an enemy canoe your team of
laughing scouts plying wooden oars maneuvering
it was an exercise in cooperation strategy and tactics
spontaneously revealed within the young population of
future statesmen businessmen husbands and lovers well
the way they built things was a wonder then I feel a
drift of things playing by in a whiff of steam or mist
aha no clear they shone and clear they stood each
along the thoroughfare many-sided and various looking far
into the view of cities and old Nature and the mind itself
roaring like a river in the mountains of the soul with its
refectories where haute cuisine is served by arrangement

it is a stringent business that goes far forward in these
verses particular things an inability to write successfully
complicated by the very effort involved you would almost say
compounded in the end by various images almost rarefied

an incorrect application of the uses of criticism to annoy us
seems to be the perquisite of power by rational insight at
the vertices and poles of earthly wonderment to this extent
you see what you can see but not what is before you so
a population withering on the vine imagines otherwheres
belike or surging swinging hanging along stringing
and an incessant particolored multiplicity of rationale
well no the answer is known to you by all rehearsals now
a habit or reflex magnified into precisely-filled hope chests

nor is that all mere indications these of necessity to build
a hurly-burly fit to make a world worth occupying as
the nether lift of adverse forces walks away in the gloaming
to the tether trestle-lined expanses limited by time
and all that borborygmous gutterspeak and divining
out of the breath of the master and his slave patrol

which appears in course of time the right way settling in
by dint of God of course of whom not much is known by us
perhaps if not resistless yet uninspiring though not inutile
perspicaciously one wondered at the happenstance of that One
in Three that family unit or that receiver of the Law or
one who goes back no more you get the picture it is one
severs bonds of these who wonder at such cockroaches
microbes etc. and these exigencies of the whole human race

because you want to know before you go don’t you know and so
the specialty of them who wait and search and inquire each
to his purview manufactures another way of seeing thinking or
feeling believing or wondering you believe them or not you see
or not but actions bring reprisals fate is kind God is just
if not there were a discovery of credentials receivable and
presentable and this were such a darkling mirror here-below

but how many such were one mass tides and time lay low
to be a search a fabrication or historically an institution
well take a breath let’s see you say the o’erarching bough
with a single pome or pomelo suspended thitherfrom
pallid yellow or russet claret red do we suspend history?

so promise absolved of ecumenicity wandered into a wilderness
and wrote such letters we read them palliatingly lived
in patience wore ourselves out caring about the whole thing
loved platinum prints of out-of-the-way places and waited

then came the moment it arose upon us suddenly so much so
you had to ask yourselves was it not much fate so we as
all man here combined understood history and all its
significations for this is all study and knowledge etc.
took the reins and rode whitherfrom herefrom toward
the gathered sundowns stars and suchlike for a cosmos
it seemed to be and we had proof of one belatedly mourned
and certain indications that might serve us at a pinch
but let’s not get historical watch this more closely here I
register panic in a pinch and glee at all caresses who
wouldn’t want to be me so in touch with my emotions?

and then for ire and wrath I am the stormy seas what
shores have I not lashed and craven designs wiped clean
the void laid bare the wind entamed the gushing air
spat free for all the anything-encumbering nuisances
that history consider and not all consider some do not
and do not ask about the crust of my pie wither away
die in reach of sterling silver dinner plate and tea
cozies underlinened these are the things make life worthwhile
sham I’ve no truck with and you know I can always tell
you know I can always tell the dramatic dominion is mine
I can see the early days as clearly as the latter rain I
shower some and not all with the hail and sleet and snow
freezes you how you know like all things propertied I’ve
ways and means God willing for your atmosphere to send
my elves and underlings to Santa Claus for coal and clowns
I bring it all the way home upon you way to go home and
be there doling dishing aping all the shit I’ve seen it done
many times and many after times and all the rain I’ve
scourged and dowered and screwed and pulled and waited
hoping to see fruit of my labors tangerines and suchlike
not a thorny bramblescrub like in the supermarket they
would have to throw away and wax and rinse and stick a label on
some other fruit and call it a day for the night boys to box
and wheedle and fruit and wear away till sunup comes
with bread and stacks of local daily newspapers bound

after the interlude he rode down the mountain glades I
remembered and he went down and all around the glens
remembering all that he said and I did not remember I
or he forgot and he didn’t or I did or the other way around

and he did the way of his kind saying something to me such
as I remember why did he all to wayfarers’ chapels and tongs
and the force majeure I paid no attention to his fruits or
registered for sample awards as for example the poet priest
of highways in the delta and other winking diatribes
laid with leering subterfuges on the path disused now

of all the vowels the consonants diphthongs and diareses
doomed to foreknowledge of these coasts I choose this city
Shalimar of kelly and azure Switzerland and Serengeti

eremites in circles of bikers and the dusty trails on
hill and gulch unseen in quiet afternoons like this
patience and the real awards significantly manufacture
according to some retrospecting excavations here and there

the reactionary hopelessness of this city caught unawares
given back up given hopeless in shafts of arid light this
abandoned yellowing bibliotheque this painted free find
cages foolery vacancy and the steady drone of dreamers

the great gatherings muscling in together to see have it
all together case and trophy spoor and pelt for consideration
not use but dictum not form or forum but nailbiting
achieves this synthesis of the manifold droppings of the orbs
of exurbs urbs and suburbs doughtily explained thus
the least thing utterly eclipsed ask yourself is this the mind us?

leave them as they lie in twofold incertitude eh
let’s contemplate the other side of the coin if there is one
and in this story there is one most certainly yet you
wouldn’t think so maybe so whatever else is new oh
contemplate the texture of this story you’re Shakespeare

how do you do there’s an opener if you like that is
you watch and see you only guess but it comes to you
in swirling camellia water or peyote visions what
you see in water or third eye what you can see there

what you have is trees and you have a few in
leaves the lemon trees and walkway avocados
and the long hill you go wagons down in or even
cardboard slats or parts of boxes flats aye

how grand the terraced windows and the late
oeuvre waiting for its critical response to rise
away from armed response and otherwheres only
wandering amid these between poles heck and hell

I’ve got you there boys you sniff the wind or you guess
you sniff the wind for your nose is well up to snuff
you know from cul-de-sac to Windermere and tent
where the boys are were and will be it’s your contract

I’ll dice this for you you saw it coming alright
let’s say saw down a tree 360 points off put
1 2 3 etc. five bucks cash and it’s a peach tree
the major avenue thru Atlanta Sherman burned
formerly Terminus hight so the end of the line OK
Corral where all them bad guys bought it sales reps hi
you HI it’s Hawaii Hilo’s there helot he Lot slept
with his daughters you don’t know business is slow you might
remember Tony the Tiger who thought flakes were great

behind the roseate hush is dullness and the frigid world of matter
idly curious about such things you’re talking about thinking
feeling no provocation no real sense of it only a certain envy
toward inviolable detachment bleaching the mirrors blind
so that you see carnivorous ponies burning up the sky
and leaving less of ruins than of retrospectives alas

the great city has its springtime too they say in coldly
temperate climes in steam heat and reflector sunglasses
suddenly the Weetabix and crumpets crumble to bits for
birds the quietly knocking redhatted woodpecker in
his Tudor coat the jay scooting and bobbling a pair
of crows yakking overhead or doves like brides with
nests like Anne Frank’s antechamber or hawks with tails
like lobster tails swimming in the sky very carefully
surprising buds on little trees not the usual ones

stickler of a thing upon my rent says the chick hopefully
regarding the loved ones needling cursing and praying
over toasts and pie wedges and the sparkling ice-cold brut

overhauled at the gym wonder heard on old story
it was two nuns and a basket full of grapes or pears
I mean plums no that’s it figs maybe I think it was
anyway one says to the other fig sister? who replies
Fig Newton! no that can’t be it I’ve told it wrong again

here comes the post by stages culled swept milled raised
airlifted deposited and then you put it in the mail ha
no these Flowers For Algernon and these candygrams
and naked singing telegrams and dit dah dits come
breakneck with a formula attached you solve for zero

what a kick in the head pink vapor trails and sturdy vents
of cunning most voraciously opening the country club to wind
catching the lees and scrags of leaves and twigs and squirrels
praying on their haunches like jackrabbits gone to church
for a tidbit marvelously hungry and at the same time
calm as a best man smart too never having been caught

a tree or stalk of Escher faces some peeled away like mummies
into thin air pelicans arc through some here like
eyes and lips in jealousy slats the whole a figure

shadows on these hills now olive drab now quartzite
sheer or padded over the hillocks less than precisian
this here honeysuckle and Escholtzia and daffodil
with periwinkle and starflower and ghostflower and shoots
of sprays and stands of hillsides in Dreamsicle blooms

warm concrete gets the best of ice plant painters
but candytuft is cold the buried stake’s a steak
will fly up to you if you set it off thick as the one
you get on Angel’s Flight when you’re near famished

under the alameda is a rudeling who accosts you
in the long afternoon dimming into blue lavandered
with pale pink roses seated into the long high bench
for the many miles from here to someway over there
from home which isn’t very far you live in it

the question is did Hubble’s rubble leave us in the dust
or do we go with them whither they go and follow the affair
from one end to another or miss an appointment or two
jell here like untended citrus trees you watch all night
with smudge pots leaving black spots in your eyes

wouldn’t you turn us say up from reel to reel
adrift sans sea legs stalwart bewildered bewildering
as patient as godlings furious shrieking in a purple rage
and penitent unseeing trumping and befooled necessary

flats down the wall crosscut some sumners old new
cut stone slender forking buildings the latest something else
the red ground of Mars and bricks of Albion with
the Minié balls and creeks and turf of Dixie here

I in a tricky position up the scubbered tree and lost
in a city of reawakenings or morning over Dover
winging tea and the shiny black coal dust with a win
at length over the board going one only way in that joke

that spectacular emblem of matter-of-fact reality
in the abstract ideal perfect that whizbang getup
along both sides and on top of everywhere a record
setting of all settings intimate harbor object truth
hilarity of the arts canopied and bareheaded in the sun

when it doesn’t go anymore you leave it home to rust
unknowingly steam engines pink lemonade dispensers
fabulous belles the virtues of sad silence high adventure
and the classic comedy of Roman Roister-Doisters

Mount Jerusalem is there an almost Hanging Gardens
to amuse a king a sacred holy spot you drive the chariot
up and around if you’re not stalled in rising waters
smelling of the loam you buy your vegetables in the air
carrying sacks of manure to feed the land with

steaming horses discreetly blinkers regulate the seats
buckled down on top of them high standing big-hoofed
and somewhat weird out of the way and weary or fresh and
lithe solemnly bringing the back end of a cart to you

it’s academic whithersoever digressions tend so why
not aspirations ministrations fenestrations lilliputians and
the closed book of a cover story like an ashtray collection

it’s back to the old corral be kind to animals
let these schmucks do it justify it self and soul
for the haciendaed ranch manager eyeing cautiously
the prospects of a trading vessel further up the coast

the channel stopped for shopping but was gone for good
later in the evening Heraclitus and Little Lulu on Channel 11

all the cloud chamber bowls and Hobo Gadget Bands
the almost unbelievable superhuman history of that art
which consisteth in living by some ingenuity or other
the absolutely stately spaces of calm reasoning ability
and small chambers of massive inspiration thrown skies
chaste beds bulbous imaginations and the dilettante’s élan

peace in the soul of the high-rise making pyramids rise
in the desert of the soul lent another day and days for this
patience in the hope of the saints and the billows of sight

some vanity of summits came home to the boulevard
asking such systems as could be still said to exist why not
a feather duster to a roof cold with slime and then fire
cleansing off the cold drinks and with a willow wand in
the air a mercer cast his sails along the seacoast to
forever brine the pickles of his sea salt tangy lime rickey

leaveless on the scene high maundering over the score
tip of the hat to a Wurlitzer harbinging lettuce more
to a naivety heretofore purposeless commanded affairs

who gasp brought out upon the fast and forays eels
to such subject headings and proverbial singalongs
the rebate to an extreme unction of all my old sins and hurts

here is an établissement sans savan or one or two maybe
charcoal in the autumn light with kneeing penitentes and
ululations and a ringmaster undisturbed in the sithence of it all

the argument says if he is there I subside or if not why
not if ice cream why ice cream or if not they whatever
have or will have a whiskey which amounts to saying nothing
since aquavit all have some more than others perhaps

on the same lines here’s the economic conference known as
ECOMCON taking place at Geneva and Rio de Janeiro
and Balaklava and Worcester and Bangkok and
Mexico City and Cairo and Seoul and Djakarta
and Darjeeling and Los Angeles and Mombasa and
Edmonton and Cancun and Rangoon and Perth

wild honey and milk in these fly-starved locales sing
hoveround to these flat trees dappled animals munch from
courteous the kingly sport and dwellings here built to house
the eyes and keen ears also nose and the rest of the traveler

orange haze and purple water with a blinding lascivious sun
aquas radiate from sand and torments the lily white
acceders of this throne or this position all their revels
up to this post oasis with a million miles of river

the sea was vinous haired and all that way back then
before pictures were silent poetry but not then there
and stewing over a book of poetry it is here too vinous haired
but only with an effort and as you may say occasionally

wearied snow on our hats the whole world folded up and moved tents
bags carpets and all the iron door rusted and fell over in
and it were better thus than lisping where it would have creaked

Mayflower Compact a stirring document a sterling declaration
what ho the virgin forests far as Sir Winston would say from
the Isle of Man the pearled rivers fishing stats tax breaks
legerdemain and hocus-pocus here-below a very rodent fart
we might say some do and in the official pronouncements
that’s what is said and bird pee legend lumps benign barf

from the ground floor up and fly the world let slip over
the many days it would take to imagine a larger set
not in my opinion wise and worldly unoccupied in a
larger sense too mind in an opinion if anybody cares

urbane meant something else they will say so be it ha
I sent you on a mission to the Great Wall of China but
all you sent were telegrams of counting bricks and sighting Huns

the discourse runs from loud to worse indeed I hope these verses
sing and if they don’t they do another way but back to this
I hear the plaintive sighing of these shores that clamor allows

my rage from the chair alarms me Mr. Chairman
I went to be outside of my lengthy confines if only
to reach inside and grasp my own innards just to see
if I could play my guts like a mandolin for hire
the preceding was a paid political advertisement

all the categorical impulses of the brave fold up like a hand
in the face of this useless eyeballing polecats rescind

what do we teach the children? put our fingers in pie
or ass that’s far and away the best thing usually

if you ask me this great tree now a sapling tied to a pole
along the great field under the mountain missile base is a
spruce or poplar or beech or oak or maple or lime or birch

a verdict is in a whining opinion perhaps but true for it
there the course of trouble neighborly observed there the cause
of it all the hope gainsaid and expectation brought to nothing

here then is now a critique the past is now a constant and
now is a portal of discovery so the thing is meld the way in
or out to the two-faced door and let it swing shut as before
in the new things we have for proposals and old things are wed

it’s not much of a way of thought but if it goes before it leads
the way and in the circumstances if you build resistances before
the law it becomes a manufactured area of things concealed to
hide behind a layer of consecutiveness making transport unlikely

not much of a hope either when you look upon a trail to
spot the way home and there it stops and calls you by name
it goes on Eleatically and on and on it goes but it never stops
or moves it’s just an idea of home a concept of the street

because if you just wonder if you are just beginning to ask if one
builder goes upon the trestle and asks whether or not to hide
between any or all boulders and rocks and the lone cacti
squatting or standing in groves and reaches the moon overhead
or just above the horizon you can see the difficulty of it all

because if you sod the tree and clear the alleys of old rubbish
dig you deep a great foundation well-supplied with concrete
and rear upon it a mere idiocy what have you obtained at all?

this then is the lesson of power and of criticism let’s hear no
more about it than all the crescences mount up toward
this and receive all their due and there is fair exchange
of views and long rapport and that is the way of it then all

whereas if the field is a charnel house of failed memories
something not to the purpose and this is the field of action
you can see not to observe and ask to be shouted at all
the view accords is of the field and welter and cuss that’s it

you can see if nothing’s important the remnants of any city
that was so brite at nite and newly-formed of many things
it asks you if any so-called calibrists had an angle here
or whether the world is a figment of imagination or the world

in the moment when if asked you have to shout above this world
the angels ministrant and militant provide the answers
and the Lord comes by his servant mainly with the Word
it’s just as well a moment’s as good as a millennium
for an answer to the medium the small and the large

the triune spear of correlatives democracy enterprise and lust
captures the imagination on a large scale the city vague
disappears and in its place the sorrow of the eyes peaks of power
and the stalled Antwerps of a very faded Monopoly

ideas are shining food of ravens bounce the water off air
to catch the sunlight air and light water and gravity and
heroic proportions meddling with the air and water and light
all this in remembrance is a theory untried and untrue
a sort of legendary impression just the stuff of dinner toasts
brackish water will serve and dim and spit on the receiving floor

ideas of ideas no idea at all if you can’t imagine that at a
solitude thronged with people all the wilderness pretends to once
magnify the burbles of the New Year and caress the folks with
images of folly just demarcated in the land of art therapy

hands on hips we regard our handiwork the drapes and carpets
that carried much signification in the arrears of our payments
seem drab somehow or other no wonder then our cause is failed

here we have our friend whose nervousness expels the sign
of our dominion alright but he is a signmaker just great
which means the sign of dominion is just passed to him

it is a very Martial idea translates all along the line
what dictum passes into history what history what pass is here
when all this is decided so very instrumentally with acciaccatura

a national art is the very hardest thing to achieve if
it doesn't dwell in the hearts of many people here and
there it's here not there or if it's there it's here and there
the same as here not there it's here or hereafter it's here

it's the magnanimous thing that dwells in the hearts of many people
we are Legion says the devil full of swine and goes the heart is
weltering in the vertices of art it can't imagine if you know
if whether or not the pallid accuses the conqueror or maid
the fantastic images that break through or mainly manufacture
the obstreperous villainly disestablishmentarianism here
where you can't say hay without thinking of horses and
old racetracks apparent in a glade mountains high oh
here is the bust of the poet in a wood with calm verses
our greatness gives a damn from time to time enough
in clouds of clamor refining up the steepest climes
a parlor and a tea Earl Grey for preference what
the same or likeness enow to wonder if the same twilled worsted
goes to manufacture any things worth cutting the same if
branded tattooed painted curlicued qualified or whatever
dispassionate or placed in the field for a whim or purpose
the same evidence not easily found but not manufactured
at some cost all cost cost-free the whirligig from here
the way all around to here and there in courses through
the idea of all ideas the way you go through chains of thought
and find a link loose here or there or simply put a whole
in active placements all around and such activity itself
an adequate placement self-referential or irreflective and
the grandeur of the whole manufactured with a cunning
so as to displace all placements in the abstract like a
punchline withering the frame in Corot shivers for the nonce
and gaining what you might call a sense of humor larger
than it seems at first like Lear a Solomon accursed
by dint of multitudes of idol-worshiping housewives
for two is many is enough the idol has its blank stare
Galen says emitting nothing in the way of light
who says the light has power and gives sight so seeing
gives displacement in the blinding things we see and lose
but they are there or if in terra incognita here not there
so we go there and manufacture them and call them things
to admire and regard if so only to see them and admire
whatever wonders there may be here somewhat overlooked
because as far as you can go is oft surprisingly very far
and we catch up catch on deal with one by one the catches
so we get it finally for the nonce and go on with the game
that soars and scuds and shimmers over the land with
green fields and bases and paths you know the game I
throw you hit we run you throw I hit we run it's the game