Exhilaration. Long song rising spontaneous,
a song from opera rarely performed, unknown,
he owes to Pyotr Ilyich and would embrace him
for it were he alive. (Somehow had been most
moved by those his sufferings Pyotr could never
share. For songs of love, for melody, this man
had few or no competitors.) Major discovery late
that same morning: no moment dedicated in toto
to itself could be other than joyful. Can recognize
joyful that have not spoken it for eight decades?
No “sitting”: with sore back, desperate legs & arms,
interminable cramp & dormant buttocks (allegedly
existence-in-the-moment): you call that by the holy
name of joy? How can one live-in-moment when
it depends on previous moment and breathes into
the next? When care has terminated in the realm
of meaning (determination to do good to animals,
humans, cultures, societies); when it has fainted
in a sandpaper wind of wounded hope, depression,
(life as the preview of the realm of hell); when there
is nothing left to do can count achievement in its
repertoire; when all’s absurd and thus acceptable—
then and then only, sing the melody by Gaia, by the
Illusion! Then and then only can moment and the joy
be imbricated on each other: for why condemn an off-
hand moment to misery? Carpe you imbecile! Why
not? What else can there possibly be to do and matter?
ii)
That you, who filled a life heavy as lead, mournful
with cries and curses, could suddenly love like a
lion this dying world, this pourriture of time, this
perishable race! And suddenly be seen to smile
when asked how the hot time of day would sit with
you, be heard to answer, it is fine, f, i, n, e,—as if
meaning held in such terms your state of mind, this
was akin to “miracle.” Brought by the sunflower.
Next a.m.: sun’s a stalk three inches off the ground.
Flower & leaves all gone. Her light is smothered. A
traveling rabbit ate the show and left no calling card.
Foreword to the whole garden perishing of drought.
2. torture: a rage
Imagine a person who lays on other persons
cri/mi/nal/ly and with rash gain of wealth,
a problematic in which they will be trapped
for the remainder of their lives and which,
short of the arts of geekdom, they will not,
in a zillion years, be capable of solving.
Means that, for all those countless eons, the
system will engender problem after problem
which men will waste so many hours of blood
& life resolving, assuming they can be resolved,
not to bring into mention, or to amendment,
the most excruciating anguish ever suffered,
amounting often to blind and unadulterated rage.
As passion for “security” continues to melt down
every aspect of culture, of human intercourse—
all human persons legally become an endless
list of names, i.d.s and passwords—which they
will find impossible to pin into their memories.
All this goes by the terms “extreme frustration”
and “learned helplessness.” At the sad end, any
advantages the system may exhibit are lost in the
disaster of the mind. All revolutions kill at the least
one generation. La conputa is sure out to kill me.
Imagine now grabbing a single techne criminal
(for there are many) and keeping him at mercy. Let
us say “him” it is the simplest, no way prodigal “her.”
Mind plans, to show your bona fides, to prove that you
are very-very and quite close to madness, a form of
misery felicitous. Take first the criminal and free his
testicles from their worn sack. Assemble the vast sums
of money, stocks and bonds, the criminal has gotten.
Open the body, skull to toe, causing as much by way
of pain as possible—all this without determining said
body. Record whatever screams the criminal may utter.
Stuff into cavities “family treasures,” gelt, shares, and
Then archeologize a burial mound in the archaic fashion.
Cause death-gods’ hairy scalps to show above the sand
at the pit’s floor. Lay burning coals into the pit and lie
the living body on them, then cover up the mess with
shit & sand. You have now dealt with one honored and
honorable to his society & yours, gladdened by women,
most prodigal in gifts & fat exchanges; one decorated
by many kings & presidents, granted abundant riches &
rewards. At least, Villon rode high on sky. Read R.I.P.
3. vital signs (the poltergeist)
i)
Take from the night. Walk in young light
with birds exploding at the heat. No one
around. How could there be: you have no
relatives close by—those at the very ends
of earth living the lives you cannot feel
within your bones? You think those lives,
you think repeatedly: find the connection!
There has been an ablation of all “family.”
What is this: to be prisoned, locked inside
one life and never to get out, no matter what
the inside quantity “compassion”? They take
your vital signs before announcing “you die
of ‘this or ‘that.’” Medical Genius One says
“this,” Medical Genius Two says “that.” And
death has all dominion, never dies. A figure
sways and comes toward you with little steps,
the steps get smaller all the while and they will
disappear completely at last breath. She takes
you in her arms. The times have died before
you—“waiting for Godot.” Or was it god they
meant? (Critics have sworn it.) Or Ludwig
Wittgenstein? Or how about Duchamp? Mini-
malists evolve your shroud, breathe on the
fire cremates you. Those other lives you can’t
experience make themselves manifest. Collect
the knickknacks, take them away to fill some
other house with snacks. Can call those stuff.
And you need far more time to throw stuff out
or to dispose of it than it took life to die-for and
to accumulate. A loss of value fast overrides &
you & yours. No one accepts donated life no more.
ii)
The sun bursts out beyond these hills, those trees
begin to burn, you sweat your body out reaching
the top incline. With heaving breath, you wait a
little, before descending to the house. Rip off the
clothes, the socks, the shoes. Your poltergeist
hides single sock and you’re left with the other.
You waste unnumbered hours searching for sock.
Whole house departs. A whole house disappearing
day by day—because the
poltergeist. So there you
go, there have you gone! Smoke rises highest yet
above those loving hills at life’s fondest farewells.
4. burial mound north
i)
Dream. Was it a dream? How can you tell
when the whole night has been a semblance
of awake, the first three morning hours as
well. A tender odor—as if some female soul
had been nearby. Odor di femina. Must have
been dream: no one’s nearby. Da Mooze?
Too much perfume n’ sex for that in this
befuddled air. Your fingers ache to follow
and pursue—grasp only air. The Aphrodite
recipe: definitely dream. This is the very last
striptease you may be doing. Tired of you
naked to no purpose and with no returns. On
the other hand, bent on ad hominem foul play,
Volva high up in her domain at the north pole
(we’re talking ancient Norse) so many years
ago, nauseous slunt, with nothing but a kaka-
demic chair between her legs, disliked your
boldness in these matters, said so as she had
done before when dealing with contemporary
stuff—and she had wrecked careers. Those
northern priestesses and shamanesses, ladies
of death & desolation, war, poverty! Knew
nothing of post-skaldic poesy but gripped her
chair nevertheless—to fart when dealing with
postmoderns. Time to die, O time to perish!
All the foul pain will take departure over to
“eternal rest.” There’ll be re-entry by and by. A
leading, kakademic critic, phoenix-like, reborn.
ii)
The Mothers in the burial mound. Back into
them through all yr. offices, yr. studios, yr.
encyclopedias of collegial knowledge—the
only manageable entrances. What else is love
but re-absorption to the primal sea below the
mound? The earth, they say, is but a floating
island topped by a single-sided Sumeru, model
of every mound. The dream hangs in here during
your whole walk round the block. Resting from
its exertions. The exaltation lasted very little:
despair (for the collective) has fallen back into
depression (far too personal). How short the
holiday! Yet birds keep singing in the same old
trees. A path remains throughout the earthquake.
5. divas
i)
Sky sapphires out such moments in the year.
One sings. Callas, Fleming, Netrebko, Georghiu,
whichever of the divas (our gorgeous slender
divas, no longer those fat ladies of the jokes).
Breaking the spines of demons, lifting the heart
and hot emotions (“such song’s for the emotions”
said one shrink), making life tolerable for a brief
breath. How do I catch in words the utter reach
of distance, all distance stressed, the elevation
of a moment like a host—in which all possibility
is possible, in which every extreme that can be
intellected reaches its boundary, breaks skull at
wall, does not transgress its boundary, survives?
Where have our friends gone that I so loved
brooking all misery in fellow-feeling? I think,
I think the wind has taken them. Alone, oblivion
waits. How speak of it? How sing of it that am not
singing? How to record it in a book of “angels”—
supposing “angels” possible within a discourse—
for voice alone brings out their feasibility? Way
out beyond the flower, beyond the bird, such voices
to maintain this creature in existence. And even love,
the immemorial, buried so deep in universal mire,
freshened, talking again, speaking and even singing.
ii)
What do you know of this, poor dime-and-nickel
idiots, your heads buried inside your spines, your
asses plastered on your torsos, with all your “po-
etry” so called, your holy “writing,” yr. broken lines,
yr. tortured speculations, yr. miserable disjunctions,
yr. footling, inexistent propositions: cough, tea, me?
Branded onto your teachers’ single style—your only
hope of board and meals the selfsame prostitution,
drowning the truly-married out in your mediocrity,
can you not see a proposition perishing, philosophy
hauled bodily out of its pastures, shattered? Critique
never acceptable to flaming egos without the love
of art to balance out the hurt? Home, y’all, Home, out!
iii)
To “friends” no longer capable of love for us, that
wind took out into the depths of winter; and snow
(the angels’ diarrhea, even the gods’, what else?)
muting all other matter to itself, all other seasons
into winter, metamorphosed in a white storm to that
last level of the ice where the lost maws would howl!
Howling a silence divas alone may break when they
raise mornings to the sphere of fire! You’ve heard of
empyrean have you not? You burying the world in silt,
in sand, in silence, way back to the Triassic? “Want
to save planets? Kill yo’self.” You are outdated, obso-
lete, forgotten. Our gods a’ shivering. Do melt! Melt on!
6. lungs floating, slick
i)
Vast lung of the vast earth: right lung now
floating. All the indigenous animalcules rising
and falling in the wrathful soup—since on this
lung and its green brachiates depends duration
for their genes. A viscous mass rises from de
profundis, wafted into the mouths of waiting
men (slaves of the floating). No longer food-
consumers. Oil-eaters: the excrement of hell
they swallow, to then regurgitate for a depen-
dent “loved-one.” Deep forests: indigenous
resistance sets barbs will peel criminal snakes
back from their spines, scorch them alive. The
cruelty of rise and shine! Thus right lung sinks
& rises in the selfsame moment, with us paying
the daily shifting taxes and powerlessly calling
for a halt. Resistance yelps a halt, flies flags
in ancient capitals to warn its chiefs the time
has come: thinking they’ve won a battle when
they’ve lost a war. Ah Ecuador! Peru! Immense
Brazil! While the immortal slick spreads further,
in the lung. Paradise birds fall headlong into it,
the bat, the viper fall headlong—even the greater
beasts: cats, mammoths, megatheriidae, massive
heliovores still lurking in the forest mind, slump
headlong to the slick. They have no other hatred
deep as this, as all encompassing, those poor, small
slaves accumulating wages in the slick, gathering
not enough, never the threshold of enough. So hate
a swine sliming its dividends in distant corporations.
ii)
Meantime, in the left lu
ng, a small and noxious pit,
the price of ages rises to the surface, the bones of
astronomic eons of past lives float upward through
the slick, revealing structures of a forgotten world
lived long before the oil. Bird surfaces, with wings
spread out, and bat, with wings spread out, delicately
made of dust here, pasted onto the present so that the
future minds their shapes and destinies. (You see, we
can insert a line of “poetry.”) Touchingly sweet dead
universes of dry selves, with all their friends and
allies, rise in a shower of scales must be humidified
so that the fossils do not crumble. A spirit knowing
nothing of the smell of meat rises to sing. The earth
with its two wounded lungs can breathe again a while
(not very long for this is finals)—but little momentitos
so that we may remember how air used to perfume
our wilderness of heart in love with sheer existence
when it ran free in our free throats... and unpolluted.
7. mammoth excretions
i)
Back from the cosmo-litical to loco-litical at hand. Zowee!
The “Rio Rancho” scene in dear old paradise. No Rio. No
Rancho—nothing new yet in this “New” Mexico. Colossal
spread of township over desert, pure, unadulterated, un-
prepossessing desert. A mammoth, vast as the You-S-A,
roaming this land, shitting as need occurs... and habitat,
cardboard-compounded, falls where they will. Ugly and
convoluted, conforming to some “standard taste” no one
outside has ever heard of. No fences, hedges, shrubs,
to sign the properties. From space to space in this catas-
trophe, the urgent shopping malls with all the dreamboats
known to “ci/vi/li/zi-za/tion.” Walmart, Best Buy, Big
Mac, or Burger King... all needs are met. But it’s now firm
the water will be wanting. The sinking aquifers of nearby
cities will not rejuvenate within some sixty years. All the
more likely for the excretions to fall back into sand. Where
will the people go (just like the Anasazi): invade the Texas
or the Mexico? A no-gold Gold-Rush into the California?
ii)
Today an article on Izembek, a Refuge at the very tip of the