A crisis of
small minds
brightens with stills
…when blossoming leaves (you know the rubbish)
do pray, so
when in
doubt, stay there
with things
that come and go to the heart of the matter
For
instance, the poet Rene Char
tells a story
of when he was fighting for the French Resistance
how he was
sent scouting for a landing field
for broken
Allied planes,
with maybe
one wing in flames
co-pilot
maybe dead
Char had
money
and he found
a farmer who would but
not if the
300 year old walnut tree
had to come
down.
And it had
to come down
(Char
explains) so
they cut
down the tree and followed the taproot
which led
them to the armor
of an
ancient knight, must have been
16th century
and he must
have had a walnut in his pocket
said Char, “level
of his thighbone,” because
the
magnificent tree had grown
right out of his grave
II
When you see
me
f*****g call
me
Give me your
heart or
your phone
and
your
flashlight
& I will
go for you
& I will
seek for you
A secret
message written
in minor keys
on the hide of the deer
(the deer
sacrifice
will not
take place this year)
III
A boundless
limitation of poetry:
the banality
of high seriousness
an illusion
of depth
and the
weight of my own self-importance
when I
haven’t had a single poetic thought all day
but I had a
dream in which
I was
travelling with a beautiful woman
with long
blond hair. How do I know
she was
beautiful? She never looked at me.
I can’t
remember her face because
She never
turned to face me
-- waiting
for a train.
IV
What is the
origin of “there is no spoon”
and why am I always touting
rectangles
I owe so much to Mantovani
&
pantomime rhyme
a quick lead
to a dead end
my guitar
technique is getting better
my fingers
are talking to each other
and the bar
chord is becoming my best friend
I don’t hate
it anymore
My hands are
less like hams
and more
like filets, boneless
fish and
moving freely from
B#mi to F#mi almost without
covering
every string
and that
doesn’t sound too bad, just
out of tune
V
I have an
intestinal disorder
I hate my
own guts
It’s not the
indifference that gets to me—
it’s the
negative capability
to hold two
contradictory ideas
in mind at
the same time
because I never believe myself
This ringing
in my ears is not silence
It is the
sound of a man
driving a
nail through his skull.
VI
The world is
not always
narrow and
mean as
we think it
is
is
always our
duty
to make it
wide and fine
VII
Wherever I
die
bury my heart in New Orleans
because
nothing else belongs there
except my
ass
Blow up your sidewalk
with your sun and rain
I’m not an
entertainer nor
an
entrepreneur, I don’t know
how to make
fish out of poetry
nor does
this have to be explained
no universal
knowledge but a little
history
I’ve been
through all that—
“You can
bust a Jackson
but you cannot
break a Tubman.”
