xli. Wage Slave
I would not work for you but these bars
I did not build nor can pull down my own.
I might work beside you if it could be said
we make something, a good day's sweat
from it. No. What I build for you is a higher
pile of dead hours none will retrieve &
the only difference I can see is that
your dead hours pay for life's shiny things
& mine pay for these angry lines of art.
******
xlii. Joy
The moment I knew I loved you was high
& deep in a desert's night, when I saw
the shift among worlds would take
you & I by each other for a short
time more & I must bid you jump
or let you go. You jumped. My joy.
******
xliii. New Fixtion
The hunger that everything matters,
however casual a hand touches a hand
by night. Words without echo, without memory,
yet this hour, how it wilds to possess
the world! I wonder as it passes, its music
become another & another. Wonder without
why what this was, the avenue lights
flaring, traffic's hard hustling drama, &
the soft remove to dreams, if removed at all.
******
xliv. Nihil
If a fuck is all that's to it,
feed, breed, continue the kind,
if this is good, is it yet good enough?
******
xlv. Crippled
One sits alone in a half-lit room,
undone by the fleeing taste of sweet—
The noise of the street sighs, abates—
what's next? the spirit asks—
What will you do? How to take that first,
new step toward, past memory?
******
xlvi. I Dream of Guns
I dream of guns often, & wonder at this.
Sometimes on an old car seat, sometimes
in a policeman's hand. One time in an
office, used by a security guard to keep
me in sight, move me around. I suppose
the gun, those seen & those felt all around,
guards the hours, patrols the rich man's
keep of golden coin & fine ass, lets the rest
know that we tend the steering of
a boat not our own, & that these controls
existed when guns were yet sharpened rocks,
& will exist on when men guard & direct
other men by harnessing starlight itself.
******
xlvii. Sparkling Lights
No perfection, all perfection,
the grime & glow of the hours,
not a dream to solve, a music to salve,
nothing but the world-crusted
mind, its unsorted well of crying
memories, the chance in every direction,
the fleeing, luring chance, come along,
it says, a guru, a demon, a bloom,
a soft voice, come along before
it passes. It passes. It passes.
******
xlviii. Self-Portrayt
I climb inside my own mind &
start to root around—
I climb inside my own mind &
here is what I found.
A beat-up orange football of foam.
A headless plastic horse. A few wrinkled
Playboy magazines. A room, at least, of books.
Countless thrift store notebooks with filled
pages like this one. 1000 movie stubs. 1000 scatched LPs.
The beat clothes of a tall man never pretty to himself.
I find the flowing image of a woman,
continuous in every shadow, on every wall,
a want want want radiating about her
& the only question I have as a frame:
do I want her heart or her cunt more?
There are children who never grow up in here,
ever crippled, ever needful, & splotches
all around them of crying guilt & hardened love
& both of these are not mine but invaded
me long ago & will not part me til I blow into the wind.
There are voices, just voices, preserved
from long dead years. They mock my hair,
my height, the shoes I wear, the very smell
of my tired, confused, unkempt body as I grope
among them in markets & classrooms.
And there are trees, millions of trees,
& a moon above, & great of concert of stars,
& there a mountain, & over there the sea,
& sometimes all of this seems gone to me,
like only men & their savage waking blood exists at all.
There are demons, too, & we regard each other,
& I say who? what? & they say you,
& others, many others, every other, when will
you know? I say I wish, they say let be,
we nod, we smile, there is chasm, there is hope.
And, last, my pen, this pen, many before
it, many to come, & this page & this hour
& I am inside my mind which looks like
& not like this world. I breathe, relax.
A beat, another. These words are my music,
how I tell of life, & they shine in my mind,
so all told here may stand revealed, &
the room for so much more yet to come.
******
xlix. Vicious, Gone
A beast in me, a beast in you,
a beast roars from the heart of this world,
a beast roars out this world &
each of us its cry, its horror at what
its song looks like, this world, its song,
the beast who cries out this world,
lawless, because laws only name the chaos
without knowing or owning it—
lawless, because before then, before now,
before order, before death—
lawless, because the beast cries &
is cry both, & I am crying too—
I am crying too for how much I will never know.
******
l. Every Confession
You are all my brothers, every last
angel & bastard of you, & the trees
in unseen forests & the moonlight
on ocean waves a thousand miles
from land. All my brothers, those living
tonight, a thousand years ago, &
a thousand thousand years to come.
You are all my brothers not because
mystics & physics tell me so, not
because the dust I am once formed
many other things & will again
in what great hereon that I will know
otherwise, not even because my dust is yours.
You are all my brothers because this blood
in me is the sea & the sea covers
the world like a beautiful swathe
& there is stardust in my bones &
stars sing over the world like a first & last
lullaby & you are all my brothers because
even in my dreams you are there & what best hope
I have of hereafter is resting or dancing with you all.
******
li. God (.)
The woman smiled & moved like
flesh made music on her bed,
smiled as a few garments & then
a fewer, the garments were clouds
& she was the sky, so when they cleared,
the sky now clear, her body smiling
& nude, I said God. We invented you
to explain ourselves to each other.
She smiled & moved again & we invented
& you explained but nothing, nothing explains.
******
lii. All One Flesh
The lean & lure toward one end
& the other, a tan face in candlelight,
a thin book that points to trees, but
then all are one, a steely union
in spirit & unto earth, somewhere
down low & in between is the moving
word, the laughing light, the doubtful dance
best men of faith do in plain hours.
******
liii. What I Learned Today
A ragged man on the street passes me,
& begs a sandwich. I ask why but
nothing he says explains. I pass a woman
& her friend considering how much money
next year? The light red to green &
I have to get on, eventually to the
tall building, the pisser full of men,
I listen from a stall, one man has
such a bad back, the other does too,
& when at last all is still I remember
listening to that leader of men
saying his new war speech crushed him
inside. A smiling girl in a short skirt,
hot ass, dying heart. A broken bicycle
frame, crushed to a tree. Rains all night.
******
liv. Train Through City December
Rains all night. The way is dis-illusion.
I walk upright, herding my many musics
& a sometimes sagging heart. I see faces
struggle in the season of lights, what it is,
what to do, how to shock themselves to happiness.
******
lv. mamapapa
In this crimson chamber,
where heart beats memory, each breath a dream,
I sit with you again, forlorn & true, &
I ask, why did you make me?
What love did you know?
Where is this place?
Will I come again to be?
******
lvi. The Healing
Inside the truth there is no preaching;
there are still the doubts besetting all men;
but wearing a stinging belt of hope,
one begins to work.
But what if the truth is double, is many,
& doubt shines more sexy, offers play
when the work is too much, sings happy
of moving from lazy faith to lazy faith?
What if nothing holds too long in the primal
shiftings of both world & soul?
Better ask: why the ceaseless dance of beat & breath?
Why the key chased through layers of dreams?
Why the healing in new touch, the mystery again close?
******
lvii. Sentience All
You come to me in voices, or maybe
one great braided voice, a dropped pencil,
a scrap of lettuce, the sheen on wet
cobblestones, voices, braided voice, a cry
I cannot know but to feel, an urging
that I connect not just among men but
among all. The need of the world from
its cells to its peaks for attention, care,
healing, & no cry of weakness, no bent
despair in this, an instruction. Yes,
take the yellowed groping of your heart,
the shaped doubts you reck faith, yes,
take the inky wants you call your songs
but listen, near, crack the brambled
world of men, its heights & cities of dirty
mirrors, you come to me in voices
or maybe one great braided voice, dolls
in a junk heap, old terminals, fallen
oak walls, another's long memory of a deep wound,
& for a moment become plain & ferocious
& say when will you learn to arrive at this hour,
& a thousand more like it, just to spark & begin?
******
lviii. Frenzied Faith
For the tall buildings feed me their despair,
& the green things feed me their mystery,
& my dreams feed me raw instructions,
& flesh's want feeds my jerky dance,
& I wonder how to make it all music,
& I don't know how to remember, how to know I know.
******
lix. Psychedelic Dream (v)
In that dream or high or song
I held my pen & looked at the page
& nothing came: I sit very close,
hunched into my pages, let the music
in my ears swathe my mind,
let the desert's long full moon beams,
let the ocean's wild fecund hustle,
led the woods replace my bones, tree up
my body, let the sun break me into
a thousand rays, let the love jingle
my mind & the pain trouble my beat &
breath, & I didn't stop & I haven't stopped
& I will not stop because something listens, something needs this.
******
lx. Season of Lights
It wasn't years ago, like many of
these stories, no. There was no full
moon, as often is my light. I am not
telling one more story of fine ass &
tryptamines because I can, there are my
hours, this is what I do with them.
There were pain, but it was not stuff
of music, & I caused as much as
I got. Was it reaction, was it revenge?
What isn't in this world, one way
or another? But there it was, not long
ago enough to be long ago, merely ago.
I sat alone, with many others, &
these were neither friends nor enemies,
& I worked, & we worked, & nothing
we made mattered, these hours weren't
even pretty enough to be ugly. What, then,
about this? Why remember it to this page?
It was because I looked up, suddenly,
& nobody saw me do it. Looked up
at something, was it an insect flashing
by, tiny & up here on the 20th floor?
It was, & nobody noticed but I did not
look down, I watched it, this visible
buzzing, watched it for how it did not
belong here, & yet here it was.
Dissatisfied, thrown, now restless
to know more, yet what book, or
which teacher, what great human path
of knowing would explain? None.
I knew this. None would explain.
That's how I ended up here. None explains.
And for a long time it hadn't mattered
anymore. I had my work, alone &
among many others. I had a chamber,
a cupboard of food, a deck of cards,
& a body to fuck every night. None
explained but I no longer knew or cared.
Now I did, & I had to know, or at
least I had to look again new &
so I stood up & left my desk,
my work, & climbed the 20 flights
down to the street, a mid-morning
of drizzle & hustlers with begging signs.
I walked the streets, thinking how
do I unlearn all I no longer
know? How do I do this? I'm
telling you about something still fresh,
not an old tale with all that came
after. No. None explains. But I had to know.
And so here I sit before you, no cup,
no line to peddle. I sit before you
on this street corner, a shout's distance
from that great tree of lights, &
I do not know. None explains.
But I ask you now, now, sit with me.
Sit here with me, a minute, an hour.
We don't have to speak. Sit with me.
We'll look at the lights. We'll watch the faces.
We'll wonder high & low because that's what humans do.
We don't have to speak but we may find we are singing.
We'll feel the drizzle, the great miracle of doubt, & the love.
******
*** Many Musics, V, xli - Wage Slave - Working class living brings some fury sometimes . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xlii - Joy - Love song to my beloved . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xliii - New Fixtion - happy song, for me . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xliv - Nihil - the old question . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xlv - Crippled - poem live from mind . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xlvi - I Dream of Guns - "we tend the steering of a boat not our own" - true, brother . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xlvii - Sparkling Lights - just no damned answers to it all . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xlviii - Self-Portrayt - still stands as a pretty true portrayt, some years on . . .
*** Many Musics, V, xlix - Vicious, Gone - sums it up really . . .
*** Many Musics, V, l - Every Confession - hope in its strange package . . .
*** Many Musics, V, li, God (.) - nothing, nothing explains . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lii, All One Flesh - sort of dreamy . . .
*** Many Musics, V, liii, What I Learned Today - such a strange day . . .
*** Many Musics, V, liv, Train Through City December - every year this occurs . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lv, mamapapa - questions never to be answered . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lvi, The Healing - all sorts of bouncy questions . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lvii, Sentience All - wow, nice . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lviii, Frenzied Faith - life of the pen . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lix, Psychedelic Dream (v) - starts slow, roars . . .
*** Many Musics, V, lx, Season of Lights - this was a poem written during my final Season of Lights living in Portland, in 2009 . . . it's a strange half-myth . . .