by now, his life
The spiral bound books
among the dead spiders and
kerosene dirt, smudged, the
moments time left, fading in--
he'd kept on spinning
not really finished
reaching for some resolution
the final one? having lost
that belief
but not unchanged
it is in the revolving
cycles to new places
taken then swerve, and
seasoned mythos
each moment dies, as
we all
die, he saw a pathway there
in the sunflower
the artist standing on his box
God! wasn't
interesting so much
anymore he was looking for some
new name to give
some other perspective, to see
reality
a really
what might mean
kind of waiting--for
Still, the elephant blare! the trumpets of Tibet
he liked that, were metaphor
there was no occasion beside Himself
to sing
he was no professional
this milestone his 56 years
til the end of the world
his death bed got closer and
his idea of Giotto changed too
THE construction
of reality
two things-- juxtaposed
like our life, and death
reconciling the two
he guessed you could say
there was just no reconciling
THAT would be a poem
a metaphor of a fragment
or have any end meaning
OFF NOW! to the villa Wall
that fresco, that American thing
he felt from under his mountains
he had turned it over and that bright
striped salamander was the
beginning and indian glint
the portrait of the great man haunted him
his poem was more than travelogue
not of airports
we'd driven far
but it was more a lenght
of pictograms into a
code of DNA like romance
the lineage of a quest
goings over
in revolution
comforting world
he was, I am, and evolve to be
there was a code or grid of mind
he saw it in the rocks above
the imaginings before tenth commandment
he felt not much for the fortune telling
no god in russian was ok
now he'd remembered the brand name,
Coke in the novel
he was in the world and wasn't sure
still moment of the profane?
wrapped in his Indian blanket of diamonded
beauty which had its own order
The juxtaposition of music made everything
the mountain to the right
and the bush to the left, balancing
he saw it that way
way a going on with around the sun
the beauty of it
he traced it and it became right
for a time then had to change
a wriggling like the snake out of the egg
there was a depth
and opposite feeling in death
his mother
he was writing after
aestheticly so much was ruined
like listening to the radio before finding
out it has a point of view
decidedly christia-- oh I don't want
this
free it seems
late Picasso was amazing
to find once again
an older self than
that devil
that, miltonic Daimon a more interesting
figure picturing sex with an industrial
nightmare
that politic truely, evil
some real end to beauty
we find an island of fiction in the chaos
and dwell there
in the order we make
a presence that represents a loss, he said
we should test this as we go
feeling for surface
cracked and crumbling building
again piecing together
what to make of this diminished thing
the fallacy
the pathetic human
all too human
stars revolving behind
a reflected life going over and around
the Egyptians pointed toward a fate
the China man a meander
I'd forgotten the western way?
I'm just making it here
looking for a shape and line and
color to make
could it be
contained there
in the scribbling of the old Picasso,
I'm writing of a blank
I'm writing of a whole,
I seek still
not calling the phenomenon, One
waiting for--
older now he held so much
in his head packing and unpacking it all
The poet rode his bike down Houston, a black tee
shirt and a poem in his head
seemed all
he should be-- near he thought
maybe he could say it
he opened his mouth--the crossing
was some crux
crisis
things jammed
together like leaves and sunset
collosal sun and fragment
memory and Villa
into that ONE he liked
at least here in the painting
although it represented what we longed
for in reality ONE, see
that made cymbal clang, trumpet blare
As far away as Tibet
Professor Thurman was excited by
and you should meet his daughter
the idea arriving!
for cycling-- soul
blue comedian!
Art! to hear
then, redraw
again
he filed it away
for later another try
make with this surprised flavour
it was a life by now
he could be dead
All those other Poets were
and he heard others--
he liked the word transposition
it kept coming up
to transpose what he saw
into another form which reflected back
but was a thing in itself that sounded real
rather strange to fix a image into words
John Ashbery had said to me,
"oh the painting and poetry thing--"
he said everything seemed so very
convoluted and difficult
he wondered what I meant?
so did he
there would be a point
and a digression
from it, Abstract figure flying
into dream of landscape questing to
surface, it was realization
one sought
inner and outer resolution
the goings over
fixing to order
making of a poem
villa whole and fragmenting umph!
it repeated it self made another swerve
traveled back to the ole fish shaped
island to see what had changed
to continue his heaven
dreams of unknown
escaping profane
He, Ho! major man at helm
hero on his head
sparagmos
was the term he'd found
rending apart, the hope
the coming down
of thought
into comic sublime
a minor key
to coincide
with certain abstract
shapes
some striped others plain.
Kept seeing,
like the leaves
that year
falling, down
around, like snow
covering
