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Gregg Glory\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nPublished by BLAST PRESS \r\nhttp:\/\/www.gregglory.com\r\ngregglory@aol.com\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
A Dream Dislodged<\/h2>\n
\r\nDisorderly love falls on our lives\r\nLike a dream in which we die\r\nAnd cannot awake or dream otherwise\r\nAnd only this dream is before our eyes\r\n\r\nRitual and rote and stigmatized\r\nInescapable and inordinately stylized\r\nA sleepwalker's temptless step's imposed\r\nAnd we see only the dream and are blind\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Prolog of a Dog<\/h2>\n
\r\nThis is an epic: shrunk, crabbed, and small,\r\nFull of false-effects, self-pity, the merely personal,\r\nA Don Juan who lambastes not the passing scene\r\nBut all that has-been Juan may be, or is, or has been.\r\nWhere more loving looks would gloss a blemish\r\nThe critic's eye inscribes a scar to cherish,\r\nFor every jot that takes away from fame, frame, or form\r\nBolts the sniping critic thus much more above the norm.\r\n\r\nI spy inside to sight with telescopic sighs\r\nThe whys of my feelings' reasons:\r\nInterloper on a landscape without seasons\r\n-- Why are such thoughts always such internal messes?\r\nInsistent blots and bleeding\r\nAwful as a Rorsach reading?\r\nOr are summer ladies in their swaying dresses\r\nThe carnal cause of my distresses?\r\n(Your guess is as good as I guess my guess is.)\r\n\r\nLove's each word confirms what I suspect:\r\nDisaster's the master, and we but the guests.\r\nShe sheds no sigh for any man's part,\r\nWhether the nether gender or simply his heart.\r\nOn Time's high hill my glass house lies sheer,\r\nWhite licked-together ice panes as thin as tears---\r\nI'll throw nothing as improbable as rocks\r\nBut must content my anger by flinging dirty socks.\r\n\r\nWhen confronted by the bare barbarity\r\nOf a too-intimate, too-personal personal history\r\nThe titillating crowd contracts a gassy gasp\r\nInto the actor's ruination of a yawn.\r\nPut away the hugs, unclench the hearty clasp,\r\nPoke about for the folded rulebook on Badminton\r\nOr dewy martinis not cleared away at dawn,\r\nAny of last season's or last night's amenable diversions,\r\nNo worse for the weather on the party lawn.\r\n\r\n\"But I have a tale to tell you!\" he told the mirror\r\nAs a minor chord played in the castle dreary,\r\nAnd like a lawyer at a settlement\r\nBetween heavenly disputants temporarily hellbent\r\nHe unpacked his tale like a holy relic. \r\nHe tried, when talking, talking about his happenstance\r\nTo concentrate Pure Mind from nominal Space.\r\nSomehow somewhere something means something\r\nAs we fill with ephemeral words our eternal dumbness.\r\n\r\nAnd ever the bleak bitterness of Love is present,\r\nAwkward to forget, awkwarder to remember,\r\nA golden goose whose taste has turned to pheasant:\r\nSour to eat, but the killing's pleasant.\r\nLeaning with a highpower scope on my pickup's fender,\r\nI forget at once who was the first offender.\r\nA kiss is just a kiss, for all our wishing\r\nAnd love is just another way for brains to say \"gone fishing.\"\r\nAnd yet what hopes are harbored in a sigh\r\nTo which all the pall of History can't manage to give the lie?\r\nAnd somehow behind Love's final curtain\r\nThe essential something-nothing of ourselves is lurking.\r\n\r\nTo say that these things are only so,\r\nThat, in the course of life, such heinousness is usual\r\nIs to dodge the lodging dart that conscience pricks\r\nAnd with our green tequilas reel \r\nAbout the empty garden like a crypt.\r\nIt doesn't make much difference\r\nIf you're in the Congo, Buenos Aries, or France\r\nTime can add no savor but regret\r\nTo what the hand has done, or the heart inflicts.\r\n\r\nYet I may say, like the newscaster at six \"Once\r\nUpon a time, in a galaxy far, far away\r\nI loved.\" Such a rare occurrence\r\nCan't be measured by existential stirrings and segues:\r\nIt's the internal turnings of that monster Fate\r\nThat makes our mousing loves or hatreds great.\r\nIs my mauve eagle of presidential pinion,\r\nOr am I but a seraph's wingman?\r\nPublic puffs and public scrapes\r\nSuck divinest wines back to earthy grapes.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Sword Inside<\/h2>\n
\r\nA purposeless scrub plain laid before the sight,\r\nInarticulate, has nothing to offer;\r\nNeutral evolution's meaning is neuter\r\nUntil interpretive man stands near.\r\n\r\nCool swaths and charts of haughty stars\r\nWhirling infinite on a pin\r\nTo rampaging wolf and twittering lark\r\nRevolve innocent of sin.\r\n\r\nBut one constellation-loaded look or angst-angelic glance\r\nCast up by blameful man\r\nCan trace God's wrath in each twinkling coordinate\r\nAs plainly as a plan.\r\n\r\nUntil the intuitive outcast on the monotone plain\r\nDivided the iterative day\r\nInto the arrowy horror of arbitrative time,\r\nInventing vatic history,\r\n\r\nGod's mercy and His blood could not from the dust\r\nGather us to his breast;\r\nBhudda in his monk-smock howled the rice from his throat,\r\nA proctor without a test.\r\n\r\nLacking sin's spectacle or anticipatory hope's\r\nHuman ability to fail\r\nLife spins in a bituminous bubble of unbecome,\r\nA whereless, whenless exile.\r\n\r\nNarrow animal and expansive man both hunt world and sky;\r\nAnxious and inscrutable they rave.\r\nThe one with tooth, paw and blind beak will kill,\r\nThe other with inner glaive.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Ardor for Order<\/h2>\n
\r\nOnce I was happy just\r\nTo flabbergast and gust\r\nOver incestuous Thanatos and Eros,\r\nMy impulsive pair of heroes.\r\n\r\nBut now my erring mind\r\n(Arranging, jury-rigging jigsaws night by night)\r\nSurveys the surrounding social scene\r\nIn meditative fright.\r\n\r\nThe president imposes order,\r\nThe pope imposes hope;\r\nWhich one has the right to expedite\r\nMy sonnets with his ardor? \r\n\r\nEvery rhyme with law and order\r\nIs enticingly narcotic,\r\nBut to impose them on the Zeitgeist\r\nIs damnably neurotic.\r\n\r\nThe windbag of a fascist\r\nHoots and emotes in Life's emporium,\r\nHis whistlework's that of the serious artist,\r\nEnvowelling society's consortium.\r\n\r\nHis graves are all so neatly done\r\nThey lie down in counted rows;\r\nThe bones obey coordinates;\r\nAbove, there blooms a rose.\r\n\r\nBut I conceive of a magic bag\r\nThat holds us all together,\r\nA something simple like the spurious\r\nConvention of \"the weather.\"\r\n\r\nThere's no God, or need be none\r\n(Intrusive into our intimate \"Scene A\")\r\nWho's got to plod, or descend\r\nDeus ex machina.\r\n\r\nDraw instead in dreamy eye or fable\r\nSomething constellationish\r\nShared with elbows tucked at table,\r\nA grace passed round or handed down,\r\n\r\nThe substance of a wish.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Aims<\/h2>\n
\r\nBullets 'oft gang awry'\r\nWhen we squint with lying eye\r\nAt the target we had thought\r\nTo level with a shot;\r\nSomewhere along the barrel\r\nOur curving expectation falls\r\nAnd what is becomes a part\r\nOf what we hope to shoot,\r\nOr perhaps an intervening wind\r\nHas changed beginning and the end.\r\nThe future always lies\r\nSomewhere in the 'is,'\r\nOr so the marksman's maxim goes\r\nHunkered in a bush of rose.\r\nThe future always lies\r\nSomewhere in the 'is'\r\nOur eyes are scouting now;\r\nHope and here intermix somehow,\r\nNor get pulled apart\r\nUnless our killing art\r\nDelivers to the shaping thought\r\nThe dead end we had sought.\r\n\r\nThe philosopher with his carcass\r\nDispenses with his guesses\r\n- What would be now is,\r\nAnd this is happiness.\r\nNor does he as he eats inquire\r\n\"What if I had not fired....\"\r\nOr if a speck of dust had interposed\r\nBetween his sightline and his nose.\r\nAll the dedication of his thought\r\nGoes to digestion of what he's brought\r\nFrom the wild field, as able,\r\nTo his domesticated table.\r\nNot until quick hunger comes again\r\nWill his thoughts curve and turn \r\nTo all the 'Ifs' of chance\r\nThat can cancel out his choice\r\nAnd send aim or word awry\r\nIn the hunted day.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
My Beloved Enemy<\/h2>\n
\r\nMy beloved Enemy\r\nConfronts my chaos to define\r\nMy anger out of emptiness,\r\nA solid hatred from rash wish.\r\n\r\nMy beloved Enemy\r\nFor my arch-arranging eye\r\nDesigns an aching target\r\nThat I must miss or hit;\r\n\r\nGives to my wide-range stagger\r\nA more local, focal goal,\r\nA sharpness to each dagger\r\nUnfolded from the soul.\r\n\r\nMy beloved Enemy\r\nIncinerates Laws like xmas-trees \r\nAnd from a dwarfish, brutal bush\r\nGrows adored as Truth.\r\n\r\nWithout my beloved Enemy\r\n--Alone, or made by mirrors three--\r\nNo matter how I writhe and twist\r\nMy very self would not exist.\r\n\r\nMy beloved Enemy\r\nRadiant with joy and energy\r\nLooks out from my own interior,\r\nPuts on my scowls and powers.\r\n\r\nMy beloved Enemy\r\nAlight with hate and ecstasy\r\n--Fevered cheek to cheek we dance\r\nHeedless of our circumstance.\r\n\r\nNow my beloved Enemy\r\nMade naked by wind and time\r\nArrives with a stricter chill:\r\nMy Enemy I must kill.\r\n\r\nMy beloved Enemy\r\nMust learn now how to die,\r\nAnd my beloved Enemy\r\nIn blood before me lies.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Burning the Vail<\/h2>\n
\r\nLet Love's lukewarm body lie\r\nDrained of every lover's sigh;\r\nPut up the crepe, pull down the bunting,\r\nPack in boxes the matrimonial trumpets. \r\n\r\nRescind the secret thought, and cancel hope.\r\nLet marriage feasts go up in smoke;\r\nLet the lover, loved, display\r\nIndependence to the end of days.\r\n\r\nHeaven's research into love's prayers\r\nRecommends ascetic despair;\r\nDespite longstanding and accustomed use,\r\nA gander's not as good as goose.\r\n\r\nWhen the mirror spots in morning's face\r\nNo room for absolution or for grace,\r\nEvery constellation seems\r\nEvidence of God's complicity.\r\n\r\nTo exercise the lover's part\r\nSeems the only answer to retreating hearts:\r\nMechanics of hydraulic hand\r\nGive no ease to loves lorn gland.\r\n\r\nModern convenience should make us fit\r\nTo enjoy the air-conditioning, and forget;\r\nYet still in every neighbor's bush\r\nLurks the same distempered wish.\r\n\r\nEvery kiss but seems to mock\r\nThose lips no kissing will unlock;\r\nSnipers crouch on every roof\r\nTo put an end to lovers' truth.\r\n\r\nRansack every inked-out line\r\nFor furtive hints of peace-of-mind,\r\nTime the healer will not dispense\r\nRelief when every breath is grief.\r\n\r\nTo be a ghost and blow unmade\r\nThrough drawn and yellowed windowshade....\r\nWhat aught occurs, there is no stop\r\nTo distraught hearts or lovers' hopes.\r\n\r\nWhat may mere continuance teach,\r\nStalwart survival of the leech?\r\nLet pain cease, and let cease pride\r\nWhen love's soft cause has died inside.\r\n\r\nIntellectual despair\r\nIndulges 'The Unrepaired',\r\nWhile Hymanaeus Io wont console\r\nParticulate memory, \r\n the ripsawed soul.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
A Double in the Dark<\/h2>\n
\r\nIdeal and disposable, the idea of you\r\nRustles beyond my moony shoulder,\r\nAmorous shadow of fictive love,\r\nA dream demanded by the dove.\r\nShapeless bloods within me, grant\r\nDark nurture to this faithless plant;\r\nHeart, beat on in dreamland to create,\r\nWhere a pink and rumpled pillow lies,\r\nNerves that throb in sympathy;\r\nCreate, heart, until I in moonbeams see\r\nA second dreamer dreaming cordially.\r\n\r\nNew eyes open, asleep yet silvery.\r\n\r\nConfessional moonlight's idyll\r\nWhich previously had bridled\r\nIn dry daylight's talk and squawk\r\nNow lets our human arms console\r\nEach other till the feeling's whole.\r\nLet rosy midnight flicker on\r\nNeon until the ending dawn;\r\nTogether in our sparkless darkness,\r\nExchanging jokes and mental missives,\r\nOur only soft defense against\r\nOuter Nature's rage: This is not this\r\nIs wishing, wishing, wishing\r\nAgainst compelling consciousness.\r\nAnd our breaths' most secret heats,\r\nSirocco on rose-darkened sheets,\r\nWhisper the stories of our souls\r\nWhere conceptual contrapuntal kiss\r\nAnd simpler carnal lips may meet.\r\n\r\nA new moon glimmers in the room.\r\n\r\nBy careful compact with the night,\r\nTangled breaths and traded hands\r\nAnd tangoed bodies no longer stand\r\nBut lie as loving strangers might\r\nAcquainted with mysteries of delight.\r\nSide by side let us abide\r\nBefore that darling blonde, the dawn\r\nExplodes and leaves in shards\r\nThe love we worked on oh so hard--\r\nLet us have a meeting without an edge,\r\nNor wrestle with our conscience once\r\nBut play pillow-talk, be each a dunce,\r\nTwo drowsy loves, pale and veined,\r\nA pair of frangible spirits' vessels\r\nLaughing out the candles.\r\n\r\nA new day glitters at the ledge.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Unawares<\/h2>\n
\r\nI lived unaware for a time\r\n(I have to admit it)\r\nUnconscious in a casual castle\r\nSipping livid Glenlivit;\r\nI was deaf to the daily curses\r\nOf incontinent scullery maids,\r\nAnd recognized not the stable boys'\r\nDisingenuous praise.\r\n\r\nAs lazy time lolled on\r\nFrom here and now to gone\r\nA private contentedness\r\nAnd not extant catastrophe was\r\nWhat I secretly counted on.\r\n\r\nAnd all that time, you\r\nLooked over the lifeboats\r\nTested and prepped the crew,\r\nGauging the drop-height\r\nFrom the second story window\r\nIn case of fire or flight.\r\n\r\nI was smoking cigarettes\r\nIn bed, getting girls up for a chat\r\nWhile tanning in a deckchair,\r\nEyeing the hostess on the sly,\r\nAnd all that.\r\nBut you had long before departed.\r\nThe hallway echoed with your passage\r\nAs dawn or noon or night invited\r\nThe memory of your visage.\r\n\r\nYou had left like a bell\r\nThat rings only in memory,\r\nOr how a tale told in childhood\r\nRetold is a story today.\r\nThe hearing ear is fooled\r\nBy a wrongful kindness of the mind\r\nWhose generous assistance molds\r\nEverything it finds.\r\n\r\nYou are silent, absent and afar\r\nIndifferent and unreachable\r\nAs a collapsing star.\r\nQuietly busy ostensibly\r\nIn an alternate universe\r\nFor your light still spills\r\nSome length of years at ease\r\nIn at every sill.\r\n\r\nShips and compasses\r\nStill rely on the light,\r\nHaving been forged in your presence\r\nAnd wandering still in the night.\r\nBut one day your light, having left,\r\nWill leave us of light bereft.\r\n\r\nAnd yet you return, return\r\nIn all the days of my thought\r\nAs if there were no now and then\r\nAs if mercury cornered stayed caught.\r\nAnd yet you return, return\r\nLike an agile ellipsoid mobile\r\nAbout your own center you turn\r\nPresenting new angles the while,\r\nNew facets and faces revealed,\r\nBut really always and beautifully centered.\r\n\r\nMaybe I too am centered, I too,\r\nBut more orbitally arranged\r\nFixed on a spar of you\r\nFrom your central largeness estranged\r\nAs when Earth to dawn has come\r\nHalfblind in the sun.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Snowbound<\/h2>\n
\r\nA silent fibbing moonlight washes\r\nDistorted shadows of the dissenting sun\r\nOver each snow-molested branch and bush\r\nArranged outside with a congregation's grace\r\nFor the terminal minutes of our love-embrace\r\nHappening behind an unrolled windowsash.\r\nYou had wanted to hurt me, and did.\r\nTruth was my only tribulation.\r\n\r\nYour hands hung, inert and underfed,\r\nAlong the sofa's arms, overstuffed and wan,\r\nResisting the reconciliation of my touch\r\n- And you pulled away, besides, your face,\r\nQuick and moonlike, from my near face\r\nHurrying forward in a rudimentary rush\r\nThat had so often sought the complexity of bed.\r\nTruth was my only tribulation.\r\n\r\nIt was then, snowbound and alone, you had said\r\nWords that made all things one\r\nAnd useless, in the gelid December hush\r\nWhose winds diminished to a sparse trace\r\nIn the outer emptiness I could not face,\r\nToo full of the moon's pale refracted crush.\r\nI don't know how all this roomy dark occurred.\r\nTruth is my only tribulation.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Pavilion Fountain: After the Funeral (Nov. 25, 1963)<\/h2>\n
\r\nWinter's never here at the fountain\r\nWhose waters' liveliness seems a warm \r\nAnd open candor. Things are but things and do as they must:\r\nAs in the fountain's pallorous spangling forever\r\nHeaviness and light contest.\r\n\r\nBeyond the torus of its halo\r\nThe summery waters' motions endeavor,\r\nWith the tear-bright dignity of an eye in agony,\r\nTo show how lightly may a substance go\r\nAn afflatus of divinity.\r\n\r\nAll things to their opposite use\r\nTortured, as when this lithesome watercourse\r\nWas narrowed from easy murmur into gladdened sound,\r\nReveal some laden tale of their earthly course\r\nReturning to their source.\r\n\r\nAs when like tears to ground we streak \r\nAnd the opened waters that accompany burial\r\nFlow in broken speech, so the startled water, at its arc\r\nInterpenetrate of scattered light, torridly tumbles\r\nAll rainbows to one stone bowl.\r\n\r\nSomething had sung up \r\nFrom the dark watered words summoned to console\r\nBodied brightness; as when we ourselves, by a terrible pity pul-\r\nLed vocal from the womb, tighten and squall \r\nTo give creation's own \r\n\r\nCry to the beautiful.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Sestina: A Whittler’s Self-Portrait<\/h2>\n
\r\nTired of the afternoon, too tired to rest,\r\na crooked dropping spider made herself my guest,\r\ndispossessed of the wood over which she'd labored\r\nwispily uniting the crooked scrap lengths of pine\r\nby busy inner habit for a length of time.\r\nUnwitting where she was, she knew no reason\r\n\r\nto rest here out of season. No reason....\r\nThough with no reason myself among the rest,\r\nI dare endure my time as long as any guest;\r\nignorant of Sisyphus, she had no sense of labor,\r\ntying and untying her crooked knots of pine.\r\nReason's only reason in the absurdity of time.\r\n\r\nWith sly and candid step, each time each time,\r\na spider will weight a grassblade for her reasons\r\nuntil the toppling tip on earth must have its rest\r\nwhere busy man himself is a busy guest\r\nby dint of crooked reason and crooked labor.\r\nToo tired to rest, wherever here is, I pine\r\n\r\nfor bed. Each crooked plank was chopped from pine;\r\nI lie and contemplate the length of time\r\nGranddad who'd taught me hewed his reasons,\r\nlaboring and loving busily that I might rest\r\nsomewhere on Earth an honored guest.\r\nAnd here again the dropping spider took up her labors,\r\n\r\nsurprising me upon the crooked wood I labor.\r\nI watched her threaded progress along the pine\r\ndesktop chopped from scraps of time\r\nwhen Granddad himself had thought his reasons\r\nfor cutting and hewing had been laid to rest.\r\nBusily I contemplate my busy guest.\r\n\r\nAbsurd, I think, how the length of time we're guests\r\nShrinks, and crook my wood portrait while she labors,\r\ngoing awkwardly on against the lengths of pine\r\nas if it were no labor to labor all her time.\r\nIf reasons she kept, she kept them her own reasons\r\nas we carved the scraps of day to silent rest.\r\n\r\nTired in my crooked dreams of tired day's length of tired time,\r\nI hear my angry Mentors demand and reason;\r\nI labor, labor, labor on my portrait without rest.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Late-Flowering Bush<\/h2>\n
\r\nBeyond the serious torches of several cypress trees,\r\nThe dusty chirrup chirrup of militant cicadas,\r\nThe noble solitude of a solid lonely oak\r\nClattering his leaves at the sun over a bleached field\r\nThat balanced his high growth by spreading out,\r\nDesert-like and hot at noon, and all afternoon\r\nUntil the evening made them equal sharers \r\nOf one shade, a blackness welled up from the root.\r\nBeyond all this, beyond the blushing bluish grasses\r\nAnd inner darkness of some evergreens out right,\r\nI thought to see what seemed from the county road\r\nA sweet hilarious patch of beech, tittering \r\nAmong more sober rowans, and walked on\r\nFarther than I had thought at first to do.\r\nA forest darkness hustled, a coat atop my coat.\r\nAnd so I came upon a late-flowering bush\r\nHidden deeper in among more doubtful darks,\r\nTaller and elder, more august and up high.\r\nIt was way out of season, much too too late,\r\nYet full of hopeful blossom regardless\r\nOf the season's clock; it kept its time its own--\r\nBefore the long sharpness of the frost that tapered\r\nIn shadows till midday, it held its whites aloft.\r\n\r\nThe flowering bush was a thing itself, alone,\r\nClotted with milky flowers as large as fists\r\nAs if to claim a space among the harder barks,\r\nAs a child will feel more brave at midnight,\r\nStartled from a nightmare, to smile in the dark,\r\nOr as a father walks twice round and round \r\nA house, for proof he really has a home.\r\nThe flowers asked for bees that would not come\r\nTo so shaded an interior, whose buzzed instincts\r\nCould not guess to lead them there, too far\r\nFrom the sugary buttercups and tigerlilies of the field;\r\nThe bees were busy with their honeys and their hives,\r\nToo industrious to bother with this thing alone.\r\nI wondered what had made the seed drop here\r\nAll those years ago when this bush first pipped.\r\nHad some panicked thrush raced bewildered through the thick,\r\nOr been carried dead by some hawk, and dropped?\r\nHow had the seed, which loved the sun, found \r\nFiltered light to endure, in the coolness all about?\r\nHad some tree burned out and a dormant seed \r\nBeen sprung, hot from its casing, into germination?\r\nI'd known an odd old fellow who had not\r\nHalf begun to sing until he was half past eighty,\r\nAnd his voice as awful as an old phonograph;\r\nBut still he sung, and mostly pleased himself of late,\r\nAnd showed the lyric shavings of sharpened wit\r\nTo any too-curious; those words were his fists.\r\n\r\nAbove us all in the little clearing, the dull touch\r\nOf a near cloud's inner-lighted immanence\r\nBroadened into mystery over man and bush.\r\nSomething happened then, I did not know\r\nHow much until years afterward had stretched\r\nMy roots into some new dark flowing underneath.\r\nBut then, I did not know what I would become,\r\nAnd, never having intended to be there once at all,\r\nAnd having forgotten all about the patch of beech\r\nThat had first sent me off into the dark,\r\nI shook my head at the flowering bush and took off.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Agape<\/h2>\n
\r\nIt's wondrous easy some days to guess\r\nWhat at last we are and what's happiness.\r\nYet these inscrutable questions duly observe\r\nBoth the face of the question and the hidden obverse.\r\n\r\nWhat do we know but that knit intuition\r\nPearls the stitches of mere superstition\r\nWhen sacred instinct's emergent pattern comes\r\nDivulging phantoms of what we might become?\r\n\r\nThere's no simple time in which to simply be;\r\nTime's a dark palimpsest of what we can see:\r\nSquaring the past with our parochial acre of here,\r\nOr inferring a fictional future from fanciful history.\r\n\r\nFlip, stitch, or analysis: we guess as we must,\r\nSurprise ourselves, and end as dust.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Borderline<\/h2>\n
\r\nA psyche's inscape's treacherous,\r\nAs alive with dangers as with bliss;\r\nThe purple outcrop of a mental rock\r\nCripples the supple Muse and mocks.\r\n\r\nCaught between imagination and the dream\r\nThe mind's barriers dissolve at the seams;\r\nThe motivating carnivals of lurid emotions\r\nCycles us like actors thru smoky memories and scenes.\r\n\r\nHere we're running, running on the borderline\r\nHalf-unaware of the tailored baggage we've brought,\r\nHalf-amnesiac about the burdens dropped,\r\nDrunk on our own lucubrant blood like wine.\r\n\r\nBlindfolded eyes foretell dark prophecies\r\nWhen we cannot see that we cannot see.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
On<\/h2>\n
\r\n Beyond the paper moon\r\n and past the plastic stars\r\n Lurks a lump or troubled wisp\r\n of what we really are.\r\n\r\n Behind the pantaloon, the canvas and the grease,\r\n beside the green stage door\r\n Lingers a loveable stranger\r\n whose tenor urges us to \"more.\"\r\n\r\n Although the lights are out, are out\r\n and the set's gone burning down\r\n Still we ache to traipse the stage\r\n and immortalize the clown.\r\n\r\n The grave is but a keyhole\r\n and we ourselves the key\r\n That into clay or on to flame\r\n abide Eternity.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
At the Gate<\/h2>\n
\r\n Beyond the bland suspension of a moment\r\n (still and queer and empty)\r\n We sip our tea and take our toast\r\n drained of life and envy.\r\n\r\n A drunken angel at a harpsichord\r\n suspends upon a cigarette\r\n Some tattooed prayer of the Lord,\r\n some blank mystery as yet.\r\n\r\n An opal in a teardrop\r\n confers what grief would keep;\r\n Purpure absolution drops\r\n in gutters at your feet.\r\n\r\n Starlight in a candle\r\n reddens the intruding hand,\r\n Restless on the icy mantle\r\n where Life makes no demands.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Come with me, Love<\/h2>\n
\r\nCome with me, love, beside the oaken bole\r\nWe'll watch the finch dance in the waterhole.\r\nOld blind men get their comeuppance\r\nWhenever a loving two become\r\nWhat's commonly called a one;\r\nOnly unlovers sit on the fence.\r\n\r\nCome with me, love, behind the hill\r\nWhere the geese hold court on the croquet field.\r\nLook at the terrible virginity of the snow!\r\nWhatever is the matter?\r\nWe'll get the geese to scatter;\r\nOnly the unmoved won't go where's to go.\r\n\r\nCome with me, love, uncomb your cares,\r\nMother and father are no longer here.\r\nTake this white ribbon, take it and tie\r\nThe wildness of your black hair,\r\nThe wrongness of your despair:\r\nOnly take my white crossed hands till I die.\r\n\r\nCome with me, love, into the sun,\r\nWe'll dare what they daren't when we are one.\r\nLet the old man's finch and the old man's goose\r\nRun to ruin and devolve to havoc;\r\nWe'll burn the prison and break the locks\r\nAnd like the moon in water let happiness loose.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Beached Lightning<\/h2>\n
\r\nStars and sand assault the sight\r\nchafeing what should charm--\r\ncloudy, angry--\r\na spirit's irritants--\r\nuntil the kiln\r\nof God's great unmated hand\r\ncloses close and fuses them\r\nopinionless as glass.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Writing at the Park<\/h2>\n
\r\nSquare sunlight on a square green field\r\nShows in a polluted puddle a perfect sky reflected:\r\nThe ordered boskage of the public park blesses\r\nAll those whose disordered hearts it caresses.\r\n\r\nLove, with her careless powers\r\nMarks or marrs our unable hours\r\nUntil desertion's our proof of having been touched;\r\nAlthough the matter is little, the feeling is much.\r\n\r\nCrossing that out, I then passed\r\nA dead house with nothing to recommend it,\r\nSolitary and unstately on the grizzled grass\r\nAnd thought again about my sonnet:\r\n\r\nLove's a whitened house with thin ivy trim,\r\nRed roofing tiles almost caved in;\r\nIts got attic eyeots to let out the stale air\r\nNinety long years had inheld with stale cares.\r\n\r\nSoon I topped a big crooked hill that tapered,\r\nAnd unsteadily almost drunk with the magnificent view\r\nSettled down sweating to my dark square of paper,\r\nCarefully writing while the sky was askew:\r\n\r\nLove, which soaks up all connotations,\r\nA paranoid obsessive of boozy inflection\r\nWill cringe at each hiss, puff at ovations,\r\nAnd in light looks divine heavy temptations.\r\n\r\nA garter snake having easefully transgressed\r\nMy naked left ankle, I stood as I Xed out the rest.\r\nOne quarter's still blank; I'll try one more time.\r\nPerhaps my tongue-tied Amour is a mime?\r\n\r\nLove, the anaconda banded to the brow\r\nCompresses all meditations into raw howls,\r\nCancels all occupations, the well and the dour,\r\nAnd contracts imaginative maybe into definite now.\r\n\r\nAll of the objects (the snakes, the sonnets)\r\nDistributed like rhymes in this Lover's Park\r\nEndure the warm unlacing of the afternoon yet\r\nAnd stay in stricter order until after dark\r\n\r\nWhen darkness grants us all all the dark wishes\r\nNo acquaintance of daylight would ever wish us.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Difference Is Less<\/h2>\n
\r\n\"The neon fire Prometheus stole\r\nShown here before us as natural\r\nIn a painted campfire fuelled by laurels\r\nSays stealing is Art's only real school;\r\nMimesis flames from Nature's manual\r\nAn ignis fatuus<\/em> that kills and fools.\"\r\n\r\nMuseum explanations and the afternoon\r\nPresume the usual, the accustomed track,\r\nDrag us down to pre-history and myth\r\nAnd then obligingly back.\r\n\r\n\"Before us both chameleon and sloth\r\nIn the surrealist jungles of deceit\r\nFollow genome's and artist's plotted path,\r\nBlend inhabitant and habitat;\r\nSo what could ever differ then, in pith,\r\nBetween boar's snort and man's snit?\"\r\n\r\nAmong the crowded halls and windows\r\nOur tourguide of the Louvre\r\nExplicates Christs, perennial widows, the dice,\r\nHung between anonymous thieves.\r\n\r\n\"Since birth we're honed\r\nTo art and to theft;\r\nTo deceive to survive alone\r\nIs Nature's tricky gift;\r\nTo get what's been gathered\r\nBy others is thrift.\"\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Art and Theft<\/h2>\n
\r\nIf a thief gave you his friendship, would you\r\n take of it and feel it?\r\nWould you sit inside his patterned house\r\n among strangers' memorabilia\r\nAnd watch his tongue when he remarks\r\n on the lamp from Aunt Cecilia?\r\n\r\nThe truth has always suffered,\r\n and the thief has always lied.\r\nBy law or thief or money\r\n the truth is never paid.\r\n\r\nRaphael's Madonna, blithe upon the wall\r\n officiates at snooker;\r\nSurely those eyes, so sad, so full, so wise\r\n they'd spot emergent Christ\r\nAmong all the convergent lice, surely they\r\n forgive the hand that took her.\r\n\r\nThe priceless art and conversation\r\n conspire to do you good;\r\nYou thrill that every turn of social talk\r\n might have a twisted end.\r\nHe recalls your foibles lightly;\r\n lightly, he's your friend.\r\n\r\nSo take the offset printed coaster\r\n that is offered obliquely;\r\nLet the politely proffered crumbcake\r\n sit center on the doilies--\r\nAnd in his tepid eyes behind his tea\r\n see if you are his.\r\n\r\nThe truth has always suffered,\r\n and the thief has always lied.\r\nBy law or thief or money\r\n the truth is never paid.\r\n\r\nBy valentine's the command comes down\r\n to pen two loving stanzas;\r\nYou lean and stare and calmly crib them\r\n on a millionaire's cadenza:\r\n\"Love is that which gives and gives\r\n and finds in taking, splendour.\"\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Villanelle: Beware Chimeras<\/h2>\n
\r\nPastiche of paradises once pursued, chimeras\r\nSimmer and shimmy, love's dancer desires.\r\nIn an era of boredom they glare from the shelves.\r\n\r\nOur wanting all wanting by wanting consumes.\r\nDesire's substance is fire, and desire continues,\r\nA pastiche of paradises once pursued, chimeras.\r\n\r\nMiss Mississippi poses and pouts blue allure as\r\nWe lust, Romeo baboons who drool for new Julias.\r\nIn an era of boredom shes glare from the shelves.\r\n\r\nKisses in a cave-dark hole we willfully dive in,\r\nDrowning and hoping for anxious love's prizes:\r\nPastiche of paradises once pursued, chimeras.\r\n\r\nDon't walk to their whistle or wink at their mirrors:\r\nWhat's seen there's not seen, merely seen as.\r\nIn an era of boredom they glare from the shelves.\r\n\r\nFadeless as marshlights, they hate the actual stars.\r\nIt's fine that they shine, but not where they lead us,\r\nThese pastiches of paradises once pursued, these chimeras.\r\nIn an era of boredom they glare from the shelves.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Silent Woman<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe silent woman in the church\r\nOn nerves and vitriol does her work.\r\nDoilies of the crucifixion\r\nFrom warm young hands spread benediction.\r\n\r\nBeyond the garden, where interred\r\nRepose parental elders of the herd,\r\nA picket fence keeps neat within\r\nA few old sinners gone to Hell again.\r\n\r\nThe silent woman in the church\r\nTho' fourteen summers have blown away\r\nHiked up her heavy velvet skirts\r\nFourteen summers ago today.\r\n\r\nAnd love was in her dawning eyes\r\nAnd a wild slow dance in her step....\r\nShe turned a measure from where the graveyard lay\r\nLike a promise not yet kept.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
One Million This Minute<\/h2>\n
\r\nYou've aged me one million this minute, my dear.\r\nFor you were my time before time had begun,\r\nYour approval my watchword, my moon and my sun.\r\nMy cartelidged bones, once supple, now snap when I shiver;\r\nThe boys on the block wear thick Santa beards,\r\nThe pup that I kissed whelps broken-hipped in my hands;\r\nI see them grow agued, and myself grow unbrave,\r\nFull of hard wisdom and friends in the grave.\r\n\r\nThe hourglass pours eons in my ancient eyes, \r\nI, who first saw you and leapt like a panther!\r\nLike fated black clockhands, together we dashed\r\n(At midnight my rest is murdered quietly).\r\nI, who was once as timeless as laughter\r\nAnd lived in quartz crystal; that crystal is smashed.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Spreadings<\/h2>\n
\r\nPerhaps my middle-aged spread, love,\r\nIs made of despair instead of\r\n\r\nPotato chips and beer.\r\nThe refrigerator's cool porcelain leer\r\n\r\nSighs and hums in weighty solace\r\nNightlong, and leaves a light on in the palace\r\n\r\nStocked with richest foods, assembled desires\r\nAnxious yet to stoke caloric fires\r\n\r\nThat youth kept warm\r\nBy muscle burn.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Thing Itself<\/h2>\n
\r\nIn any universal force\r\n or unifying vision\r\nAn emptiness of intent inhabits,\r\n a blank of indecision.\r\nTo try and grasp the whole of Man \r\n must blur individuation\r\nAnd see all wide variation One,\r\n innocent of division.\r\n\r\nWho can blame them for their blankness,\r\n or feel themselves assured\r\nThat they have flossed Reality\r\n from the asterisked Obscure?\r\n\r\nWherever truth lies\r\n it lies becalmed,\r\nUnmoved in its sutures\r\n by winter storms or squalls.\r\nWe come into our knowing\r\n neither too early nor too late\r\nBut just in a moment's glowing\r\n and take what we may take.\r\n\r\nIf you don't, as I don't,\r\n know just what a thing is\r\nSit silent, or politely ask\r\n the thing itself its business.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Events Themselves<\/h2>\n
\r\n Happily at home amidst a blizzardy haphazard of papers\r\n dawn steeps the window with visionary promise\r\n for the entire apartment complex.\r\n\r\n I am barren as you are barren, in a world replete with objects\r\n indifferent to our crux; I am broken and unwise\r\n as you yourself are broken, and both unclear\r\n and nobody objects.\r\n\r\n Its always a trifle embarrassing to be caught in the act, to be alive\r\n isn't it? Coping with jaundice and child-proof tops, waking\r\n out of the same problematical nightmare at five\r\n as if sleep were the body's occasion for jeering\r\n\r\n at the brain, which imposes its ordinary articulate order\r\n fetishistically every day on the bombardment of senses\r\n selling us fictions while telling it all, reporting odors\r\n and heartthrobs with equal indifference.\r\n\r\n God bless the gods, apathetic executives of the irrational\r\n who are powerless without our laughable bodies\r\n to cast even a third-rate thrill-\r\n er, and make of our unable lives\r\n their inarticulate movies.\r\n\r\n Discursive stanzas look like they're hurrying\r\n to the nowhere-somewhere of a formal fountain's\r\n repetitive static whiteness.\r\n What is left to say, is there anything?\r\n\r\n Let love be the last letter of the penultimate law\r\n righting us rigidly as a strapping father full of laughter\r\n when like every incertain curious infant thither\r\n we totter and yaw.\r\n\r\n And yet, with all of that said (so much) and (conceivably)\r\n registered in heart and in head by habit\r\n each day is only a day at play....\r\n\r\n A lesson in how dowdy light becomes slowly a whole room\r\n and the grateful green leather chair emerged\r\n awaits patiently by the window its daily burden\r\n like a remembered word\r\n\r\n its definition. Its in this way that we have died already\r\n died and come to this life, two civil persons\r\n talking together sanely, quietly, long-windedly\r\n as an aqueduct hums.\r\n\r\n The world is full of sane sunlight and responsible landscapes\r\n not too impossible for believable humans to accomplish\r\n their unremarkable heights or average depths\r\n and whose prayers resemble steps.\r\n\r\n But first a brief sleep, first order of business, then work (not too late)\r\n may commence: every man must darkly his own\r\n unconscious Olympus propitiate\r\n\r\n as when a mountain, unexpectedly on the horizon alone\r\n rediscovers, without notice or noise\r\n its monumental poise.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
The Hydra of Days<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe idle angling\r\n\t\t\tof a watersnake--\r\nloquacious and lungless\r\n\t\t\tthrough yellowing waters\r\nfaded, sulfuric\r\n\t\t\tof a hurried traveler's Chesapeake\r\n-- through tums of evolutionary\r\n\t\t\ttime still saunters.\r\n\r\nPoliticians, as limericks tell,\r\n\t\t\tare of a swift and similar species;\r\nunchanging agile evil vile\r\n\t\t\ta Nepalese prince with an Eton smile\r\nconsiders the cost of suicide\r\n\t\t\tthe price of becoming a democracy.\r\n\r\nPelestinian flags\r\n\t\t\ton fallen Faisel Husseini\r\ndrape the dark Dome of the Rock\r\n\t\t\twhile he's more leisurly laid beneath it.\r\nMourners wail until their faces congeal\r\n\t\t\tto unfeatured unsculpted stone,\r\nblunted as snakes' in a pit.\r\n\r\nChinese warships in a watery ring\r\n\t\t\tlazily braid to enclose\r\nthe pale clarity and newsworthy brattle\r\n\t\t\tof independently little Taiwan.\r\nWould cobras or roses be roses or cobras\r\n\t\t\tif they could be persuaded to choose?\r\nAnother day, another hour goes\r\n\t\t\tcold-soldered to the chain.\r\n\r\nState Street bagpipes and banners\r\n\t\t\tplay old Joe Moakley to rest;\r\ndead as he'd lived, paraded,\r\n\t\t\tby cries and high casuistry followed,\r\ndown to the crypt and the Beantown dirt\r\n\t\t\the lies interred with the rest,\r\nanother day snaked to the flow.\r\n\r\n\"All change as they die,\"\r\n\t\t\tis the evolutionist's cry,\r\n\"and all ways wander unlost\r\n\t\t\ttoward the one wild Great Way.\r\nEach creature encircled\r\n\t\t\tbeneath the infinite 'Ifs' of the sky\r\nis trapped in the hydra of days.\"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Memo for the Millennium<\/h2>\n
\r\nMuscular terror swipes at our skins\r\n with its professional ironblack hooks,\r\nPeers in at every evening window,\r\n flashes out of every book.\r\nDefined by what we fear, we each begin\r\n dawn within a mirror's hollow look.\r\n \r\nTerror's all eagerness and action--\r\n a nightmare thing with wings;\r\nAn Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal, one\r\n horror that glares and preens,\r\nAgitates all hearts like flippers, and thumps\r\n at the back of every scene.\r\n\r\nBefore this lonesome sojourn launched\r\n in Body's leaky boat,\r\nDid we hesitate on the angled grass,\r\n touch toes beneath the moat?\r\nDid we dream of all the dreams of wanting\r\nThat lifelong flock about us,\r\n circling and taunting?\r\n\r\nBut here we are, and that's the main thing,\r\n hugging ourselves in shopping malls,\r\nScreeching at the top of the swing.\r\n Our lonely unaloneness should appall\r\nBut is itself a kind of lovely;\r\nOr so I think the angels think,\r\n hovering abovely.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Origins & Ends<\/h2>\n
\r\n'Tis said our end is half-divine\r\nAnd our days leave but a broken track\r\nThat moves, when it moves,\r\nNeither here nor there,\r\nBut shuttles forth and back.\r\n\r\nI heard our origins are in the sky\r\nAnd we crawl in fallen estate,\r\nThat when we stand\r\nAnd cry 'gainst God's plan\r\nWe moan more than half-way mad.\r\n\r\n'Tis rumored in our veins\r\nThat sex is a wish ape-uncles had\r\nIn a forgotten forest glade\r\nEvolutionary urge made glad\r\nAnd figleaf now forbade.\r\n\r\nI know my heart's an Argonaut\r\nAnd sails on waves of pain\r\nToward adventure and to a land\r\nEvolution and God forgot\r\nBut like a sleeping seed long has lain\r\n\r\nIn Imagination's open hand.\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Off the Coast: The Castaway<\/h2>\n
\r\nOur interim swimmer\r\nThe flotsam of a dreamer\r\nWill drift and shrug on whatever log\r\nDrifts and shrugs along.\r\n\r\nAmong warm fantasies of existence\r\nHe'll pip himself a prince\r\nOr surmise a wisp a whip\r\nCoiling angrily at his hip,\r\nHis own dark, androgynous\r\nUrges to nip and sharply shape\r\nAnd torture into consciousness\r\nSpeech where a beast would gape.\r\nForgetting in the momentarily kind\r\nRegard or design of a cumulus cloud\r\nAnd friendly D vitamin sunshine\r\nHow a taut tiger might lie supine\r\nBetween the shadow and the visible\r\nHe considered that nature and nurture\r\nHad made him of all things the richer.\r\n\r\nThe circumlocution of the clouds\r\nSaid nothing to him; of this he was proud.\r\n\r\nHe thought: to be awake but unaware,\r\nTo not be subject to thought's despair\r\nOr consciousness' superstitious care\r\nThat inscribes the history of the tribe\r\nInto every member's singular side\r\n-- a Rotary Club tattoo, the gestural\r\nCool of a Crip or Blood's hand signal\r\nThat had DNA for its original--\r\nIs to give up or resign\r\nYour part in the human sublime,\r\nTo abandon the spiral nadir\r\nOf accomplishment's stair\r\nTo the deterioration of clumsy Time\r\nDirtying suavity's shine.\r\n\r\nA barracuda acting as it was told\r\nSkirled to the surface, garish and bold.\r\n\r\nHe thought thinking was almost all.\r\nHe thought that since the fall \r\nFrom preconscious One\r\nInto the active energy of Become\r\nThat History and all of her messes\r\nDevolved to individual \"bless yous,\"\r\nAnd the scale that shows this depth\r\nCan be reeled off in a breath\r\nBy any mammal whose consciousness\r\nSwims livelier than a fish.\r\nFrom a wet and worsted pocket,\r\nWith an uncareful, watery shift,\r\nHe brought a palmed mouth organ out.\r\n\r\nAnd he thought as he floated there\r\nBetween ecstasy and despair\r\nBetween the sweet green-glowing swells\r\nOf his mild Cape Hatteras hell\r\nThat the shirring, Shelleyan lute\r\nCould be plucked only to confute\r\nThe rare, the rightful argument\r\nThat evolution in the docks presents:\r\nThat obscurity obstinate and disguise\r\nAre designed by chance to make us wise\r\nAnd lift us by gimmicks to Eternity\r\nOn whose verities we may spy.\r\nBy the regularity of genital function\r\nBy the pageant of reproduction\r\nWe place opportune or Platonic kisses\r\nOn wicked lips or wicked wishes\r\nAnd spurt our progeny toward Heaven's swoon,\r\nAnd like the tiger we sleep at noon.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Darkness<\/h2>\n
\r\nHeavy, unforgivable dreams, despair,\r\nHard breathing, the omnipresent air,\r\n\r\nWhistle beneath my brain a tribal tune\r\nUncaught by inner ear since Stonehenge rune.\r\n\r\nWaking in a shuddered fever\r\nUnconscious of pattern or the weather,\r\n\r\nRipped apart by an ambulance scream,\r\nTorn to storm-cloud crepe in dreams,\r\n\r\nThe question presents itself undressed:\r\nWhat's happening? Where's Death?\r\n\r\nWhat's my cause, my case, my crux?\r\nHorror stirred to eloquence\r\n\r\nReturns the steady stare,\r\nBlatant or beady, that I did not dare.\r\n\r\nBy failure of vision we unite\r\nWhere all the candles refuse to light\r\n\r\nAt the black bottom of a bowl or ditch\r\nWhere every nerveless hand fumbles for the switch. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
A Lighter Ballast<\/h2>\n
\r\nTo balance a friendship's difficult.\r\nTo give's difficult, to take's difficult,\r\nDifficult to offer the enduring cure\r\nTo caustic inward hurt and to outward time\r\nWhere nothing's ever certain and less is sure.\r\n\r\nOne must always be willing to offer a sacrifice--\r\nA clattering frag of the poor apportioned self let go,\r\nGive the altar fire a fist of flour and rice\r\nThrown into the forward void of hope. An ego\r\nCan be a convenient casualty at three.\r\n\r\nA memory of wiped eyes deployed at four\r\nCan settle noon's uneasy moment, and by jettisoning restore \r\nA lighter ballast to trim ship and sail on. \r\nA calm cool hand on a vomiting neck is displaced\r\nBy the necessary zero, placeholding what's gone.\r\n\r\nJaded jokes traded over a toke and a drink,\r\nThe topical hour tossed off in a walk\r\nThat helps a mellow pair of humans to think--\r\nAll can be branded and bundled and bade fair farewell:\r\nYour cost of continuing's their going to Hell.\r\n\r\nLose it and be happy at the loss,\r\nPay it and be damned the cost.\r\nFriendships no less than civil societies\r\nSend out their draft notices to the soon-to-be-lost;\r\nDeath's the price to maintain us at our ease.\r\n\r\nAn accurate accounting is friendship's worst curse\r\nFor, accurately speaking, however equit-\r\nAble in feeling, all friendships divide at\r\nThe punctual inequality of a hearse.\r\nSo joy as you may and addition be damned.\r\n\r\nDon't look to friends for your conclusions \r\nWhile you nod and hum at their confusions\r\n(As maybe they will nod and hum at yours)\r\nAnd in this charmed essential interchange\r\nDo not dream to esteem yourself the worse\r\n\r\nBecause of angry antsy things either said or did\r\n(What dark horrors brightly shown, what honors hid).\r\nAfter the humiliation in the kitchen\r\nA friend will still do as friendship always bids:\r\nExert persistent force for modest growth\r\n inexorably as lichen.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
finis<\/h2>\n
\nThis quick collection saved my life.<\/p>\nMay 20th -- June 10th 2001<\/p>\n
<\/PRE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gregg Glory Published by BLAST PRESS http:\/\/www.gregglory.com gregglory@aol.com A Dream Dislodged Disorderly love falls on our lives Like a dream in which we die And cannot awake or dream otherwise And only this dream is before our eyes Ritual and rote and stigmatized Inescapable and inordinately stylized A sleepwalker’s temptless step’s imposed And we see […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sword-inside","category-564-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7401,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5284\/revisions\/7401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}