The King’s Collector

1 

The whole
world
in a mule cart
pulling
up
the hill.

	Beneath the hill—Who?

	Pulling the hill up
	from the roots of it.

Pegs that strap the hill
down onto the world—
Hills' roots
reaching     to the soul of the
hills' world.

			(Ugly old night,
with raunchy smells
and rotting smells—smells
from the old garage
and that damn car trunk
stuffed with moldy rag     smells—

*

The hill     the mule cart trudges.
The rank(s) of night
beneath the passing worlds . . .

*

Hi. I'm fine. How
Are you. How are you
this evening. I'm just fine.
Fine. Nice to see you.
Nice to see you all. How
the hell are you? Well? Well, well.
This evening, well, I'm just fine.
Just fine this evening.
It's a fine evening.
How are you.

*

How far  Up
the Mountain
trudge the mule?

Dawn break.
Stop. Watch it
Crawl
from thatch of Self. All
a blaze. I have a head
of tiny grids and animals.
With this
I constrain
the world.
The solar entity
strikes my capacity.
One of me
glistens
in the dawn.

*

	a Break
in the work. Something stops or
is stopped. Something broken. Something
at last     made whole. Take it up
again in a new place. This
text cannot
consume itself.

*

Across the gap
between the worlds—

an angel
above
The Great Divide
watches

an animal
  of the field  

(running about down there
  in terrified disarray
 looking for its place, its mate, its business
going about its business—

*

   I am going about my business
being me, not
being somebody else—not
being YOU for instance—if you
are you then I am
   not
you. I am "not-you."

The Angel
moves
in a circle
I am not witness of
                               yet
                             it

circumambulates
the life I write
  and is its hidden term and secret order ...

*

I'll be on my way.
I'm going home.
I'm getting out of here.
I'm out of here.
Get out of here.
Don't talk to me.
Don't you dare say that again.
Say that again?
You can say that again.
Why don't you talk to me?
Just disappear.
When you are quiet and listening—
that isn't gone enough.
When I am quiet also— 

Moons and Palaces.

*

It is like a lake.
At night.
No birds. No mules.
The Widow sits on her bench.

Dogs think. 

*

The mules
are full of marbles.

They labor up the hill
and the green one's rattle.

(Sounds of marbles rattling inside mules...

Donkeys.

Monkeys.	Tired ones. 

Tired little monkeys
sitting in their rows

			at the end of thinking

*

		I am    waiting
		    to return
            from my journey up
                the mountain
        back from the tiny room
		       in the small hotel
		where
			all my needs
		    have been provided for

		Now I have to get back down
				the mountain to town
			to catch a train to go back home
			   in another town.

		                                Disturbance in
                                     the information
		                   structure. 

					   And now I'm
			standing in the halls
					with too many packages—

*

Awake
	then
		sleep again . . . Again

			I'm up a mountain—
				 disturbed.

		There is a woman
		     more disturbed than I—

		She has not been "imitated"         "intimated"

					  "intimidated"
					  "initiated"

		She has not assumed
			      her place in line—

		    She thinks there is going to be a process
				    for getting down from here
				in an expeditious manner
				and therefore she is frantic lest she

								"miss the bus"

*

Dogs and strangers. Myself
alone   on a barge. Terrible weather.

What to do? Go down
in the engine palace—monkey with the gear works

*

Nothing   is  in   the way
  of the soundings.  The hard
machines
	inside the wind.

It doesn't   have a "thing"
    in mind. No aim or outcome

			hankered-after afore-thought. 

It Moveth as it Listeth

the tiny dory   "lists"   on the tumbling breakers—

		a wave pulse
			comes over it
				from somewhere
		   other than it—it

	"lists"

		along the wave pulse 

*

They assemble   assembling
the things
	each
		of us   has   to
give them to use.  Each thing

we have
is a "nerve"   they touch

	an erotogenous
location on the paradigm     each
has not contracted for.

The being     they     have
is     of     the being

we

bestow      upon

ourselves—“Don't Do it
Don't Go     for the Presidential
	residence  the honor
of the dead the moment of totality—

I see  one  mounted on a basket
with a calculator
	 passing into a cloud
	above your
		damaged hideaway.

You think him Real and Not
Real     no     words
you own     compel
his dissolution—He Stands
in the Place
of Yourself—the same
locality  	and IS
			as
you must be

*

As you are the terror of your own annihilation,
 is the Prince that Destroys.
As you are the excess of your own release,
He the monstrous Guardian rattling keys.

*

Be quiet
in the posture
of your ownmost
passage
	   out
of determinate being

*

	Falling asleep. A lake

the rowboats we are
riding in are, in the darkness,
filling up with water.

	Mine keeps moving
however, and I am
puzzled at the logic that
compels we must go on.

Now the boat is
passing     inside
chasms inside water
roads
in a mansion
in a mountain—

		The passage is too
	        narrow

	There is going to be a sharp
		Veer to the Left /

and we do veer—

	Another passage.
		Deep
	  through the innards
         of the inward
	   mansion

	a boat or
		trolley
      carriage
		     careening as it must
		towards further darkness

I am struck
   by my own
	 concentration

		down
		 the blank
		    career—Think

	"askance" at  the Managers of this
    labyrinth—the beings

	   through the bowels of whose domiciles

		willy-nilly all night I am coursing ...

*

That Which Is    is
the First Identity. It throws

I

out    on a vanishing world.

I sunders on nothingness . . .

That nothingness now glows real—

real with the many scintillations of that fracture.

*

Go away. Make the people BLINK so I can
hear the thunder
register disturbance in
the weather capacity—I need
a table
and a tall
drink...

*

Tiny mites die

	as we all fidget to eliminate the itches these
   mites unwittingly stimulate stuck
	   in coiling hair ...

a fish
  in the murky
 pond water
	attempted to eat my calves—

	   I leaped and hollered—

dogs punish people.  They don't
  want to be trained or kept
 in pleasant quarters while their
	masters galavant— they   don't   want   STUFF
  sprayed on their delicate forepaws : the dogs
get mad and crazy

	leap-through-windows   crazy

        bite the arms of gentle attenders, benevolence

    not what dogs want

*

doesn't want to eat
animals wants
to eat tomatoes
infestations of anything Not Think

Not let mind know
anything of larval
infestations

*

The world is walking a dog
  across the little
 lawn patch
                     the dog people
    live in  a cottage
  in front of the lawn patch and
    the world they have is
   walking the dog
      across this lawn
    into the general neighborhood

*

Everybody happy always never a blue
moment never a tired
time never a dream—
keep the people smiling through terrible
weather show them the
shining rooftops show the
blazing seas

		keep the cosmos
winding    keep it white keep
  the lawns pruned keep
the dogs walked keep
the dark world
		away

*

My hen     might  begin to
bleep. My little frogs
sit a long time on the mud bank

		then leap

		when some thought
					strikes them

*

You need to (dis)play
the matrix out from which these
speeches
  compel themselves  the Bed
of itches and compulsions
beauty spots and zones
of ancient valley pleasures
				which . . .

*

Primal Notes and blotches
little prongs of nervous
excitation threading
strandwise through the
thought flesh
                             that . . .

*

The House of Space
that worlds these
elemental nodules

the logic on page zero
	the topologies
		the algebras

Then the ghoulish legislation that commends ...

*

                                A woods    a matrix   a wet morass   

     a system of ducts and runnels

 houses far in mountains
		deep in night

    a banquet and a journey
       back
      or down from
             night

				stop on the way

		people attempting to exchange things

		   they want to enter deeply

       into another State

			investigate the minds
		of others   penetrate the
		place    of selves and others'

	 places

			trees and huts

	   and the dangers of contagion:

		if you touch the living

	 exudate of mud creatures deeply you lose

	your nature or acquire the mud of others

  you go out from your house in the day and all has changed

*

paths and little depots

     going for a long

 walk with no idea of why

 but some dull propulsion

 urging

		down among the bluetts

*

You are a little child. And it’s the feeling of a new place
you have moved to:
people are trees and wolves and huge tan Bagel coats
exhibiting alien functions     wide
white arms that push people off
the round green table     arms that lift
fat logs and finesse menacing gestures so you dwindle
where you thought to be a major
player and are hoisted up too high
upon the table where, in all accuracy, you chose
to be so small

I didn't want to come here
Mrs. Doughnut has a Bagel Coat

everybody has one—Oh
to have a Bagel Coat and BE

*

Too much Buzz in it.

Too much "pop."

Put that bat back in the
		bat rack buddy.

Make this hat
		blow away.

       Go awake.
Go away.
       Go awake.
Go away.

Play it like a pro. Go
slow with it. Say it
like a pro. Throw it here.
Throw it out.
Make doubt.

The gap that rocks
rocks—in that
gap sparks and a
special little hissing noise.

Leaves in a net.

*

I am a large bird
	a whole bush
		a whistle

I whistle and I sputter
	I cackle, warble, peep

I sleep
        in a bush
	while I bite
			the stem of a thistle.

Push the rock
across the field

Make the field
yield. Then cross it.

Cross it in flight. White

Cross it in sleep.

The line of bushes
	bordering the mayfield
  cropped like ruly
		       heads
		in an ominous pattern.

Green     but     inky   black   green.

The light
	of the sky

		behind black bush lines     crackling.

*

The door   in   a noise
			is
		as

    small   as it
		    has to
		   be to
       be able to allow
     that which has to pass

    so to pass

(Light crash through noise door)

*

The envelope opened.  Closed
noisy boxes
dropping on linoleum
                              sodden
pudding suddenly
similarly
  dropping on it. The Maid
with the braid
took note. This person

held her words. Held
her wooden
box. That's
the way
the noise
arose. The words
the Maid held
rattled
in the box. She
fixed her gaze.  A stack
of trays.

*

We were learning about weather
mathematics. Everybody
knows that now.

The old shack
	shook in the formidable
  wind commotion.

You could hear
    the tinny
rattle of bronze oak leaves—
you could feel
	the front
	   of the wind
    on the front of the house.

Loose, the glass
in the windows
made
	its sound.

   Whiney, singing, narrow
tones
	mewled through board chinks.

How
	the rain

			beat down.

There was no town. Only these
	few shacks
	   scattered on the plain
			exposed to the wind.

Around the plain
		the giants formed a ring.

Around
the plain
the giants
gather. They're not
supposed to know
or like each other.
Suspicious creatures
alone in punchy minds.
The general slander.
But this is the truth of the giants:
They form a ring.
They hold
	a little box
		of polished pine.

Something kept up close in there.

Something in the dark
		the bearded mothers nurture.

The wooden shacks
	rattle as they wager.

They have a wager. 

Solemn giants, waiting on the plain.

 2

The King's Ink   

            draws    the ancient lines:

on this side
those

on that
these

                 and we

remain
on
our     side

they     on that side

*	

Beyond the King
An Imperator
blanches
as the world
he organizes
shines in its
minute—		

And then That Man recovers as
the world he ravages

	grows white cabbages

*

The worlds are not assuaged   by the
	languages they rigorize.

The King's
mule
pulls
the cart.

Punks and deadbeats
weedle in the court yard.

Beat
the gong.

An elephant
is stalled, haltered, detained at a booth.

The King's
warts
are emphasized by
dots.

Adulatory tunes
brittle the room air.

 3

Beginning somewhere    is not   nature     hair

grown  on  famous      old

bald    mountain    stone  / time

increases     with advice /  the people take

too seriously  /  their actions    are infected

by the voices they   distinguish    the forest

of noises    is rife    with little voices

*	

birds in the atmosphere.  A black one   seers

through the boughs. Mind consumes the sight and reads it

ominous. (Ominous of what though?)

						A hole

in mind's own act    flies    in black

across a tree of space     thrown out to catch

the mind's OWN trees—

*	

Stein,  You   Thought—

       What
's wrong with
that? The balance
catches. The man
is swung
in the night
from his own
rigorous necktie—"Oh yeah? In this
culture people no longer
WEAR neckties"   rather

they grow WARTs
at certain THOUGHTs—

(informations weedle through
All Things
		and then some)

				their mastery
of speech has grown so thorough—deviations
in syntax from the INNATE
NORMS induce spontaneous
corrections called "Performance Pustules"

*	

	UP
we raise
our eyes
and close
our dry soul
s'
 holes
up with a sort of
spiritual caulking
compound drawn down
from the thought
of God—
		[the thought of an odd
hat that
sits
     on the heads'
tops imparting

SUPERVENIENCE to
   the partial
thoughts
	therein—I want to rise Up
					   Go Up
					 shut UP   sew UP
	my own predicament   within the precincts
   cynctured just for them

					 soar UP

			Close the holes

			Water the souls

*

wise.   old wives

			alive
                   crazed
			      raises
			eyes'
			         brows   Up at
		 	  		  that
		    flip attitude bruted about about
							 what
		    gods   do  . . . choose

		    or die. Words
		    don't  make it
		    true     a person's
		    reasons
			   each   in its own little
		    thatched
		         thought   hut   collective  breathes
               its own kind
				   of li(v)es . . .

                                                           (the genre of the Market
		    marks it    with a dry, conspicuous    reality
		    exempt from material properties
							  save for those
			that mark it)

Live alone
  with the open
 space   released
	  beneath
    immediate things of sense

hence:

Fence.

Whose?
The boss's?

Lunch.

In a pinch
on a bench
the wench
 winced
   when we
wanted her to
shove along so as we could  sit down and discuss
a little business. Give me the business, will you?

A crime   has been   averted.  The wiry
man
returns
to his own   lunch
hunched with a leer
on his lip and a queer
glance  proffered

The woman
finds
a new
bench.

A life
clenched
in a closed
hand

an organ
bound
to abuse
its own
secretions

			free molecules
			bond
		                licitly
			  quick
				in the froth

			         light
				in the gas

(These phrases  spotted     in a space     such that the genres

of speech     shift locally     giving play

to mind's  abuse

of brain matter   brain's

control 

of all

the other     organ

lives

who turned on the lights

within the body cave?

(and how to make sense of it

4

1957

the smooth, wooden (shiny wooden 

armrocker
with strawberry patterns curled up on in
against the fire

with chemicals added to make it look blue

and around the corner
a lot of books on metal
shelves

with names

the complete works

*	

going to be myself for a change

going to be as I am

be who I was

when first I thought about it

I was confused
for quite some time

I put the question that had best be left unasked
it turned out to be quite unnecessary to respond at all to the charges I had
leveled against my own, what do you call it, nature? it wasn't nature
it was just
the way
I am

*	

I ruled out
the property

and opened
the gulf

lurking
where all thought—

unnecessary

only the sun
at the bottom
of emptiness
calling

with a strange little voice

not words

but a quiet
humming

that grew into a wolf, actually
as you tried to distinguish its contours
while the mists
rose
as figures across the lake so still 

below

                        *	

I saw woods

where none had
been 

where nobody would tell you woods is 

either they hadn't seen it themselves or they were hiding
the fact that they too

had fallen

from the zeppelin
                          and were
                                     as hungry
as I 

or else they just didn't know

anything about the business—had been so enclosed

in their lives 

that the exit and entry

problematic never

arose for them       it would be enough to black out sharply 

when the quickness  terminated

 5

The King
does not
believe it. He "hears"
with his
"Ears"—spies
Eyes. Instruments and
"moments" passing
             from the throne
across the world
and back to it

with the speed of Holy Beasts
according the Categories

Kick the King in the Ass
			with his own exegesis

"I can't see!" ...  

Don't conduct an argument but Sheep Dog
the others down the field    head for the Dome

	throw rocks against the walls
		remove one stone

			 run

			   sit

			watch

				watch it settle

			        watch the stones of the edifice
							    bestrew themselves

			return

			   examine

		  execute

			     participate

		imagine

			imagine the King emerge from the empty throne

            majestic

			rubeous

             halcyon

			    refulgent

		fragrant

			resonant

				judicious

						ugly

			 loud

		an imp

			a twit

				a puck

		  a waistral

				a vagabon

		a song

		do it for a song

		to make one

		to make amends for something

				for someone

		to bring one back from the dead

		to use a sign

		and keep quiet under it

		to be among its instances

		a bearer of its tokens

		to be its cart

		before its horse

		its noble rider

		prancing toward combat

		and later

		policy amiss predictably

		the combatants rise anew from the general field

			no good come of it ...

6

Nobody
thinking
this. The thought
itself
lifting itself
out of the mind that thinks it --

off the page or digital apparatus

the abstract code
in the auguries of the possible

in the unresolved ontology of its lodgings

poised
ensconced
enthroned
stashed in memory

	UP there -- IN there -- away
anyway
  off somewhere

           where the indigent poetries gather themselves

to offer a last assault—

Do we  seek a queer alliance

with such poetries?

with mysteries?

hooded wizzards on the peaks of harried distances?

hoodwinked by their inner prepossession?

The Emerald Bauble in the Wizzard's Tower

on which the Missives of Divinity

visibly inscribe themselves and vanish

on the instant they're perused?

Up Top. It.

The logic of zero commutes

with the trick of Now . . .

 7

I was asleep

(probably)

on the floor
of
my office

in the middle of day

it was supposed to be Monday

we were driving

across the Bronx River Parkway at Underhill Road
and the car had a way of climbing
hills even if you didn't put your foot down on the gas pedal
and that's what it was doing
as we approached

Tuckahoe even though
there was no hill
and I kept asking are we going
to my house
and where is
my house?
I was certain
you had to turn left in the middle of the village, drive along the railroad tracks towards Crestwood

but I wasn't sure
that sleep
was where
I was
—for one thing I hadn't
fall
'n asleep and

then too
I could feel my body
lying on the carpet   head
cranked up on a purple
pillow right hand making a V
beneath my ear my mind
all the while
remaining
anchored in my lower
abdominal region the accumulated
affects of an unpleasant
interchange
voluble still on my liver tissue

*

now that's better,”  and I can bottom
out make my energy
smooth prepare
to get into the car and drive
in spite of carburetor anxieties
across the Hudson bridge to TK's clinic

8

The primordial nature of language
if it has one
anyway a way
to get things started

I was lying
in my crib
it was dark
I couldn't speak
I couldn't go anywhere
do
anything
but flail
and exercise my finger muscles. There were already however
certain things that were true:

the corner of the crib
at night
was a responsible
locality

it gathered over the gaps
separating its instances
into definite place

and any singular occurrence
of its
coming to mind

betokened the whole

*

your crib
they said
yer
berb
her brib fur drub

you
are lying
in the corner
of the darkest
palace
when the lights
go on it is ourselves
that have caused
this to befall you

you cannot control
the light

you will grow
into a house
by your own
reconnaissance

at such time as that occurs—then
the hazard
belongs to you but now
we incur
the damages
of your every
contingency you
are the edge
of our world

your activities
perturbations in
what we know
of our own
	ministrations
towards you

*

It was less luminous,  less warm,  much more like
draining away—

something is draining away—
you have to stop it;

You have to cause an arrival
to come from below
and staunch the passing
of immaterial fluids from the image body—

This is the technology of stillness:

to summon an influx
from the reservoir
below

to work the organ tissues
till their contours loosen
far into daylight

and the reason for the compelling
vision     of the gross materielle

no longer seem

good reason—

You can taste
the dissolution of solidities
beyond their grim topologies

and the subject of existence itself

drift towards the luminous. . .

 9

some trip   on a railroad   cart   up
the mountain but    "inside" up
to misty vistas and dark
declivities.

I'm up top

but now to get back down
the cart slides down—no brakes!
only a small switch
and of course the power of gravity
'll outweigh that—

Later. Angry. No one wants to hear
my near death, near miss
experience. 

I'm pissed.
And throw in the sponge.
And hit a friend
right between the eyes.

 10

dead light

         dark life

The Mule
on the Mountain
against the sky. The sky
inside
the Mountain. The Elephant’s
sky
inside him. The Lion. No where to go.
No challenges. His stalking
is accomplished
beforehand. .His rest
contains
his fire.

*

A cave, a hollow, a grotto, a platform, an altar. A station
on the passage    upward. The light
flashes    across the tabular
surfaces, flashes off the sheen of rural roofs.

In the grotto
beneath the summer trees
the beings
pause.

*

Situation obtains
but vanishes.

You breathe.
You know.

You retain your mind
between the intimate heart beats

between the thoughts that, harsh, assume the mind.

You stand aloof, alone, indomitable—but off somewhere.

Can’t get to me. Get to me. Through to me.
Can’t cut home.

Can’t reduce this thing,
                                      this site
of the last reduction—

one’s own being

                              cavorting with   The Menace

 11

What Justice Is (ii)

how old
is thought?

    (in the criminal degree—

		the thought
		that bucks
		the mind

Angry.
The mind is angry.

undrinkable coffee. (well, then, hell
don’t drink it.) Cripple
people, hobbling
through the parlor, old
women in pink
blouses, gathered ’bout
the luncheon table—they
compel
the world     with their brittle attitudes

(You don’t believe me—but this
old biddy OWNS
half of Dutchess County and
’s got DIBS
on the rest)

shut up. Convinced? subdued. The other mind’s
words     grind your own     mind
down on its     own words—Stay
in the fray. Stay where you are. Find
the final theme, the Ace
proposition—that from which the other thoughts flow like bees
from the fecund hive     to chase the honey badger
back from the honey trove, the wisdom
culled in nodules of golden vision, clean in the heart—

A thing
should be praised
for the way it    is

not because it generates something good in others—

to do it    is to love it     to be it     is to be
the blessed thing

(The holiday spirit, but solemn, bright, September—
the noise of the horn, the people
walking among yellowing leaves
to the Holy Apparatus Shack
there to cream the Cow
      at the summit of Being
           for all she has

to clean the beings out
  with lucky juices

the vow of ancient thought
to think again

Ancient people live again anew
          who
                   crave the crystal cleaning
     pouring down
                              through the cranial suture

         —enters the veins

                 and covers the ground

                        and cures the will—

And lightning flashed

and the meadows opened

and there was a horse of bronze

with many doors

and a corpse therein

that wore a ring

            (for chrissake can’t you remember how much of this stuff you just
made up and how much you copped from Heroditus or whomever?)

And if you turn the ring so the bezel

points into the Lao Gong point in the palm (to calm the heart)

you become     . . .     inevitable!

(Invisible)

	              inevitable!

But The Just can become invisible and yet remain
just. They Do What (They) Will
at the heart of The Law, The Law convened
to constrain the profligate
estranged from the Just in nature
(though Law’s secret ends, if not its ways, will be their own

“Being just      and seeming      otherwise”

"Being otherwise      and seeming just”

Must

 12

The Dog put this in my head
on the Eve of Nuts.

Is a Text
a place
to stand?

Will it stand?
Will it stand in my head?

Will my head
stand
land
on a text?

Will the Land
Stand? 

The Grand
stand
and
then
men
and women
quietly gathered therein.

Now they must choose.

Who’d choose the rules by which those rules were chosen?

The dog
in your head.

The dog put these words
in my head.
I heard

dog words.

I said I heard dogs words. I wend dogwards.

*

Must choose.

At night
amidst
a torrent
of the Possibles.

Water coming out of a crack in a black stone.

Only a trickle.

But the water becomes
UpStanding Men and Women

that fight against things
with noble fortitude
and ominous footsteps.

You sit alone
in your house
on a sunny monday
and hear these loud stepped persons

stand against the rock that made them persons.

The land that stands against can't stand for long.

Soon it is a rock a wall a tower aloft in the mist.

Upstanding ones comprise the tower.

They show the beacon of their nature
and bespeak the dog whereof they have that nature.

There is something on which to stand.

A shout of joy a moment
brief and oblivious
when all the possibilities flood the light

you get out of the rut or trap, take off your muddy trousers

feel all new all over.

Stop your thought in its tracks. Find the bright
interior.

Stand in the light
of the blue

dog..

Abort the text.

                 *	

Wheels and deals and I have nothing to do with the thoughts I adjudicate. Let them rut
in the dirt. Let thought rut
in the dirt. Let it propagate
its opposites, let it spew
a spectrum of nuance a range of compossibles let it SMORGE
all over the type face that
oblivious to its nuance
supports it with a dim
aplomb
a dumb
neutrality. Well fuck you you type face. . . 

*	

I am going to peel
my face
from skull selected
for me to have myself the
inside and the out of. 

It comes right off.
I pack it
in my case.
I take it home.

And where do I live in this "home," this addressable domicile?

Inside your mouth, you crotch heart. I dream within the spume beneath your tongue.

You eat my words.

*	

It is almost blue
it is growing
inside my forhead
it rides bicycles
but not loud bicycles
it effaces the path by which it came to be here"

comments
the Dog

*	

a man is standing on another one's forehead
or perhaps it is not a man. It has hands and legs.
And his left hand looks like it's just poured out a can of nails 
onto the earth but there is no can and  no earth neither.

Behind him there are drops
coming out of an invisible source
and falling evenly into a bird bath with a small hole.

Drops
appear
where nothing
is.

The edge
of shining
worlds.

Crack that wrench on your knee and hold that smile.

Lick that bench on your tree and weld that pile.

Clack that bunch on your beeper and scold that owl.

Trick that lunch from your chopper and build that tool.

Fick that kanch from your dipper and fild that mool.

Snak tok gonch dom tor dacker ind fold ak dool.

Crack lick clack trick fick snak 

wrench bench bunch lunch kranch gonch clack

knee tree beeper chopper dipper dacker

hold weld scold build fild fold

smile pile owl tool mool dool

ak

 13

The large frog face
has been here
from the beginning.

It sits on the spectacular mud
oblivious to odor.

fifteen minutes
twenty minutes
an hour

not dead
not sleeping

not waiting

a large bug passes

 14

That bald tall leaning creature
without a mouth

attempts
to impose his
nature upon

the other
thin

bald   tall

one.

Both men have ears.

*

This other
holds
his ground.

He is firm, stands
tall, won't
lean when leaned on

won't take in

the mouthless force

*

The hair
grows

from the rock

and has
no friends. Associates, possibly. Companions, companions at arms)

length

holding a black string.

They all hold black strings.

It might be a snake.

A headless sliver

profferred to the absent

force
          to force it OUT -- and STAY out.

Stay Out

Blank Force. Or Rise

In My Head

 15

Over the masticating Ocean HALF HEAD

hovers and throws

its image

down

upon the seething water

to wait for the water

to smooth over

and the re-
                   duplication of its nature

inverted

to appear.

*

A carpet spreader named Pete and his three companions

stand at the corners of the room and lift the rug.

Pete gives the order

in response to a huge video monitor he has to keep one eye up
on as he works 

the dust

from the surface of the carpet

into the shadows on the air.

*

Now people can peep into brains and see the shadows

of personal ideas

creeping across the thought flesh.

Behind the shadows 

Half Head Hovers.

*

If seventy percent of my time I actually feel like the man whose name I carry—

that's the question I wanted to put

sitting 

beside myself,

in a public room

among the other supplicants: Which what am I?

I walk

outside my body and into

the surface of the expressions I see 

opposite

to mine. Then shut up.

And sink.

Into the enigmas

of my own locality. 

 16

The Vacuole

the up arm turns the wrench and the
down arm
comes
          out of the bald man's beard
                                                       he is back
to back to  a creature with a single sickle blade
riding out of his skull

one finger up
to the sky

   tangled
         thoughts

a mouse
with a city in its

seminal vesicle

*

there are bridges over turbulent
water ways so the
people that live in the holes
across the bay may

behold their smaller and tree-dwelling relations

we are culling
our ancestors

as they ourselves
cull

—a single  [unitary
mother

in a large tree
giving birth
to variety.

                   There are geese and ducks and a few
goats
wandering in among the spinning wheels and items of wooden
furniture at the end of the road after the turn in the hill
where the muddy-coated mammoth goats
graze in the purple
light,  you never see the proprietors

*

inexhaustible funding

a yellow field

of spectacular growths

embellished on the menace

*

"people keep fooling around"
standing
in their own regard
holding
"positions"
and large crepuscular beverages

in goblets
in their forepaws
before the dawn clears

*

nothing you can say will drive
the world crazy
enough any more the existence
of elephants
as large an emirate

whose legs
are the pillars
of the sky

*

the speed of light
exists
in the state of things

and THERE
no time is passing

*

little men
address each other :

good evening and how do you do

here is my string
there    I see    you too
are holding
string

*

ink blotch holograms and wiry snakes
for hair

if there is only one string
between them
there is only in essence
one of them

*

         dis-
gusting. Alone
composing
the entire procedure the world will use  but you are only a small
person with  thoughts
on  account
coming out of your more civil
orifices
your needs
happen to be our own
so we make you into an oak tree
and grow your roots
in a field
for all to wonder    at

all to wonder that      you convene yourself
in the form of an oak

*

the philosophes
               mumble
....sit
in correct manner
and bring
attention
to bear:

an entire world      (in a mule cart)      connected
to its parts and everywhere
the independence of the plasma

is thought by the managers to bless the enterprise while others
of us
rue this same
connection
and labor to convene

a vacuole
in the social cytoplasm 

17

excuse me.     little sphericals     hang in the sky

the tower is built of bricks

a feather licks

  the crown off and

     the people
		topple.

      Or

	Are not these little spheres     terrible holes—

		holes in the air

		to show another zone—

      terrible holes in the world

		so that another world

				you cannot know

				   you know now hides there (?

[

The woman is a star. Black
crow in finger's trees.

*

Read it all. Find
the thought
that spots the little pictures in the mind.
That opens doors
beyond oblivion

(what is beyond oblivion?

The little dogs'
tongues
wag
	as the

   moon drops.

The sun is as bleak
as the snow. 

[

The word goblet.
The little gobbler
    the cup gulps down
  the night juice

It is logical

	the head's mouth
        gobbles down
      the tiny blue cup
before you    can
		down your draft
    the goblet has done it
           before you
                          so
                      you
        come later
		   after
     the ancient cup

		[head that is]

				has

			downed
			    the night juice

*

on the other side
    of the night
the intimation
   in the form of the grandmother creature

			must be lies). 

 beguile you

 with no more than the fact of it

*

come let's buy horses

and ride them in houses

till the windows pop out on the sky. That will express it ...

*[

	mind
	 hungers
	   for words
a pond

  And over it things to be eliminated
     hang
       from an enigmatical lift apparatus

*

Frog Damage.

They sit
in the black
mud
forever, actually.
                            The smaller
dragonflies
crossing each other
                                 over
the black
water 

*

All the living animals in the night
       in side their sounds
  are projects of the dreams that grow about me

I am all drunk down
        by surroundings
              black and rich

	I sleep   and fall
 into the phases of a passing far within

and hold the secret image inside my hands

*

When will the aged Rinpoches
 come out of their cars
    and hold me in my dream
  in a bubble of clarity
 against the murky substances

the living categories
          that consume each other

  then all are gobbled down
    by the mouth that
      swallows all gobblers—

				(bliss of origin

*

Blue   Light. Or LIKE
blue. (Analogy
		in a zone
				without structure ...

Our failure to understand
     is as
              peculiar
 to the history of each of us
			as
		our knowledge, wisdom, calm
   abiding insight into …

*

                each
		particular item
                     enlightened]
				freed from the world

	(returns to the zone of beings whose light it shines

      mind   resolved   in its ocean.

*

Sleep  cycle     stopt.
                                  Who
just happened?
                          World
                   out
like a puddle
   resolved
                  in sun.
                               Late
	at night
		or early
			before dawn. One bird
                in blank
			auditorium. One shadow
		line of willows

				against the wet
							light.