Rash Measures Deemed Necessary

Raze Persepolis.
Burn the libraries.
Trash the museums.
Take no prisoners.
Do it, or else.

Every time I hear
the word culture
I loosen the safety catch
on my Browning--

but sometimes the gun
just -- boom!-- goes off!


De-acquisition the rest,
sell them on Amazon.com.

Search all apartments
for books. But make sure
every school child
has a laptop and Ipod.

Nov. 22 2009

The CIA-Opus Dei-Illuminati consortium
Doggedly preserved their secret weapon, the umbrella man.
On a day such as this on Dealey Plaza, an umbrella an encumbrance,
Unless used expressly to avoid the sun.
Because the sun was out nearly a half century ago.
An umbrella can shade one from the sun that shone upon Dallas
As it does upon White River on this very day.
The illuminati lights the dark, a light within a tomb, sarcophagus.
An umbrella and a sewing machine make music together.
More than a Lincoln Continental, an umbrella,
And yellow rose petals strewn upon the hood of the Lincoln.
An umbrella fails to contribute to the poetic juxtaposition known today as surrealism.
So much depends upon the juxtaposition of the umbrella to the sewing machine,
Whether positioned across the table but below the machine itself,
Passing through the arch made by the sewing machine,
As if it sought to pass through the needle’s eye, but missed.
Or leant to the side of one of the sewing machine’s iron legs.
So much depends upon the dispersal of yellow roses across the red leather seats of the Lincoln,
Upon which waxen rose petals stick to the body of the car by viscous drying blood.
So much depends upon the trolls assigned the job of doctoring evidence for the Illuminati—
Furtive little troll who does not think about what he does,
Little two-foot troll whose amateur verses lampoon the efforts
Of those who seek to disclose the Illuminati-Opus Dei membership.
Little troll who toys with umbrellas and sewing machines,
who knows next to nothing about surrealism or Dealey Plaza.
It is upon you alone, little troll, that I place the onus.

Now (9/26/09)

The Neolithic peoples in Iraq buried their elders in clay jars in separate rooms,
And about the bodies bent in fetal position wrapped reed mattings sealed with bitumen,
but the bones of others were haphazardly piled in other rooms or unmarked jars.
The children buried in jars were given cups of clay for drinking in the afterworld.

In the larger rectangular houses in which rooms of gypsum walls and clay floors
Embraced courtyard or stable, the dead were buried beneath the floors themselves.
Some hamlets threw pottery with geometric decoration; some cultivated emmer wheat
Or gathered wild lentils and stored them; some made sickles and cutting-tools from volcanic glass

Or the obsidian scattered on hillsides. Some butchered gazelles and aurochs, tanning the hides;
Some fashioned rams’ horns or bones into sewing needles or spoons for soups of legume and acorn;
some strapped their flint sickles onto handles that were branches of sumac or oak;
Others wedged arrow-heads onto spears of ash; some stabbed away at the neck arteries

Of plentiful red deer with knives of horn; above their altars hung the skulls of wild oxen
Who’d bellowed at them from an open field before. The eyes of their statues resemble coffee-beans;
And the pornographically grotesque fertility idols, their limbs striped and ornamented,
were amulets that presided over child-bearing or fertility; another hand was always needed

For scything wild grain in the fields or grinding it; for who else would water the asses or feed
the subjugated wild hogs? Near marshes, a hand waved in air a moment might bring down
Game birds that darkened the sky with their clattering wings, thus the squiggling of drakes
Animating the decorations of clay jars the shards of which are tripped upon in this battle-space,

The ostrakons beneath the treads of Abrams tanks. No harps, no tabors or cymbals then,
no libraries to burn, only naked human voices ossified in the open mouth of a diorite statue.
(Black jongleur, court singer, scribe?) Beneath the tells, monumental alabaster jars
Withstood the pressures of the earth and sky. But that was then, and this is now.

11/21/09

About the winter constellations, about the horizon and the hillsides,
About the end of the foliage, then about rivers and the nearby lakes,
And the canoes and the barges and flotation rafts and sailboats,
And waterfall and the mills and about the space between them,
And the main street and the local businesses, about the local eateries
And the hardware and thrift stores, about a row of unkempt Victorian houses
Lining the northern thoroughfare until you approach the left turn
To the garbage dump and the recycling center.
The constellations, above the wisps of clouds, look cold, their light
As cold as the helping hand of the deceased, as the water pouring
Through springs below the earth. As the time that no one has to give to the needy,
As constellations reflected on the surface of some off-season lake,
As the surface of the lake as undisturbed as by a paddle.
The clarity of constellations to the naked eye in the countryside,
The nimbus of the street-lamps that blurs the constellations.
From the hilltop, they shout at you from above, each single star
Of which you must sadly admit you are not adept at identifying.
My blankets have become a sweat lodge in which I wrap myself
Until I begin to sweat profusely through my bedclothes as the sun
Breaks above the White Mountains. Of abstractions
Or of conceits have I little awareness unless they are contiguous
To the concrete and quotidian, such as household chores.
And of rubbing sticks to make fire I am well aware of the associations.

9/12/09

Back in the ‘seventies, in the laundromat off Longfellow Square,
an old man passing me offers parting words, Never get old.
And the absence of teeth around those words I can recall
as if that laundry Sunday were just last weekend.
Gloomy Longfellow Square, ghosts shuffling around the centerpiece,
Longfellow’s statue around which traffic streams.
Ghosts are beginning to outnumber the living pedestrians.
There will always be a sex shop across from the smoke shop.
The people crossing the intersection slow down as watch-parts do.

Now you cannot purchase a decent wind-up watch without
a cheap quartz chip embedded in the circuitry, from Taipei or Shanghai,
Circuitry waffled and delicate as a kanji character that speaks
of several conditions or dependencies that all begin at once:
a certain seasonal green and a mood that goes with that green:
alertness, acceptance, quietude, hopeful disposition toward the future,
order of lower and higher magnitudes, harmony in arrangement,
balance of complementary attributes, ducks in a row.

But no more watches, no watch springs, no brass gears or casings or teeth.
Where are the orreries mimicking the planets in lovingly cast parts?
No longer can you buy a cheap hooker or a flask of 20/20,
Drink it sitting on a milk crate at the base of Longfellow.
I blinked and thought I saw the pedestrian traffic slow,
Their faces no longer familiar, been there once before.
All bums have been expurgated from the book of life
Along with the testimonials of the sons they wanted.

prose of Sept 5 09

Surely this would be a day to sail upon the open sea,
a day to be a skipper on one’s own sea craft. Who are these people
who decorate their houses from ships and the ships chandlery,
who this pipe-smoking patriarch who mutters to his guests
about floor-boards retrieved from what antebellum schooner
of which he thought he found a print in a second-hand shop?
Who are these people, nearly immobile, among so many instruments
for movement, polished in their disuse to shine, but once tarnished
by exposure to the elements, use? Who presides over the local
historical society, which would-be seaman has lost his mind
among these maritime artifacts, whose mind has halted
among the chandlery items, muttering about the places on the globe
from which they came? Which port of call? The cocoons in the trees,
wrapped in silk, among oaks, don’t sway, the air so still.
A river pushes through a dam, water ground through turbines
Into threads of silky water — the old man who mutters, leaning on his mantle,
has lost his mind to thoughts of water’s power, relating
the history of floorboards as a schooner’s deck beneath the feet
of teller and those to whom the tale can yet again be told.
But for the listener, the tales sound rehearsed, about the compass,
astrolabe and floor-boards, as if the house were the ship,
this somnolent teller the captain, and the arrows in the artifacts
could move, ship sunk in earth, ready to sail, its crew spellbound,
the listener as neccessary to the tale as the teller himself,
leaning there, all the the paintings maritime, old sailboats, stormy moons,
lulling voyages, whose itineraries lull their passengers into stone.
Of the shipman who stands before the mantle, house guests before him
—well his mind stopped long ago.

Sept 5 2009

Surely this would be a day to sail upon the open sea,
A day for being on the ocean for a very long time,
This is a day to be a skipper on one’s own sea craft.
But who are these people who decorate their houses
From the ships and the ships chandlery, who is this
Pipe-smoking patriarch who mutters to his guests
About the floor-boards retrieved from what
Old antebellum schooner of which he thought
He found a print in a second-hand shop, where?
Who are these people, nearly immobile themselves,
Among so many instruments for movement,
Polished in their disuse to shine, once tarnished
By their exposure to the elements? Who among them
Is the matron of the local historical society, which
Old would-be seaman has lost his mind among
These maritime artifacts, whose mind has come
Almost to a complete halt among the items
Of the chandlery, among the brass instruments,
Muttering about the places on the globe
From which they came? Which port of call?
The cocoons in the trees, wrapped in silk,
Among the white oaks, don’t even sway,
The air so still. A river pushes through a dam,
Water ground through turbines to threads
Of silky water—the old man who mutters,
Leaning on his mantle, has lost his mind to thoughts
About water’s power, relating to his guests
The history of the floorboards as a schooner’s deck
Beneath the feet of the teller and of those
To whom the tale can yet again be told.
But for the listener, the tales sound rehearsed,
About the brass instruments, the compass,
Astrolabe and floor-boards, as if the house
Were the ship, as if this somnolent teller
Were the captain himself, and the arrows
Inside the brass artifacts could really move,
A ship sunk in earth, ready to sail inside
With its spellbound crew, the teller
Necessary for the tale with the listener.
And all the paintings are maritime,
Old sailboats and stormy moons,
Lulling voyages, whose itineraries
Lull their passengers into stone. Of the shipman
Who stands before the mantle, house guests
Before him—his mind stopped long ago.