;.cReselected poems, 4/89--date
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,5,75,192,2,10,15,20,25,127,5,0,
;.l7,2,78,192,2,10,15,20,25,127,2,0,


                  
YCGTFH:  Selected Poems 4/89--4/92  


Culled from:
   
      Send me the Wing:  Collected Poems 4/89--3/90 [PO190]
   (Untitled:  Poems 08/90--2/91 [PO890 + PO909]
   Was you ever bit by a Bee? :  Poems collected at the Baby Face Cafe                                   in the winter rains, 1991 [PO91] 
   Life is but a Melancholy Flower:  
          Poems collected from Silverster to Mayday, 1992  [PO92]                      











.P

.h2, ycgtfh  --
SCENES FROM SELECTED NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS

A spiking fever drove two days over my mind
leaving my soul harrowed.
                                
                                 April 1989


*Scene on a 'Religious' Moshav

The cat,
poisoned, walked away
from babies & food
as if to say
done all I can but
fed up with this world now.

-----
l7
Our Italian Catholic suburban neighbor's children once "did the job"
with a brand new remote-control-operated electric garage door
on our middle-aged spayed cat.
My mother asked, "Why would anyone want to kill a poor old shlump like that?"

 
                                                         January 21, 1991.

------- 
l1
half a minute before Susie's horse
got shot the foal whinnied
and ran up to nurse.
                          2/17/91

-----
The Snake, Iago, played fair
the taste was exquisite
    as evanescence
thought the cold after-glow
lonely as omniscience. 

-------
& Villon said, "Hang loose,
                Sam Johnson:
It concentrates the moment
but scatters to the mind
to the winds of terror."

----
the persistence of entropy's
apt to be good for a laugh:
like Chaplin's pants, for example
that just he can't keep up again.
"One cat goes in, one goes out."
 ....
.P
"and prematurely superannuated
 chicks check in to looney bins for kicks"


anyone, drowning
would hug you to the depths
therefore, parry
mountains and seas of the mind
suns and storms

---------

Tied up my puppy
for the day
or week, or whatever
& went to see a female
wending her way to the flipout warehouse.
She was so glad to have a visitor
she jumped up and wagged her tail.

-----

Before I'd washed the clothes
worn to our visit
they'd taken you away.

                          28.04.92


---------

ENVOI


Rinata's in
the looney bin

again.


                          Spring 1991 (Rev. 1992)

------------
.p
THE RETURN OF STUMBLEBUM

She keeps scraps of old prayerbooks
safe and dry inside
and locks me out in the rain.

-------

Stumblebum in the sun
coughing and farting and drying his toes.
	"That's one happy nigger."
    
         Poor old Bucket o' Guts:
         Did you really expect
         a marble laurel wreath?
          

                16.12.91, Modi'in


----------

After so much rain
a warm winter's day --
hastily I sit in the sun
trying not to alarm it.

                 Ibid.

----------
Thrown out of his hovel,
the pottering old man arranges the kitchen
of his hosts.

                    Mevo Modi'in, 20.12.91

----------------------

Arrested by the sweater
on a teenage feline
greybeard malgre lui
sighs and turns his dreams
to pancakes for breakfast.

---------
.p

-----------
SPIRITUAL POEMS, OF SORTS

*Came back to the farm flipped out, but found
the crested wheat grass I'd drilled in last summer
had become a pasture.
                         
---------                (of New Buffalo, apr. 1974)
possess places
tentatively
friends too
 
.P
FROM WHOM CAN WE LEARN, CONT.

Ed Clark said,
Comes the Revolution
Todd Gitlin will be under the bed
with the rest of us.

           SPU house, E 7th St. NYC, ca. 1965.

.p
A NOSTALGIA FOR OTHERNESS

Flying to my home
mourning a lost love
consoled by the stars.

       Forget neither how your souls loved
       nor that her heart has left you.

                                 
                           Dec. 4, 1984, El Al NYC--TA
                           (rev. 1989)

----------------------------------------------------------------


.p
SCENES IN ISRAEL

Today they are burying 
two persons whom I did not know were dead
nor had lived.

                          May 4, 1989*
                After two retirees were knifed by a soi-pensant                         nationalist while waiting for a bus.

------------------------------------------------------

**Four Star Night**                   

Sasson the Mad Russian
's wife says
they're out
on the street
but
not quite down
in the gutter;
last night they slept
at the Kings' Hotel.

                           (Cf. Catullus)

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

Like a cat awaiting grace
from the refrigerator
I sit on the walk-way mall
before a Magic Money Machine
marked 'Closed'.

----------------
.p
The gold-winged blackbirds
stopped last fall in England
to call me home.

                        Ein Gedi
                        December 20, 1991

--------------------------------------------------

gale wind over the Dead Sea
spasms of rain driven out of darkness like sand
100 children banging doors
flickering static hurls news of politicized TV peace from Bethlehem --
Signs of a stormy birth for the new year.  

Morning light:  8 Zede Yaelim
                walk across the wadi
                toward the salt-choked sea. 


                                             
                                             Ein Gedi Youth Hostel
                                             24-25.12.91

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Leila:
Black streets, cold rain
driven by a howling wind.
   "Everyone pauses, dreaming of peace" says Shlomo
    they tell us, waiting outside.

Mincha time:  snow settling like doves on orange trees
              and the Old City walls.


                                             Jerusalem
                                             31.12.91--01.01.92

----------------------------------------------------------------------
.p
TRAVEL NOTES

Cornocopia:

Descending to Tiberias
from the Central Station
one is welcomed by the goddess of the waters
seated on a magazine cover
with legs open.

-----------
Orpheus in a Hotel

That parody in a bathroom mirror
imperiously arrests me before I wake ...

--------

         Why have you come so far to see what you should be?"
                                Himalayan rishi, quoted by PVK

seeking their Jesus of Finland
they shlep like sheep from hotel to moterboat
and pause, midway betwen Ein Gevn and Tiberias
to sing of warm pine rooms on a soft snowy day,
thinking they sing of Him. 
Flying to tomorrow's news,
2 F-16's crash past.
Ashore, air soft and warm as a patchwork quilt
the pastor goes up to an old Arab
casting rippling water from fluttering eucalyptus
to show him a salmon lure
made to glitter in mountain streams. 
Pop slop plays in the kibbutz fish-house.

--------------

Sitting by the swimming pool
I glance up at the West Bank
village on the opposite hillside.

                                    (Makabim, 21.04.92)

-------------
"Israel agrees with you."
"Because I agree with it
 overall."

---------------

In winter
Israel's ski-run
is usually closed
due to snow.
.p

-------------------
A PROFIT IS ALWAYS AT A LOSS IN HIS LAND

and the drunk on Jaffa Road
spake unto the #15 bus exhaust, saying:
      been sittin' here since '48
      nobody sees me
      might's well go back home

------------------------
    
    Haman had,
    at least,
    excellent 
    ears...

---------------

I limp now.  Was it worth it?
Realized I'd sold my right to cross over again
with my bowl of pottage and those goatskin gloves.
Nonetheless, one wants.
Spend seven, seven, and seven again
and twelve stars born to cleanse.

------- 

When I was about 12
I took clarinet;
1 hour a day I
'practiced';
"but now I have put away childish things"
look before I creep; won't 
see through doing.

                              Ref:  Exodus ______ "we will obey & do"

-------

The Emperor of Ice Cream Shall Return

"Hi --
 Last time we met
 you spoke of Jeshua.
 He's Messiah."
"What's Messiah?"
"Next time we meet
 the oldest buys ice-cream
 for everyone --
'Bye."

---------------
.p
SINCERE POEMS


With what reticence she visited her grandchildren
the light, then, of her life.

                   (ASA)

-----
.p
News Item,  Decembear 1991

The complete Buddhist scriptures
once written on palm leaves
will now be inscribed
with concentrated light
on a CD-ROM tree. 

---------

 ...ain't read the daily news
except in the clouds...

.p
TALES OF NEW BUFFALO

Cave Dave found Jesus
and called the cops
on himself.
He went back to jail in Chicago
and changed his mind again
so we all sat down
while Telus tried to pray him out
and I called for help
on a phony credit card.
In the morning Telus said
"Ain't easy."
Next day Cave Dave got sprung
hitched all the way back to Hondo
and let himself out of his last ride
through the windshield.*
         


       * That was a true story; Dave was badly scarred but everyone              looked weird in those days so it didn't matter much.
         Cave Dave says:  If you don't pray from the heart, 
         ain't no way He can hear you.

-----------------------
.p
MORE MODI'IN

Reggae Tune

Eliahu go no shoes
     Nu -- he
Jet-Set it to Italy
maybe 
       to bring us back currency.

--------------

Can do
       everything
in half the time
including shmira.

-------------------------

"You ain't talked to me in 11 years
 and today all you said was,
 'Don't talk to Leon.'" 

                           
                              (Atty Wm. Richman, Esq.)
                            
------

"But," said Billy,
"Shlomo told me,
 'Go fly a kite.'"
"ASSUR!"  said the POLICE CHIEF
 for fear
 you'd snaggle a cable
 completing a circuit,
 *** HEAVEN FORFEND 
   & COWS DEFEND US ***."

----- 
Portrait of the Poet by the Lawyer for a 4-year-old

"He came from way up there
 and his mind moves so fast
 you can't even see the wheels spin."

-------

"Nothing doing here.
 Would have left the week I came,
 'cept they tried to kick me out."

----------
.p

Shaul said
"In the name of Tia:
 `It is forbidden to have sex
  standing
  because that might lead to
  mixed dancing.'" 

---------------------------

`Be a darned holy town
 soon's we kick out the riff-raff.'
	'Oh Pious Ones'
      how obsessively you invoke, though rarely attend
      wishes of heavens.

                                                (Cf. Rumi)
------ 
Back in Babylon they said 
-- I forget just why --
'Red poppies at Modi'in'

--------
.p

Today we went out to the shooting range
to learn to shoot 
3 shots apiece
so we can all carry guns 
but it was raining very hard
and so somebody asked the Rabbi
and he said we could all go home
so we all went home and the sun came out.
We will go back out to the shooting range
next year
if heavens permitt.

                                      27.12.91

------------------------------------------------

We have a new Rabash.
Every night he gets up
& puts on a real Uzi
and picks up a big new flashlight
and wakes up the Shomer
(he gets to carry a nice old M-1 carbine)
who wakes up a Modi'in-nik
who goes  over to Leon's house
and gives Leon 30 shekels to take his place
and goes  back to sleep
and then  the Rabash goes back to sleep
and then  the Shomer goes home
and then  Leon goes  back home to sleep.

	So every night
	Leon guards us all night long
	but nobody gives him a gun
	or a flashlight
	or a key to unlock the gate
	or a smile.


=======================================================================
.p
KIBBUTZ EYN KESEF ("Silver Springs"):  CAST OF CARRICATURES


Stoned on deviousness
he still shelters a candle of hope.

-----

Dreamt of rebuilding a fertile village of love and prayer
Ignore your dreams of rainbows
get what you asked for
a black-&-white highway town.

------
Crackerbarrel hassid.
'Just find a path and walk it.'

-------

How hard they work now
to clear a rational path
through Levantine poverty.

-------
Who lectured under stoa
becomes, without complaint, a menial
raising, in age, two new sons.
 
-----
Fired their hired watch-dog
a broken-hearted father
who then fortified his kennel.

-----
These raging infant mystics
by-pass their naively honest kindergarten rabbi
who simply goes on living.

------
Some too devious
others to honestly plain
to turn into pinned butterflies.

-----
In a moment's light onceived
vision lives thorugh decades
bent, wracked by mortality.

------
back-biting psychic swamp

-----




Annealed in Veet-nam hells
their Empire-Builder comes
guised as a snaky locksmith.

     :OK:  who hired Ceasar?

--------

A fastidious Flemish virago
the dog-catcher's after me.

--------

Everyone's exasperated past words
at someone.
Constellation of black holes.

-----

'Distance'd', all but 'cut off'
I am welcomed at the House of Prayer
by an open-hearted dog.

-----
Sunsets shut up in her soul
flash out as lightening
who longed to buld lovely worlds.

            ------
'See much, say little.'
Wiry as Jacob, striding stones
to shelter and raise a family on sun-scourged land.

------

Sight clear as daybreak
freely she came to our tents
where men fenced her in.

   Note:  'As clear and passionate as the dawn', said Yeats.
           Daybreak is clear, dawn passionate.

---------
Let noise and dust pass by.
Plant a pardes, guard rainbows.
Fresh air from the sea.

-----
WIT's all heart
not head.

-------------
Baby-face Battle-axe...
.p

"The only difference is,
 we're all crazy
 and know it
 and you're crazy
 and don't know it
 yet."

				 (after Bob Werz, New Buffalo, ca. '69)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                     
For four year Roy
lived like a perfect English country gentleman may
in a little 2-room cottage
with his 3 big Doberman watchdogs
in his little 2-room cottage.
One day Hai asked,
"Is that normal?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------
My neighbor the commando
slips out in midnight dark
to untie a blue line
from my puppy.

--------------
The Queen of Dogs
killed King o' the Cats
by hand of a poisoned apple
and then winds blew down her tree;
they cut it off at the crotch.
Roy said
"Looks like a hooker in a handstand." 

-----------------
Adon Katsefet

"14 years
 been shootin'
 Arabs,
 and now they won't give me a gun.
 Some folks are on a power trip."

---------	
Lady with a tied-down mind
keeps her man and dog on short lead;
someday maybe they all run 'way.

--------
Fresh smell of brush-smoke.
In case the Moshav burns up,
I've pressed the Print key.

                     May 4, 1992,  12:42 P.M.

THE BITTER TEA OF EXILE

*News Item by Andy Court from the Jerusalem Post Pesach edition

In Katmandu in '88
ba'al tchuva at a Seder said
"This can't, man, do -- know
 where you're at, baby:
 call the Rebbe."
In '89, beneath the sign
of a bakery on the way of the Elephant-god
came a carton of kippot with
air-mailed matza (baked in great haste)
and a hundred tins of gefillte fish
with two 20-year-olds in coat-and-tails
flown all the way from Austalia.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------
.p

Oh, shomer mitzvot mayonaise -- today's
fast I
unintentionally betake from thee.

                                     10 Tevet,  C.E. 1990

--------------
         CHICKEN-KICKING POEMS

                           3-if Poem

If    
     thoughts   cld                                  kill
if   that       cat               had
                                       9      lives
     & each                                   live
                cat               had  9      lives
     he'd                                            still
     be                                              dead.

------
Pavanne

Grant 'honest Iago' that "inky cloak" of literate artifice.
     (The Moor's was white upon his sleeve.)
  irridescent Hummingbird held still too long
              so
                   pity poseurs; respect affectation:
                   if angels fail
                   they fall and fizzle
                   out like meteorites; we
                   though, can't 
                   quit, have to 
                   shamble on posing like bagmen with bundles of guilt.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

 "'All men are mortal' it's said, said Tolstoy
 but Tolstoy is, perhaps, a new parameter."

Don't feel like that nowadays.
Fumbling and losing things -- pieces of 
teeth mind and memory
I'm only surprised that age arrived
before I grew up.

-------
*Resented for 50 years
your refusal to negotiate,
Time, but know now
relief at leaving
done deeds behind.

                   Harwich-Hamburg Ferry
                   Winter Solstice, 1990.

-------
TRAVEL NOTES


They trek each night to restaurants
hoping to eat a sacrament.

-----
*I ride the rails as beige displays
of foliage float by, and toast
with tea displays of black-&-white striped cows
that jet-stream past me, relatively.

----- 

Paris is vain, and London's a glutton

-----

*The Arc de Triomphe
lonely as de Gualle
stands encircled
by a swirling moat
of endlessly encircling
autos.

-----

*How Paris celebrates
each house where every poet died
of its high prices.

----
& President Ford V-8
        spake
in a great blaring of horns
unto humanity, saying:
We Rule, worms;
go Underground.

				(Paris, 12/90)

-----




The sun scuttles across the grey sky
like a hedgehog corssing a snow-lined road.

                          (England, Dec. 11)

-----
MORE METAPOEMS

but a mind is always a volatile thing
shy as a cat and apt
to run away when things get noisy...
____

Frying bacon, honing poems --
trim off the fat.

-----

While I guarded the tavern
the bandits bought me drink
and stole my poem.

----- 
Poet, pick & catch one cloud
that blew through your mind.

----- 
`One must see many cities
 to collect a single poem,'
 quoth a diplomat.
      Zhlolp'd in the sun
      I remember my bookshelves.

    :"Treasure in heaven"

--------

The echo of silence
of an exclamation point
used by Pound.

[Ref: Imitations from the Chinese, 'The River Merchant's Wife: ALetter']

-----
One tries to pick words that fit the thought.
---------------

Leaving, the bandits dropped my poems
back into my in-basket
from their smoke rings.

-----
Old men talk simply,
sipping water after meals:
say, Klee's farewell paintings
or even Yeats
savoring ironies;
retiring bodies
pottering on
as spirit soars.

--------
I came
entangling in the telling, to say
more than this.


-------
Slipping into sleep
pick pieces of my puzzle
in a language I forget

-------
[ADD TO METAPOEMS]
The distinction between prose and poetry is, of course, that poetry istyped with required carriage-returns.  Anyhow, in a dream I promised towrite one last poem about all my poems about poems.  I suppose I canbegin it with this. [TO THE TYPIST:  PLEASE DON'T PUT IN ANY REQUIREDCARRIAGE RETURNS]....
.p

*POEMS TO CLAUDIA

sigh of thunderstorm
fluttering wings of a dove
red fox lopes through the grass

------

soft wind, summer clouds
rumble of a thunderstorm
red fox running home.

-----

watched by cows and mule
I sumble down from the pass
soft bells in the rain.


             (Passeo del Colombo, Val Blenio, 8/26/90)

--------------
*One day a poor student met a comely young woman of Moab, and followedher home.  Then he remembered his duties and spurned her.  Quite a bitlater, when he came to rainbow bridge to the pearl-light gates ofheaven, he found, as expected, a great sage robed in a long tallitwaiting to greet him.  'Did you really not recognize me?' asked theMoabitess.
                                       
-----
There was, and always will be, a Princess, from the lands of cloudcolored light, who chose to see the lands below, and descended like ared-and-orange flame, until she came to a land where she learned toride the winds like a fast-fleeing storm-cloud.  Then she chose todescend further< to a land where she learned the ways of Wisdom, andthere with her mind she wrestled joyously with others who climbed inthose heights.  And then, with a deep breath, she descended to thelowest but richest place, where he feet found rest on rock and earth,and looked about for others who had made that journey.  But the sky wasgrey with rain, and cold winds blew, and often the air was full ofharsh noises, and travelers often became confused and forgot what theyhad come to do.  And so of course one day a poor student, who dressedin cast-off clothing and looked about with a frightened air, walkedacross her path and said, 'We met once in another land, where the airis not so filled with noises -- I can take you back to visit there, Ithink'  But he looked and acted so strangely that she did not believehim.

------
Refs: (1) Cf. Kitov, Book of our Heritage, on Book of Ruth
      (2) After the schematism of HIK, passim.; Cf. eg PVK's summary ofthe teachings of HIK in The Message in Our Time
(Harper & Row (?) New York, 197__).1
.p
CHAGRIN D'AMOUR
Lovers in the Morning

"before recalling who
 you ask me how
 I am"

---------

"Belied yourself
 only; I
 was, as you'd put it,
 'true'."     "And you
set to rout     merely
our   ration  of time."

----------

*"The best-laid plens of mice and men"
derive, as in Of Mice and Men.
I've no-one now to show this to.

---------------
*I gave my love three wishes.
She bade me wash the dishes.

----------
      "Hine ecquitavit"

*Friday night again,
wonder where my woman gone


--------
Pursewarden's Complaint

Furry fury, who'd have scorned
your purry beauty, were he horn'd.

------------

                                 "...but our love's all written down
                                  like a song too often sung..."
                                                           Shrager ca.'65

of an angel soul in a monkey mind
and a body like strawberry cheesecake
mane of a red wild horse
in chains to a brewery cart,
Oh ------
           horseshit: Claudia
why must you be so mean, baby
do what you do do did it
like your mamma said bad baby ....
     

-------
*"I love you true
 but you must part
 for dropping bread-crumbs on the car-
 pet; yet we'll meet again some day,
 if that's what my housemates say."

------
"Garlic."
                       "Darling......"
"Not darling, garlic."

-----

No blame, only loss,
unidentifiable.
Nothing changed.  The Angel with Flaming Sword
could await unseen an improbable crisis.
Reaching toward each other they cherish particulars
of a new, unwanted world.

-----
George Bernard Shaw, a bachelor
romanticized the liason 
as 'maximized chance of accepted advances'...

  ------

"My housemate's cast-off room-mate sat
 therein and watched TV all day
 and in and out you do it to
 my CPUnit VDT.

---------------------------------------

The Temporary Lover views Spring Cleaning

In lieu of ablutions 
she throws away whatever I gave her.
Following, I try to rearrange the pieces.

------
.p
BAGATELLES

*That spayed cat, Madam,
ate your decaffinated tea.

-----------

"Lovers in the boudoir
 must not clash
 with my potted plants."

-----

"Steve  I just lost another
 Steve; one            must  
 really be more care-
 -ful with her
 possessions."


-----

"I'll love you          dear
'till Mountains turn to tears
   and fall." She said,
"That's all?
 "Know Sir that then
  the Valleys    run
  in soft-banked streams
  and greenly swells the rolling hill with burgeoning
  that fallen mountains yet yield gold to succor, 
  buckaroo so hold your 'orse and pay our Tariff
  'ere I call my paw the SherifF."

------
.p
NOTES FROM HAMBURG

Amusing a modern woman
by my covered head
I pass the Dammtor Plaza
and glance down at a bronze plaque.

-----
In deepest sympathy
2 Hamburg policemen
& 6 citizens
contemplate a wounded swan.

-----
In the first-class Hamburger subway coach
a gentleman sits
beside an attache case
stuffed with chocolate.

-----

                               "this people mild politely smiled"
                                     Gilbert & Sullivan, Iolanthe(?)

The Great Synagogue of Hamburg lies
only in a photo, black on white
of a smirking factory worker or some such
near the Bimah, I suppose ---
   we may fast or go to the Opera
   but the villains have passed
   in a Cheshire cat's ass.

                                     Novermber 8, 1990*
                                     Hamburg--Holland train

             *November 9, 1938, was "Kristallnacht"; in which the Great                  Synagogue of Hamburg was destroyed.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Peacefully, aimlessly as snowflakes
Germans on holiday drift over the frozen Ulster 
as if nothing had changed
from those days, centuries ago, of the Dutch masters.
Now here's a man in ten thousand,
souring their joy the best he can
who says the world will come to end.
as well it may, though I think not  today.

                       2/17/91

------	

====================================================================== 

-----
FOLK TUNE	(FRAGMENTS FOR A WIP)

I was born in 1940,
'twas the year 5000
    but I didn't know it
    'cause my folks were too busy
with a War on


 .......

and I cried a long long time
walkin' my way

been a long time cryin' but you won't see tears


 .....  

met a ready woman & took her away
with a breast full of love, and body cryin'
called her my old lady and shoved her in line
till she sat back up and shoved me out cryin;
and I ran around crazy for a year or so
but there's plenty of pigs when the cow runs dry
and I worked like a bastard (shit and mud) and loved it
forked 40 tons of cowplop to a flat-bed truck
with an 8-tined fork
I was the meanest man in the place
a second-rate substitute Justin Case
 ...... 

caught the clap, got a shot, but I'd balled my old lady in between
and she lay in bed cryin', thousand miles away
and never told me till she came back home
Oh, baby. I'm sorry.

 .......

met an Afro woman, pale as daybreak
grasslands Princess in the USA
("I ain't proud to be here, but I guess I'm glad")
where a poor black girl better work hard, keep clean
stay ahead of all those sharks
play the game, and pass on through
but don't you deny your name.

 .......

whom I woo'd in the nude in a swimming pool
so we went for walk and did the deed
    (soft Arroyo clay, full moon above)
(hubby sat in th' Adobe, smokin' weed 
he wasn't much for formality
just blacked my eye and set her free
with her kid on back of my old red Suzuki
then he took the brat for a walk one day
all the way to Arizon-I-ay
so I stuck her on the bike for a day or two
and rode over the mountain to New Buffalo
but I yearned for old books and she for her kid

 .....
 
bugger young Werther; eat Van Gogh's ear
all those energy-drain-ers
are totin' the Madchen's away from the game

 .....

back in the Spring of '63
("you were not yet a gleam in your old man's eye")
it was clear for anyone to see
USA could never beat the VC
-- we'd beat King George by hidin' in tress
   now Ho was plaing the same trick on us
- "takes two to start a fight" but just one to stop it;
  don't go off shootin' folks if you can't make a profit.
so I put it on a placard and called my friends
and we we walked around in circles for hours on end
while JFK played about it a bit
but CIA shot him down when he wanted to quit
so LBJ, who thought with his cock
stayed in 10 more years, dumb as a rock
and the whole damned Senate went along
just like good Germans who never knew wrong
((except: Wayne Morse -- "kicked in head by a jackass" said HST --
  stubborn as a jackass)) -- & Ernst Gruenning, Alaska, NYC EhticalCulture))

Now Goofy Georgie Bush is a-playin with Hell;
is the man embalmed in Elovil?
Thinks he's still a kid in his Daddy's plane,
he'd murder millions, who never knew pain.

 ....
"Well I was a young man" once, full o' spunk
either high on love or dumped in a funk

 ....

((rubber &K underwear, back seat of a '52 Buick, too small))

I didn't know and she couldn't say;
came too soon and assumed I was gay
but I tried again, about 4 years later


 .....
soul of leopard and heart of a mouse

shambled around like a currious camel

 .....

shlepped here and shev'd there
lookin' for the Good Old Days



the 2nd coming was an old brown bear
who said "I'm Messiah; here we are."


       but  Ikept myself free
to peruse every goody that they said I oughta have
gebril on a treadmill
plastic disco paradise

got to go a bit crazy to walk through this world
where they lock up angels in stained glass cells

even lovers don't want you to be too pure;
angels fly into the ringmaster's boudoir
and we like sheep with Worcestershire. 




who floated up trails like a red-maned horse

Workin' 5 days a week from dark to dark
pushin ' little buttons in a stuffy boite
and The Man always stops by to take what you make
songbird raging in a yuppie cage
try to hard to pretend it's for real
while 'friends' bend your ear off about how they "feel" 






.P


DRAFT COPIES FOR SUBSEQUENT BOOKLETS OF EARLIER POEMS





.p
MORE RECOLLECTED POEMS (Seperate booklet; fuse with originals)

From Haifa Bay:  more recollected poems

*"Hey,
guess who I just saw --
my roommate --
you know, the redhead --
she's modeling for an art class --
she'll do anything.

                    (UC Berkeley, apr. 1962)
--------------
More Scorecard (for X-Rated Poems)

*Years after we failed
I wanted to make yu, Ann
retroactively.

-----
I'd write you one too, Mindy
but we never made it
and now you you're engaged.

-----

In one pulse of the moon, Jane
you filled my heart and fled.

-----
"...it's a tame theme & same seriations"

----
Between our worlds you walk, Euridice,
and men fear to touch you.

-----
 ...so, after from you I know
    no _____________
    nor simpler beauty.
                              (Placitas, 1974?) (Susan)
-----
 On Viewing Debby's Jello in July

 ...like us, it fell apart too soon
 Your jello spirals down the drain
 oh, all those goodies I bought you in vain.
                                             ca. 1974
-----
.p
The New York Poet (& his Imp)'s Reply to the Nymph

Hey now now, why so grave
as we lay there gaze to gaze
(because we put the ass before the discourse?)
                                             
-------
*The day, love, you
left I
raided your pad for food; found
a stewing chicken with you name.
So, Sue, though
split chick you're
keeping it cool.
                                       NYC 1965
------
 ...I've come across my beaverbooks but rue it;
    the goddess intimates she too won't do it.
    ...
    some more or less well-stack-ed bod'
    bedeck my virsion of The Good
    ...
    wouldst wanton waste they nature's dow'r
    I even scored the pad for an hour
    or two, maybe more
    I can't afford or find a whore
    It wasn't was it something I forgot?
             When you're hot, you're hot;
         and when you're not, you're not.

.p


for Meta-Poems:

"when pitter-pattering iambs serve as flats
to set the stage to liter'al entrechats..."

("the prick deems it a thrill
  if they essay a dactyl."

"while dropping lines like combo shots in pool"

 ...though Beauty looks best in her bearskin
    poems are rich old ladies; cloth with care --
    it's a dandy dandelion; not, necessarily
    a sunflower manque...
                           (UNM, Albuqureque, '67) 
    
.p

           Imitations of fragments from Heraklitus  (ca. 1978)

2 (Diels (Diels-Kranz?) 34)

Talkin' to the wall:
stay-at-home
stuck-in-the-mud
room for rent.
-----
3 (D2)

All souls invited
everybody comes
but each imagines
all others are decorations.

-----

18 (D40)

Scarfin' lots of turdy words
didn't fatten up them birds.

-----------------------------------------------------------
regurgitated poems

Narcissus ponder and polishes
his well-wrought phrases,
then wrapt, seals his soul
and falls into a love of gazes.
                             (Spring '62)
-------

A pornographic movie

gives the devil his due;
the set of sex sans residue
of love; and freed from complication
of art, angst, or even procreation.

                            ('74?)

-----
If 'n my art or sheepish craft
__________________and half my word-plays twice-tolled tales unfold
the err-er, Reader
's you; could ever art ________ spring
without re-cycling?

-----
To his Coy Mistress (pub. Snowmen & Scarecrows, 1974??)

Ah love, you're like a pinball game,
all turned on and a-light
until we'd get it on, or in
and then it's 
TILT! -- Goodnight. 

-----



-----

Rework of Witgenstein poem
lines written the day before going into Milluim

          
on Rilke, who found living such a hassle
he laid the bread to hang out in a castle.

I need a strawman, any flop will do
on which to hang clothes for a retinue

Byron!


   and owe us at the least one further book.

Well, this ain't it;

and follow crusted footsteps in the snow
like an errant puppy

the sugars of romantic luxor age
into complexity of wit
so from that stock
evolves a beverage as dry as hock
but rich as port, presented with a sparkling of laughter
that bubbles up like fresh-splashed soda-water


from that last port on the Adriatic
you ran free, lofted by favorable winds
across cresting waves
between dlophins' leap and seabirds' cries
swiftly past those terrifying straits
unto darkly-flowing Okeonas
whose currents run through sea-lit grottos
know to no

"when fools rule, 'tis folly to bae wise"
   homilies
the converse equally applies as rule
   more like folly 'tis, to be a fool

                           
 (W. in the WWI trenches writing Tractatus)

                            as ultimate irony
amidst tht chaos creating
a gem, refined to exquisite purity
and structured symmetry

if after all the world's not as he thought
                 it ought
to have remained that way
in some crystalline, fire-formed eve
before inchoate slime birthed the lusts and fallibilities of sex-dhumanity

cold and round the planets swing
like tether balls about the sun
just so, data come to me
cleansed of every quality


A Titan or turtle, the ancients say
holds the world on its shoulder;
Hume, bolder
wold balance the sky on the mote of his eye--
beam
but where, critics think, would we be if he blink?
"The Ere-=Opened Eye," cries the Bishop, "I see
doth sustain us, for surely sustained we be."


    though mons veneris
    dominates more primitive eras

so Everyman's an island

    in necessary privacy
and only by our actions tell
that we dance to different drummers
or to the same bell

revealed is man's cranium            (sensorium, emporium)
as like a planetariu,m
whose mind, like Adam e'er the Fall
begins with notihg on't at all
(so Plato's slaves, with the Cave)
             nothing        to save
but soon's bedecked with quite a splatter
of unsolicited sense-data
to be arranged in constellations
that fix the world into its stations

biliard balls and servants go
where we precisely send them to
so little balls of light do fly
through the pupil of my eye
along some ganglionic train
to the sensorium of my bain
where like a lord receiving letters
I can arrange thw worse and betters
(reconstrict?)
inferring from their 
similarcrum of externality

so when I sit alone I f


NOTES FOR REVISED HISTORY OF EMPIRICST EPISTEMOLOGY

I.  [Byron, Don Juan]


I need a straw-man (any fop will do)
on whom to hang clothes for a retinue

Byron!  
At last you sent  that Childe to his room
fencing on waves with a posses of fops 
l2
distilling sugars of romantic luxor age
into complexity of wit
so from that stock
evolves a nectar dry as hock
but rich as port, 
presented with a sparkling of laughter
that bubbles up like fresh-poured soda-water.
L1
then dived into your army and died
l2
from that last port on the Adriatic 
you ran free, lofted by favorable winds
across cresting waves
between dolphins' leap and seabirds' cries
swiftly through that terrifying strait
unto darkly flowing Okeonas
whose currents run thru sea-lit grottos
known to --
    winds blew back my vision's words back to free-flying spirits
    dragging my mind behind, to collapse on a sand-bar
    trapped in history, I stay below,
l1                              
l2

I follow your crusted footsteps in the snow
snuffling and piddling like an errant puppy,
who yips and whines, and with great stir
returns to the warm room he left, for a kick and a bowl of gruel
l1

Socrates paused to repay a cock
you at the least owed us one further book
well, this ain't it
  
L1

"When fools do rule, 'tis folly to be wise"
but one cannot stand firm on homilies:
their converse equally applies
so outside-in can one invert this rule
concluding:  more like folly 'tis, to be a fool

     Farewell, Byron:  you fought for freedom; we hope to survive.

.P


II. [Wittgenstein, Tractatus]
 
I sit and whittle out this set of  lines
while tears smear the creased roads running from frantic eyes
   to the swirling madness of despair       
in a damn'd land where, in the arrogant purity of youth
you threw your mind into a futile army                                     to fight in a blundering war
amidst that chaos creating
as ultimate irony
a gem, refined to exquisite purity
and structured symmetry

confused by earth's fertility
the soul cries out for purity

too vain to be respected for his wealth


on Rilke, who found living such a hassle
he laid the bread to hang out in a castle





if after all, the world's not as he thought it
it ought 
in some crystalline, fire-formed eve
.p

III.  A BRIEF HISTORY OF EMPIRICIST EPISTEMOLOGY
      (Written Taos 1972(?), polished Belmont: reconstructed reworekedhere from memory)





King Henry's unwedlocked, barrel to stock
 but on whom shall We prove it?  At length they aske LOCKE:
 
     FROM our CARDS on the table with dice up my sleeve
     let us reason'bly  strive to discern what we have.

	"I think therefore I am, I think
 	 my Maker wouldn't kid me."

Light comes through the eye you see 

so little balls of light do fly
straight through the pupil of my eye
along some ganglionic train
to the sensorium of my brain
where like a lord receiving letters
I segregate the dull from better



whose mind like Adam e'er the Fall
begins with nothing on't at all
(so Plato's slaves, within our Cave

but soon's bedecked with quite a splatter
of unsolicited sense-data
to be arranged in constellations
that fix the world into its stations

constructing in that dark emporium
of my cranium, a planitarium's
simalcrum's of reality's
untouchable analogy.

^	in necessary privacy
	and only by our actions tell
	how we're drummed by each other to the same bell

The lustrous heavens high above
are something I know nothing of
so neither can the Papacy
(Italyans are just like me)
    
^   So King Henry may bed and beget as he will,
    for if Heaven don't like it we never can tell.
           
	(and that's all the PHILOSOPHER wanted to say:
            'Take what You wanted  and give me my pay').
	
            		but a whore of ideas of superior class
            		must muffle the bastards in costly diguise
            		the issue is smothered, the trappings survive.


            	from yesteryear's Kissinger this answer comes
            	and for 200 years pedants prance to its drums.



A Titan or turtle, the ancients tell
supported the world on back or shell
         (oh it's turtles and turtles, all the way down)

         (Though mons veneris dominates primitive eras
          o' e'eery ol' 'oary forebearers
          she'all left us no letters so we are their betters.)

now Dr. David Hume will try 
to balance the world on the beam of his eye
l3

.	But where, critics think, will be be if he blink?
	"The Ne'er-Blinking EYE," cries THE BISHOP, "I see
 	doth sustain us, for surely sustained we be"
         	here, starkly.


	the cat on the mat might turn into a bat
     or unzip his fur collar and put on a hat






Billiard balls and servants go
where we precisely send them to
so simply come effects from cause
and all that is is from what was



(Says Kant, "though you think  there's a ding-an-sich,  it's onlyan epistemologist's shtick.)
       



