An alphabetic acrostic Barreling through the alphabet Composing cansos for Divinities in Eras gone by Flying as exultation's Ghost toward the past, Howling out regret for Illusions old and new Jeopardized with too much Knowledge, weighted down Low, very low, degraded to a Mnemonic device, Neutralizing in the West what Once, as abecedarii, were used for Prayers, hymns, oracles, Quem Quaeritis tropes, is now Reined to children's games, Sillinesses -- like the dinosaurs. Too big for us, they've been turned over, Under-utilized, trivialized, become Veritas-less toys Washed aside, homogenized, Xeroxed for disregarding Youth and toddlers, then Zipped into body bags, shipped to oblivion. |
Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel
decree. 001
Abundant possibilities, like small leaves in the winds of time, dance for man-created visions of belief, of symbols, rapture. Whirlwinds of certainty reduce the myriad-worlds-universe to texts and testaments, to vows, to hatred, to gun-men-defense of what were words, images, thoughts, brief, ephemeral, fugitive -- nothing ever felt, smelt, eaten, nothing to taste, hear, see, fear, love. The cooling wind moves against flesh, heated quarks open for sunshine un-hoped for in a constrained world. New certitudes will encode, be fought for, died for, real or unreal, foolish or blessed, they will rise in song, they will live and perish -- endless entertainments will sate the periodicity of time causing quarrel and debate, analysis, development of modes: old, new, simple, divine. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 014 Bonding two percent of the world, human history distorts life. It serves the merchant, the ruler, the Ayatollah, Priest and Pope, the Guru. the savant, scholar. History is written of strife, wars, hostilities, disasters. Little is written of people who live and die. The amusements of history ignore mere life. Limpidity, ubiquity outside history maintains life. A deceiving mobility, a treacherous charm, exults life, precludes all classification. What censorship forgets, people accomplish in peace's silence. Most genuine records of time are erased by their swift passage. The usefulness of genuine truth will conceal a missing truth, extol one greedy thread above the cloth, unbalance poise, distort the design, throw envy, exclude. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 027 Codifying the unseeing, obtuse ways of abstract purpose, man pursues his time-filling in philosophy, literature. Religion still exercises man's creative powers supreme, inventing demons, bugaboos, gods who, high overhead, lounge upon irradiating stars, inciting states of endless strife, powers of self and destruction greater than a God can conceive. Living in ranks of high pride, greed, hubris, deception, avarice, man in his entertainment-lust has now mastered apocalypse -- formerly his gods' assignment. Disregarding his own knowledge, man's annihilating Big Bang will bang away his absolute imperatives. The world, unthought, will return to pristine nature. Earth, stars will know amazing new species, untextualized, free. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 040 Delete it and no one will miss your history, my historie. All annals, records, poetry, politics, linguistics, science, physiology, mathematics, art are threads weaving artifice in humankind's grand tapestry, a concocted conglomerate, plucked, raveled up or unraveled, it forms a free floating mirage. It shimmers above the background of multiplicity's wild mime. Peoples, living and dead, are swept on waves, the perpetual tide of being. Isolated threads less meaningful than a movie, are filmed, spliced, unwound by bright light, admired or not admired and soon forgotten. Or, even remembered, but one short measure from the quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion events of lost lore, hours passed, days done, epochs consumed, minutia detained without name. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 053 Entertainments -- an exact term -- serious, heinous or sedate are but ways of passing the time. Luckily, along came language Soon tallies and writing followed. How else fill interminable days but with stories, theories which, given scarcity, abundance, little to do, became truth, the dogma of gods, the evil one, angels, whatever was seen in the sky: talking stars, empty space, echoing vistas, limitless voids flashing signals, a message? Interpretations were devised, fear solidified to culture. People roasted in blazing hells simulated from human awe. Men's abstract words became concrete instruments with which to torture those who said otherwise. Swords, guns were invented to reinforce the opinions of the rich, while the innocent poor hurdled life. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 066 Fortunately time manages to transform everything, to fade vows of changelessness buried deep in the ritual of passage. Each catastrophic, chaotic, unimaginable, failed chance creates a remnant of destroyed permanence, taste for remembrance. Just as the moment, the building, the life broken, is cast aside in marked/unmarked graves and is no more, is disremembered, past woe, is driven by the violence of wind-blown time, like gods who ride silently off to become pale, esoteric literature. Eventually, even carved stone, eaten by air, will crumble. Unnoticed, archaeology bargains with the wind for respite. The creator's purpose of once-carved, deep-faced texts, belie what was granted for a moment, had intention, evolved, is gone. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 079 Gratuitous, a gracious gift, life, it is given, lived without charge. How did the human mind fill so swiftly with unreasonable shoulds and should nots? Poison kills, while nonsense will proliferate forever -- as the sound of log-struck, iron bells reverberate in the dark, in the winter air, into imperishable space. Nothingness remains, followed by more theories and tenacious hope, guesses err, incarcerations cease and visions disintegrate. Don't see too clearly lest, without sound, the balsa-wood structures come tumbling down, aggregate, consign hypotheses to mythic fate, dust and death. A dictionary hides, awaiting the poet's use, words, alphabetically ordered, human mind-toys to assemble and reassembled, to evoke all but life on this spinning globe. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 092 Homo Ludens, he who plays -- but so grimly. Life or massacre is often his game. History says so, but history's tissue historically lies. Nothing like history's momentous tale ever happened. Undoubtedly there was slaughter, war and disease, but people were elsewhere living, gestating, cultivating cave gardens for the sun and the moon. Beneath torrent rains, the earth throve. Many people enjoyed bounty until history, played for fee, challenged the planet, created chaotic and uncountable justifications called reason, called rape, called inevitable called anything but murder of earth, plants, animals, the landscape, the un-named killings of others to own possessions, power. Free before, abstract as a game's need, greed seeped forth -- slow, intangible. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 105 Investigation, a new form of entertainment, is quite choice. It pays the investigator -- always of the appropriate class. Millions are casually spent to maintain the bourgeoisie as professionals muck about to discover why the poor are poor and not a nickel need be spared or spent to alleviate the homelessness, hopelessness, cold, hunger, pain of the destitute. Then counselor, consultant with office, staff, interns, committee (all of the appropriate class, whose standard of life is to strive) call up the lower-standard-of-living poor to gravely adjure. It's never mandatory or justifiable to just give money to the poor. They wouldn't know how to spend with suitable economy. Ah! Are the poor dumb? Ah, we must investigate! Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 118 Keystrokes dealt on the computer of time slide swiftly and converge into nodes, tricks. Even glass-bead-games don't playfully organize free of theory, dogma, yes-buts. Gently let the snapping synapse, the dwindled dendrite, the blood brain barrier lift and fall. Weep, dare for the world turned to words to turn again to the futile image of idle despair, lonely beauty moving, inexorable, toward chaos, implosion, black holes. Gravity's slow need to observe the obverse is aided by hot, human hubris -- lost and lonesome. Pause now and then to contemplate extinction's long and patient ease visited on the dinosaurs by meteor or odd, innate compulsion -- an almost human madness to become something else. Tap, tap, tap, on the computer's doomed creation, that one keystroke. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 131 Ludicrous shadows play, winnow my wisdom until there is none. Cornered in my darkened mind where some was still thought to be, now there is scum scuppering overboard. Rich, fine words by the multitude, which I can spell, cling, while meanings expand and contract and dissolve. Lubriciousness grabs anything. Though it prefers luminescence, it will accept old, cilantro, black and slippery with leaf slime down an unclean sink leading -- Who knows where? -- to bowels dropping five stories into sewers where quests for entertainment will provoke replacement for forgotten old friends, old todays composed of rage anti-compassion, hatred, greed, mawkishness and market-value -- murder. There's no need to apply accurate words, when we can make it just fine with something-like. Kneel! Worship one's busy human sense. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 144 Marvel at the world chewed up by man's demand, whence springs manure for daffodils, anemones, Icelandic poppies, grown fragile, grown tall on Santa Monica Boulevard beneath palms, pine and spreading-as-wide-as-a-world Morton Bay Figs, post culture, be-smogged, hydrocarboned to death. Disrespect for the way things are leads man by his haughty nose toward greater and greater anomie. Bonfires of the vanities light our planet. The phosphorescence from their flames travels on and on and on into the universe and on and on, on beyond our galaxy, beyond fugitive galaxies forever, ever more. Where is the limit, the edge, the walls and voids beyond which starts oblivion? Beyond is space. Nothingness -- illusive -- does not exist. Time does not terminate. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 157 Nevertheless, we do end. We could do better. We could replace this maniacal fairy tale of scarcity, vengeance, terror -- granting each their amusing hoax, terrible, time-passing stature and get on with our dreams of life, dribble drops of compassion here and there. Instead of studying, we could meet the unfortunate, give them food, embrace them, shelter their humanity and expunge their debt. Why does a programmed-for-death earthling, for his ninety-one years, need billions? -- to blind him to starvation, bloated bellies, bone- exposed, torn body-parts bandied about by bomb, mine, missile? Why has the human mind run away with the human heart? Can it be caught, taught, tempted, tickled, cajoled, kidded into enduring love toward other human hearts, other simple beings, without specie? Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 170 Over there in the dust among the rocks of the road the brains lie, brains and teeth of an Iraqi blown -- surprised -- through an explosive shroud. What is an Iraqi? Not a mineral, plant or green tree? It's a being -- human -- but deemed not important enough to burke. Iraqi-killers, homesick, brave, mourned, ramming ideas of life, "democratic" ideals, down the throats of those who disagree, are important. "Smart bombs," are important -- knowing to massacre just Iraqis is another ideal. Words may differ but the great hegemonic game remains the same. Boys will be boys, agree to be men with the strength of men, but keep their boys' dreams solvent, whole. Count the bodies, count the brains, wash the gore in the river of time where truth's stones are fogged, polished by hypocrisy's profane decree. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 183 Part now with certainty, pleasure, hope. The worst, unbelievable, will happen. You will no longer walk, nor stroll, nor rove, nor ramble the twilit quiet. No matter how slowly or willing to move, you will no longer go. Stasis reigns. Stasis has halted the line. Death has bid farewell. Change is gone. We are stuck in life, immobile, without choice save to learn. Learn what? Learn the slow inventions of time. Shun light, shun the day, shun what was. Death and time, O, great sisters, be; be on my side -- now. What is now? Ask again. What is now? Let be. Where can it be found? -- breathing. In darkness, breathing is now, no change. Breathing is the light, the sky, space. Itinerant is the nature of birds, molecules, the wind, death. Resurrection comes with the shine. of the sun. New creatures will grow unlike memory's reverie. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 196 Questions need to be asked again. Three narcissus bulbs pullulate. The first, two days ago. The last? A week from now? In the future perfect tense nothing will have changed. The sun, less bright will evolute, Earth, perpetually slowing its rotation, will then stagnate. The days grow shorter, sleep descends deeper and grogged by spinning time. I now know what enlightenment means: I shed the imperative. I bounce about neutrino-like -- no weight, no mass, the spin of one half cavorting, smiley-faced through the universe filled with peace, glee idiotic bliss. Who needs it? Twenty-first Century man, deep in the gore of his anger, holding back change, cries: Not I! Things must be as they are because they have been as they are. As! They! Are! Will! Be! Nature laughs, speeds up her plans for a nine-headed cow, cries: Rejoice! Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 209 Resurrecting another time's sound, other tastes, another place, I hear taped Beethoven minus Oistrakh's cadenza. It's bell-like, soaring trace is erased by time. I see the music's bones, structure. I hear deaf Beethoven at work. Then, I knew music but little. Now, my dendrites and synapses have vaulted, sparked unions, taught me: I am the world. Being music, the world's great, bright wings live in me. Once having entered, nothing leaves. Grandmother's gold, speeding needle weaving, knitting, stitching, creates from the single thread time's tangle. There's no need to re-create the cool air, nor the morning's sun, the playful cat's leap, at finding I know the concerto's every note. My heart sings it by heart. I've been in another country, I've come home, filling in the twisting trail behind, before me, I've come home. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 222 So, allure even one belief from nothingness's shield. Entice Shiva, destruction's Great God. God of my house, Shiva cat, genie of Purna, the world his honing post. Claws like scimitars, teeth like stilettos. With pink cavernous mouth, designed as a carnivore, it troubles him to distinguish between hand and meat on his plate. Or does it? Does he, like humans, desire the indigestible plenum, the everything, the all, then still desire to devour more? Digest! Attack! Destroy all things -- epitomizes his nature. Before creation can begin again, the cycle of to die must revive to live. To die, to live once more, to age, to gurgle round millennia, seasons, to re-churn time, all images change. Listen to remembrancers of lost music; review the vignette. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 235 Thirty-five, forty years ago I used to watch cats sidle through the tall, dense, golden grass of a Pennsylvania summer's late heat, padding soundlessly, moving slowly, with caution's infinite charm, watching, listening, sniffing the unusual, still green blade of grass, bite it, amble on, then, for no visible reason, lie down, paws tucked, self-satisfied. Why there? I would ruminate in awe. "Why just there?" Not up the hill nor down, near the path nor far, but gone for hours. Walking, I would find one cat here, another randomly there. "Why just here?" I'd whisper, kissing pink nose and taut, inquisitive whiskers ensconced in a vast field, vast as the Siberian steppe: rocks, wind, grass and dust. "Why just here?" Why pluck this point from the rubble of time, declare it triumphant, as -- flash forward -- a special site. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 248 Valery has written: "The Gods have received from the human mind the gift of the power to create because that mind, being cyclical and abstract, may aggrandize what it has imagined to a point that it's no longer capable of imagining it."*** Advance or retreat, time unsteadily ticks in directions resolute with memory, forgetfulness, replacing each imperative. Be-whiskered, bemused, soft, purring, was this a cinema or life? Especially if I am asleep: "...what happens to me, is my life..."**** The high-turbaned, grand vizier of wisdom passes his short regime flutteringly like an un-cocooned butterfly -- none dares to see. Who's real? And what would it matter? Beyond larvae, beyond pupae, use every word you can, lest life perish and this poem survive. Those who would truly know the world, must eschew judgment's cruel decree. 261 THE LOST OF CONSCIOUSNESSAscribe this strange poem to age. Blaze joy through it. Let it baffle before blame, let it shine, bustle, contrive to amuse, crenelate, charge across time, slowly convene dare-devil critic, desperate disciple, dauntingly destine Essene or excessive excuse, endure to hauntingly embrace feeble reason freely: farce, foe, fee, frequent follicle and flame, grimace a pain-like guillotine, grumble, groan, but soon graduate, take a deep, heme-colored, hirsute, histamine hoarse hippie for hire. Insupportable, insulate ire irrevocable, intense, keystone Klee-like lines surely kite Kampuchea or any knee. Live with love lowered to re-lave laureate in a lime-green loge, mime morale, morals, a mongoose made from catastrophic moonshine. Nightie be damned, never negate. Naivete necessitates noise, obdurate sounding off, oblique, 274 obscure and a rarely obscene, palpable, pongee paradise. Parachute from a projectile, quake while seeking the quintessence, quote while contemplating quagmire, ramble around the rapture range. Rape, though rare, ravages revenge. Scripture, skillfully sere, single side, single source will simulate temple, throne, trappings of trade's twine. Transpose whatever troubled tale vestige is left to valentine verve. Vaccinate each ventricle, ascribe this strange poem to age. Jejune jalousies will joggle, jangle, fall for want of justice. Jaundice opinion will jostle jute in the jungle jubilee. Uterine darkness, while urbane utterance use, untie, upstage urbanize, untangles ursine, unwise upgrades for fake usage. We were then wired and everywhere. Woe wore elaborate wreckage. Wreathe, wiggle, wrinkle, wobble, wipe, write up your life woven in white. Xenophobe with a xylophone, X-chromosome rare xerophyte, Yankee never so yare as, Yule yippee, yokemate of yore, yoke zoophyte or zorille, zygote, zombie through an Internet zone. Artichoke-like, fuzzily butte, bruit about this bantered bauble. 292 |
001. A Another abecedarius, this based on Sanskrit, glimmery as mica, rustic and rural as my mind 002. A Audible contradictions tar me as long as my life, a residue of father 's strangeness, likeable and despicable 003. I Initially, I felt I could jump all over the wires of my life, fill up the lily pond with starred beauty and scum 004. I Illegal, irenic, I never changed, never will change, pursued by the police of the mind, I'm in Ido danger as it is 005. U Ultimate fear shines over me, chasing me, world without end, into the full, blossoming, briary bush 006. U Usurp the mind's life, expansive but rude, rambling all over the place, digging up facts and figures and carnage 007. Ri Riddle the memory with past merriment and wine, merrily trod roughshod over the world, your oyster my oyster 008. Ri Ritonello ritardando after the risotto, definitely not his oyster or recognizably a marine mammal, Italian cookery and love 009. Lri Lyrists played their lyres for the revelry and refusal of change and because there was not a Gilbralter rock anywhere to sit on 010. Lri Lyres are tuneful, but slightly out of remembrance with poets humming the lost lyricism of the no longer revelrying world." (long) 011. E Effervescently the prey of the osprey who bears marks of the preying fish, white bellied, dark, there, on his back 012. Ai Aisles open up, routes through the sea and the air, horatory singing rings out, gadflies on the wind, the rain lashing down 013. O Overheat the universe, vent the black smokers in the sea, go and turn to stone the deep welling waters not of this world 014. Au August and hoary statesman whose haustellum doth suck and suck at the universal tit -- titmice in another age, hawk now 015. N (Anusvara) 016. M (Nasal) 017. H (Visarga) 018. Ka Kill is a primary goal, cruel is another, adventure through our times to seek the benignant sucker in our Klein bottle world 019. Kha Khaki koalas, though not native, clutch their inkhorns as embedded journalists prevaricating, word for word, evasions of truth 020. Ga Gaily grilling on the gridiron of time, man with his dog and gun gets to gracefully scale the tides of woe wondering what went wrong 021. Gha Ghazies spy out the loghuts of the western world and shoot through the ghettos of contemplation, ghastlier grow our inventions 022. Na Nyingma is red and blue, O sing ye kings and sink from sight down the Tibetan slope, disappear O cherry-cheeked nipped ghosts 023. Ca Chattermarks distinguish the glaciated rocks one from another like the fluttering hand of the tabla player, dolce on the drumhead 024. Cha Chyme cascades down the churchhill to the duodenum and beyond, into the abyss of time with chuckles from the obscured stars 025. Ja Judas priest! another scholarly adventure, jetting up, getting ready to jump from my brow into the swim of search and seizure 026. Jha Judgement will do as hedgehogs appear in the crown of time and disappear into fine penumbras digesting dirigibles and dhows 027. Na Neptunium, silvery, metallic, naturally radioactive, a singe element, following uranium and beautiful but deadly for cringing and binging 028. Ta Tell all the true tales of mourning and marriage, trailing all the rude rhythms of bearing and birth, tell them over again, the tales. 029. Tha Thenceforth theoretically the anthills will mount to gigantic methane fuming cones, termites clouding the planet 030. Da Do drum and drive the dribble back onto the glacial mountain while taking heart and hedonistic pleasure in plunking down the image 031. Dha Dharma calls -- for which seat in which time will you pay which redhaired piper dashing through days on a long fish-fly, dutiful life 032. Na None who wished to speak up spoke; everyone knew more about those who offered themselves then those who did not 033. Ta Turbulence fetched far from Ireland's water and my history -- the fact I have a history -- fills me with horror 034. Tha Taken from life, nuthooks, which we don't speak about, but they used to when tethering autumn to winter, spring to fall 035. Da Dice were played with the souls of the salmon carefully; this was a fin up on the human, generational, cooperative river 036. Dha Tongues wag and sentences adhere to the inside of dear mouths and fancy guts desperately, dextrously, adroit, skilled 037. Na Not for nothing was the nut put into the bin, made over from sawdust and starch, evidence in human nutrition unknown 038. Pa Pour the guts on out for the pagentry, put the fire behind you and sip from the cup of partiality to procure peace in the spleen 039. Pha Puffing and puttering, pulling all uphill, hand over hand over the mountain, strive like the pharaoh might strive for his pyramid concomitant with life 040. Ba Barely had I seen the sun when its glare bespoke the godhead whether bear or brilliant or both rubbing round the sides, gyres, sides, waves, tides, tsunamis 041. Bha Boarding the flight of the golden fleece is no reason to abhor the abeyance of beauty, how glad the heart with Shiva's scruf, Shakti's shattering 042. Ma Ma's map and jam will be quite enough for the picnic among the rocks of the truly truant eons bottled in wine, winsome and worry 043. Ya Yards of saris yellowing on the sand under the sun and the moon, cling yet, loyally concealing the universe's lovely rib 044. Ra Ra or Ram rising red over the planet's curve, Agni will save the year being sure of her fire, her flames and her death, obscure choices done 045. La Lovely, lulling lies lead one into the sleep of the Gods, pleasurable, restful, justified for nature is cruel, criticism the lot of the blind 046. L 047. Lh 048. Va Verve, vision mixed, might be his version of red ivy climbing chancery walls, falling drains, ripping facades near dwarves who dwell incontinent 049. Sa Surely sugar is the sinecure proving the sine curve quite sinewy for embracing what may have never been recorded before, quite rightly 050. Sh Shuttles as old as sorrowful shrouds, signal from Sanskrit's olde, 1899, dictionary in English advising to shun bush O prophet! O soul! 051. Sa Saints safely stored in Heaven sin and hiss, earthquake has the world burying forests with salt water and sea maidens. Come be with us! 052. Ha Hear this, hit your chest with remorse and hide. Until I have claimed the ashvamedha* territory -- there is nothng left to do |