Classic Poem

You don't get the sense
he has a lot to say; but he says it
very well. The search
which is a deference to the caving
walls of essential acts, potential facts. Circling
caustics in seas of suits. [l]
want a phone, a sea, a
curb; body parts impede essence. (Relation

Precedes production.) Athwart
knack (flagon). As homemade
bestiary enthrottles boheme. Bruce
is bruised by bluster (Buster). Fight
fire with water (warper). " This
is a powerful, original, and deeply
moving work and many will
find it a disturbing one. "

When in falcon time and of a ripe
rage, I bloat a board, as ever
has accord in a day-long waft ...
as or like may gird, sift, stultify,
perish, churl. Anyone blessed with
pumice. He said he had a mouse
in his hard disk. Then apoplectic, disappointed.

" I purely couldn't tell you, partly
couldn't consider, penultimately
unavoid[avail]able. " Even Pope John Paul II
agrees. " I have read Professor Bell's
letter with amazement. In my review I said
his research was fascinating and most skillfully
presented. As for
the misgivings I felt (and still

Feel), they were expressed in as considered a
manner ... " Those things
which I beheld as child — chair, table
floor — concrete, that meant a life. Or
blind to purloined recall, dodges for
bull or Bill, only to inappropriately
will. These china dolls, Moroccan
scrawls: the cost of it all.

Retention that squanders its own demand,
see-sawing and then fawning. " My ink
is not good, my paper dirty, & I
am altogether ashamed. " Standing,
stunned; strutting, stunted. He
who is lost hesitates and hesitating finds
(but not what he looked for). She
who meditates is tossed. Let geese

Be geese! (He does not care whose house he
sets on fire as long as he can warm himself
by the blaze.) There stands the hood,
there the barking knife. Take a scissors
to write . " She sure put a spook
in my wheels! " Like two dogs with one
prick. Nor cast your hose before
gnomes; that is, skin them but don't

Fleece them. For it's better to be led
by the nose than by the hairs, better
to be led by the nose than to have a lead
nose. Which is to say, he was
a hatchet without a handle, a pudding
in a puddle. What a muddle!
" I only say suppose this supposition, " propose
this proposition. Not a tragedy, just an

Inconvenience. & don't be harsh without
a reason. (Just after she screams
she picks up her bottle & dreams.)
Then we came upon a grand beech forest
Where once I lost my good friend Morris.
Willingly, I'll say I've had enough. Wet
as a mule and twice as
disgusted. Take my husband,

Please! But the pleasures are entrusted
to the wrong partitions: the cant of
intellectual fashion (Paris) lies
a decade behind leather design (Milano). Harsh,
that is, without accuracy. For with Rehnquist
& Meese, the only ones with rights
are the unborn and the police. & reigning over all,
the Great Communicator — master of deceit. No release.

Heave, hoe this
firmament.
What is here
only that; no
less. The tide
pulls back its
brim — in which
we spin.

The prolonged hippopotami of the matter
swivel for their breakfasts, fall in the middle landing soft
with the horse shrill of honeysuckle, to the decimated acid of the sweet
tub. They are hobbled, dejected
& lie frozen with salted humbling.
To the ocean of shorn horizon, averting America's
sentient emptiness, here where the body's sightless ascent
revolts in paltry recompense.

Obscurity beckons from down the block
oblivion, too, bids me come & knock.
The water calls me but I shall not go
for a man's place is on the sho'.
You can sing and you can pray & you can shout lots
but you'll never get to Heaven without a box.
Lox & bagels, bagels & lox, kreplach
is on the stove, time for a plate of hocks.

I'd ask that you call me by my Christian name, Buddy
(since I don't know your name, I hope you don't mind
my calling you that).
It's not a lot to ask; purely, it's a small thing
but I think it'd help to bond the cement between us
put us on indistinct terms, if you know what I mean.
What I want to bring across to you, Buddy
is the vanity of conceits
though you may call it what you please —

The story is told that a man came to a house noted for its views
& was told, look to the West, at the mountain ranges that loom over the land
& was told, look to the South, at the turquoise-blue lake shimmering in the blue-bright sun
& was taken, then, to an Eastern balcony, overhanging a garden unrivaled in its varieties of plants & flowers
& he looked to the North, at the thick-grown forest
& listened to the birds that filled the branches of the cascading trees
& he was ushered to the Western windows
& he said, " But I've already seen that. "