H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t
D a u g h t e r s of
A l l e n G i n s b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R
e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e s E d i t i o n
GARY ALLEN
A Complete If Dicey Tour
Beauty,
is too quick
for time
––Charles
Olson,
"Letter
22,"
The Maximus Poems
One place
replaces another,
shifting realms
in memory,
a type of light
relied uponR
like the daily
news, different
datelines
simultaneous in time.
Folks, I don't
remember nuthin
bout it, no use
even askin. He
walks with hand
in mouth
to stopper the
obvious tendency
to turn into
the things he says.
Deep down it's
gods all the time,
frequently of a
sleazy sort.
Admonishment
proves fruitless
even if it does
draw the drapes.
Business per
usual & I want
his ass hanging
in a meat locker
by this time
tomorrow, so forth.
Deep down it's
dogs all the time,
doing their
barking obsessions,
odor obsessions
& good-natured,
hopeful confusion
routines,
hunted by
masters who prove
unreliably
kind. Well so, is
one obsession
good as another
& where's a
meat locker we
can inspect
looking for Grade A?
Draft of stars
opens in a pigeon-hole.
We tack against
the wind of time
& space,
glimpse a good-natured face,
king reclined
in his hammock
between two
missing poles. Hasn't
had to maintain
his politics
for quite some
time. Reassured
by his jollity,
& somehow different,
we say
farewell, leave him there,
for the dog
shit on the sidewalk &
usual
windstorms. Return to find
dear Uncle Ed
freshly deceased.
Ed's
element-burnished skull cradles
the universes,
Aleph, rite, blossom,
coil of
galaxies & coil of feces wet
with the smell
of truth cooking to
a fine brew,
snifter of moonlight
bubbling rainbows. Ed O Ed, up, up,
leaps thy
apotheosis! Death is the high
dive where you
never hit water.
Remember that,
interpenetrated by realms,
re-replaced by
who we were, will be.
We could
forgive Time its excesses,
but it hasn't
done anything wrong.
Ed is pure
smile, abandoning frugality.
Moonlight
skeletal structure in horses
splashing
through surf. It's an eye
& it's a
marble rolling around a circle.
A complete if
dicey tour. Pedal to the metal,
glued to the
rear-view. The lassitude
of speed. Teeth chatter devoid of head.
The past floats
by into the future glazed
in butter,
delectable, infuriating.
No logic to the
parts except that they fit
like fragrant
rain in the window. Imagine
the drops
sacrificing their pure breasts
on grass
blades. Imagine the green-edged
certainty that
cuts them in twain. Loving
completeness,
made incomplete thereby.
Grey & red
rains impartially at dusk.
Could you
collect water in a net? Spark
a bonfire with
fingertips? Grow
younger through
time? We run into
the king at the
mall with his retinue
of two hundred
children, cornucopia bearers,
acrobats,
swordsmen, natty counselors, queens,
scholars &
horn men. Greets us gladly, goes
about his
business in procession, like
swan boats
elegantly traversing the Yangtze.
Sun careens
through shifting camouflage.
The myriad
structures sparkle winking eyes,
re-dissolve as
they re-emerge from
quark
soup. Fabric stitched with
tongues,
woof of nuns
crossing a checkerboard quadrangle.
How many sides
to a sand grain? A fish
on the beach at
low tide? Fire & saltwater,
kelp &
oxygen that produced a blue-green
scale glint
evolved inexorably into this beat up
white '73 Ford
sedan caroming into the
7-11 parking
lot, a few drunken 360s
before she
bangs over the curb, swallowed
by imperturbable
night. Everyone's a consumer,
tail in
teeth. And when Mohammed
drags in from
the desert, black-eyed
bedraggled from
a wrastle with his angel,
you can bet he
lost. That's Fate. Coming
together of
theoretical particles––red,
green, blue––to
account for behavior of
the larger
hadrons. Squadrons of probability
taking off for
their rendezvous with Destiny.
Destiny being a
bit chancy, a gambler, maybe
she will, maybe
she won't. So it says here
in this file
labeled "XXth Century," soon to be
fudge-packed
with retrospect, if it isn't already.
But the Academy
has discovered, ad nauseam,
that
"words are empty," & hey, what a shock.
Instead we lean
on the products of memory
in our lonely
rooms. Consciousness picks
certain themes,
classifies them into
particular
connections, sends them
into
cloud-veiled realms to be retrieved
by petty
bureaucrats in a labyrinthine
administrative
building, minotaur or two
locked in the
basement. Grandma goes senile
at the
breakfast table, unable to remember the names
of her
children. What she does recall
is a day among
apple blossoms, when 11
or 17, a white
clapboard house or yellow,
conversation
with girlfriend or sister
about that boy,
what was his name? We
lay forth our
desire, frilled about in lace,
so simply &
naively, stand there, our eyes
placed lovingly
upon it, as everything else
goes completely
to hell. The haunted trees
thread their
tentacles above, sealing
glacial evening
in the tomb. Imagine
Lazarus'
surprise when he opened his eyes
to see the sun
again. Stabbed in the chest
in his chair a
while later by conspirators
against miracle
& myth. That's Politics.
Pinhead tribalisms. Fight to the death
over an
imaginary hole. How many
sides to a
grain of air? Rain comes again
like a
definition, a circumstance
delineating
feeling; a bolt of cloth
unravels from
the window. Is rain
one thing or
many? Does a dog exist
apart from its
parts? Who barks?
Who needs a
warm hand behind their ears?
Looking up
hopefully––what passes for
Religion. Heaven articulated in
one pearl on
saw-toothed leaf. Hell,
by a cloven
face pressed into barroom floor.
Rolladexadrine. Maybe religion is
the
administrative details dealt with
artfully by an
anonymous noble in
Chinese
silk. Passionate baldness.
The ability to
drift into space like
incense, a
vanished but sensed presence.
Moth thuds
paper globe. Imperviousness
is relative to
means. Slide the sword
from the stone
in our breast, brandish it
aloft to draw
down the rain of blessing.
Successive aeons
are only one bereft night.
Time cloaked in
linearity. Reveal this face,
our Beloved, in
the singular devotion
that sings
through events like
a diamond
thread. Swans at ease
on the
lake. Turmoil years. Crown
awaiting a
head. We come divinely
when we
come. We come to Love,
as we
must. The discomfort of
inspiration
demanded over technique.
Or the glorious
E that begins the optometrist's
chart devolving
into unreadable strain below.
Insult to
personal orthodoxies. What loved,
in its original
eternity––his broad shoulders
& laugh,
sunlight through her silk dress––
shrinks to
remembered glimmer as we cross
the smoky
opacity of possession. Flatten
tummies. Lift & tighten behinds.
Reduce
thoughts. Slim our ties.
Stride cool
& comfortable customer
through meat
locker to bar,
order zeitgeist
cocktail, issue
appropriate
vocabulary, & wait
for a good
time. It's the dark glasses
on us all:
Hope. Good fortune, paizan!
May strong sons
be born to you
to work the
fields, tend the animals,
impart your
legacy & name
to an
illustrious descent un-severed
by time; that
you might be forever
remembered as
one who knew
& quoted
the scriptures, scrupulously
maintained his
wealth, protected
the purity of
his wives & daughters,
& always
venerated his ancestors.
But when the
patriarch sits
in his porch
rocker watching his
grandson sweat
in the sun,
the youth
furious with the ancient
proposes that
he build a coffin
for the old
man, to conserve food
&
labor. The grandfather acquiesces
& the young
man loads him in the box,
wheelbarrowing
it to a cliff,
where he pauses
& the elder says,
"Don't you
want to save the coffin?"
"Why?" "Because they'll need it for
you."
The antecedents
are perhaps not memories
but our own
faces, constructs of time
if constructs
of anything. Herein
we propose our
own beginning as if
there was
one. Innocence begins
& in that
lost. The despairing revelation
some years
later that our desires were
only ours, writ
large by Hollywood,
but a pocketed
stub as the marquee darkens.
We knock our
way through a few
Pater Nosters. It is not enough
to seek divine
consolation in a vibrator.
A flying dream,
sucked to the earth
by gravity, but
concentrating on heart center,
lightened, to
soar above massive
cathedral towers
in night mist.
Where do
Utopias exist? Determined by
thought?
Slid shotgun
shell into chamber, cracked
shut, nudges
whimpering skull, demands:
You vill deliver pleazure now, ja?
Maybe not. Formulas, theorems, corollaries
side-step a
perfect reconnaissance, none
a foot-print in
rock. This is Beauty.
Sifting sand
paintings––four dimensional
thought. Who thought the thought
of you
thinking? The hermeticist
traces back the
striations crawling
through encoded
text, runic veins
splayed in
countless soughing leaves,
winking
mortalities, symbols of themselves.
Institutionalize
it if you can. The walls,
the water
rights, the cisterns & statuary,
the sleek
pink-veined marble columns,
the
documentation, the appropriate officials,
the gold dome
enclosing, defining,
deifying...Uncertainty,
the true god
who loves to
fuck with us. He
raises the
rent, gets us fired, lines
his cronies'
pockets, knocks us up,
sells the old
pond to the tar factory,
& skips
town to leave us horribly,
mercilessly alone
with...Certainty.
The real
Jean-Paul Sartre scenario: hell
is Me. Village idiot cringes in a cell
of repeating
wallpaper. Nero happily
boinks his
mom. Interminable terminus.
If only Rome
would go up in flames,
get it over
with. Bleak years
smudge the
ashen row houses. Secret
police file aeon,
an elaborate
erasure of
memory in guise of History.
And then one
day beyond thinking or
effort, Kafka
approaches the golden door
& the
guardian admits him without a word.
Magpie
squawks. Rain, world continues,
drip-
ping from
evergreen. Cedar wind. Wildness
preserved in
the classic English garden,
a little
naturalness left to Nature, while
clipped, routed
to symmetries by the French,
human design
more suitable for contemplation
&
criticism. Form being a consciousness
designation-type
thing. Space/time spider web,
caught dog
struggling by personal definition
toward
appropriate object, i.e., odor
left on
tree. Cypress at field's end.
Eye &
object in copulatory embrace. O
reams of bodies
radiate sensory realms,
spindle
communion lines, body eats
body, tail in
teeth. Sea foam sucked
into sky, shat
back in storm. Ship
of
weather. Where is there to go, but
going
of its
transformations, magic show, non-
existent
sleight of hand. What we might
seek to wake
from or be. Kafka will not
return, but
leaves "Kafka" here as "Us,"
in a dark room,
anonymous voices outside
the door. Words have referents, say Words.
Plot murder
according to the logic of their
constructs,
spider web conditions, all struggle
wraps us
deeper. Woven from a river of
Shit.
Figure lifts
hand, uncounted drop in cold pit.
Fruit of
lifetime ambition. Wheel's teeth
click. Hen's teeth grind, one stupid eye
fixed
uncomprehending on the sun.
Lord, we are
dragged through dust
by wild notions
& boredoms rutted
deep in our
fear. Who rules? Chaos
that makes too
much sense. Flies
on a hot
afternoon. Cypresses threaded
into the
sky. Morning pounds on centuries
of
debauch. A lively girl's lips
await a
kiss. We won't lift
our heads to
look at her, yoked
as we pass,
refugees employing techni-
color miracle
bodies for the same
old crap. Perception stained by youth.
Age its
product. Braided together
into
clockworks. Factory melodramas,
not wheel of
hymns in the sky. Star-
encrusted
blood-line devolved to
inured
eye. Pass on our chains.
Or chained
light pulses in a single
cell. Net without knots, threads
cohered into
change. The Beloved's
face, not
commercial for but
actuality
of. Invisible copulatory
embrace. Seasonal motion is Sex.
Day into
night. Clouds speed over
rooftops, curve
of swallows, moisture,
shadows
progress the ground. The penis
rises like a
camel from the sand, a
cockatoo
through immaculate greenery.
Fig, date fed
to lacunae, our endless
mouth. A hunger that leaves its trace
during only the
momentary eclipse
of our
cells. It is parts of cells
wanting to be
cells, the components
of parts
seeking composition. Gleaming
fury on a
schedule. Permeable walls,
increase. Survivalist pump. Beehive
luminosity.
Charge restlessly, relentlessly
firing. Ants on the march. Ravel's Bolero.
Swarming
need. Spark tornado
congeals into
an eye, wetted by
love,
concealing a razor, securing
& losing
its perch on angles. Thump
of blood
circulates messages, network
info
system. My baby left me. My
love is a red,
red rose. Love those
hot, red
pumps. Separation seeks
its source as
it can. Blind, sensitive
wand. World cavern. Complications.
"I paid
for it!" indignant. Where is
"it"
now? In our mouths, 69, circ-
ular fish, a
Chinese equilibrium: up-
set continually
into balance. Australian
aborigine finds
her way home via song,
terrain maps
itself, Earth's oldest stories.
Home heard in
whistled bagpipe ache
makes the Scot
stand straight in his kilt
in the dew,
reminded of birthplace beyond
his deepest
memories. Note Africa when
Coltrane lifts
the reed to his lips, Africa
missing, that
never was, invented by unsure
sheer cry,
& found. Cry & pleasure
shudder.
Lore &
need. Sprig emerges fragile from
habitual
dust. The kiss is new. The
second
lives. The plate––meatballs/pasta,
tofu/vegetables––is
set before us. Dig in,
it's food, it's
mother's milk dripping
down our
cheeks, it's time to eat,
don't be
polite, when is hunger fulfilled,
when do government halls release
their doves,
when is this intercourse
the unified
flame, the complete insignia,
the symbol
whole & realized as real,
no longer
referential but itself, sparrow
lands on bare
rock. And yes,
sea gulls squeaky
bitching tangle
above the tide
moving in with moon,
neon coming lit
against salt blue
twilight &
signs streaked rust,
barrels stuffed
with refuse & flies
by tourist
trade. Dead carp bob
against pier,
sour brine of our
unified lives
in decomposition. Set
the plate in
front of the child. Bid
her eat. Stroke her hair, let her go
play. It is (h)ours, whatever "it"
is.
While Ezra
Pound gallivants among
the ruins,
skips & plods through
libraries in
himself. Gay, in his way,
& an old
bastard. Wish he'd given birth
to an actual baby, slick with blood &
vernix,
squealing into the rest of his
dilemma, not
just a museum of retrieved
& polished
antiquities. Too bad he
wasn't a
woman. Driving down hill into
rain, static
eats the radio. Mist thickens,
wipers push
blankness back & forth.
Get out the
map. Life is the Philosopher's
Art, the Stone
his mind, his words for
bird cages or
entertainment or guidance
in ethical
quandaries, on a good day.
God let Satan
through the hedge & we've
been dancing
with him in this circle ever
since. Job exits rewarded seven-fold,
rest of us
remain out to make a frank buck,
cutting deals
on our own terms. The watchful
eyes blinking
Morse codes of guilt are leopard's
spots jungle
camouflage maya animals
roaming our
brains, a flicker across two
points, virgin
silence between stars. Mythic
palimpsest,
time's skin, time is consciousness,
blurred
interface of memory & imagination,
our histories
grow heroes, moss beards
on monuments,
or quick of the sword through
an enemy's neck
or two, minotaur's horn
pierces closet
door. Who does what? Where
does the
matador end, the bull begin?
Europa raped
among garlands of hyacinth––
a mystery tap
on the shoulder or imperious
dealing from
Above? Satan or is it God
down with us on
the killing floor. Ancient
history of
daily life. Deadly as a clock.
Round as
earth. Crinkle of rain & dog
moan. Cars plow past. Figures hump
under
blankets. Why complain? Nothing
hears us,
except other complainers who
mutter as the
lighthouse sweeps the dark.
Primordial
night until Raven stole
daylight in a
box from the Chief of Heaven,
winged it here,
prying apart diurnal earth
& Spirit
World forever after joined again
by Raven rattle
in tribal chieftain's hand.
Sha-shok!
Couple/three
story totem poles
flank entrance
to his dwelling, great
bears one atop
another uphold images
of the
chief: the Chief is larger
than his human
form, the Chief is larger
than his human
form, the Chief is
larger than his
human form. All dreams
monarchical or
anarchical. A fish leaps
from water:
chaos or order, depending.
Sha-shok!
House
of dawn in black
bill, one in
distinction to other; sometime
thereafter walk
out of Ford dealership
car financed,
needing registration (flat fee,
VIN no.
verification, acceptable nocturnal
emissions,
extra charge new plates) &
liability
insurance ($ down, monthly
payments
adjusted re: age, single or
polyvalent,
tickets last three years
[nature of
offense(s)], vehicle nascence,
approximate
worthwhile, use [business or
pleasure?],
previous assurance, & subject
to change due
to points assessed against
licentiousness),
up to $50,000 personal/
medical,
$25,000 vehicular dismay, $50,000
toward other
operator, damage/or suit.
But that's
Life. Some are well-suited
for it. Walk home instead, orange sunset
spray over
hills, cut by blue clouds,
stenciled with
bats. Spires wired into
aether by some
architect's vision long ago.
Dusk crowds
downtown, rice swells
on the
stove. Red taillights, red dress
flash. Return home from a landslide
of jostled
emotions & requirements signed
half-blindly on
the dotted line, lines
solid or
breaking into other hexagram
futures. Dust sifts into clouds
piling
themselves on horizon behind
the
bridge. How to make the numbers
work. Simple or polyrhythmic. Dogma
indicates a
tone of voice has been figuring
our
mathematics. A thought's shadow
lay on his
face. Story-teller the key
figure,
critique of him rests
on what he
believes, his greatness
in
disinterest. Dog's voice as darkness
hems in his
yard. Milky Way listens
to itself
bark. Time to lace up
the corset,
pull on the satin thong,
outline of cock
& balls, trout throat
quiver, his
lips to her channel, mouth to
universe's
mouth, exchanging rain, burnished
conversation,
blue smoke curls from a fist.
We jiggle the
scotch glass for the perfect
trickle of ice
into fire. Furious horns
bray coolly, a constellatory
meal. Dime
for the
phone. Number dialed is number
reached. Desperate babble on one, casual
flirt on
another. Penelope home alone
unweaving. And it's Easter, buddy,
wash yer mug
& check yer pockets, how
you gettin
home? Nuthin in the coin return.
Next door St. Symeon
shimmies with the harlots.
Imam, of sorts,
who left the rules trailing
in dust, forged
a continual daylight
crawling among
donkey hooves & meat
vendors in the
marketplace, ill-tempered
cuss, divine
light of wretched humanity.
Otherwise our
hours doomed to expiation,
strung out on
the line––crucified laundry––
by housewife's
hands cursed of Eve.
All history's
peasants insects squashed
between pages
of a closed book, ink
blind to its
own incandescence. I
am a soldier
six hundred miles from
home. Tonight the few sticks gathered
for firewood
don't warm my bones.
My feet wrapped
in rags bleed & hurt.
Little to
eat. Six hundred miles
from wife's
arms, children's love.
Dragged from
the plow to march
in my Lord's
legions, I will die tomorrow
on a barren
plain, strange & meaning-
less to my
eye. Meanwhile, Prominent
Conservative
Columnist Has Homo-Erotic
Thoughts No One
Else Knows About!!!
It's all blunt
as a corpse. Another moon
rises mutating,
pupil leading to
no one's
feverish brain, series of inter-
faces ascribed
by perceiver. Ghost
of a
chance. Twist from grasp of
dubious
grasper. The secret terror lurking the
labyrinth in
the minotaur's eye is that
no one's
there. Connect the dots. Four
elements held
together by nothing, hence
five. Sweat on a leaf waving in heat.
Web strand
clung to saw-toothed tip,
catches light
particles fine & salient,
bridge across
space, investment toward
dinner. Tiny actor, arachnid at rainbow's
nexus,
eventually dissected by the
elemental pallete
knife that constructed
him. Salmon leap vaginal gaps. Humus
bakes like
fresh bread. Geese in broken
V across
October. Snowflakes filter
through barbed
wire. The sun's palatial
wealth rises on
another thin soup day.
Some eat their
brethren, gums lined
with karmic
tooth decay. Hearts piled
in desk drawer
locked deep in the bureaucracy.
The mother
hunched on the sidewalk waits
years for her
son to emerge. Dividing lines
incised &
mined. Individual
differences
& identity worshipped as
the sole
icons. We will lift that
threadbare
dollar to our lips––limp
nourishment––among
endless yatter scratching
numbers from
the air. The dust our
daily
bread. Good sweet Christ––a
cultural
road-kill. Sacrifice at crossing
of four compass
points, pyramid roof,
or simply run
down by a highway
paved by empire
intent on its
imagined
vanishing point. Ospreys migrate
to the same
riverbank cottonwood each
year, fish on
arrival. Have etched
continental
groove in air, mapped
by etheric sea
soundings. Ridges & valleys,
canyonlands of
a fingerprint; topography
in touch seeks
an unknown smoothness,
a silk wind, a
material suffused with light.
Brocade scrolls
in & out an abyss,
the wound in
the palindrome. Car door slams.
Lawn sprinklers
hiss to work. The day
expands into
activity, assignments, class
functions,
building or destruction projects;
retracts into
eight lane congestion rush hour
home. The manufacture of thought. But
what
manufacture's thought? Moon king
or
Apollonian
loom? Curtain breathes
in &
out. Door shuts. Bird phrase. Distant
highways. Tiny fly drowns in crescent
left by
glass. Juniper berry wine. Roar
of our
evenings, a jet over the roof. A
god
above our heads
as we move through satanic
worlds, trapped
in materiality. O Deo,
on our knees at
sunset beseeching intervention
of Your hand in
this diurnal misfortune,
this darkness
of forms which we unknowingly
entered
treading upon our ancestors' ill-will
& their
greed. O jealous god who stacked
our deck, who
whipped our shoulders
to the wheel,
who judged our obedience,
who holds the
heavenly comforts in a tight
fist, extending
with the other a list
of rules &
fine print, so the boy scouts
can suck up,
& the rest can go to hell.
Heads or
tails. Metathetic quandaries.
Erosion of
mouth into blue bird into
ironing board
into snake curling
around Shiva's
blue wrist. A stock
exchange. Hum of commerce. Excite-
ment, gain
& loss, full throttle. Chains
linking in DNA
prayer cycles, aspirational
murmurs
climbing into Actual Scenarios
From Real
Life! Moth swirl, &
dandelion seed,
unbendingly fragile,
like a fine
edge on steel catching sparks.
Each moment
coded with becoming, per-
haps pinned by
noon's hard plumb line,
or a camel
sloping down cobbles into
the river,
loping grey-blue to the
bottom. Mermens whisper caged power
& murky
gems. Hunters, their horns
& dogs,
woven into carpets. Heads
line the
walls. Well-groomed man-
nequins stare
from store windows
at disheveled
pan-handlers. In
some lands you
are not allowed
even to
beg. Circumstances prove
again &
again to be circumstantial,
though with
Probable Cause. Found
'is 'ead, but don't see no body. Dredging
the waters for
disembodied curios,
composite
homunculi, faceless
knights, sibyls
offering withered
teats of
knowledge. Teonanacatl
grow there, a
fungus veined with sky.
Newspaper
stuffed with current psychic
ancestry, want
ads, presidential photos.
The ground
extends 360 degrees from shoes
in grass tuft
needle broke twig seed
fern weed cone
ant arabesque. No leaf lands
in the wrong
place. Squirrel hops
wires. Psychedelic sugar maples come
orange crimson
gold. She draws
her lips,
brows; shades in cheek-
bones. Threads her lobes with gems.
Artiste of
feminine fragrance, artiste
of satin loins,
of painted nails & soaps
& floral
lace & melody. The sleek magic
of her colt's
legs as she runs to the door,
salmon powder
blue yellow silk dresses
flung in
charmed disorder on the bed.
She is the
mirror constructing herself,
lines etched on
empty map, the hand
is its message,
the firm tight curv-
ature the
surprise of space, generating
itself, bright
fountain softening delighting
the air. Stars barb fading light.
Autumn drinks
down its cup of hemlock,
fruit bed mushed
into frozen soil. In
the sublunary
sphere, eviction notice
is nailed to
the face. God-given
graces
corrupted from within by sickness,
while two
mosquitoes, driven by desire,
land on
wrist. In the Borgesian
library, the
universe bounded, circle-
walled, its
infinitude known through
symbol, script
& rune & pictograph,
like insects
flattened between pages, like
a proboscis
penetrating a vein. I ex-
pect a full
report on my desk Monday
morning. Lone square lit in skyscraper,
coffee rings on
file. Something resembling
fluorescent
sweat on brow, really beads
of thought, in
each a farmer behind
a plow dragging
through his stony plot,
between his
wife's thighs where a dozen
children spill
out. Twelve lines crawl
across a graph
from a unified dot.
Several
terminate between .25 & 5.0.
One concludes
at 13.5 years. The
rest 32 to
59.9. Another chart plotting
their
geographical coordinates shows
that none
advances beyond a radius
of 14.3
kilometers, if we take their birth
domicile as
centre & subsequent domiciles
as
progressive. Crows croak by.
The wind lifts,
bends the winter wheat,
pushes
structures of consciousness into
replication,
altering with passage the
shadows &
gold that flow down the family
blood-line. Brain's eye, cauldron
stomach, lungs
aflutter like sails.
Thus Ulysses
expended ten years upon
the wine-pissed
sea. Returned home
with his gift
for warm entrances.
Back on the
family blood throne:
thus the happy
ending to many a national
epic. In the 20th century they're written
by Samuel
Beckett. The ghost of the
page questions
its existence. Incinerates
itself into
ash, wed again to the elements.
A hand deposits
stars in the night,
& gathers
them up. So it seemed
to some guy in
a loincloth with a javelin.
Scientists tell
a different story. Myth
takes a scalpel
to myth. The Greeks
forgot their
gods before anyone else did.
Though just
about no one, no matter what
they believe,
finds emotion easily dealt
with. Ask that guy at the bar, he'll
deny
everything, deep in a highball
of speed &
technology. A modern future,
sanserif.
Bitter wind slices through
those
landscapes, concrete/glass,
always someone
trapped within &
without
them. Virtually reality, among
architectures
drawn from greed, arrogance.
Not everyone
scales the numbers. Elect
& Preterite,
however, take the same road
outta town. Das a Babylon, mon. Any
poor fuck could
wash up on its shore,
herd through
its gates. Its smokestacks
propose
Paradise, where houris scrub
our backs in tesselated
baths. How
might the
earnest disciple obtain this end?
First, by
controlling the five animal senses
(through
fasting, refraining from in-
toxicants,
& performance of asceticism)
he reaches the
second stage, region
of the
Angels. Here he prays until no
longer proud of
his supplications,
arriving at the
region of the Soul.
His duties:
love, bliss, searching,
&
insensibility. When the pilgrim
crosses the
barrier of the self
he enters the
realm where words fail.
Rosary breaks,
beads bounce on slate,
prayers
dispersed. It rains long
through the
evening. La ilaha illallah.
Time suffers
but timelessness does not.
It strikes the
ground, first step in
our dance, joy
that drums our feet,
leaps a flame
for the air, turns
on a dime. Energetic circulation
exults in
expression, calligraphy
slashed into
space. Fully fledged,
technic
mastered, nest abandoned.
The wine in
circumstance. The fully
articulated
tongue. Every muscle
poised to
perform, flinging itself
from a
cliff. Coltrane lifts the reed
to his
lips. Buson scribbles three
lines down the
page. Striving ceases,
mercy
effortless. In the copulation,
in the feet
pounding out the syllables,
sun embraces
moon, words synch-
ronize their
meaning, parry & thrust,
precision
without thinking, symbol
without self,
another drop pelts
the
window. Surf's white penumbra
in ceaseless
curves up the sand.
Flinging trees
in perpetual wind
down long
gardens winding through
the three
times, clouds of Monarchs,
orange bits of
desire, trail pollen be-
tween grids,
crowded tulips clear
as ringing
sound, space in a bell,
tongues unfurl
in the gestural ecstacy
of ordinary
life completing itself with
endings, world
united in transition, pop-
lar leaves
plucked & tossed onto
river,
microscopic populations
migrating horse
fly bellies, information
calculated in
compound eyes, equation
in search of
correct number, or fulfilling
its duty, or in
it for fun, or desperately
warding off
other notions safe in this scheme
until its
finale. Ya drawn in yumi, arm
trembles with
its dream of fulfill-
ment, target
pierced. No targets,
no archers,
vice versa. Mare's
tail whisks at
irritants in the pasture &
how did I get
here? What's confusing
is that Samsara
looks like Nirvana.
Vice
versa. Consider the Norse god who
spies the blond
comely maiden in
meadow, sweep
of gold blue eyes
iris wreathe
breasts freshly plump
&
untouched, as he descends from his
divine horse to
woo her into sub-
mission, only
to find out she's
the frost
giant's daughter a demonic
evil bitch who
sucks him into
a web of foul
shit––& who hasn't
fallen for
that? The secrets within
secrets etc.,
the between the lines.
The mark, the
rube steps from womb into
bumpkin vistas:
Hey buddy, gotta
pea under a shell, guess which one?
The dots erase
after their connection.
Rosy cheeks
become bitter old fart, no
smarter, maybe
less. Youthful idealism
buried under
failure & compromise &
how many hotels
you can stack on
Park
Place. Meanwhile the grass
is eternally
young, ruts worn through
it from A to
B. Like we might
get somewhere,
dot on a line,
memory chain
aft, fantasies fore.
Vice
versa. But when they pried
open St. Symeon's
coffin shortly
thereafter it
was empty. Conclude
what you like,
he was the kinda guy
who'd throw
nuts at folks praying
in church. We've torn away
the ignorance
that curtained the
ancient world,
reliant upon
intercession of
fictional gods
for their
unsecured happiness.
Now we walk
free (Wheel booted;
a court
summons; raised insurance
rates) of
superstition as the air
sickens &
the anonymous dead
are bulldozed
into common graves.
Human rhetoric
blows in old newspapers
down the
street. Gods & demons are
our cityscapes,
different masks
on the same
face. Between a civili-
zation's
monuments & its refuse stream
people &
their pack animals. Frames
in a
newsreel. Points on a compass.
Phantom
appearances transmigrate
the pure
radiant sphere of space;
dream bodies in
fluid exchange
without
substance, clothed in re-
lational
appearance, piling up
debts, paying
them off; dragonfly
wings flicker
transparent along
a rock, water
gushes around it, placid
in a cup, sings
from a kettle. It's
a decentralized
monologue. Translatory
beings in
linear lock-step, the A to B
to C of each
manifest object, paths
forking a la Borges's
garden. Could we
find our way
out? Deer, tentative,
graceful stick
legs, chases mirage,
closer it
approaches the further it
recedes. What's responsible? The sun,
its reflection
on the plain, the deer's
thirst? What transmigrates? Desire
seeks its
provender, its lover, its
opposite
number, its coefficient, its
covalence, its
trap door, succor,
succubus, its
branching decisions,
its inchoate
knowledge, its sunny day,
its
transitional object, its fixed abode,
its flock, its
harem, its puppet strings,
its heavenly
reward, fulfillment of its
prophecies, the
place of arrival. But
no one who
follows a bad road ever
arrives. On it anyway, damn us
if you want. Distant cities.
We stop
at a roadside
grocery. At rest in the aisles,
or roaming the
canned goods, lions––
who will move
from our way
at their own
convenience. When the wind blows,
the grass
bends. Dandelions break.
Forget it, Jackson, I've got other fish
to fry! sez one phone wire daw to another.
Taking off, the
horizon transmits
two dots. Perhaps nothing can
be shown by
analogy, every item in
the catalogue
distinct––lichen-splattered
rock, an
abandoned refrigerator––
on-going,
raising its head mid-stream
to proclaim its
thingness, its peculiar
atomic
construction, nothing analogous
to nothing,
while the analogizer finds
an atomic
weapon or the Lord's Prayer
or a home or a
masterpiece or the secret
of his
failure. The thought emerges
primordial into
its golden age,
no rules,
paradise renders
its
satisfactions, humans live
a thousand
years, the rivers run
with wine. Through silver & copper
governments
arise, kings establish
the people in
knowledge/craft/law.
The grain
requires toil. When
the iron bars
slam shut, a man crawls
through eighty
years & the skies flash
with disease,
the ignorant heeded,
the wise
ignored. The thought blackens,
its inessential
nature manifest, its
perpetuity
withering, the snake
spits out its
tail. Scream & whoop,
arcs surmounted
by greater arcs,
birdland voices
in a wet sweet sunset
squabble,
boundary & bicker, a cry
plummets again
& again into blue
abyss. Bone pit above which angels
pirouette their
clockworks, sighing
gardens, water
jeweled on dusty tongue.
A monument to
thievery this life,
stolen from
gods. The gods we were.
Taken but
unchanged in its flawless
refutations,
its branches of rain.
Footsteps
transmit across the ceiling.
An eye opens in
each phenomenological
particle
(vision a multi-directional
-type thing),
rain drops at the junctures
in infinite
webs. Stars' gyrations
in map of
palm. A million birds
house in those
palisades, the mind,
inquisitive or
dutiful, attempts to photo-
graph &
categorize them all. Liquescent
images in
flight. As is our knowledge
itself, eyes
moving across letters.
Or knowledge
without source:
moon & sun
dance & blow trumpets.
Smile a white
blossom rooted in sky,
a room
unfolding where we set
our plates,
walls composed of
juniper bole
& fresh evening star,
joists linked
by space. Virtues awaken,
effortless,
subtle as snow falling into snow.
What duality
reaches for, non-duality
is. A circle bisected. Zero is one is two.
Ring around
which hyenas pace. Within,
Uncle Ed's
skull, brains abubble. Mut-
ability is consciousness,
such as it is.
Gas explodes
from translucent skins.
Oppositional
thoughts propelled off
a cliff, meet
awkwardly in synaptic
flash. War is a twitch in our thigh
at the
negotiating table. Double-cross
in mythic
mirrors. Thought shall
join or be
sundered, sez Thought. We
wander its
halls in search of what
ain't us,
sniffing through god-rubble.
Each dendrite
aquiver with adrenal
potential. It's Fear. Part of our
philosophy. Panic in Zombie Theater.
Good/bad guy
crescendo duel ducks
among meat
locker flanks, dodging
the literalness
in each other's
thinking. Fly swatter snaps, gotcha!
I win. Have we taught the others
their
limitations, their finality?
Good.
Take a stroll. Cigarette
or two. Bonbons, white chocolate
mints, creme truffles,
coffee mocha
cheesecakes,
& lemon eclairs offered
with guileless
cheer by the sixteen-
year-old girl
behind the glass. It's
temptation,
see, patting girth. Palp-
able weakness
radiates from appreciative
spark. Don't tell my wife. Do what
I want (guilty
about it). Which
is one thought
in two shadings. How
exactly does
the Universe assimilate those
calories? One part refined white sugar,
one part
pancreatic dysfunction, one
part ambivalent
spirit. Somewhere under
asphalt,
fin-de-siecle disco industrial-
strength synth
hammer, way a life a few years.
All-important
Attitude constantly adjusted
to fend off
attacks from a shifty equilibrium.
Put one foot
after other up steps to street,
post-last call
trash skids curbside
like
unforgiving thoughts. Countless
bodies
in
inconceivably various forms led up to
this
moment. Each in its unique mode
obsessed with
acquisition/warfare
found in an
atom from the need to
see it
there. Consciousness an intaglio
of echo patternings. To find its head-
quarters a
muddle through titanic recessive
bureaucracy
& no final desk where
the buck
stops. Or to take arms
against a sea
of paper troubles &,
by opposing,
end them. I'm sorry,
sir, it's not possible until you've
filled out the appropriate forms. I
got an
opposable thumb, don't I? Sir,
we're not hiring for that position at
this time, but if you'd like to fill out
an application, we'll keep it on file.
But so anyhow,
it all leads up to
this moment
when you climb into
the White House
bed your first night
as
President. Lying there, charged
with
excitement, smelling the victory
bouquets &
unfamiliar drapes, do
you wonder for
a split panicked moment
who you are,
how you got here with
the trash
rolling past your ankles hunched
against
temperature in the junk-sick dawn?
Thus begins or
ends a time period
with someone's
name on it. Gradually
sudden
regicide, on the other side of
all the mortal
confetti, knocked off
our given
pedestal. We go down swinging––
desperate
damage control––impulsive
bribes––escalating
rhetoric––assassinated
character(s)––nervous
system insomniac
auto-pilot––mainline
adrenal toxins––
cruel
instinctual violence––no time
to check back––sloppy
glaring evidence
––tracks
half-brushed out––finger-
prints—documents––screeching
chasm
of reckoning––penetrated––cat
fangs
snap mouse
neck, blood jets into Kali's
mouth. If we had it to do over, we
probably
are. One side gnaws off the
other's
face––clock
halves. Diesel hisses by,
exhaust's dirty
gauze tugged
apart by
wind. Pinpoint headlights
rise &
disappear in ocean dark. Food
Gas Lodging
Next Exit. Truckers
Welcome. Red insignias yellow
bulbs grid
lights dashes & solid lines
white
reflectors repetitive info nos. update
rear view
analysis damp anonymous real
estate mileage
(someone's paper on file)
late night
radio blinker on lanes shifted
an inherent
belief in advance approaches &
recedes. Lives out there, under pooled
street lamps,
or around them. Consciousness
& what is
not. Blue cathode shiver
surrounded
in drifting
snows. Frontiers endlessly
psychological. Astronauts find MANI stones
heaped on the
moon. Signifiers of what
we don't see,
caught in periphery
by petty
obedience & somnambulist
rebellions––conceptual
exo-skeleton.
Do you read, Houston? Over. Analyzing
data,
Captain. Over. Houston,
I
[static] overwhelming urge to prostrate.
Directives? Over. Prostrate to what,
Captain? The
stones, Houston, the stones.
No, actually,
didn't happen that way: played
golf
instead. Things To Do In A Vacuum:
Read
magazines. Masturbate. Pick your nose.
Bridge. Freak out. Depression. Anomia.
Re-engender
generational conflicts between
designated
players. Extend control perimeter.
Subjugate
dissent. Water the turf in blood.
I hate your
motherfucking (choose one
of the following): A. Face. B.
Ideology.
C. Thought
Process. D. Skeptical Eyes. Venus
for whoring
(pleasure sneeze). World of
knowns
(/nouns). Keenly discriminated
variants in
officially mandated forms lead,
in ascendent
periods, to swift, formal
executions. Decadence brings functionaries
susceptible to
bribery & pleasure addictions
in multiple
categories. But in any period,
warriors are
scum until they know what to
fight for. Wasp buried in bee's back,
their husks
stuck to a tree. Put that
in your family
treasure album. Nurture
those dividing
lines, well-fornicated guilts
under scabrous
congealed ideologies,
the half of the
thought in shadow.
Difficult to
tell the difference between
feminists &
fundamentalists when
they use the
same tone of voice.
Gull feet left
in ice, but the gulls
flown
away. Objects over-spill
their
objectification, holes in time
where the eye
looking in is the eye
looking
out. No refuge in flesh
but nakedness,
the sun rises
on our
appetites, minor crucifixions,
five finger
discounts & miserable day-
dreams, all aroll
in the Queen Mother's
ocean, in the
spread legs of delight!
Vastness in her
nether bliss:
foundering
mariners tied to the mast.
Center point in
total compass of flame
water gale
ground melts the perceiver
into Her
consort's embrace, identification
with parts desolidified
into the whole
banana. Thelonious Monk hesitates
or majestically
refuses a fractional beat
to strike the
key. Meanwhile Plato
announces to
his breakfast table,
"Reason is
the highest good!" Socrates
shakes his
head, goes off in search of
young boys,
muttering. On square found-
ations we shall
raise the Republic,
bewildered
forever after as our windows
shatter &
drop into the street. A feminine
hand extends
from the carriage excitingly
callous-free,
indicative of aristocratic
rank. We reach to assist those gem-
encrusted
fingers, to assist her down,
assist
ourselves up from the painful
inconstancies
of our current situation,
mired always in
logics of skin shadings
& wealth,
credentials & know-how,
stretching for
Jehovah's finger
or his
Virgin's. How many edges
can we
accumulate & maintain,
beat the
bastards at their own game,
while the
Emperor grows bored in his garden.
Glass the
meeting of sand & fire, scissored
by wing
shadows, arborvitae brushing
against it in
the afternoon as ink
scratches out
its decrees. Thoughts at
labor,
intentions percolating, eventual
effects
un-guessed. Generals see
a chessboard,
grunts their intestines
on a
plate. Death or birth at the fricative
moment the
corridor narrows & who
we were can't
pass through. Wind
bends the
firmament. Light sings
through
stone. Appearance at all,
the true
sartorial splendor. Nobility
encompasses;
falsity clings to titles.
Moslems hammer
off the Buddha's face,
but nothing
upsets him. Numberless
twigs weave
from the sky into
a unified
trunk. Crows calling.
Bone splinter
ground. Hyena squabbles
kick up
dust. Serpent coiled
around roots
among old helmets,
rusting
weapons. What weapon
doesn't
rust? Ask Sun-Tzu, cutting
down enemies
before they arise, old
warrior whose
sword is Wisdom. Blade
that cuts
itself. Bridge out of
our
neighborhood is bridge into it.
We cross, a
migration of moments
& impulses,
obsessed with aspects,
or cohered into
wholeness before
it's decided
it's achieved something.
A liquor
inherent in appearance: eat
drink bathe in
it, it's us. Blood
of Christ. Information shines through
the senses onto
the mind's screen.
But the
screen's a bubble in a series,
theater in
motion catching angles
of light, a
snow fall, irremediable,
un-regretted,
flakes turning in a
blue world,
their complex silence.
Perhaps memory
only an attempt
at cogency,
manufacturing linkage
from
after-images to complete the
sparrow's
flight across a cloud.
An engine in
pieces on a dirty blanket
in the living
room. An undercurrent
of bitching
usually accompanies the need
to do
something. We are trapped
between start
& finish. Demi-god
or demi-monde,
or half-wit in a
halfway
house. Where does one end,
two begin? The pieces comprise
the
picture. Orion aimed at center
of outerspace,
Milky Way in raindrop
clung to
leaf. Plum blossoms drape
the landscape
like a devi's kimono.
The problem
with deconstruction is
it hasn't
deconstructed itself. Well,
leave that job
to posterity. But it's
Wednesday
night, not much happening
on Main St.,
just a white '73 Ford
sedan parked in
front of a vacant
storefront, a
sink on the back seat.
Nothing to do
being part of what we
do. Sink or swim. Run endlessly
flowing dappled
surfaces in elegant
stillness,
wavelets replacing them-
selves in newer
immediately gone
configurations
a stately rush under
the suspension
bridge, ripe with
fish, up river
detritus, worn
tires nestled
among grasses alive
in cold &
perpetual motion, the same
moon Li-Po saw
breaks up & re-
assembles
there. Mirror of a sun
we don't see on
our trundle into
the Land of the
Dead. Recall
those
faces? Each one what we failed
to destroy or
embrace. Though Eurydice
is not as we
remember her, smiling
from our
scrapbook. Shadows here
made as though
to drink us in, each
a millenial
contemplation in an
alcoholic
stupor. A warrior pays
with every cell
in his being to know
what form is
& is not, & passes
through the
keyhole again, slender
as air. It all goes back to Homer.
Actually, it
all goes back to nothing.
History a
painting in ruins. It moves
us as much by
what it isn't as by
what it
is. Or what it is isn't. Foghorn
trails,
ephemeral, the equal of fog.
Overlapping
gull squeaks. Entwined
clarinets. Unified light on water.
Within the
inside is the out. Wild-
eyed,
consuming. Foot pressed in
habit's
face. Drunk all the time
on blood of our
fucked up notions.
Hear it sing,
mantra inherent in sound;
to it, night
& day taste the same.
Could we then
forgive this ineptitude
(ourselves)? Coughing cities & lamentation,
furious labor
upon frivolous addictions. Christ
died in this
culture but never rose. Three
car pile-up
under the overpass. Police
directed
traffic until ambulance & tows
arrived. Left-wing political activist
nurses an
ulcer; no one listens
to his teeth
grind. Letters lift from the text,
fly off like
insects. The barrage
a cyclone that
punches in, axis a silent
gyration,
dancer's graceful foot leaned
into the floor
like a mother hugging
her child. Light emerges through cracks
between paving
stones, bridge of
butterflies
against the sun. Or arbors
a succession of
fountains, a sequence
of gateways
into progressive nakedness,
skin, entrails,
bone & marrow removed
at the door, to
sit on the throne within
the most secret
court, to be the eye
without
hierarchy, monarch of wild grasses
& flowing
space, cow dung & lightning.
It churns
around a bone axle, gold
wheel & its
bewildered inhabitants.
A rain of
affection drizzles into desolate
fields. It would never really come
if we had to
make it up. Myths
for remembering
who we are, more
persistent even
than a crushed
cigarette &
half a glazed donut
on a
plate. Try as we might,
study our
Mencius & walk a
straight line,
what is is anyway,
total &
undivided, a bird cry
sharpening a
razor. Odin hung
upside down
from a tree & suffered
privations to
fish up an alphabet
to put it all
down with. Theory
or prophecy,
the day passes in
its million
moments, old lady's
wheelchair at
the window, husband
long dead,
teeth in a glass, friends
citations in
the funeral notices,
& the
afternoon sun sliding among
the balsams
like the day before
she was born.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Notes for “A Complete If Dicey
Tour”
"Aleph"––See "The Aleph," a story by Jorge Luis
Borges.
"Primordial night until Raven stole, etc."––drawn from Denver
Art Museum brochure on Northwest Coast Native American raven rattle, pub. 1991.
"All dreams/ monarchical or anarchical"––From Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone,
Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (Autonomedia, 1991). "In sleep we dream of only two
forms of government––anarchy & monarchy. Primordial root consciousness understands no politics &
never plays fair. A democratic
dream? a socialist dream?
Impossible."
"solid or breaking into other hexagram/futures"––I Ching hexagrams, of course.
"St. Symeon shimmies with the harlots all night./ Imam, of sorts"––St.
Symeon, sixth century Christian saint, noted for his outlandish behaviour, consortion
with whores, & empty casket.
"Imam" here, from the Moslem tradition, used in the sense of
"leader of the faithful."
"I/ am a soldier, etc."––See the Chinese Books of Songs.
"Moon king or/ Apollonian loom?"––Sun-faced buddha, moon-faced buddha.
"our ancestors' ill-will/ & their greed"––Eve & Adam,
to name two.
"snake curling/ around Shiva's blue wrist"––Snakes in Hindu
yoga traditionally symbolize kundalini,
or basic spiritual life-force.
"Dredging/ the waters"––Water is the psychic element in western
astrology.
"teonanacatl"––Nahuatl word: teotl means "god," nanacatl
means "mushroom," or psychedelic mushrooms.
"Elect/ & Preterite"––See Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Terminology originates with New England Puritans. Refers to the "Elect" or
Chosen who are rewarded with Heaven,
"Preterite" being, more or less, everybody else. In Pynchon's world, the Haves &
Have Nots.
"How/ might the earnest disciple obtain this end? etc."––Four
stages drawn from "Letter from a Sufi Teacher" by Shaikh Sharfuddin Maneri,
Sufi Review, Pir Publications, 1992.
"La ilaha illallah"––Sufi mantra meaning "There is no God
but God."
Buson––Yosa Buson
(1716-1783), great Japanese haiku poet.
"the three times"––Past, present, future.
"Ya drawn in the yumi"––"Ya" is Japanese for arrow, "Yumi" Japanese for bow.
"No targets,/ no archers"––"If we don't have targets,
archers won't shoot at them.
That's Buddhist logic."––(paraphrase) Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche,
lecture on "How to Create Enlightened Society," Boulder, CO, 1980.
"bumpkin vistas"––Phrase originates with Shimano Eido Roshi,
contemporary Zen master.
"the pure radiant sphere of space"––"Purity" in
Buddhist terminology means "non-dual."
"no one who takes a bad road ever/ arrives"––Quoted from Thomas
Merton, The Geography of Lograire,
who in turn took it from the Chilam Balam,
a Mayan text.
"When the wind blows,/ the grass bends"––Paraphrase from The Analects of Confucias.
"Perhaps nothing can/ be shown
by analogy"––Milarepa (1040-1123), famous Tibetan poet-saint, sings in
one of his realization songs or dohas,
"The truth cannot be shown by analogy."
"The thought emerges...the wise ignore"––Relates to the four
ages of the world as envisioned by Indian philosophy, each age connected to dots
on a die.
"moon & sun dance & blow trumpets"––Lines from a song
by Indian meditation master & scholar Naropa to Marpa the Translator,
Tibetan meditation master & guru to Milarepa.
"junk-sick dawn"––Tip o the hat to William Burroughs.
"surrounded/ in drifting snows"––"Tibetans have as many
words for space as Eskimos do for snow." Ives Waldo in his introduction to
The Precious Treasury of the Dharmadhatu by
Longchen Rabjam.
"MANI stones/ heaped"––In Tibet, the mantra of Avalokiteshvara,
bodhisattva of compassion, would be carved or painted on stones which were then
piled into cairns along roadways & paths.
"Queen Mother's ocean, etc."––Primordial space.
"grunts"––Army slang for foot soldiers.
"Moslems hammer off the Buddha's face"––The Moslem invasion of
the 10th century A.D. wiped out Buddhism in India. I recall learning in class that there were so many Buddhist
art works & statues to destroy, the soldiers would only hammer away a nose
or face to save time. Randy Roark
commented on this to me: "Cutting off the nose of a statue was common in
Egypt as early as 2500 BCE because it was believed that if you cut off the nose
of a statue it somehow lost power."
Sun-Tzu––Chinese
warrior-philosopher who lived at least two thousand years ago. See his wonderful, pithy The Art of War (translated by Thomas
Cleary, Shambhala Pub., 1988).
"To win without fighting is best."
"the same/ moon Li-Po saw"––According to legend, the ancient
Chinese poet Li-Po drowned when he drunkenly sought to embrace the moon in a
river.
"Eurydice/ is not as we remember her"––See Ranier Maria Rilke's
rendering of the myth, "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes."
[Used
by permission of the author. Originally published in NHS 2013, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/_special_edition_nhs_2013/.]