Merry Fortune

Communitas

The birds are stars
The chick a body
A star there
plays the window of a lean limo,
crooning it’s raining

From out is born
A way gone and never

Inside out threads love you there
and here while songs radiate us
there to where there’s nothing to capture

As I become a hobo form of expression
Something comes with a need to corset a hoodlum
and distract a wolf from crying

To set it free in the forest,
a pine needle a daughter

Its cries radiate there to where there’s nothing to capture

Deep Red M30 Guild

I am a Seagull but last night dreamt I was an enchilada
You’d think there’d be glamour in this but I have to admit it was a little sad

I am no liar. I am a rose, an honest woman. An honest woman who
has dreams of being an enchilada but I lied and one dream
does not an enchilada make

I lied for the sake of sparing you. The dream was dark, very dark
My body was gone and there was nothing. My dream is your big fear
I am no longer afraid and I’m not a liar when I say I fear it doesn’t last

I know nothing but the belief in one state or another causes lots of problems

It’s all so much plastic on the furniture. I no longer wish to erupt. If moving

through this world ever again I want to know when to stop as when to move
takes care of itself. I want to know if this is true but honestly who but a liar
must qualify. Deep scheiss, I am in deep scheiss- a rose in deep scheiss

As a rose or a liar or a cynic I have a penchant for genuine space,
silence as good as any birds,
hand or foot to south of the mouths open wide exchanging demons
And giant and caustic like a porcupine to something that’s not

I am a Seagull, a Guild, a Takamine, a Washburn, a Cockburn like a Montague
I roam reeking of promises and salad my shoes are of no use at times my
body nothing more or less than inevitable
Looking for freedom I know it’s no simple question of asking where it is

A Gruhn, a Gretsch, Danelectro, Martin, Dean, Frank
a Stella Parlor, a deep red M30 Guild

For Soldiers and Horses

There is a sound somewhere made by a horse everyone likes. It pulls itself from a bag of uncomplicated words like ranch or corral, knows to the pit of its hooves. When contained I am always stolen; when saddled I must have been measured. Somewhere I was eaten and in a poem I am in a poem

On a morning for a horse who became a poem. This poem is mud and loves nothing. Impacted on the roots of trees, the soles of shoes, forming the embankment, residing on benches where the folk of horses should be. Deep in the park while in a sudden downpour. Running for cover hurrying through the land of everyone before, you, history collected on a pair of muddy soles. In material consistency can be found the wisdom of all occurrence

Mud is everywhere. On your cheapest pants, your best gown, your child’s faces, your mother’s spoon, your father’s trousers, our excellent worldly deed and deepest avoidance. Transported on treads and hooves splashed like a free Pollock onto the highway railing. Common as fuzz but needed as worms. How far has your automobile or horse taken you? There in the flinging hours

Stolen and rearing in the lightning the horse pulls itself up from a muddy slide down from the race. Fearing the barn it takes to the field. In the field it fears being broken but once lame has no idea. Do elements of kindness determine a lame horse’s death? A pine tree loves a horse and knows no hours but’s got plenty of aromatic needles. A Darwinian substance poses a threat; it used to be a human

While knowing no such thing as metaphors the thing itself metaphorical in a way as only the thing itself could be. In some Navajo circles a butterfly brings the sacred flame to the hooves of the horse. In certain medical circles the stomach is referred to as the second brain due to a large number of neurological transmitters. The caterpillar relegated to a lesser historical pertinence and perceived as nothing but a stomach is reevaluated and up-lifted by these findings. The caterpillar pending deification is now known to be an excellent communicator and does so through complex vibrations. It may be deciding on the location for the next convention in Kyoto but I tend to doubt it

The Spiritual Sense

I am a horse driven carriage without a horse maybe I am just the reins snapping and protaginating at nothing, cruising the lake in a spooky dress, the plastic ivy of the topiaries of Tavern on the Green including Kong, now all but pending, a tourist season, or the Sheep Meadow, where Kim Simmonds said he played the window from a limo. Or the blue-grey egret walking the latitude of the Boathouse both for the poor and rich including the very good and reasonably priced chili and fireplace and stupendous view of the lake, the swan and also the duck, and sometimes the rowboats and frequently appearing Gondola, the sometimes perturbed hostesses not far from the Bramble and tunnels, the quietest spot in the park south of where a guy spit and a dog peed and one half of a pair of lovers was reticent and eventually fussy and succumbed in the little house off the lake, a kid wearing his shoe laces around his ears and his shoes on his hands being cruel to his small dog while the grandfather stares past the kid out into the carousel and its rickety music, or the nervous line of the Summer Stage, the stunned blue Porta-Potties, or maybe just the plain old volition of all that makes a thing move and will never be tired or average

I have calmed and fed swans losing their barely grey cygnets in secret. I swear there was an appearance of hills for only one night it happened by the sign announcing the town after the Stop & Shop but before the library and boat store. When the egrets flew to Babylon I wanted to go but had to admit I wasn’t even that good of a dreamer. The traffic under them seemed less of a phenomenon than the very commonplace invention of the sum of its parts. One night music came from a small house out of the body of a chick wailing. I turned while the length of me walked kind of straight. At the same time geese appeared on the freeway-side of the fence. They were pretty mad about it or at least a little miffed you could tell by the way they looked at you sideways daring you to pass a little too closely. And the soap spray used to kill weeds clouded their thoughts but they made it back to the other water-side of the fence which is the dirty part of the water where they seem to like it anyway. They go to the clean part of the water too but something holds them there by the freeway, rusted carts and stand-up fan. One of the cygnets died and the swans swam in a different way I couldn’t help but see. The boats maybe have not been selling but the docks are out catching the sun, rain, changes, and people still fascinated by small voyages into the sound of Long Island. A warm focused breeze can keep anyone quiet for a moment

Mogador

It always ends when someone holds a picture of old-world minstrels and contemplates figures. Comes an offering of a little kiss, John Zorn’s sax and the belly dancer whose spirit guards the tangines. Movies and observations are made and tours are conducted to make sure everyone knows which building is on the cover of Physical Graffiti and a woman has named her small vintage clothing store after the genuine vinyl recording. Unless comparably loaded or spaced-out of reach appear scores of kids you can’t ignore with certain interests up for pummeling language into perfectly good air relegating the rest. Must have climbed out of some sick Hookah. If you check their pockets you’ll gather loose change and novas, sushi, sashimi, maki, celebrities and lox, limos and priest jokes. Digging secularly deeper you will find Wimbledon or similar stadiums, the Times NYC, a pair of socks, directions for a seaside location, Jersey and Scarsdale, Associated Unions, NYU’s, an Emeril Green episode and a journal containing etchings of the Dow that you might not want to be lending any more of a figurative interpretation to than is at all necessary. They carry cells and move through bars collecting girls and boys and scores and cards and more cards than that and cars, transportation to fumble around in while reinventing the wheel or at least the hubcap of havoc wrecking. They dress nice and many are polite particularly in the moments before alcohol. After there is a firm sequence of relax, over-relax, ignite, verbiate, explode and melt, spill or liquefy depending. Usually they eventually go home and you know them by the excessive and crashing of garbage trucks somewhere around dawn and their not so empty spaces

Not sure where to go or about wanting to leave, spoons are all we need. Through hordes of the fresh, early evening falls away, becomes later evening and further and fluent conversation over time reveals we are more than observations and judgment and the chairs we have melded to for the night. It rains slow and quiet and the shine on the sidewalk brought on by many sources of light can do no more than reflect the world as it is. Momentarily an agreement is made to say these surroundings are something say a spell necessary as a lesson in history and an agreement to laugh. By the end of this night and this meal we really know how to pour tea from a modernly semi-ancient container without harming ourselves. The secret is to place the plastic spirals on the lip of the cup and tilt with caution. What’s to be done, we have faces, it’s seventy-two degrees, there is a moon and we wear shoes

Poetry