Oh, You Silly Angels

Ithaca 656

From the lagoon I can see
the millwheel of the sky and
the harnessed clouds breathing

All this violence this hydrogen dew and
density
it fouls the watercourse and bursts
globe

Would you wash your hands and
lose this healing power?
The metal ships becalmed among icebergs
left short of wreaking ruin upon the flowers

your simplicity vanishes, a fading photo in
the parting of this water.

Ithaca 657

the madman and his salt revolver
stumbles in quest of what seemed like a good idea
at the time

Fanned by the flames
of October waters the minerals
and coals and fossils form
the anatomy of boredom
Your fresh eye and language
define a certain absence

can abundance ever be named?

Ithaca 658

The advantage of night
is the relief from the constancy of noise
that grief makes when it is fresh and cold

It is the absence of the question
(does Bertrand shave all and only those
citizens who do not shave themselves?)

the hand that lights the damnation candle
will send the world into the remote places

(does Bertrand shave himself?)

Hey, Baby, What's Good?*

Ithaca 653

Do I rise?
am I finally uninjured by all this open space?
are the fiery doorways of experience
finally extinguished and do
the flames of the burning sun
warm my face?

Will it hover, transparent and obeying
attempt at ignition?

Will we regain our senses
and gain access to the window of cognition?

or will our fortune remain lost along the hallway,
the space of lapsed acceptance?

Ithaca 654

the physics of dying isn't hard to know
it is a theatre of hydrogen
trying to turn to coal
whence it becomes fuel for the fire
and enters the gaze of old ladies
left rapt and watching
For jesus on feet of pegs
climbing down to this enameled kitchen
where cooking dinner is a religion

Ithaca 655

Water flow the dry vastness
the calm quiesence the
sill of devastation the globe the basin

the convict the meter your present disaster the
supply of systems the possibility of slaughter it
all withstands the ration of instruction but who
wastes time on st ignatius that filthy reservoir of
sad frustration that uselessness of odd fascination

it all comes down to public humiliation

*Lou Reed

Ithaca

("It's the same with men as with horses and dogs, nothing wants to die,...")****

Ithaca

650

There he was, on the corner, training for christ
and here I am, the son of music
finding myself at home
in the lower day
an anachronism of magnetic north
an arc where matter inherited converts itself to spirit
where admission to the forest of the orthodoxy
crosses into the circus of celibates
this life, plastic, transatlantic,
this life, interrupted, diametric,
this life

this life

Ithaca 651

the art of collapsing
is a subject of destination
an electric influence based
in restriction
and procrastination
a development of converse accommodation
imperfect in motion with a past history
of occasional acquaintance
and degrees of circular navigation.

with velocity in hand
and imperfect experience
we arrive and in arriving,

choose this domain

Ithaca 652

Space is a question of pharmaceuticals
a prepared rest compressing existence
into a dwarf stratagem a
stone a point in the darkness a
destination of hope
forgotten
Everything we received is gone at
moment of our decision
we, the men of indifferent hats
hands in trousers
pocket-less, moving on irritated pavement
feet allowed to ascend in preparation
stealing the host and
falling into nonexistence

**** Tom Waits