If I Let You Go, You Slip Into the Fog,...*

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503

remembering forgotten friends
surely you have changed the nature of the problem
the melancholy square becomes a circle
while we twirl presuming change
our fatigued eyes starved for the sublime
our amputated thumbs
twitching, having no inkling
of the accidents of memory
we devote ourselves to descriptions
of various ordeals
and the particulars of religion.
we soon become ridiculous in our
dislike of the thing.

504

the uncertainty of shadows
overcomes us
our nightbirds fly into tomorrow, leaving
us to find our appropriate suns
we consult the book of combinations
but see no example
we wander, dazed, through love
but too soon it all falls apart, too,
leaving us to face
the prospect of another year.

*Kate Bush

Sacred Desert

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501

the monsters of parallax
are never clearly understood
though they walk about in costume
twitching in finery
they come to rest on inadvertent teeth
they reveal tomorrow with
bogus attention, they hear brains
calling from alleys and believe them
to be a hoax
they hope for numbers
to hide the effect of
all those misplaced syllables
they devise fingers from lilies
and make tribal hats
which they will never wear.
their eyes hear
mournful music
which warns them:
beware!

502

your skull dislikes your throat
so you think about taking a gun to it.
your ass is fat from bread and oxygen
the layer of suggestion
leaves nothing to be wallowed in
Egypt bumps in the night
our rest is undisturbed

Sample Illusions

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500

little kitty
enters all blue again and flows
across the room.
beneath the chandelier
she flashes a roll
in overcoat and projects and cooked heels
she adjusts her new flesh slowly
twisting a twilight cigarette
I'm not looking,
she's all eyes, smiling at me
and my thumbs turn to fluid
twirling her shame
she stands behind and
raises her middle finger
and gives a head a name.


*500th Ulysses poem

What Is Is

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498

I forget myself and as
a consequence of slipping
I begin again and I am
confirmed in my suspicion of beatitude
and I am longing for air so
I name the stars so I
mention my guilt
so you err for ruination
entering, as you do, with
noisy dogs
friendly bishops
mother's plumber
seeking the word in her depths
and finding the light in the end
world without end.
Amen.

499
beauty is at hand!
we glow in our toupeed truth
and dream of Shiva
we know of autumn zodiac
we know of skeleton
seawind blown through
of twelve hands
smiling hats
and shaven chin encrusted
with dark stormbirds
we struggle for the waning, wailing light
Step on the gas!
let's get there before twilight!

Next Year In Jerusalem

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496

elijah is dancing, leaking
tepidness
about to spring as
we watch swollen rockets
leap away and secretly
proclaim
ownership of the stars
Now a twoheaded light bursts
through the fog
perspiring, choking, draped in laughter
and prepares to form
the end of the world

497

as if we join in
the big certainty
all run to the jesus vibration
you certainly think
sure joy
you call
us to belief in
black numbers
we phone the sun to say
whores are us
you drown in certain life
you think of god and pie
get me?
getme?
got me.

Next year in Jerusalem

How To Disappoint People

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494

the ultimate god
knows with stupidity that
noise soon follows reality
what we learn in laughter we
forget upon return,
it is lost in the sun.
the holy summer
traverses the eclipse
what was once possible now is finished,
our commercials have become acts
during which we wait to be separated
from our blaring selves

495

the serpent explodes
upon the arrival of the
barefoot antichrist
his head tumbling on life's waters
his jaws outstretched
he tumbles with pilgrims in the darkness
he noses his notes,
his papers.
lipless, he finds his image
in unjust editions
and with laughter he recedes
leaving only the eye
to tell us the time.

The Boundary of History

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492

O, limelight you ail
coughing whores and imbeciles
hands in chains waving
wands of lost
navies, glowing above mildewed pianos
hiccup whispers,
"tonight's the night,
tonight's the niiiight."
enter the heart
and turns with
feeble hair hanging
beneath himself
he beats a sleepy time,
slowly, slowly
while the sailor finger
sprawls once more
spread-eagle on the mirror
shores of light.

493

extreme eyes
laughing matters
who ties snakes together
to make sentences of lost names
the young pass by,
"these knots are knots of error"
they seem to say

Wesensschau

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490

The tongue buckles under
under monster music
can it be that
we can see into
our own true heart?
laughing at the symmetry
of love,
we slip into its blaze and
count all the jealous things
we shouldn't have told you.

491

your frown is a fox
you bend your light and
light becomes painting
becomes running
becomes music
where you quickly draw all the sounds
in the brute room
before becoming drugged
like all the rest:
a tapestry of flies and mice
furiously examining
each other's manners

S=k log W

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488

The citizens, blissfully
unaware of light,
praise gunpowder
keep to jesus and allelluia
become shrunken
and set to flame
the chorus a merciful plague
wandering in sin
candles of darkness
forgive us this unhappy land.


489

the best girl
is insincere she
leaves her necessary
sorrow for a dream
supposes the clay to be the future
where love plays the evil eye of chance
and time is read wrong
we breathe patriotism, that mother
of insanity
are ruined with the rest of
this black race.

Start the Line But Never Finish

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486

in creeps the devil
with the voice of the messiah
dragging a dead hand behind him
he evicts your ears
and assumes for himself
the seat you stole
from orphans
join your eyes
with written walls now
the shaking begins
beneath the prison bridge

487

If you see him
in the land of Ham
approach cheerfully
and, hand on shoulder, together,
throw stones at the
bush on fire
and with ownerless spirit
wag your ears
at night corpses
appear with spirits
those bearded travelers
and whisper softly to the shepherd
"your sins are gone."

Entelechy

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484

We are there, in this handsome country
Spartans in necklaces
children of war
chairmen of language
Priests of Winter.
I, I, I in hairshirt, posthumous,
wandering the earth like some fucking bum
appealing for clemency
for American compassion
finding none in society
I brace for some coming of expensive cold
my organs sing
and tightly clutch my name

485

Hanging by a foot
a stone moustache
a column of suffering begets
an eclipse
a paper messiah comes from
different directions
blows into town
with a curiass in its suitcase,
the sun
and a black eye.

In the Background, What Was Created Is Now Undone

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482

Weeping we leapt from pillar of infantile midsummer
into mechanical haste and hatred
vats of oil rend us down
to a thing of no particular commercial value
the apocalypse is here
and catches up to us before suicide
at last! something to live for!
madness employs us,
our days spent drowning in nature
our misfortune a breath of fresh air
through which we descend,
comically,
having thrown ourselves from the various windows.
we and our fellow, Caliban,
a disgrace to hell.


483

Virginal viper
you are guiltless, your nature is sufficient
the traces of your testimony
demented, escaped from
simple moral consequence
and you are of little consequence
with complex teeth you
help the sinner gain asylum
though your grade is wrongful slander
you are preserved in the suggestion of snow,
I remember, now, that
you must first have memory
for memory to be lost.