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