Ulysses Sketchbook

As If It Were A Swarm of Bees

2011-12-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

Eumaeus 646

As if there was ever a dog

chained to a horse

as if there were bones

inquiring noises made famous

by particular Queens

who bound themselves in illusions

as if there were sorrow

in flying over the blue horizon

as if in this toy ship

adrift in the desert

reflected in the wisdom of the sky

as if there were evidence of dancing

tonight in holy peril

as if this horror were an instrument

of recall a dark artist

training creation for its

debut as if it were an alligator

as if it were an emergency

as if it were a swarm of bees

as if

Eumaeus 647

Mother's music sung in future tense

sang sung a murder come understood

but not distinct

in clothy purpose penny fashioned from old songs

highly passion wordy even more the sea sea

nodding read the near sky

the empty sky

the blessed, attended sky

where beautiful sonics command their notes

to be infallible

sky-sirens and

sea-sirens bargain

for translations that arrive from the deep blue beyond

in right minded ships

bearing for the edge of the world

Die Welt Ist Schon

Eumaeus 648

You have decided the rut of dignity

and taken a place in the yoke of the uncommon

your plan was for reason

but the cards all came up empty

how handy for it to be decided for you

you go to the show

upstairs in a house that

has no second floor

it was a matter of air, right?

it was a career containing little

foreseen in different literature

practiced procrastination

and forthcoming of foot and nose

opening life

for accidents of spacetime

it was speaking for the seasons

it was helped by an embrace

Eumaeus 649

So this is how the swineherd ends

the character dwindles sleeping

into his last oh wow oh wow oh wow

nasty pretexts proud

mired under the scythe the

feather the humble light no longer noticed.

We are practitioners of memory

and our practice is imperfect

intended as private joke the word

spin from heads of streetly gardeners,

who say goodnight to all the

ships and bridges

Goodnight, Eumaeus.

For Brad Bird

That Is No Country For Old Men*

2011-12-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Eumaeus 643

I pawned my eyes

to come to this favored opening

a wall so ill, so high with neither corner nor

darkness, where echo drowns in the dark sand

I lugged luck from harm across these bright waters

and made myself now elderly in this impatience

secondhand voices answer

from within a watering brain

it was a book of holes which described me

the former moments pass away

avoiding found wakefulness

and picked from ire

to keep all this intensity

from wanting your words.

Eumaeus 644

according to the floor, the

stones never fail

they outstay honesty and being.

their blood is on the night air -they get their

companions from certainty

and walk sinewless among

our mistakes

we will grasp the differences in failure

and look for the price of welcome

we will put down our arms and

disown winter

because the only thing left

is the end of all flesh

and the debt due.

Eumaeus 645

Madam Time withholding

character in a hat

death in mind and voices through doors

amateur music making all this desire

seem sacred

an opinion of worship

surely god is knowledge

ranting, dreaming, virtuous.

All these moody peasants

studying gems

for clues to perfection

air made of stone

its purpose eviction

these tenants of privilege.

*W.B. Yeats- "Sailing To Byzantium."

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

2011-12-14T06:12:00.001-08:00

Eumaeus 640

Heart, will you still be possible

when yesterday is suddenly missed?

will you always astound somehow, speak

and falling like some profligate star

like years of duty, so wedded to a piece of affection?

Heart, so elder and such the

travelling eye leading you fondly through

the weeks and years you

speak of trains in the night

of age and life

and see the best lies

in all your neglected arguments

Eumaeus 641

The suffering of common animals

is often misunderstood

the dog remembers the spoil as well

as the mistake

he has not years but only this neglected moment

only conclusion and causes

his faith is often sorely strained

and cruelty is an incurable event

approaching a mistake

he risks conclusion in order

to be cured of reason

his idea of fate

is an idea of water,

it will not hold him from departure.

Eumaeus 642

eventually, God became a cynic

its pessimism beckoned

accompanied by all those beautiful

chambers of fate

it was left shaking in the vicinity of home

standing near a shanty in Blarney

with a revolver in its overcoat

feeling the pleasure of it in its hands

thinking a plan of blood

sailing on a sea of grass

failed calculations in its frozen marrow

becalmed in these silent years

The Well Is Full of Pennies*

2011-11-27T08:50:00.001-08:00

Eumaeus 635

A ladder against my night window

a peculiar gospel of forgetting

a dreaming stairwell in an electricbedroom

the simple fashion of assassination

moves me to claim safety in the storms ofbliss

and carve fame from doubtful fire

and loveless smiles

to witness the wild and windblown shore

to hear the eternal itchy sirens

to finally fall victim to theirexpectation

and gain admittance to the waves no more.

636

Diego's king

that man of Spain

surprised by teeth

made by decency

wouldn't be so passionate

had he answered his own reflection

where he bears the glowing of abandon

of pianos and executions

and rumors of vengeance without dreaming

his Velazquez daughters

rather muddled in his pockets

watched over by that frumpy idiot

the tiny lady eyeless,

victim of gravity.

*Tom Waits- The Fall Of Troy

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet*

2011-11-22T07:13:00.001-08:00

Eumaeus 632

A little bitching and the plague is upon us

we fools we beat the length of our absence with a jaw

and pull a coup from the mouths of our poor

these nests of nettles and copper

they settle us as lent lords even though we

often place our feet between our teeth

but, nevermind, thebodies reasons will cleverly manage

to deliver us to joy

633

who but a friend may take shelter

in rooms of the dead?

who buys our memories

and resells them at a profit?

who but man with eventual aliases

will be hurt in the market of oblivion?

who will lead us out of redemption?

634

O common bitch

you fucked up and left a bone

had you come back you'd 've

found at least one

in matters of faintest laughter

we are worse for our suspicions

we are commonplace drifting criminals

without suspicion

and lie to each other affectionately

on a boat named no direction.

* Gavin Bryars

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Nous Sommes

2011-10-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Eumaeus 629

We were the fumes of everyday life

our anger changed the proportion of laughter

you felt but you were entitled to affirmation

you were surprised by the

bitter brilliance of the air

you misapprehended your own philosophy

you spoke with your eyes

and none too soon you

failed to keep your promise

Eumaeus 630

underclothes in the yard

Antonio fiddles in the keep

with brain and acquaintance having

gone terribly wrong

it is the nature of our savagery

the original way we practice sin

forced to name our fault

we call it fury

Eumaeus 631

our lovemaking distant, now

like the night, gone in

this eternal twilight

it was a rebus with

typewritten names for all the lives lost

we puzzled out itsmeaning

while tossed on a vessel

in a thrown away sea

off to a start

our illness had a name: satisfaction

again, again swindled in demise

preceding embarkation

our lives submerged

our eyes lost in the galaxies.

Memoria Visum

2011-09-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

Eumaeus 626

Eyeless navigator

spawning flightless dreaming

refusing love

performing the trick of life

lucky, those fatal

lies

inflict a burden of mortality

welcoming some savior

in many different skins

striking out in confidence

takes its shadow for fact

reminding of the shape of rumor

served as transparent history

Eumaeus 627

Trouble is a glance an

offender intolerant of form

it takes the shape of the world

boastful but often right

as it delivers the wrath of war

it speaks in questions

laying down, disguised as second comings

unable to stop itself,

it spreads the rumor of flight.

Eumaeus 628

Priests of poverty

measure the progress of the day

into indulgence they watch

small birds

and wonder if they suffer.

Jealous of heaven, they

are unaware of its emptiness

They surprise themselves

with the sound of their own voices

they thought their eyes were glands of honor

they could not swim in untasteable waters

they once had homes in the arms of their mothers

but forsaking them,

went sailing instead.

Second Person Plural

2011-09-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

Eumaeus 623

so you bring your foreign committees

your launched disturbed sentries

you leave with your fortune intact

but humanity left behind

over, over this brief space

when we describe the invisible

the tolerable wrecks that

easily tether us

rather out of close improvement

and all this evidence of noise

we are watchers we

composing knowers of fate

and we find our footholds

in sleep.

Eumaeus 624

a lord comes in forms of agreement

disguised in brass and toy hat

chanting a song of increase a

surplus of watery success

but we do not regain

all the sunken countries

the crescendo of air

instead the steam of night

pays down

and we find ourselves falling

through the market of history.

Eumaeus 625

The years depend on a bit of doing

they extend so privately gem-like

and advise tidings and signs

of simple circum-navigation

the tarpaulins that cover our lost sisters

are wishes for land. There are also

jumpers who have a chance to do it all over,

then jump again, anyway

would they try to land

in the place of their birth?

we are lost in the explanation of all these fools.

An Old Man Is But A Paltry Thing*

2011-09-04T07:57:00.001-07:00

Euameus 620

herding the coincidence

with these giants, killing time

knee-deep in bullshit artists

hacks and cramped con-men

what was that thing that

reminded us of mariners? Oh

yeah, it was in our hands

the thing that lied while it

gave names to the gospels of melodrama

in a quiet mind you may

describe yourself as a straightened

resident of imagination

a bowl-legged poet in love with spelling

an inventor of crimes meant to pass as probabilities

Eumaeus 621

In the eye of night

we fall through the ice

it is the shape of our want

the splendid blood and

the number of our days

we pass under the sun

forgetting to mention it

even in the museum of the unmistakable touch

we confuse phantoms for fish

and a fish for a shoe

we are washed in the waves

of the beautiful shore where

we harvest triangles for

the listeners of reason

(For Gerry Dubuque)

Eumaeus 622

heavily slowly piously passing

working the wrecks of

the splashers of viruses

and makers of rain

marking the sailor's last visits

on the courses of the temporary

this morning is cured by

composing committees and

and cleansing our limbs of

all that's amazing

we wait at the bay

as it easily lies to the water

watchers of horses, we

sing of our time in

this brief space of day

*"...An old man is but a paltry thing, a
tattered coat on a stick,...."

W.B. Yeats - Sailing To Byzantium

And He Filled His Mouth With Pebbles,....

2011-08-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Eumaeus 617

The king remarked to the wind,

"what good is the boatman to the gatekeeper?"

in this elder country

no trade is without its nautical concern

from the start we sort

hearts of the unfortunate

and make sober the evil shirts of those

who need their competence explained

(not sufficient that I should know it- but

that you should know I know.)

Of course, you believe yourself to be

a wind merchant - a noticer of

vague creatures

who ought put stop to desire

and such matters of the soul.

Eumaeus 618

O, Galileo, now fingerless rememberer

of belief

you reached for god and were stirred by the sun

contrived you a business of differing

hearing the far horses of truth

you engineered accidents

and arranged the evidence

finally blind

you wrote us a demure sonata

celebrated in simple time

and we were annihilated by its possibility:

the moon is only an opinion

not shared by forgers

the fault, dear Mike, lies in our proverbs.

Eumaeus 619

Madam paid the madman

pianoplayer conspicuous by his

suggestion and observing the friendship of

useful knives

our point-blunt taken up and handeled

was to cut the wind

(or at least break it)

to be remunerated

for our stolen palace

to work against reason

to speak in a low voice

to collect the hands of wives

and to require a difference

between reflections and memory

Slipping Glimpser*

2011-08-15T19:52:00.001-07:00

Eumaeus 614

"Exactitude is not truth."

- Pierre Matisse

Achieving the North sea

and tired from this business,

I, possibly cease.

sinking into wet sawdust and junk,

the fates still sing-

they sing in the laudable service

of all those contrived secrets

of all those special cases

where heavy gratitude fails

and flesh is scorned

where boats dream of pastures

and salts reminisce, grimacing and

sinking in heavy water

where the walls give up their stones

and hell is full of empty lifeboats.

still, someone sails into glory,

at least for this day.

Eumaeus 615

we expect to be torn

to be shorn of our daughters

to lie and be lied to ,

becalmed for the day

seeing shore so far in the distance

dragged into the storm

when mariners throw their knives into the sea

and black winter is a time of forgetting

Eumaeus 616

glimpsing slipping I smiling

rather vague and idiotic the tempting moment

the look of direction

without the skin of erection the

pied number stretched in admiration

washing paper and picking the moment

reason has lost us

in preposterous costume caught

putting on some special face

a calm but fleeting space of partially sunken

allegation and resumed organ of expression

without reason or outward duration

eaten alive by longshoremen

and briefly detained by the questioner

and brought to the object of begging

soiled in love and loving

the fingers of skin in the

hat of sighs

*Willem DeKooning