THE SHELTER WAS HAMSTRUNG

154. THE SHELTER WAS HAMSTRUNG (the fire) - [Taken from 'The Blue Garden']

Forever narrowed by the wanting of something not to be had the name of the place is The Blue Garden and it embodies everything you've ever realized : twenty-five angels singing harsh truths two hundred zealots in fierce and determinate motion three caravans of nomads waltzing lightly over the desert sands five thousand lethal virgins swimming in want fifty thousand souls of the dead and each one holding a candle of eternal light and behind all of that rides the great sound of the deep the sound of life forever the never-ending scales of Heavenly orchestras playing without time and within all that is and the preachments stare back through windows a'flame the writhing hands of ten million lost send screams upward screaming and wherever one looks there is need and want and the opposite condition of each - plenty and abundance satisfaction and pleasure - where the lights are the source of all light and deep deep penetrants of space and time commingle BUT only is the secret opened for the elect and the saved for ONLY is the opening clear to those with new eyes and the vision of the saints arrayed and ONLY do the eyes perceive the darkened rooms behind each door when they too have been given new light and all things fall together in some different place some new-arrival of fortitude and understanding beyond all words ! and listen carefully for YOU shall hear : "the quote..." from everyone's mouth for everyone knows but for myself I have nothing different to say except that which comes forth from me - and therefore the Blue Garden is something I shall try to explain try to describe try to encolor with richness and precision : 'if place is somewhere we can remember and be at in the same instance therefore for that alone it is substantial and worth attending to and if the life we lead can be anything it should be INTERESTING it should be BOLD and UNENCUMBERED by the distractions and limitations that come with society' and TRY THAT ON FOR SIZE ! but I put things in a darker place I settle things separately and differently I am the one who waxes whimsical perhaps when I should be stern but the surprising thing is that there is surprise everywhere and for that I watch for should we be dogged in an enterprise with no reward ? should we persist in chasing things which in reality do not exist must we accumulate the piles of stuff with nowhere to go and pass on from that as empty as the day we came should we live the life of despair and loss which seems so solid around us ? NO NO I say ours instead is a staff for joy a reach Heavenward a twinkling in the eye towards some eternal truth and pathway before us and that struggle is more difficult than any other and it involves NOT haste but deliberate steps solid foundation and fitful marchings and 'when the student is ready for the Master the Master will appear' so fear not fret little and don't go out of your way to make an extra turn - for it's all written down already and all you are doing is following the script as dutifully as you can.
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"What I want more than anything else in music painting and poetry in life and in belief is the thrill that I experienced once in all the things that no longer thrill me at all - I am like a man in the grocery store that is sick and tired of raisins and oyster crackers and who nevertheless is overwhelmed by appetite" [Wallace Stevens, 1948, 67 years old].

THAT'S WHEN I GOT IDEAS

153. THAT'S WHEN I GOT IDEAS:

That's when I got ideas - wild notions of speckled cabbages and twisted kings and I doffed my imaginary hats to both memory and dreams and couldn't wait to sleep again just to see where it would take me and what it would bring and these ideas took like fire in some twisted schoolboy's oval head - notions without words and things without form but they were my own and I recognized each of every of them all the time and in all ways.

UNDERGROUND ON MARS

152. UNDERGROUND ON MARS (a memory of Edward Rutherford):

"I ain't got nothing but space I don't own a dog I own nothing and I want less I don't have a car and I walk when I can I don't like other people but I tolerate what I must I calculate severely everything that happens and I make ends meet MAYBE just by lengthening the string between each end NOW DO YOU understand that ? because if you don't I haven't got the time to continue and if you think I'll just stay here and talk to you for free you're dead-ass mother-wailing wrong so either you come up with some genuine American dough or I clam up right now - dig?"
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Yes he said all that one day to me one day just sitting there one day when I thought we'd be friends again and as I look back now it was NOT really out of character and I probably should have seen it coming but didn't : I was younger and my eyes were more fixed on others on places and events of which sort of things now I'd not care for in any way - and maybe he realized that and he'd always start telling some non-objective corollary of a story or tale and SIMPLY like that I'd listen : 'and in the middle of the Circus was an ancient Roman fountain filled with blood' was one 'no tears in the writer no tears in the reader' was another (Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Frost respectively) and 'the art of losing's not too hard to master / though it may look like a true disaster!' and then - this one I always liked and he'd draw it out perfectly - 'the smell of the earth the smell of the dark roasted coffee black as fine black as humus - no coffee can wake you no coffe can wake you - no coffee can wake you no coffee no coffee can wwake you no coffee can wakeyou no coffee can wake you NO coffee' (I've typed it sort of as he'd speak it - and it was 'about Death' he'd utter) and then he'd say "that's my version of acting you see that's my James Dean and it's a long trance I'd not come out of and it would just go on and on" and I believed him - 'yo quiero ser llorando el hortelano de la tierra que ocupas y esterccole a las desalentadas amapolas y siento mas tu muerte que me ('I want to be the weeping gardener of the earth you occupy and the fertilizer of the discouraged poppies and I mind your death more than I mind my own') and like some June elegy for a firefly I miss him more than ever forever too.
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Sometimes it goes without saying that people just talk too much - the little saddle-driven drivel that comes forth from a mouth and mind empty with wonder and at the other extreme the perverse shenanigans of some stupid brainiac who fancies himself the Philospher-King of the Andes come back to Earth to enliven the debate and all mankind's tidings - and at both extremes a person listening or being forced somehow to listen just wants to scream and get away and ALTHOUGH sometimes it was like that here I never went through those extremes and remember this was all a different time too - cars were still big and rakish - long angular tubes of formed and bent metal silly with angles and curves and fins as they dwindled and the streets yet had the darkened older look one cannot any longer find - like men with fedoras or women in starchy black with hats - something of a half-time between light and dark and whatever a 'CITY' was originally for this was still it - there were manufactures and productions in nearly every space and the great huge sagging trucks idled nearby each curb as workmen pushed and heaved or rolled things around the traffic snarled with the anger of produce and goods and transport and people just simply meant business and each person was exactly what they were and nothing more - unlike now where everyone takes on temporary roles and walks the streets as if prowling some disaster-prone movie set for the role of the week and no one sincere no one essentially real can be found - for they've all blown in like litter and chaff from some other far-off and meaningless place and everything now is colored : the hues of Heaven and the hues of Hell in some equal measure of disrespect and running forth like blood-noise from the rooms of death are people's blather and chatter and music and noise and screech : a horrid room in an anteroom to Hades just awaiting a reverse deliverance and there was always a kind of jazzy cool to the street - half covered by smoke and grime and only occasionally broken through by the beamed solo of a sunlit trumpet blasting through vertical canyons of a chimerical hieroglyph of mystery and the swamp of unreason YET here too numbers were tallied and messages tolled and each corner stayed alive with dense possibility and the profuse occlusion of chance and danger still lived -- and that was HIS world mine too OUR world together or at least the one whose messages we read in script scrawled downward onto diner napkins and lunch-counter bar-room secrets - the missives and mementos of love and anarchy too - everything in some Chelsea code of what-was-meant-to-be and I thought to swear I'd never leave this place forever and I'd live and die my days in the locations I chose and if that included Rutherford too then it would and we'd paint fame and erect grandiosity and we'd live forever as legends all BUT it was not to be NOTHING of it in any way none for the staying power of time and energy was something I'd forgot to note is weak and dwindles and sinks in the west like a Sun every chance it gets - and we grow tired and I grew tired too and Rutherford was dead.
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There was this point one day when he'd just reached some level of intensity that had begun to be difficult to understand - as if some other activity or force perhaps was taking over his time and effort - and from that he started talking more and more about stuff that had what seemed less and less relevance but nonetheless he kept at it : "you wish to know something ? you want to hear truth fact and information ? I can take you there I can lead you to what counts - you want to know about Underground on Mars I'll tell you : Underground on Mars is right here and Mars is alive ! there is no such thing as space and dimension and time NO separation between THAT place and THIS place for WE are Mars and we are the underground - the very active underground of Mars - and science isn't going to tell you that nor are any of the astronomers or scientists or physicists who work on that endeavor because they CANNOT tell you because they work within their own broken field of clutter and are brainwashed nightly and cleansed of each original thought by the powers which infiltrate and make the order and control necessary to keep us down because they can only SEE one way which is the paltry and poor dimensional way of hard matter cause and effect rooms doors walls and connections - a very literal and very dead field of matter and motion which will never add up THE SCREED is wrong the curtain is down and they operate in darkness : Mars is here and there is no spatial differentiation between where we are and where the life of Mars itself is and the PLANETARY set-up and the simple listing and supposed deadness of planets and space is all illusionary because in our vein of view they may appear lifeless solid and barren but they are not for they inhabit their own times and lives in another way we don't yet see - as multi-faceted as anything else - as your TV with its fifteen channels all GOING at once but you only SEE one - the simple singular one you've selected for that moment's viewing - yet all the others are there and are operating and underway and it's just like that with space the Underground of Mars is the overlapped energy-vibrancy we work amidst and Mars itself is a small portion of a greater force which has always operated like glove-in-hand to control us and our space and huge tremendous vortexes and inter-spatial time and energy warps exist within our planet and underground middle-of-the-Earth kingdoms here exist which channel right back to the Underground of Mars and everywhere else as we travel (space travel is a constant and a reality too) and that inter-mingling brings us all that we see and it taught us the skills and the crafts we needed to arise from the dirt and confront and construct our civilizations and societies - pottery food work agriculture medicine simple science engineering construction entertainment - each facet of our moments is brought down to a single ONE and that ONE is processed and controlled and PROJECTED for us by those who rule us and control the thought factors we (if we only knew and stood up and did) can USE to create the REAL world within us (stifled stilted stranded and adrift) and that eternal conflict - due to man's weakness and faults [our 'Original Sin'] - is what keeps us down and in ruination and the slavery our minds are in - which brings us the sadness illness disease and death we have (LISTEN listen to me you stupid fucks - I can take you OUT of here!) for the supposed Underground of Mars is the real ground of OURS."

THE HOUND I WATCH IS TETHERED BY A CHAIN TO A FENCEPOST MADE OF STEEL

151. THE HOUND I WATCH IS TETHERED BY A CHAIN TO A FENCEPOST MADE OF STEEL:

When things start to accumulate that's when they get onerous - you're looking at maps let's say so as to find position or direction you're tracing the river's path to see where it would take you - whether Port Jervis or Callicoon or just dumping out the old Hudson's mouth it wouldn't really matter and the Delaware would do just as well (if I was only able to learn Philadelphia) but there's no one to ask about anything because now they're all newcomers anyway and they really don't know a thing : marvelous mosaic and all of that crap : so we walk half-blindly into things along the way - looking at the fire stations where the new crop of pumpers are or we're walking past smoke-shops which now have to advertise what it is they do because no one really any longer understands or we pass the ten thousandth Korean Nail Shop of the day and wonder what genetic pool brings forth such people with whatever talent it is they brag of - polishing nails and coloring fingers cleaning toes and sanding ankles for whatever purpose it's all done - and nothing is found to mention or speak about anyway so the entire world seems silent except but for the noises certain things make on their own - the essences of traffic and industry the chatter of people and the hum of silently-passing transport units like ghost-dreams in a daylight's dark but all of that goes into reflected glories of cities and places like them where windows throw back light and the passing day and all its clouds and shadings are seen again in some reverse image almost the same but not quite and the braying hound I watch is tethered by a chain to a fencepost made of steel while inside some store nearby its lazing master mingles amidst the cobwebs of fruit and pastry or grain and tea (for that's the sort of things these urbanites always buy) and the modern day hurts like a lumber to the head : pencil-men playing cheesy stickball between two streets and three kids picking up a dead bird to inspect the carcass of what they don't know LIFE and all its attributes while some taxi driver pisses between two buildings at the alley's back-curve where the oily tires are piled - no one notices no one says a word and life just moves itself for that moment out of the way - the street's been torn up greatly and deep and I inspect the layers of time and age in the strips of macadams and bricks and stones the roadway was once composed of and the multi-faceted past shows back from below the street - some solemn story no one notices nor understands and it's all again mute and strange like some sullen story from another time and place (I wonder of the horses and look for their feet) but nothing like that comes for for this 'new' day has bankrupted all else.

I WRITE IN IGNORANCE

150. I WRITE IN IGNORANCE:

Nonetheless I write in ignorance just as so many live in ignorance - that’s just the way things are - but I feel heavy and solid and frozen in place to the extent that it’s sometimes impossible to get an engine going : the brain breaks down the wires cross the sparks collapse the energy and everything short-circuits as nothing works and the only puff of smoke produced is from the waste of whatever just transpired - the cities I see are still lit all night and the electronic grid of things remains – coolant circulating heat pumps pushing lit rays everywhere and if that city ever went out there’d be a Hell to pay and I wonder sometimes about the day I’ll die – will it linger will it pass quickly be pain-free be confusion-filled be noisy or quiet or sensible or weird and uppermost in my thoughts is ‘where will I be’ and what will I be thinking then ? these are probably hideous questions but things which arise within the matter of time the luxury of which I guess I now do have – but for how much longer I do not know : and the medical callouses which grow over time are already starting the ubiquitous passages the pains and the hurts the clots and the tumors therein and just like the city filled with energy and the fused-circuiting of all that wild internal power too it all – over its time – diminishes and I see it pass : not with pleasure but a certain pain : I ask ‘where shall I go?’ and ‘how shall I get there?’ and am answered with nothing but the swerving silence and the muted voice of a spirit which says simply ‘continue on’ and that I must accept.