WAR CRIMINALS ALL

288. WAR CRIMINALS ALL – MADE TO SEEM SHITTY BUT ALL THAT THEY KNOW IS THE SAME NITTY GRITTY:

Oh well there’s a slacker in the kitchen on some tear and with a mission – eating cauliflower on the run YET no never mind I remember it all and still see the bright white cab riding off towards 33rd with three people inside and everyone talking as much with their hands as with their mouths – traveling foreigners dignitaries with panache open-mouthed malarkeys who defenestrate at will and call the local gendarme by his name and two other guys reading The Irish Echo outside Malarchy’s where Jack Dempsey’s used to be and I have to ask myself – with a modicum of verve – what stillness it is which keeps me company now how straight can I walk how high can I stand and whatever should be done about bad posture but no answers worth the almighty something ever arise and instead of that THREE TURKEYS IN THE DEN are seen and Frank Middlehut from the Cigar Center walks by smoking and nods my way but the only Cuban bastard I’ve ever seen was Carmella’s nasty father in his limousine (or was it a hearse?) as he rode by with flowers on the roof and me and Carmella clutching under the brightly patterned Spanish sheets and she fucked like a squid and screamed like a toad but really nailed my back like a monster lizard from Hell but no you never mind they’re eating cereal and saltines by the backdoor watching the kids take their very first steps OVER AND OVER on some camcorder tape totally boring and liquid as hell but that’s the way people are now DESPOILED and solid or hidden in the hedges outside Security Steel (whatever that ever meant all my tawdry life now it’s torn up and vacant under a Sunday sun with a For Sale Commercial Lease sign in the driveway and nothing to be done) and Truman Capote himself came by with Rona Marriotte and her sister Sam wincing carolettes grandly in an off-key fashion saying ‘where can we find the grave of Dudley Moore?’ and only I answered back ‘that’s Deadly Moore forevermore quoth the pavement and he’s in the back’ and they scurry off as Capote winks in a big-eyed stare but a ten-spot keeps him quiet in the wintry cold and I’ve gotten so tired it seems of the sacred and serious that I’d joke over the funeral of the Pope himself if only something funny would happen there and ‘how much money does the country hold ? as much as you want and just as old!’ I bet you’ve heard that one before ten million times and more…oh well.

THE SOUND OF THE NEW JERUSALEM

287. THE SOUND OF THE NEW JERUSALEM (not so dumb):

I was watching the seagulls traverse the deck of that old oily ship I'd stayed on and slept and the final resting place of so much more came down to this : 'Death as a way of life' (see under: ‘Love’) …noise gunshots and shouts incendiary words and mournful laments amidst explosions and demonstrations and heaps of clichés and special broadcasts from the scenes of terrorist attacks and calls for revenge…right there we’ve ‘pupae’d the larvae’ so to speak we’ve fled to the outer limits we’ve reached new boundaries of Hell from Albuquerque to Ataturk and Antioch to Amsterdam (and Athens to Alexandria Antwerp to Alsace Austin to Avenel) AND ‘within the whirlwind spinning and turning in the eye of the storm THERE IS SILENCE and it can be heard ! AND it is felt in every cell of the body writhing within each dilemma encoded with anyone there – Essene to Embryonic – a deepening silence such as one feels in the brief moment between receiving bad news and comprehending it between the blow and the pain THE EMPTY SPACE in which every person knows with piercing certainty all that he or she does not want or does not dare to know’ and then some parking lot tyrant comes by exposing himself (to ridicule to abuse to anything) and stands by the entrance to the hardware store near the pizza place waving two wands ONE the frieze from Wednesday night and the other the fifteen pounds of leftover palms he swiped from St. Matthew’s Holy Name Trade Fair and Exposition held at the Demolay Hall and hosted by Father John Rutabaga SJ who’s just back from Rahway where he administered to the flock all of the murders shootings and beatings he could manage BUT NOTHING NEW TRANSPIRED it had all been done before ‘well done Brethren – for we have entered the halls of God with bold new ideas in mind so let us sing as we pray for deliverance and bring forth the multitudes we need from but ONE lonely acolyte HIM who stands here freezing all alone’ and I hear them applaud as the lights go out and the movie fiction starts again (some Finnish guy in a yellow Ferrari racing towards the catacombs just outside the city) and nothing beats success except more success and its double DEATH so we all move on : and I saw a most beautiful girl coming right towards me smiling as we sat down together and he began to talk : 'I've come from Samarkind and I only want to stay these few moments alone and forever with you ! you are truly wondr'ous and wild and weird!' and I asked her the real name she would use when she had to and she said 'that's it that's it my name IS Real and it's Turkish for 'beautiful darkside flower' and nodding back I said I understood and then I kissed her lips as she went away - it was all about poise and worth and dignity and she had all of them in abundance - and soon I went away to enter Darkside or Navesink or Asbury or NETHERWOOD ! that’s what it’s called ! where the old servant quarters of Plainfield aspire to rise from their graves and retire to WHERE MY Son ‘Flower’ wishes to go (he’d changed his name from Rufus J. right after he had the operation) HE’S A GIRL NOW we have to call him something different but I lift the chair above my head only to see the ladder’s broken again and all the stairs are turned inside out and anything old is new again and two things always happen together ONE THE REFUTATION OF THE OTHER and like the Bible says ‘save now for a rainy day’ and ‘it’s only a paper moon ripping over the madman’s tomb’ but what I say I can’t decide and if ever there was HAPPY it was Mary’s womb but leg o’lamb and rack of pinion WHO LORDS OVER THE LORD’S DOMINION! and all of a sudden there came such a rush and I ran to the window to see what was the matter but all I received was one lethal blow and Charles Foster Kane all ready to go and he sat down beside me and started to sing and just then the whippoorwill cried and SOMEONE HAS DIED! was all that was said [Kane piped up: “you just give me the prose-poem and I’ll supply the WAR!’] and I noticed he laughed to his fat heart’s content and rolled towards the door until OUT HE WENT!! (I couldn't stand it any more!).

DUMBSTRUCK PROFOUND USELESS AND ALL

286. DUMBSTRUCK PROFOUND USELESS AND ALL - (an adventure along Washington Street) :

“Do you see what they’re all like how can it be that they’re all alike and at the same time how so many things can crumble and fall away to make everything different ? ‘buttle scut or scuttle butt it’s all the same to me’ Joaquin Balagueur or John Betancourt whoever it was he said that on the balcony which only later collapsed with 33 people on it and falling from the third floor to the ground killed 11 – all actual dynamic numbers – and like the footnote to Revelations says (John) ‘1000 means infinity as 12 means perfection as 144 means quintessence as 7 means righteous harmony as 777 means perfected infinity’ and the man in the snakeskin cap says ‘whatever it is you don’t bring that back’ and nothing worse than water has ever passed my lips - what the Gypsy takes the Gypsy gives - and any God worth his salt would know that on the back of every mirror another image lives” so I threw my tender cards down on the Sunday table and closed the cabin door as all four of us settled in for more of something and something more as the latter day preacher took to the floor STARTLING the crowded oasis as he said : “God made something out of nothing (you see) and then hung that something on nothing (you see) so here’s where we’re left (whosoever is REAL shall BELIEVETH in me!) in this reverie (well DO you see?) deciding on clothes for our Garden to be and DO NOT let my heart harden but LORD ‘till I see ! and we each let TOMORROW be” and then shy shy Rita Cooper herself jumped up on the table “WHY do you treat your body as the enemy ? I do really want to know ? why do you harbor such envy at all I wish to know?” and with that she stripped to her nothings-at-all on the little glass table before us DUMBSTRUCK PROFOUND USELESS AND ALL as at once we watched the dilemma unfurl until Father Time introduced himself (‘Earl’) and improved the situation by bringing it to a close and ARRIVING JUST IN TIME as one dimpled buttock of Rita’s pride sagged and the other quite near fell and all losing interest declared “TRULY this passing of time it is Hell!” and as nothing ever came from nothing the street-side side-liner swelled and the shadowed something of TIME’S OWN SHROUD removed any doubt from us and the crowd as just that quick Sunday morning returned wherein I have decided to do nothing and so with that (idleness Devil’s workshop all work and no play make Jack want to stay if you don’t take a chance you’ve got nothing to lose six of one half dozen of another I’ve heard all that before tell me something I didn’t already know Stella McCartney knows the score: DRESS like a QUEEN act like a whore) 15 birds are singing of something on the outside porch where the thermometer lingers and the hanging brush grows and the 3 cars passing are traveling no more as 2 feet up and some red wine in hand I listen to Beethoven (WHO MIGHT UNDERSTAND) and time passes slowly up here in the night ‘we stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right’ and just then a new deliverance entered the scene and ABSTRACTEDLY SO AND OH SO SERENE I listened some more : “to understand Tintern Abbey one needs an eye made quiet by the power of Harmony (who is a left-handed female Goddess of some furious fame) and the true power of joy as we SEE INTO THE LIFE OF THINGS for within a person of light there is light and getting back to the Goddess again (HARMONY stands her name) she had great dreams while I would dream merely of people getting murdered and people counting hamburgers and she would dream about hillsides and beautiful words and if you bring forth what is within you THAT will save you AND ONLY THAT ! and if you DO NOT bring it forth THAT IT IS too which will destroy you!” and then all of a sudden what to behold but ROTHSTEIN rolls in shouting of gold !!! betraying his motives and declaiming his people UNFAMOUS STUPID AND BOLD – “once more we have a new Tyrant telling us everything and a male Tyrant as well DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ? the severity of all that ? do you not see the mass mindful and controlling orthodoxy which is ripping our culture to shreds NAY WHICH HAS ?” and with that I stood up and said back “let me tell you what I want in the hopes that no one will listen I was born at the Bayonne Bay on the Kill Van Kull which ships transversed like nothing else and laden deep with cargo and fuel and all the raw materials which once went into industry’s passage through time long ago every hull filled with swagger and the juices of work and nothing else mattered nothing had worth except what sweat men produced in making a product for this was a world still reeling and sinking in anger’s debt and the vile note of every hatred then known to man YET no books passed by on those waterways soiled and Sartre and Camus and Aristotle and Locke (and Lao Tsu too) were never entered for life at this table and so it was that I was brought forth from people who knew or made nothing of value but work and its curses and long the lines of men (and their hearses) would pass by my doorways and young and still raw I tried understanding each thing that I saw and every maiden above me or lesser at whichever doorway or floor or vanity or dresser was trying so hard to make something up whether face or idea or family or pup and these were my years in silence and dread that I watched what came out of man’s daily bread and all that I’d heard I was sure was untrue but I put Faith in front of each step with my shoe and so thus protected walked gleefully on like some furious lamb to some slaughter confused and alarmed with every tree’d leaf a William Blake in disguise and something within me felt all those lies and the thousands of memos and white little lies and each man who fell was damned by his tries and still SOMETHING THERE WAS GREW HIGH TO THE SKIES and tower’d infernos and multi-laned streets across from Manhattan like Kipling or Keats I kept that strange eye going to and sent fro until EVEN I learned the language through which I would grow and only that it has been – through all these fair years – which have kept me and made me IN SPITE OF MY FEARS and so now if you listen I’m sure you will hear what I’m trying to say or trying to bear so leave me some leverage still shut on this Earth to make my way forward or (at the least) find what I’m worth.”

…(you can’t put SOMETHING back if you’ve never taken it away)…