Reynolds & Midway 58

       Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be - famous song

Morrison said something to the effect: The barrel

is an extension of the eye but I would venture

cliche as fact: The gun is an extension of the cock,

its stiffness at the ready, aimd to fire its shot,

O long and slender but the bringer of sudden death

also preserver of life, in good and righteous hands

brute force in stasis and potential, masculine

hard arm and not of power which is Feminine,

O Mary Mother of Christ, eternal Mother of God,

Thy breasts the Power and the Glory, Hera's milk

sprayd vast and cosmic by the naked eye espied

the Way of life, the white of love and purity

O Arc of Triumph, whereas also sprayd & white

the seed of man, by that hard gun of fearsome force

O passive vulva Pound had spoken of, but power

incarnate, hidden mouth  O Solomon the pit

of Hell, Oh really?  Seven hundred concubines

and golden megamillions? Now thy words of wisdom

let us reinterpret for the sake of sparing youth

the folly of contradiction, for the spread of truth,

for mass dissemination: Brute force is not power!

And shun false witness: for the muscle of man is weak

and force is death without the guiding hand of Power

behind it, God in perfect balance, God the Father

and Mother, Lord of dreams & glossolalia, tongue

to Moses & Baruch, Guatama, Christ and Jung,

O hear me not O Lord lest I be blind and trickd

O chasten me, O Lord, lest I, a wolf dressd up,

be liar— O majestic Christ, o midway—   cry     
Be Silent!

7.9.15

Reynolds and Midway 44

                                         for Gavin Douglas in Heaven

The durris and the windois all war breddit

With massie gold, quhairof the fynes scheddit.

With birneist euir baith Palace and towris

War theikit weill, maist craftelie that cled it,

For sa the quhitlie blanschit bone ouirspred it,

Midlit with gold anamalit all colouris,

Importurait of birdis and sweit flouris,

Curious knottis, and mony hie deuise,

Quhilks to behald war perfite paradise.

sd Reynolds, quoting from his pate as we

went wambling headlong in our revery

and reverént revéls, as Ian croond it,

not to ape good Father Hopkins, he

of that sprung rhythm, wich was taught to me

in mony a buik whose leaves instilléd glee

when I o'erturnd them w indéx and thumb

whan we were yonge and narrow, quhite and dumb,

but inky as a monk in a scriptorium.

Now what became of William's telling query

minds that grok in yrs not distant very,

wich to invert beyond what we'd expect,

and far beyond the good and necessary,

is but to lovely mimick one whose merry

lines in Yoda-speak made readers wary

and eyeballs tried and true and likewise weary

if not plain angry at such craft suspéct,

wich Dickey thoght, we thoght in retrospect,

but not w/o respect. Now w respect

to Bawby, wich is hér pronunciation,

who came from nigh on Pittsburgh there in Penn's

sylvania , where they tunneld through the mts,

as you can see when driving thro' the nation,

leastways that region [insert rime: think fountains,

think counting, think of Emmet who'd say countins]

close by those famous chocolate factories

whose smells were wafted sweetly on each breeze

that cloyingly wended. Bawby's skin is pale,

his Boddie° slender as a girl's, his wristes

narrow, knuckld bigly, but his fistes

never bunch to strike. He wld not wail

Medieval style on maiden nor on mail,

nor can he think a thoght that pugilistes

think when in a ring w other fighters

throwing hands like mony dicky blighters

taking waspies in the welkin.  Stale

the air of Bawby's close and small apartment,

wich May did open up when she wld visit—

she that she who hails from Pennsylvania,

whom we've written on above [revisit

stanza iv.] and have renamed w love,

whose eyes were ever on the stars above

the jagged peaks of brown and stunted hills

in something of a sort of astromania

(that of the astrological department,

not astronomy), whose cherry lips

did light on his that starry starry knight

when he did ope his mouth and shyly askd her:

May I kiss you , and she said, you may ,

wich isn't why I turnd her into May,

tho' you may think it. Such allowance taskd her

hardly, given God's Will to obey,

and man's; but none wld her deep love eclipse

come hell, highwater, or Apocalypse.

°for you, John, & thx.

- 6.18.14

Reynolds & Midway XXII.

In the documentary I saw the words—

I forget already, the words I heard were—

I forget, re:Prophets from The Buik;

but there was something else that I was fain

to tell you now that's buried under heapes

of garbage, as at Gehenna, which is what

I thought I so desired to speak of. For of Hell

it most disturbs me, for, from e'en my birth

my fears were of a Hell of sorts, a dark

so dark that not one shred of light wd strike

my eyes, & not my hand before my face:

a child of six or sev'en I stood, my mother's

hand in mine, it could've been my father's,

plumb in a cave, in Southwest U.S.A.,

wherein the guide had plungd us into night

so night-like I had ne'er seen night before,

and queried, whoso wishes the light returne

please raise yr hand, and lo, the only hand

struck-up was yrs, sincerely, so they laughd

at one so dumb & young, or innocent ?

All three, no doubt, a three-in-one:trifecta—

trinity with minor 't', like that

softsoap that claimeth, 3-in-one, & that

snakeoil that offereth daily clarity,

I noticed of an evening: can this be

coincidence & happenstance, I wonderd,

but knew the answer in my latherd loins,

sd Midway, at which saying let us turn

back to the lantern slides: I saw

a man with quhite flanks on a public road

nude as a jaybyrd (naked hast too many),

who was to be the person of Isaiah,

at which point Reynolds clamord: be the Jazers!

forfend such visions, at which time did Midway

rub his chin & recollect his dreams

wich had been full of mony a bare behind

(Imagine me in the forest, with a beare

be-yoind ! The maiden with a bonnet sd

to Benny 'ill, who then screwd up his mug

& brought greate laughter sans an iteration)

not only of the spice & sugar kind,

not only of the waking kind, neither—

but dreams "wrought of volition", as I tappt

in Radcliffe, which was but a theft from Stevens,

one of the first things that I made

in this electric, softer mode: say things

said Midway, for the title "poem" must

be granted by another. Reynolds? No,

an other, not a sprite of thy invention,

thy shameless vanity, thy undead ego,

that stalketh still & loude inside of thee,

sticky w blood & sick, undisciplind flesh.

We made us cigarettes & watchd the screen

and learnd a tittle, which we will forget

despite the notes, despite the copy-pasted

chunks of information, bytes of data

that flow like rhinorrhea, true or false,

and clusterjammd for fingers to unpack

and hopefully unfuck, although our hope

is fading, for the world, both soft & hard,

is festering with minds & tongues that seek

destruction, not enlight'enment, that prefer

a loud guffaw & giggle to a fact,

who hold the truth in somewhat more contempt

than but beneath, scowling & sneering mouths

effeminate, insolent, & whorish-red

with shameless shaming, backwards industrie,

& duncy Alexander Potpourri.

Indeed, we're in a catch, & stuck between

the rock & hard place :seek & ye shall find

or seek & ye shall have the devil's index

+ fuckyou finger clapt inside yr nose

and led whither the Good Lord only knows.

'Tis time to pay attention, tappeth Midway,

and more, & closer. Deep. Be of good cheer

and of good faith, for God will make ye hear

despite yr stubborn creaturely stiff necks.

It hath been written, and will be againe

when you are changed back into elements,

whan that great Conqueror Worm & progenie

make windows in your skull & winde yr bones

in dirt & maggots. Maker of gold & bungholes,

of silver tongues & bullets, Lord of Hosts,

and of the world, Who maketh high the low

& low the high, Whose voice is from the little child

& sage, philosopher and lunatick, from wild

& cultivated, all, from lyon downe to lambe,

He speaketh via signs hid in plain sight, resplendent,

from asse to ant; and so He ruleth man, whose sins

are read, be His ways by the clock, or widdershins,

nathless they werke & are beyond ken, His Iamb

beyond all men, before us, obvious, transcendent.

11.30.13

To the Woman I Love

How many years I've loved you, who cannot return
my love, how many tears have wet my broken bed,
like seeds sown in the darkness, where no stem is born,
but where the breath that speaks of love says love is dead,
and sounds like silence, and like depth, and solitude,
that faintly go and then as faintly come around
again, like silent blackbirds in a winter wood,
like violins and voices stilled and void of sound,

until there's no more counting, no more new amount
or number, and we just let go the hem of time
that shrinks and shrivels in the pitch it was made of,
and heart and mind forget what it had meant to count,
and can't conceive the point of meter or of rhyme,
and do not understand at all a word like love.

12.12.2012

Reading Walcott

For Andrew Mandelbaum


When this man writes white almonds, I pretend I'm blind
as a bat that's lying dreaming on a book of Homer,
so I can go on reading, in my head a number
of voices ricocheting, a deliquescent grind
of genuine island lilts and one that's less refined:
my landlocked cracker mimick. No. We must remember
the almonds. White, he said. Alright. I see a comber
Curling in, on top a watermelon rind-

white froth of foam that seems to want to settle down
upon an arc of shoreline where I see together
a woman and a man in daylight sharp as a diamond.
Her hair is dark and flying loose, skin cinnamon-brown,
half-naked, and him the same; they laugh and love the weather.
They wave me over to them, toss me a sweet white almond.