Showing posts with label numbers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label numbers. Show all posts

Mar 15, 2016

Reynolds & Midway 67

We're almost there he sd, which means to make
Him supple again, wich means to flesh Him out,
Extend? perhaps Baruch would say & take

some soup or toke, for we had heard about
his fancy for a puff & liked his pipe.
It's something in this thing of one & aught,

some ancient, primal, irreducible pip
at the beginning, wich wld be a point.
But could it be that all we have is hope,

the truth of faith, the struggle for a hint
from Him, to whom we pray and raise a roof
and say it's a temple? Now, Midway ain't no saint

sd Reynolds, that's for sure, and if you want proof
just look him over, he's sick & thin & white,
and if there's any smoother, silkier calf

than his, I'm Lincoln's grandfather. That's right,
I says, & let me tell you all about it,
like Tuco, who had felt the rope pull tight,

& as for yr ass, you cld feel the devil bite it!
We're coming closer to the devil's tower
whan the 19 seventees became excited

w visions of alien & other than our
intelligence & machinery, whan dark invaders
walked our skies and workd w unseen power

& used the Force to stump the silly raiders
of Cosmos who had gone to the other side
& dumbly swung for Chaos 'gainst the Creator's

will. This Davies' 9th's no joke, than Midway sd
but hath a certain twang of Richard Strauss
leastways at's how it struck me in the head.


3.15.16

Oct 2, 2015

θεωρία iii.

ELOUNTU

ran wither his own heart
to which he listend led,
as one & yet a part,
apart but interbred.
& where he put his foot
was made, yet up to him,
untrammeld, absolute,
as ancient cherubim
that God Himself had made
w purpose point & skill
when also He had sd,
w joy be multiple,
& sd, let there be light—
right, wrong; black, white; day, night.


10215

Oct 1, 2015

θεωρία ii.

GENI NOTU

scrambled up the hill   rocks
knees fleckd w earth
shifted one foot   other foot
tunic pushd
at her left hand
when she stood
point to point
a wibble in the gait
slithe? A word. Wobbled
under delicate teardropt
contour prickd   lifted
w/o shame she climbd
bay & silken   safe
watchd


10115

Sep 28, 2015

θεωρία i.

AOOUN

In the begining steppt barefoot upon
the green, & was but she a lass alone
& comely, gray, of silver was the lash
& gemmd w black like beads; & in a slush
of dew & grass went wayward, where she was
w wing enclosed who watchd when over us
he made his print, & when he did she watchd
& saw the mark whereon his hand had touchd
but softly, gentle as a swish of wind.
So on she went, in summer violind,
the distance shelterd with its shimmer, brown
bay umber music blent w cinnamon,
& wither went she it is written, dark
on white, eternal emblems of her mark.


92815

Jun 20, 2015

Blue Red

                for Tad Rapid & Tirds McGee

Blood is blue inside and red
outside ∴  Blue good, red bad.
Red: Alarm. Red stands
for police & ambulance.

Blue: Mel's Passion: Think
Gesthemane, in blue: Good.
Blue link, good link;
Red link, no link ∴ 

Blue good, red bad: Red light:
Stop, but green light—
wait, no, yellow that— wait
Red cross good, right?

Yes, right, right ∴  red cross
should be blue cross? And?
Blue Cross Blue Shield !
Cross is Christ, yes, and

plus sign tilted becomes an X and
x means times, that's right, and yes,
t means Time, of course, of course
∴  plus/minus one/zero equals a little and

of course a horse
is a horse of course
and Paul saw Peter
and Peter saw Paul

and 42
means

at all



6.20.15

Jun 11, 2015

Reynolds & Midway 55

     I love a kitchen boy, and William is his name. - Steeleye Span [trad.]

Endless corridors, passageways, lights,
a sense of confusion, of having been
newborn, or born again, in some new world,
to seek out, strange, dark. Scotty. Born,
Dotty. Born. Yes, I remember, Oh My
Gawd.  Laughing. Daughters of some, bright-eyed
laughing daughters. Daughters. Tricorder.
Check. Mr Checkov. Checkov, run
a full sensor scan.  Off & on. Onward
rode the seven. 7 hundred. No.
it was 6 hundred. Six hundred men! Scotty.
The stars, you're fired mister. Dilithium.
Crystals. Dilithium. Lithium. Salt.
Water. What?s. I want answers. Speculate.
Spock. Spock. Please report to the. Quarters.
My quarters, Bones. Tricorders. Zones.
Neutral. Zone. Scotty! Dammit Bones.
Lieutenant. Yeoman Rand. Who is John Galt?
Yesyes lieutenant, I sd code. 2. Arm
phasersmister. You have yr orders.


6.11.2015

Jul 24, 2014

Reynolds and Midway 50


     To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. - Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

   O Jubilee, O Jubilee at last,
says Reynolds, laughing, raising his corded arms
as he goes dancing o'er the limen fast,
   shaking his booty. Midway's softer charms
are flattened in the captain's chair, his silky
satin smoothness squashed. Dante alarms
   him, yet he reads with zest, his milky
skin aprickle as the hairs stand up,
those few that sprout upon his erstwhile bulky
   thighs and calves. With mustard in a cup,
and garlic-tincted pretzels, he continues,
dipping each, with relish. Ransom's grub
   occurs to him and floods his withering sinews—
or, more correctly, his dendrites and neurons—
then sup, then sop. Most literary venues
   revere the master. Upper echelons
convinced Midway that to ignore the poet
for much longer would be the direst of sins,
   which brings us neatly to—I didn't know it
when we started out, you must believe me,
and still I think that Christ the Lord will show it
   at some point hence, unless my wits deceive me—
the topic of sin. As creatures, we are broken,
divided, Janus-faced, since Adam and Eve. Me-
   thinks, he says, to coin a rhyming token,
and there again, también a wee puníto,
that Genesis unto the world hath spoken
   truly and with might, that Adamito
lent his ear to a conning sibillance,
and tainted us; but Eve, remember, she too
   bent an ear, and lost our innocence.
We're in this lot together, sinners and salt
of the earth, and no man hath sole governance
   of body and mind. And yes, who is John Galt?
Good question that, for none of us are he,
and Adam's fault is everybody's fault,
   and no one's, in continuum, for we
are you are me and we are birds of a feather,
until that Kingdom come, triumphantly,
   when Christ returns and we all come together.         †


7.24.14

Jul 13, 2014

Reynolds and Midway 48

                  Like a tiger in the cage
                  we begin to shake with rage - Rob Halford

Yes, of the feet, for fourteen hours I walked
those small square tiles and eyed the chalky grout
where seeds and grains of salt and flour and spice
would gather daily, in that concave space
that made the plane a grid. To get it clean
and keep it clean required the utmost care,
my eyes directed downward, spotting flecks
of contraband packed in the soles of shoes,
the tiny rocks and specks of matter dragged
in from the outside. This is pure defeat:
to do a task and know that one is conquered,
a tedious and nonproductive toil
they pay you for, but not enough. My heart
goes out to every soul who ever worked
in similar futility: To fill
a belly, and to have one's labor turned
to shit, to gratify the basic needs of Man
with little recompense and scant reward.
Reynolds and Midway stand aloof and yawn.
They stretch their wispy arms and laugh at me.
My brow is sheened with sweat, my back aches,
my feet are sore from walking up and down
and to and fro, my shirt and slacks are soiled,
my fingers puckered, over-sanitized,
my pockets filled with scraps of sugar packets,
bingo chips, squashed peas, kernels of corn
I pick up from the floor. Not just for Christ,
but for my own wellbeing, and my keeping,
O, yes, for Him, I kneel and bend my head,
I scrape and gather like a scavenger
among the table-legs and tattered chairs,
wheelchairs, walkers, in the stink of cheap
institutional food, the clink of cup,
saucer and plate, and flimsy silverware,
for love of self, for love of these I serve,
and which is greater, only Christ will judge,
and only Christ can know; for when I speak
I hurt, and when I kneel my spirit aches,
and when I bow I show my spine that once
was crooked, and I hide a crooked heart
that, though it overruns with honest love,
and pounds with joy to honor God and Christ,
is yet a catacomb of jealousy,
a house of loud pulsating pride and hope,
for one who loves not me, an echo hall
of vanity and lust, a red devil
flapping in rage. Screaming in rage,
sorrow, and pain, it beats its cage.

7.12.14

Jul 11, 2014

Reynolds and Midway 47

                        "Take it away, Howard." - Woody Allen's Bananas
 
On the road he was on He came to him, and he
fell, as we fell, Reynolds and me (we should say 'I'),
as if down steps or stairs, and woke up wounded.
We felt it first, a deep ache in the side, 
then black and blue, then red, then multicolored.
For hours we lay in the emergency room
with no emergent physical trauma, triaged
fairly to a bright cold room to wait.

We slept and dreamed, and this is what we dreamt:
An Ozymandias, a monument
in some imagined past or future: Desert
civilized, but prehistoric: beginning
times, wound back to start, biblical settings.
We thought of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel,
a populous in utero, we thought
of Noah and his kin, but not the Flood.
 
Antedeluvian, the land was young
and ripe for husbandry,    yet not rife
with throngd humanity. Entwined with these
dream thoughts, or visions, were impossible
absurdities, my chair a captain's chair,
I had the conn, commanded with my clicks,
as ages happend past my ogling eyes.
Spirk at my hand and I a James T. Cock,
 
cook of the walk and riler of the roost,
an i am i, faux tetragrammaton
in silly miniature, a puppeteer
of myriads of poor Pinocchios
(his voice is dead for three days as I write)
and meaty marionettes who span the globe
to bring the constant variety of sport—
the thrill of victory,    andthe     agon


7.11.14

Jul 2, 2014

Reynolds and Midway 46



          KING
          Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
          QUEEN
          Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.


"Sie ist der hellste Stern von allen, hier
kommt die Sonne..." hier I sit again—
tambien y Also, not as in as well,
but so , or thus, as in Herr Nietzsche's Buch
and Strauss's tondichtung, and not that Strauss
who made The Blue Danube, but Richard, he
who hymnd w his triumphant brass and chords
the Cosmos ere that cinematic wizard
Kubrick borrowd them and also made
those notes Eternal— Sing, then, muse of song,
Apollo, he whose son usurped the reins
and drove the sun across the vaulted dome
that spans the Earth, like Icarus, whose father
watchd him fashion wings: both vainly fell
for their ambition, like that fiend of old,
the brightest angel Lucifer, by Milton
glorified who told in his 12 books
of that archangel's ancient hate and fall
with his one third the populous of Heaven,
who warrd with monumental engines, strove
with futile energy and negative power
against the greater Seraphim and hosts
immeasurable, when One born in the Light
and coeternal with the Lord enthroned,
greater than Michael, mightiest of angels,
Him to be brought low and born of woman
in Bethlehem, that tender Nazarene
Who wanderd weakend in the flesh of men,
constraind to poverty and mildest temper,
Who, puissant on high and formed of might,
drove Satan and his hosts to depths of woe
and dark regret: Like that, he sd, and I:
There is a painting of young Phaethon
downtumbling from the sky, by Johann Liss,
and flabby bodies, nigh on corpulent,
watching in terror and astonishment.
Better the scene envisiond by Brueghel
and later immortalized by Wystan Hugh,
of Icarus, an object in the distance;
better that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
should move to center stage and Hamlet brood
alone in wafty castle corridors.
But wherefor, is the question Reynolds puts,
and Midway: Few get saccharine violins
and windy music as the credits roll,
as teary-eyed invigorated viewers
rise and, clutching empty popcorn boxes,
walk the graded carpet to the square
of light that takes them back under the sun
and to the ordinary. Many pine
and everything goes foul; and every day
a question forms its curved, quizzical mark
in that Platonic plane where Absolutes
exist unquestionably and absolutely,
of that material of which the World
is made, or should we say, is in the making,
the Light, the Waters, and the Firmament,
and all that creepeth on the field One made
Who knows the field and Is its Knower, One
Who sees the salamander in the ground
beneath the stones we overturnd, the cool
wet soil where wiggld worms, where went
the multipedald centipede and ant,
Also observed and numberd, as the hairs
upon our heads, so warnd the lamblike Christ
Who was His Father's embassy on Earth—
O Word made flesh, Who also sees the scales
of fish flash in the Waters, and the spume
of whales, Who walkd the lake of Galilee,
and in the garden of Gethsemane
cried on the Father, Abba, Adonai,
and chastend Peter, who denied him thrice,
and, kissd by Judas, went to pay the price
of our salvation, bound, a criminal,
spat on and scourgd. O Lord, my Saviour, Christ,
let me be chastend also, make me love
all those that hate me, let me speak of them
who in this minute, while my fingers move,
are trappd in desperation's snares, whose hearts
have not Thee, who are in despair, whom hope
has left, who wear the woven shoes of Sorrow,
who go w soundless and w sudden feet
and over Goldengrove unleaving mourn
and live in darkness. Grant these, Lord, Thy light
and gentle hand, in Thee reborn.


7.2.14

Jun 25, 2014

Reynolds and Midway 45


    We must thus begin the chapter on the deceptive powers. Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives him. - Blaise Pascal, Penseés.


Heigh Ho! let's go, hallooed the harried hare
that jumpd out on that road that we were on
all thinking angle, triangle, and square—
while listening to a devilish antiphon—
and diagrams, then something in the air

like lines along the blue dome caught my head
criss-crossing white like contrails or strung cloud
like butter dribbld over too much bread.
A dry loaf ? Reynolds whisperd, and a loud
array of stanzas we had often read

clamord | But let us think of Julian,
for we had spoke of Ocquonoctua,
now lost, sd Midway, in the merest span
of that Eternity whose wink brings awe
to us in Time who all were ancient whan

our Mother Christ had held us to His breast
before Mary had had the counsel of
that angel who had told in secretest
comforting words that she wld rise w love
and thicken with the Father's child. Unrest

had left her spirit then. Another angle,
sd Reynolds, as the creature made it safe
and hoppd over the curb, of our triangle.
Scoffingly? We cannot here vouchsafe
for one whose ear may hear another angel.


6.25.14


Jun 18, 2014

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



Jun 10, 2014

Reynolds and Midway 43


                 ...when loth at landfall soft I leave.
                        - John Berryman, Dream Song 12 

Now let us tell of Bawby, most hushhush
and bring the whole tale out. Let William Tell
the truth, and nodding but,
but sideways slantwise lest the prickéd ears
and opend eyes of lil ones lying abed
take fright and swing their bedfellows to bear
adown the necks of them that tuck them in !

We heard that minstrel in the gallery
who sang of sperm in gutters by the Thames,
who whistled on the 7th day and piped
in woodes and in the valleys, who purchásed
6 bay mares and 6 golden apples, who
astride his horse of air did gallop by
Scotch Corner at one hundred 20 M

PH and paid the Piper w/ a tenner;
who [summoned am to tourney] came w/ hair
of Adam, Abraham, and Allen, who
was Kral Majales, King of May, and crownd
and carried beaming proud like Quasimodo,
whose 1 good eye was teary and whose ears
were stufft with bronze from bells too deftly swung

like birches, which now swings us back to Robert,
not that Robert, Duncan neither, nor
that Celtic Plant who pushd love to his baaaaaabe
(whom Midway hereabouts sang heretofore)
in wanton song and denim, for this Bob
is mine alone, and he is quite a dry-Bob,
neither Sordello's, nor that Zimmerman

who fancied southern Timrod° in Deluth—
Henry,° like him whom John Allyn Smith
fashiond in Dream Songs, like those Henrys
Stephen made, whom Willa Cather sd
was not a poet, though War Is Not Kind
but red and of whom Junior wrote a book,
before he went one day and, Brodie-like,

leapt to the Mississippi far below
to rid himself of 45 sad yrs
of anger and forgiveness— How I wish
his beard would billow and his fall estÓp
or he be caught midfall by Jesus Christ
… Amen at 44°59'N 93°16'W …
and taken to the Father's loving breast
and laid more gently down to rest.

6.10.14