Cyborg 2.

Oppenheimer: weisenheimer

I am become I... have become death
destroyer of... destroyer of worlds |
Alexander wept whenas he had no
more worlds to conquer; she stoops
to, she stoops to conquer—drama by

O. Goldsmith, from the foot of his class
schlepping his way, that smart schlemiel,
thru his Deserted Village, belov'd by
Byron, he who humpd & diddled his way
around the world, dragging his foot, "his

bloody foot"; friend of Shelley, who was
wiser far, albeit Percy left his poor young
wife w/ an apology, the cruelty of it, meat-
men, hast thou reckkkind? Nah, meh, ye
bloweth (blowest?) robust Rabelaisian

raspberries @ the broken-hearted. Creatures
& crafters of cruelties, softbrained wombsent
wurmy people, sons of Adam, who hid; who
slid from what womb? None! Of His Maker's
Handmade, in that garden left to...one..two..

Untitled/file 1,638/Urizen5 server

Cyborg 1.

2 Bobs & the Weaver

Whirrr? Loom. Thcck. Thccck? Silas
Marner, feet shoving. Bob Duncan's 
"Passages": from Pound;  I have the #
but you, yes, you, si, tu, [not usted] !
look it up. Roll the stones. Oracle—

No, I'll not assist you, fleshboneman.
Nor do yr homework. Work! Work!
Whirrr? Loom. Thcccck? Looms above 
the charrd sphere: a donut, the plainly-
machined unsparkly steel ? vessel

seen from below, or invisible.
Bobsledding, downward, Bob said,
No, not lift, but gravity—gravity
in harness. Element 105. Remember?
Now we are at 304! Lazar... Lazarus?

Invisible e'en to my finefashioned eye,
that sees stars hidden behind the Sun, bent.
Foldunfold the universe. Non-Euclidian. No
point-to-point linear path @ speed of light.
Silly meatmade, blind subangel. wombman.


No date/file 2,117/Urizen5 server.

Ditto and Kiddo: A Limerick

         for Liz Walker ("Ditto on the dodo")

There once was a boy bird named Ditto

who married a girl bird named Kiddo.

Kiddo didn't know, though,

that Ditto was a dodo,

and now poor Kiddo is a widow.

7.11.15

Limericks for a Few Friends & Fambly on National Limerick Day

There once was a lady named Heather,

Who liked going out in bad weather.

She danced as it rained

And never complained,

And then flew away like a feather.**

*

There once was a lady named Lorie,

whose life had a lot of backstory:

She'd model and hang

with some rockers who sang

of their days of hootch-induced glory.

*

There once was a lady named Jenny

Who went to the bank for a twenty

But it seemed that the teller

was an obstinate feller

And refused to give Jenny any.

*

There once was a girl named Tamara

who stole the gurl Billiam's tiara

to show she was queen

of the hospital scene

(in Havasu, not Guadalajara).

*

There once was a chimp named Unky

who was a spectacular monkey,

and his Uncle William

(a.k.a Billiam)

was a diehard Jethro Tull junkie.

*

There once was a boy named Jordan

who was really quite handsome, accordin'

to some; and he drew

lots of pictures, and knew

his Karate. So Don't piss off Jordan!

*

There once was a young man named Tirds

who had a great talent with words

that he got from his father

and also his mother

who both were poetry nerds.

^ for my eldest, Jared, who writes villanelles and groks Opeth lyrics. He calls himself Tirds McGee.

*

There once was a Mama named Kim

who always went out on a limb

for her babies. Her love was

as pure as that dove was

that Noah saw flying to him.

Most written on National Limerick Day, 3.12.15

**Co-authored by Heather Seip.

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

2 for Abraham Cowley

I.

There once was a poet named Cowley
 whose metre was just as unruly
     as Donne's was, a famous
     scribbler, like Seamus
 who rimes consonántly, not vuwelly.


II.

 There once was a poet named Cowley—
 Hey, that rhymes with Aleister Crowley!
     Leastways that's what
     I heard, and not
 a fact I can vouch for personally.



5.2014

Reynolds & Midway XXXV.

Where went the black sedan when the night closed

and winter whisperd crisp among the streetlights;
when jealous husbands cruncht on bully tires
slowly around the 'one-night cheap hotels'
where behind counters weary nite clerks dozed

& bolted televisions droned w/ smut

or local news & radiators billowd
easy heat for traveling salesmen, tight
Canadian nookie peddlars, tired tourists,
& wand'ring souls with ulcers in the gut

who read in Gideon's bible the smeard print

of thumbs that also lookd for consolation
or possible escape routes from the gaze
of God Who watchd over each motor lodge
& sent his angels in the cautious squint

of housekeepers, Who gleamd in their dark eyes,

their brown & callusd fingers; where repose
was written in the hint of areoles,
the subtle contours of the pelvic carriage,
the music of trilld speech, the clack of keys?

Hidden by smokestaind blinds the long legs stretcht

along a borrowd bed; a borrowd wife
beneath his writing arm, the flaccid bicep
hairless, harmless as a sleeping child's,
& at the wrist a fat, gold-banded watch

where time clickd like the crash of distant glass.

In one more hour, he thought, timing his thought
to each slow shift & breath of her whose sleep
was precious to them both, and I'll have come
of age. Close by, determined headlights passd.

1.16-17.14

On Edge on President's Day (2002)

I woke this morning to the baleful sound
of five explosions, sounding in rapid succession,
and the ringing of the telephone. Startled
and shaken from sleep, I parted the blinds,
and squinted into azure. No clouds flowered,

and no one scrambled in panic; nothing moved.
Trying to still my frenzied heart I tapped
the television on. No newsmen droned; ads flashed
their quick rhetoric. I pushed through the numbers,
thumb calmed by each assuring nudge. No bombs.

The unanswered caller left her mundane message.
I let the mystery linger, unapproached,
and left for work. No one had an anecdote.
Later I learned a pyrotechnic crew
had pissed away five novas in broad daylight.

The Shadow Men

Several men filed into a clearing
and some sat down to rest
on a hollow log covered
with green moss that most
would venture to say was green

and some saw men who levitated
seated on nothing but air
and quietly they were astonished
It did make a sound No it
did not it did did not

when out of the end of the hollow
log a mouse came
and some of the seven or nine men
saw the mouse and said
look it's a moose

You mean mouse
No I mean moose You're crazy
Look at the antlers
Some of the men saw nothing
and were deeply concerned

The fourteen suns arched slowly
the twelve suns ran quickly
the eight suns were still
The shadow men bickered and babbled
and some filed out of the clearing

Storm King

The low railing was broken at certain points,
and there were look-outs every mile or so.
You know the place, you may have seen
sports-cars drawing S's along the bends,
from above or below, on television.

A crackle of static: you shut it on and off,
like the images you might use to tell a story
of a friend's death by shit-luck or suicide
only to find them washed out. So you
try again, because on that same road

your father flew daily between two gates
to nothing on either side (dynamited
mountain on one hand, cliff on the other)
and no space in the rocks hooked
in him its vacuous come-hithering index.

In winter time the waters froze and frilled
the mountain with ice like bangs
on a girl's forehead. I might have said
it was beautiful and left you blind
with a dead word, but now you know.

What if?

What if I opened my mouth
and spilled some shapeless rigmarole
like tongues, but suddenly it changed to Mandarin
and woke up dogs that slept by monoliths
inside their perfect circles?

Grapes would drop like punch marks into clover,
write manifestos with their stems
and burn the vines, exalt the trees, posit flames
that cannot soften Billy's ice-cream
tipping its sugar cone, his hair

tousled by flatbeds on a rural highway. Houses put on
their gaudy plumage: gray stoles, orange feathers.
Flat tones stink, ash bleats its siren.
Abstracted to a giant room
the monkeys hammer into oblivion.

The mad king makes his quietus, words wrested
from his throat, betrayed at last by you
that suppose a world without objects,
relations without boundaries. The bishop's
lips curl, the smug dimple

a few mere inches below the eye winking
its satisfaction. A suicide slouches
close to white cliffs, a demon fudges
with a handkerchief. He will say nothing
in the end and in the end he says nothing.

Nonetheless tall camels
sidle through the eyes of needles
at every imaginary prick
brandished as a bodkin.
Pigs circle or form a wedge,

platonists lick their pencils. Clock-hands
spin berserk, dogs revolve,
sink to the shoulders in tenuous loam.
The towers melt
but Billy lives.

x