vacation

__________





Could


it be that poetry is a vacation? that the first christmas on earth, as the young French poet dreamed it, is the utopia of poetry land? that the nights of hunger and slavery when one puts pen to page, leg to stage, finger off keyboard, ten fingers counting blog, the ornament of space dropped away in the anti-work squads of love, its brigades of mercy, that work and vocation, career and the class desire,
peer into the night of the voweled abyss have terminated their shift, a passion for play the child word stammering , melted into the dew of its thought as our body dies, could it be this vacation of rent that every human breaths, longs for the open pasture of language, melting its snow


its caps like mountain tips of effort smirking at the world and its everyday business of chatter and blather. O blather me timbers in the shakedown ways 'n pray of life and death and you r body

which I love so much

You know
you know you know
Ive not seen not seen
not seen your body
of yours of yours
twenty years yet
love was a fire that crackled your bush





Simple seer of day and bear of love 's candle lit drag
its wake

Expecting nothing in the sigh before dawn


Poetry was a holiday. Not a thing to be pursued with grants and totems of desire and acceptance by the academy of its present. with some leader named Emily at our helm, we were
dawn breakers
and beaks at the bow-sprit of your thighs
I kissed your thighs this dawn
imaginary as they were
bound to be and be they were bound
locked around my head
wreath of desire
in the ships of helm


helm smith


and the rock and rollers remembering who you were
not some mighty general of a molar formation
some band of a fascist chief
some bastard carrying on kings , knaves
and sailors. I have nothing against sailors.
Make waves and trucks sigh
tonight is the gathering

gathering garner
yer staff




this distaff of lust
body board
trampoline dust
Milton's cave
the southern gales
mackaway Town
in

the thimble rouse

bird falled over
the knock down play
at the crack of 'dawn'
the cark of soothing


crackle barrel intent

. If poetry was a holiday where taxis smoothly stayed. I saw that wink
in your hand, I mean the wink in your blog it made my mouth water
at the drooling before time of time and its species the treble clef of nowhere some deterritorialized fish that escaped your lawn


just before this little bit of lip
that says your name
a thing hangs in the air
my word racked by the ruin of y
er bod
y
how
it kissed
sunday nights
sundering night
of two backed beast

your breast a mouth
to whisper a paint on
haul the word out
find the camber to make you sing


inside the wear been of
half man
of body stand (hand stands)
stems
portals flew wits
may flowers of carry on
deals
nickels dime
nickleodeon of what we could have
played
revenge for your absence
the love
not had
in the
verb before cluster's last hand


each time i held the melody
of your tension
it was a spring
was it black or next to prose that poetry woke the river to talk? was
it an award that bore its fate, cataracting by morning rise
the burial of hate?
was prose the doctor of your love, come my children made yours.
they were my kids inside your body born by him and the ruin of
flight your possesive noun a deterioration before
before
fore
a coarse melos
fay
in the fairy
truth
of truckers
and stage rammers

buskin boot mouthed by November
some stage you remembered by



if poetry was the knight across the awkward grave
listening
the listening post where spy men meet spy women


then it'd be the holiday you
always wanted

___

then it was the pray at stop

signs where

cats speak

and murders stay for a pause

so then it reeks

she said

no that was some

other noun

if poetry was the hold when the ship keel

.

then poetry would be the stage at your right and the night was a

shifter leaving blanks in the space

all your wears then would be

the amateur

I

poetry is not a career. a life in language is a life bereft of monetary gain. this is no secret, for who gets paid to write, or read, poetry. i am an amateur. but i'd hazard to say every writer who takes poetry seriously cannot be a professional. a contradiction? only when you define a professional as someone who is paid to do the work, the writing and reading, of poetry.

i take my reading seriously, and read for pleasure. i have not the discipline to qualify my reading. i read a lot and my reading is essential to my life in poetry. i cannot write in language, or live in it, without reading. there is no other qualification to poetry. to be a poet means living as a reader. reading is not a career.

II

a life in language is a passionate life. perhaps passion is a definition of the amateur. for it is in passion that one comes to love, anything. no job, or degree, can bestow passion upon a person. the poet must live and make mistakes. the poet must live within contradictions.

i am unable to qualify that. poetry, the reading and writing of it, is worth whatever the poet is willing to pay. the poet is an amateur who declares a life in language is not an occupation but a vocation. the poet's hands are empty but for passion and language.

Epithalamium

Nan and Jim, together now
And I, a witness to the general joy
The white dress the white suit
Will you, Nan, be as Hera of the white arms
Or another kind of goddess?
And will you, Jim, as hubby
Take after tubby
The man on my right, four times married, the last to
The woman on his right
As he stares at the red flower on the breast of
The woman on my left
For whom he has just bought
A sherry and soda?

The priest, sweet-witted, said, why, your happiness,
Like faith, can only increase
Do you want it
Yes, I want it
(A no-brainer, thinks the bride)

But you dance now and
Your two children dance, too
Spinning and cartwheeling
Years before, I dreamt of
My own wedding supper
The man, well-loved, yes
But what I really remember was
The end, when a band of
Monks in brilliant robes
Pulled me to the floor, saying
We are writing a play
And will you write with us
None of this has come to pass except
The end, when

Nan and Jim, for you I see
The whirling dance
The plaited hair of your daughters, blondes
Both already born, and dancing
I think of your bridal bed, much-envied
Its springy coils and matted sheets
Have a resilience
I am shy to examine
God knows how much the pair of you
Make an hour
Your bed can take it

herbie

Herbie Mann began
stationed
with a band in Trieste.
He was active
playing and writing
on flute. In 1959
he took on
fifteen African countries.
In 1961, discovered
idiom.
Album, hit single.
Played Brazil, Japan
most popular flautist in jazz.
Mann won
from 1957-1970.
Plenty of substance
and high proceedings.