The Parboiled Letter

Below, below the grammar-line, I have cut and pasted an exegesis on the not-so-fine art of semantic no-nonsense and, might I add, under no duress, ill-will, coercion or chicanery of any kind. I culled a selection of small pieces, all written days, weeks, months apart, and basted them together as a unified text. What I noticed, against my will and better judgment, is that by some alchemy they seem to fit together, unfittingly so, but together nonetheless. This speaks more to my state of mind than to craftsmanship, or the fact that I have obsessive compulsive disorder, the need to find randomness in order and order in randomness.

As with anything done in a stream-of-consciousness style, freely-associated, the sense is in the senselessness, the meaning in the meaninglessness, the text hidden and revealed within the text. Doffing my boatmen’s cap to Lacan, I have purloined a letter, stamped it, signatured it and sent it on its merry way. Where it goes is incidental to the randomness of chance, judgment, craftsmanship, OCD or chicanery. Though I did send it off in my boatmen’s cap, so there must be some guile and hew to it, unfitting as it may be.

I take the gardener’s rake and scrape the rain from the bark of my face; this is how it begins, naked rain, rakes and an indifference to both.

That’s it: randomness, guile and chicanery, and me in my Lacertian boatman’s cap purloining letters without stamps.

Circling

On every forehead, the label warned
"you were meant to be blossom or a halo

of circling doves... naked, except for joy".

Then wind separated sea; the spirit found
its famous groin and fell asleep, haunted.

They built churches. Columns, arches, spaces;
body of stone, glass whose heart trapped light

in the shape of a sword pointed up towards oblivion.
In the belfast, doves circle round the vining blossoms.

poem

   "Nora Roberts, Planet Finder"

Vesuvius · glacier
oilfield strike

clench your fist
for four long years

all the shopping centers named "Village"
breaking camp
for the last time here

don't hit the hydrant
or the diesel Mercedes

The Jazz Symphonic Glass Ear

page 87-92


Earth terra mater under the domain of Tellus and the fertility of Ceres in the month of April fooling the Gregorian calendar of the nineteenth footing into thinking that all the lost years with their spent seconds silently scatter across the docile meaning of the body earth mother earth father earth with all its kin of conflagration living the good fat life that only earth can give to its breath bound inhabitance its ocean fumaroles ignition that dive and float submissively to its commands issued as a hurricane of wind and water blinding the hunger of the air to be filled up with a desire for war with Lazarus falling sick with the saving of the sorrowful soul but truthful spirit and body suffering the healing salvation of rain on the face asleep the rain keep its lament spent on the rhyme of seven heaven where the together weather of your emotion toil in the soil of the flesh that went bent in the lush thrush brush of a rush winning the praise of the Gods weather my fair weather friend my everyday companion we wear each other both night and day wear each other both fair

Earth of a packing house where the cold pill is due to heal the oracle of Abu the hypothesized possibility found in the age of naming where the astonishing wrong doing of watching television is held tight against the fatigue night unable to sleep but must continually move toward the birth of daylight itself a roving angle angel waiting to be lit up the promise of rain is heard on the breeze a sleepy thing easing its way southeastward the sky crack open in a flood of emotion and the clouds give birth all is not lost along the long string of rain that break open on the concrete where puddles reflect rain embracing the air with a song to sing where its refrain scare with a flare the lie’s prize of vows on the boughs of spring’s wings that roar a shore pour its score ascend till spent on the prime slime of life on the shoulder of the beholder bolder then its brother as a mother nursing as a father protecting as a lover sharing the house of the heart the cage where age finds its full measure that dwells and fell in the flesh there where whine us down to the rare air of the end of the wind and we make amend to our rescued friend overwrought by the hand of the land where the burial of an oak is stroked where the watery bed is bred from snow where the sea-swell’s will is the joy of a poor boy and everywhere the round motion of air’s breath is caught in the seamanship of a forsaken waken by the thunder down under seeming redeeming of the eternal burn my soul remember the greenish yellow path in the Taebaek mountains of Korea the colonized bells the sat Buddha among the fall foliage and the white beaches of Cheju-do the remembrance of blood on Port Chop Hill deceased renaissant memories the empty lights of a by-gone day I have paid for my days all 54 years of them the wreckage of the immaculate virgins as a poet I tell all of my secrets I caught herpes from a Korea whore a business girl a picked up in a G I bar in the village of Tongduchon where the redemption by wild fire water wild women and wild drugs the cargo of the American soldiers on leave from Camp Casey on an over nighter pass a turtle sleeping in the dinner plate bed of a whore once an immaculate virgin do she ever contemplate the consistency of her trade the sharing of the naked skin

Earth with its eyes to the ground watching over fresh graves turned out of their skins in the last holy art of reasoning that the sons of Ganymede are going to war against those who will kill the eagle rather then let the voluptuous beautiful cup bearer into their estheisi invented heaven where only the catholic claim that they can go where the shittim wood overlaid with gold housed in the smited want of sex it shall come to pass that all shall be seen as sisters and brothers in the midnight hour of our forgivefulness the kind mind shall triumph in the season of our faithful reason when earth birth the exultation of our salvation and we know that the tender slender flocks of flowers the thunder of colossal colors fit for the eyes of bees that fly the scented why of a reply the handsome face of a flower’s grace drift as lift by the wind that roam without a home sing long of the wind with a song overflowing with the first communion for Nature is the godhead of the all mighty consolation the royal ration the blooming fuming consuming years of tears she is mouth and ears divine she is the first and the last of life all imposing power that cover all none can step outside none can go pass there is no knowable knowledge without her celesta power she is the present living God of Gods she is Isis and Bast Ninhursay and Ishtar Devi and Shiva Artemis and Athena Agrona and Brigid Freyla and Fulla Mary and Eris she is God my father my mother wedlock as one

Earth has witnessed man claiming the tree of knowledge to discern the suppose scientifically hidden face of God when the face is all about him to be seen in the skin of trees in the flesh of water in heart of dirt in the forgetful voice of the wind in the consumption blood of mosquitoes in the restless pumping heart of the conflagration of bees in the motion of ants’ knees and the breath of a fly buzzing about busily about the business end of the day where our breath feeds the trees that feed in return in this union is to be found the sensual air trap in the lung of a new born the birth of a tree the birth of a child both a holy thing brother of the other joy in the birth of a boy joy in the birth of an oak kind in kind in the flung flame of a tongue by defiance name she is the same that can not know shame with justices and with grace she keep to her pace strong she can not do wrong

Earth has witness the eternal eminent and minimal minute broken down to where we are holding fast in its circumstance of a mythological relationship that rationalize the passing of a prophet’s minaret into the cries of the faithful whose mouth is full of begging prayers the world bowel is forever fat and full of begging while we no longer call to the spectral sun in it ephemeral rebirth to save us from the cyclone orgasm ragging across the face of earth we are her heir we born bare wear the concern that turn on the tip of our minds in the hour of our greatest need we plea to a God never seen our needs betwixt the fixed mixed rife of life spent on the element of laws that draw praise to the supposedly only way but the poet say rest in the breast of the breath you who do through your daily lockup live look to the very birth of your union look to the everyday God immaculately full of worms God of the shared air the understood undertook motherhood of the flood of blood in the veins the mystery of the Nazareth is not the same for he requires a far flung heaven and not the wondrous robe of the globe with its good heart playing the part of the will still in the flesh the marvelous conceive before the year that man was born we are late comer to the Godhead

1 H D i 1

they are coming to take my cubicle

she smelled like SweeTarts
and asked if the windows

caused monitor glare.

she rolled into my cubicle

and sat down on the ledge.

then I pieced together candies

that were left in the parking lot.

then the wood was hot

before the anvil. no one cared.

they say uneasiness is a matter

of morale in this climate.

she strolled into my cubicle

and took my cubicle

and I was left with a keyboard

to leave my head on for the

night.

Into Blur

Another shocking crime.
Similiar victims. Women.

Trampled. We break eggs;
nothing disappears. It feels

like nothing. Like a blur,
like a string of smoke unfurled.

Either way, we curl fetal,
guitar-shaped, guilt-filled.

There is flame, shadow, art,
wound, mouth, body, dark-

remember?

When my questions reach you,
indecipherable, simple,

is it soul that traces shape
or unearthed, long dead words

that perfectly disguise bruised
and upturned prayers- a remedy

for plunder, feast and fear?

When a man falls into a mountain,
soot-colored throat, blind disaster

rushing down, the distant rain
like winter fur wistful, sad, invisible

is brightness swallowed?

small part of a large work

I don't MANAGE hurting anymore

I don't MANAGE people very well.
would you leave me ALONE?

IT'S NOT HURTING ANYMORE
what did you do with the lighting?

a common plug of clay for you.
have you UNDRESSED your outlook?

takes some work to blot out identity.
AM I TALKING TO YOU? WELL AM I?

if in J, stay away. if in X, call for Rex.
heard that one from the radio?

HE WAS TALKING ABOUT A VALID EXPERIENCE.
should I PARK the car?

my job is to paint letters over letters
that someone else has already painted.

OUTLINES

good advice for squalid digs

try picking needles out of your own haystack

try sawing off the tree limb with both your arms

burning

Love, American Style still leaves too much beef fat

in the refrigerator

leaky faucet's a sure sign that someone is

humming a tuneless melody on the phone

I watched you through the keyhole

I washed you through the cardoor

I wished you had had your own trail mix

it isn't easy to digest, it just says so on the

packaging

pears & soundbites - sweltering

swell with me if you cut down that tree

written by wax dummies

published by tennis elbow certification specialists

swinging from a crucial point

like a jaded drop-out
dogged by sway,
placid yet clutched at the knuckle;
can it be there is no
ricochet or flinch
at the bearings taken,
just a slump in the beeline
a state-of-the-art amble
along yawning slip roads
that branch away from
a solidarity which makes
sense to some
yet is a cliché to another who
takes the lead from a
subterranean source
confessing every blade of
camouflage, giving the game away
that hasn’t already been lost, set back
in a search oblivious to acquisition
taking refuge in the bolt-hole of nebula
that embryonic nook so coveted
where a continuous u-turn backs-up
the long-distanced forerunner

For Clifford Duffy