Last Bender

The name we give
a yearning after
or getting chased
Love and paranoia
the reaction accelerates

       
On the way to the car I passed McSorley’s. I could’ve let it slide. Nothing would’ve pleased me more in fact, except maybe an ice cream cone with nuts and sprinkles. But I had to stick it in. It had to be.
        The door dinged open and shut. I gave the bottles the [...]

 
From Blake’s Public Address on his Engraving of Chaucer’s Pilgrims
 
This is Blake on originality in art. He’s talking mostly about engravers in England but he applies his thought to poetry as well. He attacks Monopolizing Traders and blames them for foisting bad art on the public and as a result making people cynical. I’ve put [...]

To the Sidewalk Scaled With Rain
 
Are you a lizard or the look of stupefaction
Eyes frying in their holes conceive a slithering
Pavement their pain assembles on the ground ahead
It dances darts hypnotic till the displaced eyes
Disturb themselves at play
 
The lizard liquefies and roils
Yards of tendons coil like wires
Till the lizard’s neon sparks in agitation
 
Deserted eyes pathetic [...]

Jail’s a good place for reading books. And a ship at sea. Men on submarines read a lot, and in the Antarctic. But the place I’ve read the most has been in decompression chambers, after working in a diving bell. You’re breathing helium. And there’s just nothing else you can do for weeks at a [...]

it’s ok to prick your finger, but you can’t finger your prick.
i spent so many hours in my basement listening to his shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckerandtits album. i had a blacklight, a mildewy old couch and glopaint on the walls. this was before i started taking drugs or anything. it was 6th, 7th grade. george carlin was a [...]

I wrote this poem in 1983 or ‘84, I think. Maybe even 1982. People used to tell me they had no idea what I was writing about, but liked the music or the images. My idea of a poem was one of music and images. It wasn’t until some time in my thirties, or the [...]

1.
lately
collisions
with walls.
sharp touches sharp
and soft on soft
always what should be
but not now
nor ever really
like that.
sometimes sharp on soft
collisions.
sometimes hot
like a stove
not like:
did you see
him? i’ll take
one of those;
or hear about
these collisions
they have seen
and paid to see
excited by
rather
thrilled to death
it’s the dry face again
and dark moves
around me
touch soft to sharp
to see what would pop
and what would [...]

I was standing over the middle of the river when I suddenly couldn’t account for my actions. Why had I done what I just did. I did not want to undo it and so I walked on. It is the same with love and friendship. I can catalogue the physical sensations of either but why [...]

“Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with Melancholy, and gently brings it on like a siren, a shoeing-horn, or some Sphynx, to this irrevocable gulf, a primary cause Piso calls it; most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk [...]