Last Bender

The Ground Plan
the ground plan is obvious
here are eyes
there exit signs
deep confusion on the lower floors
galleries and such
fiends and fangs and blowtorch touches
gothic purple slang
flesh hangs
into pots of glue
Egypt’s all the rage
next
draped in parachutes
I Dream of Genie tents
with waiters
silver service trays
eunuchs vexed with gold leaf
below
Time’s Square and all
hobble up the curb
on ball joint busted
amputated feet
all [...]

This is a variation of a poem I posted earlier, Fire, See the World Through the Eyes of Fire. Both are drawn from a manuscript that dates from January 2007. I was unsatisfied with earlier versions of the poem and rewrote it from the manuscript. Then I realized there were two or three poems in [...]

If I could write one book as good as Charles Willeford’s Pick Up I’d put down my pen and feel fulfilled. I could retire to my garden and family or buy an old tobacco shop and slowly desiccate among the shelves of borkum riff and Virginia shag. But I have no talent for the perfect [...]

Fire Day
 
he was naked all the year
they came to talk and gaze
and every city had no shame
 
they came to say the days
are as they are
 
the place and time are evil
the dance arranged;
drinks punctuate the festive drizzle
thirst is not assuaged.
 
smoke fills up a chimney
torch-eyes split and drift
hot breath bends and blackens rage
lost things hoist on air.
 
it’s [...]

See the world through the eyes of fire
Prisoner of glass and metal, like a girl,
Pouring down and up a mountain ridge.
The mind yawns the early dark
Shuts down the sky. There is no silence
No void but in ideas
The empty patterns of things to come
 
I do not feel the surge from beneath
Of this character of fire
Its smallest [...]

WALLACE, ALFRED RUSSEL
The Malay Archipelago; The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; A Narrative of Travel With Studies of Man and Nature. 2 volumes. Macmillan & Co., London, 9 March 1869:
The Durian is, however, sometimes dangerous. When the fruit begins to ripen it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents not infrequently [...]

This a poem of George Oppen’s, a favorite of my friend Randy. I had read Oppen and not had much sympathy for him until Randy showed me this one, in The New Collected Poems. But all of that is for another post. For now I just want to put this poem up.
Psalm
 
Veritas sequitur…
 
In the small [...]

I am an empty Universe
A mirror flashing in the sky
Your light my love and mine
And then we die

This is an excerpt from the middle of Endangered Species. I’m going to post the whole thing one of these days but for now it’s going to be excerpts, and an excerpted novel isn’t always all that comprehensible. In this part my characters are putting on a show, Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. It’s a sort [...]

A journal from DC called Big Cigars published this one in 1990. I have no idea when I first wrote it. Maybe 1986 or ‘85. I’m right now rooting around for another poem that goes with it, with the three hungry lizards and the beets the size of basketballs.There are no lizards, beets or basketballs [...]