1996 Road Movie leaving, Long Island, Part 2

1996 Road Movie leaving, Long Island, Part 2


leaving, Long Island

dead to me,
leaving for-- through
thoughts racing,

the West

a loaded car snorting in traffic, at the tunnel,
that figure silhouetted,
dark, in winter's coat
camping under the hulking Manhattan Bridge,
thoughts of western direction
the Long Road heading South--

the hierarchy of
Art's reality, the returning
figures, ordered places
the ideas--
revolving

thoughts over the falls
spume and dream,
splashing
in the democratic sun
unchoosing

dead blue sky,
indifferent

comic irony puffing by

the sea, the unending echo, repeating,
faster, gobbling up the time
that first day, I recognized, the detached
strangeness
this mind going on in a self

the absorbed pain, the frenzy,
grown to be wary of--
I hated in others
reflecting me
feeling that I had to go--

struggling among the crowds, the throng
crowding the streets,
I walk in alleys, on the edges
nothing
grand as boulevard, I feel just

the gray-beige of familiarity,
radio static in rapping earphones--
childlike Achilles’
black look
the circles evolve

blank upon blank
ancestral void
deeper deep
down, as going
down

then,
a touch to the head,
Thetis, mother
purpose
and swimming toward light

the leaves
elegiac passing
of faint red sky
long winter’s
March
preceding the 'c'
before the choir’s,
song

the thoughts revolved
set in motion
mythos of seasons
heightening
the, singer in the sun
moments,
clearly seen

looking over the repeated
images hardened to cartoon
the sincerity worn, the moment’s
clarity, clouded,
sun, set to shine, creating the

Villa in the Sun
interlocking puzzled, surface, breaking
into myth of
America’s dying into America--

dying and, BANG
gone to America!

and buried in its mountains
and shining through
the radiant light--
Juggled Diamonded Light

plunging

the eye
the first circle
blank upon
and up to light
the mother's face
of one-passing
in cycle

the waning light
eye-- dazzling leaves
the new reality
of change
of every day
seen,
continual change,

Singer of this Sun’s
this, Villa

the look, of what we saw, as
we stood weeping, bare foot,
dying into the space, soaring
into heights
the jabber and blather,

jays
among the pines
western tanager,

framed, fragments
of the civilization,
yet unfound, sinking

starry night
reeds, Milky Way
of black
bright imagination,
bubbly drift
and sleep

out beyond the land
holding all the pieces together--
flying apart in cinematic fashion,
one reality bleeding
into another

Crispin steps gingerly across
the sky, passing in a flash of sun-- the baton,
flowers burning in painted
silhouette, I will go on, the march of artists,
ramparts of vision

past mixed and reformed,
scent in the grass
hatchings, over
hatched, a skull, a spirit like
flung sheet,

obsolete, shards
a stiff wind
the crescent horn
and a star
blinking change
Arcturus

the bee buzzing blown
down the beach over the
tangled reeds,
white burnt etched light
of broken waves striped

and targeted,
seen and
gone
tilting over the wave,
gone.

the figure
in the sunset
a sunflower
brown and ruined
the end flashes
as a serpent
flag
fin

the comic hero
limping
in pantaloons
sagging at waist
silhouetted
in blue
on an orange
stripe
turning
starry,
blinking

back
to the tree,
the space in hard won, thoughts --
etched and scorched, the intensity,
becoming image

physical surfaces jutting
to transcendent air,
necessary fiction,
the gaudy mythos, revolving
down

into Orphic AMERICA
from under mountains,
this mock hero,
this fiction into a historic journey
of the second chance,

the American west, kicking the shards in
dust and tumbleweed,
Sierra in distance, the bird,
out there, somewhere, in the sun
the hoped for future

outer world, stepped out into-- blasted,
that my mouth was opened to sing,
Gregory singing-- ha!
nature darts upon and stings me,
that leaf extending

the tree, picking it up

going on
through
crumbled Villa
searching the
Plains of the Campana
for plain air

that tree, draw it again, the simple nude
leaning, warmed in dappled light


the path, not taken

this humbled beauty,
my brooken beauty

the food is cold,
the place settings hocked
everything for sale


the earth
breathes
in and out
rolling green
in Diebenkorn blue

serpent’s circle of four
more revolutions, rolling down
vale and up mountain in waning
moon and rising
light

the corners chipped-- health declining,
far sighted, no trust
squinting trickster
off into the sun

scribbling
another cycle
to journey through
shards, cluttering

the clouds
leaves
waves
waterfall spilling
silent
spilling volumes
continuing
the swoosh through
leaves

the simple
happy time,
dreaming under palms
watching the birds, flying overhead
the mystery that brings to mind,

where she went?-- gone, beyond me
I make this image,
I can understand
keep, trace and retrace
the greater mystery of the first

idea, the first reality, this second order
culture shuns-- this romantic
mess of impossible lines
shifts to a classical rightness, the
knowable form, that suits us we

formalize this, give it laurel,
wreathe and gold
and nail (to this knowable
tracing) the deconstructed,
mystery left behind

the paintings, stacked in the studio,
a coat pulled on against the chill,
a calm of finality
reality, blanks--
BACK IN THE CAR--

turning the key

the beach rose
for Becky
overtaking
the pounding surf
crashing
on rocks

still waiting for the eviction notice,
“when you asked me how I felt?
was that some kind’ a joke?”
I’m speeding past Long Island onto

the Western dream

reeling in gold blinking emptiness,
trekking Brindlestint

stumbling in Nevada’s dark parking lot
helicopter spiraling
in space

past evening
down
the arm swings down
another cycle
the arc
the rising sun,

made in America,
the model struts ,
shoot and blinding light, cameras, Vogue pages
flip in glare of
Road Movie,
bar and glitter

one armed, slot machine,
bells and whistle-- ongoing
Indian morphs to coyote,
tramp in a can
motel stories

mattresses aflame
through gasoline flare,
road trip
with poets, ha!
out on the Plains

giving away our belief
to own anything,
but the “pressures of reality”
a different war
the rifle butt on the door

our own individual end
for the common good,
the poem, a sheath on the floor

stomped on, stepped over,
and blowing
out the door--

once each day,
the paper and
forgotten
wham, bam--
swoosh

the sunflowers
continue their cycle
spinning
into the western orbit
of tanager and blue
imagination
the western facet

deep within
mountain
origin
the finality
ending
fragments
thoughts
the larger
poem
an earlier cycle
the flashing light

jutting from this
confusion and frustration-- the shard
of resentment sticking out from
underneath, the cross
dressed figure

on stage, spot lit--
one becomes the other
symptoms of overwhelming number, over
produced
the perverse, exaggerated

to no feeling, backward role in wig
and bra,
the satin negligee, smeared
lipstick, ringing mouth
this dream
began with cut fingers

the severed limb
stopped, frustrated,
more guns

the ever spinning
out of gear
world revolving out
wobbling
axis

the green tree, poster torn, turtles lost--
same tree in sunset, blazing light

the despair that started
this nightmare those unending
evenings, in the box
cooking dinner
the pasta

cardboard tomato
the knife, another evening
to meet an exhausted body,
though, still painting,
more paintings, to leave,
in dreams

weird and with comic speed,
knives appearing
Van Gogh, recording the moments, the slow
blurred flowers that Picasso carts away, minotaur
and the melted DeKooning, the sincerity

of heroes, Jasper Johns is tracing
to remember, becoming the saddened
figure betrayed,
the system rotted
the height achieved,

the painting’s fragment falling,
to fashion beat,
to flip of the hair,
the runway lights
Naomi’s butt, god-- dess!

running forehead into
the bent No Parking pole,
the tarred animals hanging
in a nature of doom, falling-- revolving carousel
through facets tumbling through

a realism of cigarette smoke and
packaged smell through drunken fog,
unclear, confused, up whose--
stopped short of goal,
moneyed sex machine for

starched shirts and lame dress, raising
the crystal glass perfumed, pinkie ring
and good manner,
she wants, he wants
repetitions into patterns,

formaldehyde starling
steeped in coal oil hanging, from a foot
that same squawk--
mantra
repeating

sun
on the bay
Paumonak
sand and snow

far off
the Clark’s Nutcracker
flies from a pine
(something of a Prince)

things called up
in everyday routine
ordered
into a world
still repeating

my own symbols,
my own life,
of this place,
Siddhartha meditates
to Buddha stature, teaches
the change, spiritual radiance

I go for refuge to the Buddha
I go for refuge to the Buddha
I go for refuge to the dharma,
someone else's song, wheels
turning, I go for refuge

to the sangha, myself to
the community
world,
one,
the whole difference

and
gone
beyond all images, gone,
beyond the power of
all words

Dharma bum, Rudy amongst bottles,
do I believe in God?
a difficult word, believe-- “I Know,”
my studio rent--
a tin can for beans, shot out

arcing across the sky
the surrounding silence echoes,
the desperate motif
one does not plan this, something happens,
fate of furies, eaten out heart,

just wanted to camp, reading
Rexroth, a beautiful poetry, reading outside,
bringing along
Kerouac and Snyder, Ginsberg
and that fellow, Witter
Bynner from New Mexico
to read Chinese
poems, poets singing of--
Jade Mountain
mad in the mountains
wedding the west, to beloved
Snowman

skull and table,
the red table
reeds burning
sunflowers overturned

the Comedian enters,
stumbling through washboard of Nevada
desert hills
continuing one after another

“who is my audience” he asked.
“Or do I think it is?” out there, in here,
out there kicking
through detritus of what’s, left over
pot pie for dinner,

a video of Zambriske Point
the second order
to fill the void,
between stopping the onslaught,

cracks, with paint
copy ourselves, to feel, copy a place, to be
no place, “to be”
the second world, built on top of polluted nest,
used home, of pigeon’s shit, and six pack loop
looking for answers on high,

to what question?
forgotten, thousands of years of asking,
“no Reply” giving up hope,
forgotten question,
answers float, tattered prayers

flags in crisp blue air,
mountain height
the answer,
maybe stories, we have made
wondering about the millennium,
in 1996,

I'm already-- past that,
my Singer,
Singer of the new reality!

of heavens
falling
and time
always a shard
here, there

the cycles flashing
faster, faster
a single day
containing
sun and ash

nature’s presence
spring, is here is alive
and full, colorful

keeping attention
evolving, another word

a
moment
cycling
revolves
crystal

re-dreamed, the gods echoed in the sky,

become that tree!


the oneness by copying,
we becoming it, one
to be one,

breathing with these
cycles of universe, copying
becoming--
“and to all these who sold out the
imagination…,” he was unsparing, “”...who killed

the red headed bird?”
“give us this day our daily death...
...that we may learn to live”
in the general apocalypse,
of Atomic Cafe, warning and preparation
Debby’s 1960’s flower powered

concrete bunker, now swimming
pool, down on old Front St.
that dilapidated neighborhood,
emptied in winter
the spinning, repetition

vibrating and vertical
collapsing
darkness of possibility
flowers breathe
lungs of beauty
from reduction
to fullness

after a while
it was too much, withdrawing
into the poem
is all too much--
gone to the woods

still searching
an answer,
“oh, what I fear is the answer.”
the naked
hidden, love unspoken,

strange reality, that Religion
fright and superstition
TEAR IT ALL DOWN
what is the poet
doing for himself here?

Spit on you,
In Fear
and Hate,

only I this avenging ego, Know!

I draw my coat around--
the snow, following a road
the desert, I see nature

and the wind “cries Mary,”

POWER! of the Sublime

in the fading sun
advancing beyond

winter in a new dream,
a springtime into summer

the NEW SUN's blinding
light, the thrill the excitement of the Vital I,
SHIFTING IN MY SEAT
always onward,

then, the long decline
wheeled along in weakened sun,
knees blanketed
ever to achieve height, again?

to see anew--
fear
undulating in the night

What we felt
at what we saw-- looking
a hamburger helper for dinner,
another cold one on the table,
pissin’ in the wind

no degree to present,
no right,
a walk in the world, to name this self
renaming it,
this self, me

not me
conscious me
unconscious me
real me.