Poems 2000

What Makes Us Great, The Luck of the Bowery, I’m Outta Here!

1. The 6 pack. You want a beer? Hey, why not buy six! Brilliant.

2. Batteries Not Included. We’ll sell you something but it won’t work till you buy something else. Genius.

3. Some Assembly Required. So we’ll make it as far as it’s profitable, then we’ll let you take over. You buy it, and it’s not even made yet. Perfect.

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3rd Movement of the Quartet for the End of Time

“Abyss of the Birds”

One bird

Flies toward

A window

One bird flies

Overhead

Circling, lost

Two birds

Their wings almost touching

Glide over the cemetery

A woman sits apart, her hands loosening handkerchief falling

A child wanders off and into the woods

An owl sits high in a fir tree and gazes over the treetops

The cluttering mutterers communicators set up camp in minds of lonely and compete in bicker whine

Where are the birds flying to? The Land of Birds, and the Land of No Birds

Keep climbing -- matter natter scatting thoughts wings dropping tiny bombs of meaning, meaning, non-meaning

An emptiness opens up

It is sweet and calm

But it is empty

Where the birds once were

Where they once flew

Not enough air to give lift

The chest slowly rising and falling even

Poems, tombs

Let me sing the song of no music

Of no birds

Let me sing the song of the end of time

Opening sounds like emptiness opening

The memory of a bird flying towards a window

The memory of a bird circling, lost

The memory of two birds, their wings almost touching, gliding over the cemetery

The memory of music

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Be Fifty-two: A Pick-up

Number of weeks in a year

Number of cards in a deck

Two times the letters of the alphabet

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Bob Holman presents:

Apocalypse Eternity

Characters:

God

Child

Snake

Earth

Eternity

God: In the beginning I was thinking of something

Which rapidly disintegrated

Boy: Hello

Snake: Pleasant evening (Yawns)

Earth: Happiness

Eternity: Which dances

(A wind, a train, the theater turns inside out, we are on a cold deserted hillside, wet and slick with rain. The grass smells so fresh it’s decadent. Our characters are happy (or not) as they go on, which may be repetition (or not). They do not know they are characters even. We watch them as if it were a play, but, you know, it’s not, probably, because the actors aren’t aware they are actors. All we can do is watch them and enjoy the show and wonder how we got here. And is that so different from what we do, anyway, every day?)

Us (in revelation!): Apocalypse Eternity!

(and, need I add?)

The End

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Can’t Cant