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

Tom: sd, do the intimite details of my dailiness truly intrigue you? not asked testily,

Cheri: I didnt know that Wm Honan came with you to Sarah Lawrence but then again

Cheri: it changed cause you thought that I would be snatched away from the market soon while I needed you more

Cheri: yeah the guinea-pigs liked it and apparently market-research does have its advantages

Cheri: but you want to see me and see me and see me and you cant see why I don’t want to see you

Cheri: that if she ever said one bad thing about any man I liked I was going to stop th.

Cheri: how afraid I am that if this aint working nothing will cause th. is the thing our culture chooses

Cheri: th > I have no idea how smart she is but she was smart enough not to corner me

Cheri: and not to make me feel like "unconsciously i didn’t want to do th." like this other woman said

Cheri: she said: no. We don’t know each other, it's difficult, maybe you won’t like what I say

Cheri: but as I don’t want to fly around the world for all my life i want to change this

My Oral History is tremendously focused in a logical fashion. I’m writing everybody’s biography, including God’s.

I’m writing primarily for my own amusement, as I happen to be the only Joe Gould in this solar system. By this don’t mean to exclude the possibility that there probably are other systems full of Joe Goulds.

It was then, at ten am, that it came to me: I began (or could begin) my wax window series. A train whistle, a starter’s pistol, a crack of thunder and lightning, these are typical, so familiar and might I add boring, we should have sex first and then I will continue describing how my series, “The Wax Window Series,” came about.

I finished the book, I think I mentioned, and so I picked up the next book. I had been feeling in the long long book, which wound down perfectly to the beginning, as if it were part of other books by the same author. In all his books, see, I had had to look back at earlier passages, flip through the book till I found some fact or description that I couldn’t quite remember, or that I couldn't quite believe. but at the end of the longer book, I felt like looking back to other books, as if the books were interlocking.

When I opened the new book, I was not quite stunned to see that it began immediately after another book -- not the long one, but the one before that, and in fact was back in the same hotel. That would be a hotel I would like to stay in, I thought, and out of this desire came a series of questions.

If I were to show up at the hotel, and call you, what would your reaction be? This might be touchy ground here -- I assume that our love is real, and that it fits into your life as it surges around and dances with our love (to our love? like music?), but of course one of the hallmarks of our love is that if need be it will stay put and not interfere with the schedules and rigors and dailiness and requirements of our lives.

I remember when you came to N and stayed in Chinatown after you broke up with P. That was a wonderful visit, and that room with stuffed animals and a dog in the hall and naked in front of the refrigerator and tiny lunch in the garden -- well, you get the picture, and, as usual, I am happy to drift into the past, whereas you like to stay in the here and now. What I'm getting at is that you just showed up, and a while ago, when we had contemplated spending some time together, and then it didn't work out, you mentioned that you wished I'd just come over to B, and I certainly wished that.

Which bring me to the hotel. As you had a room where we could stay, I'm wondering if I could find such a room. This is like the Hotel I am reading about, and it seems to be the author's purpose to turn the desire for his lover into the desire for the place which would allow the lover's return, a place where love could be. Is this clear?

So another question would be, do you know this hotel? Murukami generally calls it the Dolphin Hotel, but it could be a room not in a hotel or a hotel with another name. All I know is that I hear you calling me, and I want to answer, but to do that I must find the room where love is not in the corner nor is it something to dance to but is the room itself. If you have any ideas -- or any idea what I'm talking about! -- I'd appreciate your sending me the phone number/address.

I have many other questions, primarily to do with time, but they must wait, as I am suddenly very tired.

A hotel, or room, then! I will go there now, and wait for you to tell me where it is. Don't worry about me, or think ill of me, or in any way be concerned about or for me. It is where I want to be.

A marriage two young people didn’t feel young at the time but looking at the photos now young is what I’d call em zap it’s yr birthday today

Forget to say happy birthday then zap back to baby sitting up as parents freeze zap child grows up as parents freeze it’s a pretty good trick they do it in post

Ya ya the oral tradition is a way to give praise to someone without humiliating them totally

And now if I keep going on like this/ you'll have a first hand experience/ of why the oral tradition probably died out in the first place

Or maybe tonight we'll survive it revive it make it live it pass it on and leave this party humming hmmhmmhhmm

Ooo I think we've now established the fact that tonight's a praise song for Elizabeth Murray

So I guess I can stop this singing that is if you call this singing though personally I just call it "Reading the Poem"

And Elizabeth never stopped me from reading my poems in fact she's always encouraged me perhaps to change after tonight which by the way takes the place of the Christmas Eve Party

She does and we'll not escape (Chorus: no we'll not escape) (the call & response portion of the oral tradition) we'll not escape (Chorus: no we'll never escape) we drown in art

in an Elizabeth Murray painting, not a bad way to go, as the oral tradition makes

a comeback thanks to the poetry club I'm starting on the Bowery currently looking for investors to go in on Real Estate for Art New Model Capitalismo gee what a gizmo

if interested see me after party meanwhile we're all dippin in the cup kickin in

hey ho I do love this griot job composing praise poems is as easy as saying Elizabeth Murray totally great artist Dr. Elizabeth Rose Murray we are drowning in your Art and handing over prizes doctorates presents awards flowers love balloons for what you give us is Incalculable and all we do in return is praise best we can humbly means

Every little piece of the big painting had been scraped back reworked fretted over and slashed turned over left alone scathed scorched beaten torched pacified fed perked up in a sexual way invigorated slapped around and left up all night to fend

She works like that opera where the orchestra is drunk and the conductor is running around crazily the ladder is not on fire it is fire and the painting is called

IF ONLY I’d spent a little more time starting poetry record labels and a little less

Early it is 5:36 in D’jma El F’naa, Marrakech the woman pulls bread from out

There’s the ocean! What? It’s a red ocean! Please. The marriage of eye and ear

OK everything is in its place and everything is
going to take over one another’s place luckily
leaving a blank space right where it just was
for the one moving in good thing we do not
have a long term lease arrangement here as we
just keep moving to try to keep out of the way
and also simply to be moving moving all day
and that’s the birth of dance it follows the music
where is it going that is the word so it stays up
all night and it flies like nothing and it means
everything