On the Pere Marquette
When you
talk to
God do
you think
of it as
an idea to pay
attention to, as
a conversation
with a being
with some other
self, selfless unlike you
are not, but wish to
be? Like that Marine
marched us ‘round
the Seymour Square
Christian Reformed Church
parking lot, bunch’a Cadets
we were, we were
in His charge too
on a canoe
trip where the
Great Raccoon first
told me why
the convertible did
not crack up when the other
guy in charge charged
passing on that narrow
2 lane Michigan blue
road. He gave me
a vanilla milkshake in Big
Rapids as some form
of reward, told
us all not to
tell our parents or
his sergeant about that
raccoon or the river while
Ed Sanders sang
Olsen with the Fugs:
“We drink & break open our veins
Only to know. Only to know.”
Prayer
“Lions, and Tigers, and Bears oh my!”
The Tigers don’t exist
in a future without Great Cats.
Athena, beautiful goddess
of the Edsel Ford Freeway,
we pray to you
that they will, & that
you who live in a big old
house built in 1880, with Sarah,
the greatest teenager in the world
may heed our entreaty.
Near Greektown, Casinos, what was once
J. L. Hudsons. Attended by avatars
once known as Negroes who
can’t cross the visible bridge to
the People’s Republic of CANADA.
Who stay in town on a gamble.
May you go to Tiger games where
The Green Man awaits you,
ivy bat poised to challenge Kaline,
Cash, Horton, Cobb, Gehringer, & Greenburg.
May American Gods of Jewish, Christianic & Islamist persuasion
join devotees in immense celebration
of spirit, mind, and midst there. May we
together sing
“Bless our house, our Tigers caged
or not, & remember the child
in the Green Cathedral
at Michigan & Trumbull,
where the immortals play
the great game forever.”
We bow, beseech the
Rev. Mr. Harwell to lead our prayer:
Essential deity, we worship thee
in fervent stripe & fang
& razor-sharp
talon of dream.
after Townes (sort of)
I.
The Doctor said no
ideas but in things, but
then when there
are no things
it gets dicier. Loretta.
She’s my . . .
II.
Where was
I, was she &
whose 7s are those
on her sleeve?
III.
Loretta told me a lie
never told to anyone
but me &
that is why
I love her even
more than
the good Doctor did
or might.
Material matters, is
all there is.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2007
O Dan, sz she
did you see?
Another wrestler died.
They think it was steroids.
O Death, where is thy sting?
Right where it
always has been.
At the end.
All World Lucky Day 7-7-07
First.
Following a TV conversation between Giants Broadcasters Duane Kuiper and color fill-in Bip Roberts after St. Louis utility player Aaron Miles makes three errors at shortstop in an inning, unintentionally providing the last place Giants a 7-3 lead against the World Champion, but 8½ game back, St. Louis Cardinals.
Second. Vizquel gets rid of his hat.
Going straight back
damned thing gets
in the way. Omar
has a flip leaves a hat
way behind on his
way into short left.
Third.
Joe Morgan once made
three errors in a game.
It pissed him off.
It pissed him off even
more when Tito Fuentes
made three errors too
and pulled himself. Big
Leaguers are supposed
to be
better than that.
Fourth.
Miles grounds into a
bang-bang 3-1 with
the based loaded and
the score 7-6
in the Cardinal 8th.
Fifth.
Omar starts a double play
off Pujols grounder in the 9th.
Sixth.
Hennessey faces Chris Duncan
who has homered off him
twice in two at bats, so far,
in history. Gets to
3-2. Walks him. Brings up Rolen.
Seventh.
Scott Rolen once
got into my friend Terry Little’s
cab when he was a
Phillie Rookie and said
“Show me the Haight.
Show me the House
where the Dead and Janis
lived. “ Terry did. Sd that
Scott Rolen was the nicest baseball player,
and quite possibly the nicest civilian,
he ever met.
Eighth.
With one on and two out in the 9th
Rolen grounds out to Vizquel.
Giants win 7-6.
Ninth. Also Happened, same game . . .
Vizquel passed Aparicio for
for most hits by a shortstop . . .
ever . . .
at least that what they’re saying . . .
2353, or sumfin
like that.
In a caravan of sorts
I am sleeping
with a beautiful woman who
is cheating on her Mexican husband.
I, strangely unaligned, am
cheating on no one, besides
we are not “technically speaking”
“fucking.” Not even
technically speaking
to each other, just
sleeping together. It is
pretty & pleasurable.
Just as it is. We stop
in a coastal town
for supplies, particularly
beer. Brief scene
of debt reckoning &
borrowing unresolved ‘til
one of us realizes I have
lots of Canadian dollars.
My lady needs drugs
from the drugstore &
there isn’t one until
someone explains it’s’round
the bend, by
the Castle.
A terrible racket is
taking place in
The Castle Dungeon.
The landlady is screaming
at the Lord of the Land.
Some of this is captured, or,
perhaps, already has been,
by the Sunday Magazine.
There is a feast with
comings & goings &
special guests & photographs of
reputed Visigoths.
Many are known to me,
or others, although, some
are not, at all, there. There are
huge portions of beef &
it falls to the floor in joints
to join the cheese.
for Voop
I. What would Hayes Carll do?
Orpheus plays to a remarkable collection
of snakes and other creatures of the underworld
in a remarkable woodcut from a Century somewhere
between his and the present.
In the court of Charles II
the guitar enjoyed a period
of nearly manic enthusiasm, sometimes
there were
5 strings, sometimes 6, sometimes
8, 12, or 6, again.
Send a check to KLFU in Los Angeles
if you still watch television.
Make it out to the LA School District.
That’ll learn ‘em.
II. Somewhere
There exists a youthful artist
from East of the East. Her
12,000 works since she was four show
the imprint of genius.
Her name means luck. Her other name
means to fly. She is their answer
to a luminous Yankee painter of shit
& Tiger Woods.
III. Little Monkey Falling Sick from Eating Rotten Fruit
In her eyes, monkeys are human. China Post
used her design when she was four. She paints
spontaneously & she’s really good
at monkeys. And at unique composition, as in
We have dinner here. Now.
She has 2 monkey friends beside
her numerous imaginary others who
show us their great joy with
her and are her
ideal human beings. She often
takes walks with her father.
She likes dolls. She often
talks with little friends who come from Peking,
Shanghai, Vancouver, & Odessa Texas.
Once, she took great pains to paint
over her father’s immortal
Marxist Realist output. He didn’t like that
too much although he respected her
work & said “Yani, you should show
more respect for your partners.” He painted
flowers while she nailed an orchid & said
she liked the chickens being
taken good care of by her parents. Then
she started throwing brushes
with dripping ink at the chickens, and a
new form, Chix a la Pollack was born. Yani
is always happy when she is painting. Tube
after tube of the young artist’s product
Awakening Lion
Ghost of the Last Catch
Fairy of the Cone Within Us
Let’s Go Cherry Picking
11 Eagles Looking for Game
& so many more
get on airplanes to who knows where .
IV. Critical Comment:
“The thing is
it is beautiful painting.”
Home, beat up
by Lincoln &
the garden, legs not
only sore but
weak with work
& play. Chris
& Nancy in Santa Cruz
digging the Blues.
I am not
a rock,
but today I
am on an island.
I. So There
So what are
my brother
& his first daughter & wife doing ?
In San Francisco?
At the Giants game? Him
in the chef’s toque they gave
away today? Ella Grace
making sure it suits
him perfectly?
Without telling me? There are
images stored somewhere
in the cerebral cortex.
II. One is
A brother’s face that
sometimes appears
in hallucination. If that
isn’t him then he is
mixed up with some
other stranger on TV that
looks like him. Frightening
but hardly lethal.
Similar disturbances
have happened before.
He’s talking on a cell phone.
(Ain’t me calling.) Or maybe
it is, a reverse, an alternate me
& an other, him.
III. The Universe & the Mind
The Universe &
the mind
it spawned remain
personal & mysterious.
Baseball is going to
get more interesting &
entirely less of
the matter.
More games will be
suspended postponed subject
to arcane postmortems
about what
might be. In-
fielders will have
the harder
time gauging
structure & wind.
Drift will
confuse more than
it used to.
Once real as well as all
the contrived rivalries will
continue to be
old confused &
not of the moment
or matter.
Voices will natter.
Gophers will continue
to eat my onions, the Lincoln Park
coyotes will continue to threaten,
I say threaten, boy, Pepper.
Stormy will continue to shout
at them. We will
play. We will win,
we will lose, we will
survive. Longer than
Pepper. This
would be no
big deal if
it didn’t
threaten the Great
Game. The only truly
American thing worth
a damn is
baseball. (Well, exceptin’
coyotes, who
too are American, so
that makes two
things. Long as
they don’t eat
Pepper.) God’s Dog
6th hole. Lincoln Park.
Hawks circling. Why
San Francisco is
a refuge, for
some creatures.
I.
Green ideas sleep furiously in the lees
and squirrels dream about the autumn rains.
We did too. Laramie’s late-night trains
knew our desire and gave us little peace.
It never has been easy deliberately to cease
believing in true love exiled on Main
Street, longing for a tenderness to sustain,
although (a poet might say) it’s better than disease.
And still, I am reminded, awfully
of her and that last incredible night
in the Silver Spur Motel. She took
my side, and I loved her and the three
things she said. The desperate fight
was over. All we had to do was cook.
II.
The Flying Squirrels often seem to sleep
while their leader’s frightful monologs strain
even a customer’s patience. They keep
right with the beat, though, when the refrain
comes back around. Scenery turns green
as lime icing on citrus cheesecake.
Fred would say that’s better than obscene
allusions to Vancouver fleshpots staked
out by rookie cops of the sort Hank might
bring up if we let HIM in. But it still comes
at me, angry, & close to that night.
I have no choice about my brain. It thrums
like squirrels flying close to ground.
Radar screens bleep furiously when she’s around.
III.
Though furiously they sleep, all green ideas
are known to fuck like squirrels when it rains.
They do their fucking underneath the trains.
It isn’t us they fear, for they’re at peace
believing true love is desolate, a stain.
I long for love that green thoughts may sustain.
XJ would say it’s better than disease.
I am reminded that a lethal breeze
wiped out the Duke and Duchess who complained
that God was being fickle yet again.
That someone somewhere would hear him, and reprise
devising plagues of frogs and pesky flies
to vex the angels flying close to ground.
Radar screens don’t bleep when God comes round . . . .
That word does not exists in any language
It will never be uttered by human mouth
Give me back my name
Give me back my name
Something has been changed in my life
Something has been changed in my life
Something must be returned to us
Something must be returned to us
lines from Name:
David Byrne for Talking Heads on the enduring classic 1985 LP Little Creatures
. . . if you haven’t ever listened to it, there is no better time than the
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